grateful: Without Islam I would have been one of these parents.

You don't know that, you have assumed that because your Religion has TOLD you that would be the case. That's using Fear to control you. If you were a good parent you would have instilled good behaviour into your children anyway.

I know myself that we did a good job of raising our kids. Still, one went off the rails for a while until he got a shock & now is a pillar of his Community. You can be a "Feral Parent" & the Kids turn out really good & you can be a "Perfect Parent" & still your kids can turn out bad. Religion has nothing to do with it. Look how many Muslim kids were raised right & now are running away to commit Jihad.

Jayb,

What your saying is correct. But what i was saying is based on what i know of myself.

AJ: <<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.>>

AJ I said “don’t expect a response” not “I will not respond”.

You over-stepped the mark calling Yuyutsu and myself dishonest.

When you find yourself in trouble you revert to the following tactic: present a fallacious interpretation, which you know is false (like the one above), or raise an issue which is off the point and you know is off the point. The purpose is to avoid conceding a point by putting the other person on the defensive.

The game you’re playing is different from what others are playing. While others might be trying to test an argument, offer information or make a point, you are playing a game with two things in mind: winning (as you see it) and maintaining control. You will do anything to win your game and maintain control ("Looks like I’ll just have to give you the benefit of the doubt....").

This is evident in the above post, along with the inability to accept responsibility for your words.

The above contrivance of my argument is a clear signal that you cannot address the question: Where do the laws of nature come from if not from within space-time? How can science, which is limited to explaining within space-time, account for the laws of nature?

Therefore, arguments for the validity of explanations that are not what physical science (eg. Keith Ward) can offer are critically important.

grateful,

I’m not sure why you would bother to tell me that on this particular occasion then if you didn’t mean for it to signify an arrangement a little more permanent.

<<I said “don’t expect a response” not “I will not respond”.>>

I never expect the theists I engage with on OLO to respond. Mostly, I think, because I overestimate them. No offence or anything, but the ability you guys have to continue to prop up an argument that’s already dead in the water never ceases to amaze me. It reminds me of that movie, Weekend at Bernie’s.

<<You over-stepped the mark calling Yuyutsu and myself dishonest.>>

If I see dishonesty, then I will call it out. In those instances, it was pretty overt.

<<When you find yourself in trouble you revert to the following tactic: present a fallacious interpretation, which you know is false (like the one above), or raise an issue which is off the point and you know is off the point.>>

I would be fascinated to hear of an instance in which I actually found myself “in trouble”. Unlike yourself, I have no burden of proof and no reason to cling to my position if it turns out that I’m wrong.

<<This is evident in the above post, along with the inability to accept responsibility for your words.>>

Oh, I absolutely accept responsibility for my own words. I’m not ashamed of my accusations and provided solid reasoning as to why I shouldn’t be. Your qualifications are still suspect. I make no bones about that.

<<Where do the laws of nature come from if not from within space-time?>>

I’ve already alluded to the fact that I don’t know. I’m not a theoretical physicist. I don't think even physicists know. What I do know, however, is that plonking a god in as an explanation is fallacious.

My (or anyone else’s) inability to answer your questions or unknowns does not strengthen your argument, and it is foolish of you to think or make out as if I’ve somehow been on the back foot because I can't provide an answer.

gratfull: What your saying is correct. But what i was saying is based on what i know of myself.

Ditto.

grateful,

When someone is gracious enough to give you the benefit of the doubt and thereby offer to cease continuing down a line of suspicion, you don’t throw that back their face to make it look like they can’t take responsibility for their own words. To do so reeks of desperation.

Every one of your slanderous accusations are as contrived as the above mentioned; applying the most dubious and creative interpretations of my actions to conjure up something sinister on my behalf. Some examples:

That you had figured that my critical thinking skills weren’t very good over a simple misunderstanding, thus giving yourself an excuse to bow out with some dignity (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18201#324554).

That I was exiting in a huff, leaving a trail of charater assassinations in my wake, out of some imagined necessity (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18201#325193).

That when I find myself in trouble (one can only imagine when that has been), I “present a fallacious interpretation [of some unknown occurance], which [I] know is false” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18201#325498). Do you know what transference is in psychology? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transference) And your evidence for this? My pointing out of the dubiousness of your claimed field, and Yuyutsu’s obviously made up story about having gotten those four infamous points from an attended presentation when I had just posted them and they were in your video.

Then we finally come to this creative interpretation of a gracious act to suggest that I cannot take responsibility for my own words. Well that’s gratitude for you.

Every one of your slanderous claims are so obviously contrived that it’s embarrassing to read.

If you have become so desperate to deflect that you can defame another by twisting an act of goodwill to turn it against them, then how about I just take the more honest route? I think your qualifications are bogus. You clearly know nothing more, and sometimes even less, than your average layman about statistics.

I take full responsibility for those words because I can back the claim. You even clumsily quoted me doing so in your last response to me before proceeding to use it against me.