(April 20, 2013 at 11:54 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: 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.
Okay, well I apologise that I completely misjudged your character.
I think most people would interpret your initial post as rather unsavory, but I understand that this is the way that you express yourself. You're obviously a decent guy if you do all that charitable work, so I feel rather guilty for judging you as a narcissist. I will learn from this mistake of judging people so quickly.
Also, I do not mind people swearing at me, but it is difficult to focus on an argument when the tone of a message comes across to be seemingly ferocious.
I can understand if I come across as intellectually dishonest or even pretentious, but as I have already mentioned, I basically spend my entire life on my PC reading and watching watching documentaries about the topics that are being discussed on this thread. It is nothing to do with my ego or trying to come across as superior in any way. I just like to discuss these kinds of topics in great detail.
