A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy. *** If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value? *** If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic? *** Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
I'll Be Offline Until 12-10-16
But I WILL be back. See you Then.
10 comments:
Anonymous
said...
OK. Hope you look at the e-mail that I sent you when you get back. Some certain troll is demonizing you on his site again (I think that Hugo Pelland commented about you on there).
Stan, pardon the intrusion, I know you don't want me to comment here, and I respect that, so feel free to remove it... But hopefully JB and yourself will first read the comment, as my name was spelled out and I thus feel like it's just normal to reply back. I do read the blog pretty much daily, as usual, as it gives insight into a worldview that I am otherwise seldom exposed to.
Yes, Stan's name came up on im-skeptical's blog; just like I noticed my name came up here, accompanied by insults on my rationality instead of argumentation... But no, there is no 'demonizing' going on over at im-skeptical's blog. We disagree strongly with Stan, and others, on certain topics and that is what is being discussed over there. I did point out some of Stan's blog posts and a couple of YouTube videos, which are available publicly, for anyone to get more context. Nothing new. These are simply in the context of exchanges of ideas, which Stan refuses to take part in for various reasons. Anyone is welcomed to participate over there, as far as I know, unlike here...
Regarding trolls, I did not see any evidence of anyone trying to disrupt on purpose, rather than engage. And that's a good thing; I have always been all for moderating comments precisely to avoid that kind of disruption. Quite a few folks have commented on im-skeptical blog over the last few weeks and I did not see anyone raising concerns about trolls. I wonder why you think so JB? What's ironic is that you don't seem to engage much, and rather prefer to just point out to others what is being said on other platforms. Basically, it seems to me that you are attempting to get people riled up instead of actually engaging in discussions. It's up to you, but it certainly does not make you look like someone who actually cares.
Stan, safe travels, vacation, or whatever you are doing for the next few days.
Hugo, here's the thing: Skeppy has been a nuisance on several blogs (Feser, Dangerous Idea, etc...). He acts like he is the king of science, and he seems to make snarky remarks about God from time to time.
Heck, on Feser's blog, Martin (a former poster on this site) was annoyed earlier this year when IMS started posting on Ed's blog (check the comments of this entry out):
JB, I have mentioned before that I don't like im-skeptical's style much, on his blog actually, and we simply agree to disagree on how we should approach online discussions. At the same time, I have never seen him write anything that warrant the label 'nuisance', and I would be willing to be proven wrong as I know you will disagree; but my experience has been that blog owners tend to be really intolerant of opposing views, especially when it relates to the Atheism-Theism debate.
On Dangerous Idea for instance, which I did read and interacted with on a few occasions, I noticed many Theists such as Crude, Illion, or grodriges (wrong spelling for these last 2 I am sure) be complete assholes to others, for no good reason. Yet, because other Theists are on the same page as them, they get an almost free pass to say whatever they want in whatever way they want. They insult instead of engaging and boast of their superiority, in their own eyes, just because they the Theists on a Theist platform. Grodriges was better once, when I actually remained calm in my discussion with him, as I always try to do, and he eventually admitted that he jumped to conclusions and apologize for his tone.
The same thing applies to im-skeptical. He fully admits that he sometimes like to use strong language just to trigger a reaction, and that it's his way to reply back to others who do the same. I think it just creates a vicious circle of useless noise around the topics of interests, but the point is that he is not worse, nor better, than the average online writer. I would also argue that since he has started his blog, after being banned multiple times as you pointed, he did improve his tone. Basically, it seems to support my point that the main reason why you see him as a nuisance is actually because others, on "your side", are also a nuisance and he merely replies to them. It's just a normal reaction when faced with loud voices, especially when there are many. I prefer to just ignore, as most people seem to do I believe, but im-skeptical engages...
Martin is an interesting example. I know him very well and had some interesting conversations, a few years ago already. But you know what he did? He erased every single thing I had written on his blog, saying it was some non-thinkery devoid of any rationality and meaning. But let's think about this for a second... why would someone who thinks they are right remove evidence of them being right? In reality, what happened is that we discussed 3 logical arguments and I pointed out a fatal flaw in 2 of these, which Martin conceded, but when it got to the 3rd, he just couldn't take it anymore and quit the conversation. No abuse from my part, no insults, no distraction, just trying to engage because it's interesting... But Martin got all emotional, it seems, and thus preferred to remove the entire threads. I don't really care, it was informative on a personal level in any case, but it's obvious that if Martin thought he was right and proud of his arguments, he would have let them up... So if im-skeptical really annoyed Martin, it's probably not as simple as just im-skeptical being annoying on purpose. People get really uncomfortable when their positions are challenged, and religious positions are the toughest to discuss as most people believers who care enough to be vocal about their beliefs are also the ones who are the most attached to them. It's a part of who they are and they thus find it very difficult to detach the attacks on their arguments from attacks on their person.
At the end of the day, my main point here is that it's silly to call each other names, or mark others as irrational, or extrapolate meaning from a limited set of one's positions. We are all people who deserve some form of respect, as human beings, and we should engage each other to figure out what we agree on, or not, and why. It doesn't mean that we should respect each other's positions, not at all, but we owe it to ourselves to at least consider the points of views of others. We are unfortunately at a point right now where people are more divided than ever, especially here in the USA, and social media can blame in large part for that. We all live in silos of information and if we don't try to pro-actively talk to each other, we cannot ever work together on things we agree on, as we'll just focus on what we disagree on.
Plus... I realize that this had nothing to do with my previous comment so I am not sure why you mentioned im-skeptical actually, nor why I wrote that long comment. I hope you and Stan don't mind ;) But actually, I would avoid discussing it more out of respect for Stan, who is not even here right now...
Really? That's your answer to that? "My main point here is that it's silly to call each other names, or mark others as irrational, or extrapolate meaning from a limited set of one's positions. We are all people who deserve some form of respect, as human beings, and we should engage each other to figure out what we agree on, or not, and why."
Hugo, Your only actual contribution here was in the form of personal attack. So your current self-righteous pontification regarding respect for others is non-coherent at best, and self-serving at its base.
You defend a non-objective, Atheist-by-definition, non-science by providing Appeals To Authority Fallacies, and you never stopped doing that even after you were booted from here for failing to accept that your fallacious reasoning was fallcious. You consistently defined contrary input as “failure to understand evolution” rather than to falsify the contrary input. That’s because you could not empirically falsify that contrary input any more than the cult of evolution’s story-telling can be falsified empirically. And that’s because of evolution’s non-empirical position. If my position were, “Yes! Oh YES! Evolution is the ultimate explanation for the existence of everything, the perfect unifying theory of Atheism; and Darwin is to be revered as God-On-Earth!” then you would have granted me acceptability, and moved on to conquer others who are still intellectually benighted, those who still believe in objective determination of replicable physical facts before claiming that an [untestable] claim is Truth Inviolate [because: Authority].
Now you take advantage of my absence to comment on a blog where you have been banned for your failure to accept responsibility for your own fallacies. That is dishonest. But it fits perfectly with your intellectual process.
In Martin's case, this is what he said about Hugo:
Hugo would do things like agree with the ontological argument and its conclusion (that "God is imaginary" is a contradictory statement), but then not agree with the conclusion. It was ridiculous. Like the pigeon playing chess meme. And he went on and on and on and on and on for fifty comments. I got fed up because I saw it as just clutter for my nice clean blog so I wiped everything out.
10 comments:
OK. Hope you look at the e-mail that I sent you when you get back. Some certain troll is demonizing you on his site again (I think that Hugo Pelland commented about you on there).
Stan, pardon the intrusion, I know you don't want me to comment here, and I respect that, so feel free to remove it... But hopefully JB and yourself will first read the comment, as my name was spelled out and I thus feel like it's just normal to reply back. I do read the blog pretty much daily, as usual, as it gives insight into a worldview that I am otherwise seldom exposed to.
Yes, Stan's name came up on im-skeptical's blog; just like I noticed my name came up here, accompanied by insults on my rationality instead of argumentation... But no, there is no 'demonizing' going on over at im-skeptical's blog. We disagree strongly with Stan, and others, on certain topics and that is what is being discussed over there. I did point out some of Stan's blog posts and a couple of YouTube videos, which are available publicly, for anyone to get more context. Nothing new. These are simply in the context of exchanges of ideas, which Stan refuses to take part in for various reasons. Anyone is welcomed to participate over there, as far as I know, unlike here...
Regarding trolls, I did not see any evidence of anyone trying to disrupt on purpose, rather than engage. And that's a good thing; I have always been all for moderating comments precisely to avoid that kind of disruption. Quite a few folks have commented on im-skeptical blog over the last few weeks and I did not see anyone raising concerns about trolls. I wonder why you think so JB? What's ironic is that you don't seem to engage much, and rather prefer to just point out to others what is being said on other platforms. Basically, it seems to me that you are attempting to get people riled up instead of actually engaging in discussions. It's up to you, but it certainly does not make you look like someone who actually cares.
Stan, safe travels, vacation, or whatever you are doing for the next few days.
Cheers
Hugo, here's the thing: Skeppy has been a nuisance on several blogs (Feser, Dangerous Idea, etc...). He acts like he is the king of science, and he seems to make snarky remarks about God from time to time.
Heck, on Feser's blog, Martin (a former poster on this site) was annoyed earlier this year when IMS started posting on Ed's blog (check the comments of this entry out):
Ed Feser: Debased Coynage
Also, he insulted Joe Hinman's book without reading it, and Joe banned him from his sites for a while.
JB, I have mentioned before that I don't like im-skeptical's style much, on his blog actually, and we simply agree to disagree on how we should approach online discussions. At the same time, I have never seen him write anything that warrant the label 'nuisance', and I would be willing to be proven wrong as I know you will disagree; but my experience has been that blog owners tend to be really intolerant of opposing views, especially when it relates to the Atheism-Theism debate.
On Dangerous Idea for instance, which I did read and interacted with on a few occasions, I noticed many Theists such as Crude, Illion, or grodriges (wrong spelling for these last 2 I am sure) be complete assholes to others, for no good reason. Yet, because other Theists are on the same page as them, they get an almost free pass to say whatever they want in whatever way they want. They insult instead of engaging and boast of their superiority, in their own eyes, just because they the Theists on a Theist platform. Grodriges was better once, when I actually remained calm in my discussion with him, as I always try to do, and he eventually admitted that he jumped to conclusions and apologize for his tone.
The same thing applies to im-skeptical. He fully admits that he sometimes like to use strong language just to trigger a reaction, and that it's his way to reply back to others who do the same. I think it just creates a vicious circle of useless noise around the topics of interests, but the point is that he is not worse, nor better, than the average online writer. I would also argue that since he has started his blog, after being banned multiple times as you pointed, he did improve his tone. Basically, it seems to support my point that the main reason why you see him as a nuisance is actually because others, on "your side", are also a nuisance and he merely replies to them. It's just a normal reaction when faced with loud voices, especially when there are many. I prefer to just ignore, as most people seem to do I believe, but im-skeptical engages...
Martin is an interesting example. I know him very well and had some interesting conversations, a few years ago already. But you know what he did? He erased every single thing I had written on his blog, saying it was some non-thinkery devoid of any rationality and meaning. But let's think about this for a second... why would someone who thinks they are right remove evidence of them being right? In reality, what happened is that we discussed 3 logical arguments and I pointed out a fatal flaw in 2 of these, which Martin conceded, but when it got to the 3rd, he just couldn't take it anymore and quit the conversation. No abuse from my part, no insults, no distraction, just trying to engage because it's interesting... But Martin got all emotional, it seems, and thus preferred to remove the entire threads. I don't really care, it was informative on a personal level in any case, but it's obvious that if Martin thought he was right and proud of his arguments, he would have let them up... So if im-skeptical really annoyed Martin, it's probably not as simple as just im-skeptical being annoying on purpose. People get really uncomfortable when their positions are challenged, and religious positions are the toughest to discuss as most people believers who care enough to be vocal about their beliefs are also the ones who are the most attached to them. It's a part of who they are and they thus find it very difficult to detach the attacks on their arguments from attacks on their person.
At the end of the day, my main point here is that it's silly to call each other names, or mark others as irrational, or extrapolate meaning from a limited set of one's positions. We are all people who deserve some form of respect, as human beings, and we should engage each other to figure out what we agree on, or not, and why. It doesn't mean that we should respect each other's positions, not at all, but we owe it to ourselves to at least consider the points of views of others. We are unfortunately at a point right now where people are more divided than ever, especially here in the USA, and social media can blame in large part for that. We all live in silos of information and if we don't try to pro-actively talk to each other, we cannot ever work together on things we agree on, as we'll just focus on what we disagree on.
Plus... I realize that this had nothing to do with my previous comment so I am not sure why you mentioned im-skeptical actually, nor why I wrote that long comment. I hope you and Stan don't mind ;)
But actually, I would avoid discussing it more out of respect for Stan, who is not even here right now...
Oh, Hugo. You're the very soul of rational, commonsense discourse. Then you attempt to follow a logical argument and it all just... goes to pieces.
Hugo, how 'bout you just tiptoe away and don't come back until the New Year? New Year 2018?
Really? That's your answer to that?
"My main point here is that it's silly to call each other names, or mark others as irrational, or extrapolate meaning from a limited set of one's positions. We are all people who deserve some form of respect, as human beings, and we should engage each other to figure out what we agree on, or not, and why."
Ok Steven. Thanks, very insightful.
Hugo,
Your only actual contribution here was in the form of personal attack. So your current self-righteous pontification regarding respect for others is non-coherent at best, and self-serving at its base.
You defend a non-objective, Atheist-by-definition, non-science by providing Appeals To Authority Fallacies, and you never stopped doing that even after you were booted from here for failing to accept that your fallacious reasoning was fallcious. You consistently defined contrary input as “failure to understand evolution” rather than to falsify the contrary input. That’s because you could not empirically falsify that contrary input any more than the cult of evolution’s story-telling can be falsified empirically. And that’s because of evolution’s non-empirical position. If my position were, “Yes! Oh YES! Evolution is the ultimate explanation for the existence of everything, the perfect unifying theory of Atheism; and Darwin is to be revered as God-On-Earth!” then you would have granted me acceptability, and moved on to conquer others who are still intellectually benighted, those who still believe in objective determination of replicable physical facts before claiming that an [untestable] claim is Truth Inviolate [because: Authority].
Now you take advantage of my absence to comment on a blog where you have been banned for your failure to accept responsibility for your own fallacies. That is dishonest. But it fits perfectly with your intellectual process.
I allowed you to continue here far too long.
You are still banned from commenting here.
Moderation is ON.
In Martin's case, this is what he said about Hugo:
Hugo would do things like agree with the ontological argument and its conclusion (that "God is imaginary" is a contradictory statement), but then not agree with the conclusion. It was ridiculous. Like the pigeon playing chess meme. And he went on and on and on and on and on for fifty comments. I got fed up because I saw it as just clutter for my nice clean blog so I wiped everything out.
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