... Said the man who claimed to be literally possessed by demons.

Oh, and who frequently ad homs all over us atheists!

No, an ad hominem attack is an irrelevant statement made to discredit people. This is different from criticizing individuals or movements which is fair game. They are not ad hominem, and I have provided evidence.

To attack someones mental state is a fallacy (unless you have good evidence they suffer from psychiatric problems), it is irrelevant information that is unknown and presupposed and it is a dirty trick and is deceptive, because I don't have the problems you mention. You are lying and attempting to discredit my testimony.


If someone says someone else has psychiatric problems, and they have no evidence for it, that is ad hominem. It is arguing against the person, and it is a very special case of ad hominem which is especially fallacious and dirty because it attacks people credibility through attacking their health and cognitive functioning. It is a very evil thing to do, similar in some ways to arguing that someone is incapable of making a decision because they are black and are biologically incapable, so their beliefs can be swept aside without considering their ideas.

(March 28, 2013 at 1:17 am)jstrodel Wrote: No, an ad hominem attack is an irrelevant statement made to discredit people. This is different from criticizing individuals or movements which is fair game. They are not ad hominem, and I have provided evidence.

To attack someones mental state is a fallacy (unless you have good evidence they suffer from psychiatric problems), it is irrelevant information that is unknown and presupposed and it is a dirty trick and is deceptive, because I don't have the problems you mention. You are lying and attempting to discredit my testimony.


If someone says someone else has psychiatric problems, and they have no evidence for it, that is ad hominem. It is arguing against the person, and it is a very special case of ad hominem which is especially fallacious and dirty because it attacks people credibility through attacking their health and cognitive functioning. It is a very evil thing to do, similar in some ways to arguing that someone is incapable of making a decision because they are black and are biologically incapable, so their beliefs can be swept aside without considering their ideas.

Strodel, I'd argue that claims of being possessed, of speaking with god, the stuff that you claim is cause to believe a certain degree of mental illness. Is it conclusive? No. But is it cause for concern? Yes.

Just consider the possibility that the belief is genuine, and not just a way to attack you. For one, the man who doesn't believe in god is generally more inclined to seek out reasons for stuff like that based in reality. And also... well, hearing voices and stuff like that really is a sign of possible illness, whether you ascribe god to be the source of that voice or something else. Sorry if that offends you, but mental illness ain't funny, so that's not really a joke.

jstrodel Wrote:To attack someones mental state is a fallacy (unless you have good evidence they suffer from psychiatric problems), it is irrelevant information that is unknown and presupposed and it is a dirty trick and is deceptive, because I don't have the problems you mention. You are lying and attempting to discredit my testimony.

Cupcake, hearing invisible voices and seeing visual hallucinations at random is good evidence that you suffer from psychiatric problems.

I don't hear voices and I don't see visions at random or see anything. I have experienced thigns that are consistent with the 2000 year history of Christian interaction with God, while I was studying these things.

What you are doing is blatant ad hominem, not as an "educated" internet user would refer to as an insult, but formally, as a fallacy of attacking a person with irrelevent information (in this case, speculation, that also begs the question that supernaturalism is false)

(March 28, 2013 at 1:49 am)jstrodel Wrote: What you are doing is blatant ad hominem, not as an "educated" internet user would refer to as an insult, but formally, as a fallacy of attacking a person with irrelevent information (in this case, speculation, that also begs the question that supernaturalism is false)

To suggest the most probable causes of your experience is not ad hominem, especially when you demonstrate around here that you get pretty unhinged when things get heated.

If you put it in argument form it would look like this:
1. Person claims supernatural experience
2. If persons claims to have supernatural experience, person is insane
3. Person is insane (MP 1,2)
4. Supernatural evidence is claimed
5. If person is insane, supernatural evidence can be discarded.
6. Supernatural evidence can be discarded (MP 4,5)

If you don't see how circular this is, you aren't interested in taking seriously the testimony of mystical experience that has dominated the whole world, whether the spirits people experience testify to the same propositions doesn't matter.

Notice how badly 2 begs the question. Of course if you start off saying that anyone who claims supernatural evidence is insane, you are begging the question, you have already set your mind to believe the supernatural does not exist without evidence and reduce all miracles to insanity. You are a sophist.

Now, I don't expect a serious response where you dissect exactly where my analysis is wrong. It is not ad hominem to mention that someone is incapable of making a decision because they are psychologically incapable of making a decision. But that is not what you are doing here. You are not producing evidence that I am psychologically unable to make the decision, you are pressuposing that ANYONE who has miraculous claims is psychologically unable to testify reliably and that miraculous testimony itself is simultanously evidence for insanity, and that insanity invalidates testimony.

The last statement that you just stuck on to the end, a kind of psuedo-evidence about me becoming "unhinged" as atheists use blatantly fallacious reasoning techniques to advance a nihilistic agenda serves only to support the claim that you will do anything to avoid honest reasoning and resort to ad hominem and circular reasoning.

(March 28, 2013 at 2:23 am)jstrodel Wrote: If you don't see how circular this is, you aren't interested in taking seriously the testimony of mystical experience that has dominated the whole world, whether the spirits people experience testify to the same propositions doesn't matter.

Notice how badly 2 begs the question. Of course if you start off saying that anyone who claims supernatural evidence is insane, you are begging the question, you have already set your mind to believe the supernatural does not exist without evidence and reduce all miracles to insanity. You are a sophist.

Why would I ever believe in the supernatural without evidence? Would would anyone?

You've made a claim, and that alone isn't bad. The problem is that there is no evidence to back it up, and in fact that there's rather a trend against the supernatural in what we do know.

Now, the claim you've made, taken in the context of what we know about you- admittedly not a lot, but some- is worrisome. It bears some hallmarks of a mental issue, and in accordance- bearing in mind the lack of evidence for supernatural claims beyond your (potentially flawed) personal experience- we make the judgment that the possibility of mental imbalance is more likely than that your experiences are supernatural in origin.

Calling something supernatural does not absolve it from the rigors of logic and evidence, and our determination is not rendered invalid or flawed simply because you disagree with the conclusions we come to. You can not like it all you want, but that doesn't make it illogical, nor the conclusion inaccurate.

You didn't even address the argument. Typical. An honest person would just say "I have no way of knowing whether this is true". But you have no problem ascribing a psychiatric cause to something with no evidence.

I realize that to make a significant claim, such as to have experience God directly is a serious claim. It need not be accepted as absolute truth, it is not wrong to believe that, perhaps the person had a psychiatric issue. That is different from intentionally maligning someone with psychiatric terminology, mocking, coming from "liberals" who are so compassionate they use condescending labels designed for the mentally ill and tactics reminscent of Stalinism.

You can without assent, that is not flawed to do unless it is done wrongly, but to assert a claim that someone is mentally ill to avoid dealing with an argument is a sign of a narrow minded ideological mind that wants to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

No one has produced a single piece of evidence that I am crazy, other than the fact that I have posted a supernatural form of evidence.

I am not saying this because I am so defensive that I need to vent my anger, I am saying this because I am genuinely concerned for your salvation and want you to realize how far you have tilted your falsely called "critical thinking methods" against religion to prove what your heart wants, which is freedom from religion.

(March 28, 2013 at 2:23 am)jstrodel Wrote: If you put it in argument form it would look like this:
1. Person claims supernatural experience
2. If persons claims to have supernatural experience, person is insane
3. Person is insane (MP 1,2)
4. Supernatural evidence is claimed
5. If person is insane, supernatural evidence can be discarded.
6. Supernatural evidence can be discarded (MP 4,5)

Nope. It'd look like this:

1. Person claims supernatural experience
2. Supernatural experiences have never been confirmed to exist and all evidence indicates that they are always fabrications or deliberately designed to be impossible to disprove.
3. Therefore, person is either insane, ignorant, or intentionally lying.