Most of those are anti-christian. What I pointed out in the other thread is that many new atheists seem to make the mistake that religion = Christianity. You can bash, destroy, and ridicule Christianity until it's a smoldering pile of rubble, but that will do squat in discrediting the concept of religion as a whole.
Your first link, for example: All his supporting points are attacking concepts promoted mainly by Christianity and a couple other major religions. But his conclusion is that ALL religion is incompatible with science, which is bogus. Deism's an excellent example of that, as it was created by Enlightenment scientists: A sentient something-or-other made the universe. No further assumptions or assertions past that. Absolutely nothing science can ever prove will go against it. For that religion (and infinite more possibilities), they are compatible.
Oh, and since I apparently missed some stuff from a while back, I'll respond to those:
Why do ya'll think solipsism has been brought up like, 80 times? It's not because people actually want to advocate it, but rather that saying "you're making baseless assumptions" is not pointing out anything new. Of course they're making baseless assumptions. So are you. Yours aren't "better," either.
Mine are not better; mine are fewer.
Okay.
“We all assume an objective reality, therefore I can assume whatever I want,” is not valid reasoning, because, as I have said, we assume out of necessity, not because assumptions are good.
Necessity for what? If we accept the possibility of not living in an actual reality, you have no necessity of dealing with it.
And that first part is a strawman. No, justification for assuming whatever we want is not the point I'm making. Quite the opposite, actually. The point I'm making is by simply interacting with the world around you, you're just as guilty of a bullshit, baseless assumption as any religious person is. So please, keep off the high horse. That's all.
You don't really need to have the same premises to debate somebody.
Yes you do, if you're attacking their conclusion. If you don't have the same premises, then you need to attack the premises you disagree with, by going and looking at the premises
those premises are based on.
Debate 101 here. You either find out which fallacies they're using to reach an illogical conclusion, or you find out what basic ideas aren't shared between you. Anything else results in a fallacious argument.
The strongest weapon against presuppositionalists is reductio ad absurdum and that can be done without sharing their presumptions.
This is pretty much what I'm advocating. Point out why their presumptions are absurd or contradictory.
I'd avoid appealing to consequences, though. "Because that conclusion would be silly" isn't a strong argument, at least alone.
There's a difference between a fundamental assumption that could only be wrong through coincidences happening all the time (we don't share the same objective reality but the realities we experience just happen to be exactly the same to all intents and purposes) and an assumption of something which could never be proven wrong even if it is wrong.
There is, but an inductive argument cannot be made for empiricism since all the evidence supporting it is empirical. If you try to support it, you end up going in circles. It's built upon its own assumption. It's like asserting that someone is telling you the truth because they told you they were telling the truth.
Tell me, what does that line of thinking remind you of?
We're not disputing whether it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. We're disputing whether the information you're receiving about that duck can be trusted to be valid.
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Topic: Atheism/Religion Discussion (Read 181475 times)