Comments by bitbutter

Comment #275399 by bitbutter on October 31, 2008 at 6:32 am

This seems a good place for a reminder about the BHA's fundraiser against faith schools, donate here: http://www.justgiving.com/faithschools

2. Atheist Bus Campaign Comic

Comment #274975 by bitbutter on October 30, 2008 at 3:15 pm

"This would be funnier if God was waiting at the bus stop on a Sunday. The caption would read "There's probably no bus..." "

Excellent, doesn't even need to be on a sunday. Wipes the floor with Private Eye's effort.

3. Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

Comment #271272 by bitbutter on October 25, 2008 at 12:52 pm

@Richard

Sarah Palin's Drosophilistinism

Excellent!

I'm hoping that Palin's ignorance is overstepping some boundaries, that it's making it difficult even for some of those who want 'someone they can have a beer with' in power, to remain confident that she is qualified for the job.

Do we know how the opinion polls (or perhaps more importantly, the prediction markets) are being affected each time she speaks?

4. Why Evolution is True

Comment #265537 by bitbutter on October 17, 2008 at 1:51 am

This sounds to be perfectly targeted. I understand the reservations expressed here about the use of the word true in its name, but it makes for an attention grabbing title--and its tone clearly signals that this will be accessible for a broad audience, exactly the kind of book that's needed.

I agree that good primer books like this should be in classrooms, a huge improvement over school textbooks on the subject (at least the ones i've seen).

5. Dawkins: a theologian's perspective

Comment #261546 by bitbutter on October 7, 2008 at 3:00 am

If God answers prayer, performs miracles and the like, then we ought to be able tell that he is doing such a thing - there simply should be more obvious evidence for him. [..]

[Miracles] are instead actions that seem to obey a different set of laws, or operate in another dimension of reality that is not specifically accessible to scientific analysis or study, and which shows up in odd events in our own world.

Tomlin tells us that we should expect the evidence for miracles to be very poor. Fair enough, but so much the worse for justified God and miracle belief. A very weak answer from someone seeking to defend theism, practically an admission of defeat.

6. Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids

Comment #259222 by bitbutter on October 3, 2008 at 5:24 am

@bucketchemist

No bones lie underneath holocaust memorials, and if they did they would just be bones. So the offending act is not an offence against real live humans but is an act of desecration, just as is the cracker-theft.

Agreed.

7. Robert Winston criticises dangerous 'science delusion'

Comment #247738 by bitbutter on September 15, 2008 at 1:43 am

Winston must be counting on his readers not being familiar with what Dawkins actually says about science. The idea that Dawkins is saying that 'science is truth' is a strawman unworthy of youtube apologists.

8. Why we evolved to be superstitious

Comment #246348 by bitbutter on September 12, 2008 at 8:05 am

Although this kind of 'playing safe' has something in common with pascals wager, this article is not describing pascals wager, which considers a very specific potential reward/cost.

This is the 'intentional stance' that Dennett describes in Breaking the Spell.

Scrappy article. Why are we told nothing about the study? (except for the conclusions drawn from it).

9. Do subatomic particles have free will?

Comment #232358 by bitbutter on August 18, 2008 at 2:10 am

dloubet

Random does not equal free will.
Determined does not equal free will.
Why would a mixture of the two equal free will?

This gets to the crux of the matter i think. And it seems clear to me that the answer is no.

Libertarian free will dissolves when you ask someone who believes in it what it actually is. In particular, when you ask what the basis is on which this free will makes its decision about whether to veto courses of action that flow from our desires, character and experience.

We don't, and couldn't have free will, because it's an incoherent concept.

10. The Trolls Among Us

Comment #223386 by bitbutter on August 2, 2008 at 6:28 am

That was an interesting article.

To anyone who is stumped by a particular internet abbreviation, http://www.urbandictionary.com usually has the answer.

11. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215589 by bitbutter on July 22, 2008 at 6:54 am

Good stuff.

I agree with the comments that the caller who believed that the theory of evolution could be blamed for WW2 was probably referring to 'the final solution'.

And in my view the best rejoiner is a version of PZ myer's (?) observation that Hitler's plan had nothing to do with Darwinian natural selection; instead he was using artificial selection which farmers have known about for thousands of years.

12. Atheism on the buses

Comment #206568 by bitbutter on July 8, 2008 at 1:24 pm

Signed.

The beauty of pledge bank is that you will only have to transfer the money once enough people have pledged too, so you can be reasonably sure it won't go to waste.

This is a discussion that needs to be had, and a sign on a london bus would help stimulate that.

13. Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman's hat

Comment #203538 by bitbutter on July 3, 2008 at 5:39 am

My email to mail@tayside.pnn.police.uk

--
It came as no surprise to learn that a Muslim (Mohammed Asif) invoked the magic word--offense, over the puppy image used in the recent campaign.

What was surprising, and very disappointing, was that the Tayside police force apologised for the image.

By capitulating to those who complaint the loudest, over something as innocuous as this advert, you have sent a clear message to the nastiest parts of Islam that they can continue to demand special treatment in the UK, safe in the knowledge that the UK authorities will spinelessly tiptoe around them for fear of causing offense, and perhaps triggering violence.

It's not difficult to see that this approach is the surest way to keep the claimed 'outrages' flowing. Your approach ensures that claiming outrage is incredibly effective. It works so well in fact, that if you want to censor media in the public domain because they don't conform to an arbitrary set of rules from your favourite ancient text, you don't even have to claim outrage yourself--a 'diversity advisor' will preemptively do it for you.

These kinds of small surrenders set precedents that cumulatively work to erode the UK's capacity to stand up to those Muslims who feel as though they are entitled to special treatment. And while this kind of policy continues, their number will grow.

If you continue to view claimed outrage as a legitimate reason to alter the way you deal with the public, then consider this note an expression of my outrage at the shortsightedness that prompted the apology over this image. I hope my outrage counts, but I fear that it might not because I'm not making a credible threat of violence, or speaking on behalf of those who are if they don't get their way.

Yours

14. It can be right to discriminate against the religious

Comment #202391 by bitbutter on July 1, 2008 at 12:26 pm

You don't choose your race, sexuality, or gender, and they don't affect how well you do your job. But you do choose your religion - and there are instances in which it will make it impossible for you to do a job properly. If you are a burqua-wearing Muslim, you can't enter Miss Great Britain.

A bit sloppy. Gender can also be an important impediment to entering Miss Great Britain.

15. Charles Darwin was not the father of atheism

Comment #201760 by bitbutter on June 30, 2008 at 8:16 am

But I just want to suggest that Darwin wasn't the father of atheism;

No shit sherlock. Did you hear anyone saying otherwise, or is this the straw man it looks like?

16. New discovery proves 'selfish gene' exists

Comment #197652 by bitbutter on June 22, 2008 at 12:35 pm

It's interesting that this team is getting close to isolating the gene for worker sterility, but the references to Dawkins' The Selfish Gene seem a bit confused.

As far as I understood, the main message of TSG was that it can be useful to consider that all genes are in a sense 'out for themselves', and not that there are some selfish genes which are out there to be discovered.

17. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #191155 by bitbutter on June 10, 2008 at 9:52 am

The simplest proof (yet one that no atheist has ever been able to counter effectively) is that a universe of this size and magnitude does not somehow build itself

Here's a pretty effective counter: How do you know? (so, do i win anything?)

How many universes have you seen develop? of those, were the ones guided by a divine superpower the most complex/biggest ones? Please share your findings.

18. Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Comment #170205 by bitbutter on April 27, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Steve Zara

By "Universe", Dawkins means "everying". He is talking about God as the ultimate first cause.

Yes. I also thought that Dawkins was talking about universe in the original sense here, meaning everything that exists. Not in the more recent 'part of a macroverse' sense.

A being that created everything that exists (if we ignore the glaring problem with that idea for a moment) is fundamentally different from a technologically advanced alien.

19. Responses to 'Gods and Earthlings' by Richard Dawkins

Comment #166222 by bitbutter on April 23, 2008 at 2:43 am

I sent them this email

--

An excellent article. Dawkins' trademark clarity of thought contrasts sharply with the confusion in some of the replies to this article. I'll try to address a few points.

James McDermott wrote "It is not logically contradictory to hold both that God is the author of all that exists ...". Whatever comes next, this is already logically impossible, since God himself is also claimed to exist.

William S. LaSor wrote "Either the universe has always existed, or it was created by someone who has always existed".

William's dilemma is false. He offers no reason to suppose that whatever he takes to be the universe, was caused to exist by a personal, intelligent power rather than an impersonal, unconscious power.

There's a more fundamental difficulty too. It's not clear what William is thinking of when he talks about 'the universe'. I take the universe to mean everything that exists. On this view, the universe can not have been created by an external force, since whatever is proposed as its creator must be assumed to exist. And the existence of this thing automatically places it in the collection that is the universe.

Elaine Fleeman wrote "How could natural selection create the first living cell? There is no advantage to non-living material becoming a living cell".

In other words, "I can't understand how X occurred, therefore X didn't occur", the classic argument from ignorance.

People who agree with Elaine should reflect on the fact that there is no clear dividing line between living and non-living matter. In the evolutionary stages leading up to the first cell we would recognise as 'living', its ancestors would represent a smooth gradient from non-living replicator, to living cell. If we examined all those ancestors we would not be able to point to any of them and announce that it was the first living system because it would look almost identical to its immediate ancestors and descendants. When replicating systems reach an arbitrary level of complexity we call them 'living'.

So what Elaine is really saying is that "There is no advantage to a self replicating system becoming more complex", which I hope makes it more obvious where she's going wrong.

20. For sale: 13-year-old virgin

Comment #161566 by bitbutter on April 15, 2008 at 12:11 pm

I didn't read all the comments. But I wondered if Henri noticed: The idea that the outlook of a particular culture is no better or worse than that of any other, is itself the result of a particular cultural perspective. So why should we privilege it?

21. Beware the Believers

Comment #153169 by bitbutter on April 1, 2008 at 6:58 am

Comment #153075 by VanVoorst

The here is a link to YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0f-2Tit5Fg

I have no idea how authentic this is.

On its authenticity: The maker of this vid has access to what looks like the individual layers used in the animation, which makes it seem legitimate. OTOH it's a little suspicious that the poster didn't use the same youtube account as the original vid was posted under.

22. Beware the Believers

Comment #152418 by bitbutter on March 31, 2008 at 1:56 am

Comment #152405 by Laurence

Actually I think if I were a creationist caricaturing scientists I would do things differently. I would, as you say, mostly play on negative associations, so I'd do the big science, elitism, catching 'ID scientists' nonsense, just as in the video, but probably also throw in some Nazism and eugenics, some rubbish about there being no transitional fossils, etc. But I almost certainly won't waste my time incorporating references to Hume/Paley, Huxley/Wilberforce, Darwin on the Beagle, etc., stuff that mostly only atheists would be familiar with, and doesn't add anything to negative associations.

Absolutely. Unless there was a sudden, dramatic departure from their tactics in the past (including in the expelled film), the whole vid would be strewn with straw men.

Here are some other things i would have expected to have seen if this was a creation of the expelled gang:

1. A reference linking Richard to the idea of panspermia (in the film Stein tries to imply that Richard is a believer in this view of the origin of life on earth).

2. Overt portrayal of 'new atheism' as a dogmatic religion (congregations, priests etc).

3. Straw manning of abiogenesis theories; "life began on the backs of crystals?!"

(ps. MC frontalot confirmed that it's not him rapping here)

23. Beware the Believers

Comment #152189 by bitbutter on March 30, 2008 at 11:51 am

Comment #152174 by ThoughtsonCommonToad

As to the connection with Sam. I would doubt anything specific. I imagine they arbitrarily chose uniforms for each of you that resembled the types of clothes and jewellery worn by rappers.

Yes, agreed. Though it's kind of tickling to see Harris, someone well known for wanting a genuine discourse about ethics and spiritual experience unconstrained by dogma, as his near opposite: an image obsessed, ostentatiously bling-flaunting, show-off.

24. Beware the Believers

Comment #152166 by bitbutter on March 30, 2008 at 10:22 am

Comment #152163 by Steve Zara

Is rap possible while standing still?

not if you're doing it right!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m0bmsWkZ4dc&feature=related

25. Beware the Believers

Comment #152032 by bitbutter on March 30, 2008 at 3:37 am

Comment #151849 by Richard Dawkins

I evidently understood so little that I actually felt quite flattered by my apparent role in the video.

And rightly so in my opinion. Even if the creators do fire some shots at science (I'm still on the fence about whether i think they are doing) they clearly have an appreciation of how important your work has been to promote understanding of it.

My problem with this video is that I can't find anything funny in it. It doesn't even make me smile, let alone laugh.

Even though I doubt if any amount of analysis will make something funny if it's not to begin with, here's my tuppence worth.

Like others, what I think I like about it is the disconnect between the tone that your avatar in the video is communicating in, and the very careful, measured way in which you actually express your ideas.

On top of that there are lots of parts that work as 'in jokes' in the video, references to the Scopes trial and the Wilberforce debate. Because the delivery is so rapid you have to be paying attention and have the relevant background knowledge to make sense of these things.

The reward is that you feel that the creators of the video are talking to you, that you're part of the 'in group'. For me this isn't laugh out loud funny, but it is entertaining somehow, in a similar way as looking at a political commentary cartoon can be.

I'm also a sucker for clever wordplay and an MC who knows how to push and pull the rhythmic accents by just the right amounts. The flow of whoever recorded this is excellent, that also has a lot to do with my enjoyment of the clip.

I hasten to agree though that it's not funny like The Simpsons is funny.

26. Beware the Believers

Comment #151800 by bitbutter on March 29, 2008 at 12:32 pm

I'm wondering whether this might be mc frontalot rapping.

In any case, if you enjoyed this you might like these tracks too:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmx6Q0YLH8A&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE

27. Beware the Believers

Comment #151636 by bitbutter on March 29, 2008 at 5:33 am

I agree with themodestagnostic's Youtube comment here:

I'm thinking it's pro Dawkins now. It starts off sounding pro expelled, which cleverly draws in an atypical audience, but gradually tells a story which is basically true. I confess fascination:-)

28. Expelled from Expelled: PZ story goes global

Comment #150495 by bitbutter on March 27, 2008 at 2:19 am

Make sure you boost the search visibility of the expelled exposed site by linking to it anytime you write expelled online.

29. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #150082 by bitbutter on March 26, 2008 at 12:47 pm

rod-the-farmer

Comments please. I was thinking at the time that I perhaps should have "stood up/come out" and made it clear I thought it was reprehensible to force his child into a faith before she was even mature enough to understand what he had signed her up for.

bugaboo

Treat him as a human being

Bugaboo, treating him as a human being, responsible for his actions, is exactly what i think rob was considering.

In our interactions with others we have the opportunity to signal our approval, or disapproval of the actions of those others. Doing so is how we can cast our 'vote' and in some small way influence the direction in which the moral zeitgeist shifts.

Rob: i completely understand your decision not to say something however. I wouldn't dare to do so in a similar situation (i live in a muslim neighbourhood, and would worry about reprisals).

30. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #149945 by bitbutter on March 26, 2008 at 10:52 am

Happy birthday Richard!

Congratulations too, on the release (near release?) of your science writing anthology, very much looking forward to reading that.

31. Expelled Overview

Comment #149625 by bitbutter on March 26, 2008 at 2:33 am

so that by the time the creationist movie is released, www.expelledexposed.com will be the most popular Expelled site on the internet!

We can help this by making sure that anytime we write the word expelled, online, we make it a hyperlink to the expelledexposed site.

This will help the expelled exposed site do better in keyword searches for expelled.

32. Out of the Blue

Comment #140990 by bitbutter on March 9, 2008 at 1:40 pm

RSP

Unless they have a way of sending it data, there's not much for such a consciousness to conceive.

If the objectivists are right, consciousness is consciousness _of_ something. So without senses, (or at least injected 'memories') perhaps there can be no consciousness.

33. Fleabytes

Comment #130065 by bitbutter on February 20, 2008 at 2:45 am

Thanks very much for taking the time to put this together, an entertaining read, and an excellent resource!

34. Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Comment #128583 by bitbutter on February 17, 2008 at 12:22 pm

Quetzalcoatl

Don't get me wrong, I'm no AI skeptic, in fact I'm very enthusiastic about the idea and its implications.

I didn't count you among the skeptics :)

Steve Zara

It may only be a matter of the right kind of simulation, but on a large scale. The brain is built from a recipe in our DNA, and we don't have that much of it... 3 billion base pairs, and most of that is just for the infrastructure - we share most of it with a cabbage. It is not like we have substantial software instructions anywhere inside us.

That's an interesting point; if i understand correctly it hints at the idea that a lot of brain power could emerge 'automatically' once we get certain fundamentals straight.

Another factor that should limit AI skepticism is that the project of reverse engineering the human brain is looking very promising. The problem of AI is being approach by several disciplines which can potentially feed off advancements in each other.

35. Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Comment #128555 by bitbutter on February 17, 2008 at 11:22 am

@ Quetzalcoatl

As fascinating as the development of true artificial intelligence would be, I have to wonder where this prediction of 2029 came from.

I think he spells out the reasoning behind this figure in his book 'the singularity is near' (on my to-read list). I believe that the basis of it is the trend (law?) of exponentially increasing computing power.

@ AI skeptics in general

The problem of creating the software necessary for 'strong AI' is of course a very difficult. On the face of it, it doesn't look like throwing brute computing power at the problem would help.

But if we remember that we are now entering the era of evolutionary computing, brute computing power does become something we can 'leverage' to create intelligent solutions. Evolutionary algorithms can be used to 'write' software.

Kurzweils idea of 'the singularity' is quite fascinating imo; The idea that soon after the point where super-human minds are working on the problem of how to create smarter minds, all bets are off and the world looks utterly, unpredictably different than it is now.

36. Why Darwin matters

Comment #125257 by bitbutter on February 11, 2008 at 6:31 am

I guess talking to creationists made me over-sensitive to ways in which passages like this could be misconstrued.

Here though, Dawkins seems to imply that the theory of evolution has something to say about how life got started. Is it not better to keep these two questions separate?

I humbly withdraw this comment :)

plastictowel

I think Dawkins is again saying what all honest Darwinian biologist are saying. ONCE life get's started, it follows Natural Selection.

hi plastic towel. That doesn't seem to be what Dawkins says here. He says that evolution probably underlies the emergence of life wherever it happens, i found this problematic on an initial reading but i've changed my mind since.

jonatan

Hence, depending on your definition of life, natural selection could well have something to do in the appearance of e.g. the first proto-cellular machinery helping some nucleic acid molecules to replicate faster than their neighbors.

Point well taken Jonatan. It seems obvious that these chemical pieces were evolving before they'd reached a complexity that we'd be comfortable to call life.

37. Why Darwin matters

Comment #124112 by bitbutter on February 8, 2008 at 11:47 am

Excellent introduction!

I had a bit of trouble with one passage though:

"If life exists elsewhere in the universe - and my tentative bet is that it does - some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence."

Creationists continually complain that the theory of evolution is invalidated by its failure to explain how life got started. People who understand the theory often reply by saying that the theory is not intended to explain how life got started, but to explain biodiversity--and that all the evidence we have points to the fact that it succeeds in doing so very well.

Here though, Dawkins seems to imply that the theory of evolution has something to say about how life got started. Is it not better to keep these two questions separate?

38. Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Comment #123696 by bitbutter on February 7, 2008 at 2:13 pm

there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that's a bit of a danger

I could hardly believe my eyes. I'm relieved to see this foolish nonsense getting the bashing it so richly deserves.

39. Richard Dawkins on The Big Debate

Comment #120110 by bitbutter on February 1, 2008 at 9:10 am

Here's a relevant e-petition (these ones get replies from the government, worth signing). "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make all state funded schools in the UK secular." http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Secular-Schools/

40. Happy Birthday Josh Timonen!

Comment #118780 by bitbutter on January 31, 2008 at 1:24 am

Happy, merry, birthday josh! Thanks for the excellent work on the site.

41. How Evolution REALLY Works

Comment #112791 by bitbutter on January 18, 2008 at 5:06 am

This is an excellent vid. If you like it too, please star it up on youtube to make it more visible.

I'm going to plug my own online artificial selection experiment (firefox only) here since it seems relevant ;)

http://facemaker.redshiftmedia.com

42. George Scales, War Hero and Generous Friend of RDFRS

Comment #111562 by bitbutter on January 15, 2008 at 2:38 am

Get well soon George!

I'm a Brit living in the Netherlands where the national liberation day holiday strongly reminds me of the meaning of what was achieved in WW2.

I'm deeply grateful for your courageous service in the war, and for your generous support of the RDFRS. Wishing you strength.

43. 2 fleas for the Christmas week

Comment #102940 by bitbutter on December 24, 2007 at 2:35 am

@Radesq

where do I find the good pro-theist arguments?

Floating in orbit between the earth and mars, recorded in a book too small to be detected by our most powerful telescopes.

I've been looking too but so far i couldn't find any. The best i got was a thought-provoking argument, that of presuppositionalism (Greg Bahnsen, Cornelius van Til). I learned a lot while looking into that. But it's not a good argument for the existence of God by any stretch.

44. 2007, a bad year for God squadders

Comment #102335 by bitbutter on December 22, 2007 at 11:42 am

That God would choose to come among us in such a way is so strange, so inexplicable, so unbelievable, it compels us to believe.

lolol classic!

45. Borders Tags Atheist Book with 'O Come All Ye Faithless' Cards

Comment #100650 by bitbutter on December 19, 2007 at 3:50 am

Comment #100374 by briancoughlanworldcitizen

Please sing this and post it on youtube if you haven't already done so. Excellent!

46. What is the role of free will to an atheist?

Comment #98741 by bitbutter on December 14, 2007 at 7:15 am

We feel like we're in control, and that we "could have done otherwise" in any given situation. But our intuitions often lead us astray, and this is one of those times.

Like a gunfighter trying to outdraw his shadow we can never be aware of the causes of our thoughts before we think them. In this sense the causes of our thoughts are forever hidden from us, but it's a mistake to conclude that because we never glimpse them, that they are not there.

Free will, as it's most commonly understood (the libertarian interpretation), is idea that we "could have done otherwise" given the same situation. But it's an incoherent concept.

If there was a part of our will that was not caused then its decisions would not reflect our desires, our experience, or our instincts. Whenever this will was active we would, in effect, be slaves to a will unrecognisable as our own.

Compatibilism provides a 'grown-up' redefinition of free will (see Daniel Dennett's book Elbow Room). But I'm inclined to agree with Kant when he said that this redefinition of free will is an act of 'wretched subterfuge'; compatibilist free will is not 'free' at all.

We don't have free will, but that's ok because all we need is a natural, caused, will.

47. GOD VS. SCIENCE: A Debate Between Natalie Angier and David Sloan Wilson

Comment #92201 by bitbutter on November 30, 2007 at 3:37 am

Notice how much less kind was the response to a reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology: "No, astronomers do not believe in astrology," said Dave Chernoff. "It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary." He ended his dismissal with the assertion that in science "one does not need a reason not to believe in something. Skepticism is the default position and one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something's existence." In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is entirely on them�poor gullible gits. But for the multitude to believe that, in one way or another, religious divine intelligence guides the path of every leaping lepton �that's OK.

superb!

48. Secular Fundamentalists: There is no such thing...and the AAI conference doesn't make atheism a movement, either.

Comment #88319 by bitbutter on November 16, 2007 at 1:28 am

(Repost of my comment on the guy's blog)

A cowardly piece. Snide enough to poison the well, half-jokey enough to escape the responsibility that comes with actually saying something in earnest.

http://surfeited.net/blog/out-of-africa-atheists.html

49. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84022 by bitbutter on November 1, 2007 at 3:01 am

I agree with all the comments saying that no text, or idea, should be sacred. Of course we should try to have a civilised discussion wherever possible, but please don't respect my beliefs, I certainly won't be respecting yours.

50. The Transcendental Argument for God

Comment #82737 by bitbutter on October 27, 2007 at 12:30 pm

@aslipp: Agreed. I think its easy to underestimate the strengths of the presup' approach if you haven't debated with a presupper before. You can be caught off guard and end up looking foolish (Bahnsen vs. Stein).

BitButter (#13) offers something very close to what's been going around my own head. Assuming that God is the foundation of human thought (man created in God's image, etc.) requires a further assumption: That God exists and has characteristics. Jade at the Internet Infidels board presented a much more comprehensive version of this here (formal debate): http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=80583

Yes, Jade's posts are some of the most insightful i've read on this topic.

The answer to TAG which i posted earlier is a version of the Objectivist rejection of theism, which i think has a lot of mileage when it comes to answering presupp' apologetics.

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