Skip to Main Content (access key 1)
Skip to Search (access key 2)
Skip to Search GO (access key 3)
Skip to comments (access key 4)
Skip to navigation (access key 5)
Skip to top of page (access key 6)

Comments by Quine


651. Pascal's Wager

Comment #81348 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 3:55 pm

I posted this on the Debates Points thread, but I see that it should go here:

Always remember that Pascal's Wager represents an arms race among religions for who can come up with the most terrible eternal damnation. Why should religion X get all the converts just because they thought of something so bad you shouldn't risk it? If Atheism is true, and you do not take charge of this, your only life, you have blown your chance for all eternity.

652. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81343 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 3:51 pm

D'Souza slipped Pascal's Wager into the Hitchens debate.


Always remember that Pascal's Wager represents an arms race among religions for who can come up with the most terrible eternal damnation. Why should religion X get all the converts just because they thought of something so bad you shouldn't risk it? If Atheism is true, and you do not take charge of this, your only life, you have blown your chance for all eternity.

EDIT: After posting, I noticed Pascal's Wager had a subthread, so I reposted this there.


653. A new website addition: Debate Points

Comment #81315 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Atheism is self-refuting because it asserts that everything in the universe, including the atheist's own reasoning, came about as a result of non-rational forces. If that is indeed the case, every argument employed by the atheist is, according to his own assertions, incoherent and meaningless. Only the theist is able to claim coherence and true logic in his arguments because those arguments are founded on the notion of an all-knowing being.


The computer I am typing on at this moment works through non-rational forces, but the results are neither incoherent nor meaningless.

EDIT: Paul, don't be sorry; I got the message just fine. (see you on the subthread, when I get time)


654. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81285 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 2:33 pm

I have a question for all. Is it time that Dawkins comes out to play with D'souza?


In writing, yes, in person, no. In person, you have to play D'Souza's weasel game, which takes special training.


655. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81281 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 2:30 pm

I have started a thread over at the RD Forum so we can list our refutations to the 'points' D'Souza makes in a place where they can be collected. Here is the link to the thread.


656. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #81243 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 1:24 pm



Comment #81222 by JelloWasabi

Are there any debaters out there who can think of a better way to address the issues (nonissues) brought up by D'Souza?


For specific arguments in front of specific audiences, yes, but for arbitrary arguments in front of arbitrary audiences, no. For example, suppose you were transported back in time and found yourself trying to defend someone who was accused of witchcraft because the local populous had been frightened by a solar eclipse. The audience does not have the knowledge of the motions of the earth and moon to provide the context for understanding your first choice for explanation. You will have to connect to something they do understand if you want to make any progress.

Yes, we should make a compendium of all the specious arguments these people trot out, but it will, also, be necessary to generate a number of answers that can be used based on who is listening. In many cases, you can't win outright then and there, but what you say can connect with what people do know is true, and make a small extension in the direction of enlightenment. Add up enough small extensions and you will get there.

657. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81044 by Quine on October 24, 2007 at 12:35 am

I find I am having some trouble keeping track of the Religion v. Atheism carnage headcount. The arguments about modern times are bad enough, but what about all those earlier times for which we have no records? At some point in the past our ancestors developed enough brain power to entertain magical thinking, and anthropological studies indicate that they probably worshiped animals. We do not exactly know when this was, but just suppose it was 30,000 years ago. So, my problem is that before our ancestors could imagine a magic world beyond, they would have been unbelievers, and so every one they killed would go in the Atheist column. This could be very bad for us because this pre-religion period might go back something like a million years, and that would count for billions of deaths if it only averaged out to a couple of thousand a year over the entire population.

Thankfully, once believers took over, they seem to have done so in every human group everywhere. That means that after some point, effectively everyone who was chopped up by someone else goes in the Religion column. We know we got a lot of help from the folks in history like the Pharos of Egypt and Alex The Great on this, but think of all those believers who went before them and brought great armies down on neighboring lands (of different believers) and slaughtered them.

Finally, I am having a problem counting the early Christians who were fed to the lions. The Romans who were doing the feeding were believers, so that is the Religion side, but we know of no religious belief systems ever attributed to any lions, so they would have to count as Atheists. That would have to go for tigers and bears as well. Atheist lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

658. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #80747 by Quine on October 23, 2007 at 12:37 am

Comment #80742 by Veronique

Why you religious chaps come on here and quote biblical passages in order to prove those biblical passages and never seem to realise that it does not constitute a logical argument, is beyond me.


I have wondered about this. Perhaps some who have been conditioned to believe that the words of scripture have magical powers think that by typing those words we will be transformed by the magic. Although tedious for us, there may be some good caused by the cognitive dissonance when the magic does not work, and after many (ugh) repetitions of the words, the missionary to the cyber heathens is forever asked to provide something that makes even a little sense.

659. Atheists aren't a bad lot

Comment #80478 by Quine on October 22, 2007 at 12:14 am

Game theory studies have shown that taking a step forward to be a good person is not a weak strategy, as long as you are willing to stick up for yourself if you do not get reciprocation. I want to be the kind of person who lives in the kind of world I want to live in. So, no skull smashing (unless, of course, you meet the Buddha in the road, and he obstructs you).

660. God's honest truth?

Comment #80472 by Quine on October 21, 2007 at 11:30 pm

#80462 by Eric Blair

I understand his basic point but feel he's fighting an uphill battle of secondary importance.

He is not fighting a battle, he is using a "consciousness raising" technique to get people to think about something they normally do not even notice. There is nothing to win that is not won by just the fact of noticing that children are being labeled without reason (or consent). It also can cause young people to ask "Why was this done to me?" which is one of the best places to start.

661. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80446 by Quine on October 21, 2007 at 9:53 pm

Comment #80438 by hotshoe

quote D'souza "universe as a whole is rational, i.e the universe as a whole follows laws"

Actually, this is exactly how science does work; ie start with the premise that the universe follows laws.


Please be very careful with the way you use the word "law" in this context. D'Souza intensionally conflates this with the word "law" used in scripture to push the idea that science is demonstrating the works of his deity. The word was there before we started constructing models of Nature, so it was easy to add a new meaning in this new context, but D'Souza has turned that against us. We can never prove that that there are any "Laws of Nature" but we put them in our models of Nature when we can demonstrate they have predictive value, and throw them out of the models when we find counterexamples.

Another problem can come with the word "rational" which was fine back in the days of Newton, but experiments in quantum preclude the use of this word in its general meaning. Again, it turns out science does not have to be rational, it just needs to be able to reliably make testable predictions. Einstein did not want to hear this, either, but we need to be honest and not claim something we can't deliver. Remember, if religion could reliably make testable predictions from scripture, no matter how irrational, we would have nothing on them.

662. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80431 by Quine on October 21, 2007 at 7:58 pm

D'Souza is, obviously, a master of the weasel school of debate. :bs:
He is adept at rephrasing a point for the opposition so that it sounds like (although is not) a point for himself. That was a masterful recasting of the context for Galileo and quick words placed in the mouth of the (then) Church to make it all look like an honest little error. You can also see him ramble along packing in several outrageous falsehoods, but not hitting a conclusion, until he has something to tack on the end that is hard for you to answer: "Hitler ... Stalin ... millions dead ... but are you saying you don't love your mother?"

It is especially bad when scientific experts try to take on one of these, so I am glad it is Hitch, not Richard who is going to have a go at him next. Hitch will not suffer weasel wording gladly, and I hope he is in a 'take no prisoners' mood when he gets there.

EDIT:
I am sure he would have stood there with a straight face and used this same Galileo defense to show that when they burned Giordano Bruno at the stake, it was just "a small misunderstanding."

D'Souza writes about the upcoming debate with Hitch here. It is expected to go up as video (shortly after conclusion) here.

663. Debate between Michael Shermer and Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #80418 by Quine on October 21, 2007 at 6:38 pm

The completely erroneous statements from D'Souza came so fast and were so numerous I just gave up on keeping track. I would like to continue the line of points made by Donald to remark that science does not assume nature is comprehensible. Science simply uses its method to keep finding another piece of nature that is comprehensible. No faith of comprehensibility is required; we just look and see.

664. The greatest debate

Comment #80359 by Quine on October 21, 2007 at 12:38 pm

gd_edi, (re comment #80339)

If you put in your HTML table code all on a single line, the preprocessor won't put in all the line breaks that make that big blank area above the table in the finished comment.

665. Atheistic Denomination Struggles To Fill Void Left by Founder's Death

Comment #79847 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Nusmus,

No, they do not bother me any more than the Civil War reenactors, who do not knock on my door and try to get me to believe I have been drafted to fight.

666. God's honest truth?

Comment #79815 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 3:42 pm

I just ran across this interesting blog about religion and child abuse. Anyone know about this one? It has a pointer to a recent JW transfusion case in Ireland.

667. God's honest truth?

Comment #79779 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 1:54 pm

Comment #79760 by wombat

The First Amendment would have to be severely altered to allow a policy like this in the US.

Not necessarily; laws could be passed that equate teaching non factual religious beliefs to children under some age (say, 12) to some kind of child abuse. The First Amendment (glory be upon it) is not absolute; you can't legally "yell fire in a crowded theater" even when they are showing a porno film to an audience over 18. I am sure you could (and should) get protection to preach any religious nonsense (hate speech notwithstanding) to those over 18, but somewhere in the lower ages it is not so clear. (Something about teaching religion and showing porn to kids feels like a kind of equivalence to me.)

There is a case that kids have a basic human right not to be lied to about things that could impact the rest of their lives. It would be a big advance if the law said that you can teach kids about religion, but had to wait before you preach one as true in school. Naturally, there is no hope that any law would keep parents from taking their kids to church to be preached to, but that could be separated from the special authority environment of the school. That would be worth organizing.

EDIT:
From this Time article on withholding medical care:

For its part, the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in twice on the topic; first in 1944, when it ruled that while parents "may be free to become martyrs themselves, it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children." The Court ruled similarly in a 1990 case.

668. Dan Dennett award and speech at AAI 07

Comment #79747 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 12:09 pm

Remember, Dan Dennett asked for something that was true in 'Turkish' not something that is necessarily true when translated into any other language.

EDIT: e.g. "This sentence is in English." will not be true if translated directly (especially by machine) into Turkish.

669. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79740 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 11:32 am

Susan Blackmore wrote a very nice introductory text for a consciousness class she taught. Before you start going down this long and winding path, please do some reading so you know the history of so many arguments that have gone back hundreds of years, and the impact of modern scientific investigations.

670. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79734 by Quine on October 18, 2007 at 11:12 am

Wonderful Donald! :clap: Half way into the second blue response, the voice of John Cleese took over in my head, and it was quite delightful thereafter.



Thanks again.

671. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #79594 by Quine on October 17, 2007 at 10:16 pm

Hi Chris,

How is your class going? I suspect you saw the Dan Dennett video on the main page. What did you think?

672. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79540 by Quine on October 17, 2007 at 3:59 pm

Comment #79536 by Bonzai

The whole plot of sin and redemption falls apart for Christians if they don't buy into the stories in Genesis. If they do they are believing in absurdities that are in blatant conflict with evidence. Either way their belief system is untenable.


This has been explicitly stated by the self-deceived at Answers in Genesis (no, I am not going to put in the link) in recognition of the cognitive dissonance that forces them to bend reality. They know that if the myths in Genesis go down, it all goes down. It is their Achilles' Heel, and we need to keep shooting them there.

673. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79483 by Quine on October 17, 2007 at 11:55 am

Comment #79451 by frankie1958

Well for a second there, I thought it was John Cleese....to which i owe an apology to John Cleese.


That's okay; Cleese's got a friend in cheeses.

674. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79479 by Quine on October 17, 2007 at 11:43 am

Does anyone else notice a general pattern in history where rational thinking overthrows silly magical thinking, only to slowly acquire little magical additions over time until it doesn't look anything like the original (Buddhism comes to mind, but there are many others) and has to be, once again, overthrown by rational thinking, ...?

675. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #79463 by Quine on October 17, 2007 at 10:23 am

Comment #79109 by Russell

Well, I rather fancy the Carvaka school of Indian philosophy myself, just as I am most sympathetic to the Epicureans among the ancient Western schools.


I just read about the Carvaka history in Jennifer Michael Hecht's book Doubt (highly recommended) and was very impressed. (no monkeys, though)

676. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79278 by Quine on October 16, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Re: Comment #79268 by Russell Blackford

I nominate Michael Farris of Patrick Henry College, although, if we could get Fr. Guido Sarducci they would pay to put it on cable.

677. God Hates the World

Comment #79221 by Quine on October 16, 2007 at 1:36 pm

With the others here I, also, wish to extend a welcome to you, Nate. Looking back at the first comment by Richard Dawkins on this thread about the child at the end, I cannot fathom what you must have been through. Best wishes.

678. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79211 by Quine on October 16, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Comment #79161 by AnthSynthasome

A brief aside: I wish you could have seen the flat affect on the faces of some of the Jesuits in attendance after a few of Hitchen's deliveries. It was utterly priceless.


As a youth, I was (in part) educated by Jesuits and I would have paid dearly to have seen those faces. (Especially after the creepy old virgins crack. :oops:)

679. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79190 by Quine on October 16, 2007 at 12:16 pm

What did Hitch say just before McGrath said, "I'll turn away and count to five"? I think it was something about wishing the water was turned to wine?

680. Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

Comment #79184 by Quine on October 16, 2007 at 12:01 pm

I liked the point Hitch made about the world being run by 20 somethings for 98,000 years. Is there any surprise these myths came out of our distant past?

681. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #79009 by Quine on October 15, 2007 at 9:00 pm

Comment #78917 by Dianelos Georgoudis

Drange's estimate is in the whereabouts of 10e-1.

Did he give a handicapping spread?:pop:



Deity Handicapper Sheet
Isis?
YHWH?
El?
Baal?
Ram?
Zeus?
FSM?
Thor?
Catholic 3-Part?
Quetzalcoatl?
Generic Xtain?
Atum?
etc....

682. Report on Hindu god Ram withdrawn

Comment #78970 by Quine on October 15, 2007 at 3:00 pm

Oh, if only I had the extra schedule to write a little .gif of time lapse bridge building by monkeys ...:funny:

EDIT: I wish to state that I am in agreement with Russell Blackford above, as to protecting cultural artifacts when reasonable. It's just the monkeys part ...

683. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78795 by Quine on October 15, 2007 at 12:20 am

Thanks, Spinoza, but something can be said for ignorance. My favorite quote from Thomas Jefferson is:

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

This is the central message of the danger of faith, and why there is no shame to answer questions like the origin of the Universe by, "we don't know, yet."

684. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78784 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Spinoza, E5 P36 Wasn't it?

685. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78778 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 10:50 pm

Forgive them, Professor, they know not what they ... well, they just know not, and that's the problem! :roll:

686. Can the rest of us have our planet back?

Comment #78771 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 8:40 pm

Fossils are the handiwork of the devil


687. Richard Dawkins receives the Deschner Prize

Comment #78750 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 5:29 pm

I find it very encouraging that the arguments Prof. Dawkins uses just keep getting better as he has been exposed to these last couple of years of criticism, :clap: whereas, the religious folks have made no further progress.:oops:

688. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78723 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 2:07 pm

Comment #78497 by GBG

Great, That's all we need. The fate of mankind to be in the hands of muslims and christians.


Yes, and one of the (many) things Christians don't get is that their unfounded belief (in the resurrection of a guy back in the iron age) facilitates belief by Muslims (in another guy who directly received the word of an almighty deity and was physically taken "up") because the Christians have no standing to say the latter belief is nonsense. This is why it is so important for rational people to stand up and say "nonsense" to all religion.

689. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78708 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 12:12 pm

Dianelos,

Before you go on in the Theism v. Naturalism argument, I strongly suggest you go over to the philosophy section of the forum and read the materialism thread and its subsequent branchings into several consciousness threads. This will save you typing in stuff that is already there, and reading all the stuff that will, inevitably, come back to shoot you down.

Of course, you are invited to start your own TvN thread there if you really want to get a workout.:argue:

690. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78700 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 11:09 am

Comment #78684 by Dianelos Georgoudis

But be forewarned, in the end of his book Drange estimates that the probability of the existence of God is much much higher than the probability of fairies living at the bottom of the garden ;-)


Be forewarned that a very very bad event with a probability of 10e-1000 is 1000 times more likely than another very very bad event with a probability of 10e-1003; neither of which are going to keep me awake at night.:roll:

691. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78697 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 10:59 am

Complexity compared to what? Ptolemy's system of "crystal spheres" was more complex than the Copernican system that replaced it. Likewise, General Relativity is simpler than the Newtonian celestial system with the kinds of kludges attached to it that would be necessary to patch up the problems encountered before Einstein. This kind of pattern continues.

692. Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #78694 by Quine on October 14, 2007 at 10:43 am

Comment #78685 by Dianelos Georgoudis

3. Predict some observation that would have to follow if the null hypothesis were true.


Watch him sleep.

693. Ayaan Hirsi Ali at AAI 07

Comment #78617 by Quine on October 13, 2007 at 10:05 pm

Here is a link to an electronic form of Spinoza's TTP.

Edit:
Spinoza, the link you found does look better. I also agree to recommend:
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Samuel Shirley, translator, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001)

694. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78603 by Quine on October 13, 2007 at 6:31 pm

From comment #78602 by Teratornis

... eventually blossom into a verdant forest of doubt, with every bough sagging under the bounteous fruit of mixed metaphors.

Wordslinger, heal thyself ...

Actually, I enjoyed your comment very much, and encourage you to expand it and submit it to the deconversion section. :cheers:

695. Ayaan Hirsi Ali at AAI 07

Comment #78594 by Quine on October 13, 2007 at 5:35 pm

I am quickly sending the link to this video to everyone I know.

696. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78592 by Quine on October 13, 2007 at 5:23 pm

Teratornis 19 Of course the chain of "reasoning" won't be in so many words. That's more of a narrative describing the magma of emotions swirling through the subconscious.


Last night a friend told me that people trying to recover from substance abuse had to find a "higher power" to succeed. I tried (unsuccessfully :sad:) to explain that that "higher power" was the unconscious mind.

697. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams criticizes popular atheist writers

Comment #78573 by Quine on October 13, 2007 at 4:19 pm

The common faithful do see Prof. Dawkins et al. attacking what they believe. I am waiting for them to turn to the theologians and ask the experts why they don't believe what the common faithful believe. (Not holding my breath while waiting, however.:yawn:)

698. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #78438 by Quine on October 12, 2007 at 10:19 pm

In fact, it's the last I will say here on any topic.


I'll believe it when I don't see it.

699. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #78121 by Quine on October 12, 2007 at 12:20 am

Chris, be sure to add Ann Coulter to your post of things that make Atheists angry.:lay:

I know she has her own special place on this web site (The Ugly), but don't forget her. Unfortunately, we can't.

700. Muslims tell Christians: 'Make peace with us or survival of world is at stake'

Comment #78063 by Quine on October 11, 2007 at 5:35 pm

Perhaps we should write to these 138 and ask them not to kill those who leave the faith.

More Pages: Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | Next