Do you wish there's a god?

[Abaddon_ire]

The Pure Lackists deny this, say they are atheists for no reason at all, and in some cases claim that their minds are the same as when they were infants.

Why do you continue to lie about this when you have been corrected?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sunk cost, he's already too invested.

The irony, beyond the fact that he describes himself as a lackist, is that for all his bitching about atheists not being able to engage in honest introspection about the reason for their atheism or consider sophisticated theologies..when he got exactly that, he lost his shit and hasn't let go since.

If I had to guess, it fucked up some argument he thought was just brilliant, lol.

[Belacqua]

The Pure Lackists deny this, say they are atheists for no reason at all, and in some cases claim that their minds are the same as when they were infants.

Why do you continue to lie about this when you have been corrected?

It's always nice to hear from you. I hope you're well.

---

Would you point out somewhere here, please, who would agree that they claim not to have any beliefs at all?

If we use "belief" to mean "something I hold to be true," then I think everyone here acknowledges that they have beliefs.

What I've been talking about is that some people say their atheism is not based on any belief. That is, they have no standard for evaluating God-claims, they just reject them for no reason. 

So far both Bucky Ball and Gae have made this claim. 

Bucky seems to be gone now, and I've given up on Gae. If one or both of them has adjusted his claim recently that would be fine, but I'm bored with talking about the whole thing. 

Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists aren't just low-hanging fruit. They're a threat to civil society and democratic governance, because they believe in a God that gives them marching orders.

Then by all means fight those people. But making overly general claims about Christianity doesn't help to fight them.

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe people™ say that because it's true, Bel?

Would you prefer that I had bullshitted you, instead?

Tried to sell you some garbage about how, after an exhaustive survey of the subject and all relevant literature, alongside the classics of rational discourse.....at the tender age of 5...lol..I concluded by reason that gods don't exist?

Would you believe that? Say yes. God please say yes. I feed on the lulz and stupidity, like a lamia...but with a dick.

[Mister Agenda]

We directly perceived that round things roll and flammable things burn. We also directly perceived that the sky is a dome, the moon probably not that much higher than the mountaintops, and the earth a disk that you could see once on a mountaintop. The method we used to make wheels and fire was observation tested by trial and error. After all, not all round things make good wheels, and not all flammable things are easy to set on fire. That's not even getting into the best tools for making them. We used a method to figure out how to make those things, different primarily in complexity from how we figured out that our world is roughly an oblate spheroid, the moon is hundreds of thousands of miles higher than the highest mountains, and how to make computers. The knowledge didn't spring from our brows fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus.

You're moving the goal post. You earlier claimed that the scientific method is some sort of cure for the limitations imposed on us by our biases. This is what I'm arguing against. Not the variety of benefits, inventions, discoveries that were a product of it.

Let view strong biases as a disease, and imagine the scientific method as a cure to that disease. We'll use a creationist with his strong biases as an example, explain to me how I can cure his disease, his biases, with the scientific method?

Will his biases prevent him from applying the scientific method properly? Does he have to set his biases aside first, before applying it?

The variety of benefits, inventions, and discoveries produced by the scientific method are evidence that it works, despite our biases and flawed perceptions. Essentially all science is, is finding out what actually works no matter what our initial guesses were and building on that knowledge. It's our most dependable way to find out what disputed claims about the natural world are factual, or at least most probable.

Whether your proposed creationist's biases prevent him from applying the scientific method will depend on what biases he holds and how strongly he holds them. His biases matter less if his work is peer-reviewed, because one of the purposes of peer review is to expose biases that have affected an experiment or discovery. There are a minority of scientists who aren't creationists who still can't accept being proven wrong, or evidence that their work is fatally flawed (the discover of supposed cold fusion comes to mind). The contributions they make to science that tend to be longest remembered are their examples of how not to do it. Science can't persuade someone who rejects findings that don't align with their preconceptions, but neither will anything else, generally speaking.

Were you under the impression that I was claiming that science can cure specific individuals of their biases? It doesn't do that at all. It enables us to discover facts about the natural world despite our biases because it's a way of screening our biases and misperceptions out. The scientist who runs the experiment can be as bone-headed at the end as she was in the beginning, if the method is followed honestly all the way through to peer review, the results will be less biased than the scientist who conducts the experiment. They can keep thinking they've discovered cold fusion or irreducible complexity all day long, but the scientific community (sooner or later) will figure out what is actually the case based on the data.

---

And what the utter fuck is a lackist?

A term for people who say they simply lack belief in god .

But apparently a PURE lackist doesn't have any beliefs at all about anything....

[The Grand Nudger]

Lackist Master-race?

[Mister Agenda]

Would you point out somewhere here, please, who would agree that they claim not to have any beliefs at all?

If we use "belief" to mean "something I hold to be true," then I think everyone here acknowledges that they have beliefs.

What I've been talking about is that some people say their atheism is not based on any belief. That is, they have no standard for evaluating God-claims, they just reject them for no reason.

So far both Bucky Ball and Gae have made this claim.

Bucky seems to be gone now, and I've given up on Gae. If one or both of them has adjusted his claim recently that would be fine, but I'm bored with talking about the whole thing.

I don't want to misinterpret Gae, but my impression is that he never believed in God, not even from a very young age, before he would have developed reasoning about why he couldn't accept the idea as true. Maybe he was just naturally skeptical. I suspect he's accumulated some reasoning since then. If a small child can accept God without rationally evaluating the concept, I dont' see why a small child can't reject God without rationally evaluating the concept. Gae is just being honest, I think. Some of us had to reason our way out of beliefs we already held when it comes to God/gods; Gae didn't.

Gae, please set me straight if I'm still not understanding you.

Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists aren't just low-hanging fruit. They're a threat to civil society and democratic governance, because they believe in a God that gives them marching orders.

Then by all means fight those people. But making overly general claims about Christianity doesn't help to fight them.

Neither does constantly saying 'not all Christians' before you say anything about any of them. When someone complains about white guys, I don't think they're talking about me unless I fit the description they're complaining about. I'm more likely to nod ruefully, because I wish that there were so few white guys like that, that such a broad brush would be puzzling, but I know that almost any complaint made about white guys is true of far too many of us. The 'not all white guys' guy is not participating in the conversation, he's interrupting it.

And what, am I going to piss off the 'ground of all being' folks so much they unite to delete the 1st Amendment from the US Constitution? When it comes to politics, I can ignore finely nuanced and reasoned-out theistic positions because they don't form a basis for a political position; their support or opposition is gained or lost on other grounds.

So I don't think your no doubt kindly meant advice about how to spare the feelings of the 'good ones' is much use. The actual good ones don't think I'm talking about them.

[The Grand Nudger]

Gae, please set me straight if I'm still not understanding you.

Pretty much nailed it.

[Amarok]

What I've been talking about is that some people say their atheism is not based on any belief. That is, they have no standard for evaluating God-claims, they just reject them for no reason.

So far both Bucky Ball and Gae have made this claim.

Bucky seems to be gone now, and I've given up on Gae. If one or both of them has adjusted his claim recently that would be fine, but I'm bored with talking about the whole thing.

Straw men so many straw men

[Nay_Sayer]

What I've been talking about is that some people say their theism is not based on personal evidence. That is, they have no standard for evaluating FSM-claims, they just reject them for no reason.