Posted by Gremlin [12.254.42.102 - 12-254-42-102.client.attbi.com] on 14 December 2001 at 01.39.59 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Fallacy posted by meta_human on 13 December 2001 at 16.17.05 ZuluTime:

from what i have gathered, from her highly defensive apologium, Hunter's metaphysical (and inescapbably, existential) disposition entails the following...

You forgot the part where you'd gathered that metaphysical dispositions were viable qualities at all

1. that Faith (and strangely, "belief") requires irrationality; or at least an unjustified supposition. {and there was something in there about she herself having no faith - quite the presumptuous little hoodlum)

If you stuck to the vernacular, would you misuse less words?

Faith and belief are irrational. Unless you're counting rationalisations as faith and belief. In which case they're merely illogical.

2. that she does not hold to anything not based on "evidence" (what type of evidence i could not extrapolate from her).

Best guess? Testable data. You assert that deities exist. So:

1. Define for 'deity'--explain exactly what a deity is, and how it differs from any known organisms
2. Provide any evidence which directly shows a deity to exist
3. Provide supplimentary evidence that the deity you'd like to have exist is the one in existence
4. Provide evidence that the existence of this deity could possibly matter to real organisms

and 3. religiosity, or indeed anything mystic, necessarily requires fallaciousness, because "everyone is really an agnostic" since "nobody knows for sure".

If you know for sure, you'll have no difficulty in answering the questions above. Else{ you're an idiot who just came to the wrong messageboard.

and so here is the inherent contradiction that comprises Hunter's [highly structured] worldview: "i have no faith, yet i have faith that God/s haven't made it a condition of my existence that i seek the truth"; in other words, Hunter sits back, supposedly dispassionate (though very emotional) and supposedly objective (yet of very selected interest), in a state of epistemological nihilism - claiming that her very consciousness does not require access to truth. yet (!) at the same time, she claims that this position is true!

Ah hell. I thought you were talking about hunter@gremlin.net; whatever strawman you're on about hasn't posted here.

nevertheless, her actually ontology is that of [what is called in the philosophy world] Strong Agnosticism. not surprisingly, there are very few strong agnostics left, because such agnosticism (in the tradition of Hume and others) requires that one rejects as a surety the existance of other minds. a rationalist empiricst such as Hunter, rejects all that which is not conclusively proven via demonstration. but alas, one can not demonstarte the existence of other minds, only infer. even the existance of the brain organ, is based upon a whole series of prejudices which the strong agnostic must reject (such as the reliability and unprovability of the senses).

Fuck it: you're an idiot.

What you seem incapable of grokking is that, just because someone smarter and deader than you has defined something for you to misunderstand, memorise, and regurgitate like Good Will Hunting's barflies doesn't mean that everyone else on the planet has to adhere to any of it. The situation is simple [to some of us]: without evidence of deities, there's no reason to assume that they exist. Without the assumption that they exist, the belief that they exist isn't present either. Without deital beliefs, from the Greek, describes the condition of atheism.

Agnosticism is defined literally as 'without knowledge'; and that clearly applies to you. In applied use: agnosticism means 'without knowledge of deities'. And, in common error: it means 'presuming that deities can't be known to exist'. Because that presumption calls a characteristic of the very thing which can't, according to this idiocy, be known, it becomes a paradox. You can't know whether a deity exists, but you can know that it can't be known to exist. It's got all the logical sequence of the phrase 'everything I say is a lie'.

If you can answer the four questions above, I'll deal with you then; if not, we'll conclude from the evidence at hand that you're just another assloaf whose mother got him to believe he was special....

--Gremlin

Follow Ups: