Discussion of the BrandonMustang thread debate thread...

[BrandonMustang]

I would say pretty low. My pastor is finishing Seminary and his wife just had a baby on top of the normal pastoring stuff (visiting, studying, preparing sermons, etc.). I will be glad to ask him but I can not see him being able to commit any time. Plus, a lot of Pastors really don't like to argue the point when there isn't a lot of hope of "winning hearts for the Lord". We are good friends and talk doctrine constantly, however, so I can tell you what he would say about just about everything. We think alike on almost everything doctrine-wise. Not the abortion thing though. We go round and round on that one.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I'd like to take an excerpt from the argument and comment on it

Wow, this actually came up in a class discussion today in Psychology. First of all, I can't find anywhere in the Bible that God tells one of His children to go break His laws (like "don't murder"). There are some guidelines that get broken by the will of God to put some things in place (or does God just use those mistakes? It's a chicken and egg argument) but none of His moral laws. I really don't see that happening. God would have to be fallible to force a person to break His own perfect law. I don't think you are gonna find any sane people that think John Lennon's murderer actually received a revelation from God.

Right, because purging the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, wouldn’t require a violation of Commandment 6 Judaic/6 Protestant/5 Catholic, Lutheran, and New Church/4 & 6 Islamic.

[Haruko]

BrandonMustang,

When you say that you believe atheists are "lost", is that to say they can't be both intelligent and honest?

[Haruko]

The use of the word "lost" seems to me a curious choice in place of "incorrect", or something like that. It reminds me of the U.S. Vice President's statement that opponents of the war or "morally and intellectually confused" instead of "incorrect". It seems to have some underlying implication that's supposed to put me down.

[Superman]

This line kind of caught my interest:

I wasn't trying to play word games. This was another example of me trying to answer you in the context of my beliefs.

Your beliefs sound an awful lot like delusions.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

I, in the same way, can not justify my faith that God is perfect and perfectly moral.

I would really like to know why he believes something that he has no justification for. It's like saying gravity really makes things fall up, and then when asked "WTF?" reciting "It's what I beleive, I can't justifiy it but I know things fall up and that it is a valid worldview."

[Ritterin Sophia]

I, in the same way, can not justify my faith that God is perfect and perfectly moral.

I would really like to know why he believes something that he has no justification for. It's like saying gravity really makes things fall up, and then when asked "WTF?" reciting "It's what I beleive, I can't justifiy it but I know things fall up and that it is a valid worldview."

When it gets right down to it and you've presented everything you have, and they still refuse to admit that they have no reason to follow that set of beliefs, I think most theists just want to feel good, don't want to admit being wrong, and don't want to admit their peers are wrong. I also think they're immature, because they need a perpetual all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, all-everything parental figure.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

In addition to the feeling good, not being wrong, and offering an alternative to just going away when you die, (Which, mind, is not to be underestimated. Survival is one of the strongest biological functions.) I also find that a lot of theists want their lives to be important.

Consider: They are the most central thing in their world. Everything they have ever seen or heard has, by default, directly applied to them. Because of this, it is not a stretch to assume the idea that their problems are insignificant and they will never ever be able to do something profound is quite simply inconcievable. They want to think that some omnipotent being is so obsessed with them that he is constantly meddling and watching over them. They want to think that their lives are important and decide things that will matter for eternity. How much of the Christian dogma is about your personal sin, responsibility, and relationship with God? Yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of other Christians, but remember that God loves you! God wants to dictate your sex life! God wants to help you decide what to eat for breakfast this morning! God promises that you will be able to fufill your instinctive drive to survive through eternal afterlife!

Belief offers comfort, importance, and the promise that you aren't just a rapidly decaying lump of carbon after your mental functions cease. I understand why people are suckered in, but what I really wanted was to hear him try to explain his erronious stance. Sometimes it takes a basic look at the error in your beliefs to understand that you don't really have any reason to believe that way at all.

Also, I find his constant squirming for rational sounding answers hilarous.

[Vyraeth]

Consider: They are the most central thing in their world. Everything they have ever seen or heard has, by default, directly applied to them. Because of this, it is not a stretch to assume the idea that their problems are insignificant and they will never ever be able to do something profound is quite simply inconcievable. They want to think that some omnipotent being is so obsessed with them that he is constantly meddling and watching over them. They want to think that their lives are important and decide things that will matter for eternity. How much of the Christian dogma is about your personal sin, responsibility, and relationship with God? Yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of other Christians, but remember that God loves you! God wants to dictate your sex life! God wants to help you decide what to eat for breakfast this morning! God promises that you will be able to fufill your instinctive drive to survive through eternal afterlife!

And you got your doctorate in psychology where?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the rational premise of theistic belief, because there is none. But to assume that it exists because people want to feel important about themselves, seems not to consider the fact that it exists because people are indoctrinated to believe it or that they simply can't come to terms with a life without a supernatural.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

Consider: They are the most central thing in their world. Everything they have ever seen or heard has, by default, directly applied to them. Because of this, it is not a stretch to assume the idea that their problems are insignificant and they will never ever be able to do something profound is quite simply inconcievable. They want to think that some omnipotent being is so obsessed with them that he is constantly meddling and watching over them. They want to think that their lives are important and decide things that will matter for eternity. How much of the Christian dogma is about your personal sin, responsibility, and relationship with God? Yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of other Christians, but remember that God loves you! God wants to dictate your sex life! God wants to help you decide what to eat for breakfast this morning! God promises that you will be able to fufill your instinctive drive to survive through eternal afterlife!

And you got your doctorate in psychology where?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the rational premise of theistic belief, because there is none. But to assume that it exists because people want to feel important about themselves, seems not to consider the fact that it exists because people are indoctrinated to believe it or that they simply can't come to terms with a life without a supernatural.

The same place you obviously got your degree in literary analysis. Care to disprove any of the assumptions I made? It is also interesting to note that I did not discount the reasons you have there, I simply elaborated on another I felt was overlooked. I'm not entirely sure if you deal with fundies on a regular basis, but my statements as to their motive are thus far from direct observation of people around me. Is it a controlled study? No. As you said, I don't have a psych degree. But I do have functioning eyes, ears, and a (I daresay) brain.

[Spoonist]

Sorry about the delay, been busy elsewhere.

Wasn't the whole purpose of the restricted thread to allow BrandonMustang a single person to person debate? To then want to circumvent that intent with a thread like this one is to me the same as posting in that thread. Especially since you target the individual directly.

The thread was originally about what we hope to see, however he chose to come in here himself and make himself a target.

Him responding or not has nothing to do with my reasons to criticize your behavior, a behavior which will make him less likely to carry on the one-on-one debate. Something which we have had far too little of in SLAM. Especially since there is bound to be a lot of vulturing.

So either FUCK OFF the debate until it is finished or at least grow the balls to post in the restricted thread and take your just punishment as you deserve.

I did post in there, however, it was moved, thus your argument about 'growing balls' is moot.

Didn't know that you had done that. But the comment was generic to all who wanted to circumvent the purpose of a one-on-one debate anyway so the sentiment stands, even though I with hindsight would have liked to rephrase the sentence.

Now AFTER that debate is considered finished by the participants, you can have your free for all with questions and comments but before then you are just a bunch of hypocrites.

In what way is it hypocritical? Or are you just going to make unsubstantiated charges and attempt character assassinations?

So then what is the word for someone who breaks the intent of something while not breaking the letter of it? Preferably something which will be perceived as an insult since that is the intent. Lawstudent doesn't do that for everyone...


OK, to clear things up I'll try to make a more coherent explanation of my view.
Why I getted pissed of at this behavior is because it is a rare thing that SLAM gets visited by someone with the values of people like BrandonMustang, especially one who is actually trying to make an effort in explaining their own view instead of the old 'god is right you will all burn' ad nauseum. So what usually happens is that everyone like you get over exited and wants to participate at once. This has always in the past resulted in half-assed debates that detiriorates rapidly in quality. With the result that the person takes off never to come back. Which to me is a pitiful behavior and counterproductive to my personal interest in the actual arguments of the debate. I would much prefer to let people like BrandonMustang grow into the Stardestroyer culture, by for instance a one-on-one so that we can keep the debate going for longer and with better arguments.
So when people like you repeat history and ruin the interesting part, I get pissed of for a personnal reason. Sorry for being too short in the last post and just venting instead of explaining why I think you are jackasses.

[Spoonist]

Wasn't the whole purpose of the restricted thread to allow BrandonMustang a single person to person debate? To then want to circumvent that intent with a thread like this one is to me the same as posting in that thread. Especially since you target the individual directly..

While I don't plan at this stage to debate BrandonMustant, I should point out, none of his opponents are pointing a gun at his head and making him post in this thread. He CHOSE TO REPLY.

So? The intent is to get him to answer points from that thread in this one instead. Defeating the purpose of a one-on-one debate. Since this means that BrandonMustant will divide his attention to answering in both this and the other thread, especially since he has used the 'no time' card a lot. So by creating a thread like this one you have to be pretty ignorant not to realise that it will have a negative effect on the other debate. Now if the target is silly enough to actually answer that is up to him, it is not the target's behavior I have a peeve about.
Personally I would have loved to get an opportunity of such a one-to-one debate, (and would have been even more aggravated if someone tried to hijack it in a seperate thread).

Now AFTER that debate is considered finished by the participants, you can have your free for all with questions and comments but before then you are just a bunch of hypocrites.

I am curious. How does this exactly make them hypocrites? Because you said so?

Hypocrite is the wrong word for the sentiment I was striving for, but was close enough for venting. If I can find a better translation of the feeling I'll come back.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Him responding or not has nothing to do with my reasons to criticize your behavior, a behavior which will make him less likely to carry on the one-on-one debate. Something which we have had far too little of in SLAM. Especially since there is bound to be a lot of vulturing.

Apparently it does, since you would rather him respond to Wong specifically, again, he was not obligated to make a reply to us, just like you are not obligated to open your own trap.

Didn't know that you had done that. But the comment was generic to all who wanted to circumvent the purpose of a one-on-one debate anyway so the sentiment stands, even though I with hindsight would have liked to rephrase the sentence.

How the fuck do you rephrase 'Grow some balls and reply in the one-on-one debate' and expect it to mean something when I've already done that, fucktard?

So then what is the word for someone who breaks the intent of something while not breaking the letter of it? Preferably something which will be perceived as an insult since that is the intent. Lawstudent doesn't do that for everyone...

And how does it break the intent, again, no one is forcing him to come into this thread.

OK, to clear things up I'll try to make a more coherent explanation of my view.
Why I getted pissed of at this behavior is because it is a rare thing that SLAM gets visited by someone with the values of people like BrandonMustang, especially one who is actually trying to make an effort in explaining their own view instead of the old 'god is right you will all burn' ad nauseum.

So special treatment because he's not ranting and raving yet, but he's still allowed to make claims and state his beliefs as if they had any basis in logic and reasoning, despite not providing the necessary reasons?

So what usually happens is that everyone like you get over exited and wants to participate at once. This has always in the past resulted in half-assed debates that detiriorates rapidly in quality. With the result that the person takes off never to come back.

I don't see a problem with people not following rules, like not backing up their claims, and then leaving, saves the Senate some time.

Which to me is a pitiful behavior and counterproductive to my personal interest in the actual arguments of the debate. I would much prefer to let people like BrandonMustang grow into the Stardestroyer culture, by for instance a one-on-one so that we can keep the debate going for longer and with better arguments.

Star Destroyer Culture? Wouldn't that mean following the rules and backing up your assertions and understanding you can and will get flamed if you do not?

So when people like you repeat history and ruin the interesting part, I get pissed of for a personnal reason. Sorry for being too short in the last post and just venting instead of explaining why I think you are jackasses.

For the last fucking time retard, no one is holding a .44 to his fucking head and telling him to reply whilst threatening him if he does not, have a nice day and stop it with your incessant whining.

[Nova Andromeda]

-Spoonist I'd appreciate it if you kept to the topic of the thread. You bullshit whiny complaints are exactly what I hate to see clutter threads so SHUT THE FUCK UP or MAKE YOU OWN FUCKING THREAD!

[Ender]

The following has really nothing to do with the debate or anything, but it's an idle musing I had recently and whiel I don't think it iw worthy of its own thread, this seems like as valid a place as any to spout it out.

Let us consider that there is an unknown, sufficiently powerful entity out there to meet the criteria of being sufficiently advanced to be termed a god. As such, when interacting with things in this particular brane/universe/dimension/plane of existance it would be restricted to the fundamental physical laws of it, even if we assume that the entity is responsible for creating this universe. Such is not out of the realm of possibility - though an engineer can design a car, he then can't make the car go faster then its engine allows. He would have to significantly alter the car to allow more horsepower to fit in, possibly to an extent that the car would basically cease to exist in its original form (having replaced the frame, altered the body, etc). While the engineer can certainly make all those changes, it raises the question if whether it is worth his while to do so or even if it would preclude the desired result. Stabbing a man to get his attention so you can talk to him would be a fair comparison - he is now in no state to recieve what you had to tell him.

As such, the entity would be restricted in its ability to interact with the universe due to, for lack of a better term "signal degredation". The laws of quantum electrodynamics and thermodynamics inherent in this universe/plane/brane/etc make it unavoidable to the point where over a sufficient distance one can't achieve enough data to do anything. Consider the size ot the arrays required to detect other planets, then consider what you would need to see the movements of atoms from such a distance, much less manipulate them to achieve events described as miracles. In short, there is an upperlimit to what can be sent and recieved.

Now whatever method of data transfer exists will be fundamental to the universe and, with sufficient instruments, retectable and usable. Just as we can use photons to carry information, whatever the entity uses to send information to a target could be used to send information back to the entity. This is the basic idea behind prayer - as the entity can send information to us, we focus and try to carry information back to it.

Let us now consider this in less vague terms such as those of computer science. We know there is an upperlimit to the amount of information that can be sent at a time between two terminals, analogous to bandwidth between two computers on the internet. Prayer would be a variation on logging onto a site - you are sending a signal to the site and transmitting your information to it to get information in return (e.g. clicking on links to get specific pages). So all those religious people praying constantly would use up the bandwidth in trying to all commune with god at once.

Religion is conducting a giant denial of service attack on god.

I probably screwed up some concepts or terminology in there, and if so please correct me. But personally, the conclusion that religion and faith prevent god from interacting rather then calling on him to amuses me a LOT.

[Spoonist]

-Spoonist I'd appreciate it if you kept to the topic of the thread.

OK

->General Schatten & Mr friendly guy
If you want to continue PM me instead.

[Nova Andromeda]

The following has really nothing to do with the debate or anything, but it's an idle musing I had recently and whiel I don't think it iw worthy of its own thread, this seems like as valid a place as any to spout it out.

-Can you read?!? I specifically asked you NOT to do this in my thread! If it's worth posting do it in your own damn thread! Have you no respect for others? Do you get off trying to hijack other people's threads with offtopic idle musings?

[Nova Andromeda]

-Spoonist I'd appreciate it if you kept to the topic of the thread.

OK

->General Schatten & Mr friendly guy
If you want to continue PM me instead.

-Thank you

[Ender]

The following has really nothing to do with the debate or anything, but it's an idle musing I had recently and whiel I don't think it iw worthy of its own thread, this seems like as valid a place as any to spout it out.

-Can you read?!? I specifically asked you NOT to do this in my thread! If it's worth posting do it in your own damn thread! Have you no respect for others?

Now that's a funny accusation

BrandonMustang requested that our discussion from the abortion thread be continued separately, in a thread where he would only have to address me and not a dozen other people at once.

You want to bitch about me not respecting your request to stay on topic of going after this guys arguments after he specifically requested and was granted a one on one challenge so he would not get dogpiled.

Why is it your request to only hammer the guy is more valid then his to not get hammered?

This is nothing but a pathetic attempt to dogpile the guy and me to! the attacks on his arguments. Yeah, no one forced him to reply here, but that isn't the point: Whether or not he decided to reply here was ultimately irrelevent - the idea behind this was you wanted to go after him and stroke your own ego, but couldn't. GS at least had was honest enough to go after him in the thread, and was slapped down for it. You went and pulled this cowardly bit of rule skirting.

Its a one on one debate. You are circumventing that. And crying about others going around it by talking about things off topic, thus distracting attention from you and how oh so smart you are. Which is horribly ironic because the purpose of this thread is to distract him from the other thread by demanding answers here. Yes, we tradtionally have discussion threads - but they are to discuss the positions and ideas put forth, NOT to debate the participants.

Fuck off kid. These challenges of yours aren't in violation of the law becuase it isn't in that thread, but it goes against the spirit of it by challenging him and splitting his attention and you damn well know it. And that makes this stunt out of line, even if legal. You have no fucking leg to stand on here and from the get go intentionally cast away the moral high ground you are now so desperately trying to invoke.

[Vyraeth]

Care to disprove any of the assumptions I made?

It's your obligation to provide evidence for the claims you make. Your assumptions are not evidence.

I don't really buy the idea that religion exists partly because people want to feel important about themselves. I'm sure certain individuals feel very important about themselves when it comes to religion, such as the highly pious, but you make it seem as if it's a general symptom of any theist.

I know many teenagers, to focus on one particular group of theists, who feel as though God is a cosmic cop out to ruin their fun. God seems to function as a burden there, not as a device for feeling important about oneself.

It is also interesting to note that I did not discount the reasons you have there, I simply elaborated on another I felt was overlooked.

Granted. Poor wording on my part, since I made it seem as though you were only proposing your "theory" as a reason for theistic belief.

What I meant was that I would like to see more evidence for this rationalization, then merely your assumptions based on your encounters with theists.

You're postulating without any data.

I'm not entirely sure if you deal with fundies

Was your initial statement meant to refer only to fundies? Since in your initial statement you said "theists", not fundamentalists.

Is it a controlled study? No. As you said, I don't have a psych degree. But I do have functioning eyes, ears, and a (I daresay) brain.

And so that you means you can go around spouting whatever you want about theists, when it appears your "observations" are based off fundamentalist Christians, and don't take into account all the theists out there?

[Darth Wong]

Fuck off kid. These challenges of yours aren't in violation of the law becuase it isn't in that thread, but it goes against the spirit of it by challenging him and splitting his attention and you damn well know it.

I wasn't aware that I nominated you to speak on behalf of me and tell people what the "spirit" of that thread was. BrandonMustang requested a thread where he could have a clean one-on-one discussion with me. At no point was it stated or implied that nobody else on the board would be permitted to comment publicly on this thread; the purpose of the thread was to create a public place where BrandonMustang could explain and defend his beliefs without being swamped by replies. The restricted thread does that, regardless of whether someone creates another thread to discuss it.

[Darth Wong]

I don't really buy the idea that religion exists partly because people want to feel important about themselves. I'm sure certain individuals feel very important about themselves when it comes to religion, such as the highly pious, but you make it seem as if it's a general symptom of any theist.

It's a general symptom of any Christian theist, since the Christian ideology itself makes the rather spectacular claim that the Lord God Creator of All the Vast Universe cares deeply about your personal conduct and beliefs. That claim is intrinsic to Christianity's core ideology and cannot be separated from it, and if that doesn't promote a mentality of delusionally exaggerated self-importance, what does?

Now you can argue that this is a "chicken and egg" situation and it may well be, but you can't say that you can't describe cosmic self-importance as a symptom of Christians in general when cosmic self-importance is written right into the Christian ideology.

[Feil]

Care to disprove any of the assumptions I made?

It's your obligation to provide evidence for the claims you make. Your assumptions are not evidence.

Adunakhor made an assumption: Theists believe in part because it gives them a feeling of importance. He then spent a whole post backing that up. Either show that the points he brought up to support his claim are false or that they don't lead to the conclusion he drew.

It's obvious that you intuitively think that you should do this--you made a half-hearted start at doing it in your last post, even though you vehemently denied that you had any reason to. Right now your 'argument' amounts to "I disagree, so nyah!"

Why don't you lay off the misapplication of burden of proof rules and offer a counterargument?

[Vyraeth]

Now you can argue that this is a "chicken and egg" situation and it may well be, but you can't say that you can't describe cosmic self-importance as a symptom of Christians in general when cosmic self-importance is written right into the Christian ideology.

You're right, and this makes perfect sense. When it comes to Christian theism, there clearly is an element of self-importance involved, thus I concede that point to you, Ar-Adunakhor.

[Nova Andromeda]

This is nothing but a pathetic attempt to dogpile the guy and me to! the attacks on his arguments. Yeah, no one forced him to reply here, but that isn't the point: Whether or not he decided to reply here was ultimately irrelevent - the idea behind this was you wanted to go after him and stroke your own ego, but couldn't. GS at least had was honest enough to go after him in the thread, and was slapped down for it. You went and pulled this cowardly bit of rule skirting.

-You can take your liable and shove it asshole! I created this thread to ask BrandonMustang a few questions before he left (which often happens), but also decided it would be nice to have a thread for others to comment on Darth Wong's discussion with him. If he's really that busy he can stick to Darth Wong's thread and ignore this one.
-You obviously haven't even read what I've been asking him in this thread either since it is primarily NOT going after him for his beliefs, but instead trying to get a feeling for how his group feels about living with nonbelievers and his thoughts on coexistance. What others decide to ask BrandonMustang is their business. Further more your whole damn post is nothing, but a vicious ad hominem attack AND a red herring. Time for you to conceed and appologize so that you don't further sully you status as Senator.
-I wonder if you have intelligence to apoligize and stop trying to intentionally clutter other people thread with off topic crap. Probably far to much to expect....