Be advised, dart, In your misstatements and inaccurate reference to what I have stated, you consistently “poison the well” (logical fallacy) as marg so aptly observed.
"Be advised"? You have not demonstrated any mistatements or inaccurate references. You're refusing to answer questions right this minute because you know you've painted yourself into a corner. Do you really think nobody can see this? You're afraid to respond in a point by point manner because you're trying to hide the fact that you cannot defend your precious thesis.
You have yet to preface a comment: according to JAK and express with accuracy what JAK actually said nor have you been inclusive of the context.
Actually I quoted you on numerous occassions. More than anyone else. My post on Feb 20 at 6:33 pm (my time) provides this citation. So you're not going to get away with claiming I have ignored what you've said. You're not explicating yourself. Instead you're hopping around the direct questions by claiming to have been misrepresented. This is the same crap you tried pulling with Tarski and CC. I went to bed last night think that by the time I got home from work today, you would have answered the very simple questions I presented you. What I found instead, was a slew of posts by you responding to everyone else and anything else but those questions.
You have yet to quote with accuracy the centrality of what I actually stated:“Where reason and evidence are turned aside in favor of dogma and claim absent evidence, danger prevails.”
Actually, I have quoted you on this, but your problem is that I also quoted you on numerous other statements as well. Context puts your agenda into perspective so I felt it was important to take everything you have been saying about theists and religion, and consolidate it for a proper analysis. Your statement above has no significance by itself, with regards to your other claims that "all religion is dangerous," because your reasoning is fallacious in that you assume all religion "turns aside" reason and evidence while "substituting" it with "claims absent evidence." All you're doing here is begging the question: does it really? You haven't demonstrated this; all you have done is assert, assert, assert, and then assert some more while claiming to despise truth by assertion! Most theists base their belief in evidence of the supernatural kind. Science is dealing with laws and principles that govern the natural world. So you're talking about two different things without even acknowledging or considerint it. Do theists claim to rely on natural evidence for their belief in the supernatural? No. So why are you complaining about it as if they do? Until they do, they're not "substituting" anything.
You see, you don't have the intellectual stamina to keep up with your own statements, understand their meanings, and to absorb the significance of the quagmire you've created for yourself.
n conjunction with that: Truth by assertion is unreliable. Religions rely on truth by assertion.
No, they create dogma and assert it to be true. That isn't the same as relying on it.
Again, historically, but closer to our time, it is religion which must revise to comply with the genuine discovery that objective, clear, transparent, and skeptically reviewed study produces.
When science directly conflicts with religion, historically religion has conformed to science. This flies in the face of your ignorant statements to the effect that religion substitutes reason and facts for unreliable beliefs. Don't you at least have the mental capacity to understand how this contradicts your thesis? Probably not, but I suspect that the audience generally does.
Science does not conforms to religious dogma. Rather, religious dogma is revised as a result of that objective, clear, transparent, and skeptically reviewed study.
Now you're just mimicking what I have already said. What you're not doing is explaining how you can accept this premise when you already defined religion as its antithesis. You're contradicting yourself. This is why I told Jersey Girl that no matter how you responded to the question, one of you would be embarrassed. If you want to insist she is correct in reading you - and I can understand that need, since you need all the help you can get and your qualified supporters are scarce - then you still have to explain why you're contradicting yourself.
The process of doctrinal shifts in religion is generally slow. Myths have not been on the cutting edge of information and cumulative knowledge.
This has nothing to do with my argument and you know it. You're just stalling and trying to avoid answering direct questions. There are plenty of posts with point by point rebuttals which you haven't even touched upon. Schmoe ran to yoru defense insisting I was too rough on you, and that is why you fled. But now that you're here, you have no excuse for ignoring the questions.
Perhaps you don’t really understand it, and that’s why you avoid issues. No personal attack, name calling, etc. is an honest address of issues before you. None of your ad hominem posts address the points. They evade them.
Cry me a river. I've addressed every single "point" your ego thinks you have actually established. You're focusing on whatever it is you can to avoid answering direct questions. You don't like being caught by the short hairs and obligated to answer for your own contradicting statements, I understand that. But don't think for a second that this is fooling anyone.
Such substitution of personal attack rather the address of issues and accurate representation of what was said is sufficient reason to cease any address. Such are my reasons for not addressing most of your posts.
If what you just said is true, then you never would have responded to begin with. But the fact that you do respond is proof that my "ad hominem" isn't too much of a deterrent after all. You just use this as an excuse for dodging the tough parts of my rebuttals that you can't handle. You don't answer questions. You just proved that all you're doing is picking and choosing the stuff you want to respond to while ignoring the heavy hitting stuff that involves direct questions. You have yet to answer a single question that would cut to the chase. Instead, you focus on this whine about ad hominems, as if you and your ilk are somehow innocent.
As others have observed in support of my comments, religions do rely on doctrine and dogma.
When did I ever say otherwise? You see you are so busy ignoring what I've said, you haven't the faintest clue what my argument really is. The issue is not whether religions rely on dogma. You might be arguing with someone else about that, but not with me. Religions create dogma, but to say they never rely on reason is absurd. It is easily disproved by the fact that Christianity has mutated according to philosophical movements of the times.
They declare truth absent evidence or fact.
Yes, sometimes this is true, but they readily admit these things are not proved by natural science. So it isn't like they are lying to people telling them science proves it when it doesn't. And it isn't like science can prove or, more importantly, disprove, any given supernatural claim. But since most of these claims are not disproved by science, it cannot be said that religions only substitute reason and facts with unreliable belief. In order for a substitution to take place, they must first replace a scientific fact with something unknown. If you cannot prove it is false, then you cannot prove it is unreliable. The following would be a perfect example of a substitution:
1) Science tells us the moon is real
2) Religion tells us the moon is an illusion.
Religion in this case would be rejecting a well known scientific fact and "substituting" with a religious belief. You see I can come up with examples, but why can't you? Because you know the examples won't actually pertain much to modern religious doctrine, and as a result your thesis that "all" religions are guilty, will be undermined? Thought so.
But you cannot even fathom hypothetical scenarios with religions you're familiar with, let alone every religion on the planet. Yet, you make the dogmatic assertion that this axiom applies with all religions. Well, I'm still calling your bluff.
It’s a flawed and inaccurate method for reliable discovery or conclusion.
You have not proven this. Was it flawed and unreliable when Joseph Smith said smoking was bad for you, long before science found out that it was? I suspect this will be just one of the many other questions you have and will continue to ignore.
Without question, it’s important (in serious discussion) that people clarify and be given opportunity to clarify meaning which may appear ambiguous.
THEN DO SO!!!!! I am the one who said we should wait for you to answer the question, but you refuse to answer.
dartagnan, A quick reference to Jersey Girl who is reading correctly as is marg.
Then you need to explain your contradictions. I am the only one who has read all of your statements in context. You've balthered so much the past week on so many different threads, you can't even keep up with them all. But I have consolidated the relevant statements on the previous thread. So you can't tell me I don't know what you've said.
You fail to distinguish your questions from Jersey Girl’s comment.
No I simply refuse to be goaded into defending something I never said. Jersey's question was from left field somewhere. I wasn't even sure why she was asking it.
It was Jersey girl who stated: "I don't recall a single instance where JAK claimed that all theists lack critical thinking or evaluation skills."
What Jersey Girl asked was not related to anything I said, so as far as I am concerned you're using her strange question as a straw man. It is as relevant as me saying "I don't recall JAK polishing my shoes anytime this week." I asked the question I did because that pertains to my consistent line of questioning: “Do you really not believe that believers in God are dangerous?” That is the issue I was accused of "misrepresenting," so I asked you directly if you believe this. You refuse to answer. Instead you prefer to derail onto Jersey Girl's irrelevant question. Marg and Jersey Girl don't seem to be keeping up with all of your statements. They seem to think you can say religion does X while not implicating members of religions. They think there is a distinction between theists and religionists, but I know better. I know that this is not according to what you said, with regards to theists being followers of dogma and doctrine. For you there is no distinction between a theist and a member of a religion. If you say there is, then you have to explain your contradicting statements.
My question pertains and my argument remains sound based on what you have been saying for days now. Therefore, you still need to answer the request in order for your "thesis" can take the first baby step towards credibility. So provide us with a hypothetical situation where you think I would make an "dangeorus" decision as opposed to your "safe" decision, simply because I have religion and you don't.
For someone that keeps harping on his thesis as if it is a golden rule of sorts, one would think that you could at least conceive of a single example how it could apply in every day life. I mean it applies to "ALL" religions you said. That's billions of people you're talking about, yet you cannot come up with a single hypothetical example of danger. The only one to take a wild stab at it was GoodK, who came up snake eyes. So if you want to make your thesis appear viable, then support it with examples.
For those who remain skeptical of that, the following websites offer further evidence in support of that position.
This is why I find it extremely difficult to believe you could have ever been in the education profession, on any level. Do you really not understand how fallacious your argument is here?
What you did was the equivalent of this:
Thesis: "
All black people are dangerous. Where black people live, danger prevails."
Evidence: List a dozen websites referencing news events of crime in cities where black people live.
Conclusion: Nobody can refute my thesis!!
There has been no refutation of the basic position:
“Where reason and evidence are turned aside in favor of dogma and claim absent evidence, danger prevails.”
As I explained, and as you ignored, the proposition is fallacious because it is loaded and begs too many questions. Nowhere do you explain what you mean by "turning aside" reason and evidence "in favor" of dogma. Nowhere do you expalin what you mean by "danger." EAllusion tired to water down your thesis by suggesting the danger didn't really refer to physical danger, yet your only support for this claim consists of examples of physically violent religionists.
Whenever I try to deal with it you claim misrepresentation while refusing to clarify what the hell you mean by any of this. It is just a meaningless slogan put together by someone who plaigiarized a few anti-religion articles from the web. That's it. You're actually trying to pass this off as some kind of witty axiom of your own. Why?
For those who would argue that dogma and claim absent evidence as a principle is superior to evidence and reason, I would invite you to post sources which support that position.
Who in the hell said THAT???
Now you're just inventing arguments from thin air. Were the ones we actually presented so tough, that you had to fabricate replacement arguments so your ego could knock them down?
Again, you speak as thought there is a dichotomy between the two as if they are mutually exclusive. This is another reason why you're a mediocre mind. You don't seem to grasp the fact that some dogma is actually based on scientific fact and the history of theological paradigmn shifts correspond to the emergence of various philosophical schools that have their basis in Greek logic. It was Greek logic that prevailed in Christainity that refuted the then dominant position that the universe was really just an illusion. It was the Christian "dogma" that encouraged scientists to seek out and understand the laws of the Universe because it was a theological assumption that such laws exist and could be understood. This is why so most innovation in the history of science has come from the hands of Christian scientists and been sponsored and funded by the Church.
You're arguing in circles with yourself pretending you've actually accomplished something. What you haven't done is explain how you can keep mainiting these ridiculous "theses" while at the same time admitting the fact that religions do abide by reason and logic when they mold themselves to modern science.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein