Skeptics I no longer have any respect for.

[Tiberius]

I'll accept your argument if you can prove that (a) objective reality even exists, and (b) if you can do it without being tedious.

;-)

[Norfolk And Chance]

No, you're alright, I'm not a lover of philosophy, as you know. IMO it serves next to zero purpose, though you probably disagree.

I agree with your three picks in the original post - Dawkins has irritated me for a while now.

[Mister Agenda]

Richard Dawkins
I'll start off with possibly the most well known atheist in the world. I used to respect Dawkins a lot; he was one of the people who got me to be more open about my atheism, to start a blog, to even start these forums. I used to hold his book "The God Delusion" in high regard, and indeed I got a copy signed when I met him a few years ago.

That book is ironically one of the reasons I've lost most respect for him. If you read it as your first book on atheism, or even on philosophy, you think it's brilliant. If however, you start to read other books on atheism, or delve into philosophical thinking even more, you realise that "The God Delusion" is a pile of crap. It tries to make several philosophical points, as well as commenting on various theological ones as well. The problem is, Dawkins has no training in philosophy, and certainly no training in theology either...and it shows...really badly.

I don't disagree with your assessment of the book, but it was intended to be a first book on atheism. I don't claim that Dawkins could have written a more scholarly version if he wanted to, but if he had, I doubt it would be a best seller and thus would have reached far fewer people. As an introduction to skepticism about theistic claims, it was a great success.

[theVOID]

Regarding Dawkins, I have much more respect for acommplished biologist venturing a opinion in philosophy, than an accomplished philosopher opening his mouth on anything, including on philosophy.

Philosophy is fucking bullshit.

When a person philosophises so much that they begin to claim that they don't know santa isn't real, then that person is a) detached from what is important - like objective reality, and b) a tedious cunt.

If you really think "Philosophy is fucking bullshit" then unless you want to be a glaring hypocrite you'd better not be seen around here talking about ethics, morality, naturalism, theism, political philosophy, the scientific method, logic, mathematics, reason etc - All of these things are either directly philosophical (naturalism) or have risen from philosophy (the scientific method).

It's no secret that a lot of philosophy is complete bullshit, but a lot of the 'science' that people believe is also incredibly fucking stupid, like young earth creationism - Quinean naturalism, Bayesian analysis and a great deal of analytic philosophy is extremely useful for describing thing like logic, reason, science and natural epistemology (deciding how to treat beliefs and evidence) and many of these things are at the root of modern atheism, things you unknowingly it seems philosophise about probably every day.

Whether or not Santa can be known to be not real depends entirely on what you mean by 'knowledge', and defining knowledge in a consistent way is extremely difficult - or maybe I'm just a "tedious cunt".

---

It was the blasphemy that upset him. I'm not arguing the technicality of it being his private business, nor the fact that it's bigoted. Of course it's ridiculous in a moral sense for him to act that way just because he disagrees, but it's also more than a bit stupid for people to NOT understand that he would be offended by what he saw at the conference when those are his deeply held beliefs. I don't care what your judgment of his beliefs are - he should be accorded the same respect that ANYONE who says "Okay, I believe something different, I acted badly but changed it and apologized," should be. Telling him he HAS to think something different, or crucifying him for his beliefs, makes PZ no different from the Christians who try to vilify us for our lack of it, in my opinion.

How is it 'of course' ridiculous in a moral sense? Exactly what is 'morally wrong' about deciding not to trade with a given subset of the population? I think that's a ridiculous notion, but I'd love to see your justification for that.

Sure, it makes PZ a jerk, but we already know that he is. This isn't news. His refusal to accept a legitimate apology isn't a moral wrong, it's amoral, none the less it has the effect of making some individuals change their opinion of him which may or may not be detrimental to his own goals and values.

[DeistPaladin]

Philosophy gets a bad name from the bad philosophy used by apologists. It's like if people's idea about "science" were molded by Creationists. They might say that "science is bullshit" because at least part of what the word means to them is the bullshit of Creationism.

The reason Creationism isn't science is it works contrary to one of the core principles of the scientific method:



Apologetics is bad philosophy for the same reason Creationism is bad science. They both start with the conclusion and look for reasons to believe them.

[thesummerqueen]

*I* think it's morally wrong, and I never said it was some objective measure, to decide you're not going to trade with someone simply because you disagree with them. But it's his business. That's just my internal opinion. Excuse me if the language I typed out led you to believe otherwise. I'm allowed to think he's a cock for doing it, and so is PZ, and I'm allowed to think PZ is an asswipe for not forgiving him on even a basic level.

None of those people were causing him any harm, or his customers, or his business. His reaction was out of prejudice and disrespectful towards another human being for an utterly irrational reason. My morals call for compassion, empathy and forgiveness - my subjective moral code. "Getting along" benefits humanity - I consider that justification enough - and you don't have to necessarily agree with a person to do it. Silly, because it's a gelato store, but if it were a privately owned hospital? You turn people away because it's your establishment and you happen to disagree with them on some point? I find that repugnant.

[theVOID]

*I* think it's morally wrong,

That right there should give you pause - you're equating morality with your own subjective opinions, you should really be saying "I don't like this" rather than "It's morally wrong", the latter has a is much less concise and carries many assumptions in conversation when you could be more effective in being clear that you are stating your own values.

and I never said it was some objective measure, to decide you're not going to trade with someone simply because you disagree with them. But it's his business. That's just my internal opinion. Excuse me if the language I typed out led you to believe otherwise. I'm allowed to think he's a cock for doing it, and so is PZ, and I'm allowed to think PZ is an asswipe for not forgiving him on even a basic level.

Well sure, I agree with all of that, but there is certainly no "moral" aspect to any of it.

None of those people were causing him any harm, or his customers, or his business. His reaction was out of prejudice and disrespectful towards another human being for an utterly irrational reason.

Agreed.

My morals call for compassion, empathy and forgiveness - my subjective moral code. "Getting along" benefits humanity - I consider that justification enough - and you don't have to necessarily agree with a person to do it.

Getting along is indeed good for humanity in general (with the exception of some people really "getting along" and giving each other STDs ), but does it really make any sense to say, even subjectively, that "not getting along" is morally bad? To me it is in and of it's self entirely amoral, you'd need a much more extreme instance of "not getting along", like aggravated assault, before you reached any territory that it would be sufficient for it to be claimed a "moral wrong".

Silly, because it's a gelato store, but if it were a privately owned hospital? You turn people away because it's your establishment and you happen to disagree with them on some point? I find that repugnant.

Sure, but that still doesn't make it morally wrong. They are not doing harm, they are not violating the rights of others, all they are doing is refusing an interaction - while that sort of behaviour gives us reason to condemn and shame people who do such things in an attempt to change the values and attitudes of people (or to make them realise that their lack of cooperation can undermine their other values) in an attempt to create an environment more conductive to our own values, it does not give us any moral authority to punish.

[fr0d0]

Apologetics is bad philosophy

That's an ungrounded assertion. Presupposition is a philosophical conclusion resulting in a way of looking at things in the same way as any supposition.

[DeistPaladin]

Apologetics is bad philosophy

That's an ungrounded assertion. Presupposition is a philosophical conclusion resulting in a way of looking at things in the same way as any supposition.

We already have an entire thread dedicated to discussing why presuppositional apologetics is bullshit.

Starting with the conclusion, one supposedly a matter of faith anyway, and looking for rationales for it is a faulty way of thinking.

[theVOID]

Apologetics is bad philosophy

That's an ungrounded assertion. Presupposition is a philosophical conclusion resulting in a way of looking at things in the same way as any supposition.

Presupposition is necessarily unsound, it always states a premise that it cannot support. From presuppositionalism you can never deliver a sound argument and thus necessarily never demonstrate a fucking thing to be true.

Sure, you can make interesting arguments given that you assume x but you can they can never substantiate x, if they could it necessarily wouldn't be a presupposition.

If your world-view requires any kind of presupposition then you have a world-view that is necessarily irrational.