Why Richard Dawkins should debate Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

Slater,

It occurs to me that all of the same points are being made and missed here again and again. I never claimed there was any truly nuetral ground, just that both points of view could be examined carefully. I'm not surprised that you reject that notion, however, as it seriously undermines the validity of your religion. However, I was Christian, at least I professed and tried to be. Now I am an Atheist. Many Atheists traveled that same path. Therefore, it is safe to say that both points of view can be carefully considered.

If there is no neutral ground (which as I demonstrated there cannot be) then careful consideration is not possible. A person either has to assume that scripture is the infallible word of God ahead of time or assume it is not, I am just intellectually honest enough to admit I am in the former group. Anyone who claims it is not the infallible word of God is in the latter group.

What is most apparent in this exchange here is your refussal to focus on actual subject matter. I use the word magnificent, you need clarification. I use the word verify, you need clarification. I say I've carefully considered both sides, you need clarification.

I think what’s apparent is your reluctance or inability to properly define your terms and standards. I ask you for a standard for determining what a magnificent claim is, you provide me with none. I ask you for the difference between a magnificent proof and inductive/deductive proofs and you provide me with an example of an inductive proof. I ask you for clarification on exactly what you mean by verify (since you apparently do not mean firsthand experience/observation) and you are unable to clarify. I just do not think you have properly thought a lot of these things through.

This pattern of yours reveals that you do not feel strongly enough about your position to argue it's merits, therefore, you use petty deflections to avoid facing the subject at hand.

Quite the contrary, I feel very strongly about my position, and the fact that no atheist seems to be able to even present a logically coherent challenge to my position only makes me feel more strongly about the consistency and coherency of the Biblical view of reality.

And, while that may sound good to you, it's a useless piece of gibberish to anyone with any sense of objective logic.

Why?

So, what exactly are we debating here? As far as our conversation: nothing. Nothing at all. I'm interested in an actual discussion and debate about the Christian perspective and it's merits, and your interested in semantics and spelling names right.

So now we are debating again? If you’re interested in the Christian perspective I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. However, it appears you were more interested in taking personal jabs at me, which is why I had to point out your misspellings because they detracted from your insults.

If you decide you want to dispense with the deflections and actually tackle the subject matter, I'm game. In fact, it's why I'm here. But it seems like a fairly poor use of my time to try and explain myself to a seemingly infinite degree every time I make a very clear point.

You’ve yet to make a clear point, you merely produced a multitude of the typical atheistic assertions and when you were challenged to define or clarify what you were even referring to you seemed unable to do so. I’d love to continue the discussion but if you continue to behave irrationally I am going to have to point it out to you, what’s the point of having a conversation if we are allowed to be irrational?

That said, I was Christian at one point as well (I've grown up since then) so I understand how bored you are, and how much more meaningfull meaningless things are from your perspective. But it's not just your time we are utlilizing here, so keep that in mind.

You see, it’s these sorts of comments that make it very hard to take you seriously. Implying that all Christians are somehow childish or ignorant is itself a ridiculous and rather childish position to adhere to. You jumped into this discussion assuming that I was some sort of buffoon who didn’t possess any philosophical sophistication or knowledge of epistemology. This is not my first rodeo, I have heard everything you’ve presented to this pint at least five times before on here and I am well aware of how to poke holes in all of it. I like you (almost as much as I like Queen and Shell B, but not quite :-P), I think you’re a decent enough fellow, but I think you’d be well-served by being bit more respectful of your opponent at times, but that’s just my opinion.