Instead of trying to sound smart by writing words with lots of syllables, why don't you just try to say what you mean in small words? I am confused, explain it to me like a child.

Oh, I know why - because that will cause you to understand that you are making statements that make no logical sense (also known as "spouting bull****"). Cognitive dissonance is a *****, huh?

Ok, I'll admit - in my last response I ran out of steam, and read only the first couple of sentences of your last paragraph before I responded. You have to understand, it is quite difficult to try and parse the text of someone who is purposely trying to be oblique, while one is 1/2+ drunk.

Nonetheless, I have now re-read this paragraph. It's basically Pascal's wager. Take it to the appropriate thread please, and I'll debate it with you there.

1) You make false claims.
2) You ignore true data.

Simple enough for you?

I'd ask you to tell me, but the problem is that you're too oblivious to realize what's happening.

Simple as pie. By the way, you know statements like "religion is the root of all evil" are opinion, right - I can't give a cite for that. It is not a "true" or "false" claim. My spidey senses that you don't understand that distinction.

False claim: "There are probably highly intelligent people in this world who have sufficient capacity for analysis and introspection that they can separate their religious beliefs from their "other" thinking. However, these people are few and far between, if they exist at all. To suggest that Joe Blow can do the same is facile."

Your claim is false. There are many religious scholars in secular fields, including the sciences. Really, your only way out of this is to draw a weird line about "highly intelligent people" and make the metric something where you explicitly need to include language to exclude the people you want to, but then you would just be guilty of ignoring data.

Ignoring data:

Your response was a non sequitur. Oh, sorry for the fancy words. Your response had nothing to do with the argument being made.

You have completely ignored the indisputable fact that your William of Ockham was a religious person. Trying to change the subject (and in the process make other errors) does not change this.

...

Your spidey senses are as sound as your logic.

Emphasis mine on "false claim"

Your willingness to parse "false claim" as somehow not pertaining to your "opinion" (even though it's clearly phrased as a claim) is ironically similar to your "evolution is a theory, creationism is a theory, they are all theories" statement.

I was curious whether you would stop and do some basic research or simply choose the path of ignorance as you've done in the past. You answered that question for me, and I'm not surprised.

The way that knowledge propagated through Europe instead of dying off was because there were religious thinkers who were reflecting on the nature of knowledge and trying to preserve it as best they could. This is not obscure information by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're looking for something regarding contemporary scholarship:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amarna..._b_749630.html

...

I like how you're trying to rewrite history a bit here. You did respond. Here's how you attempted to justify your position:

You took a fact that was presented to you and provided your own alternative facts in order to defend what you believe.

It's like you can't even bring yourself to fully admit error when you're obviously wrong. You still need to hedge. That's not a good sign for your intellectual honesty.

.

1) I said you made a false claim.
2) You said that I should cite one.
3) I pointed to a claim in your OP and said "This is a false claim."
4) You said, "But that was an opinion!" as if that actually makes a difference.

You know how you believe (or at least, I strongly suspect you believe) that religious people twist themselves up trying to defend their beliefs? Well...

By the way...

This is the battle cry of climate change deniers. This isn't looking good for you.

And the parallels don't stop there. There really is no debate on this one. You're straight up wrong in your OP. Your view of religion is wrong. The whole thing is just wrong. The sooner you confront that instead of hiding behind the various layers of delusions and bad argumentation, the better.

The circular argument comes in if you use 1) to prove 3) and vice versa. I.e.

1. I propose X
2. You say I have no credibility to propose X because I am known to fake false claims.
3. I ask for an example of a false claim.
4. You provide X as an example.

First, I'll point out that 2 does not resemble anything I've said.

Second, I'll point out that this is literally stupid.

Me: You made a false claim.
You: Show me.
Me: Here it is.
You: CIRCULAR LOGIC!

Do you have any idea how "evidence" works?

Yes, let's not rewrite history. Here's the history (post numbers):

#1 - Your OP
#2 - Td challenges your claim
#3 - You ask for a cite
#4 - Td cites Ockham
#13 - You present alternative facts about Ockham
#25 - OrP challenges your alternative facts
#26 - Td challenges your alternative facts

Only one extra person chimed in to point out the wrongness of your alternative facts. Had that not been the case, I wonder whether you would have continued arguing against tame_deuce's characterization of William of Ockham as you did the first time. (It seems that you've decided to continue arguing against me despite the ongoing wrongness of your claims, so it's not unlikely.)

You need to get out of the little mental bubble you're in and start confronting reality.

I'm sort of arguing against you, but this has gone massively off topic. If your point is that you're religious, but nonetheless capable of logical arguments, well - perhaps. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data", however.

If you are trying to get me on some finer points of my argument and you don't really care about the underlying point, that's fine too. I am a fan of pedantry. Just collate and present all the areas where my arguments have been fallacious, and I will respond.

Just read this article. It's from publication that I have no issue with, and I have to say I am shocked at the results. So much so, that I think either the survey was biased, or the respondents were lying.

In support of this assertion, I would pose the following questions:

- By their own data, they surveyed 0.25% of the qualifying population. That is actually a decent sample size for a population of 630,000. However, on what basis was this sample selected? Was the selection voluntary (i.e. they sent out some number of questionnaires to a random selection of the qualifying population, and some % replied) or was the selection made by the surveyors (i.e. they sent questionnaires to non-random selection of the qualifying population to start with).

- In the US, there are notable consequences for people in positions of authority or power who are self-avowed atheists. For example, I doubt you could find one self-avowed atheist in the Senate, the House, or any other position where one has to be elected by the masses. It is statistically near impossible, however, that none of these people are atheists. The conclusion has to be drawn, therefore, that people who are in any sort of public spotlight would consider their positions vulnerable if they were to "come out of the closet". I imagine that being an atheist is probably more damaging to one's career these days than being gay. Was the survey anonymous? If not, would that make it more likely that respondents would lie?

For the reasons stated above, I have serious doubts that any meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the study cited in this article.

My point is that you're putting forth terrible arguments from beginning to end in this thread. It's true that I'm religious and you can think of me what you will on that, but the others who have criticized your argumentation would not classify themselves as religious. My religious beliefs make no difference in the failure of your argument.

There really aren't any "finer points" about the failure of the argument. It just fails. You're just wrong in your beliefs.

You can create whatever narratives you want in the rejection of data. Just like you can create alternative facts about William of Ockham's life. It doesn't matter. You will find a way to convince yourself that you're not wrong.

What's clearly happening here is that you're emotionally invested in the rightness of your belief of the general stupidity of religious people. And when faced with the fact that you're wrong, rather than adjusting your beliefs to conform to the evidence, you're doing whatever you can to hold on to your beliefs in spite of the evidence.

You are no better at reasoning than "them."

Can a mod please move all Aaron's posts and my replies to him to a separate thread please? Quite happy debating the finer points of logic etc. in a separate thread (call it "d2 vs AW" or something), but I think our back-and forth here has robbed other people of a chance to respond.

LOL

The answer is that they are. There's nothing to debate here.

Edit: I think that your responses are instructive in many ways. You're pretty much reacting the exact same way that those religious people that you think aren't capable of logical thought and rational discussion respond. Data? Facts? Nah. I'll just believe what I want to believe.

I am happy to debate with you (or not, if you don't want to), but our back-and forth here is getting a little pedantic. I would like to hear other people's opinions, and that's not possible while you and I keep taking pot-shots at one another

I'll step back for a while, but it sounds like you're fishing for someone to support your side of the argument so you can feel better about yourself. Maybe some atheist troll will come in and give you a back rub.

You still have yet to actually take a deep look at the claims you're making so that you can see just how poorly you've tried to argue your case, and the types of mental manipulations you've done in order hold on to your belief. You have not really faced up to the alternative facts that you created in order for you to really avoid William of Ockham, you have basically rejected a peer-reviewed study (not the HuffPo article, but the publication on which it was based) on the basis of random speculations, and you still seem to think that pointing to false claims constitutes circular logic when it comes to claiming that you made a false claim.

So... good luck?

Are religious people capable of logical thought and rational discussion?

Yes.

(Only really posting since you asked for more opinions, but the answer to the question as stated seems obvious. You could probably ask a more interesting question by making the implicit claim less absolute. Maybe "do traditional religions require epistemological commitments which impede rationality?")

Here's your problem. Taken literally, the claim that theists are not capable of rational thought is obviously false. Most people who argue much about religion will have met smart theists. It is trivially easy to find brilliant geniuses that believed in a literal god (Ockham has already been mentioned, but he is not unique, eg Godel also believed in a personal god).

You back off of this a bit by acknowledging that highly intelligent people can "separate their religious beliefs from their "other" thinking." Presumably you mean that they are smart and rational in their ordinary life, but then they turn off their brain when dealing with god and religion.

The problem with this claim is that the theistic counterexamples listed did not just turn off their brain when dealing with religion. Ockham was a brilliant philosopher and theologian. Godel developed an innovative version of the Ontological Proof of God's existence.

Here's what I would say. You have a set of beliefs that you think imply that theists are typically irrational. My guess is you think that a personal god and the argument for its existence are so ridiculous that only idiots would accept them. However, this hypothesis is empirically proven false. This means you need to change your background views. The most likely mistakes here is that your view that the arguments and idea of God is not as silly as you think or that rational people are much more likely to believe silly things than you think. Take your pick.

Thank you, this is a great response, and the sort of discussion I was looking for. It has given me some food for thought.

I did not know Godel was a theist (first link). I did try to read the second link, but I will admit, I didn't understand it, so I won't comment on it.

I think I would like to reframe the position I took in my OP. Give me a little time, I need to think about it.

Ok - so the original position I took was that religious people are incapable or rational discussion. I guess most people (religious or otherwise) would say that such a statement is false "prima faciae", but I wanted to generate discussion, and I had actually started to believe it myself given recent developments in the world. I guess, to some extent, I was trolling. I have never really been any sort of militant atheist, and I am sure I have a couple of religious friends, so I can't be an atheist, right?

On point though - I take issue with religion on a couple of matters, and I won't be particularly diplomatic about it:

- Wars. How many ****ing wars are there going to be about religion? Although, to be fair, if there were no religion, people would find something else to fight about. Demagogic leaders will always find something to appeal to the populace.

- Laws. Personally, I couldn't care if you want to read the bible (or the Brothers Grimm, or whatever else), but I object when you want to start abridging my rights based on your interpretation of it. I don't really care if your imaginary friend disapproves of where I put my penis - it's none of his business, nor yours.

- Conflation of religion and morality: "Oh you're an atheist, how can you be a good person?" I mean, **** you to anyone who says that. And my own mother said it to me.

Going back to the OP - I have no objection if you personally want to believe in, well, anything you like. I object when you start trying to foist it on me, and even more so when I try and argue back and you tell me that I'm going "against god". Like it or lump it, the religious people in this thread are in the 1%. The rest just subscribe to the narrative, and it's either what Jesus would have wanted, or it isn't.

You now have Creationism being taught in schools in the US on par with real science. Wake the **** up.

Nice wording. I like it. I was taught to eschew obfuscation, though.