IGX

I enjoy our little talks though.

You wholly misconstrue the nature of disbelief. You're selling, I'm not buying. Mine is a negative posture...you're the one asserting something.

I do not say any such thing as sky pixies must not exist because you cannot prove it. I say, rather, I do not believe they exist because there is not a lick of compelling evidence for them and the absence of evidence seems a ridiculous premise on which to build a life.

1. Sky pixies don’t exist.
2. Sky pixies do exist.
3. Sky pixies may exist, but sufficient evidence does not exist to make a determination.
4. The existence of sky pixies in unknowable.

You can just as easily say the universe is a large piece of fruit stripe gum and run that through your matrix...but that's silly. A better question is not if God exists it's why God in the first place..Why not just Satan and no god? Why not an advanced alien race tinkering with genetics? why is it it always an ancestor/creator being/all knowing force of love and goodness? The answers don't seem point anywhere but right back at the human brain..hence, no compelling evidence of magic means...I do not believe in magic.


Again, my life is unchanged whether I believe or not. Your life is the one wrapped round the axle of belief. I look at the evidence and shrug, you look for holes in the evidence and pray.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:You wholly misconstrue the nature of disbelief. You're selling, I'm not buying. Mine is a negative posture...you're the one asserting something.

I do not say any such thing as sky pixies must not exist because you cannot prove it. I say, rather, I do not believe they exist because there is not a lick of compelling evidence for them and the absence of evidence seems a ridiculous premise on which to build a life.

1. Sky pixies don’t exist.
2. Sky pixies do exist.
3. Sky pixies may exist, but sufficient evidence does not exist to make a determination.
4. The existence of sky pixies in unknowable.

You can just as easily say the universe is a large piece of fruit stripe gum and run that through your matrix...but that's silly. A better question is not if God exists it's why God in the first place..Why not just Satan and no god? Why not an advanced alien race tinkering with genetics? why is it it always an ancestor/creator being/all knowing force of love and goodness? The answers don't seem point anywhere but right back at the human brain..hence, no compelling evidence of magic means...I do not believe in magic.


Again, my life is unchanged whether I believe or not. Your life is the one wrapped round the axle of belief. I look at the evidence and shrug, you look for holes in the evidence and pray.

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

Beautifully done, BD.

Of course, Fat Cat used a Latin phrase in his argument, which carries a lot of weight in such matters. Any chance you could squeeze in a few verses of classical Greek?

οὐκ ἔστι λέουσι καὶ ἀνδράσιν ὅρκια πιστά

Didn't him and his brother form a moderately successful hair metal band in the 80s?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:You wholly misconstrue the nature of disbelief. You're selling, I'm not buying. Mine is a negative posture...you're the one asserting something.

I do not say any such thing as sky pixies must not exist because you cannot prove it. I say, rather, I do not believe they exist because there is not a lick of compelling evidence for them and the absence of evidence seems a ridiculous premise on which to build a life.

1. Sky pixies don’t exist.
2. Sky pixies do exist.
3. Sky pixies may exist, but sufficient evidence does not exist to make a determination.
4. The existence of sky pixies in unknowable.

You can just as easily say the universe is a large piece of fruit stripe gum and run that through your matrix...but that's silly. A better question is not if God exists it's why God in the first place..Why not just Satan and no god? Why not an advanced alien race tinkering with genetics? why is it it always an ancestor/creator being/all knowing force of love and goodness? The answers don't seem point anywhere but right back at the human brain..hence, no compelling evidence of magic means...I do not believe in magic.


Again, my life is unchanged whether I believe or not. Your life is the one wrapped round the axle of belief. I look at the evidence and shrug, you look for holes in the evidence and pray.

This is not a cogent argument. For a champion of reason you have a hard time constructing a reasonable position.

Fat Cat wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:You wholly misconstrue the nature of disbelief. You're selling, I'm not buying. Mine is a negative posture...you're the one asserting something.

I do not say any such thing as sky pixies must not exist because you cannot prove it. I say, rather, I do not believe they exist because there is not a lick of compelling evidence for them and the absence of evidence seems a ridiculous premise on which to build a life.

1. Sky pixies don’t exist.
2. Sky pixies do exist.
3. Sky pixies may exist, but sufficient evidence does not exist to make a determination.
4. The existence of sky pixies in unknowable.

You can just as easily say the universe is a large piece of fruit stripe gum and run that through your matrix...but that's silly. A better question is not if God exists it's why God in the first place..Why not just Satan and no god? Why not an advanced alien race tinkering with genetics? why is it it always an ancestor/creator being/all knowing force of love and goodness? The answers don't seem point anywhere but right back at the human brain..hence, no compelling evidence of magic means...I do not believe in magic.


Again, my life is unchanged whether I believe or not. Your life is the one wrapped round the axle of belief. I look at the evidence and shrug, you look for holes in the evidence and pray.

This is not a cogent argument. For a champion of reason you have a hard time constructing a reasonable position.

Please elaborate on the flaws, Fattus Cattus.

At the root of Bldldddidrrrwwwg's bewilderment is this statement:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Not Believing in fairies, river spirits and unicorns doesn't make anyone religious no matter how strident they are in their opinions.

That is, not believing is an absence of belief, not the antithesis to a theistic position. BD correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's what you are saying. Assuming I've characterized it correctly, I can understand and am sympathetic to that line of thinking, but I reject it as a flawed argument.

Let's remove the emotion-laden field of religion an deal with formal epistemology. To say, "I do not believe in X" is adopting a formal position. Why? Because BD is not claiming to be omniscient, or to have irrefutable evidence, or even that X is unknowable. What he's saying is that he views the probability field of X to be so small as to be effectively meaningless. He does not believe X, he does not have all the facts about X, he does not posit that X is unknowable, but still he presumes to form a judgment based on his assessment of its likelihood. And based on very, very little. How can this be said to be anything other than a position? A formal belief? And based on faith in his own capacity to judge, no less.

Looks like Turd hacked your account, Mak

That was cruel.

Bucket seems to have a handle on FC's recent downturn.

You do not apply the same degree of skepticism to your own beliefs that you do to those of others.

Fat Cat wrote:You do not apply the same degree of skepticism to your own beliefs that you do to those of others.

Poor assumption on your part... bold in it's condescension coming from one who chose faith over skepticism.

I didn't mean it in a condescending way, I mean it in a practical way. You couldn't possibly, nor could anyone.

Fat Cat wrote:You do not apply the same degree of skepticism to your own beliefs that you do to those of others.

Interesting. Remind's me of the heading to the Catholic Herald's obituary to Christopher Hitchens:

A courageous writer who questioned everything – except his atheism

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/comment ... s-atheism/

Fat Cat wrote:I didn't mean it in a condescending way, I mean it in a practical way. You couldn't possibly, nor could anyone.

Well I stand corrected. On this point we agree.

Hey look tits!

Fat Cat wrote:Hey look tits!

I stand corrected twice now...

Tits..compelling evidence of the divine

do you see now?

Yes, I'm drunk wrote:

Fat Cat wrote:You do not apply the same degree of skepticism to your own beliefs that you do to those of others.

Interesting. Remind's me of the heading to the Catholic Herald's obituary to Christopher Hitchens:

A courageous writer who questioned everything – except his atheism

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/comment ... s-atheism/

Nice obit. I always had an issue with that perspective though-- Hitch was a Trotskyite who lost faith. IMO he was searching for truth (which makes him in an important sense a religious man); and he was brilliant when he skewered those who took shortcuts. Maybe that was why religious people seemed to understand him best-- kind of like how Chesterton understood Shaw better than the other socialists did.

Excellent insight. Now, if I spend the summer figuring out who Trotsky, Chesterton, and Shaw were...

really? Nobody liked the Dokken joke?

screw you guys

BucketHead wrote:Excellent insight. Now, if I spend the summer figuring out who Trotsky, Chesterton, and Shaw were...

Word, son.

Proto, it went right by me. I am so ashamed. I had a girlfriend in the 80s who was obsessed with George Lynch so I really should have done better.