What's the point of philosophy any more?

[bennyboy]

I can state..as an alleged a priori truth..that your above statement is certainly wrong..simply because I understand the meanings of the word authority and dogmatic.  

If you are suggesting that absolute certainty is necessarily dogmatic by definition then "dogmatic" is neverless extremely misleading and unhelpful a word to use when applied to an incredibly sound and rational statement such as "all squares have 4 sides." (Misleading and unhelpful much like yourself in debates in general).

However, to say that it is dogmatic of you to assert that absolute certainty itself is necessarily dogmatic regardless of reason is neither a misleading nor unhelpful use of the word "dogmatic" on my part. It is indeed very dogmatic, in a truly negative way (and in a way that makes "dogmatic" an appropriate word to use), to assert that absolute certainty itself is necessarily dogmatic regardless of reason. That's dogmatic and unreasonable and you act as if connotations aren't relevant to language. "Dogmatic" at the very least alludes to "absolutely certain about something in a case where it's a bad thing to be absolutely certain about it". Dogma is bad. And there's absolutely nothing bad about being absolutely certain about something that you absolutely should be absolutely certain about because it's absolutely true... that's an absolutely good thing, and it's at the very least a little bit bad (or incorrect) to not be absolutely certain of what is  indeed absolutely certain... and to pretend like something is less certain than it actually is is not only illogical at best and disingenuous at worst, but like I have already explained... the pitfalls of the post-truth "nothing can be absolutely certaintly known to be true, false right or wrong" era may not be as bad as the pitfalls of dogma... but they're not much better.

From a balanced standpoint, arguing against the "no truths can be known absolutely" position is like arguing against an irrational brick wall just as much as arguing against  dogma... and arguing against you and your insistence that there is no absolute truth that can be known regularly feels like this to me:
[picture removed by me]

And it's no wonder. You absolutely do make epic fails and just because not everyone agrees with me doesn't mean I don't see something that some people don't, and know that I absolutely do see it just as others who absolutely do know it absolutely do know it.

When observations and ideas are at odds, you have two choices:
1)  Fit the ideas to the observations.
2)  Fit the observations to the ideas.

Science takes the first approach (perhaps after attempting the second and eventually failing), and religious dogma the second.  Christians already "know" what is true, so they must follow the second approach.  The problem with this approach is that if it turns out your source was not a gift from an existent God, but rather a collection of fanciful fairy tales of ancient, uneducated desert-dwellers-- then you have a problem.