Two points:
As my recent posting indicated, I do not consider my faith to be "blind". You may at your discretion, however.
Also, I am not accusing the global warming True Believers to be engaging in any kind of blind faith. What I accuse them of is taking something which is based on little evidence, and sometimes no evidence, and calling it proven science. Like I said in my first post, the difference between a critical thinker and the True Believer is that the critical thinker can alter their position based on evidence, while the True Believer clings to their position against all evidence.
Before Beldaran pops in again and says that must mean I'm not a critical thinker when it comes to faith, I remind you again that I am not using my beliefs to impose draconian government control over our lives. Al Gore and the global warming True Believers are doing just that.
The toll road thing may be completely different. Gas taxes haven't been altered since the 90s (and they do NOT rise with inflation). People won't stand for an increase in the gas tax, so tolls may be the only way to go, with no relation to impact on Global Warming.
Your definition of a True Believer sounds a lot like blind faith to me. At least, that's how I would define blind faith - taking a position without evidence and presenting that position as fact, and then clinging to that position no matter what evidence turns up that counters that position.
Furthermore, if the issue is really one of personal rights, you do yourself a disservice by arguing on the grounds that global warming is "made up" or whatever, because if it truly is an issue of personal rights, then then reality of global warming should have no bearing. It's like terrorism - you wouldn't argue that wiretapping, for example, is wrong on the grounds that there are no terrorists. That would be a horrible way to go about it on multiple levels.
Starkist wrote:
As my recent posting indicated, I do not consider my faith to be "blind".
Seeing things that are invisible is not the same as seeing things. It is, however, the same as being crazy.
Beldaran, your arguments lack substance. You are as blinded by your extremely dismissive nature ("If I don't believe it, it's wrong"😉 as Starkist is by his faith.
Dechipher wrote:You are as blinded by your extremely dismissive nature.
Yep! I am blinded by logic. I dismiss Jesus, Zeus, Thor, Leprechauns, Unicorns, and all other relentless bullshit.
Dechipher wrote:("If I don't believe it, it's wrong"😉
This is not my attitude at all. My attitude is "If I don't have compelling, irrefutable evidence, then I don't accept something as doctrine."
There is much more evidence for global warming than there is Jesus, and Starkist thinks people are gullible for believing data that is published in scientific journals and supported by 2000 scientists from 150 different countries.
Starkist, who worships an invisible 2000 year old carpenter with magic powers who lives in another dimension and who is best friends with everyone and watches them every second of the day to make sure they don't look at porn and say bad words, thinks people who read climatology journals are gullible.
This is grade A primo bullshit hypocrisy at its best.
Starkist wrote:The True Believes and their messiah, Al Gore, believe two things that are absurd: 1) That man has the ability to cause dramatic and dangerous changes to this planet; and 2) That man can halt and reverse the changes that occur.
Wow I think you're officially fucking stupid. I know Beldaran has been making fun of it for awhile, but this really shows it off. You actually don't believe man can cause dramatic change to the planet. Holy shit. Oh wait sorry, I don't believe in your imaginary friend so... Wow.
The problem is that you claim that everything is to be viewed in black and white and hide it under the banner of logic.
I would rather have someone who is open minded enough to concede that they are narrow-minded than someone who claims to have superior beliefs.
Dechipher wrote:The problem is that you claim that everything is to be viewed in black and white and hide it under the banner of logic. I would rather have someone who is open minded enough to concede that they are narrow-minded than someone who claims to have superior beliefs.
For the ten billionth time, my beliefs are not superior, because I have no beliefs whatsoever. A belief is a logical aberration consistent with delusion and psychosis. It assumes knowledge without evidence; a form of insanity.
I cannot concede that thinking rationally might be the wrong way to go, because of the mountains of evidence piled against fanciful delusion as a productive and accurate method of acquiring knowledge about the world.
I don't know why you give delusional fantasy such a wide respect. It's really quite a sad condition that deserves to be sadly chuckled at by those whose brains are free from such errors.
Starkist wrote:Two points: As my recent posting indicated, I do not consider my faith to be "blind". You may at your discretion, however.
Whether or you you think your faith is blind is completely irrelevant to the reality that faith is blind by definition.
Also, I am not accusing the global warming True Believers to be engaging in any kind of blind faith. What I accuse them of is taking something which is based on little evidence, and sometimes no evidence, and calling it proven science. Like I said in my first post, the difference between a critical thinker and the True Believer is that the critical thinker can alter their position based on evidence, while the True Believer clings to their position against all evidence.
The irony here is so sharp I had to get a band-aid.
Really, so far you haven't put forth much of an argument. Your debate tactic seems to be something along the lines of:
1. Make an object or a group of people seem scary and evil and evil by giving them a label and Using Capitalization. For bonus points, use a label that is laughably ironic when compared with your own belief system.
2. Spout as much pseudo-intellectual rhetoric as you can. Quote a dead guy to make your argument sound smarter. Use sources such as talk show radio programs to back up your statements, because talk show radio hosts are never wrong.
3. Defend your flimsy arguments by hiding behind a wall of fallacies. When anybody challenges your statements, take any tiny logical fallacy they make, then make a long post about how they used a fallacy and they are therefore totally wrong, without ever actually addressing any counterarguments.
4. Be as arrogant and pretentious as possible. Accuse others of not having an open mind, and not applying critical thinking. Because clearly people with open minds and critical thinking skills would immediately agree with everything you say.
Oh, but wait! This is whole post is obviously ad hominem and can thus be dismissed with a wave of the hand. And possibly a long-winded post about why this post is ad hominem, oh and by the way here's another questionable source of information to prove that this group I hate is a bunch of radical jerks and I am obviously not.
DarkDragoonX wrote:Whether or you you think your faith is blind is completely irrelevant to the reality that faith is blind by definition.
Wow, well I'd like to see that definition of faith. Apparently having faith that my chair won't break when I sit in it is blind.
phattonez wrote:Wow, well I'd like to see that definition of faith. Apparently having faith that my chair won't break when I sit in it is blind.
That's not faith - you have evidence. The chair hasn't broken any other time you sat in it, and it looks sturdy, and so it is safe to assume that the chair won't break. In fact, you would be very foolish to have faith that the chair won't break, as that would cause to to ignore any other mitigating circumstances, like , for instance, in the event that the legs look termite-ridden.
Faith is, quite simply, belief in the absence of evidence. In fact, I would argue that belief even in light of evidence is foolish. For instance, I do not believe that when I wake up tomorrow, gravity will still be working, despite 13 billion years' worth of counterexamples, because no matter how completely we may think we understand gravity, it could always change tomorrow. Pragmatically, I make the assumption that gravity will still be working tomorrow, because honestly, even if it were to fail, it's not like there's anything I could do about it, and being that in my experience it hasn't, it's not worth worrying over, but this is not belief, this is a pragmatic conclusion based on prior observations.
Believing that your chair won't break when you sit in it isn't faith. You believe it won't break because it's a well-made object specifically created to sit in. You have a logical, fully supportable reason to think the chair won't break.
Faith is essentially the belief in something, anything, without any hard evidence to back it up. People who believe in god, leprechauns, aliens, ghosts, etc, are all operating on faith. If you have no information about the stock market yet firmly believe that Nasdaq will go up by fifty points tomorrow, you're operating on faith. It's blind. You have no real hard evidence to prove that what you believe is true, but you choose to believe it anyway.
Now, at this point I'm going to say that I didn't rush off to my Webster's to look up the definition. And yes, you could probably go to some internet dictionary and run back with a hyperlink and a triumphant look in your eyes shouting "HA, that is NOT what faith means, see?" Well, I'd argue that most of the time, the word "faith" is used exactly the way I described it. So, if it makes you feel better, you can think of my definition of "faith" as definition 8c.
And before you think about getting into a debate over that, I'm going to curtail the argument right now, as well as earn some extra Insufferably Smug Bastard points, by declaring that I have faith that my definition is reasonably accurate and perfectly appropriate, so let's end the nitpicking game right here and move along.
You people have a screwed up definition of faith. Here's the number one definition from dictionary.com
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
Here's number one from the American Heritage Dictionary.
Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
Any questions?
MottZilla wrote:Wow I think you're officially fucking stupid. I know Beldaran has been making fun of it for awhile, but this really shows it off. You actually don't believe man can cause dramatic change to the planet. Holy shit. Oh wait sorry, I don't believe in your imaginary friend so... Wow.
Show me evidence or shut up. Acting like I'm stupid for what I said, but not providing any evidence is the mark of one who is too insecure to even debate the point.
Come on guys. Smog clouds over cities were created by the devil, not by the emissions from cars or factories that were made by man. Didn't you know that?
If it was an obvious fact that man was causing climate change, why the need for deceptive propaganda? There are numerous sites that detail the factual errors in An Inconvenient Truth. There were highly publicized stories of icecaps melting but when they came back even stronger, it's barely news. Climate change believers continually repeat facts and figures from discredited climate models, even as new ones show other evidence. If it was so obvious, why the need to shout down skeptics, call them "deniers" and try and censor them? If the argument is airtight, then it need fear no debate. Yet the global warming True Believers brook no debate; they claim the debate is over and scientists have reached a consensus.
Science is not a democracy.
Phattonez, just because it's the first definition does not automatically make it the most applicable to the situation. The faith that you have in your chair is not the same as the faith that global warming believers have in global warming or the faith that Christians have in God. In fact, let's trot out definitions 2 and 3 from dictionary.com, because they both seem fairly applicable to the topic at hand.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
EDIT: Whoa, this thread is rapidly spiraling out of control. We've got arguments about religion going on, we've got arguments about the definition of faith, and we've got Starkist in the corner apparently arguing with himself, because I still have yet to see anyone actually come out and say "Global warming is an undisputed fact," though I will say I find Starkist's methods questionable at best.
Definition 2 looks strikingly similar to number 1. Either way, I have shown that faith need not be blind.
Starkist wrote:Show me evidence or shut up.
How about you shutup and go read something besides a game forum. Scientists have been publishing peer reviewed papers on global warming for over a decade. If you think there is "no evidence" for global warming, your head is stuffed up your ass.
phattonez wrote:Definition 2 looks strikingly similar to number 1. Either way, I have shown that faith need not be blind.
Phattonez, you are absolutely incorrigible. The kind of faith you're talking about is an entirely different concept than the kind of faith we're talking about. In the context of this discussion, faith IS always blind. You're just arguing semantics.
Beldaran wrote:How about you shutup and go read something besides a game forum. Scientists have been publishing peer reviewed papers on global warming for over a decade. If you think there is "no evidence" for global warming, your head is stuffed up your ass.
You didn't read my last post, did you? You think yourself a champion of logic, but you're only willing to debate those statements you pick yourself. Like a carnivore culling the sick and weak, you ignore the strongest arguments.
Anyway, for every paper warning of man-made climate change, there is one showing how it is not man-made. Of course, scientific funding is not allocated to those who say "Let's do nothing" so guess who gets the attention, guess who gets past the peer-review gatekeepers?
Look at the original post in this topic, for crying out loud.
"Peer-review gatekeepers" is the conspiracy theory for people who feel it's unfair that imaginative crap isn't printed next to real information.
If I may just throw out just a tiny bit of actual evidence into... whatever it is we're all talking about, whatever global warming is or isn't, it looks like the solar activity theory is a bust. Sunspot activity is a useful measure of solar activity - however, as demonstrated by this graph, the data does not explain the recent increase in global temperatures.
That graph might change depending on where you take your temperature data from.
The Global Mean Temperature will change if you are in a different location?
There are a few different ways to measure global temperatures. You could average all of the world temperatures, get temperatures from the atmosphere (I think the troposphere is used the most), temperatures from the ocean, etc. Using different locations gets you different information.
So, are you calling into question the very notion that global temperatures are rising at all?
That's not what I was implying at all, as I'm nowhere near qualified enough to make that call. I was merely saying that data can be taken from different places, and those places will give you different information.
I would just like to point out that Al Gore is not a scientist, and we can't base our opinions of global warming off of a movie.
I havne't seen An Inconvenient Truth, but it just seems silly to believe or disbelieve something because of a movie. Might as well become a Christian after you watch The Passion of the Christ.
And Beldaran, I'm not sure who you can claim that you don't believe you are superior, while simultaneously talking down on anyone who has any sort of belief whatsoever.
The reason I give any respect to the notion of any sort of external power is simply because of it's universal qualities. While the system in America is pretty fucked up, you can go anywhere and they have religion. It's an aspect of humanity, whether or not you identify with it. Additionally, religion can mean a lot of different stuff to a lot of different people. So I can't just blithely disregard something because it's not what I believe.