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Post by Harris on Nov 4, 2008 13:49:18 GMT
Saint Stephen Wrote:
Stephen, I really do not know how to deal with you on this. You are being unreasonable, argumentative and totally illogical.
Both posters Inedifix and Hemingway, were respectful on this site. That is a given. I am not making the case as you state above.
Our starting point here is that they were respectful and courteous. Anyone who disagrees with that must prove their case.
Therefore your statement above is an incorrect statement and regretfully it appears its something you do when replying to many posters on this site.
You attempt to state what their position on a topic is, when what you say does not accurately represent their position. You then attempt to discredit them by discrediting the fallacy you just created.
Stephen, this is what is widely known in debating circles as a straw man argument.
The only person who claims they were not courteous is you Stephen, therefore you must prove your case. It follows the tenet in law of innocent until proven guilty.
You have not proved they were guilty. I have offered to help you on this issue by asking you to recall an instance where they were breaching the rules.
As I said before, I will copy and paste the section on any thread they contributed to that you ask me to provide to help YOU with YOUR case.
You have not taken me up on this offer.
Now secondly, if you want me to prove my case (which would follow the idea of guilty until proven innocent) what do you suggest I do?
Copy and paste every contribution each poster made?
Lets be practical and reasonable here.
Also can you explain your remark "Dear Harris, When I write to you why do I get the feeling like I am addressing you backside?"
I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. I am attempting to be courteous to you and you appear to want to engage me in juvenile name calling? You have also attempted to do this on another thread.
Why do you appear so angry and confrontational all the time in your posts?
Why on earth would you adopt such an attitude with people who just want to engage in meaningful debate?
Do you think this is the behaviour of a good Christian?
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 4, 2008 15:59:54 GMT
Dear Harris, When I write to you why do I get the feeling like I am addressing you backside? You made the case that Inedifix and Hemingway are courteous and respectful, you prove it. Oh there is a mature statement. The moderators can ban people for making courteous arguments but they will not ban someone who says something like "I am addressing your backside". Some decorum please! As for the onus of proof, I see the phrase "Innocent until proven guilty" holds no weight whatsoever with "SaintStephen" here.
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Post by whippa on Nov 4, 2008 22:26:07 GMT
Saintstephen: OK, you will say, this is just my subjective response. Why should the onus of proof be on my response and not on your materialism? There are many articles on the burden of proof in logic studies. Basically, positive claims require positive proof. There's a well known logical fallacy of negative proof. The old "X must be true, because you can't prove X isn't." You just insert "Monkeys are all buddhists" into X to see how fallacious the argument is. So, generally, "God is true, and loves us" is two statements with an onus of proof. That's not to say you need to prove it to someone else before you can personally believe it. Personal belief is based on personal proof. Atheists are generally split into strong and weak atheists. The strong atheist position is "There is no god", which is a positive assertion, and as such has an attached burden of proof. Again, for them to believe it, requires no more than a personal proof, but to spread it requires the burden of proof. A lot of atheists are what is known as weak atheists. Their statement is "I don't believe in any god". That's not a positive statement and if anything invites others with differing points of view to their opposing burdens of proof. There's no burden of proof, because all they're saying essentially is "I don't believe you, prove it." The problem is it's hard to differentiate between. I like to think of the strong atheist position as antheists, and the weak as atheists. A- for none, an- for anti. The position that has been described in this thread by sirsaint is more properly an angry ex-theist. Ie: someone who essentially still believes but is annoyed at their deity. Al
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Post by saintstephen on Nov 4, 2008 22:46:42 GMT
As for the onus of proof, I see the phrase "Innocent until proven guilty" holds no weight whatsoever with "SaintStephen" here. " Dear Harris, The evidence of guilt has already been established, they were innocent until they proved themselves guilty.
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 4, 2008 23:55:05 GMT
The evidence of guilt has already been established, both were innocent initially then made guilty by their own testimony. That is untrue. They did not break any forum rules. A moderator on this site has confirmed that they have not broken any rules, and has applauded the contributions of one of them, going on to described his input as "polite and thoughtful." So I concur with Harris - if you are going to level accusations at members, you should most certainly present evidence to back them up. If you cannot, we must all conclude that they are false. What kind of poster levels blatantly false accusations at others?
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 5, 2008 6:49:40 GMT
Dear Mel, Do you have any evidence to back your statements? Show us the evidence. Hello Saint Stephen, Yes, I do. But before I present it, I would like it noted by all, that you, Saint Stephen, have falsely accused me, Inedifix/Mel of discourtesy and disrespect, and of insulting the hosts of this site: CPM and Michael G. You have also stated that I was deleted because of these offences. Yet despite being requested on several occasions by other members to present evidence to support these claims, you have either failed, or refused, to do so. So before I provide evidence to back up my statement, I want it on the record that you have repeatedly failed to do what you now request of me. I The evidence is here: irishcatholics.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=catholics&thread=269&page=6
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Post by hazelireland on Nov 5, 2008 9:15:46 GMT
As for the onus of proof, I see the phrase "Innocent until proven guilty" holds no weight whatsoever with "SaintStephen" here. Dear Harris, The evidence of guilt has already been established, both were innocent initially then made guilty by their own testimony. The burden of proof of courtesy in their case is in your responsibility as you are making the pretense of representing them. No one else on this forum is so far on your side. This is nothing short of lies. I have no other way to describe it. You have not pointed to one quote, citation, or any form of evidence to establish such guilt. Not once. You are essentially just sitting there saying "There is loads of evidence.... really there is..... so im right.... but I should mention Im not actually able to SHOW you any of the evidence.... but im still right.... honest".
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Post by Inedifix II on Nov 5, 2008 21:30:52 GMT
As the atheists claim there is no God, then why is the fundamental protest of the atheist that God is unjust? It isn’t. The fundamental claim of the atheist is that there are no supernatural forces or entities in our natural universe, including: no gods of any kind, no spirits, ghosts, demons, devils, monsters, werewolves, vampires, krakens, dragons, griffins, pixies, elves, goblins, gremlins, leprechauns, fairies, Easter Bunnies, psychic powers, divination, telekinesis, souls or Santa Claus (etc). The God of Abraham is just one of those entities. The atheist protest is not that he’s unjust, but that he isn’t there. They hold that this god (as with all others) is the invention of men. And because the invention is such a demonstrably cruel and unjust one, they find it incredibly hard to understand why anyone would want to worship him. And they find it reasonable to point this out to their fellow human beings. That speech is 8,849 words long. The small part of it that deals with the question of an unjust god is just 287 words long. Is it possible that in focussing on just 3% of his argument, you may have missed the whole point? How is it that any organization of supposed non-believers propose that the primary cause of their unbelief is the supposition that God is unjust? Well… they haven’t, they don’t, and you’re wrong to assume that they do. Therefore, your entire premise is founded on a false assumption (or a false assertion) and therefore invalid. Atheists have not and do not support their claim of non-belief in God with any factual or even emotional evidence of their non-belief This, clearly, is not true. Perhaps you should actually read the George Smith speech you linked to in its entirety. But more importantly, you are simply repeating the tired Argument From Ignorance Fallacy. Atheism cannot prove that there is no god, for the very same reason that theism cannot disprove Russell's Teapot. Negative proofs are a logical impossibility. However, it is possible to prove a positive assertion, e.g. Mr. X is guilty of a crime - The prosecution must provide evidence/proof of guilt. Boyle's Law is True - Science must and has proven this as fact. God exists - Theists must prove that he does. These things can all be proven, by providing adequate evidence. But their opposites cannot be proven. That’s why the burden of proof lies with the prosecution and not the defence in a court of law. And why Boyles Law is proven by compressing gasses, not eggs. And why the onus is on Theism to provide evidence to support the claim for the existence of God. Yet to date, no one has proven the existence of any gods (despite the many thousands of them invoked by humans) nor conclusive evidence of one, so it is reasonable to conclude instead that there are probably no gods. And for every day that has passed, and passes, the probability that there are no gods increases. We then turn to the overwhelming scientific evidence that provides totally valid natural explanations for the vast majority of phenomena historically attributed to gods down the centuries. When these two stances are combined (constantly increasing probability of no god + natural causes for all explained phenomena) we have a compelling case for the conclusion that we live in a wholly natural universe governed and described by wholly natural forces. This is the fundamental premise of atheism, not the misinformation with which you opened this thread. I
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Post by hackenslash on Nov 9, 2008 20:03:29 GMT
As the atheists claim there is no God, then why is the fundamental protest of the atheist that God is unjust? I am referring to one claim of the atheist at www.infidels.org/library/modern/george_smith/defending.html "Atheism: The Case Against God." How is it that any organization of supposed non-believers propose that the primary cause of their unbelief is the supposition that God is unjust? It isn't. The fundamental claim of the atheist is that there is no rational evidentiary reason for belief in a deity. The argument that god is unjust is simply a rebuttal to the implication that god provides our morality, when the evidence suggests otherwise, as we can hardly take our morals from a being who is patently immoral. We don't just make these assertions in Catholic circles, but in many theological circles, and even in some circles that have no connection with theism. You want evidence? OK, then, how about the fact that there are no questions left to science that require a deity to answer them. Atheists have no doctrine of belief. That's like saying that not collecting stamps is a hobby. We have no belief, which is the point. I have yet to see, in many years of looking, any evidence of the existence of god, let alone the word of god. All I have seen are bronze-age scrawlings of the illiterate and credulous, which does not, and can not, constitute evidence. No, please post your evidence. Without evidence you're just mumbling, and your arguments are unfounded. Show us the evidence so that we may subject it to proper scrutiny. Again, no doctrinal beliefs. No beliefs at all, in fact. And again, you can't expose anything without exposing your 'evidence'. Let's see it and we can judge for ourselves, or we will simply have to assume that your argument is a canard. And here has always been my biggest problem with your dogma. I saw through this before I had even reached double figures in years, and it gets more ridiculous with each telling. Was this really the best way an omniscient deity could show his 'love'? 'I know, let's create a planet and the heavens and the firmament (that's not even going into how ridiculous the creation myth is, but we'll let that slide for the purpose of this discussion). Then let's sit around for the majority of the existence of the planet. We'll let most of the race die out through wars, famine, childbirth, low natural life expectancy, etc. Then one day,he suddenly decides to intervene. And the place he decides to intervene is in Bronze Age Palestine, and the best way to get the message across is to send my only son and have them kill him, so that their sins can be forgiven. Does this not seem even a little unjust? Would not a benevolent god, even a dictatorial one, just forgive us and tell us to behave? This story is so full of holes you could drive a bus through it.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 28, 2009 16:11:56 GMT
I'll restart this thread to draw attention to an interesting phenomenon. A great deal of contemporary literature seems to me to be just as "preachily" atheist as (say) nineteenth-century religious novels are "preachily" Catholic, Protestant, etc - not only in the sense that it dramatises the author's atheist views but that the author intervenes to ridicule and shift the balance against non-atheist beliefs, often in a manner which damages its dramatic plausibility. I hope to give examples on a later post. It is also noticeable that much criticism appears to treat atheism as a sort of unproblematic default position, rather than a view which can be criticised or debated like any other (for example, Evelyn Waugh is regularly discussed as a Catholic author but Ian McEwan is rarely described as an atheist author) and that mainstream critics regularly explain away the beliefs of Christian authors by reducing them to psychological traumas, while atheist authors' views are not subjected to the same reductionism. (For example, CS Lewis' Christianity is often dismissively attributed to emotional regression to childhood in response to his mother's premature death, but I have never seen John McGahern's atheism, which was clearly linked to his mother's death, treated so dismissively. For the record, I think such dismissiveness would be wrong in both cases; I hope to launch some posts soon comparing Lewis and McGahern.)
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Post by hazelireland on Apr 29, 2009 7:20:04 GMT
It is times like this that the label atheist is useless to us. By bring it up you risk starting a long thread on what it means as it means something different to everyone. Some people think it is the active belief there certainly is no god. Some people think it is just a lack of a belief of a god. I have heard yet more definitions.
This is why I do not answer to either of the labels. I do not consider myself atheist, although it is a word I use for linguistic convenience. I also do not consider myself agnostic as it is a pointless term in its current meaning (which differs from the meaning Huxley gave it when he coined it). I am as agnostic about god as I am about leprechauns and Santa Claus and so many other things that the usefulness of the word agnostic is diluted to a point that makes even homeopathic medicine seem potent.
I personally do not need a word. I am just someone who has yet to be convinced by the claims. That is all. I do not need a word for that. I do not accept the claims of astrology either. I do not feel the need to wake up in the morning and affirm my position as a non-astrologer. I do not require a term.
Life is rife with things we can not prove to be false, but which you are unconvinced by and you proceed without those assumptions. These are the default positions. I write this post today without the belief that I need to defend myself and my loved ones from Alien Abduction. Do you feel that as an author I now need to be labelled so that my writings can clearly be defined as coming from a non-abductionist view point? Clearly not. Why? Because it is a default position. We are not convinced by the claims.
If we had to label every author by everything they are NOT, descriptions of authors would go into uncounted pages. It is just not workable. Instead we label authors by what they ARE.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Apr 29, 2009 11:22:49 GMT
I have just defended Hazelireland to Hibernicus and now I seem to want to do the opposite. Hibernicus is advancing a relevant point here about literary criticism and Hazelireland above all people ought to see that there are many views of what an 'atheist' is. The writer John McGahern was very consciously atheist (devoutly so) though he saw no incompatibility between this and wanting a Catholic funeral. Other writers have similar points of view. Outside fiction, would you assume Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins are writing from a default or neutral position, or that it could be class in an other way than 'atheist' literature?
Given that atheist literature does exist, it can be quite varied and diffuse, just as Catholic literature can be. Some people even regard the writings of the Marquis de Sade and of Casanova as Catholic literature - I don't know how other than in reference to the background both men grew up in.
And the human race is a bit too complex for default positions, however neutral one perceives their beliefs to be or however passively one has come to them or professes them. In Hazelireland's case, he spends a lot of time on this and other fora advancing his non-belief.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 29, 2009 12:00:38 GMT
Hazelireland: I consider Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to have been two of the greatest conmen who ever existed and Mormonism to be full of demonstrably false and absurd claims. If I were arguing this out with a Mormon, however, I would consider myself obliged to adduce rational evidence for this view and to answer any objections he raised, not because I respect Mormonism but because I respect him as a person, however mistaken. I Similarly, if I wrote a novel in which Mormon characters appeared it would be an artistic mistake to simply sneer at them, to display no curiousity about what Mormonism means to them, to make statements about Mormon doctrine or history which are flat-out mistaken, to assume or assert that all Mormons are idiots etc. (For one thing, quite a few Mormons have been prominent in business and politics, and I can think of a couple of prominent science-fiction writers who are Mormons.) By the way, if you think Catholicism is so self-evidently ridiculous that it can be classed with belief in aliens and leprechauns, why are you posting on this board? If we are as delusional as that, you are not going to change our minds. Are you just coming to Bedlam to poke a stick through the bars? Viewpoint and quality are not the same thing, by the way. I would be closer in religious terms to Canon Joseph Guinan (a minor novelist who wrote about the same Longford-Leitrim region in the early twenteith century) than I would to McGahern, and yet I can see quite clearly that Guinan is a lousy novelist and McGahern is far superior to him both as a writer and as a social observer.
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Post by hazelireland on Apr 29, 2009 12:01:19 GMT
Alaisdir6, forums such as this would be of no use if everyone agreed on everything. Do not find it surprising that you would defend me in one thread and not in another. It would be pointless to have discourse if it were otherwise. I welcome you doing both, probably more than I would lesser quality posters doing 100% of either.
What I was questioning here is advocating the labelling of an author by what they are not rather than what they are. Atheism is just a term of convenience really and it obfuscates rather than clarifies the author’s position and intention.
Since you mentioned Dawkins and Hitchens I will use them as an example. You ask are they not atheists and writing from that viewpoint. The labelling of them by what they are not is an umbrella term which does not tell us anything.
Hitchens is primarily a secularist. He has no problem with people holding a faith per se, but it is the encroachment of that faith on moral and political arenas that he writes most about in “God is not great”. He himself says he also does not answer to the term atheist, but to that of anti-theist or “One who is not only unconvinced by the claims, but given how horrible they are is rather relieved there is no reason to consider them true”. There is a clear distinction between this and most “atheists” as I have heard more often than not the atheist say “I do not believe in god, but I wish I did as it would be nice”. He is clearly in STARK contrast to that and having listened to his reasoning I am inclined to agree. He, as a humanist, is also highly offended by Theistic claims such as “Without god we would not have morality” as this is a direct insult to the humanist position. Another flavour of atheist would just find such a claim wrong, but not insulting.
Dawkins is a scientist and his book mainly explores the arguments for the existence of the god entity. The “God Delusion” explores all the traditional arguments for a god and explains why they are insufficient. Very little of his book (although some does) explores the consequence of the faith and its presence in the public arena. He is, as he says himself, more interested in whether the claims are _true_ or not.
So clearly labelling these authors by what they are NOT has told us nothing about what they ARE. Labelling them as a Scientist and their book as a Science book or as a Secular Humanist and a book about Secularism, tells you much more about what they are and where they are coming from.
Whereas labelling someone as a Christian tells you a lot about what they are. One need only read the teachings of Christ to tell exactly what such a person is advocating.
Still further one could look at Sam Harris. The simple labeling of him as atheist tells you nothing about how powerfully and convincingly he advocates spirituality and aspects of eastern Philosophy. Calling him a Buddhist would be inaccurate, but would tell you a LOT more about him accurately than calling him an atheist. In fact I think it is true that the word "atheist" does not appear even once in the entire book "The End of Faith".
To highlight what I mean still further one need only observe the Argument From Hitler to see what I mean. Antagonists against non-belief, even on this forum, have been seen to say “Ah you are an atheist…. Hitler was an atheist…. That’s where atheism gets you”. A statement which is about as useful as saying “Ah you do not believe in alien abduction. Neither did the serial killer <insert name here> . See where not believing in Alien Abduction gets you”. Calling Hitler an atheist tells you nothing about what he was, even if there is evidence to suggest he was no such thing. Clearly we have to label him by what he was. Labels such as Totalitarian, bigot, cruel and more all come into play.
Still further again I will put forward the more rare but still possible position of being a deist. Such a person might write against religion and be labeled an atheist. A-theism, without a theism. It is possible to be an atheist deist in the same way one can be a secular theist. Calling such a person atheist tells you nothing about what the person is. Calling them a Deist, however, does.
I think highlighting the difference between that literature which comes from the position of being certain of the non existence of god, and that literature that says “given the lack of any evidence for such a concept, I proceed in the following fashion….” Is subtle and dismissed by many. I struggle to highlight that it’s importance should not be overlooked however. Subtle does not mean unimportant and although you are in disagreement with my post above, I strive to clarify why I think it important to make these distinctions.
Finally I am not, as you suggest, here to “advance non-belief”. I have not that much concern in changing what the people on this forum think in that manner. If the people here wish their minds changed or challenged they should go to atheist websites like I am on catholic and Christian ones. It is not for me to force them to do it.
My presence on this, and many other similar forums, is to try and find someone who can present me with evidence for their entity. If I am presented with evidence I find lacking I feel myself justified in telling you why I am unsatisfied with it. If you think that comes across as an agenda to advance unbelief then I must assure you that you are in error. I am merely showing why what I have been given so far is of no use to me in the hope that you will present either more data, or more arguments for the data I had dismissed.
I am just not one for hiding on forums where people agree with me, and thus protect myself from data to the contrary. Nor do I hold much personal respect for those that do. I am actively seeking people who can show me how and where I am in error. This is not limited to the topic of, nor forums about, religious matters either.
Again I thank you for your post, like I did the other one to which you referred. I hope my position and my reason for espousing it is clearer now at least in some proportional fashion to the time I just now spent clarifying it.
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Post by Hemingway on Apr 29, 2009 12:08:02 GMT
In Hazelireland's case, he spends a lot of time on this and other fora advancing his non-belief. alaisdir6, I feel you have been a bit unkind here and are misrepresnting hazels position. How on earth does one advance a "non-belief"? The very term means that there is no “belief” to advance! Its an oxymoronical statement. Also I think hazel quite clearly stated that he remains to be convinced about whether theism is or is not the correct stance to be taken or not. Please re-read his post. I am sure that like myself, he just wishes to be convinced either way. To convince a rational thinking person who does not subscribe to supernatural explanations is a challenge though. Such people will require demonstrable evidence. So far no one has presented evidence I would deem appropriate to convince me that theism or the belief in a higher power is the correct stance to take. In fact any "evidence" I have been presented with pushes me to the far end of that scale. None of the atheists that post here wish to convert Catholics to atheism. We enjoy debating and looking for answers. We are not promoting atheism but merely asking questions about various topics. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we don’t. That’s how a forum works. But we must take on board what each other says and not misrepresent them.
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