Porn For Bibles

phattonez wrote:So because Bel posts an article about people selling Bibles for porn I should abandon my beliefs?

No, i believe that Trev is saying that if we all allowed ourselves to be touched by His Noodly Appendage, perhaps it would make these controversial topics unneccesary.

For the FLying SPaghetti Monster so loved the world that he gave us midgets. And it was good. Ramen

Beldaran wrote:Perhaps if you make fun of atheists enough they will go away and stop making you uncomfortable with your mysticism.

Forgive me for departing, but Ronald and Grimace are almost in alignment for a day of good fortune.

Phattonez,

I was merely trying to diffuse what promises to be yet another religous debate in which niether side can win because both are assured of thier correctness. No one should abandon thier beliefs unless they want too. Try to look at things from different viewpoints.

Besides, we all know the Flying Spaghetti Monster will one day touch us all with His Noodly Appendage and we will ascend to a higher level were we'll live together peacefully.

I swear the more people talk about the Flying Spaghetti Monster the more it sounds like some kind of support group for molested children. I'll take a deity that doesn't slap me on the forehead with his dick thank you very much.

he could at least have put it in a box to let me know I was something special 😞

Trevelyan_06 wrote:Phattonez,

I was merely trying to diffuse what promises to be yet another religous debate in which niether side can win because both are assured of thier correctness. No one should abandon thier beliefs unless they want too. Try to look at things from different viewpoints.

Besides, we all know the Flying Spaghetti Monster will one day touch us all with His Noodly Appendage and we will ascend to a higher level were we'll live together peacefully.

It doesn't really seem like it because you're disrespecting religion with references to its legitimacy equal to that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Don't try to sound like the peaceful guy here.

That's just the thing though Phattonez, every religion is assured of it's legitimacy. Yet how can you claim that your religion is legitimate and at the same time say that someone else's isn't?

Yes the FSM is a joke, but it's author was trying to call attention to the fact that religous debates quickly spiral out of hand are become rediculous.

When did I say that other religions aren't legitimate or even other beliefs?

I apolize for my poor attempt at a joke earlier. I don't wish to get in an arguement about anyone's beliefs. I'm sorry if seems I did.

No problems, it just seemed like you were trying to start a fight with Christians and we've had enough of that on this board for a while.

No you see I disagree because

Christianity is a glorified form of retardation.

Not to spark a controversy or anything...

Well, I don't know if phattonez respects other people's beliefs or not (though I suspect he considers his superior), however as a person of no beliefs whatsoever, I make no secret of the fact that I do not respect people's beliefs. I respect their right to have beliefs, but I do not respect the belief in magic itself. I frankly wish people who believe in things without evidence would read more about the scientific method and try and broaden their intellectual horizons.

Bel, you know I respect science and don't just completely blow it off.

deathbyhokie wrote:...if we all allowed ourselves to be touched by His Noodly Appendage...

Man, and I thought the catholic sex scandal was bad.

All I have to say on the entire topic is this: If you want to believe in some religion, go ahead, no skin off my back. However, whenver science and religion comes to blows on something... SCIENCE WINS. It's as simple as that. You simply cannot, CANNOT use a mystical, fictional book to debate things against science. You cannot fight facts with hallucinations. To do so is mentally bankrupt.

Moral concerns can be debated as moral concerns at a scientific level, but trying to play the "my religion says it's bad!" card in order to ban/ignore/ridicule some aspect of the scientific community you don't like is fucking retarded.

EDIT: All I'm saying is, when you casually dismiss the sum of human intelligence in favor of an explanation that can basically be boiled down to "a wizard did it," something is fucked up.

No you see you are wrong because

I will say this, the important part of religion is not the technicalities and interpreting the text to figure out how the world was created. Really, the only important part is - at least in Christianity - to love other people as you love yourself. Jesus even says that following the law word by word is not important, it's all about love.

All argument outside of that about religion is really rather pointless.

phattonez wrote: Really, the only important part is - at least in Christianity - to love other people as you love yourself.

So why can't you accomplish this without all of the insane magical nonsense?

I'm quite capable of loving people without believing that I should because a magic wizard told me to.

Beldaran if you really think every person who believes in religion in the slightest thinks that if they pray hard enough they'll get a Brita that filters their water to wine then you learned all you know about Christianity from the back of a Fruit Loops box, next to the feature "Toucan Sam discusses the finer points of successful tactics for logical debate".

I was raised by born again christians and was a devout christian until age 18. I've read the entire bible 3 times, and obviously read some parts many more. I've read the many popular apologetics (CS Lewis, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, etc). Your colorful way of putting me down has no actual point.

My disgust with religion stems from my very accurate understanding of it.

NOBODY

Actually it was a trap I didn't intend to set. You didn't listen to the part where Toucan Sam warns against the dangers of assuming that because some members of a set display some characteristic that all members of the set display the characteristic. It's a pretty basic subject in lower-level logic courses, usually illustrated by some ridiculous hypothesis/conclusion set regarding Aristotle that I don't remember exactly.

This is probably the fourth or fifth time this month I've pointed this out to you so I doubt you do much more than read the first and last words of my post (actually I am going to edit my post just in case that is what you are doing!).

Almost every single post you make contains a fallacy against the logic you claim to embrace. Do you just enjoy the irony of being outmaneuvered by one you consider inferior in an arena in which you claim superiority? Or is it that since I am a Christian then anything I support by logic is magic and therefore irrelevant? I sure do wish that only magical logic applied to me because I could have simply charmed away my Digital Devices class.

So since we are all the same to you, which one am I: your mother or your father?

I hope I get to be the mommy!

*edit* Also if I were really immature I would have written this Greasemonkey script it is a good thing I take life on the internet so seriously and would never do such a thing!

CARES

AtmaWeapon wrote:Beldaran if you really think [insert something Beldaran never said] then you learned all you know about Christianity from the back of a Fruit Loops box

I do not see this profound and skillful use of logic you are claiming in that post. I think you need to become more articulate, or perhaps better phrase your arguments. You mostly just sound insulting and hard to take very seriously.

I claim that the scientific method is the superior way of thinking. Religion violates the scientific method in every way possible.

That is my only claim. I do not think you can argue successfully against it. However, you appear to be continually undaunted, and so I expect yet another long and vague post about how smart you are, after which I will be insulted for not following your spaghetti logic that you learned in some books that I have not read.

I do not think you need to study formal symbolic logic in order to understand that the scientific method is superior to a belief in magic, which is what you believe in. However, as an electrical engineering student, I am not unfamiliar with symbolic logic. In fact, I understand it well enough to know that it has nothing to do with anything you are talking about and that I am correct and you are wrong.

FACT: In post #48 I make the claim that Beldaran makes the fallacy of hasty generalization by suggesting the following:

1. Some people I know are devout Christians and value mysticism over science.
THEREFORE, all Christians believe that mysticism has more value than science.

FACT: In post # 49 Beldaran defends himself, stating that his parents were devout Christians and he has read books and obviously this makes a representative sample for several million people.

FACT: In post # 50 I point out that "I knew some people" is not a proper defense against an accusation of hasty generalization.

FACT: In post # 51 Beldaran teaches us the following:

• Obviously my logic is broken.
• Religion violates the scientific method, despite the fact that the man credited with inventing it believed religion and the sciences could coexist:

  a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion

• Beldaran chastizes me for asserting my faith in my intellectual state by reminding me that he is an intelligent man above such base behavior
• He got distracted by the single mention of symbolic logic in my post and turned it into an attack on my claim that he commits fallacies.
• Beldaran is right and I am wrong. No evidence provided.

Fallacies can happen in symbolic logic as well; you are assuming p->q where p is "some Christians do this" and q is "all Christians do this" but I claim your sample group is too small to justify this relationship. This is an informal fallacy because, with a sufficient sample p, the relationship does hold. However, I consistently challenge your generalization and you consistently fail to provide evidence that you have sampled the behavior of more than a few dozen Christians.

Seriously if you fail to understand that symbolic logic is a simplification of philosophical logic I don't understand how you can say you know so much about it. It is as if you are suggesting that algebra has no basis in reality because in the equation 3x + 2y = 145 x and y are simply abstract quantities and can in no way, shape, or form be considered the quantities of two products I wish to produce such that I make a net profit of 145!

Science is evil and Bel believes in science, therefore he is evil.

I love being blind too.

AtmaWeapon wrote:FACT: In post #48 I make the claim that Beldaran makes the fallacy of hasty generalization by suggesting the following:

1. Some people I know are devout Christians and value mysticism over science.
THEREFORE, all Christians believe that mysticism has more value than science.

FACT: In post # 49 Beldaran defends himself, stating that his parents were devout Christians and he has read books and obviously this makes a representative sample for several million people.

FACT: In post # 50 I point out that "I knew some people" is not a proper defense against an accusation of hasty generalization.

FACT: In post # 51 Beldaran teaches us the following:

• Obviously my logic is broken.
• Religion violates the scientific method, despite the fact that the man credited with inventing it believed religion and the sciences could coexist:
• Beldaran chastizes me for asserting my faith in my intellectual state by reminding me that he is an intelligent man above such base behavior
• He got distracted by the single mention of symbolic logic in my post and turned it into an attack on my claim that he commits fallacies.
• Beldaran is right and I am wrong. No evidence provided.

Fallacies can happen in symbolic logic as well; you are assuming p->q where p is "some Christians do this" and q is "all Christians do this" but I claim your sample group is too small to justify this relationship. This is an informal fallacy because, with a sufficient sample p, the relationship does hold. However, I consistently challenge your generalization and you consistently fail to provide evidence that you have sampled the behavior of more than a few dozen Christians.

Seriously if you fail to understand that symbolic logic is a simplification of philosophical logic I don't understand how you can say you know so much about it. It is as if you are suggesting that algebra has no basis in reality because in the equation 3x + 2y = 145 x and y are simply abstract quantities and can in no way, shape, or form be considered the quantities of two products I wish to produce such that I make a net profit of 145!

Just so you don't accuse me of not reading this post, I read this whole post.

The original scientists who believed in god where a product of their backwards and fearful era.

Having faith in something for which there is no evidence is a contradiction of the scientific method. Every single person who believes in magic and still respects science cannot escape the fact that they have departed intellectually from science.

AtmaWeapon wrote:
1. Some people I know are devout Christians and value mysticism over science.
THEREFORE, all Christians believe that mysticism has more value than science.
!

Although you are trying to dress it up as a fallacy, this statement is true. All christians believe that mysticism has more value than science. You cannot partially embrace science. You either have a purely scientific mind, or you decide that science is not as important as your beliefs and so you cling to your magical notions. You can be a preeminently gifted scientist and still believe in god, but you cannot claim you value science more than your beliefs because if you did, you would respect science enough to reject the unfounded notion of god.

AtmaWeapon wrote:

• Beldaran is right and I am wrong. No evidence provided.

I am correct and you are wrong because of the simple nature of what scientific thought is. Believing in magic is outside of the purvue of science. Being outside of the realm of scientific thought is a form of mental illness that you and all others who believe in magic suffer from.

So when I say I am right, I am saying "I am correct that science precludes the notion of believing in magic without evidence."

If you care to dispute that single phrase, then feel free. However you will find it a difficult task to convince me that an unfounded belief in magic is right up there with quantum mechanics and algebra.

Bel speaks with such authority and says things without evidence. Why can someone who is religious not believe in science also? I can use science to lead to my belief, but it's not why I believe. For me, everything is just too complex to be an accident, and that's why I believe that this was not all an accident.

Oh I get it now. I'm wrong because I'm not an atheist. If I were to revoke my faith all of my statements would magically revert to truth but at the moment if I were to write a thesis with several cited independent studies that got peer reviewed and confirmed by other scientists it would be false because I believe there is something that happens after I die and that places me in direct conflict with the scientific method.

Got it.

By the way, do you even know what hasty generalization is? This is the way the dialog went:

Beldaran: blah blah some Christians are dumb so all Christians are dumb.
Me:Um unless you qualify the size of the group you observed and prove it is a representative sample then I say this is a hasty generalization.
Beldaran: I don't have to listen to you, you are a Christian and your logic is tainted. I am awesome.

Also LOL:
AtmaWeapon: What about these scientists that wrote on the merits of religion as a philosophical construct, with no emphasis on one religion in particular? (So far I've cited Einstein and Francis Bacon)
Beldaran: They disagree with my statements so they don't count.

Neat, so Einstein wasn't a scientist. Do you discount all of his research or are you comfortable with this contradiction?

Do your legs hurt from how much backpedaling you are doing? Now we are to believe that every time you've told me "I'm right" you were referring to the narrow context of "science does not support the belief in magic", which is something I have agreed with you on since the first post I made in a thread long ago. You continually attempt to address all of my points by latching on to something you perceive is my point and attacking that instead. This leaves a long trail of questions you have dodged and only acknowledged after my repeated attempts to have you address them finally penetrated the thick lining of your field of superiority.

You, sir, have the worst grasp of logic I have ever seen on the internet and I'm tired of spending time attempting to show this to you. I'm turning the Greasemonkey script back on because it is good at compressing your posts so that I waste less time reading them.

By the way, you are only wrong because you are an atheist. If you were an enlightened individual you would see the truth and I would suddenly agree with you!

Well, your post is fatally factually innacurate. Einstein did not believe in god. He referred to the awe-inspiring mathematical order of the universe as "god". It appears I have read a book you have not. (read on "Spinoza's God" in google, references in works by scientists such as Harold Kroto, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, many others.)

It appears your most frequent tool of argument is insult and imagination. You just rephrase the convseration to suit your childish bias and reveal yourself to be struggling with something internally. I suspect it is the conflict between your inane beliefs and your desire to be logically consistent.

I hope someday you will think more deeply on this matter and learn to respect your mind enough to stop believing in magic. The world gets a little better every time a religious person realizes he or she has been deluded by a psychological quirk that compels the human creature to invent reality in his mind.

Until then, you will be nothing but a very intelligent but logically inconsistent person who does not apply scientific reasoning to every area of your life.

I'll let the posts speak for themselves.

AtmaWeapon wrote:What about these scientists that wrote on the merits of religion as a philosophical construct, with no emphasis on one religion in particular?

Beldaran wrote:Well, your post is fatally factually innacurate. Einstein did not believe in god. He referred to the awe-inspiring mathematical order of the universe as "god". It appears I have read a book you have not. (read on "Spinoza's God" in google, references in works by scientists such as Harold Kroto, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, many others.)

Also in the last religion clusterflop thread I cited Einstein and pointed out that while he wasn't necessarily a Christian, he did support the notion of religion in general and felt that religion and science should find ways coexist and build upon each other.

It appears your most frequent tool of argument is insult and imagination. You just rephrase the convseration to suit your childish bias and reveal yourself to be struggling with something internally. I suspect it is the conflict between your inane beliefs and your desire to be logically consistent.

While I admit my arguments are heavy on the personal side, it's primarily the result of having you either repeatedly ignore things I say or intentionally misinterpret them based on the fact that since I don't agree with you there must be a flaw in my logic. It is my nature.

I hope someday you will think more deeply on this matter and learn to respect your mind enough to stop believing in magic. The world gets a little better every time a religious person realizes he or she has been deluded by a psychological quirk that compels the human creature to invent reality in his mind.

Until then, you will be nothing but a very intelligent but logically inconsistent person who does not apply scientific reasoning to every area of your life.

I take great pains to attempt to keep my mind open, Beldaran. If you can provide concrete evidence that I have within the past few months supported a notion that goes against something science has proven, then please bring it up and allow me to do some soul-searching. The existence of God itself does not apply here; I believe I've said often enough that this point is not something which logic can prove or disprove, and I think you'll note I've never attacked the position of "God does not exist" since I have as much evidence to attack that position as it has to attack me. I believe you will find this quite difficult, but if I am wrong I'd like to know.

Alternatively, give me an example where "believing in magic" as you put it hurts my daily living. I suspect this phrase is mostly a device intended to insult the opponent and instill a bias in the reader; feel free to explain how I believe in magic, then explain why I am suffering because of it. The last few years of my life have pretty much been the best, so I'm doing something right I guess.

I'd personally rather quit replying to threads such as these, but I always feel compelled to point out situations where your claims don't match even the post made immediately before your own.

Atheism -
Completely missing the point.

I lol'd, though.

Your negative opinion of my arguments, like your god, a figment of your imagination.

My argument: Belief in magic is unscientific.

Your argument: Five hundred pages of nonsense filled with impressive names, page numbers, references, personal attacks, insults, imagination, and absolutely no refutation of my argument.

If I fail to read some of your posts very well it's because they all run together like some sort of spidery, emotional drawl. It's like listening to your girlfriend go on and on about her feelings when you just want to know which restaurant to eat at.

My claim: Belief in magic is unscientific.

Feel free to refute this. I contend that you cannot.