(August 17, 2013 at 7:50 am)fr0d0 Wrote: @Esq I won't bother wasting time on your straw men. You can't be bothered to address me squarely. That doesn't deserve an answer.

I love it, you do this every time you don't have an answer: you just say the name of a fallacy, and then stop conversing. How about you justify your accusation? Or, you know, tell me where I'm going wrong, if you think I'm misrepresenting you?

Because I assure you, I'm not doing it on purpose if that's the case. You just seem to be unwilling to actually express your position, and are in fact being really evasive, here.

Quote:You still didn't justify that. Why shouldn't a rationally justified argument be enough to believe something? Why should we not trust our reasoning abilities?

Because you can rationalize next to anything: one can construct logical chains of thought out of false premises, after all. Or, hell, they don't even need to be outright false, if you're not taking everything into account. Here, lemme show you: 1. All dogs die. 2 Abraham Lincoln is dead. Therefore, Abraham Lincoln is a dog. The premises are both true, but I've come to an untrue conclusion because there are additional facts I haven't taken into account. The same can be true of any seemingly rational argument one constructs without recourse to verifiable evidence.

Without any physical corroboration from the world around you, the conclusions you've come to are just in your head.

And we don't trust our reasoning abilities because they were developed and evolved to deal with smaller scale problems than the ones we're currently talking about. We reason that the world is flat because it looks like we're living on a flat plane. We reason that the world is the center of the solar system because the sun seems to be moving from our position, but we aren't. What changed those incorrect reasonings? Well, verifiable evidence!

We're all working with fancy ape-brains, here; nothing in our reasoning heuristics is set up to deal with issues on a scale larger than, say, our immediate community group. Certainly not on the scale of gods or the origins of the universe.

(August 17, 2013 at 8:49 am)fr0d0 Wrote: You have to verify the rock exists before you can believe it. Do you see how dumb that is?

Everyone already knows the rock is real, because everyone can see it, or blind men can feel it with their hands. The rock can be tasted, and it can be heard when it falls to the ground. The rock even has a smell. The rock can be experienced with all five senses, and the crazy one would then be the one claiming that the rock is not real.

Everyone does not experience god, unless those individuals decide to forgo with reason. God cannot be experienced with any of the five senses. God can only be experienced with the imagination. Believing in god is no different than believing in any other fairy tale for which there is no verifiable evidence to support its existence. If only god was as tangible and as verifiable as a rock, then believers could truly refer to themselves as sane.

Yah there you go dismissing reason again. loop.

Esq
Nothing of interest to respond to.

So essentially you're just going to wave off anything that disagrees with your preconceptions, Frodo?

Your rock analogy is flawed because, as Maelstrom pointed out, we have verifiable evidence for the existence of a rock, in the form of our senses, and the sense experiences of others. There's no reasoning involved there; we see a rock, it looks like a rock... there's a rock. Someone else sees the rock, and now we're sure the rock's not a hallucination. That's verified evidence.

Meanwhile, across the world, millions of people are using non-evidence based arguments just like yours to rationalize into existence the gods of every currently active religion, right this second. How do we determine who, of them, is right, especially when all of them will claim that their position is rationally justified, and all of the others are not?

I address every sensible question. I have to.

(August 17, 2013 at 9:22 am)Esquilax Wrote: There's no reasoning involved there; we see a rock, it looks like a rock... there's a rock. Someone else sees the rock, and now we're sure the rock's not a hallucination. That's verified evidence.

What about optical illusions? Or how about this: does everything exist exactly as you see it? The sun looks perfectly spherical--are we justified in believing it is indeed a sphere? Can you confidently call a rock a rock without examining it to the last atom? Where do you draw the line between a rock and a boulder? Is that line verifiable... or do you the categories come from your head?

(August 17, 2013 at 9:30 am)fr0d0 Wrote: I address every sensible question. I have to.

Only if you are absolutely always motivated to do so.

(August 17, 2013 at 1:37 pm)Undeceived Wrote: What about optical illusions? Or how about this: does everything exist exactly as you see it? The sun looks perfectly spherical--are we justified in believing it is indeed a sphere? Can you confidently call a rock a rock without examining it to the last atom? Where do you draw the line between a rock and a boulder? Is that line verifiable... or do you the categories come from your head?

About halfway through this, I began reading it in Laurence Fishburne's voice.

(August 17, 2013 at 8:07 pm)Tonus Wrote:

(August 17, 2013 at 1:37 pm)Undeceived Wrote: What about optical illusions? Or how about this: does everything exist exactly as you see it? The sun looks perfectly spherical--are we justified in believing it is indeed a sphere? Can you confidently call a rock a rock without examining it to the last atom? Where do you draw the line between a rock and a boulder? Is that line verifiable... or do you the categories come from your head?

About halfway through this, I began reading it in Laurence Fishburne's voice.

But even Morpheus realized Neo needed more to go on than his own telling of events.

To Undeceived- your screen name is a misnomer.

(August 17, 2013 at 4:33 am)fr0d0 Wrote: FTR

The only way I contradict myself is if you have a problem with comprehension. I've repeated again and again, and it says in the thread title my position.

It's ridiculous how I don't even have to say anything to defend my claim about your contradictions. You've done all the work yourself:

fr0d0 Wrote:

FtR Wrote:" So, when you say that there *could* be a
supernatural explanation "

I didn't say that. I said there could be a natural explanation,

Earlier before

fr0d0 Wrote:I never said that water to wine doesn't have a supernatural explanation. I said it #could# have.

With all due respect, I'm going to have to withdraw from our discussion. Intellectual dishonesty is something I absolutely can't stand.

---

fr0d0, I have one last question. If you could, please respond to this statement with a simple "true" or "false":

God won't act in a given situation if it means being discovered.