Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy

[A_Nony_Mouse]

I dated a guy with a double major in computer sciences and philosophy. He was pretty full up on how he thought the world worked too. Had a big wallet and a big Johnson though. That was fun.

He carried his wallet in his front pocket. Interesting.

[Creed of Heresy]

In his shoes I would also ignore Creed. Whether or not any of his arguments are valid, why should I wish to converse with someone who is so openly hostile to anything I have to say? ["Right is right"? Really? Sounds like something some shallow fundamentalist would say.]

I'm pretty embarrassed about the tenor of this thread. More often a theist will show up spouting trite bible passages interpreted literally. Those who engage that kind of poster will strive to get them to concede anything at all with no success.

Here we have a theist who starts off conceding that the bible is not the revealed word of god, that the significance of Jesus is not the magic of his sacrifice and that creationism is bunk. Why is everyone so anxious to drive him off? Makes me think we only deserve to attract the stupidest theists to this site. Maybe that's all most of us want, theists who live down to our expectations.

Count me out. Enjoy your lynching.

Since when did you become such a delicate flower, Whateverist? Besides which, the nastiest thing I said to him was merely the truth; that he was being an intellectual coward. He's a spineless wimp, as is evidenced by him getting all butthurt and ignoring me over me calling him a spineless coward. The fucker proved me right! So, yeah, clearly "right is right." I called him a pussy, he ignored me like a pussy, instead of manning the fuck up and obliterating my points like he should have done if he had any cojones. Oh and I called him a cherry picker because, get this, that's what he is. All I've done is point out the truth. Truth hurts? Well get used to it, that's life.

Maybe you have a higher tolerance for bullshit or something. If so, well, I recommend a job in the customer service field.

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Something I also wanted to point out is that I am apparently a hateful, vile individual, according to Pussypants McLove here. You're right, I only get beat the fuck up for supporting gay equality and I only now donate about 20 hours of each week to helping rape victims at a rape crisis center. I only donate an additional ten at the Madison Soup Kitchen. I only go out for four hours every two weeks to stand out in the freezing fucking cold to try to get people to donate to the A.H.A.'s charity drive to provide financial aid for those in need. But I called a coward a coward on the internet. Oh yes, I am TRULY a vile, hateful, spiteful, dickish individual, saying such heart-breakingly cruel things. Kid better harden the fuck up, cuz I'm by comparison to some of the others he's going to encounter on this forum as soft as a fucking rose petal.

And apparently I keep dragging myself back here because the intrigue of watching a train wreck is just too damn delightful or something...

[thesummerqueen]

He did, actually!

He dropped off the face of the planet when I got serious with David. Such a shame.

[Creed of Heresy]

I have not studied philosophy at academic level; it is a hobby in which I partake in my spare time. I hold a first class Master of Science (MSc) degree in Information Technology (2012), and I am a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) student studying Computer Science (2013-2017). The universities involved are none of your concern.

In other words you're full of shit.

[LastPoet]

Long ago, some men used philosophy to advance human thought, to increase our understanding of the world. In these modern times they have made a mockery of the discipline only to give confirmation bias to their wishfull thinking, to the point of solipsism. It angers me greatly that such an honorable discipline has been so much raped in interest of organized religion. That is why philosophy cannot stand alone in modern times, as 'philosophers' are like whores, competing for the johns. Shame to see such an honored discipline thrown in the gutter

[Love]

Something I also wanted to point out is that I am apparently a hateful, vile individual, according to Pussypants McLove here. You're right, I only get beat the fuck up for supporting gay equality and I only now donate about 20 hours of each week to helping rape victims at a rape crisis center. I only donate an additional ten at the Madison Soup Kitchen. I only go out for four hours every two weeks to stand out in the freezing fucking cold to try to get people to donate to the A.H.A.'s charity drive to provide financial aid for those in need. But I called a coward a coward on the internet. Oh yes, I am TRULY a vile, hateful, spiteful, dickish individual, saying such heart-breakingly cruel things. Kid better harden the fuck up, cuz I'm by comparison to some of the others he's going to encounter on this forum as soft as a fucking rose petal.

And apparently I keep dragging myself back here because the intrigue of watching a train wreck is just too damn delightful or something...

Creed, I admire you for doing that charitable work; that is awesome! I also hope to engage in more charitable endeavours, although I also do my bit such as designing websites for free for some charities where I live.

Look, the way you came across in that first post seemed to be extremely aggressive and hateful. I have no problem with people that disagree with me, but I just cannot see why the tone has to be so aggressive. Furthermore, I really couldn't care less if I have 100,000 members hurling abuse at me; I would just ignore them and address the members that I have time for.

Cheers.

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Not while the subject is alive. That negates what you appear to be saying.

Also neither would correctly involve nuclear medicine.

You are correct on this point; well spotted. I made a mistake and actually meant to write "Positron Emission Tomography" (PET) scanner. This is a nuclear medicine device, which can monitor neurotransmitter activity in the brain when the human subject is alive.

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To which I reply, QED.

It must be an odd university that does not have doctoral candidates but doctoral students and has a fixed four year program for same. Similar concerns on a "first class" MS. Perhaps that is how it is done in England or Australia.

So, in order to understand a subject, does this mean that one must hold a bachelor's degree or higher?

I was expecting an attempt to explain the odd terminology and a fixed four year PhD program. Instead I get an attempt to deflect the discussion away from the issues. That is more than enough to call bullshit on all your claims.

Do you need a degree to understand evolutionary biology? Of course not. Furthermore, why don't you find a passage with which you disagree and discuss it instead of being pedantic and petty?

Running with the attempted deflection however I made no such claim. I have noted most everyone here has disagreed with your ideas about philosophy and what philosophy is and is about. You have adamantly stuck to your positions. You have "invoked" an imaginary REAL philosophy student to contradict a post.

Yet the entire foundation of your posts and positions is hobby knowledge which NO ONE has in any form certified is even close to correct. Perhaps you should tell us all upon what basis you have lead yourself to assume your views are correct. Again, full disclosure.

Again, I am not disclosing the location in which I reside. Whether or not you believe me about my qualifications and study is none of my business, although I will say that "first class" and "distinction" are used interchangably at the university from which I graduated.

I was not interested in the tech part and the quick response on PET scan indicates the kind of knowledge such tech claims would encompass suggests no reason to question them.

However the primary issue regarding you views of philosophy has been answered. You are on one side against many people who more or less agree with each other that you are wrong about philosophy based upon common knowledge about philosophy that they share. And the answer is you know nothing more about philosophy than your hobby interests have taken you.

This is not an issue of majority rule of course. It is the entire group against a hobbyist of one.

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He did, actually!

And for my next trick I will pull a rabbit out of a hat.

He dropped off the face of the planet when I got serious with David. Such a shame.

Some guys are so mindlessly against polyandry.

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Long ago, some men used philosophy to advance human thought, to increase our understanding of the world. In these modern times they have made a mockery of the discipline only to give confirmation bias to their wishfull thinking, to the point of solipsism. It angers me greatly that such an honorable discipline has been so much raped in interest of organized religion. That is why philosophy cannot stand alone in modern times, as 'philosophers' are like whores, competing for the johns. Shame to see such an honored discipline thrown in the gutter

A long time ago philosophy developed a sub-group called natural philosophy. That went on to call itself science and leave the rest of philosophy in the dustbin of history. Science progresses. Philosophy meanders from fad to fad and never gets anywhere.

The closest thing to a claim to fame it Hegelian dialect as a contributor to the greatest ever political scourge of mankind, Marxism.

[Creed of Heresy]

Creed, I admire you for doing that charitable work; that is awesome! I also hope to engage in more charitable endeavours, although I also do my bit such as designing websites for free for some charities where I live.

Look, the way you came across in that first post seemed to be extremely aggressive and hateful. I have no problem with people that disagree with me, but I just cannot see why the tone has to be so aggressive. Furthermore, I really couldn't care less if I have 100,000 members hurling abuse at me; I would just ignore them and address the members that I have time for.

Cheers.

I'm going to give you the very basic reason why I am so aggressive:

Because I hate religion, I hate intellectual dishonesty, and I hate people who pick and choose things in their various religious texts. I hate people who make unfounded assertions and assumptions. I hate people who salute double standards and worst of all I hate people who try to act as if they are authorities on a subject when they have no formal education in it. I don't try to pretend like I am some great debater, in fact a large part of why I am here specifically is to learn through experience (the rest is just to be around other atheists in some nominal sense, since where I live ((Wisconsin)), evangelists comprise 80+% of the population and as you can imagine atheists around here are extremely rare), and to consider multiple viewpoints. In person, I generally do not debate; I have trouble just formulating my words. I am not much of a conversationalist, I usually am just a guy who just bullshits around about trivial shit when I do talk, and I much prefer to just let others talk instead. But when it comes to written debates, I can parse things much easier. And the problem is, when you start dissecting an argument put forth by a theist, you start seeing their argument come apart at the seams and they don't even know it. And when you point it out, they reject it, and I know EXACTLY why they reject it. Because if they admit they're wrong in one place, then they're wrong in another. It's a cascade effect. The dominoes come toppling down in sequence, and ultimately they lead to the domino of the core of their faith.

Greater than any hell imagined by the feeble minds who slapped the bible together, religious fear the loss of comfort faith brings them. I lived that life. I went to church with people who felt and acted that way, and I was one of them. But I try to be modest. I try to be humble. I don't have much in the way of pride, so humility is all I've got, so when I started considering other points of view, I started realizing where I was wrong (and in the present this still happens at least once a day; if I'm on this forum, I'll realize I'm wrong about three times out of every ten times I make a point). My faith collapsed brick by brick. Was it such a bad thing, though? Not really. So when I see others terrified of letting the bricks start tumbling, I get frustrated. No, scratch that, I get infuriated. "If I can do it, why can't you" sort of thing. Ultimately it comes down to how much courage you have to admit you are wrong. If you cannot admit you are wrong, you're lost, and you will never gain anything.

The problem is, here, you are outright rejecting rationality. "The rationalists," you keep saying in a disparaging "tone," as if being grounded in reality is somehow a bad thing. Thing is, I've never seen anyone who could be considered "too realistic," and the ones who are very realistic are the ones who know their shit far better than anyone around them, and are usually the ones to identify the problems and oftentimes the ones who correct them, too. You make arguments for "what ifs" but I don't think you even grasp the "what ifs" you are trying to argue for, because if you did you would probably change your tack in a hurry.

So yes. My post probably sounded quite hostile and aggressive, but I was merely stating what others have all pointed out to be pretty much accurate.

Truth hurts, but it sets ya free, to use a really tired but still quite accurate platitude.

Seriously though you should probably list those universities if you want anyone to actually believe you. Everyone here is actually pretty harmless and all we're really interested in is knowledge and discussion. Hell, it's a forum, that's what fora are for. Nobody on here is really taken with the idea of making claims and then not asserting them.

Take for example my thing about cherry picking. I went and pulled a bunch of quotes I remembered from my time reading the bible up to show that the bible is openly hostile towards philosophy and philosophers, and those were just the ones I could remember off the top of my head. If I dug any deeper, I could find dozens more, and I am not exaggerating. My point was made, though; I cited my sources, and showed why the idea of Christians claiming to philosophy is an absurd and outright contradictory concept. Which is also why I am so contemptuous of you (if this seems hostile, consider for a moment that I actually respect you enough as a person to be honest with you and not bullshit you); you're actually going against numerous biblical key points, some of which are actually very, VERY fundamentally required basics to Christianity. See, I despise people who just claim to be Christians, and then start going "but not in this way, this way, or this way, all of which are ways that define Christianity" because then I am left asking "then what the fuck are you, actually?? Because you're clearly not a Christian!" When people can't even get their basic shit straight, I start bristling very quickly.

[LastPoet]

Look, the way you came across in that first post seemed to be extremely aggressive and hateful. I have no problem with people that disagree with me, but I just cannot see why the tone has to be so aggressive.

Sorry to get in the middle, but if your pride gives you pause, if your skin is so thin, then you probably won't be here for much time. This is the problem with theists around.

Don't get me wrong, but if you get paused by the words shit/cock/fuck/pussy/cunt/whore etc, etc... You are judging people by their words, not their reasoning.

Usually, when someone posts something to me, I ignore the outrage feelings if there is an insult, and adress the argument instead of feeling insulted. To alot of theists, its the easy way out, as they can diverge from their original point and focus on how victimized they feel.

Can you prove to be different?

[thesummerqueen]

This “tone" argument that goes on in the atheist and skeptic spheres is getting old.

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PS, Love, while I might be ignorant of the finer points of philosophy, having absolutely no interest in it isn't “lazy." It's just that I consider it less useful than even knitting, which I also have no interest in. Careful how you bandy “ignorant and lazy" around when you dislike the fact that someone doesn't hold your pet hobby in high enough regard.