But I don't know that it's true that there are no gods, so how could I express my view as firmly as a 'truth apt' belief. I simply have a high level of doubt about the existence of gods, I don't believe, but does that mean that I believe the opposite? I don't think that it does.

I'm not saying that you do believe the opposite, what I am saying is that contrary to your earlier contention it is possible to.

Just to revisit my earlier point, consider the propositions

P1: There is a God.
P1r: There is no God

There are three appropriate attitudes to hold towards the proposition P1, one can:

A: Assent to the proposition, there is a belief in God in this instance,
B: Deny the proposition, by which the person assents to P1, there is a belief in no God
C: Withhold assent, in this case, which seems to be your position, a person is not committing to either P1 or P1r. There is merely the absence of belief.

This is the same for mundane propositions refusal to assent to a proposition does not entail it's rejection, you are not committed to believing the opposite but nor are you prevented from doing so.

Within my set of views wrt to religion I do have 'beliefs', certainly. For example, I've wondered how these stories originate, gather momentum and perpetuate, why they grab people so, etc etc, and I believe that it can be explained. That's a belief. But wrt to the stories themselves, I simply don't believe them true and don't feel that need to have something as strong as a contrary belief.

I'm wondering why I even care and I think it's a reaction to my suspicion that people who have a belief that is criticised as much as, say, Christianity is, somehow feel that they've scored a point, or made some kind of advancement to their argument if they can show that you too hold a belief that you also can't prove true. That it some how strengthens their position.

Wrt my 'poor wording' post, I've now refined that position, I've done that knowingly (although I might not have noticed it happening at first, I now know it), it's not some devious attempt to not look wrong or claim I never said anything, or any of the other things I've been accused of while posting here, I've simply moved on from it having learned something new. I accept that it's possible to have a belief about a negative, to believe something untrue. However, that's not what I'm doing in this particular context and I reject that atheism as a whole is a belief system and have been doing that since I said to NR that I can see who strong atheism might be a belief.

Batair, I now agree that "Some atheists will say they believe there is no God".

Meh im as much of an ass as him and well you are not the most pleasant either.... make the trade.

As far as him still posting. Thats good, ides should be challenged even if no one responds.

I'll be honest -- I have no recollection of you doing that.

My recollection is that you blocked me on the basis of challenging the factual basis of a statement you made:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=34

To my recollection, you have never recanted your list or admitted error that you presented factually inaccurate information in an attempt to support your position.

There have since been many examples in which you have stubbornly held your ground, despite mounds and mounds of evidence that are contrary to your belief, which not only includes your whole "religious belief" framework (treating religious beliefs as being a distinct category of beliefs that are subject to certain rules that are not applicable to the general concept of belief), your unusual standard of expecting others to give equal weight to external perspectives while you maintain a form of intellectual independence from others (as evidenced here), and the entire pareidolia in which insisted for an inordinate amount of time that seeing a picture of a face is pareidolia because it's a picture of a face and not a face before finally conceding that you were wrong.

I post in this forum first and foremost for my own entertainment. I wouldn't do this if I didn't enjoy reading and responding to posts; it would be a bad life decision to be reading and responding to posts with such an outlook.

I respond to your posts because I disagree with your ideas. If I say something that someone else picks up on and engages with you, then great. And if nobody takes them up, that's also fine. I don't think that my posts require validation by someone else responding to them.

I'll note that I post in a way that does not bring attention to the fact that you've blocked me because I think it's a disruptive pattern to do so. In the realm of ideas, it simply doesn't matter.

I believe you post with an unhealthy myopia on certain things and lack of self-awareness, so to whatever extent the ideas I put forth are picked up on others as they engage with you, I think it's a good thing. In fact, there's a standing understanding (explicit with certain posters, but even in general) that I don't care if someone takes my ideas and quotes them without attribution in order to engage you on your thoughts. You have demonstrated that you're not going to engage with thoughts if you know they originated from me, but you would be willing to engage with them if you didn't know they originated from me, which I find to be quite disappointing with regards to the level of intellectual honesty and openness that you bring to the table.

Aaron's multiple year long constant responding to someone who isn't ever responding back is just.....weird.

One of the things that makes a forum great is the adversarial debate. By having your views constantly challenged, having errors corrected, weak points identified, and so on, you improve your ability to understand and criticize ideas. It isn't that there is no value or enjoyment in practising critiquing things when nobody will ever respond (doing this to opeds in the news is very valuable, for instance). I occasionally write a blog only a few read for similar reason that I enjoy it, and that I find it very valuable. Many will journal their ideas where nobody sees it, heck, Aaron could well just type out his replies to Mightyboosh in a word document. Forums, however, offer a great opportunity to get the benefits that adversarial debate gives in an easily accessible format, and it seems rather silly to spend two years asymmetrically responding to the one person who isn't giving any form of adversarial debate back.

Even if you don't want to think in terms of value - just pure entertainment as you framed it - I, at least, don't really see the interest. Yes there is some psychological pleasure in dismantling other peoples views and proving oneself the superior internet warrior. But from someone who doesn't respond back? Spending two years saying over and over and over how terrible the other person is when they never read let alone respond? I don't see it, it just seems.....weird.

Conversations with other posters have started as a result of addressing something that MB has said. Similarly, conversations with MB have advanced through at least some ideas that I've put forth.

It's not nearly as weird or silly as you think it is. It *would* be weird if I blogged my thoughts about his posts in some place where there's no chance for interaction at all. Or if I PMed them to him (knowing that he doesn't read them).

Right, indeed, on a forum the "chance of interaction" is key and without it you seem to agree it would be weird. But relying on the occasional third party to pick up your ideas to relay on to the subject is a very suppressed form of interaction. Especially given how Mightyboosh is I suspect by far the person you most commonly "interact" with on this forum (A quick search of posts by Aaron W. with Mightyboosh or uke_master in the search string caps the 250 post limit at a much earlier date). While simultaneously appearing to value having interaction in your forum posts, you have chosen for two years to incessantly respond to the one person who the chance of interaction is reduced to hoping third parties occasionally pick things up.

People get entertainment from all kinds of things, and if informing a nonlistening mightybush how terrible he is as a poster over and over is really your thing, well have it. But it is weird. And more than a bit ironic that you call him stubborn and myopic.

Mightyboosh is one of the most frequent posters, producing the highest volume of statements (200,000 words) to reply to in 2014. So you may be right (though I don't think you are), but for reasons that are way more boring than whatever mental delusions you may think I suffer from.

Given the frequency of errors that he commits, it's rather unsurprising that I would have plenty to say.

Having plenty to say is at best necessary condition for you to choose to - while claiming to value interaction - spend two years incessantly responding to someone who doesn't interact with you in any way other than by the occasional third party bring up points you first brought up, hardly sufficient.

I don't think you suffer from any mental delusions. I just think you are entertained far more by calling people on the internet stupid than you are by actually engaging in any form of substantive debate. I don't even think this is particularly unique, lots of people are like this. You just go a step further than most, spending two years abandoning any pretext that there is an actual adversarial debate going on with a back and forth, and just enjoying telling mightyboosh (or more correctly, everyone but mightyboosh) how stupid he is. A relatively normal thing, but taken to a rather weird level.

Who other than Mightyboosh do you think you have responded to more, out of curiosity?

You're probably up there because of the extended back-and-forth conversations we've had. I have flurries of interactions with Lestat that stand out in my mind, but those aren't as frequent because he doesn't post too often. Back in the day, I racked up a lot of posts with figures like law_dude and rizeagainst, so they may actually be up there in the count.

But there are plenty of other types of interactions, such as the Tsar/I Am God thing, though that was just a flash in the pan. Original Position doesn't post too often, but he's always insightful and interesting to read and respond to. Sometimes I think he should post more often. Then there are the regulars that don't post too too often, like neeel, VeeDddz, RLK, zumby, well named, LEMONZEST, Naked-Rectitude, and dereds. A lot of those guys have a lot of posts, but that's more due to longevity than frequency. (And I think many of their posts are directed at MB, which brings us full circle...)

You get a lot of posts responding to me (still much less than mightyboosh) because I actually respond to you and engage you in an actual debate. That makes sense. And it makes sense to also talk with lestat and lemonzest and whoever else because they also all respond to you. In these cases there is a good "chance of interaction" which you allegedly value. Your post will be read, thought about, and responded to in a way that simply isn't true for Mightyboosh.

Hmm. Naked_Rectitude, neeeel, deregs and well_named are the 2nd, 5th 7th, and 8th higher 2014 posters in this forum. You (1st) have responded to Mightyboosh (3rd) far more than any of them. For instance, if my searching is correct, you have a mere 46 all time posts explicitly addressing Naked_rectitude, the number 2. I have no idea why you are mentioning people like rizeagainst which (unless the database is truncated) you did a small fraction of the responses you have done to mightyboosh like 6 years ago. It is simply a fact that you are responding to mightyboosh far more than anyone else and this remains true proportionally to other top 10 posters. All without generating a single reply by which you could then respond again (as is done with, say, me).

Doing it on occasion would make a sort of sense, I suppose, but to spend a considerable chunk of your time in this forum - more than to anyone else - going around mocking someone over and over who isn't even reading your posts is just....weird.

Clearly, you're at least reading them, and I have no doubt that others are reading and thinking about them. And while I don't get interaction from MB, I get a level of interaction from it.

I'm surprised it's that low, but I suppose it's also true that N_R says fewer crazy nutball sorts of things, and makes fewer of the basic errors that are easy to pounce on.

Hmmmm... I remember him fairly clearly, which is why I thought I had responded to him a bunch. But I don't make any claim that my memory of posting on the internet 5 years ago is going to be wholly accurate.

Since you seem inclined to be doing data gathering, maybe you would see how often they've responded to me. I would expect that many of their posts are directed at MB, echoing many of the types of things that I'm saying (not that they are always taking my ideas and reframing it -- because of the magnitude and types of errors MB makes, it's likely that others would discover them for themselves).

If not for MB, this forum would be mostly dead. He says the sorts of things that are fun to pick at.

If you've got the data, why not just share it all?

I definitely have addressed MB by "stealing" some of your thoughts from the posts you direct at him that he doesn't read.

I also enjoy reading those posts, even if I hardly post anymore. This forum is not as jumping as it was last year, I think I'm partly to blame. MB and I would fuel a lot of the discussions, and we've stepped back quite a bit.

did you ever hear the old morality tale about the Rude Midstakes Grinder? Oh it is a delightful little tale. You see, one day a great fish sat down at the Midstakes. The RMG quickly pounced and the action with the fish was fast and furious. Week after week the action continued, and RMG won more than their fair share. Yet the RMG was, first of all, insufferably rude. And in time the fish lost interest in playing the RMG. The unthinkable happened, the RMG was ignore listed. The shock! The horror! The Fish contined their fishy ways, playing at the Midstakes, but the RMG could not get a piece of the action. What was the RMG to do?

The RMG was so infuriated that they started to stalk the fish. For years, everywhere the fish would go, there would be the RMG. Of course, the RMG never got in the action, but the RMG delighted themselves by whispering in the ears of all the other players about how horrible the fish ways, and all the little ways one could outplay the fish. Oh sometimes the RMG would sit down at the penny stakes (he even once played witht eh tsar of Russia himself!), and sometimes the RMG at would try his hand at the high stakes, quickly losing his money and resorting back to just being rude. But always, it was the Midstakes fish he had his eyes on, followed, and figured out the optimal play in every hand, telling anyone would would listen. Some - one had a penchant for playing naked - would even listen to the RMG, using the RMGs own advice in the fish, but the RMG could never get a drop of action.

Over the time the poor RMG even started to delude themselves, thinking that maybe they DIDNT spend more time following the fish than anything else, or that his high stakes nemesis ever did anything more than the most cursory glancing at the RMG as they stalked the fish. Once, when the high stakes nemesis tried to help the poor RMG understand the error of his ways, the RMG struggled to even use the basic search feature that takes five seconds for a search (or 16 seconds if performing multiple, stupid rate limiter). It was all rather embarassing for the RMG, but ultimately useless as the RMG went back to their fish stalking ways, never again to get action, but always to be there, convincing ghemselves of their own intelligence and of the foolishness of the fish they would never play against.

So wait... you're the fish?

Did the use of the singular they (vastly superior than using gendered pronouns in my view) confuse you? So far as to confuse even the basic characters? I'll give you a hint, the guy obsessively stalking someone else for years on end without any hope of action in return is you.

Edit: admittely the erroneous themselves vs the self would be confusing....for people who can't parse grammatical errors, that is.

Oh ffs autocomplete, stop being an *******. Themself!

I don't want to misrepresent you specifically, but I have heard something like this from other theists, the idea that deists are a sort of 'theist-light'. Based on my admittedly limited exposure to deists (they seem like a rare species nowadays!) the only thing a deist god has in common with a theist god is the word, 'god'.

This is why for example, cosmological arguments like the Kalam, are not really that interesting to me as an atheist, whereas it is often posited as a starting point for theists.

While I don't know if I'd say that deism was unreasonable, I would say it is unjustified. And if a first cause could eventually be demonstrated, to paraphrase Sir Christopher Hitchens, "you've still got all your work ahead of you".



I am also fairly certain that the definition of atheism within philosophy is that of strong atheism: that no gods exist.

If you wouldn't mind, how would you re-phrase this without using the word 'faith'? Or more broadly, what is your definition of faith, as you use it within Christian theology?

I think it depends on how you define "unjustified". To me, God seems like a viable explanation.

As for first cause, it has no bearing on the existence of God. The deist God, by definition, transcends the system, so regardless of how it all came to be, God is always one step back behind the veil as it were. That's why deism is not concerned with the origins of the universe as much as the workings of the universe. It's as simple as there appears to be intelligence, coherence, purpose, and as such, positing a sentient being is not unreasonable.

This is why I maintain that a certain type of atheism is a belief, because you are forced to ask yourself all these questions about the universe and of life. In this sense, atheism is the belief that God is not the best explanation, and instead posits an eternal universe of some kind, or to keep with your Kalam argument, a transcendent material cause.

I don't see a problem with either belief (deism/atheism), but I'd be curious to hear more about why you don't see deism as justified.

I think so, too.

Harsh, but funny. I think it breaks down a little in that there's a quantifiable, financial benefit to chasing a fish, but Aaron doesn't really stand to gain anything from engaging with me. If I'm as stupid as he thinks I am, then he'll never be able to make me see why that's true. (Or maybe he thinks I'm smart enough to understand why he's right... thanks Aaron!). I'm not sure I'm a fish though, part of what makes someone a fish is that they don't realise that they're bad, and I'm more self aware than that, or am I... I wouldn't actually know if I wasn't would I.... urk... brain anurism...

I actually don't have a problem with 3rd parties using Aaron's arguments, especially when they're people who are pleasant to talk with like NR, then I get the benefit of Aaron's superior intellect and dazzling logic without having to put up with his nastiness. It's a freeroll for me....

Also, a friendly word of advice Uke, if you spend much more time than you already have telling Aaron how weird he is for the amount of time he spends pursuing me, it's gonna start looking weird.

I think this is the only real way to look at this. I mean, the entire forum is based on logic and truth, so if we're trying to discern certain things - what's reasonable, what's logical - then it shouldn't matter where the ideas come from, as long as they're helpful.

I likewise wouldn't take issue with you listening to other people, or other sources, it's not like we're simply trying to "win" an argument hoping the other person is more ignorant, we should want them to bring the best ideas to the table.