(May 19, 2015 at 8:34 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: If someone points out that I have a belief based on faith, not evidence, you know what I will do? I will stop believing it. That is what rational, critical thinkers do.
Here is a an interesting point though, if you believe that you're a rational critical thinker then you can rationalize why you're not guilty of a fallacy or cognitive dissonance, etc. And I am not saying that you do this and attacking you at all personally. I just think that absolute statements on unknown/unknowable things seem to be irrational in the first place. And we would all agree with it but when you start adding ad hominem attacks, straw men, red herrings, or just being ignorant to what someone really believes then you're just bringing down the dialogue and encouraging cognitive dissonance on the other end. I think that even when we don't know the name of a specific fallacy, we still can sense when someone says something that kind of makes sense but something is missing. WLC, who i know is beloved in this community, often points out in debates that his counterpart avoids answering to certain refutations and points that he has made. And I personally don't believe that is to be minimized. I just find it humorous that a lot of the comments in this thread have gone straight to ad hominem attacks on christians and theists.
