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Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
And, you've changed my argument. I never said that we couldn't have reasonable 'opinions', I'm not even talking about opinions
According to your view, what is the substantive difference between an "opinion" and a "belief"? I think you're drawing yet another arbitrary line to try to preserve your argument.
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and more importantly my actual point is that I don't understand how lagtight continues to hold his beliefs whilst agreeing that two contradictory arguments both have merit enough to describe both as 'reasonable' by his definition.
It's not so difficult. Beliefs don't exist in vacuums, but are contextualized among the other beliefs people hold. So that there may be two equally compelling arguments about a particular topic, you may hold secondary beliefs that support one position over another.
Going back to the sports analogy, you're focused on the outcome of a particular game, but most people think about the course of an entire season. You think that because one game between two teams is really close that the two teams are somewhat equal in skill. Others may take a step back and look at the records over the season as a way to influence their beliefs. If one does this, it does not deny that this particular game was close.
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That would put me firmly on the fence or cause me to fight even harder to prove my argument.
This is also the sort of intellectual attitude that leads you to argue nonsensically about things. You feel the need to "fight even harder" when you really ought to try to learn. You don't need to be "on the fence" to learn. You can be fully convinced of the rightness of your underlying position even if some argument you've made is shown to be in error.
Historically, you've really had problems with this. It seems that your general disdain for religion leads you to think that *anything* that makes an affirmative argument for religion in any sense must have some sort of flaw in it, and that you believe this strongly enough that you'll go to any length to try to win the argument to defend that.
It could be that this whole win-lose mentality is what's underpinning your emotionally held beliefs. Rather than being able to accept arguments on their own merits, you feel as though a strong counter-argument must necessarily cause you to abandon beliefs you don't want to abandon. And because of that, you will put up the most outrageous fights to prevent yourself from having to acknowledge other positions. You're not putting up stronger fights because you're *actually* right, but because of the emotional loss that would ensue (at least in your mind) if you were to concede a point. You can't let that happen, so you'll keep on arguing and insisting on the rightness of your beliefs and ignore/negate all the information that points to the wrongness of your beliefs.