A nice summation.

Byron sounding very sure of him(?)self.

I think he(?)'s right, though.

To be honest he might as well post nothing more than a smiley in response to each post.

Reading the affirmatives OP is like when Homer Simpson confidently tries to extract himself from the tar pit that he bumbles into.

"First I will simply pull out my feet out with my arms"

*arms get stuck up to the shoulders*

"And now I will simply pull my arms out with my teeth"

*completely submerges self*

stijndeloose wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:

Off we go again. Nothing new. Plenty old.

You don't have to read it.

That is obviously for me to decide thank you very much.

Sad to see Will offer nothing but appeals to authority and the usual combo of appeals to incredulity and personal ignorance.

I do not understand how it is that Byron's latest post constitutes anything worthy of consideration. It is just an uninformed, venomous screed with zero substance. He can't even depict the Trinity properly.

hackenslash wrote:A nice summation.

Here Hacknslash shows no ability or willingness to criticize a member of his team, no matter how bad their performance.

Mick wrote:It is just an uninformed, venomous screed with zero substance.

Well, now you know exactly how people feel about your posts.

CookieJon wrote:

Mick wrote:It is just an uninformed, venomous screed with zero substance.

Well, now you know exactly how people feel about your posts.

Hah.

Watch my debate and see.

I think the two debates overlap nicely. Mick is going to prove an intelligent agent set the universe into motion, while Will can attempt to answer the all important questions like "how do we talk to this agent", "what does he want from us", "would his son pass a roadside BAC breath test".

Well, I have to agree somewhat with Mick. So far it seems Will's actually trying to establish that the christian god exists (or at least, is rationally defensible), while Byron just babbles about how much of a badguy this god is. Not that I disagree, but being an arse doesn't mean you don't exist (or isn't rationally defensible).

Not much attempt at rebuttal has transpired so far. There was a small piece in his opening but that's about it.

Byron's last piece reads like the opening of The Atheist Manifesto by Michael Onfray. I was hoping for something a little more Lofty*.

*adj of, like or pertaining to John Loftus.

(SWIDT?)

Mick wrote:

CookieJon wrote:

Mick wrote:It is just an uninformed, venomous screed with zero substance.

Well, now you know exactly how people feel about your posts.

Hah.

Watch my debate and see.

Is it going to be different to the other crap you write? I doubt it.

Found some evidence have you? Going for tthe Nobel prize?

I think Wilhoud and Byron are doing a good job of presenting the argument as whole in colloquial terms and perceptions- that is, the debate is a good representation of what two intelligent "normal people" who care in a non-trivial way about the consequences of what they're saying might be arguing in "real life".

The argument is about belief and the Christian faith. Some appeals that would not fly in a vigorous setting are perfectly okay here. It would be inappropriate and even dishonest to exclude emotional appeals from the debate.

Wilhoud's argument from Morality is clearly fallacious (quantifier shhift fallacy and illict inversion, for those who attend to such things). It can dismissed on formal grounds. Byron's counter commits the informal fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam and cannot be categorically dismissed.

Having already given great value to "hope for things unseen", Wilhoud cannot simply brush away Byron's appeal to consequences as fallacious: he has already acknowledged the optative mood as a legitimate modality in the debate.

And so on...

lobawad wrote:I think Wilhoud and Byron are doing a good job of presenting the argument as whole in colloquial terms and perceptions- that is, the debate is a good representation of what two intelligent "normal people" who care in a non-trivial way about the consequences of what they're saying might be arguing in "real life".

The argument is about belief and the Christian faith. Some appeals that would not fly in a vigorous setting are perfectly okay here. It would be inappropriate and even dishonest to exclude emotional appeals from the debate.

Wilhoud's argument from Morality is clearly fallacious (quantifier shhift fallacy and illict inversion, for those who attend to such things). It can dismissed on formal grounds. Byron's counter commits the informal fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam and cannot be categorically dismissed.

Having already given great value to "hope for things unseen", Wilhoud cannot simply brush away Byron's appeal to consequences as fallacious: he has already acknowledged the optative mood as a legitimate modality in the debate.

And so on...

It's willhud. No -o-.

Calilasseia wrote:This thread is for comments on the Formal Debate: Can Christianity Be Rationally Defended?.

No it can't - it's complete garbage, just psychology for lame minds.

Hold up. I think some of Byron's points are importantly in response to Will's moral argument. If the moral law that undergirds human cultures in some universal sense is actually God's moral law and this is evidence that God exists, then Byron may have a point. Read Will:

Willhud wrote:But underlying all the small variants of morals we happen upon a basic structure or framing of basic principles which human cultures have held since humanity began. It is that basic structure which is known as the Moral Law. Incidentally, that Moral Law matches in agreement with the God of Christianity and His Law.

Paul in the Epistle to the Romans wrote: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

My blue-ening.

Then in Will's next post:

Willhud wrote:My opponent than goes on to talk about several negative sides to the Christian God and I have to ask where he got the notions from? The Bible? And even if the Christian God was as malicious as my opponent has made Him out to be, that does not in any way disprove the notion of God.

Whether or not we all agree he's made it well, I think this is the gist of the point Byron has attempted to make.

So far, the debaters are somewhat talking past one another, though it's still strangely interesting.

LoneWolfEburg wrote:So far, the debaters are somewhat talking past one another.

True, but I think Byron has been the far more consistent debater, just calmly and steadily pouring out a well-composed litany of all the irrational aspects of the Christian God. And an irrational god cannot be rationally defended. Will, on the other hand, for all his effort, has been pretty much all over the place, and he hasn't responded to Byron's mention of predestination: "he saves and condemns without rhyme or reason." Instead he wonders:

willhud9 wrote:My opponent than goes on to talk about several negative sides to the Christian God and I have to ask where he got the notions from? The Bible?

Well, yes. Predestination is in the bible. From Augustine to Aquinas to Calvin, Christians of all stripes have found it there, pretty plainly. And even if you go in for a non-traditional theology like Pelagianism or salvation-by-merit, it's still irrational of God to mete out an infinite punishment for a finite transgression. Byron had it right in the beginning of the debate: unless Will can refute all the irrational characteristics of the Christian God (from which Byron has a nearly inexhaustible store to draw from), Christianity cannot be rationally defended. Will is kind of ignoring this fact by throwing out a flurry of proofs, equivocations, and qualifiers—none that really persuade.