Gabriella,
Assertion - therefore irrelevant.
Wrong – read the posts for yourself.
Assertion - therefore irrelevant.
Wrong – read the posts for yourself.
It would help if you could read and understand the words "As I said, I get you think the theoretical difference between the 2 types of claims of objective fact is profound. I look at the real world result of competing claims of objective fact and I don’t find the difference profound. " as opposed to demonstrating your usual inability to comprehend words that contradict your blindly held assertions and bias, followed by you returning to your tired comedy routine like a fly returns to crap. Fair enough. If that’s how you roll then go with it, albeit at the price of confirming that you have nothing to contribute here.
Why do you keep avoiding? How profound it is we’ll get to, but all you need to comprehend for now
is the category difference between “investigable in their nature” and “not investigable in their nature”.
It’s not difficult.
No - not really, quite often it doesn't no matter how much you like to pretend it matters in the real world.
Wrong again – it matters a great deal for the reasons I explained. All faith claims could be put in the “guesses” box and ignored equally; investigable claims on the other hand have evidential traction and so can be evaluated differentially.
It’s not difficult.
So what? In practical terms, as opposed to theoretical terms, the difference between claims of fact that can't be validated in the first set and many of the claims of fact that can't be validated in the second set are meaningless. Maybe not to you because it gives you something to hang your chosen philosophical argument on, but in the real world where people make decisions or adopt positions without being able to agree on, let alone investigate the facts or the truth, your philosophical argument is often irrelevant.
So everything: ignore all non-investigable faith (ie, not reason-based) claims; process and evaluate all investigable (ie, reason-based) claims.
It’s not difficult.
You do know these simplistic examples do nothing to discredit my point. This is not even remotely close to the complexity people face in the real world and therefore irrelevant to the point I made.
You do know that you’re wrong about that. You fundamentally misunderstand that simple (not “simplistic”) models are routinely used to illustrate larger principles.
It’s not difficult.
The difference sometimes matters, and other times it doesn't matter in the real world.
It’s the
principle that matters. Try to grasp the basic notion that we’re talking about a principle here. How often that principle matters in practical, real world terms is a different conversation.
It’s not difficult.
I have not said anything about all truth claims - I'll leave the inaccurate generalisations to you.
Wrong. Try reading what your ‘argument” actually attempts.
Can you provide evidence of a terrorist making this argument or is this just another example of you being unhinged from reality.
Dear god but your obdurate wrongness is approaching Alan Burns levels now.
First, the 9/11 hijackers (to take just one example) were deeply pious men – they were heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” even as they committed their atrocities. It would be idle to suggest otherwise, even for you.
Second, they’re dead. They’re not around to be asked whether they’d use their (and your, and any other) method of “faith” as the common rationale for their actions.
Third though the point you keep avoiding concerns the privileging of faith over just guessing. It’s not just terrorists – all the way down “faith” is used to justify hideous behaviours (the KKK consider themselves deeply Christian and mandated by its tenets remember) as well as perfectly benign ones. What the specific outcomes are on a case-by-case basis from privileging faith isn’t the issue though – what
is the issue is that the rationale for all of them
is the same. Claim “faith” as any better than guessing to justify your actions and you remove yourself from rebutting anyone else claiming the same “method” to justify his actions, no matter what they are. "But that's my faith" is the same argument
regardless of what it justifies.
Except it doesn't leave you defenceless at all because in the real world we just work on the principle that the rule of law allows us to try to stop people who commit or try to commit criminal acts. And hopefully you have grasped by now that I think privileging certain aspects of faith in the public square is not necessarily a bad idea, if a democratic process is followed, but privileging certain other acts of faith in the public square might be.
Groan. “In the real world” that’s often right because “in the real world” many countries are
secular – to a large degree they explicitly do not allow the privileging of faith over just guessing in the running of their affairs. Even then it’s only to a degree though – various faiths still get special exemptions and privileges (exemptions from carrying out equal marriages for example) which in my view is still the rust that never sleeps, but they are at least kept largely in check. “In the real world” too though there are countries that
do privilege faith over just guessing in the running of their affairs (ie, theocracies of various stripes) with the predictably grim outcomes we see.
Do you have a link to some evidence of such a study or are you just guessing?
The people who are certain in their belief, would be as a result of their interpretations of personal experiences for which they obviously cannot provide objective, testable evidence.
Oh, I see what you did there – you just changed my “pretty much all “people of faith”... think that their faith is a more reliable guide to truth than just guessing” to “people who are certain in their belief”.
Was that a mistake, or did you deliberately re-frame the words so as to misrepresent me? Of course most people who go to the trouble of observing the rights and rituals of their various faiths think that “faith” is “a more reliable guide to truths than just guessing” – otherwise why would they bother pursuing one guess instead of any other?
Susan was wrong. As are you about the significance of your philosophical distinctions in the real world. Apart from that though....
Susan was right – for as long as you continue to miss the point, evade, avoid, obfuscate, prevaricate and misrepresent you have nothing to contribute here.
Your choice now is that you stop doing these things and finally engage honestly with the argument (in which case we’ll have something talk about) or that you carry on with the same tactics (in which case we won’t).
It’s up to you really.
