(March 26, 2013 at 4:39 pm)jstrodel Wrote: No, it is true. You will find the moral argument to be a more serious problem if you care about the nature of objective morality. If you don't care about whether objective morality is true, the argument will have no force.
Ad hominem is only fallacious if it is irrelevant. it is certainly relevant how much atheists care about morality to the veracity of theistic claims. If people don't care whether they should be living a different way, they won't act.
Define propaganda. What makes propaganda different from other things?
What makes you so sure that peoples habbit of living has no effect on the way that they perceive God to be evident or probable from the arguments? Do you think it has any bearing what so ever, for instance, if someone has spent an hour or two every single day of his life trying to understand God, whereas, someone else has spent maybe 100 hours in their whole life thinking about ethical issues?
I think that statements describing the flying spaggetti monster and things like this typically come from people who have spent less amount of time thinking about morality and the problems and ways in which people deal with this, which would cause them to come into appreciation of different ways in which people have done this. I think it is certainly relevant.
Do you think that all arguments should follow the form of appearing to come out of a "critical thinker"? What if that form was itself a kind of propaganda, obviously it is, aren't all words aimed at persuading?
I would agree to that. Yes. They most certainly are. The disagreement here is whether or not these things should be used to determine truth or facts.
If you were trying to sway me into agreeing that Coke was better than Pepsi. Any of the above methods of persuasion would be acceptable.
If you are trying to convince me of something real that exists in my observable universe that is equally real as everything else that I experience, then your opinion or propaganda are not adequate forms of persuasion. Your opinion of what qualifies as what is real to you is different than the criteria that must be met in order for me to accept that something is real.
If you care at all about actually winning one of these, you have to appeal to OUR qualifying criteria for what is real.
The spaghetti monster is just an example to show you that the same methods fail to meet YOUR criteria as an equal example for what is real. The God you are trying to show is real cannot be proven to us by any other means than logic or evidence. That's it. Anything else sounds just like saying Coke is better because you've been drinking it for a long time and it just tastes better. There are lots of different brands of soda out there. Why is yours the best? Why is your God real and the spaghetti monster isn't? Popularity, or longevity of the religion are not convincing arguments for this topic. Appeals to authority that agree with you mean nothing. However stupid you think the suggested equals to your argument are doesn't matter. Your personal experience is of no interest to us. How long it took you to convince yourself doesn't matter to us. How much time you devoted to your belief doesn't matter to us. If it's the best explanation to YOU for something it doesn't make it true unless you are using the same criteria for truth that we are. None of these arguments hold any water in such a debate. Until you understand this, you will not win. I am open to a legitimate argument. But, you have to recognize if it fails and attempt to examine why it fails. Scientists put every hypothesis under the utmost scrutiny. They try from every angle to make sure that what they think is true is, and from every angle. If they avoid accepting certain flaws, there can be no progress. You must approach yours the same way. It's a two way exchange and opinions are not welcomed in such an exchange. Its not what you think, its what you can prove.
