Louis
Posts: 6436 Joined: Jan. 2006
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Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Aug. 30 2011,07:05) | [SNIP]
I object to people pushing plain error and would like to let them know exactly why busted apologetics are harmful. If the "breathtaking inanity" factor were dialed down from 11 or beyond, I think that that would help people get along better. It may not be much in the overall scheme of things, but it's something.
[SNIP] |
Absolument!
Maybe FTK can reflect on the words of Thomas Jefferson (admittedly on a slightly different topic):
Quote | ...But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. |
1) No one with a functioning brain who can give it even a moment's calm, rational thought gives a gibbering Dalek doodoo about what anyone believes. Go to it! Go to your churches, FTK, read your bible, pray, don't have abortions, don't understand basic science*, do no harm and you will have a friend in me. Extend your personal, private beliefs beyond that sphere and I will....
{Dramatic pause}
....argue with you. I know, persecution right? Guess what though, you get to do the same with me! How cool is that?
2) Here's a couple from Gandhi for you, not that I agree with everything the bloke says, but he's hit the nail on the head regarding this point.
Quote | Be the change you want to see in the world. |
Quote | I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. |
And here's the KJV of your own Holy Bible, Matthew 7:5:
Quote | Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. |
Your attempts at relativism and shifting the burden of proof are, as I have said before, hilarious. Since we have all covered this ground before many times, it pains me to say it again, but I, and others, do not simply believe the various theories of evolution and facts associated with such biology are true, we instead accept them as being provisionally true based on the available data. That might seem to you like a fine hair to split, but it is the crux of the issue. Regardless of what misinformation you have from pastors and other such sundry, pompous pious personages, we are simply not arriving at our conclusions via the same means.
If you cannot grasp that the reason scientists accept the facts and theories of evolutionary biology is EXACTLY the same reason that your car mechanic accepts the engineering principles required to fix your car, or the same reason you accept the medical principles that underpin the treatments your doctor gives you, or the electronic principles that make the computer you are reading this on work, then you are truly mistaken. And mistaken in the most pernicious manner.
So before you project, yet again...yet nauseatingly again, your own callow thought processes onto others, try to grasp the fact that it really, really, REALLY might be you that's mistaken here. Trust me when I say the entire scientific community does this on a professional basis every single day. Evolutionary biology has not been arrived at by some belief system, it has been demonstrated time and again. The various creationist claims of your "Big Tent" chums simply have not. Worse, regardless of what you think, they have been refuted utterly on every occasion...as indeed have the "logical" arguments for your (or any) deity. Wesley's point about apologetics is vital to YOU here, not to me. Every time you, or one of your dribbling creationist effluvium merchants, puts out some hideously simple apologia for your deity, it opens your deity up to disproof, to destruction as a claimed entity.
If instead you restricted your claims to faith, i.e. the simple fact that you believe in a specific deity on faith alone, then no damage could come to your beliefs. Whilst I have no truck with such epistemology, and we could argue over its value, at least I'd defend your right to espouse such to my death. But the moment you claim your deity is factually demonstrable, then people (rightly) question that claim.
3) As per usual you are "big on claims, light on evidence and reasoning". As Wes says, you want a better response, try actually acting with some intellectual integrity and ability and you might be amazed.
But I've said all this before only to be ignored, so fly my electrons, fly. You are wasted in the desert of FTK's brain.
Louis
*I'd argue this does harm, but meh, we can carry a few rubes.
-------------- Bye.
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