Skeptics I no longer have any respect for.

[theVOID]

maybe you'd like to explain what it is, rather than just asserting it?

^^^ This

I DID explain my reasoning for position 1, you have had ample opportunity to contest it but as usual you've avoided doing so while still acting as if you had.

Let me defend premise 1 with another logical argument.

1. The soundness of an argument depends on the truth value of it's premises as well as the validity of the logic.

2. An assumed premise can be assigned no truth value.

Therefore:

3. An argument with an assumed premise is inherently unsound.

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In further defence of 2:

Assumptions necessarily have no truth value, at best they are useful for conditional reasoning (if x then y), but these conditional arguments themselves cannot demonstrate the truth of any considered premise, only to find the conclusion of a valid argument given the premise assumed.

Premises that do have truth value are either themselves proved to be true or are assigned probabilities, an assumed premise is necessarily neither of these - An argument with a probabilistic premise can only give a probabilistic conclusion and even then the argument is unsound if the probability of a given event is falsely stated.

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An example of an argument with an assumed premise.

1. The wave functions of all particles are only collapsed by ethereal farting clowns (assumed premise).

2. The universe has always experienced the collapsing of wave functions.

Therefore;

3. Ethereal farting clowns have existed since the beginning of the universe.

You can see that premise 1 is assumed thus leading through valid logic to the conclusion in 3, yet this argument is entirely unsound because of the assumed premise.

It does not matter what this assumption is, no assumptions have any more inherent value than any other.