Dear Yuyutsu,

You are twisting yourself into knots. We may be able to deal with ‘disease/bug/pain/slavery’ because there are alternatives such as health/insecticide/analgesics/freedom, but there is no alternative to the ephemeral. That's all there is.

Religion consists of superstition and ignorance. It is nothing else regardless of the character of those who claim otherwise.

There is no native state of emotion. Joy is one emotion. Sadness, grief, anger and many others exist.

You wish to retain your illusions about attaining God. You don’t need my permission to do so

AJ:<<If adults talk like what?>>

Following your example, kids would learn to preoccupy themselves playing stupid mind games.

This is a game where lying and cheating is permitted. Where you can claim to be open to evidence when in fact you are not and accuse others of various logical fallacies when in fact it is you committing the fallacies. You can accuse others of lying when you are the one lying. This is done to deflect attention from the weakness in your own argument and your own porkies.

The aim of the game is not to find the truth but to win and control.

I grew up with this stupid game, but my children will not. They can open their religion to challenge and remain true to values and lifestyle of their religion.

As they grow, they will observe their non-Muslim school mates follow a “lifestyle” of binge drinking, sex and drugs, along with self- mutilation (tattoos and piercings on all parts of the body). It will not be a surprise if they, as i did, encounter stories of date rape and attempted suicide among their class-mates.

They'll be taught that in fact this lifestyle is not "normal" and fundamentally it is because their parents cannot or will not provide the guidance they need.

Without Islam I would have been one of these parents.

Don't expect any more responses from me

Dear Dan,

<<Are you now claiming to be 'rational'?>>

Not at all, Dan. I claimed and explained many times why none of us is rational and I include myself in it.

<<Previously you were trying to tell me there was a difference between truth and facts. When truth and facts must separated, then truth dies for true men.>>

Good and well: there are no true men, there is only God and this is the truth, so when the truth is known, this "point-of-view of God" (for lack of more accurate words) that formerly considered itself to be a man(/woman), has turned inside to know Its true identity.

---

Dear David,

Suppose even there are no alternatives, it doesn't rationally follow that one should value anything - you could still value nothing. If you value the ephemeral because it is the only thing in existence, then you probably do so because you value existence, which itself is irrational.

Sure, our native state is not an emotion, it is sat-chit-ananda, but when pure bliss is reflected in a body, it shows as the emotion of joy.

As for beating religion for the evil of others, we have been there 100 times already, so perhaps for a change I'll take it with humour:

Gone was every blessed bird!
"Horrid Spitz!" was her first word.

"O you Spitz, you monster, you!
Let me beat him black and blue!"

And the heavy ladle, thwack!
Comes down on poor Spitz's back!
Loud he yells with agony,
For he feels his conscience free.

(from http://germanstories.vcu.edu/mm/mmeng2.html)

Thanks for the response, grateful. I was under the impression that our relationship had attained the higher state of being that that of Yuyutsu and mine had attained. Apparently it has from this point forth, though.

Unfortunately, however, you have merely resorted to slanderous ad hominem with accusations that you, unsurprisingly, cannot substantiate. Very disappointing.

I’m sorry you don’t like having your fallacies pointed out to you, but simply accusing me of doing the same without supporting that claim with evidence/examples can only be interpreted as an attempt to defame. Very poor form indeed.

Modesty aside for a moment, the reason my arguments are robust enough for those like Yuyutsu and yourself to have to take your ball and go home by vowing to ignore me, is because I am aware of logically fallacious reasoning, and can therefore avoid it. Do I catch myself out doing it too? Sure. But when I do, I pull myself up and correct my thinking by either finding a different line of reasoning for my belief, or discarding that belief if that’s not possible.

This is the fundamental difference between you and I. And if you ever learn to do this too, then you’ll find that your religious beliefs will vanish faster than you can say, “logical fallacy”.

Your claim that the loss of religion will and does result in all sorts of horrible things is not supported by the evidence, I’m afraid. If anything, the opposite is the case.

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf
http://www.skepticmoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/table-religion-vs.....png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdtwTeBPYQA

<<Don't expect any more responses from me>>

I won’t then. But don’t expect that this will stop me responding to your claims if they are wrong.

Yuyutsu has refused to respond to me since a marathon discussion we had well over a year ago (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6579&page=0). But this sort of childish silent treatment only works if the person who you are ignoring does what they do to provoke a reaction, and that’s not the case for me. I do what I do because I care about the truth. If you don't respond, then that just makes my job a whole lot easier.

AJ<<Yuyutsu,

You still haven’t mentioned when you had the privilege of seeing this Schroder character. It didn’t happen, did it? Just as the field that grateful works in doesn’t exist.

Why is it that you religious folk are so okay with telling porkies? It seems to be a real sickness, and the fact that I wasn’t alright with doing that myself seems to be the difference between my de-conversion story and the story of yours and grateful’s continued clinging to religious faith. That’s evident in his offensively skewed version of events regarding this discussion. I understand that some on OLO consider the pointing out of lies as abuse, and I appreciate that, I really do, but I simply don’t know how else it can be described when it’s so overt.

(If anyone has some advice, then I’d appreciate it.)

Does it not occur to either of you that the fact that your god supposedly requires you to tell untruths means that he doesn’t exist?
>>

I have Grad Dip in Statistic, along with Hons (1st class) & PhD

You have a problem.

Well I’m glad your boycott of me only lasted one-and-a-half hours, grateful. Welcome back.

<<I have Grad Dip in Statistic, along with Hons (1st class) & PhD>>

And yet you somehow don’t understand how and when exactly to utilise the null hypothesis. Nor do you seem to understand exactly why a sample size of one is fatal to the fine-tuning argument (or perhaps you did once it was pointed out to you and that’s why you needed to introduce the concept of multiverses as a red herring?). Nor did you even seem to realise that probability is measured between 0 and 1. You also appeared to confuse confidence intervals with p-values.

Looks like I’ll just have to give you the benefit of the doubt. Either way, my suspicions were well-founded and based on evidence and are, therefore, not indicative of me having some sort of a problem.