Well, I guess this thread pretty much proves my point. On the "pro" side, we have one smart guy (Aaron) and an army of idiots.

I didn't even want to ask if English was the first language for some of the people that posted in defense of religion.

Wow. Can I play "fallacy bingo"? This quote is just ****ing comical.

You are better than this. Stop.

Edit. Basic one being "religion? but whattabout politics?"

Go for it. You've got your "free" spot marked and you've incorrectly covered your "True Scotsman" spot. Go ahead and fire away. You can just declare your BINGO at any time, and nobody will care because you haven't yet realized you're at the roulette table.

That's not a fallacy. That's reality. I'm not making a deductive argument. This is an observation how humans think and behave. I'm pointing to patterns of human thought that appear to be both unavoidable and undeniable.

The "fallacy" (not a logical fallacy, just an error of thought) would be the belief that humans are fundamentally rational beings.

"I admit that none of my arguments are successful, but this proves my point!"

No, "this" doesn't prove my point. The quality of the responses from others "proved" my point, in a colloquial sense of "prove".

Really, if you stopped pouncing on minutiae, you would find debate much more entertaining. Not every little thing needs to be noted. You don't need to be such a pedant to make a point, and, actually, your point will be much more persuasive if it is not based on pedantry.

Oh, you mean "prove" as in "unjustified generalization"! Of course that's how English language works!

Yeah, you're right. Ignoring the details is totally the right way to analyze things. If you just focus on the things that confirm your irrational biases, then there's no way you ever make mistakes!

Thanks for "proving" that "All atheists are bad at logic" for me.

I think you the whole point.

You seem pretty tilted. If I retract my statement that you're smart, would that make you more tilted?

I want steam from ears. Don't let me down.

I think you the sentence.

You should trust your perception of emotion about as much as you should trust your intellect to reach valid logical conclusions and your ability to cite true statements to support your ideas.

Would you like your troll card stamped so that you don't have to pay for the first 90 minutes of parking?

Mostly, whenever you post, you prove my points for me. So you can say and do what you will.

If you don't mind d2_e4, I'd like to offer my two pennies:

Aaron can be frustrating, but I don't mind saying he had an influence on my posting here and elsewhere. The problem comes when you get bogged down in the tone, rather than the content. But if you are sloppy, incomplete or flat out wrong with your thoughts (or parts of them), then if someone should point the problems out (especially if you missed them yourself), isn't that going to benefit you in the long run?

Not to speak for Aaron, but when I first asked him about his tone with people in the past (you aren't the first / won't be the last), he has said that he comes from the position of pointing out errors, at least to begin with.

That's not to say he is always right, and there can be occasions where threads becoming unreadable after he and his opponent chase pedantic, irrelevant side issues down rabbit holes for another hundred posts! To be fair, that does take two.

Anyway, it's a bit weird to talk so much about one poster but I just wanted to give you another way of looking at interacting with 'difficult' posters. This is all assuming he's not some kind of AI bot. I wonder whether he'd pass the Turing Test?

You're commenting on Aaron's tone, and his being difficult.. to d2_e4?

Wow.

You do realize that the whole neo-Darwinistic paradigm is a crumbling house of cards?

https://phys.org/news/2015-06-evolut...iologists.html

Evolution is unpredictable and irreversible, biologists show
June 8, 2015

Evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould is famous for describing the evolution of humans and other conscious beings as a chance accident of history. If we could go back millions of years and "run the tape of life again," he mused, evolution would follow a different path.

I generally start off with a fairly neutral tone. What happens from there depends on how the other person responds. If the responses are at least thoughtful and reasonable, then there's no problem. There are plenty of normal and/or deep conversations that proceed with civility.

But given the premise of the thread (that religious people are incapable of rational thought) and the intellectual honesty of the first dozen posts or so... well... some outcomes are predictable.

Do you find that people who disagree with you generally respond to you with civility?

Festeringzit - lol @you. You call me a ******, and then you completely ignore my posts pointing out how wrong you, yourself are? And then quote something completely irrelevant?

You are the nut worst. GTFO.

.

It varies from person to person. For example Original Position disagrees with everyone with the utmost of civility no matter who he is responding to. I think there was really only once when I saw him get exasperated and say something that could be interpreted as uncivil. Most of the time, he just says "Okay" and walks away.

I have had numerous disagreements with others that have remained quite civil. And I've had numerous disagreements with others that have gone down the other path. But I should say that while the number of incidents of the latter is larger, the number of persons involved in the latter incidents is smaller.

So the response to the matter of "generally" depends on the accounting mechanism being used.

I'll point out wrongness as I see it on both sides of the fence.

That things make sense is totally a reason why one should reject those things. At least, that's the logic you're putting forth.

Actually, it's the poor thinking religious people that are enabling you. If there were no poor thinking religious people, we would all point to your terrible logic in unison and you would theoretically desire to improve your mental capacities to be like everyone else.

But since you feel intellectually superior to your equals (an unwarranted belief), you feel sufficiently confident to continue onward in professed ignorance.

Please, do explain what this means. Other than some comical, nonsensical word-salad, of course.

Like I said - maybe BBV is a better sandbox for you to play in. You are demonstrably moronic, and your posts only serve to undermine the only person posting in this thread who is in favour of religion (Aaron). You can, of course keep posting, but you are only serving to prove the point I made in my OP.

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and besides the pig likes it".
George Bernard Shaw

What? Have you just resigned yourself to posting grammatically correct sentences that make no sense whatsoever? Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

I learned a long time ago not to engage with people who have no real point to make, but resort to soundbites - and not particularly appropriate ones at that. -me

If you want to call yourself out for being insufficiently literate to understand the sentences I write, that's your prerogative. And I have no intention of slowing you down.

Indeed.