mrjonno wrote:The problem with god squad debates is to win you basically have to kill your opponent, I'm obviously not talking about stabbing them but destroying their world view so badly that could be at risk of doing themselves in, if they survive they will be basically reborn as someone else. I could only begin to imagine how terrible a world would be where the christian god existed and I assume christians would think the same about a godless world

Debating with someone whether cannabis should be legal or not is unlikely to cause serious mental harm if you get that person to change their mind, doing so regarding god is going to be very traumatic to say the least.

The people who do change their mind over god probably weren't that committed in the first place. I've met a few ex-priests who have talked about it and they always said they had doubts

Maybe but I went through a solid four or five years of emotional turmoil realizing Christianity wasn't true. If we were vulcans and could detach from our emotions, it would have taken four or five hours of looking over evidence and deciding that religion doesn't fit the evidence. But as a human, that intellectual understanding was followed by years of emotional turmoil because of the commitment. True the suspicions of how sadistic the fictional character known as the Christian god is were already there just from things I noticed in the Bible.

Calilasseia wrote:

pelfdaddy wrote:ravkere,

Your description of bias and its anatomical structure is both accurate and precise. I would like to quibble only about the degree to which your description applies, in that the rabbit hole goes deeper than is comfortable to admit.

There are many Christians who are studying the sciences and philosophy merely to obtain the necessary credentials to work, publish and speak publicly in the fields in which real progress is overtaking religious dogma, in an effort to reverse this hopeful trend. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but having been a born-again Christian from 1987-2008, I can affirm that it is quite real, although I would refer to it not as 'conspiracy', but as 'ministry'. The future earnings of churches and preachers the world over require the reassurance of believers and a soothing of their doubts. It allows them to write books that say, "There are scientists and philosophers who are Christians just like you, and they still believe. Don't worry--just keep attending church and putting money in the offering plate; we've got the atheists and the scientists covered."

Bill Craig is among the advance guard in this modern Christian movement. All this is merely to say the following: that there is one reason why Bill Craig would obtain credentials in the Philosophy of Time. This is not an honest attempt to do research or discover new truths. It is a blatant attempt to alter the landscape in the field by concocting certain arguments. He needs to be able to reference assertions that support his cosmological arguments in support of Theism.

That is all there is to it. If you would trust a plumber who only paid for a plumber's license in order to gain admittance into people's homes for the purpose of child molestation, then by all means trust Bill Craig to produce good work in the fields of history, physics, and philosophy.

I suppose I am agreeing with you in a sense--because you seem to be suggesting that we must know the individual before we know what they are up to. And the individual to whom you refer by way of example is one that we know very well.

A particularly duplicitous example of the phenomenon you describe above is Jonathan Wells, who has openly stated that he's only studying for a degree in evolutionary biology, in order to provide him with the tools he needs to "destroy Darwinism". No one familiar with creationist liars for doctrine, however, is in the least surprised here.

Reminds me of a guy I knew who took years of criminology courses alongside wannabe LEOs and the like so that he could understand the psychology of criminals and cops and be a better criminal himself. Haven't heard from him in years...

rakvere, I apologize for misspelling your handle.

Calilasseia wrote:

pelfdaddy wrote:ravkere,

Your description of bias and its anatomical structure is both accurate and precise. I would like to quibble only about the degree to which your description applies, in that the rabbit hole goes deeper than is comfortable to admit.

There are many Christians who are studying the sciences and philosophy merely to obtain the necessary credentials to work, publish and speak publicly in the fields in which real progress is overtaking religious dogma, in an effort to reverse this hopeful trend. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but having been a born-again Christian from 1987-2008, I can affirm that it is quite real, although I would refer to it not as 'conspiracy', but as 'ministry'. The future earnings of churches and preachers the world over require the reassurance of believers and a soothing of their doubts. It allows them to write books that say, "There are scientists and philosophers who are Christians just like you, and they still believe. Don't worry--just keep attending church and putting money in the offering plate; we've got the atheists and the scientists covered."

Bill Craig is among the advance guard in this modern Christian movement. All this is merely to say the following: that there is one reason why Bill Craig would obtain credentials in the Philosophy of Time. This is not an honest attempt to do research or discover new truths. It is a blatant attempt to alter the landscape in the field by concocting certain arguments. He needs to be able to reference assertions that support his cosmological arguments in support of Theism.

That is all there is to it. If you would trust a plumber who only paid for a plumber's license in order to gain admittance into people's homes for the purpose of child molestation, then by all means trust Bill Craig to produce good work in the fields of history, physics, and philosophy.

I suppose I am agreeing with you in a sense--because you seem to be suggesting that we must know the individual before we know what they are up to. And the individual to whom you refer by way of example is one that we know very well.

A particularly duplicitous example of the phenomenon you describe above is Jonathan Wells, who has openly stated that he's only studying for a degree in evolutionary biology, in order to provide him with the tools he needs to "destroy Darwinism". No one familiar with creationist liars for doctrine, however, is in the least surprised here.

I can only assume Well's means he is studying biology, this is not a subject you can learn by rote at degree level. He is going to have to understand concepts and experiments and show his workings. So unless he wants to fail, he will have to lie for Jesus (or a paycheck) which will be fun to watch.

I used to enjoy the debates at first as they were fun and exciting though as the years passed and going over the same ground. Well soon ennui sets in, luckily with atheism there are younger 'members' to take your place. They seem full of piss and vinegar and ready to step up to the plate. I just hope it doesn't go to their head and we end up with quite a few 'new atheist' fuckwits who think they're all that because they argued against a position that had no evidence to back it up in the first place.

DaveDodo007 wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

pelfdaddy wrote:ravkere,

Your description of bias and its anatomical structure is both accurate and precise. I would like to quibble only about the degree to which your description applies, in that the rabbit hole goes deeper than is comfortable to admit.

There are many Christians who are studying the sciences and philosophy merely to obtain the necessary credentials to work, publish and speak publicly in the fields in which real progress is overtaking religious dogma, in an effort to reverse this hopeful trend. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but having been a born-again Christian from 1987-2008, I can affirm that it is quite real, although I would refer to it not as 'conspiracy', but as 'ministry'. The future earnings of churches and preachers the world over require the reassurance of believers and a soothing of their doubts. It allows them to write books that say, "There are scientists and philosophers who are Christians just like you, and they still believe. Don't worry--just keep attending church and putting money in the offering plate; we've got the atheists and the scientists covered."

Bill Craig is among the advance guard in this modern Christian movement. All this is merely to say the following: that there is one reason why Bill Craig would obtain credentials in the Philosophy of Time. This is not an honest attempt to do research or discover new truths. It is a blatant attempt to alter the landscape in the field by concocting certain arguments. He needs to be able to reference assertions that support his cosmological arguments in support of Theism.

That is all there is to it. If you would trust a plumber who only paid for a plumber's license in order to gain admittance into people's homes for the purpose of child molestation, then by all means trust Bill Craig to produce good work in the fields of history, physics, and philosophy.

I suppose I am agreeing with you in a sense--because you seem to be suggesting that we must know the individual before we know what they are up to. And the individual to whom you refer by way of example is one that we know very well.

A particularly duplicitous example of the phenomenon you describe above is Jonathan Wells, who has openly stated that he's only studying for a degree in evolutionary biology, in order to provide him with the tools he needs to "destroy Darwinism". No one familiar with creationist liars for doctrine, however, is in the least surprised here.

I can only assume Well's means he is studying biology, this is not a subject you can learn by rote at degree level. He is going to have to understand concepts and experiments and show his workings. So unless he wants to fail, he will have to lie for Jesus (or a paycheck) which will be fun to watch.

But such an endeavour, from such an avowed religionist, is surely undertaken in order to lend scientific credentials and credence to an apologetic project that is fundamentally anti-scientific(?)

I've noticed how fundamentalists are often happy to cite science when it suits and decry it when it doesn't. For example, the following 'facts' form part of the dogma of the Jehovah's Witnesses cult, presented as scientific proof that we are living in the end times.

Letters from the governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses wrote:[s]ince 1914 destruction by earthquakes has escalated throughout the earth, and these have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
In 1915 at Avezzano, Italy, 29,970 died in an earthquake; 180,000 in China in 1920; 143,000 in Japan in 1923; 60,000 in India in 1935. The 1960’s saw great quakes in Iran, Chile, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Libya, El Salvador, Russia, Colombia, France, Indonesia and Turkey, among others. In 1970 an earthquake killed 70,000 in Peru, and over 12,000 died in Nicaragua in 1972.

With data obtained from the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, supplemented by a number of standard reference works, a tabulation was made in 1984 that included only earthquakes that measured 7.5 or more on the Richter scale, or that resulted in destruction of five million dollars (U.S.) or more in property, or that caused 100 or more deaths. It was calculated that there had been 856 of such earthquakes during the 2,000 years before 1914. The same tabulation showed that in just 69 years following 1914 there were 605 of such quakes. That means that, in comparison with the previous 2,000 years, the average per year has been 20 times as great since 1914.

Do you need more evidence that the world change in 1914?
Open your eyes, you are really living in the time of the end....

http://governingbodyletters.blogspot.co ... ntury.html

-- my bold

When it comes to debates between non-believers and certain, shall we say, literate fundamentalists (such as debates on cosmology with WL Craig, or on evolution with Behe or Dembski, etc), much of the time is given over to delineating the importance of cherry-picked scientific snippets, which, presumably, are offered to lend weight to moral insistences about the inherent truth of this-or-that religious dogma or doctrine. And though this often just bogs a debate down in irrelevances, and wrangling over the 'correct' interpretation, it is nonetheless undertaken in order to present an extreme, fundamentalist viewpoint as, erm, fundamentally moderate, reasonable, and, most importantly, factually correct.

It seems that even the fundamentalist understands that they must provide robust support for their claims and assertions, and so they invoke the spectre of Science as a proper authority - even when they simply misunderstand the science in question, and even when they do understand but are happy to wilfully misrepresenting it.

God, why did I google Jonathan Wells:

10 Questions You Must Ask
ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry -- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?

VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection -- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?

MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution -- even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident -- when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact -- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?

WHY DOES IT MATTER? Why should we be bothered one way or the other about the conclusions science arrives at as long as they are rigorous and reviewable? Nobody disputes the field theory that explains and predicts the behaviour of the electrons inside a personal computer, even as it's being used to compose inelegant screeds maligning the motivation, character, and conclusion of science in this one particular area.

Of course, Wells et al are engaged in an apologetics, not science; an apologetics which is brought to bear not to convince the sceptic but to bolster the faith of those who might apotheosise the apologist.

Wells is a professional liar for doctrine. End of story.

THWOTH wrote:WHY DOES IT MATTER? Why should we be bothered one way or the other about the conclusions science arrives at as long as they are rigorous and reviewable? Nobody disputes the field theory that explains and predicts the behaviour of the electrons inside a personal computer, even as it's being used to compose inelegant screeds maligning the motivation, character, and conclusion of science in this one particular area.

But then no-one bases their self-image and self-esteem on field theory in the way that some humans seriously base them on the belief that the One True God must have created them as its Most Favoured Creature.

Even when those people pretend to be humble, as they often do, their version of humility is sticking at all costs to the idea of being second only to the Creator Of The Universe because they're obviously far too special to be related to mere animals, an idea they treat with open contempt.

Many Christians believe and teach that the angels of heaven themselves are in awe of them, stand ready to do their bidding, and wish they knew what it was like to be born again Christians.

So there's this fucking debate between Richard Carrier and some preacher named Douglas Jacoby. The issue is on the essence of Jesus, human or Divine. God in the flesh, or just a guy. Carrier does a great job in spelling out the fact that so-called Greek 'Mystery' religions featured dying and rising saviors who redeemed those who were baptized etc., and that these proliferated prior to Christianity; that they merely merged themselves with local religions from Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East generally. He points out that Christianity is a perfect picture of what one would expect from the welding of the preceding version of Mystery religion to the existing form of Judaism at the time.

Simple.

Jacoby's only thought is to rescue his Christian audience members form the perils of doubt. His only response is (paraphrasing), "Oh, come on! Are you kidding me? Geez, get a load of THIS guy!"

During cross-examination, Jacoby returns to this, saying, "I don't think they're the same thing."

"Oh, yes, they are the same."

"No, those religions had A and B, but not C, D and E."

"Well, they actually had A, B, C, and D, and of course the idea of E was common at the time."

"Yea, but that's not the same thing."

"How so?"

"E is the key missing ingredient."

"Only if you assume your version is superior, which they all do. It fits the pattern."

"No, it doesn't, because it's not the same thing."

"You wouldn't expect it to be identical in all respects."

"You just said it was."

"Well, my whole point was that you expect these religions to copy those that went before, but also to create innovations as they go along, so it perfectly fits the pattern, yeah."

"I don't think so."

Just a fucking preacher doing what fucking preachers do: Watching out for his own back pocket.

A couple of small points for consideration...

* one of the reasons for troublesome debates which is touched on here and there in several posts, wasn't as directly addressed as I think it needs to be, for this threads' purpose. That is what might be called "Expertism-itis" or something. Specifically, it consists of two elements:

1. giving reverence and respect to a viewpoint ONLY because the person has some official certification, and not because they make sound arguments;

2. the insistence on formal game-playing when debating, narrowing the ability of participants to the nomenclature of the alleged areas of expertise.

I see this in a LOT of over-blown discussions in these very forums, and it is actually pushed as much or more by those who insist that they are "anti-wibble" as it is by those who are pushing nonsense.

The problem with is "expertism-itis," is that it causes those arguing AGAINST nonsense to tie their own hands, AND to tell those looking on, that they are themselves, not allowed to think, and not allowed to take note of when they notice that a given "emperor" on the dais, has no clothes. Another way to put it is, that too often (again, both here and in debates as are being decried in this thread), onlookers and debaters alike, get told that they have to put up with outright, obvious manipulative nonsense, not because it's true, but because the perpetrator of said nonsense, played by the official rules, and used the officially approved lingo.

* From a broader point of view, one only runs INTO all these debates being described here, if one actually seeks them out. In a way, the threadstarter reminds me of an unpleasant neighbor I had a long while back. No offense intended, and I'm making no accusation here about the thread starter, just noting a behavioral trait, which he might benefit from considering..

This unpleasant neighbor lived two doors down from us when I was in College, living in a group house. it was July Fourth, and to celebrate in the no-fireworks-allowed area of the city we were in, we decided to take my housemates' VERY expensive and VERY high quality music system out on the porch, and to share some nice music with the neighbors. This fellow two doors down, took the time to write an extremely snotty note, and hand carry it to us, declaring that we were horrid people because we played "bad" loud music to celebrate July Fourth. I tried to help the situation by inviting him to bring some of his own music to play, since out intent was sharing, and he did so. We tried to show him that there was variety and nuance in what we had to play as well, and he responded by making a great show of claiming that all of our music, no matter how mild, actually physically hurt his ears. Things didn't end well.

Some time later, I witnessed him strolling down the alley behind some other neighbors' house, and pausing because THEY were playing some music for themselves, and had a window open. Despite his not being aware that I was watching, he still put on a great show of disdain, but REMAINED STANDING BEHIND THE OPEN WINDOW until the music ceased.

In short, the reason this neighbor had a bad day, was because he SOUGHT OUT things that he already knew he did not like, perhaps in order to reaffirm that he did not like them, and that he was therefore a superior person of some sort.

Point of this from me: I pay attention to the news of the world, and of the US and of my state, by reading many things every day, and by listening to a number of different radio stations, and several educational TV stations. yet, every time someone here complains about a surge in Theistic nonsense, I have to google the people being mentioned, because I've never heard word one from them before.

Thus suggests that the reason some of you are having such a horrid time with "wibble," is because you are seeking it out. It really isn't taking center stage here.

Can you give an example?

Igor,

You're right. I am seeking it out. This is because I find it interesting. I also find it incredibly instructive to watch the debates because the conflict between atheism and theism is important to me. I have gone on at length elsewhere as to why that is. Some of the debates are pleasant and groovy, others are annoying for various reasons. Those reasons are the point of my having started the thread. I've got nothing else for you on that.

I get Igor's point, but for my part, I watch and listen to these debates because they reflect in microcosm the broader interplay between the insistences asserted on behalf of religion and the broader rational critique thereof that is played out in society at large.