For Moonwood and KTR

[Dr Mundo]

Yes and you can stipulate until you are blue in the face. Dr. Mundo insists that truth can only be known through demonstration. I have tried to argue against this. He does not accept the arguments as valid but the matter cannot be settled by stipulation; it has to be argued. Again there is that parental tone.

Just to clarify, I am not clamming that I know for certain that all truth claims can only be known through demonstration, but that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support. Those claims that we don't have a way to validate or even falsify, I would be extremely cautious with. Especially when they are claimed to be the most important set of claims in all of existence.

I absolutely love talking about these things with you guys, and we can continue to hash this out in the demonstration thread if there are still some misunderstandings in my position.

Does this help you understand my position MW? Or are you still unclear?

[mitchellmckain]

Mitch, I think you are right that this is to do with the way you were raised. I wonder just how liberal your parents really were

It is difficult to imagine parents that were more liberal. Peace marches, free love, communist activism, communes, pot smoking (though not excessive) are some of the highlights. Except... that they did stay out of jail and managed to hold down jobs most of their life, so I suppose that defines some limits to their liberalism.

because what I hear from you is the voice of a critical parent that when challenged slips over into that of a petulant child and I think I am hearing echoes of conversations actual or internal that went on in your childhood home.

I have no idea where you are getting such garbage. Nowhere from anything remotely resembling reality. THAT is for sure! Perhaps I should put the shoe on the other foot and try to psychoanalyse you and make assumptions about relationships with YOUR parents to see where this comment of YOURS came from?

But to give you much more benefit of the doubt than you have given me, I would suggest that this is the same kind of stupidity that calls people from another culture ignorant and barbarous because it is based on some stupid set of rules that they think is SO important when it is really a bunch of arbitrary made up nonsense. You know like Westerners looking a Africans running around without clothes and saying that they are no different from animals, or looking at Indians eating with their hands and saying they have no manners. No I don't know the stupid rules by which you go around judging everyone and frankly I don't care to.

But no doubt these dumb rules of yours will come barging in again to call this petulant, beastly, childish, barbaric, unmannered, or whatever when the plain fact is that when you cut out all this subjective culturally relative nonsense, the only question of real importance is simply whether what I am saying is true or not. No doubt that no matter how offensive what you just said obviously is, you will insist that what you have said is acceptable while what I have said is not. I REALLY don't understand how people do such a thing with a straight face and functional brain, but apparently people can, because I see them doing it all the time.

I think the bewilderment you are expressing is genuine and perhaps you never really learned to relate to other people on a feeling level, or perhaps you can do this in life but on this site these aspects of your total make-up come over more strongly.

Excuse me! No I guess I never learned to relate to YOUR kind of "people" and what you choose to call "a feeling level" but yeah I do just fine in MY life with the people that I know. I am quite sure that all kinds of things come out in sites like this, including the way that some people like to assme that something is wrong with people who are different from them. No offense, but frankly, among the people I know and the culture I was raised in, that is just unbelievably arrogant, ignorant and offensive.

What Mitch and I both agree on is that arguments of this type are not the main reason why we believe what we do.

Yes and no. Often they do somewhat describe some of the subjective reasons why people believe. But over and over again the principle I reason that I hear is the difference that it has made in peoples lives. Atheists can cry and scream that there is no objective evidence there all they want and it will be utterly meaningless to them, because it is their life they have to live and not those of these other people. Now my reasons for belief are quite different to be sure, but however much their reality may not be mine, I find the dismissal of their lives and reality to be as unacceptable as the dismissal of the reasoning and honest perception of the many atheists I have known.

[Keep The Reason]

Peace marches, free love, communist activism, communes, pot smoking (though not excessive) are some of the highlights. Except... that they did stay out of jail and managed to hold down jobs most of their life, so I suppose that defines some limits to their liberalism.

Wow, they sound terrible! Marching for peace? The nerve of them! Communal living, like Jesus and the apostles? Horrors of horrors! I guess that free love thing might be a bit kinky for you--- all that dirty, dirty sex. Maybe a little Eddy Pus Wrecks going on there? And some pot smoking (but not enough to cost them their jobs-which-you-admit-they-were-able-to-hold-down-for-most-of-their-lives). The terrible, terrible pain you've endured!

I have no idea where you are getting such garbage. Nowhere from anything remotely resembling reality. THAT is for sure! Perhaps I should put the shoe on the other foot and try to psychoanalyse you and make assumptions about relationships with YOUR parents to see where this comment of YOUR came from?

You are the one who keeps bringing up your "craven" upbringing as if it's an excuse for all your biases and intolerances, as an instant example, right here:

Give them another shot at what? Doing that which we repeatedly tell him that they can never do? I don't even understand "harsh" and dismissive. That it is the truth seems like the end of it to me. I don't even see the relevance that you think it is "harsh" and "dismissive". Shall we pretend that something is not the truth because people might think the truth is harsh or dismissive? I don't understand that, AND I certainly don't think that most atheist would care that what they declare is harsh and dismissive, ONLY that it is the truth as they understand it. Please remember that this is the way that I was raised, after all.

MtH doesn't wave his upbringing around like some sob story we have to grant him "extra understanding" about (nor do any of us do this). So you're way off base suggesting that his psychoanalyzing you is off limits and maybe you should do the same in return to him. He doesn't invite it like you do because he doesn't bring his upbringing and his parents and what not up at all. Whereas you bring it up over and over and you have the gall to do it in such a way that we have to grant you some special dispensation. Yeah, right. You of all people deserve that!

For the record I couldn't give a damn how you were raised. Whatever it is that makes you into what you are is whatever it is that made you into what you are. Frankly, I'd recommend some therapy for this obsessive anger over your mom and dad, rather than spending all that time in that creepy little church you reside in, and if you have been to therapy, you might need more because you keep raising this specter over and over like it's the flag of your island nation. You've offered the illustration of a weak little child who can't overcome what his parents did to him, and it seems to inform your every move.

This is not just assumption on my part-- you share this stuff every third or fourth post -- hell, the other day you posted about being with your sister who is more like them and even that had tinges of this psychology that holds you in thrall -- to the point where I feel embarassed for you.

Not that you care about my opinion but shit, man-- get OVER it! Suck it up and grow up. And if you aren't going to get over it, stop whining about it and using it as an excuse for your antisocial behavior. That dog not only don't hunt, it ain't even a dog.

[Aaron]

MtH doesn't wave his upbringing around like some sob story we have to grant him "extra understanding" about (nor do any of us do this). So you're way off base suggesting that his psychoanalyzing you is off limits and maybe you should do the same in return to him. He doesn't invite it like you do because he doesn't bring his upbringing and his parents and what not up at all. Whereas you bring it up over and over and you have the gall to do it in such a way that we have to grant you some special dispensation. Yeah, right. You of all people deserve that!

Well in Mitch's defense he only brings it up when he's accused of being short or rude. It seems all he's saying is that is how people are where he comes from, just like Native Americans ate with their hands, they weren't barbaric in their culture, that's just how they did it.

I've let Mitch know when I wished he would have been gentler and not used swear words, but at the same time I can very well have understanding for people who weren't raised in a home like I was. Not everybody starts from the same spot, as you are well aware.

But I do think that when someone becomes a Christian and Jesus takes up residence inside of them they will soon begin to show his characteristics, it might take some time and some people might have more challenges to face than others, but if Christ is really living in I them I believe Christ will be shown. And Mitch hopefully you don't take this the wrong way, and maybe its just me, but I've noticed that you've become a lot more gentle in your responses, so thanks.

[Dr Mundo]

Yes and you can stipulate until you are blue in the face. Dr. Mundo insists that truth can only be known through demonstration. I have tried to argue against this. He does not accept the arguments as valid but the matter cannot be settled by stipulation; it has to be argued. Again there is that parental tone.

Just to clarify, I am not clamming that I know for certain that all truth claims can only be known through demonstration, but that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support. Those claims that we don't have a way to validate or even falsify, I would be extremely cautious with. Especially when they are claimed to be the most important set of claims in all of existence.

I absolutely love talking about these things with you guys, and we can continue to hash this out in the demonstration thread if there are still some misunderstandings in my position.

Does this help you understand my position MW? Or are you still unclear?[/quote]

[Moonwood the Hare]

Yeah I'm not a fan of Descartes.

When you say you are not a fan do you mean you can see flaws in some of his arguments or do you mean he was a poor thinker. If the former I agree if the latter I disagree. Specifically can you see problems with his concepts of intuition and self evident and if so what are they?

I think it is demonstrable. I don't have to experience your consciousness in order to demonstrate your existence. How you define existence and how you define "You" will set this up to be an easy thing to demonstrate. If by exist you mean able to manifest itself in reality and physically affect the surroundings, and if you by your own capacities chose to interact with the world around you then we can measure the impact you have on it. We can measure your body heat given off, we can take your mass and come up with consistent numbers, we can watch you take actions and record them to study or examine later. So long as you are independent of the person examining the actions or physical attributes that make you up, we can establish that you exist.

If you are going to demonstrate something I would have thought the demonstration would have to be a kind that could not be accounted for in another way. So I am talking about the demonstration of the existence of a mind and you say you can measure mass and body heat but these are things that do not need a mind to account for them. I think there are possible ways forward with this for example you can say wherever I have behavious of a certain type I am going to say that I have a mind so that mind just becomes a name for a certain set of observable behaviours or perhaps for an unknown entity that produces such behaviours. Then you can think of mind as either something inferred or as a convention we use to talk about a way humans behave.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Mitch, I think you are right that this is to do with the way you were raised. I wonder just how liberal your parents really were

It is difficult to imagine parents that were more liberal. Peace marches, free love, communist activism, communes, pot smoking (though not excessive) are some of the highlights. Except... that they did stay out of jail and managed to hold down jobs most of their life, so I suppose that defines some limits to their liberalism.

because what I hear from you is the voice of a critical parent that when challenged slips over into that of a petulant child and I think I am hearing echoes of conversations actual or internal that went on in your childhood home.

I have no idea where you are getting such garbage. Nowhere from anything remotely resembling reality. THAT is for sure! Perhaps I should put the shoe on the other foot and try to psychoanalyse you and make assumptions about relationships with YOUR parents to see where this comment of YOURS came from?

But to give you much more benefit of the doubt than you have given me, I would suggest that this is the same kind of stupidity that calls people from another culture ignorant and barbarous because it is based on some stupid set of rules that they think is SO important when it is really a bunch of arbitrary made up nonsense. You know like Westerners looking a Africans running around without clothes and saying that they are no different from animals, or looking at Indians eating with their hands and saying they have no manners. No I don't know the stupid rules by which you go around judging everyone and frankly I don't care to.

But no doubt these dumb rules of yours will come barging in again to call this petulant, beastly, childish, barbaric, unmannered, or whatever when the plain fact is that when you cut out all this subjective culturally relative nonsense, the only question of real importance is simply whether what I am saying is true or not. No doubt that no matter how offensive what you just said obviously is, you will insist that what you have said is acceptable while what I have said is not. I REALLY don't understand how people do such a thing with a straight face and functional brain, but apparently people can, because I see them doing it all the time.

I think the bewilderment you are expressing is genuine and perhaps you never really learned to relate to other people on a feeling level, or perhaps you can do this in life but on this site these aspects of your total make-up come over more strongly.

Excuse me! No I guess I never learned to relate to YOUR kind of "people" and what you choose to call "a feeling level" but yeah I do just fine in MY life with the people that I know. I am quite sure that all kinds of things come out in sites like this, including the way that some people like to assme that something is wrong with people who are different from them. No offense, but frankly, among the people I know and the culture I was raised in, that is just unbelievably arrogant, ignorant and offensive.

No offence taken as none was intended. Mitch you seem to be saying both that it is okay for a person to say whatever they regard as true and that some things should not be said because they are ignorant, arrogant and offensive. You also tell me this comes from the culture you were raised in which makes me think that culture may have had the same contradictory expectations. If it did that would have been quite confusing for you as a child. I can stop saying what I regard as true or I can carry on. Which would you like? If you say you don't care I'll stop.

[Moonwood the Hare]

Just to clarify, I am not clamming that I know for certain that all truth claims can only be known through demonstration, but that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support. Those claims that we don't have a way to validate or even falsify, I would be extremely cautious with. Especially when they are claimed to be the most important set of claims in all of existence.

Does this help you understand my position MW? Or are you still unclear?

Yes I understand but here's the problem. The claim that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support is itself a claim which by its very nature cannot have evidentiary support and hence a claim on which according to itself we should not put much stock.

[Keep The Reason]

Well in Mitch's defense he only brings it up when he's accused of being short or rude. It seems all he's saying is that is how people are where he comes from, just like Native Americans ate with their hands, they weren't barbaric in their culture, that's just how they did it.

I disagree. He raises it often, and not just to defend his rudeness. He can raise it all he wants, but it means it's fair game. And seriously, I believe he needs to get over it.

I've let Mitch know when I wished he would have been gentler and not used swear words, but at the same time I can very well have understanding for people who weren't raised in a home like I was. Not everybody starts from the same spot, as you are well aware.

Better yet, it should be utterly transparent what one's upbringing is in the context of a debate forum. What is its relevance?

But I do think that when someone becomes a Christian and Jesus takes up residence inside of them they will soon begin to show his characteristics,

This is one of those escape-hatch kinds of statements. It's "No True Scotsman". It seems to me that by far the majority of Christians are not exhibiting any of the nobler characteristics of this Jesus fellow (which doesn't surprise me because I consider him a mythic figure and not actually able to proxy through living human beings), so what does this say about the efficiacy of the doctrine?

it might take some time and some people might have more challenges to face than others, but if Christ is really living in I them I believe Christ will be shown. And Mitch hopefully you don't take this the wrong way, and maybe its just me, but I've noticed that you've become a lot more gentle in your responses, so thanks.

In some ways, I agree-- he is somewhat less caustic, but maybe that has more to do with people standing up to him and refusing to be intimidated by it thatn it does to believe a long-ago dead charactrer in the bible is "living" through him.

[Dr Mundo]

Just to clarify, I am not clamming that I know for certain that all truth claims can only be known through demonstration, but that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support. Those claims that we don't have a way to validate or even falsify, I would be extremely cautious with. Especially when they are claimed to be the most important set of claims in all of existence.

Does this help you understand my position MW? Or are you still unclear?

Yes I understand but here's the problem. The claim that the most reasonable position is to put the most stock on those claims for which we have evidentiary support is itself a claim which by its very nature cannot have evidentiary support and hence a claim on which according to itself we should not put much stock.

This is just not true. When we have a claim and want to examine it. We use evidence to support the claim in order to ensure that we have, at least to the best abilities we can sum up, a reasonably accurate claim. Take a look at the Chemical structure of fossil fuels. We use evidence to support the ratio of Carbon to Hydrogen in each variation. We have tons and tons of examples in which evidentiary support can give us accurate information. The abandonment of evidence in favor for "x" leads to less supported and higher probability of an inaccurate claim. That is used as evidence to support the claim that evidence supports claims far better than assumptions and guesses. If you wanted to see the chemical make up for gasoline would you use evidence supported data or guess as to what it might be, and if two different people used those two methods whos data do you suppose would represent reality more closely?

[Rian]

This is one of those escape-hatch kinds of statements. It's "No True Scotsman". It seems to me that by far the majority of Christians are not exhibiting any of the nobler characteristics of this Jesus fellow (which doesn't surprise me because I consider him a mythic figure and not actually able to proxy through living human beings), so what does this say about the efficiacy of the doctrine?

Jesus said he came for those that are sick, so it shows that that bit is true!

As far as the efficacy of the doctrine - unless you can see a person over time, you won't be able to tell from just looking at a person. The thing that is a true measure of the doctrine is if there is improvement in a person. Where they are currently at doesn't really show anything.

[mitchellmckain]

No offence taken as none was intended.

No I don't need to take any offense at all. I guess what really offends me is a double standard -- a repeated neverending insistence that something is only offensive when the other person does it and not when they do it. So if you tell me, "no offence taken or intended", then I am good.

Mitch you seem to be saying both that it is okay for a person to say whatever they regard as true and that some things should not be said because they are ignorant, arrogant and offensive.

Not at all. First of all it IS ignorant, arrogant and offensive to insist on knowledge of another person that you simply cannot have. It is why turning these discussion towards topics of personality get so ridiculous. Keeping the topic of discussion focused on the actual content of the posts makes everything so much more sensible.

You also tell me this comes from the culture you were raised in which makes me think that culture may have had the same contradictory expectations.

Yes cultures usually do have contradictory expectations that the people raised in them are usually quite blind to.

If it did that would have been quite confusing for you as a child.

Was it confusing for you?

Like EVERYONE, my childhood had both its good points and it bad points, and like everyone I am accustomed to the good things and have learned to cope with the bad things (sometimes by deciding never to subject my own children to the same thing). The result is that most would never exchange theirs for those that are different and I am certainly one of them. They wouldn't know how to cope with the problems that other people live with and would find it very difficult to live without the good things that make their life worthwhile. I believe this is a very large component of culture shock and this is not something that just happens when you go to another country. It can happen when you live or spend time in another persons house. So while my childhood circumstances might have appalled you, your childhood circumstances might very well have made me physically ill. LOL Ah yes there is a famous story about this very thing. It was called "Heidi".

I can stop saying what I regard as true or I can carry on. Which would you like? If you say you don't care I'll stop.

No I absolutely DO NOT want you to stop saying what you regard as true. But I repeat that our discussions would be far more meaningful if they stuck to reasonable topics, which do not include judgements with regards to the personality or life of the other participants.

[mitchellmckain]

Well in Mitch's defense he only brings it up when he's accused of being short or rude. It seems all he's saying is that is how people are where he comes from, just like Native Americans ate with their hands, they weren't barbaric in their culture, that's just how they did it.

That is correct. Its not a sob story AT ALL. That is just more of KTR's typical bullshit! Frankly and no offense, but I would probably rather be dead that have the childhood that many of the participants here had. The point was simple that it was different not that anybody elses was better! HA! better?! That is a REAL laugh to me! Furthermore it was a childhood where people just like all these atheists here set the standards, and so all THEIR contradictions and hypocrisy have a stink that is particularly difficult for me to let pass without comment, JUST as they find so many of the contradictions and hypocrisy familiar from their own Christian upbringing so offensive. People are not the same and you should not expect them to be. Its just idiotic and bizarre when people take these arbitrary stupid rules that the people who raised you made up and use them to judge everyone else as if those rules were some universal definition of goodness and/or evil.

I've let Mitch know when I wished he would have been gentler and not used swear words, but at the same time I can very well have understanding for people who weren't raised in a home like I was. Not everybody starts from the same spot, as you are well aware.

sorry.

But I do think that when someone becomes a Christian and Jesus takes up residence inside of them they will soon begin to show his characteristics, it might take some time and some people might have more challenges to face than others, but if Christ is really living in I them I believe Christ will be shown.

Hey in many ways I am a fragment of a person, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a good fragment or that I am going to just abandon it to become a shabby immitations of others. The expectation of this is one of the things that has been wrong in much of Christianity. What you say here Aaron is all true, but it can get very twisted when people mistake themselves for the image of Christ.

And Mitch hopefully you don't take this the wrong way, and maybe its just me, but I've noticed that you've become a lot more gentle in your responses, so thanks.

I certainly hope so, but I don't claim to see it and I don't know if anyone else sees it either. LOL Change is often a long uphill battle.

[Keep The Reason]

Jesus said he came for those that are sick, so it shows that that bit is true!

As far as the efficacy of the doctrine - unless you can see a person over time, you won't be able to tell from just looking at a person. The thing that is a true measure of the doctrine is if there is improvement in a person. Where they are currently at doesn't really show anything.

Well, I don't see much change over time in lots of people, particularly the better known which we can use as an example (and I know it's not scientific because it's a small sampling -- but let's remember the huge FOLLOWING these people have, and have had, for decades).

Here's a short list of people who claim that Jesus is very much within them:

Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
Glen Beck
Rush Limbaugh
Sarah Palin
Bill O'Reilly

Every last one of them displays nothing at all like any of the "nobler" characteristics of Jesus. Jerry Falwell went to his grave being a douchebag, and Pat Roberston doesn't seem too far behind him. I suspect we regrettably have the douchebaggery of Glenn Beck to look forward to for a long time. Remember, it's not just these people, but the literally millions of people who emulate them and laud them and bleieve they display some degree of "true" character traits.

These are some of the most public spokespersons for Christianity out there today (sans Falwell). When I see this kind of list, I am almost surprised that atheists are the one with the "bad reputation". (I say "almost" because frankly, nothing surprises me about this kind of thing any more).

[Rian]

Most people in the public eye have power and ego issues, so I just don't think your list is a good sample to use. However, I can see why many people would have problems with Christianity, given some of the "Christians" in the public eye. I think a better sample would be just "regular people" Christians.

In the same way, the atheists in the public eye probably also have power and ego issues, so perhaps that's why atheists get a bad rep. Maybe we should also look at "regular people" atheists, instead of the ones that keep yelling that Christians are idiots.