(February 3, 2010 at 2:10 pm)Watson Wrote: In this case, I have pointed out several times that the definition of coincidence is inherrantly incorrect based on examination of it's own dictionary definition.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-2559-pos...l#pid53078

Here is your problem. The definition of coincidence isn't flawed, but you simply disagree with some circumstances being coincidence. Coincidence is used to suggest that two events are entirely unrelated; if you disagree, you can suggest a connection between the two events. All you've shown through your arguments is that you don't think events that have been deemed "coincidence" are not "coincidence". This has nothing to do with definition, but with attribution.

The dictionary definition of "coincidence" no more has to include the possibility of an act of God, anymore than the definition of "act of God" has to include the possibility of coincidence. Whether you agree that a certain event is a coincidence is the real issue here.

Quote:I agree, there is a difference between knowing and understanding. And if what you say were the case, all good detectives and all good criminal profilers would also be serial killers and mass murderers, because their very job is to understand the POV of these people and to see from that person's perspective, without actually agreeing with it at all. It is called empathy and it is a human trait to express such a sentiment.

Hardly. When did this issue of belief get conflated with serial killers? It is the job of the detective to understand the motives and how the mind of the serial killer works, not how he believes. I hold that if you understand completely how someone believes a certain thing, you have to believe that thing as well. As an example, take atheists & theists. Atheists know of plenty of reasons why theists believe in Gods, but they do not understand completely *why* the theist does not see the way they do, see the flaws in their beliefs, etc. Likewise, the theist might know plenty of reasons why atheists disbelieve, but they do not understand completely *why* the atheist does not see God. If I (as an atheist) understood completely the workings of the theist mind that leads to a belief in God, I would be a believer, since I could follow the same logic.

Quote:I am not using the assumption to prove the understanding. I believe and have faith that God exists(I don't assume He does, an assumption is baseless), and from that belief I recognize God as He is around me. Now, due to God's nature, when one recognizes and acknowledge's His existance, they can logically deduce attributes of Him which lead to their understanding. Having accepted God as He is, I can understand him, as I would a good friend.

I never said you were attempting a proof. I was warning you against thinking that because you can logically derive attributes by assuming the existence of a being, you can derive attributes of that being as a reality. All you are doing by "understanding" God is understanding the idea of God, not the actual God. If there is a God, and it is the resemblance of the idea of God that you have, then you can use the derived attributes of the idea to describe the God of reality. However, there isn't a way of proving that this God exists, or if he did, that the God described by the logical deductions of assuming a certain God exists, exists.

Quote:Advice and lecture are not the same thing. I'm offering my advice to you, not forcing it upon you or teaching it to you as a teacher to a student would in a lecture.

You evidently haven't been to a lecture recently; that's all I can say on that matter. Don't lecture me in future. If you want to give advice, you do it in a pleasant way. You come across as condescending.

Quote:1.) I am not, nor have I ever been arguing. If I were arguing, the end goal would be to have you agree with me and have been 'converted' to my side of the spectrum. That is not my aim. My aim is to hold a discussion, which is not synonymous with argument. In a discussion, one simply wishes to understand the other side better, to empathize with it and hopefully have the other person empathize with & understand their point of view, as well. That's what I'm trying to do. Not too sure about you.

Look up the definition of an argument. Whenever you produce a logical statement that describes your position, it is an argument. Discussions are full of arguments, and to understand each other, both sides present them.

Quote:2.) You're the one who digressed the discussion from the original topic into the discussion of personal definitions. Instead of trying to understand my point of view on that subject, you decided to counter my views on it and in so doing you muddled the original intent of the discussion.

I wouldn't have had to do that if you hadn't digressed the original topic by using a personal definition instead of just disagreeing with the attribution of the definition that was already defined for you.

Quote:3.) No offense, but from what I have read on this forum, the 'respected theists' here are the ones who choose to keep their mouths shut and who don't present a large enough 'threat' to your world-view to be viewed as bad. I'm not insulting or accusing them at all; it's an imposing thing, to come into a place where so many are so misunderstanding of your beliefs and to try and discuss them. I'm merely observing that the 'respect' you give your theist members only holds so long as they hold their tongue.

Take fr0d0, for example, who seems to be fairly well liked around here. From what I've seen he's a very smart individual, and his points are very logically sound. From what i can tell, without his knowledge, he's the guy you can all point to and say "See! We can get along with Christians too!...if they don't disagree with us enough to be a problem." When he starts making sense and raising heavy points, however, the so-called 'respect' is down and it's anybody's game who gets to rip fr0d0's beliefs apart limb-from-limb this time.

fr0d0 has nearly 4,000 posts, and is the 2nd highest poster on these forums. He hardly "keeps his mouth shut". Arcanus, on the other hand, posts very little, but when he does, it is lengthy and interesting. He could hardly be said to keep his mouth shut either.

We respect fr0d0, because he allows us to attempt to rip his beliefs apart, and he responds to our attempts in due course. He doesn't get pissed when we tear them apart...and if anything I'd say he encourages it.

If you want to have respect on these forums, but you believe in God, then you present your arguments, you listen to the objections, and you respond in a polite, civilised, and logical way. So far, you've responded with numerous logical fallacies and you've been impolite. This is why you don't get respected. When we tell you this, you continue to insist that your definitions are correct whilst established definitions simply aren't, and the reasons you give have nothing to do with the definition in the first place, just the attribution of it.

Quote:What I am suggesting is that there is no more likely explanation than that a God intervened and affected the world around them. He did not, as you might suggest now, interfere with free will, but He let A and B know that there was a certain place they had to be at a certain time, and left it open to them whether or not to act on that. Then, when the two did choose the path that was there for them all along, God affected the universe in such a way as to get them there at the right time to meet up with each other. The idea that all of this is 'less likely' than the idea that it 'just happened' is prepostorous.

Coincidence is by definition a more likely explanation, since the two events converge at random, without any "meaning" behind the convergence. You've taken my example and made it more complicated, showing that you simply do not understand coincidence. Nothing "let" A and B know that there was a certain place to be. A and B chose that location, and it just happened to be the same location, at the same time. No God involved.

Quote:See above. This point is fundamentally flawed at it's core because, to suggest coincidence is to surely dismiss simplicity completely! For a coincidence to have occured, several events must have transpired all at once in a converging way, with seemingly no cause and for no reason at all, and then to have gathered in the one single event, the coincidence. If these events are all interconnected at the convergent point, then why and how were each of them drawn to the convergent point?

Several events occur all the time and converge. I never said, nor have I ever said, that they have "seemingly no cause". Of course such events have a cause, but the convergence is the point of interest, not how the events got there. If person A kicks a ball in a park into person B's garden, and person B turns out to be some family member that A didn't know lived in the vicinity, then you have a coincidence. There are causes behind person A kicking the ball, being in the park, etc. There are causes for person B living in that specific house. However, the two events meeting at a certain point, and the connection between the two people, is a coincidence.

Quote:God is simple, and your misunderstanding of His nature as such is the reason for your inability to see simplicity for what it really is.

Every time I ask you to give evidence of this nature, you say "it's in the Bible" and then refuse to give a passage. Don't blame me for your failures to describe the nature of God correctly. The Christian God is described as omniscience, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent by the Bible. If you think this is "simplicity" then you have no idea what those words mean.

Quote:haha, Figure it out for yourself Mr. Open-minded-Smart-Guy. Clearly you are intellectually above me, should you not be capable of understanding my words very easily and knowing just what I mean?

The thing is, you don't understand because you have not even opened your mind to my view of life and what it is to be me. I do not say this out of malice, but because I know that all people are capable of empathy, if only they would open themselves to it completely. It upsets me, therefore, to see that you have not. And hence why I discuss these things with people such as you, to hope that you will come into a better understanding of what I believe and that I can further my understanding.

So first you chide my request for you explaining yourself better, saying I should be able to work it out myself, and then you say you'll continue to discuss these things, so that I can understand you better. Erm...that's all I wanted...thanks.

My request was that you present your case better, as you confuse definitions, arguments, etc. All I want is a nice simple argument that I can read. It has nothing to do with my ability to understand words, it's your putting of words into a coherent sentence that I'm having trouble with at the moment.

Quote:How do you know this? Well, you don't, you merely have to take my word for it. You have to believe me.

You ask me to believe you with no evidence or reason for doing so. Faith defined perfectly. Thanks very much.

Quote:And another thing, you say that for a God to exist, there would have to be no free will...then you go on to state that you do not believe in free will. That's an enormous hole in your logic. If there is no free will, and your view of God is that free will would not exist if He did, then why can't God exist...?

I never said God couldn't exist. Point out where I did so and I'll write a subsequent apology for saying some so stupid. My position isn't on whether God exists or not (I honestly don't know the answer to that), but whether I believe God exists or not. Currently, I don't.

Quote:I admit that this is the weakest point in my logic, but what I said still stands. According to you, within quantum mechanics, things can simply 'pop' into existance. If that is true, and your theory of how the universe was created via a singularity is true, then couldn't the universe have simply 'popped' into existance? Since I recognize God as being the entire universe, and being synonymous with it, then that could mean that God merely 'popped' into existance when once there was nothingness.

So now you're a pantheist?

Quote:I assert that you do not understand it because you do not want to, but only because you willingly close your mind to certain trains of thought and evidences which are before you. That is not baseless, it is quite true.

You assert yet you have no evidence to back up that assertion, hence the fallacy. Assert all you want, it's not true. I don't close my mind to certain trains of thought and evidence; I simply find your trains of thought flawed logically, and your evidence unconvincing / easy to explain without resorting to complex sky daddies.

Quote:My friend, you clearly lack an enormous amount of understanding in the way of Sherlock Holmes! Not only would he not have been proud of that statement, I whole-heartedly believe he would have been appalled at the very idea. Sherlock's entire methodology relies on drawing large inferences from small clues. He searched for small hints as to the individuality of the person he was after, rather than looking for the same kind of clues to find every single person.

I never said anything about clues. What the fuck are you on about? My point was, is you have an extraordinary claim, you should have extraordinary evidence to back up that claim. Holmes would have agreed with that totally.

In "The Hound of the Baskervilles", the claim of the family and the peasants is that a supernatural legendary hound is hunting members of the family and killing them. This is an extraordinary claim. It required extraordinary evidence to back it up, and Holmes found *simple* clues (as you put) that show the hound was nothing but an ordinary dog, being controlled by the protagonist.

Quote:This would be like cutting off a human arm and showing it to an alien, then expecting the alien to know exactly what humans are like based on that arm. If the alien has never seen a human and has no knowledge or understanding of it, then it isn' tgoing to undertsand the function of the arm, either.(this is assuming the alien is not humanoid at all.) The Bible itself is the entire message, and I already explained it to you in three simple words. Three words which you don't understand at all.

The alien could take the DNA from the arm, and reconstruct a clone of a human, learning all about them. I think your example just failed.

Quote:

Quote:No, it's stood pretty well for the last 95 years. All evidence currently supports it. A "theory" in the scientific sense is not a "theory" in the general sense.

Oh, so now we're making up our own definitions for things, are we? HMMMMMMMM.

No. The differences will astound you.

Quote:I agree, a scientific theory covers all the known scientific facts available to it, but that's just it; it only covers the scientific facts. If your position that we cannot use an assumption to prove that the assumption itself is true, then you cannot say materialism is true simply on the grouns that all you can prove is materialism, by examining materialistic things. Examine the world from different view-points and looking for different kinds of evidence, and you will find that there are othe things which are true in other senses, other than materialism.

I never said materialism is true. Stop putting words in my mouth. I've examined the world from different viewpoints, and I find nothing that cannot be simply explained with materialism. There are no ways to observe or reason the existence of anything else, and until someone shows me how this is not the case, I'll stick with materialism.

Quote:The best arguments can be picked apart and poked at while still retaining their original message, but only if the person doing the picking understands that message to begin with. Because you refuse to understand the biger picture, all you can look at is the indivdual small parts, and claim they are disjointed because you are not taking a step back, and observing the larger picture.

It's not a matter of your format, it's a matter of your understanding and grasp of that which you are picking apart.

*yawn* more fallacies...

I can't be arsed to go on any further. You haven't made a single convincing argument yet.

haha, Done. I've said my peace, there is no point in my furhter involvement.

(February 3, 2010 at 5:18 pm)Watson Wrote: haha, Done. I've said my peace, there is no point in my furhter involvement.

Why is it only ever the Christians on these forums that won't even attempt a response to valid criticism? I've never seen an Atheist here ignore a long and well though out response from a theist only to respond with some bullshit one line comment, they either continue the discussion or admit defeat if they are unable to respond, but never waste someone's time like you just have.

If you can't respond to an argument it's most likely because you can't and you lack the spine to admit it.

Care to prove me wrong?

Wow talk about obvious & low VOID. That should qualify for some sort of award for blind discrimination. You obviously like asking questions you know the answer to beforehand. An easier proof is hard to find.

Blind discrimination? Just observation.

I can't remember seeing a single time when a long and thought out response was issued by a Christian on these boards only to be blown off by a one liner refusal to discuss. You yourself have done it multiple times which is why i have to keep repeating myself. on this. If you are debating with someone and you completely neglect to answer even single refutation or question then you give a very clear impression than you are unable to provide an answer and lack the courage to admit it.

That goes for everyone here ya know, frodo. The only reason that i had to mention Christians is because you are the only ones who I have noticed doing it on a regular basis, the frequency of dodges amongst the Christian groups is extremely high proportionately, Even Pippy with his wacky beliefs will answer pretty much every point raised every time.

We all agree it's beyond frustrating to type a long and thoughful reply to someone only to have it dismissed with no reasoning or no concession of defeat. It's a sign of intellectual cowardice and i'm going to call it every time i see it.

Yeah I get people ignoring my points all the time too. And you complain when I say I've already answered something comprehensively and say I don't want to go around the circle one more time, like you did recently.

From both sides it looks like dodging. I can honestly say that I do try to answer all questions. Even when that might not be the wise thing to do... responding to Evie, for example. I'm also happy replying to the regular onslaught from many people at once.

Intellectual cowardice is your post above - slating someone who has already said they're finished. Or giving someone negative rep because you can't win any other way.

You are my bitch.

(February 4, 2010 at 6:36 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Or giving someone negative rep because you can't win any other way.

That sounds familiar.

Quote:Paul Wrote: Unfortunately, all I have seen from you is childish repetitions of antitheistic dogma like, "your god is a delusion no differnet from FSM", when my argument clearly establishes the ontological differentiation between such material beings and God.

Not sure why he thought I was talking about material beings when in fact I was talking about non-material beings. He couldn't defeat the points I made and I think that was why he gave that neg rep. So I gave one in return because I disagreed with that. I won't give bad reps to anyone who fails to answer/counter points made, only if they happen to be out of order or rather rude like giving a bad rep for not agreeing with the other person or countering the points made.

(February 4, 2010 at 6:36 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Yeah I get people ignoring my points all the time too. And you complain when I say I've already answered something comprehensively and say I don't want to go around the circle one more time, like you did recently.

Lol mate, you are the one who was going around in circles, first flip flopping between the claim that 1) you have evidence for God of which you failed to produce any, and 2) The "Non verifiable clause", refusing to answer simple questions and refusing to admit you can't when you were asked again and again and still provided no answer as well as ignoring long refutations to your arguments.

Quote:From both sides it looks like dodging. I can honestly say that I do try to answer all questions. Even when that might not be the wise thing to do... responding to Evie, for example. I'm also happy replying to the regular onslaught from many people at once.

Then let me ask you again:

1) Do you have evidence, either empirical or logical, for the existence of God and if yes then what is it?

Quote:Intellectual cowardice is your post above - slating someone who has already said they're finished. Or giving someone negative rep because you can't win any other way.

It was a cop out, he couldn't answer the refutations and couldn't admit to it.

I neg repped you for being an irrational, dishonest coward who can't give a straight answer. Start posting proper logical responses to questions instead of dodging and spinning and you'll get your rep back.

Quote:You are my bitch.

Careful fr0d0, insulting a mod can get you a warning (yeah i'm not going to, you're just too much of a wee cutie to punish)

Fr0d0 will side with Watson because of this line:

Watson Wrote:Take fr0d0, for example, who seems to be fairly well liked around here. From what I've seen he's a very smart individual, and his points are very logically sound.

Nothing like a good ego boost to secure the support of our fr0d0. It doesn't matter that fr0d0 knows full well Watson's points are invalid, cryptic, or just plain excuses. Theists tend to stick together on these forums

Only someone more retarded than fr0d0 could praise him for good logic the way he's been going lately.