Searching for GOD...

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

[As a Christian I think I know…

It’s got nothing to do with your Christianity – it’s to do with reason, and Christians don’t get to have their own private version of it.

…what Alan is getting at and I think I know where you are coming from, although your dogmatic stance against becoming  absolutely certain is suspect and contradictory.

No, it’s basic logic. However smart we think we may be we have no means of stepping outside ourselves to see whether there’s a different reality of which we’re not aware. Absent a means to do that, “absolute certainty” about anyhting is unobtainable.

I think Alan's idea of absolute certainty is like being certain you are born or certain you have written your e mail.

Then it’s not “absolute” at all – it’s probabilistic, a qualitatively different thing.

Also, what makes you know Alan’s mind better than he knows his own? How do you know he doesn’t mean “absolute” to mean, well, absolute? 

I would not have used Alan's words in the context of your collective antitheist attitudes.

Why the tu quoque here? It’s got nothing whatever to do with "antitheism" – just logic, and AB’s abuse of it.

But that is not why I replied which was to critique your dogmatism that we shouldn't put ourselves in the position of other than fence squatting. That is evasion of a possibility.

Why the lie? There was no “dogmatism”, and you confuse possibility (which no-one denies) with probability (or, in AB’s case, certainty), which would require some evidence or logic of its own to be taken seriously. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

Slippery slope fallacy?

No – that’s not what the fallacy entails, for reasons that will be too nuanced for you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Fallacy Boy,

No – that’s not what the fallacy entails, for reasons that will be too nuanced for you.

Ad hominem.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

Possibly you missed my reply 19594 when I took the trouble to falsify your position line-by-line?

Two problems there:

First, there is no “door” of “it’s impossible”. I’ve explained this to you already – no-one says that either your conjecture “God” or my conjecture unicorns is impossible, so that’s not a door that needs opening.

Second though inasmuch as there is a closed door it’s the one that stops you from getting to “absolute certainty” about anything. How would you propose to eliminate even the possibility that you’re wrong?

I have not seen evidence of unicorns making themselves known to people.

[floo]

I have not seen evidence of unicorns making themselves known to people.

About as much evidence as there is for god making itself known to people!

[Shaker]

I have not seen evidence of unicorns making themselves known to people.

Likewise with gods.

[Alan Burns]

Alan advocates absolute certainty as if it were a good thing. I respond to demonstrate why an open mind is better than a closed/fixed/certain mind. 

An open mind is certainly needed for human deductions, but once God has made Himself known, that is when you get absolute certainty.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Fallacy Boy,

It’s got nothing to do with your Christianity – it’s to do with reason, and Christians don’t get to have their own private version of it.

No, it’s basic logic. However smart we think we may be we have no means of stepping outside ourselves to see whether there’s a different reality of which we’re not aware. Absent a means to do that, “absolute certainty” about anyhting is unobtainable.

Then it’s not “absolute” at all – it’s probabilistic, a qualitatively different thing.

Also, what makes you know Alan’s mind better than he knows his own? How do you know he doesn’t mean “absolute” to mean, well, absolute? 

Why the tu quoque here? It’s got nothing whatever to do with "antitheism" – just logic, and AB’s abuse of it.

Why the lie? There was no “dogmatism”, and you confuse possibility (which no-one denies) with probability (or, in AB’s case, certainty), which would require some evidence or logic of its own to be taken seriously.

A testament to your arrogant assumption of what people mean.

[Shaker]

An open mind is certainly needed for human deductions, but once God has made Himself known, that is when you get absolute certainty.

How do you know that it's this god character which has made itself known?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

Ad hominem.

That's not what "ad hominem" means.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I have not seen evidence of unicorns making themselves known to people.

But I'm telling you that they've made themselves known to me. Our respective claims "God" and unicorns are therefore epistemically equivalent. 

[ippy]

An open mind is certainly needed for human deductions, but once God has made Himself known, that is when you get absolute certainty.

You're lying to yourself Alan, in a way what you're doing is a bit like cheating at patience, in all of your writings here, on the forum, you've yet to display any sensible reasoning or use of logic, you're very strong on assertion but you've certainly not supplied even the slightest shred of viable evidence for your unsupportable unsupported beliefs. 

It wouldn't be so bad if there was some sort of logical pathway pointing to something like a god was there somewhere to go looking for, you haven't even got that as an excuse.

ippy

[torridon]

An open mind is certainly needed for human deductions, but once God has made Himself known, that is when you get absolute certainty.

In the sense that you are using it, certainty could only apply to your own experience and you cannot be certain of the experiences of others.  To derive an 'absolute truth' of the 'meaning behind our existence', or somesuch profundity, you need to incorporate some understanding of the experiences of others into your framework. Your personal certainty terminates at your skin boundary, you don't speak for me.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

In the sense that you are using it, certainty could only apply to your own experience and you cannot be certain of the experiences of others.  To derive an 'absolute truth' of the 'meaning behind our existence', or somesuch profundity, you need to incorporate some understanding of the experiences of others into your framework. Your personal certainty terminates at your skin boundary, you don't speak for me.

Antitheists and indeed everybody's posts are replete with statements proceeding from a basis that they are very,very,very etc likely to be ''true for everyone''.

[Enki]

By acknowledging that God is a possibility, it allows you to open the door to absolute certainty.

Actually,  I support, Torri here.  By saying the opposite(that is by not acknowledging that God is a possibility), it allows you to open the door to absolute certainty.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

In the sense that you are using it, certainty could only apply to your own experience and you cannot be certain of the experiences of others.  To derive an 'absolute truth' of the 'meaning behind our existence', or somesuch profundity, you need to incorporate some understanding of the experiences of others into your framework. Your personal certainty terminates at your skin boundary, you don't speak for me.

But in taking your line of dogmatic agnosticism any external point of absolute certainty terminates at YOUR skin boundary and is in fact ''dodging.'' In other words you have ruled out a priori any possibility.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

A testament to your arrogant assumption of what people mean.

No, a "testament" to the fact that words actually mean something. If you presume to think that AB meant something other than the plain meaning of the words he used, the only arrogance here is yours.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

An open mind is certainly needed for human deductions, but once God has made Himself known, that is when you get absolute certainty.

Your problem there being that you have no means to demonstrate with “absolute certainty” that a god has “made Himself known”.

Incidentally, you're doing Fallacy Boy no favours here. He's desperately trying to tell us that you mean something other than the plain meaning of the words you use, and you keep repeating those words. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

Antitheists and indeed everybody's posts are replete with statements proceeding from a basis that they are very,very,very etc likely to be ''true for everyone''.

Presumably because logic is "true for everybody". When you or AB decide to go off piste by abusing logic though then you are indeed marooned in "true for me only" subjectivity, despite your unqualified assertions to the contrary.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

AB,

Your problem there being that you have no means to demonstrate with “absolute certainty” that a god has “made Himself known”.

Incidentally, you're doing Fallacy Boy no favours here. He's desperately trying to tell us that you mean something other than the meaning of the words you use, and you keep repeating those words.

What Alan is saying and what has become obvious in this thread is of course Dogmatic Agnosticism is philosophically and intentionally opposed to any certainty. Torridon has amply demonstrated that prior and intentional rejection of the possibility of the absolute certain and flagged up it's evasiveness and you in your inimitable style have followed behind Torridon with your Turdpolisher and it's interminable category buggerings..... in this case turning possibility into ''probability'' which was a large red herring.

Now......... apply said Turdpolisher to a more appropriate location and stick(self moderated from this point)

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

What Alan is saying and what has become obvious in this thread is of course Dogmatic Agnosticism is philosophically and intentionally opposed to any certainty.

It’s got nothing to do with “dogmatic agnosticism", just logic. There is no means to eliminate the possibility of being wrong, about anything. Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Torridon has amply demonstrated that prior and intentional rejection of the possibility of the absolute certain and flagged up it's evasiveness and you in your inimitable style have followed behind Torridon with your Turdpolisher and it's interminable category buggerings..... in this case turning possibility into ''probability'' which was a large red herring.

Just out of interest, do you tell lies consistently in your normal life too or is it just something you take pleasure from there?

Torri of course did no such thing, so why even bother lying about that?

Once again for the hard of understanding – it’s not that anyone rejects the possibility of the “absolute certain”, but rather that simple logic tells us that there’s no way to know that it is the absolute certain.

Oh, and you don’t know what “red herring” means either. All I did was to correct AB and you on your common misunderstanding – first because no-one denies that anything is possible (that's just your straw man), and second though because something being possible tells you nothing about whether it’s probable (that's the huge missing piece in your reasoning). 

Now......... apply said Turdpolisher to a more appropriate location and stick(self moderated from this point)

Presumably you’ve resorted to personal abuse again because somewhere deep in that badly disordered mind of yours you have at least an inkling that you’re as flat wrong about this as you are about everything else. Oh well.

Incidentally, perhaps you can help me with a term. You seem to have invented a fallacy all of your own for which there’s no word. Not only do you commit fallacy after fallacy after fallacy of your own, but you also consistently wrongly accuse others of fallacies (“ad hom”, “category error” etc) presumably because you have no idea what they actually mean.   

What word then should we use for “someone who mistakenly accuses others of fallacies because he doesn’t understand what they entail”?

[torridon]

But in taking your line of dogmatic agnosticism any external point of absolute certainty terminates at YOUR skin boundary and is in fact ''dodging.'' In other words you have ruled out a priori any possibility.

I see nothing dogmatic in recognising that my own experience is valid for me and likewise your experience is valid for you.  I don't accept that your experience is somehow more valid than mine; it's different, ok, we have to live with difference.  I don't extrapolate a projection of my personal experience onto others and likewise I expect the same respect from others.

As to broader external epistemic empirical truths, we cannot know anything with total certainty as we all have only limited knowledge. To recognise that is not 'dogmatic', it is honest.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Fallacy Boy,

Presumably because logic is "true for everybody". When you or AB decide to go off piste by abusing logic though then you are indeed marooned in "true for me only" subjectivity, despite your unqualified assertions to the contrary.

Turning the antitheists into the logic lords is just a piece of crap.

[Shaker]

Turning the antitheists into the logic lords is just a piece of crap.

Somebody has to do the job - so far the theist contingent here are to logic what Winston Churchill was to Woodbines.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Fallacy Boy,

Turning the antitheists into the logic lords is just a piece of crap.

Actually it's the routine use of "antitheist" when you actually mean "rationalist" that's the only "piece of crap" here.

If you don't like the reasoning that undoes you, why not try to counter it rather than insult the people who explain it to you?