Mistaken emnity between theists and atheists

[Touchstone]

But this excludes the content of thoughts from your ontology, then (“Bob is thinking of a tomato”) – surely you didn’t mean to do that?

No, and I don’t think such an ontology does that. It’s traditionally hard to measure, instrumentally, other people’s thoughts, but that doesn’t mean we are helpless to make judgments on the credibility of such a claim, or understanding that other people, being physiologically like us, have similar thoughts to our own.

And with advancing technology, we may be very well able to support such a claim instrumentally. We may be able to verify, via fMRI or one of its future offshoots, just such a claim.

Nor does it include logical laws. What if I were to start reasoning like the following…?

If A, then B.
B.
Therefore, A.

This is false (invalid), but not because it fails to correspond to states of affairs in the extramental world. Are laws of logic neither true nor false, on your view?

Logic is only as useful for dealing with real world statements as it demonstrates itself to be. That is, the law of contradiction is useful because it happens to be concordant with our experience – an object is generally an extant object to the logical negation of being not-an-object, and that is why non-contradiction is useful as a principle to apply to the real world. Logic isn’t ‘true’ or ‘false’. It is effective or not for the goals being pursued. If the laws of physics were such that the Law of Identity had no applicability in this universe, then the Law of Identity wouldn’t help us very much, would it (notwithstanding that ‘us’ and this very sentence is transcendentally dependant on such a concept!)?

Yes, well, so does non-magical theism. It is illegitimate to, whenever you come to a philosophical problem, invoke God’s omnipotence as the solution. You won’t find serious Christian philosophers doing so.

Aquinas, anyone. I agree, he’s not nearly as serious a thinker as he’s taken to be, but it’s important to remember the intellectual environment he lived in. Modern minds have no such excuse. Modern Aquinas fans, anyone? Isn’t an omnipotent God the answer to ex nihilo nihil fit, combined with the observation that, well, we’re here? I think that is the very philosophical heart of Christianity, this kind of thinking.

-TS

 

[edwest2]

I think there is some mistaken enmity. Part of it has to do with trust though. Let’s look at that:

1. Person A and person B are opposed on some issue but both are sincere so, theoretically, an exchange of views affects one or the other.
2. Either person A or person B is lying. They create data and refer to evidence in a selective manner to make it all appear convincing. The goal is simple: engineering consent based on false information.

I have watched Catholics being lied to by various groups and individuals over the last 40 years and have watched the consequences unfold.

I watched some radicals in the late 1960s adopt the “by any means necessary” approach to achieve their goals.

In the midst of the Cold War, “trust but verify” was the idea. If nuclear stockpiles were indeed to go down in Russia and the United States, a way to verify that it was actually happening had to be put in place. (It was known that both sides had enough weapons to destroy the world several times over.)

Finally, if anyone does not understand the idea of psychological warfare, it boils down to this: maneuvering the enemy to believe what you want him to believe and to act on it. In Vietnam, it was called “hearts and minds.” The US had to be made to appear to be the good guys as opposed to the Vietcong.

About Catholics. Either we’re Catholics or we aren’t. It’s partly like joining any organization with rules. You either follow the rules or you’re out, but that’s where the similarity ends. No priest will be pounding on your door Monday if you missed Mass on Sunday. Too many Catholics have drifted away from the Church over the last 40 years.

To non-theists, I say welcome. Keep in mind though that a necessary pre-condition of being Catholic is belief in God. If we don’t share that then yes, there will be disagreements, and some things will not be amenable to purely materialistic explanations.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Touchstone]

I think there is some mistaken enmity. Part of it has to do with trust though. Let’s look at that:

1. Person A and person B are opposed on some issue but both are sincere so, theoretically, an exchange of views affects one or the other.
2. Either person A or person B is lying. They create data and refer to evidence in a selective manner to make it all appear convincing. The goal is simple: engineering consent based on false information.

I have watched Catholics being lied to by various groups and individuals over the last 40 years and have watched the consequences unfold.

Ed, this is the very stuff of gratuitous enmity. This is “bearing false witness” in your lingo. Not because Catholics haven’t been lied to over the years and subjected to “psyops” in any way that makes them special over Catholics, which is what you are suggesting – note the conspicuous absence of the problem of “Catholics lying” in your post here. That really is a shameful to approach this, and provides evidence of yet another Catholic who is an enemy of a fair and reasonable approach to serious issues like this. You’ve claimed the halo for yourself and your tribe, and are handing out the horns. This kind of “conspiracy thinking” is intensely narcissistic and it runs all through your posts. The mindset you bring to all this is one that cannot be defeated soundly enough – this is part and parcel of what makes Christianity wicked, such engulfing hubris.

I watched some radicals in the late 1960s adopt the “by any means necessary” approach to achieve their goals.

In the midst of the Cold War, “trust but verify” was the idea. If nuclear stockpiles were indeed to go down in Russia and the United States, a way to verify that it was actually happening had to be put in place. (It was known that both sides had enough weapons to destroy the world several times over.)

I’m one that has spoken up many times to defend Catholics against demonization of Catholics, particularly when it crops up in the guise of unfair accusations about the priest/sexual abuse problem in the Church. The enemies of the Church are often very quick to make more – much more, like “this proves the Church is rotten to the core” – of the problem. The details of that horror in the Church ought to give you pause in complaining about the Church being lied to, rather than contrition as the ones doing the lying, but even so, a fair mind understands that as bad as that is, it’s an evil ploy to blow that issue into some overall condemnation or discrediting of the Church and its claims.

Think for a moment what “trust, but verify” would really mean for your Church, eh?

Finally, if anyone does not understand the idea of psychological warfare, it boils down to this: maneuvering the enemy to believe what you want him to believe and to act on it. In Vietnam, it was called “hearts and minds.” The US had to be made to appear to be the good guys as opposed to the Vietcong.

Simplistic thinking like that is part of the problem. A big part. Catholic==good, non/anti-Catholic==bad is a paradigm that is bad for the world, bad for human beings. The real world isn’t a cartoon story like that.

About Catholics. Either we’re Catholics or we aren’t. It’s partly like joining any organization with rules. You either follow the rules or you’re out, but that’s where the similarity ends. No priest will be pounding on your door Monday if you missed Mass on Sunday. Too many Catholics have drifted away from the Church over the last 40 years.

To non-theists, I say welcome. Keep in mind though that a necessary pre-condition of being Catholic is belief in God. If we don’t share that then yes, there will be disagreements, and some things will not be amenable to purely materialistic explanations.

It turns out that “belief in God” as a position in its own right, really isn’t that big a problem. Where things really go bad is when that idea is used to create moral authority out of that, to project one’s own positions and ideas onto “God” so that they are beyond review and critique. There are many people who I have very little to disagree with who “believe in God”. It’s just when the leap is made from that to “and God says…” or “God revealed to me…”, that is where one become an enemy of mankind in becoming such a “friend of God”. But belief in God itself is really not the major problem.

Telling me God exists doesn’t get a rise out of me at all. Telling me evolution is part of a “campaign of lies” against your faith tells me that you’ve abandoned a rational, decent approach to dealing with your fellow man, that you can’t be bothered to love others like yourself, as Jesus commanded, for that is blaming others and projecting your own sins on others unjustly, condemning them for what you’ve failed on.

-TS

 

[edwest2]

To TS -

What is fair and reasonable? I was certainly not handing out horns. What am I to say about a group of men on Wall Street whose sole purpose was to rationally watch the numbers suddenly putting the world in debt and trouble? An editorial cartoon was printed showing Alan Greenspan seated at a table, speaking to Congress while a fire raged behind him. There was an open box of matches on the table with the word greed.

Would you care to comment on the following?

Trust science …

Scientist Admits Scientists have been Lying
This disharmony [between science and religion] is **a dirty little secret **in scientific circles. **It is in our personal and professional interest **to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, **groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim **that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence—the existence of religious scientists—is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith.
– Evolutionist, Jerry Coyne, Seeing and Believing, New Republic, Feb 4, 2009

I work with people every day who are nominally Catholic, other, and non-religious. We get along fine.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Touchstone]

To TS -

What is fair and reasonable? I was certainly not handing out horns. What am I to say about a group of men on Wall Street whose sole purpose was to rationally watch the numbers suddenly putting the world in debt and trouble? An editorial cartoon was printed showing Alan Greenspan seated at a table, speaking to Congress while a fire raged behind him. There was an open box of matches on the table with the word greed.

Out and out greed unto national suicide, or – that’s too far – to allowing the economy to go over the cliff and into a deep recession and possibly a full-blown depression. Another form of irrational faith – everything will work out, and the Ponzi scheme can go on forever. As I keep saying, Feynman was a modern prophet:* the first principle is not to fool yourself, and the easiest person to fool is yourself*. Good, adversarial skepticism and accountability is as good and useful on Wall Street as it is in the Vatican or the Bible Belt or One Temple Square in avoiding major trainwrecks.

Would you care to comment on the following?

I’ve got several long posts on just this question here on this forum. As Coyne knows, and wants to exploit, many religious interepretations are prefectly compatible with modern science. Not all of them, but a great many to be sure. But even so, as I’ve said before, noting that compatibility sort of misses the point. Science can’t disprove God or gods, not possibly, but it CAN and DOES push those gods back, out of the picture, into the distance of irrelevance and superfluity. Science doesn’t make God “false” so much as extraneous, and Coyne is fully aware of this.

I work with people every day who are nominally Catholic, other, and non-religious. We get along fine.

Yes, but I’d wager you have amuch more honest and responsible disposition toward them than your “enemies” here. If you helped yourself to the kind of attitudes toward them that you display in your posts here, I think the situation would be far different. I realize this is more a place where you feel you can “let your hair down”, so to speak, but that just underscores the point I’m driving at here, I think. When it matters, and it’s serious, and you’re accountable to people around you in a way you’re not here, I bet you are much more fair and reasonable than you are here. That’s why these forums are such an interesting social phenomenon; the relative anonymity afforded by our online avatars here gives all of us a kind of window into how each other behaves “when no one is looking”. Others are looking, but the dynamics are such that we remain relatively unaccountable.

And this is where our “true colors” show in ways we aren’t perhaps aware of because of that. Catholics hold themselves “when no one is looking” to higher standard than my ex-co-Protestants evangelicals do, I don’t mind saying (and I salute Catholics for that, as a group!), but that same fundamentalist/conspiracist mindset is plenty well represented here on this forum, even so.

-TS

 

[edwest2]

Out and out greed unto national suicide, or – that’s too far – to allowing the economy to go over the cliff and into a deep recession and possibly a full-blown depression. Another form of irrational faith – everything will work out, and the Ponzi scheme can go on forever. As I keep saying, Feynman was a modern prophet:* the first principle is not to fool yourself, and the easiest person to fool is yourself*. Good, adversarial skepticism and accountability is as good and useful on Wall Street as it is in the Vatican or the Bible Belt or One Temple Square in avoiding major trainwrecks.

I’ve got several long posts on just this question here on this forum. As Coyne knows, and wants to exploit, many religious interepretations are prefectly compatible with modern science. Not all of them, but a great many to be sure. But even so, as I’ve said before, noting that compatibility sort of misses the point. Science can’t disprove God or gods, not possibly, but it CAN and DOES push those gods back, out of the picture, into the distance of irrelevance and superfluity. Science doesn’t make God “false” so much as extraneous, and Coyne is fully aware of this.

Yes, but I’d wager you have amuch more honest and responsible disposition toward them than your “enemies” here. If you helped yourself to the kind of attitudes toward them that you display in your posts here, I think the situation would be far different. I realize this is more a place where you feel you can “let your hair down”, so to speak, but that just underscores the point I’m driving at here, I think. When it matters, and it’s serious, and you’re accountable to people around you in a way you’re not here, I bet you are much more fair and reasonable than you are here. That’s why these forums are such an interesting social phenomenon; the relative anonymity afforded by our online avatars here gives all of us a kind of window into how each other behaves “when no one is looking”. Others are looking, but the dynamics are such that we remain relatively unaccountable.

And this is where our “true colors” show in ways we aren’t perhaps aware of because of that. Catholics hold themselves “when no one is looking” to higher standard than my ex-co-Protestants evangelicals do, I don’t mind saying (and I salute Catholics for that, as a group!), but that same fundamentalist/conspiracist mindset is plenty well represented here on this forum, even so.

-TS

Thank you for your reply. The people I work with know me as I am. One of them comments, jokingly, about my obvious Christianity on a regular basis.

I know that nothing is hidden from God regarding what I do or write here. I realize that must sound irrational to you but that is how I view it.

As a person who works in the media and who studies it intensely, I watch trends develop. Over the last 40 years I’ve been watching the trends developing among followers of the major religions and those I know who are Last-Tuesdayists and others. It’s all moving in one direction. That direction is reverberating through interconnected platforms as the media labels communications today.

Once again, people I know, know where I stand on the issues: Same-Sex Marriage, AIDS, Abortion, Alternative Lifestyles, and especially the influence of the Media on the average person.

What do you think I should be more fair and reasonable about? I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “enemies” which you’re attaching to me.

There is a real culture war going on. I find the primary problem is that the average person is, to varying degrees, too trusting. So it’s not just making certain that you are not fooling yourself, but being able to be certain that the information you read is worth believing at all. The internet has made the concept of trust greatly more difficult. I sugest you pick up a copy of The Cult of the Amateur.

Finally, part of what I do is locate information. I get assignments all the time to track down this or that piece of information to make sure that the fictional stories my company puts together ring true in terms of references to real world places and things or even mythological concepts.

After 2,000 years, the Church will go on. I am certain that the Church’s leadership that operates at the interface between itself and those who make policy around the world will continue in their mission.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Touchstone]

Thank you for your reply. The people I work with know me as I am. One of them comments, jokingly, about my obvious Christianity on a regular basis.

I know that nothing is hidden from God regarding what I do or write here. I realize that must sound irrational to you but that is how I view it.

No, that’s pretty much inescapable if one accepts the existence of an all-seeing God, right? That’s the only rational position to take, given your premises. But that commends you, as I’m sure you know many Christians, as do I, who behave, curiously, as if even God can’t figure out their little schemes. If we are hip to their little cheats and conceits, sure an extant God would not be fooled, eh?

As a person who works in the media and who studies it intensely, I watch trends develop. Over the last 40 years I’ve been watching the trends developing among followers of the major religions and those I know who are Last-Tuesdayists and others. It’s all moving in one direction. That direction is reverberating through interconnected platforms as the media labels communications today.

Well, if you are concerned about the culture moving away from embracing *omphalos *(Last Tuesdayism), why is that a bad thing?

Whatever the case, there, I don’t dispute you’re noticing real trends, and trends that augur toward the secular, the non-religious and often enough, the irreligious.

Once again, people I know, know where I stand on the issues: Same-Sex Marriage, AIDS, Abortion, Alternative Lifestyles, and especially the influence of the Media on the average person.

Well, I can respect a guy who knows where he stands and will stand up for that. I’m much more impressed with that when it’s coupled with good reasoning and solid justification for his views based on the evidence. But I don’t think I would dispute a lot of your take on the influence of media in our culture. Media is culture, and we are a social, cultural species. That doesn’t make such influence good or bad – it can be used for either.

What do you think I should be more fair and reasonable about? I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “enemies” which you’re attaching to me.

Well, the conspiratorial thinking is manifest in your posts. It’s not that society is thinking its way through this, even if it’s the “elite” doing the heavy lifting and “condescending” to the little people through the bully pulpit of the media. No, it’s much worse than that – the “other guys” are out to trick you, to deceive, to sell their deceptions because they are driven by power lust and greed, and not by ethical convictions and principles in opposition to yours. The creation issue is a classic example, in your posts.

Yes, the “other guys” want to prevail in terms of education and policy over your ignorance and intransigence. But it’s a noble cause, and it’s out in the open, defensible on the merits in the light of day. Yet you persist with a kind of siege mentality that not only refuses to be reasonable on the facts and evidence, but demonizes those who are being fair and honest with the evidence that’s out there.

Your are right, evolution is a really serious problem for Christianity. It’s not insurmountable by any means, but it’s a problem. But reality is what it is, and its not “evil leftist atheist science” that are conspiring against you. It’s reality itself that is set against you, Ed. You’re painting those that want to be fair and disciplined about reality as part of some evil plot, and that has you accusing good people behaving ethically and responsibly without any justification. If you want quotes, I can furnish them from your post. I understand the cognitive dissonance in your head. I’ve been there. But a man of integrity and courage does not demonize others who are behaving responsibly as the “way out” of that dissonance.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t liars, cheats and exploiters out there looking to capitalize on your dissonance for anti-religious ends. There certainly are. But it’s a cop-out to point at that and satisfy yourself that reality is not against you in a very compelling way, here. I can grant you all the nefarious deeds of unethical atheists exploiting science for anti-religious ends and the dastardly deeds of the media, and it won’t change a thing.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

There is a real culture war going on. I find the primary problem is that the average person is, to varying degrees, too trusting. So it’s not just making certain that you are not fooling yourself, but being able to be certain that the information you read is worth believing at all. The internet has made the concept of trust greatly more difficult. I sugest you pick up a copy of The Cult of the Amateur.

I may do that, someone else suggested that to me the other day, as well. But you are right, I think in spite of yourself. The internet is a denialist’s dream, a playground for conspiracy theorists. Most good science is still locked behind a paywall, and really good, solid, responsible research and thinking can’t even get its shoes on before the crackpots and denialists have streamed out treatise after treatise of baloney.

There are good resources on science and evolution out there to be sure, but it’s not a subject that dovetails with the dynamics of the web. Populist denialism is a match made in heaven (hell!) for the Internet.

Finally, part of what I do is locate information. I get assignments all the time to track down this or that piece of information to make sure that the fictional stories my company puts together ring true in terms of references to real world places and things or even mythological concepts.

OK, well if that’s true, you should be aware of the gravity and depth of the scientific research out there. How it completely embarrasses and eclipses the “ID culture war” tripe that fuels religious anti-science and denialism. If you really take time to check the data, and the facts, I can’t see how you pursue the tinfoil hat lines you take here so regularly. I do understand it, though, when I remember that the overarching context is the teaching of the Church, and that provides the resolution. Evolution can’t be true, world without end, amen. And homosexuals cannot love in a real and noble way. And society can’t abandon Christianity as the product of reasoning and wisdom. It’s gotta be the playing out of the cosmic battle of good vs. evil. So the trends are evil and conspiratorial by definition, because you know how the story ends, and know, incontravertibly, who’s wearing the white hats when the credits roll.

After 2,000 years, the Church will go on. I am certain that the Church’s leadership that operates at the interface between itself and those who make policy around the world will continue in their mission.

We can agree on that, at least!

-TS

 

[edwest2]

If anything, we operate from different worldviews. Speaking generally, there are those who fervently defend their political party, right or wrong. Does it concern you that one party, for example, can completely rubbish another party even though the light of day evidence speaks to the contrary? I watched the story of a man who was an expert on antique watches. He began to notice fakes being sold on eBay. After a while, he became such a nuisance he began to receive death threats. Who was in the wrong? The people trying to sell fake antiques or the man trying to help his fellow man?

Regarding homosexuals, let me only say I can have a real love for my closest same sex friend, but that does not automatically link to a desire to have sex.

I believe real events occurred 2,000 years ago that have changed history. I know that real miracles are being investigated right now by the Congregation for Saints’ Causes. It can take years to interview all of the doctors, other medical experts, review documents and witness testimony, and when the investigation is complete, all of that data is challenged by a review board.

Finally, regarding the subject of evolution, the Church is not convinced. And having been involved in advertising and marketing campaigns, that represents most of what’s going on here. If I may:

Science has given you everything! And you spit on it! You deny it! You want to get rid of science and you want millions of people to die! You are ignorant!

Or my current favorite from amazon in response to positive reviews for a Creationist book: “You are a Christian extremist and a terrorist.” The writer went on to accuse those praising the book of being against the economic success of the United States in the global economy.

And please don’t try to tell me these are isolated incidents.

youtube.com/watch?v=F5QzQtwBseQ

It’s infected politics. As we know from years of experience, the level of out and out deception and false words, referred to as rhetoric, to try to sell your position is the stock and trade of politics.

Billboard: Praise Darwin. Evolve beyond belief.

Do you think the people who designed and purchased that billboard don’t believe the message it carries?

Peace,
Ed

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I think there is some mistaken enmity. Part of it has to do with trust though. Let’s look at that:

1. Person A and person B are opposed on some issue but both are sincere so, theoretically, an exchange of views affects one or the other.
2. Either person A or person B is lying. They create data and refer to evidence in a selective manner to make it all appear convincing. The goal is simple: engineering consent based on false information.

#2 happens, but I guess I always think it’s good to assume the best of your opponent, until proven otherwise. I myself pay little attention to my opponent’s methods; I just try and figure out the truth.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I do have a similar intiution, I guess. The “I must be disembodied in some sense becuase I can’t apprehend the embodiment of my mind or fathom the origin of such a setup” idea is a natural [sic] one, I’ll grant.
…

Once you have meta-representational cognition, though, none of this is really remarkable, but rather just inevitable, in the same way a Turing-complete language would inevitably be used to solve all sorts of interesting, and (by Turing) unanticipated problems.

Yes, but *getting to *metarepresentational cognition is the amazing part. At any rate, I’m glad you’re just as astonished by the world as I am.

This innate grammar is then self-evident in the sense it is part of our physiology, but it’s quite general and emotional, as opposed to being proposition or principled. That doesn’t make it any less a fact of reality, but it does discredit the idea that anything beyond the most general propositions are self-evident as moral truths. We can observe that ‘living things wish to remain alive’, generally, and that humans are no exception. But we cannot recognize something like “abortion is wrong” as self-evident, or that stem-cell research is unethical; those may be good moral principles to arrive at and apply, but they are not self-evident truths, any more than “all objects are made of atoms” is in terms of apprehending the natural world around us.

I agree, I think. All we need for objective morality, though, is large scale principles – but we need them generalized in a normative way. “Living things wish to remain alive” doesn’t help you any when you realize that it has exceptions: some living things want to die. Does that justify my killing someone because I think I have evidence that they want to die? Of course not.

So what we need are prescriptions, but (as you were saying) in the most general form possible. Will “living things, insofar as they are living things, ought to wish to remain alive” work? I don’t know. Will “do unto other as you would have them do to you” work? Maybe, with a few addendums. Will “do whatever leads to the greatest pleasure and the least pain for the greatest number” work? Yes, in many cases. Will “do not violate a person’s possession of life and freedom” work? Again, yes, but we need some qualifiers in there.

I don’t claim that “Abortion is wrong” is written in the heavens for all to see. Perhaps it can be derived from the larger principles, or perhaps all we will get is “Abortion is almost always wrong” or “Abortion may be justifiably banned by a government”. At any rate, those who espouse natural law also recognize how specific scenarios can get dicey.

Instead, we embrace models, and we test them, and judge them by our experience with them to assess their utility and value.

Well, then, that’s what I propose you do with morality. What model would have the most utility? The moralist, like the scientist, subjectively decides what his goals are.

OK, fair enough. But that want is a temptation to error all its own, and a strong one. It begs you to indulge in confirmation bias, to fall in love with fluffy explanations that are as appealing to you emotionally and pyschologically as they are fatuous as a matter of reasoning and disciplined thinking. This is where the intellectual courage to accept unkowns as unknowns is demanded of the mind, and where accepting facile “god of the gap” answers impedes the mind from the quest for actual answers on that question some day.

But I don’t see myself accepting fluffy explanations, although I’ll keep a look out. I acknowledge that certain moral truths are inscrutable to me, and that much of ethics is a matter of prudence, not epistemology. But I don’t think that the subjectivist explanation of ethics is more likely than the objectivist explanation, and it is a good deal less revealing. When I come to a problem, I do not invoke God to solve it (with one single exception – the problem of existence itself). God would not have created intelligent beings and then made them to use ad-hoc reasoning to solve every problem.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

What should happen is that anti-homosexuals, like the racists of several decades ago, should just be called out for the offense to decent, moral society that they are. Catholics should be villified as social pariahs to the extent they embrace and promote their demonization of homosexuality, just in the way a storm of condemnation awaits the person who says a black man should not vote because his skin is black nowadays.

Demonization? Really? Is it demonization to say in public that you believe something is wrong? If it were, then we would have never reversed slavery – the abolitionists would have been vilified until they shut up. I’m not saying that homosexuality is wrong, necessarily; I’m just saying that people shouldn’t be ridiculed if they say that it’s wrong.

Now, if they are hateful and mean, that’s another story entirely. But, although I am disappointed with the Church on this issue, characterizing their position as demonization is just inaccurate.

Well, I’m always open to new ideas. I’ve encountered lots of arguments for the “full personhood” (not “full humanity”, that’s a different concept) of the zygote, but none that don’t stand on religious dogma. It’s hard to impute the salient features of personhood to a zygote in natural, objective terms, after all. Supernatural explanations (the “endowment of the soul”) must be invoked, and thereby is the real cause of the fetus harmed. With advocates like that… well, the results speak for themselves.

No supernatural entities required. Question: why is murder wrong? Because it deprives a being of a (human) future. Why is abortion wrong? Because it deprives a being of a (human) future.

That’s all I meant by religious poses, there. Catholics, just like Protestants, would rather feel “Godly” than effective in pursuing the cause of human rights of the fetus that does meet objective, reasonable criteria for personhood, and the protections that attend it. By injecting irrational dogma, the Catholic position “feels good” and “strikes a pious pose”, but it ultimately condemns more real human persons to die an unjust death as the bloody price for its religious indulgences. It feels good, I know – I’ve been there as a Christian – to take an extreme position for God, but here, it comes at the most profound cost to the most innocent and unprotected among us.

You may be right that the position Catholics take might hurt the pro-life movement somewhat. But, you see, unless I believe that the ends justify the means, I can’t misrepresent my position for benefit, not even for the benefit of babies.

 

[rwillenborg]

But I have to implicate myself as your enemy in a direct sense, unfortunately, given your statement 3) in your initial post: I do and will ridicule ridiculous beliefs. I am a libertarian, and an ardent defender of free speech and freedom of conscience, but that is not a commitment to lie or put my brain in neutral.

-TS

Really? You ridicule people’s beliefs? The definition of that word is to deride or mock them. Really? You do that? You actually openly mock people? Do you think that possibly hurts their feelings? Again, if I’m understanding you correctly, it’s not that you engage them, or are curt with them, or simply point out how their rock, but you actually mock them?
How’s that working out for you? I mean, has it ever helped a situation?
And, I’m afraid I don’t understand the link up to lying or putting your brain ‘in neutral’ as it were.
I’ll be honest here, I’m just really surprised.

 

[Touchstone]

Really? You ridicule people’s beliefs? The definition of that word is to deride or mock them. Really?

I guess the answer depends on what you classify comments – derision, mocking? I don’t recoil, when the arguments warrant from calling them “ridiculous”, or “asinine”, or even “stupid”. That’s derisive, I’d say. Being wrong is one thing, and a regular occurrence for the brightest and most diligence among us. But often what we find is not just a matter of error, but willful, spiteful, hostile ignorance, a form of agression expressed in ideological terms as anti-knowledge.

Simply ‘correcting’ the errors doesn’t really address that problem. Grown-ups can handle correction and criticism, and adjust things accordingly. What is happening in lots of “culture war” debate has nothing to do with errors, facts, or reason, but the corruption of those as weapons. It’s that kind of quasi-passive hostility that needs a different social treatment, a cultural rejection that recognizes not just the error in facts and claims, but the hostility projected by the bearer on the rest of the community.

It’s not just “you’re wrong” – I get that regularly, and am often honored by the charge, the thinking and effort behind the claim. And often enough, I find the charge to have merit. I forget who it was here, but I was recently called for an unfair claim or conclusion on someone’s words here, and in reading it back, I agreed. I was in the wrong, and apologized.

Beliefs and arguments that merit ridicule show disdain for knowledge, not just ignorance, contempt for civil discourse, as opposed to unfamiliarity or just crude conversational habits.This is the use of language and communication as a weapon, not a weapon used honorably, but dishonorably to preserve one’s one ego and views at all costs.

You do that? You actually openly mock people? Do you think that possibly hurts their feelings?

I’m sure it does, and when I do unleash that way (lots of forums simply won’t permit it by rule, which complicates things, and favors those pushing ridiculous, over-the-top obnoxious arguments), I’m sure it stings, and feelings get hurt. And that is part of the goal, social sanction and stinging disapproval from peers for behaving so badly in public.

The basic logic is that ridicule and mocking for arguments that deserve it, those that have really ‘jumped the shark’, provides a social disincentive for that kind of behavior. I note, with gratification, that overt racism now often solicits open ridicule and mocking, if not open direct hostility. This was not the case, at least to that degree, when I was a child. There are many views and arguments that are as fatuous, destructive and unworthy of decent community that still get ‘coddled’, and religion – even this forum, sad to say – often enough is one to coddle and protect the ridiculous and the passionately disingenuous among them from the kind of criticism that rises to the level of their offense.

Again, if I’m understanding you correctly, it’s not that you engage them, or are curt with them, or simply point out how their rock, but you actually mock them?

Yeah. Actually. On an email loop I’m on, just today, I went off because of some of the most obnoxious defenses of Kent Hovind’s “pH.D” thesis, which was recently found, scanned and put online – Google it and you’ll find it.

There’s a good case to be made that when you get to to the point of ridicule, you should consider just leaving that community as you are probably wasting your time, but in this case, this is a list I help run. Anyway, if you read Hovind’s “thesis” there’s no way to assess it honestly but as “ridiculous”. Hovind is the poster boy for the kind of argument and polemic that deserves a sharply hostile and stinging rebuke. He’s not so much wrong, as he is obnoxious unto evil in his disrespect and hostile for his opponents, and his contempt for the basic intelligence of his audience. “Correcting” Hovind is pointless, in my view, and plays to his schtick.

Thinking grown-ups send guys like Hovind out of the village, rather than correct him. Hovind is not about correction, or about being right or wrong. Hovind’s been sent to prison, for other (but maybe related) reasons, but he has some disciples that are really off the charts on the obnoxious scale. The beg for ridicule with their words, and have come to expect no one has the backbone to call them out as ‘more than just factually wrong’ in their arguments.

How’s that working out for you? I mean, has it ever helped a situation?

Well, there are precious few willing to do it, it turns out. Which is one reason so much ridiculous stuff remains so prevalent in our discourse and communications. We suffer fools gladly, it seems. This is not a problem atheists have solved, by any means, but one serious burden for Christianity is that is acutely impotent to resist and repel fools in its ranks. Not just people who are mistaken, mind you, or ignorant, but actively subverting knowledge, truth-finding and thinking toward positive goals, all as a means of serving their cognitive dissonance at the expense of others.

I do have many experiences where speaking up and out like that has been effective, and made a positive impact. There’s always tricky issues with moderation (and this is expected and reasonable), but in cases where that hasn’t been a problem, such reactions really can and do inject some seriousness about the antics and bad behavior of trolls and
other misanthropes.

And, I’m afraid I don’t understand the link up to lying or putting your brain ‘in neutral’ as it were.
I’ll be honest here, I’m just really surprised.

I’ll just chalk this up to your good fortune in hanging out in higher quality communities than I have, historically.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Yes, but *getting to *metarepresentational cognition is the amazing part. At any rate, I’m glad you’re just as astonished by the world as I am.

Aye, it’s an amazing story, no matter which path was taken to get where we are.

I agree, I think. All we need for objective morality, though, is large scale principles – but we need them generalized in a normative way. “Living things wish to remain alive” doesn’t help you any when you realize that it has exceptions: some living things want to die. Does that justify my killing someone because I think I have evidence that they want to die? Of course not.

I think it’s very difficult to understand, or have any meaningful evidence, from an animal that it wishes to die. That’s a severe limitation due to the absence of language. I do remember a member of our hunting party some years back that shot a coyote that did apparently have a death wish, made manifest in its boldness in approaching our campsite, fangs bared, seemingly unafraid. May he was rabid, dunno.

But generally, the behavior animals speaks loud and clear to their intentions – they are all about survival, and whatever that takes.

I won’t suggest that is a robust ethical framework in itself, but i am suggesting it is an objective basis for grounding ethics; humans, like the rest of the animals, wish to survive, and resist, forcefully, violently even, being killed. This is a solid foundation for the values that drive ethics. Not the sum of it, but a good foundation.

So what we need are prescriptions, but (as you were saying) in the most general form possible. Will “living things, insofar as they are living things, ought to wish to remain alive” work? I don’t know. Will “do unto other as you would have them do to you” work? Maybe, with a few addendums. Will “do whatever leads to the greatest pleasure and the least pain for the greatest number” work? Yes, in many cases. Will “do not violate a person’s possession of life and freedom” work? Again, yes, but we need some qualifiers in there.

OK, nothing to dispute in that paragraph! You’re “I don’t knows” are too timid, but yes, I agree with the thrust of that.

I don’t claim that “Abortion is wrong” is written in the heavens for all to see. Perhaps it can be derived from the larger principles, or perhaps all we will get is “Abortion is almost always wrong” or “Abortion may be justifiably banned by a government”. At any rate, those who espouse natural law also recognize how specific scenarios can get dicey.

Yes, agreeing, again.

Well, then, that’s what I propose you do with morality. What model would have the most utility? The moralist, like the scientist, subjectively decides what his goals are.

Yes, but there’s a crucial difference between the two. The goals of both may be subjectively determined (not sure I agree, but not interested in pursuing that, here), but the method of judging performance couldn’t be more different, with the scientific method integrating an objective form of review into the validation process, and the moralist relegated to subjective judgments on how things worked out for any given model.

But I don’t see myself accepting fluffy explanations, although I’ll keep a look out. I acknowledge that certain moral truths are inscrutable to me, and that much of ethics is a matter of prudence, not epistemology. But I don’t think that the subjectivist explanation of ethics is more likely than the objectivist explanation, and it is a good deal less revealing. When I come to a problem, I do not invoke God to solve it (with one single exception – the problem of existence itself). God would not have created intelligent beings and then made them to use ad-hoc reasoning to solve every problem.

Does that strike you as a tacit admission that God-as-answer-to-the-problem-of-existence is ad-hoc in nature?

As for the ‘objectivist explanation’, I think that doesn’t get off the ground, conceptually. There’s nothing objective about it, as I understand your use of the term (correct me if I’m mistaken), and this idea of ‘objective morality’ is badly mistaken in its terms.

If God exists and is sovereign over all of creation, and determines what is right or wrong in absolute terms, that isn’t in any way an instance of ‘objective morality’. It’s still a purely subjective morality, as it proceeds from the mind/will of God, and only from the mind/will of God. Right and wrong still are wholly dependent on a will, then, and are not intrinsic to nature itself. This is an area we can credit the wonderful Dr. William Lane Craig for spreading confusion far and wide on this subject.

Nevertheless, I do understand your distinction between right-as-defined-by-a-totalitarian-ruler and right-as-defined-by-a-human. You think the former is more likely a more accurate model of reality. But, to “quine” this idea, this belief itself is a subjective position, and as such is as fully a ‘subjectivist explanation’ as any other, at least barring any heretofore unknown evidence for such a deity…

-TS

 

[TheAtheist]

Simply ‘correcting’ the errors doesn’t really address that problem. Grown-ups can handle correction and criticism, and adjust things accordingly. What is happening in lots of “culture war” debate has nothing to do with errors, facts, or reason, but the corruption of those as weapons. It’s that kind of quasi-passive hostility that needs a different social treatment, a cultural rejection that recognizes not just the error in facts and claims, but the hostility projected by the bearer on the rest of the community.

The basic logic is that ridicule and mocking for arguments that deserve it, those that have really ‘jumped the shark’, provides a social disincentive for that kind of behavior. I note, with gratification, that overt racism now often solicits open ridicule and mocking, if not open direct hostility. This was not the case, at least to that degree, when I was a child. There are many views and arguments that are as fatuous, destructive and unworthy of decent community that still get ‘coddled’, and religion – even this forum, sad to say – often enough is one to coddle and protect the ridiculous and the passionately disingenuous among them from the kind of criticism that rises to the level of their offense.

I think this has to be the most hilarious justification for throwing out the rules of civil discourse in favor of rhetorical invective.

They are giving childish/stupid/disingenuous arguments and the “strong medicine” response is to mock them?

You know what. Nevermind. There will always be tremendous gap in methodology between those who feel the need for agitation, and those who must work with far more pragmatic goals in mind.

 

[Touchstone]

Demonization? Really? Is it demonization to say in public that you believe something is wrong? If it were, then we would have never reversed slavery – the abolitionists would have been vilified until they shut up. I’m not saying that homosexuality is wrong, necessarily; I’m just saying that people shouldn’t be ridiculed if they say that it’s wrong.

I think that declaring someone’s sexual orientation as evil in its nature is deeply immoral, no matter if it’s declared to the self in private or in the public square. And it’s not just immoral, it’s quite reasonably seen as such, and the reasons for the declaration (in the Catholic case, for example) are just as easily seen as arbitrary, unjustified, foolish.

I think that ‘ridicule’ has some leeway in it that bends toward reactions I would support or criticize, but for a Church or its believers to declare a homosexual orientation as an evil orientation, or even homosexual acts as inherently evil no matter what the emotional intent, relationship, goals or ethical context surrounding that is deserves a good round denunciation as ITSELF an indecent act. It’s below the standards of a decent, responsible human being. Again, being wrong isn’t grounds for ridicule. Being willfully reckless and unreasonable on such a serious matter is.

I think there is good insight for Catholics to considering how they would act around overt racists, white supremacists who believed “God said” white people were superior, “God’s chosen”, and that black people were fundamentally subhuman, damned, and could be hurt, scorned, killed and humiliated by white people just for being who they are.

This is the Catholic church toward homosexuals. They have embraced a dogma that commits them to cruel, evil doctrines that are no more respectable or decent than the virulent white supremacist’s. It will take a long time, because this kind of hatred is enshrined in our culture (thanks in large part to the Catholic church!) in a much deeper way than even racism was, but hatred and for homosexuality I think will one day be known for what it is, a barbaric relic of the tribal, brutal past.

Now, if they are hateful and mean, that’s another story entirely. But, although I am disappointed with the Church on this issue, characterizing their position as demonization is just inaccurate.

Again, I don’t approve of ‘blaming the guy in the pew’. This is on the Church and its doctrines itself, and goes all the back to Paul, and before. That is the real source of wickedness, here. I of course don’t approve of Christians showing overt hatred to homosexuals, etc. But that is just symptomatic of the real problem, which is the “sinnification” of homosexuality – all of it. Not just the instances (like equivalent heterosexual acts) that are exploitive, abusive, banal, harmful, etc., but even the loving, supportive, seeking-the-best-in-the-other expressions of homosexual sex.

That’s calling what is good and noble and benevolent as evil – a position that is fundamentally perverse in its own right.

No supernatural entities required. Question: why is murder wrong? Because it deprives a being of a (human) future. Why is abortion wrong? Because it deprives a being of a (human) future.

The loss of the future is a significant factor, to be sure. But that isn’t the whole story. I don’t want to be killed. Forget the loss of future, that is a “possession” I want to preserve, to be sure, but prior to that, I just resist you controlling me in such a way that I die. It’s against my immediate desires for an array of reasons, and these are desires that control a domain I have a claim to sovereignty over – my person. For the simple reason that I know others do not wish to be killed, even apart from the ‘loss of future’, I have an obligation to honor others wishes, as I wish them to honor mine.

You may be right that the position Catholics take might hurt the pro-life movement somewhat. But, you see, unless I believe that the ends justify the means, I can’t misrepresent my position for benefit, not even for the benefit of babies.

I understand, and odd as it sounds, I don’t credit “cafeteria Catholics” for their choices in this matter. It’s a package deal, and what comes under the aegis of Catholic authority is… under their authority, if you grant that authority. But bringing it back to the topic of the thread, this is why you and must be ‘enemies’ of a sort, unfortunately, because you have ‘signed on to the package’. You are required to suppress your good conscience, and I will just say here that I sense a good, moral heart in you that knows that Catholic teaching is wrong, unjust and cruel, deep down. No, this is not a claim I can support with external evidence, just a sense, so feel free to discount and discard accordingly.

But if that’s the case, you are stuck. There’s no way to “slice and dice” this, and be a good, faithful Catholic. So you assent, and my guess is you treat homosexuals around you with the same kindness and respect you treat everyone else, and good on ya for doing so. But you are still a ‘soldier’ in an army commanded by forces bent on the demonization of homosexuality. Not just the discouragement of the practice of homosexual sex, but one committed to casting the basic urge, the orientation itself as an evil one.

That’s just a stance that decent folk have to speak out against. I can applaud your personal grace on this issue, but your ‘authorities’ are rotten to the core on this issue, and thoroughly incorrigible, blinded by dogma on this issue. That means that while Catholicism brings much I can applaud to the world, it brings a worldview that produces fruit like this, and for that, it should be condemned, defeated. There are other ways to produce and promote the good that resist these evils.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

I think this has to be the most hilarious justification for throwing out the rules of civil discourse in favor of rhetorical invective.

They are giving childish/stupid/disingenuous arguments and the “strong medicine” response is to mock them?

Well, insofar as identifying those arguments as “childish/stupid/disingenuous” is mocking or ridiculing, then certainly. That is, if you dismiss an argument as “childish”, see what kind of response you get. It’s “spiteful ridicule” or “flaming” perhaps (to religious people with more delicate sensibilities), or may even “ad hom” for those that want to resist it “logically”. But the bottom line is that “childish” is an assessment that discredits in a personal/social way, and well it should, when it applies. Behaving childishly in a conversation is a hostile action toward the conversation, not “wrong on the merits”, but destructive in the conduct of the conversation itself.

As I noted above, any such identification is often problematic, as calling out childishness is quite likely to kick that childishness into high gear, to exacerbate the problem.

In any case, I’m not thinking of “Neener, Neener!” here as my repsonse, if that’s what you are thinking, but a frank, direct form of ridicule: this is a ridiculous argument, and one presented in childish terms, and doesn’t deserve any more consideration than noting that.

You know what. Nevermind. There will always be tremendous gap in methodology between those who feel the need for agitation, and those who must work with far more pragmatic goals in mind.

Agreed. But there’s a lot more going on in term of dynamics in these conversations than “on the merits” pragmatic goal seeking. One of the reasons the discourse often degrades, and degrades badly is because “childishness” or “disingenuousness” is protected by the configuration of the discussion itself. That is, being a troll or a griefer isn’t really hard, and there are innumerable ways to express provocative forms of passive aggression that inevitably poison the well of discussion if left unchecked. So the provocateur can operate unchecked – childish forms of hostility and intransigence go ‘under the radar’ – and the grown ups in the room can’t say anything. If someone says “Knock it off, you’re being disingenuous, and not fooling anyone about it”, this someone becomes the problem, and here the provocateur has his goal in hand if he can count on the rest to shy away from such direct confrontation, even if its merited.

In forums where the community can ‘police itself’ – where the grown ups can tell the childish to ‘knock it off’, or to have some respect for the minds and sensibilities of others in a thoughtful conversation, the discussion holds together in terms of being interesting, on-topic and edifying all around (even if no one is moved from one side to another). In communities that suffer fools dedicated to childish arguments and antics gladly, the discourse becomes vapid, and paradoxically, plagued precisely by what the over-agressive moderation rules hoped to avoid – emotional, political, personal, ever drifitng away from thoughtful exchange on ideas and concepts, as everyone has wade through the currents of passive agression and self-indulgence that attend discussions where childishness/stupidity/disingenuousness flourishes.

-TS

 

[rwillenborg]

I guess the answer depends on what you classify comments – derision, mocking? I don’t recoil, when the arguments warrant from calling them “ridiculous”, or “asinine”, or even “stupid”. That’s derisive, I’d say. Being wrong is one thing, and a regular occurrence for the brightest and most diligence among us. But often what we find is not just a matter of error, but willful, spiteful, hostile ignorance, a form of agression expressed in ideological terms as anti-knowledge.
I’ll just chalk this up to your good fortune in hanging out in higher quality communities than I have, historically.

-TS

When people present ideas which you deem ‘stupid’ how do you know they are doing so out of hostility as you suggest? How do you discern that? Especially if this isn’t someone you know well, or someone who’s past is unknown to you, how do you know their motives for their beliefs? I’m very curious. I am a person who has trouble understanding people’s motives (hence all my questions about yours ) and so I ask alot of questions. I really find it fascinating that you are able to discern that some people are incorrect due to ‘not just a matter of error, but willful, spiteful, hostile ignorance, a form of agression expressed in ideological terms as anti-knowledge’
You’re sure they’re not just wrong? And if you are wrong, if you believe that they are being hostile and in the end they aren’t, they’re just plain wrong, did your cruelty serve any purpose?

I try to imagine what meeting you in real life would be like.
I hold some very odd beliefs, TS. The foundation for those beliefs was a singular event that happened fifteen years ago with a group of people who are all dead or lost to drugs by now. I’ve never spoken of that event to anyone. Mostly, I fear the ridicule that would surely result. I am sure if I were to tell you those beliefs, you would ridicule them. And, I would expect, you would come to the same conclusion about me as you do others - that this isn’t just a matter of error, but of hostile ignorance. I would never correct you. I think what you are trying to suggest is that mocking someone’s beliefs is more intellectually genuine than challenging them. But how is creating an environment that is hostile to the truth bring about a more intellectually genuine conversation?

Perhaps, as you suggested, I do hang out in higher quality circles than you do. But, TS, if the people you hang around with are so deserving of your derision, maybe you should hang out with different people? I’m just sayin. It’s a big world and a short life. Why spend time with people you clearly hold some ill-will towards?

Most of the people in my life are nuts, by the way. My husband won’t allow any mirrors in the house because as he says, ‘Everyone knows evil spirits come through those at night and steal your soul’. Ayup. And I MARRIED that man. Like, made a conscious choice to LIVE IN A HOUSE WITHOUT MIRRORS FOREVER. (The bad news is, if HE should be ridiculed for this belief, where does that leave me? I mean, seriously, that man was BORN crazy, I picked crazy.) Should I ridicule him?
There’s my friend Mario. I spent over an hour last week explaining to him that he is ACTUALLY 32 years old, not 31. I admit, in the end, he was quite sad, having lost a year of his life in the short span on an hour, but I can’t say that I mocked him for it. I don’t think he deserved to be mocked. He just had bad math. Very, very bad math. Should I ridicule him?
There’s Carrie. She thinks that a fairy dies every time someone says they’re not real. It makes her cry. What can I say, she’s a very sensitive soul. Should I ridicule her?
And you talked about racism. I find that interesting, seeing as one of my nearest and dearest friends is Skinhead Dave. He’s, well, a skinhead. The Jews and Blacks are destroying the world blah blah blah. He’ll tell you ALL about it. Catholics, too, if you really get him going Blatant racism. I mean, he wears a swastika for goodness sake, the man’s not playing around. Should I ridicule him?

Perhaps I am just being willfully ignorant. But I wonder if someone brutal honesty is more brutal than honest.

 

[Touchstone]

When people present ideas which you deem ‘stupid’ how do you know they are doing so out of hostility as you suggest?

Often times, and especially in new situations, you don’t. Many people just are mistaken or ignorant in an honest or benign way. But when you track with people on forums or lists, and they are repeatedly given ample and clear information by way of correction or information, there is either a learning disability at work, or some bad will. And while I’m sure learning/attention problems do occasionally come into play, it’s quite common to watch such posters demonstrate via their posts that they are plenty capable of learning and assimilating new information when they want to. They just show they do not want to, and are willfully ignorant in a belligerent way, or worse – just plain lying about what they understand because its problematic for their views to acknowledge it.

How do you discern that? Especially if this isn’t someone you know well, or someone who’s past is unknown to you, how do you know their motives for their beliefs? I’m very curious. I am a person who has trouble understanding people’s motives (hence all my questions about yours ) and so I ask alot of questions. I really find it fascinating that you are able to discern that some people are incorrect due to ‘not just a matter of error, but willful, spiteful, hostile ignorance, a form of agression expressed in ideological terms as anti-knowledge’

I think this is addressed in my paragraph above. Like I said, the evidence paints the picture, and it’s not hard to discount “learning disabilities” over time when you can see these individuals showing their mental process in topics that don’t represent problems for their beliefs or political goals.

For example, one a list I co-manage, there is one particular member who has a real hang up about radiometric dating, and he brings up the SAME ridiculous points, time after time, crazy stuff about Carbon dating being falsified because it dates a just-killed elephant or other animal at 25,000 years old, which isn’t supported as a description of the case he links to in the first place, and even “fixed” does nothing more than highlight the limitations of C-14 dating – it’s not supposed to work on an animal freshly killed.

It’s not the error of this itself that’s offensive – we see this kind of nonsense regularly, as this is what the more extreme young earth creation apologists regularly put out, and this its what the faithful in so many fundamentalist churches faithfully accept as gospel. But this guy has been corrected, time and again, dozens of times now, inundated with helpful links, explanations and citations to the relevant science to help him out.

But – and it’s come up again this week – that complaint is apparently just polemical tool which he has no interesting in making sure is accurate or responsible. It’s just useful, and if it’s a lie, well so be it. He doesn’t want to know better, apparently. Good Christians just know that carbon dating is a Satanic lie.

You’re sure they’re not just wrong? And if you are wrong, if you believe that they are being hostile and in the end they aren’t, they’re just plain wrong, did your cruelty serve any purpose?

Well, I’m a free speech guy, so people like I described above get to remain in the discussion a lot longer than they do elsewhere, but even so, as the data piles up on their modus operandus, we provide yet another correction when he lobs these crazy arguments into the conversation, and a link to a post that chronicles his intransigence, so people who care can see the pattern of his hostile, ridicule-deserving behavior for themselves.

And of course, in cases where I/we jump the gun, or are mistaken about the motives/capabilities of the person in question, that’s an injustice, and something that reflects poorly on me, when it happens.

I try to imagine what meeting you in real life would be like.

I’m told its a gratifying experience. Just don’t be persistent in trying to BS me. Avoid that, and engaged minds and stories over a good, tall glass of Guiness is a recipe for an evening well spent!

-TS