LightGigantic's Defense Thread

[S.A.M.]

the theist mentality of living in a delusional state and rationalizing their beliefs without any recourse to facts. Naturally the reasoning non-believer will be inevitably frustrated at such tactics since the opportunity to twist appears infinite.

But this is not so much a criticism of LG but more to do with the effect that the religious meme has on those who choose to believe and support the absurd.

Do you keep missing the point deliberately or are you just too obtuse to get it in the first place? Try and read the opening post carefully. The issue is not the criticism of LG or the religious "meme".

 

[Oniw17]

The positive claim is that there *is* a god or gods, not that there isn't. The onus is upon the claimant to prove, not the doubter.

Why the double standard then? It's necessary for the theist to prove god beyond a reasonable doubt, but not for the evolutionist? That's a little biased.

If I meet a man who claims to be the reincarnation of General Patton and I say, "no you aren't," the burden of proof is upon the would-be General not me.

That's my point. The guy could point out a lot of similarities that might to the untrained eye suggest that he is th general's reincarnation, but if he can't prove it, it's just speculation. You can't say that if you can't disprove it that it's true.

What?!!!!!
Do you even know how stupid your line of reasoning is?

Yes I do know how stupid the reasoning that if you can't prove something wrong, it must be true. This is the exact same logic that Fire used when he said that LG had to prove that evolution(or something, I'mm too lazy to scroll up) wasn't real for that to be the situation. I just said the exact same thing and replaced evolution with God, and now it's the other way around. There's plenty of evidence for evolution, but no solid proof. You could argue that there's plenty to suggest that there might be a god. For example, you could say "I have no problem believing abiogenisis, but if that's what happened, why hasn't it happened again since?" It's very flawed to say that if you can't disprove something it must be true. That was my point.

The burden of proof does not lie with the skeptic but with the one claiming a positive. In this case an absolute positive.

Evolution doesn't claim a positive?

If Einstein wants to prove his speculations are factual or that they explain natural phenomena, he must provide the evidence and the arguments. He doesn’t say:
“Okay prove that time is not relative or it is”

Exactly.

If Darwin wants to prove his theories are correct he must provide arguments and evidence.

That's EXACTLY what I was saying.

If my retarded half-wit neighbor wants to prove that he can fly, he doesn’t say “Prove that I cannot or else believe that I can” he must prove it.

Indeed, however, that can be disproven with a simple test.

When a moron leads a nation to war based on hypothetical Weapons of Mass Destruction, not even he can use your stupidity as a method of supporting his cause and justifying his actions.
“Well gentlemen, prove that there’ aren’t weapons there! Ha! Gotcha!”

Isn't that what he did?

Man doesn’t live in accordance to what he can disprove, but in accordance to what he can prove as being more likely, or in accordance with explanations that can be tested and questioned and challenged within our common pool of awareness we call the world.

I agree with that.

I cannot claim that there are fire-breathing dragons raiding my farm every night by explaining them as creatures from another world or challenging the other to prove that they are not.

If it were otherwise then I can use this to explain anything.
It’s the strategy of avoiding the burden of proof.
You stupid idiot!!!!

That's the reason behind my post.

Furthermore, I do not agree with the idea that people should be protected from reality.

Ok? Are you being sarcastic in your usual way?

You either deal with the world or you spend your life running from it, into fantasy worlds and feel-good dimensions.
Humoring the stupid might seem like the “civil’ thing to do’; a harmless practice that keeps everyone comfortable in their own delusions.
Civility: hypocrisy institutionalized.

You humor the obtuse long enough and they begin believing they are your superiors or your equals or that their opinions deserve just as much respect as anyone else’s.

Yes, sadly.

This is like protecting the 120 lb weakling from the realization that if he enters into the ring he’ll get hurt, by telling his 220 lb opponent to pull his punches and not be as brutal and hard on the poor fellow.
Who wins from such a farce?

The 220 lb guy doesn’t break a sweat and the 120 lb guy starts believing he can beat anyone. The 220 lb guy is frustrated by the ensuing taunts the 120 lb weakling unleashes upon him - since all weakness is vengeful and will siege upon the first opportunity to overcome his feelings of inferiority and insecurity.

I pretty much said the same thing in a thread in Human Science not too long ago.

Equalitarianism and political-correctness has done little more than protect the feeble and stupid from the reality of self-awareness.
If these idiots want to come to an open forum, with the bravado and self-confidence of that 120 lb weakling who has never faced a punch because everyone, who knows his thinking is flawed, has been humoring him and offering him the right to believe what he likes, then he should not be protected from his own idiocy.
Weakness has a price.

You either survive it and grow or you wallow in it until death.
In nature weakness is punished with extinction. In human environments weakness is tolerated and humored, and protected, creating a slow decay technology is supposed to keep correcting

This is why I love your posts.
Seriously though, I believe Darwinian evolution more than just about anything, and I don't believe in any god. The point of my post was that you can't just dismiss speculation by saying "prove it wrong" just like you guys have reassured me. :m:

 

[KennyJC]

Agreed.

Often atheists argue that there being a god is impossible, which automatically makes them idiots enough.

Are you an idiot if you say a celestial teapot doesn't exist? When human beings invent extravagant claims which are not rooted in observation, then they will always be wrong. So there is no comparison between the irrationality of any theists and those atheists who happen to state god doesn't exist.

I think we agree again that theists are not idiots for believing in the possibility of god, but only when they try to set in stone the properties of god and want people to believe that?

What you described sounds more agnostic rather than theistical. A theist is the belief that god exists. If you believe it exists and live your life as though it does exists, then the 'possibilitiy' doesn't come in to it because you believe it anyway.

Isn't that the reason why it is called 'faith'? Dogmatic atheists are as much idiotic as dogmatic theists, so long as neither is proven.
Thanks.

Why does the word 'faith' excuse theists from being irrational idiots? Faith just means delusion. Any theist beliefs are stupid even if they aren't dogmatic. Simply not believing in the claims made by theists is not idiotic. If we refused to believe the claims of magical thinkers by default, we would always be right. They never have any evidence and formulate beliefs based on what they want to be true - this is idiotic and should be dismissed by default.

 

[Prince_James]

LightGigantic holds no Irrational Beliefs

In and of themselves, none of the beliefs which are affirmed by LightGigantic are irrational. In fact, here is a smattering and why they are not, although they might be wrong:

There exists two substances: Matter and spirit (transcendence). The former is a gross manifestation of the latter and is dependent upon spirit for its initial existence and continued presentation. This is also a view held by Renee` Descartes, and though it has a flaw in that it is primarily suspecitble to the Mind-Body problem, this is addressed by the second belief.

God is the direct cause of -all- things. There is no causality independent from the will of God. This is called Occasionalist Dualism. A variation on such was proposed by Gottfried Leibniz.

The only evil is ignorance, specifically, ignorance of God. This is a Platonic notion.

Evil is ultimately inconsequential, as reality is like a dream. Because evil is not metaphysically sustainable, evil is not of ultimate importance to the spirit, and will in time - although time, actually, doesn't exist, according to him, to the "living entity" (I.E. the soul) and God - be rectified through spiritual advancement which will draw us back to God.

God exists: A standard statement of monotheism.

Science requires education and can only discuss the empirical. Um, this is pretty much accurate.

The limits of man's knowledge are based in his fallibility and dependence. Only an independent, perfect being, can have perfect knowledge.

Morality is necessary for philosophy and religion both. An immoral person cannot be counted on to be objective.

The charges that LightGigantic holds "irrational beliefs" are unfounded. None of these are, ipso facto, irrational. Ironically, they are actually rational.....ist. That is to say, they are a Hindu variation of philosophic rationalism, which has one of the longest, and most storied traditions, in Western Philosophy. In many ways, I'd argue that LightGigantic is a Hindu Leibniz.

 

[spidergoat]

I would argue that he holds no rational beliefs, since he has expressed a distrust in anything that he can't directly perceive.

 

[Prince_James]

Spidergoat:

I do not think he has expressed that radical empiricism you are referencing. He tends to employ reason more than sense in his arguments.

 

[spidergoat]

Although it is rational to acknowledge direct perception, to limit the use of reason to extrapolate implications from them, or to reject the establishment of objective standards of measurement that could quantify perception, is to say that rationality is useless.

He goes on to say that he might acknowledge the direct perceptions of a suitably trustworthy person. Since there is no way other than a gut feeling to tell if a person is percieving something true and eternal, I would say that this practice is also not rational.

 

[Roman]

Spidergoat:

I do not think he has expressed that radical empiricism you are referencing. He tends to employ reason more than sense in his arguments.

I would hold that disregarding the senses is irrational.

 

[Prince_James]

Spidergoat:

Although it is rational to acknowledge direct perception, to limit the use of reason to extrapolate implications from them, or to reject the establishment of objective standards of measurement that could quantify perception, is to say that rationality is useless.

I do not think that LightGigantic has ever claimed that science is not useful for giving reasons for things, only that those reasons are incomplete. He is fond of noting the incompleteness of science. The pretensions of some seem to indicate that they feel that science is complete, which Lightgigantic assaults as a silly notion - which it rightfully is. Science, by virtue of allowing for future discoveries, is not complete.

He goes on to say that he might acknowledge the direct perceptions of a suitably trustworthy person. Since there is no way other than a gut feeling to tell if a person is percieving something true and eternal, I would say that this practice is also not rational.

I believe he "tests the waters" of their doctrines and morality before he ascribes to them a perpetual event of God. But yes, this is not a purely logically justifiable belief, in so much as he cannot prove that they experienced God, only infer with more likelyhood that they have according to his beliefs.

Roman:

I would hold that disregarding the senses is irrational.

Do not we all disregard our senses at times? For instance, you do not think the tower in the distance that you are approaching is actually increasing in its height, yes?

 

[Godless]

Shouldn't this be on (About the Members) subforum?

But I think I summed up every theist here on this forum
Post #34 http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=60169&page=2

With that said, the point is he makes claims of which he has nothing, nada, nilch, Zero.....evidence in the remotely since of the word Nada! That I've not seen before, I've been here for quite a while, LG reminds me of Tony1 another fad theist who tried to convince us and himself that he was right, truth is, atheist last here, theist come and go, mostly go, and never come back!

 

[spidergoat]

Science is fond of noting the incompleteness of science, but this isn't an excuse to ignore the obvious.

 

[Roman]

Do not we all disregard our senses at times? For instance, you do not think the tower in the distance that you are approaching is actually increasing in its height, yes?

Previous sensory experience informs me the nature of distant objects.

Pure speculation would reveal nothing.
Blind men know nothing of towers.

Who was it who had the example of billiards balls? There's nothing in the essence or form or whatever of the balls that tells us how they'll move. Only previous experience let's us predict the movement of the balls.

 

[baumgarten]

That was Hume.

 

[Sarkus]

In and of themselves, none of the beliefs which are affirmed by LightGigantic are irrational

There exists two substances: Matter and spirit (transcendence).

This IS irrational.
There is no evidence to support this claim - and thus must be irrational in that it is being accepted above and beyond any simpler "theory" (i.e. that there is just matter.
If he thinks that there IS evidence - then he must supply that evidence - and none of this "need the right epistemology" drivel. He needs to take his evidence to the community at large so that we can all see the distinction between "matter" and "spirit".

God is the direct cause of -all- things. There is no causality independent from the will of God.

Again, irrational, on the same grounds as that above.

The charges that LightGigantic holds "irrational beliefs" are unfounded. None of these are, ipso facto, irrational.

No - they are irrational - regardless of who else might have held these beliefs.

His "epistemology" is based, from what I can tell, primarily on the voice of authority - which is logically fallacious as a claim of evidence.

 

[lightgigantic]

This IS irrational.
There is no evidence to support this claim - and thus must be irrational in that it is being accepted above and beyond any simpler "theory" (i.e. that there is just matter.
If he thinks that there IS evidence - then he must supply that evidence - and none of this "need the right epistemology" drivel. He needs to take his evidence to the community at large so that we can all see the distinction between "matter" and "spirit".

Again, irrational, on the same grounds as that above.

No - they are irrational - regardless of who else might have held these beliefs.

His "epistemology" is based, from what I can tell, primarily on the voice of authority - which is logically fallacious as a claim of evidence.

If you accept material monism then it appears that it is also irrational since there currently exists no unified field theory (at least that draws a consensus from the empirical community) within molecular reductionism to explain how matter is monistic

 

[baumgarten]

If you accept material monism then it appears that it is also irrational since there currently exists no unified field theory (at least that draws a consensus from the empirical community) within molecular reductionism to explain how matter is monistic

Actually, materialism as a solution to the mind-body problem has been (I believe rather conclusively) shown to be very inadequate. I suggest looking for Thomas Nagel's essay, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Nagel points out that while materialism can explain all observable natural phenomena, it is utterly incapable of describing the experience of being another living creature, or indeed any living creature at all. While our own spoken language, we might say, also falls short of this mark, there is an implicit understanding that words do symbolically represent conscious, qualitative, subjective experiences, rather than simply objective interactions. For example, the statement "I feel happy" conveys a distinctly different notion from the statement "the brain is responding to a release of serotonin," whereas materialistically, the two should be completely synonymous.

 

[Sarkus]

If you accept material monism...

Woah!!

RED HERRING and STRAWMAN LOGICAL FALLACY!!

Where have I stated this - and what does it have to do with YOUR beliefs / claims - which is, after all, what is under scrutiny in this thread???

Please stick on topic.


PJ claimed your beliefs, as he saw them, where not irrational.
I have given why I thought they are.
Now either dissect those arguments - or counter them - but preferably not with a logical fallacy.
My beliefs (or lack thereof) are NOT under scrutiny - especially when you try and assign beliefs to me and then try to knock them over.

 

[baumgarten]

Where have I stated this - and what does it have to do with YOUR beliefs / claims - which is, after all, what is under scrutiny in this thread???

The assertion that reality consists of material substance and spirit (or mind) is dualism. To claim that dualism is irrational on the grounds of lack of evidence for the latter is materialism. That's how it relates.

 

[Sarkus]

The assertion that reality consists of material substance and spirit (or mind) is dualism. To claim that dualism is irrational on the grounds of lack of evidence for the latter is materialism. That's how it relates.

My point is - how does my philosophical position (whatever it may be) have any bearing on the question in hand: LG's beliefs?

Answer: it doesn't.

It is thus a red-herring to bring it up.

But again - to claim something is irrational is NOT to claim that it is wrong - just that it is an IRRATIONAL position.
I could claim that dualism is irrational and still hold to that same philosophy of dualism, but accepting of the fact that it is irrational. So the fact that I claim dualism is irrational does in NO WAY make a claim about my own philosophical stance.

 

[baumgarten]

My point is - how does my philosophical position (whatever it may be) have any bearing on the question in hand: LG's beliefs?

Answer: it doesn't.

It is thus a red-herring to bring it up.

You said that LG's beliefs, particularly his dualism, are irrational because there is no evidence to justify dualism. I have taken issue with the assertion that there is no evidence to justify dualism, and I have presented what I believe constitutes the wanted evidence. It's not a red herring; it is directly and clearly relevant to the thread. My attack on materialism, which is a defense of dualism, proposes a rational, evidential basis for dualism. That is what you wanted, no?