Skeptics I no longer have any respect for.

[fr0d0]

The only one who wants to argue seems to be fr0d0...so no one then??

Believe me I don't.

You just can't help being attracted to the dirge sometimes

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I remember the Rebecca Watson thing - Personally, in relation to the OP, I was originally on the "WTF it's just coffee" catagory.

Since the various issues after that event however (highlighted again in the OP) I've developed a firm dislike of her.

[thesummerqueen]

Most people were perfectly fine with her before Elevatorgate. It just feels like she's turned it into a McCarthy hearing when it comes to the men in the skeptic movement. A lot of the Skepchicks have burned one guy or another. Brian Dunning got flamed as well. DJ Groethe's dealing with it. It's pretty awful.

I tried to explain to a male friend last night who was on Rebecca's side that the problem is that feminism is filled with ideals and is an ideology. It is NOT skepticism. Skepticism and ideologies DO NOT mix well. So to be a feminist skeptic is to risk having one portion of yourself or the other being trampled on. If you really pride yourself on being rational, you stop and take a breather and re-group. If you just want to shout about how retarded everyone else is and claim they're being sexist...

It doesn't help that people have a habit of not reading what's actually in the post. Or asking someone to clarify what they meant.

Ben posted the link to his original article on his FB page and we had an interesting discussion - and I do mean discussion, there was no name-calling or insulting, just sharing anecdotes and statistical information and opinions - about it that included some pretty staunch disagreement. So where was it necessary to decide suddenly that he was an asshole instead of clarifying what he was after?

This is what Phil Plait was talking about when he gave his "Don't Be a Dick" speech, which ALSO turned into a shitshow.

[leo-rcc]

She got 233 votes in a poll...an online poll...on the same website PZ Myers blogs from. That's not really anything to be proud of.

Ehmm, so do Greta Christina, The Atheist Experience crew, and Ophelia Benson, all of which I have much respect for. Not sure where you are going with this comment.

[thesummerqueen]

Nothing wrong with Freethought Blogs - very likely something was announced on SGU. If podcast listeners, of which there are many, went to vote, but Greta and the others didn't have as many proactive listeners or readers (I don't think Greta is regularly on a podcast but I could be wrong), then it's pretty easy for her to take the lead out of sheer readers/viewers/listeners.

Sometimes (s)he who is most accessible wins.

[Tiberius]

She got 233 votes in a poll...an online poll...on the same website PZ Myers blogs from. That's not really anything to be proud of.

Ehmm, so do Greta Christina, The Atheist Experience crew, and Ophelia Benson, all of which I have much respect for. Not sure where you are going with this comment.

Sorry, let me explain a bit more.

My point was that this was an online poll to find the most influential female atheist of 2011. It's an online poll, so it's accessible to practically everyone. It's on the same site that PZ Myers blogs from, so it's not exactly out of the way, and yet she only managed to get a measly 233 votes? I'm sorry, but if the title of "most influential female atheist" can be won in a community of hundreds of thousands of people with 233 votes, it's hardly a great achievement.

Heck, half the active community here could have easily swung the vote to someone completely different, and we're tiny in comparison to some other atheist communities online (especially freethought blogs).

[theVOID]

You're all confusing presuppositionalism with a conclusion. Like I said. Point 1 fails. Badly. An prime example of skewed logic.

If you've got a problem with point 1 maybe you'd like to explain what it is, rather than just asserting it?

And no, we aren't confused. Presuppositionalism is merely a form of apologetic that makes the explicit assumption that the Christian world-view is true - this makes all conclusions of presuppositionalist arguments fallacious because every presuppositionalist argument is unsound.

Unless you can actually demonstrate that premise 1 "A logical argument with an assumed premise is unsound." is false, that is.

But we already know that it isn't. For an argument to be sound it must be logically valid AND all the premises are shown to be true. An assumed premise necessarily fails the later criteria.

[DeistPaladin]

I wasn't just thinking of presuppositional apologetics, btw. All of apologetics is bad philosophy in some way or other. Christian apologetics is based on trying to defend what is already believed on faith.

All the famous arguments that I know of are fallacious in some way:

Ontological Argument: Non-sequitur
Teleological Argument: Bare assertion
Moral Argument: Appeal to consequences, bare assertion
Trilemma: Strawman, oversimplification, bare assertion, non sequitur
The Bible says so: circular reasoning
Would they die for a lie: Using folklore to prove mythology
etc.

It's all junk "philosophy" the same way Creationism is junk "science".

[Jackalope]

You're all confusing presuppositionalism with a conclusion. Like I said. Point 1 fails. Badly. An prime example of skewed logic.

Soundness is concerned with the truth value of an argument. Let's example point 1:

A logical argument with an assumed premise is unsound.

A assumed premise has no determinate truth value. The soundness of an argument depends on the truth value of it's premises. The truth of an arguments conclusions necessarily depend on the truth of it's premises.

If the truth value of the premises of an argument are indeterminable, then it logically follows that the truth value of the conclusions are likewise indeterminable.

Therefore, the soundness (truth value) of a presuppositional argument (i.e. on with assumed premises) is indeterminable.

Still checkmate.

---

Whether or not Santa can be known to be not real depends entirely on what you mean by 'knowledge', and defining knowledge in a consistent way is extremely difficult - or maybe I'm just a "tedious cunt".

Anybody that will sit there and debate that they don't know that Santa is not real, is a tedious cunt, because I'm talking about the earth based story about an earth based being, that of course we know is made up.

Well, as theVOID indicated, that all depends on what is meant by 'know' and 'knowledge'.

In the sense of the common meaning of the word, yes, of course I know that Santa is not real, for the reasons you state, amongst others.

In the epistemological sense, it can only be known to a degree of certainty, even if that certainty is nearly indistinguishable from certainty. Yes, I realize that to you this seems absurd - but there is always a non-zero chance that our perceptions and observations are inaccurate. This is one reason why science does not claim to discover truth, except to any degree of certainty.

What this means to me, is that in casual conversation, I'm perfectly willing to assert (for example) that deities do not exist. However, in the context of a serious discussion on the subject, I'm not going to make such a firm claim as I cannot assert same is true in an epistemological sense (i.e. justified true belief) to a certainty. I can say that I believe it to be true, and give my justifications to it's truth, but I cannot claim it to be The Truth.

Is a lot of philosophy nothing but bullshit exercises in mental masturbation? Of course. But it is also philosophy which is the basis of scientific method, and that which tells us that there are things we can only know to a degree of certainty, subject to error in observation, perception, and deduction.

And yes, of course I agree that Santa does not exist.

[fr0d0]

maybe you'd like to explain what it is, rather than just asserting it?

^^^ This