Nothing supernatural about the western suburbs of Melbourne

[worldslaziestbusker]

Sorry you werent able to help get my AFA membership reinstated. :-(
But at least we are BOTH free to discuss/debate stuff here at this fine venue.

It's not a matter of not able. I don't know if I was able or not. I was unwilling to try because you lost your membership for breaking rules you agreed to when you joined.
You enjoy freedom of movement in our society. If you break the rules of our society, that freedom can be curtailed by society placing you in prison. You had your freedom, you failed to value it enough to abide by the rules, that freedom was taken from you. I see this as exactly parallel to your treatment at the AFA forum. You had freedom of speech, you didn't value it enough to abide by the rules, you lost that freedom. It's not unfair, it's just how a community has to operate if you're not going to allow people to ride roughshod over each other. You tried to ride roughshod and you weren't allowed to do so. Tough biscuit if you don't like that.

Hang on, I'm a member at Reasonable Faith and I"m agreeing with YOU that your ban WAS unfair and unjust. How come you get to complain that the place you were banned from treated you unfairly but you wont entertain the possibility that your buddies at AFA treated me unfairly?

There's the difference. My ban was unfair and unjust. Your ban was fair and just. I abided by the rules I agreed to when I signed up. You did not.

But at least we are BOTH free to discuss/debate stuff here at this fine venue.

Your stated reasons for this being a fine venue don't add up to much and repetition doesn't make something true. I'm reserving judgement on the merit of this space until I've seen more of what goes on. You might contemplate Groucho Marx's thinking on the issue: "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

Why on earth are you whining about being unfairly banned. Sounds like you're glad they did you a favor.

I don't want to go back because I was banned for no reason. Why on Earth would anyone want to belong to a forum that banned them for no reason?
Oh, wait, that's exactly what you claim happened at AFA forum, so you should be able to answer that question for me.

At least we are BOTH free to discuss/debate stuff here at this fine venue.

Your tautological redundancies are unnecessary. Twice.

The Greeks kept running into the Persians. What is your point?

Ego much? The Greeks/Persians?
The point I am making is that if our judgment of good/bad forums wasnt similar we wouldnt both be here at this great place.

I didn't assign Greek or Persian labels to you or I. I simply pointed out that being vocal on opposite sides of a divide over religious privileges, it's hardly surprising that we encounter each other repeatedly.
That's the third time you've tried to bootstrap merit on this forum by repetition in just this one post.

You forgot to put a question mark after ''how about we...."
So I suppose that was a rhetorical question right?

No, it was an error. Rhetorical questions still warrant a question mark.

You were already demolished, you just didn't realise it.

Boy, I hear that a lot. You're wrong and wont admit it. You're wrong and dont realize it. You secretly know we're right. Youre just pretending to think that, you're lying, that's not an answer....blah blah blah...

Three hypotheses (more available if needed) for the observed facts:
1) Atheists are all stupid and all fail to recognise the brilliance of your arguments.

2) Atheists recognise the brilliance of your arguments but are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to deny their brilliance.

3) You are no good at arguing.

I don't doubt your sincerity regarding your opinion of your ability to argue and anyone who thinks you know you are wrong has failed to take the Dunning-Kruger effect into account.

I don't think this is true.

Yeah, well you would say that wouldnt you.

That's just gainsaying, which is not argument. It's not even something you see from most adults.

Isnt it great that we can both discuss/debate stuff here at this fine venue?

Four times? Really?

I really dont have any sense of shame, pride, vanity, ego, boastfulness, etc, etc, etc. Why arent I embarrassed by that?

Clearly it's not humility at work, or it would negate itself because you'd be so proud about how humble you are. Transparent ploy is transparent.

And fear of humiliation isnt something I lose any sleep over. PHEW! thats a relief.

Again, the Dunning-Kruger effect could be at play, creating humiliation absorbing crumple zones around your ego. A person has to have humility to acknowledge they're wrong about something and they have to realise they are in the wrong to be humiliated, so no danger there for you.

Yet, strangely enough the more atheist counter-apologists I talk to on the net, and theres been a few since 1996, and the more times I hear the same things from them, the happier I get.

\

Then your recursive joy is set to go exponential, because you aren't any more correct or better at argument than you were when I first encountered you, and I suspect your future holds many more people making cogent cases that you that you are wrong.

And I'm kinda happy with just being happy.

I hope you are as happy here at atheistforums.org as I am.

Are you sure you're not a Buddhist? You seem to be chanting.

---

I don't begrudge you your efforts on your own dollar, but you have no right to take money from my pocket to push your agendas.

Ah, yes we do. We have the same right as every other Australian to petition the government for grants.

No, taxpayers have that right. Churches don't pay tax, so that right should not extend to them.
What's more, it's not just the grants your church shouldn't be eligible to apply for that is at stake. Your church does not pay tax on its businesses, doesn't pay stamp duty on its vehicles and got its (very profitable) land free. The shortfall that religious turnover should be contributing to the tax pool has to be made up out of the pockets of all tax paying Australians. I don't mind paying my taxes iff the entire community benefits, but when I am expected to pay for your church's share of the roads, the power stations, the sewers (Max Wallace, writing in "The Purple Economy" estimated that the PAYE tax on the average Australian worker would drop by 2% if religions were taxed at the same rate as every other business entity) etc. I get annoyed.

What you and I see then are two different things my friend.

Don't make a straw man. I didn't say "basic community needs" I said "community services". And yes we also provide a lot of real basic community needs that the government fails to,

Don't use the genetic fallacy again. The government made the same mistake in trusting you to provide services that parents make in leaving their children in the care of clergy unchaperoned. Just because they're religious doesn't mean they're good. I hope to see change in the way these issues are handled in my lifetime. Just because that's the way things happen now doesn't mean that it's good, let alone the best possible scenario. You would need to apply a large logical fallacy to try to make that argument. Oh, wait, you already tried. And you did use a large logical fallacy.

Neither of the above points you made justifies your involvement in state funded schools, using my taxes for your agendas or interfering in legislation. All of these things happen, though, so I am justifiably upset. The only thing that would show that you are right to do these things is evidence beyond reasonable doubt that your deity exists and is the only deity. I set the bar at beyond reasonable doubt because if you expect to use your doctrine to influence legislation, you should use the same standard of evidence as the courts that will see that that legislation is acted on. Until such time as you have that evidence, kindly get your ghost out of my government and off of my lawn. Get your hand out of my pocket while you are at it.

Anglicans do it so successfully that many clients are directed to our aid organizations from the government. Hmm, tells you something doesn't it?

Yes, it tells me that past governments got a lot of stuff wrong and that the current government is too inept to do much about it.