What I mean by that is that if your most basic presupposition is the non- or ir-rational then your whole system is irrational. It doesn't mean we can't communicate, but that you can't be consistent with your presuppositions in order to do so. On the atheistic, materialistic basis of reality there can be no meaning or purpose, logic and reason would be irrelevant, and therefore no possibility of genuine communication. But fortunately few atheists are consistent with their beliefs.

Cite please. What you say is obviously false even in this thread.

Do you accept the possibility that some atheists are perfectly rational in their views and that you are just not smart enough to understand them? If you really believe what you are saying, you are almost certainly not intelligent enough to understand alot of things. (Not trying to be mean, but your view is so ridiculous it is hard to imagine you have put any serious thought into it at all. You don't have to respond, I almost certainly will not respond to you again unless you post something that indicates some reasonable level of thinking ability.)

I think we're talking about different things and since you seem to want to make it ad hominem perhaps further discussion is pointless.

Max, you have to add 'ultimate' to all of notreadies assertions before they have any hope of making sense. Ultimate meaning etc

Then it becomes fairly obvious why the assertions are wrong and/or irrelevent.

Its less obvious why he perpetuates the misunderstanding.

I think there is sufficient evidence to conclude NR is clinically mentally ill. (Unless all his posts are an elaborate satire.)

I think the attempt to discuss philosophy and theology with those who are scientifically oriented is perhaps one of the most useless endeavors in human history. See the below link. I haven't read it all, just skimmed part of it, but it clearly addresses the issues I've been talking about for years. What I say is standard, basic, sophomore level thinking in philosophy - that no one gets it here or thinks it is unusual is intensely frustrating and it's becoming more and more clear that no one is making the slightest effort whatsover to engage realistically. Your only answer has always been and ever is some insult. There seems no use at all in discussing a fundamentally basic and simplistic question that you can't even recognize is a real issue.

http://www.ahpweb.org/articles/kinnier.html

Its useless for you because instead of attempting to communicate, you misuse common terms and make communication impossible.

There's plenty here who have gone way beyond somophre level philosophy and we've made many attempts to communicate with you in that past with some success. Having clarified what you were talking about it didn't contradict atheism or what atheists are saying, you were just saying something different.

Yet you keep falling back behind your confusions again - why do you do that?

Ofcourse it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

Why do you constantly say my use of the concept "ultimate meaning" is special to me as if I invented it? Is that really your position?

?

The special thing about you is you say 'meaning' when you mean 'ultimate meaning' and everyone else just means 'meaning'

no, you don't seem to understand. it is unlikely that we will find a rabbit from the cambrian, it is impossible to find christ's bones and know that they are his. the rabbit allows for falsifiability, the christ bones don't provide any falsifiability.

Not to mention, I'm sure Gould was just using a rabbit as one of many possible examples. I'm sure if any mammalian species or any number of other modern species were found in the Cambrian he'd consider evolution falsified. It's certainly plausible we could find such fossils. Thus Gould's example is perfectly legitimate.

It's hardly surprising NR is utterly clueless about not only evolution, but how the scientific method works in general.

Try thinking in terms of context.

Okay. From this thread:

I don't say my beliefs are unfalsifiable. I've said many times prove something false in the Bible and Christianity is in trouble. The quote you give concerns questions of ultimate truth and rationality. I'm not saying MY beliefs are unfalsifiable but that if atheism is true truth itself is destroyed and so also the concept of true and false.

The implication is that your belief in God is not logically (certainly not empirically) falsifiable.

Your belief in Christianity may be, but you continually refuse to cite any evidence that would falsify that belief. Again, what concrete event could happen tomorrow that would cause you to stop believing in God? What concrete event could happen tomorrow that would cause you to stop believing in Christianity? "Show me the bones of Christ" is not a concrete event. "Show me bones dug up from a tomb marked 'YESHUA,' along with pictures of the tomb and carbon dating results" is a concrete event, would that do the job? If we found a tomb marked "YESHUA," and there were some old bones inside the tomb, would that cause you to stop believing in Christianity? If not, then the example would not falsify Christianity for you.

the contetx of you failing to communicate again and again and again with person after person after person.

Eventually you should consider that it might just be you whose doing something wrong.

That must be the zig because you use the word context in a way no one ever has before in the history of the universe.

context of this thread?

anyway you carry on complaining about being misunderstood and the futility of trying to communicate and don't worry if its your lack of effort may be the problem. it must be everyone else, probably an atheist conspiracy by the evil scientists.

Or you might consider that you are being intentionally obscurantist.

That my use of the words "meaning" and "ultimate" is standard is further shown by this link:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/

I haven't read all of the article but it's quite clear the discussion is along the lines I have pursued constantly on this forum.

One quote:

So what is different from what Camus "famously" said and what I'm saying? If it's "famous", how is it you think my use is unique to me? And remember, Camus is one of yours, an atheist, not a fundy theist intellectually dishonest arrogant evangelical like me.

So its not you, its everybody else.

So faced with an inability to communicate you find a reference to a philosophical encyclopedia to show your usage can be permissable rather than make clear that that is the particular usage you are utilising.

Again, I never said it was unique to you. Which part of that statment is confusing you?

I've made it clear, you've even stated that what I'm talking about is ultimate meaning - but then you say I'm the only one who uses the words that way - that's what the reference is for. Pardon me for bringing in facts to confuse you.

I don't identify with atheists any more than you identify with Mormons, as you've been told plenty of times. The fact that you lump me and Camus into the same category doesn't mean we have much in common. I'm not an existentialist.

From your own link, "If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither exists, then you are a nihilist." (Emphasis mine.) I don't believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life.

Regardless, Camus believed that the universe was absurd, not nonsensical. The shades of meaning in existentialist thought are very deep and complex. Camus never made simple-minded statements like "if atheism is true truth itself is destroyed." He probably would have agreed with that statement, but he would have added a much greater degree of nuance. Camus functioned just fine, his world was not a gaping maw of chaos. If that's your interpretation of the existentialist "void," then you either need to get better educated or you need to think harder. Camus maybe would have said that theists are more rational than atheists, but he would have said it to be clever and rile people up, not because he believed it. He wasn't a big believer in rationality at all, and using him to claim your argument is rational arguments is completely missing the point. You don't use Camus to back up a rational argument, at best you use him to destroy a rational argument. Any argument predicated on Camus is teetering on the brink.