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[chaoticag]

Please don't pour gasoline on the fire tofu. It isn't that bad, nowhere near perfect, but not that bad.

[Andir]

Please don't pour gasoline on the fire tofu. It isn't that bad, nowhere near perfect, but not that bad.

Notice how tofu didn't contribute to the thread in the manner to which they wanted it to head, but sat back and complained because the thread wasn't going the right way... ironic.

[dreiche2]

What the fuck did I tell you guys? That this thread didn't have to go to hell, if you just acted at least a little civil! Fuuuck.

 

Edit: To clarify, you're not exactly being calm and civil either. Apart from that, personally I am not trying to "fuck things up" by any means, nor to be overly argumentative.

[Leafsnail]

OK since LeafSnail and dreiche2 kept dragging me offtopic with intelligent design, and now that they seem done knitpicking about my modest proposal to internet atheists, let's completely re-rail this to the topic of atheism with a clean re-rail:

You made a factually incorrect statement, and it was corrected.

The negative proof fallacy swings both ways.

Even if it does, that does not change the fact that there is no evidence for a supernatural entity, and thus the idea should not be believed unless evidence is produced.  The whole point of a scientific theory is that there is evidence and testable preditions.

No, you're right. I think I'm thinking of Leafsnail. The endless one quote reply posting ballooning into irrelevant nitpicking about words is bringing back memories of some sort anyway. I can't put my finger on the individual, but there's one here that I really dislike but it's been so long it might as well be the lot of atheists here.

Funnily enough, my beliefs have changed since then.  Anyway, it's not irrelevant nitpicking if you're attempting to use genetic modification as proof for intelligant design through incorrect definitions.  The distinction between creationism and intelligent design is also pretty crucial.

Did you know it has a sister half? And they're, gasp, teaching the following blasphemous logical fallacy in school?

   X has not been observed
   Therefore X does not exist

No.  The logic I follow is:

X has not been observed
Therefore we can dismiss X as a possibility until it is.

If there's no evidence for something, it has no more chance of being correct than any random postulation anyone can make.  As long as it's vaguely consistent with reality, anything we haven't observed is just as likely to be true.

Live and Let Live.

I'm not attempting to do otherwise.  I merely find this discussion interesting.  As you must do, since you keep popping in.

Oh just wait for the whole occam's razor thing when one of them gets around to the applications of the negative proof and whatnot. I'm surprised someone hasn't yet.

Occam's Razor is neither necessary nor appropriate for this.

And I think Leafsnail does that thing were he picks your post apart and balloons it up in a bunch of single quote responses, many of which claiming complete ignorance, to where you can't possibly keep up so that your whole moment burns down. Or he's accidentally doing a very common and cheap tactic I've seen everywhere else.

I'm not attempting to do anything of the sort.  I regard it as the equivalent of responding to someone in real life, but I guess if you have a large starting post with lots of different points (especially when some of them seem to be extremely odd) it can get unmanagable.

Oh screw it. Now I'm just ranting about the religion equivalent of an Illuminati or something. Yes fine, I'm just trying to annoy people. I'll make an effort to annoy you in the future.

:|

I'm not kidding about it though. Religion had even politics by the balls back when, and now it's a bunch of free spirits being beat over the head by home school philosophers playing whack a mole whenever one of them steps out of their element.

Yeah, this is what we call an overgeneralization.  Again.  I'm not even sure where you got that idea from.

Idiom... as far as I can tell, you have a personal grudge against atheists.  You don't seem to believe in the "live and let live" that other people have been advocated, nor do you seem to be defending any of your own beliefs.  I guess you can dislike a group of people, but I'd like you to stop these childish overgeneralizations.  Remember, when you bash atheists, you're bashing me, most of my friends and almost all of my family.  It's not something I can tolerate.

[Cthulhu]

I'm not kidding about it though. Religion had even politics by the balls back when, and now it's a bunch of free spirits being beat over the head by home school philosophers playing whack a mole whenever one of them steps out of their element.

Yeah, this is what we call an overgeneralization.  Again.  I'm not even sure where you got that idea from.

Idiom... as far as I can tell, you have a personal grudge against atheists.  You don't seem to believe in the "live and let live" that other people have been advocated, nor do you seem to be defending any of your own beliefs.  I guess you can dislike a group of people, but I'd like you to stop these childish overgeneralizations.  Remember, when you bash atheists, you're bashing me, most of my friends and almost all of my family.  It's not something I can tolerate.

Perhaps, as an atheist, you've never noticed it?  Back when I mentioned my beliefs on the internet, doing so would result in the aforementioned whack-a-mole by high school age existentialists whose arguments were silly but since I get flustered in emotional arguments I never noticed the fallacio they were committing until it was too late.  No matter where it was, this would result.  Eventually I stopped bringing it up.

[Leafsnail]

Doesn't tend to happen here, though.  I mean, I suppose you'll be challenged on the atheist/ discussion thread, but elsewhere nothing tends to kick off.

[Cthulhu]

Well, this is one place, and even when we're all antsy about the new release and getting into arguments much more often, this place is much more chill than the rest of the internet.  Most other places if you mention Jesus without also trotting out the ancient and decrepit Cosmic Zombie joke; someone, most likely an angry youth who just got done reading The God Delusion, will demand you stop shoving your beliefs down his throat and then proceed to vehemently tell you why your beliefs are wrong and you should stop believing them.  This is done with no sense of irony.

[Leafsnail]

Yeah, that'd be called "being a douche".  It's still not like the majority of atheists would do that though...

[chaoticag]

The way I see it, no one with a working brain would talk like that. They are basically screaming to the world at large that people that don't think unquestioningly the way they think are closed minded.

This also applies to people who think that certain events are unquestionably miracles and proof of the existance of God without investigation, and therefore you will go to hell unless you believe what they do. Odd things happen sometimes, and saying that one of those events has helped you find meaning in your beliefs is fine, but don't expect people to make the same conclusions.

Also, it would be better, in my opinion, if people only bothered converting those that are curious. Doing anything else is just going to annoy other people, and affirm stereotypes.

[Lord Dakoth]

I think that people should generally limit converting people to people who they know really well. I easily understand how an attempted conversion from a complete stranger could be considered annoying (and I am in fact personally annoyed by door-to-door Religion Salesmen.)

I don't typically say much at all about my religious beliefs. If someone asks, I'm fine with telling them. However, I don't bring up the topic in conversation unless I know the person very well. I think it's a good rule of thumb to follow.

[dreiche2]

Hm, but again, while I don't want to disagree with that one should be respectful towards personal beliefs, the influence of religion just goes beyond personal matters in practice.

For example, if laws are passed on religious grounds, say on abortion or gay marriage, how is one supposed to argue about them if one isn't to bring up religion?

Again, where I live the influence of religion is relatively small, but if I were in the US: As far as I can see, a politician in the US has only a chance of becoming president when he or she is a Christian (at least by appearance). Which is not surprising given the numbers I quoted about beliefs in the American population. So if I disagree with Christian values, how could I change this situation if not by trying to convince people to believe otherwise? Of course, it's unlikely that one could convince the more extreme cases on either side, but what about the more undecided?

[Jude]

@Cthulhu: "Fallacio?" Is this a concept I should know about?











It sounds hot.

[Realmfighter]

^{Live and let Live}

[Andir]

^{Live and let Live}

I've reported you.  Contribute, or go away.

[Leafsnail]

Apparently "fallacio" is an amazingly common misspelling for a popular sex act.  Also, this site caption which I found when I googled it is great: