VG,
It's not just me interpreting the words differently from you. It's a common theme in language that words can have different interpretations. Whether you want to accept this or not is up to you.
I don’t agree that it’s “a theme in language that words can have different interpretations” because I interpret the words “theme”, “language” and “different” differently from you. What’s that you say? “But to take a valid position on that you must also justify specifically
why you interpret those words differently from their standard definitions”? Oh no no no – I can just ignore that problem, and instead keep making the same broad statement about some words sometimes changing their meanings over time as if that somehow gets me off the hook.
That is how this works right?
Oh wait, sorry – I forgot the snide little straw man at the end: ...whether you want to accept this or not is up to you.
There you go – job done.
On the other hand, you could I suppose stop deflecting and instead finally just tell us how you would justify your different interpretation of the god character’s use of “will” so we’d know that wishful thinking isn’t all you have after all. What’s stopping you?
So nothing to do with Mary and the nativity story then? No claims of unnecessary suffering there?
No, nothing at all to do with Mary – do you suppose though that that may just have something to do my with answering the question you
actually asked me in the context of the problem of evil and a god of the omnis (ie, “Define "unnecessary" and "suffering", given what you perceive as "unnecessary suffering" could be viewed differently by someone else. So what "unnecessary suffering" are you talking about?”) rather than in the context of the previous exchanges about Mary?
You really have no shame at all have you.
Regarding the brain cancer, I have already said that I don't know why pain is part of the human experience for babies or adults. We could have all developed in a way where no one will feel pain ever but we haven't. One way I can look at it is that maybe there is some point to the pain or reason for it that I can't appreciate. Another way of looking at is to not believe in a god of the omnis. Given I do believe in a god of the omnis, I'll have to go with the first option.
Yes, you don’t have much choice about that – it’s a common piece of theistic casuistry to hand wave the problem away with “it’s a mystery”, “god knows best”, “that way, the babies get to meet god sooner” etc so you’re not alone in tying yourself in increasingly Gordian knots to explain why unnecessary suffering is part of god’s plan rather than just what you’d expect to see if there was no god at all (or at least not a theistic one). You might want to consider Occam’s razor about now though…
Stop lying. You haven't made any arguments that undo me. You have made some assertions that you can't support with evidence though.
Just responding to someone identifying your lying with “stop lying” doesn’t work. What you could try instead though is finally to try at least to deal with the arguments you’re given: why not finally for example tell us why you think “will” doesn’t mean “will” after all, or perhaps try something other than an
ad hom to dismiss with no arguments at all the ethical guidelines of a respected organisation working extensively in the field whose policies have been adopted by various government agencies?
You are really struggling here with the common use and understanding of the word "will", which is that it is a prediction of a future event and that someone's prediction can change after being expressed. A large part of Christian/ Muslim/ Jewish religious teachings is that we will be held accountable for our choices, as opposed to behaviour being inevitable because people have no choice https://prayray.com/god-gives-freedom-choice-prayer/
So not sure what you mean by "inevitable" when you say that an "inevitable future event" is the only meaning of "will". I am surprised that I need to explain this to you and actually provide a link to a dictionary, since this is common usage. I thought you were just being difficult.
It does not need to be "inevitable" as you seem to be interpreting it - as in 'can never ever change once uttered'. The word "will" combined with another verb could be the expression of a future intent or plan or prediction. An intent, plan or prediction that can change.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/will
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/will
If you want to interpret "will" as meaning an intent once uttered that can never be changed, that's up to you.
Er, aren’t you forgetting something here? The “will” of the Bible story wasn’t said by some ordinary Joe who might have changed his mind later on or who overslept or who was just shooting the breeze. It was said (so we’re told)
by an Angel who was passing on the unfailing message of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent god. What are you suggesting here – that a god who knows everything past, present and future might have changed his mind later on so when “He” "unfailingly" said “will” he actually meant something like, “with a bit of luck it might happen, but hey you can’t expect me to be unfailing about that because I’m only human after all not a god and, you know, new information might turn up that… oh no, wait a minute though…”?
This is the same mistake you made earlier on in this thread by the way re the god character’s morality (“morality changes over time” etc), forgetting that “god” is supposed to be morally perfect already – ie, precisely
not changing over time (“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” James 1:17).
Perhaps if it would help you if you give your head a wobble about now?
I didn't realise that we in the UK were now looking to the US for guidance on morality - do you also advocate introducing the ownership of guns into the UK?
I guess when all you’ve got left is to attack the provenance of the evidence then all you can do it to attack the provenance of the evidence right? The only argument I had to substantiate though was that these standards exist at all and are followed – which I did. I don’t have to substantiate the content of the guidelines themselves, nor do I even have to agree with them. And having shown you that they do exist, the question you endlessly deflect from remains: do you find the morality of the guidelines or the morality of the god character to be better?
It seems I now also have to correct you on what the term "argument from authority" means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
https://proofed.co.uk/writing-tips/fallacies-arguments-from-authority/
So, how do you avoid arguments from authority? The simple answer is to always focus on evidence. If someone is known as an ‘authority’ in a certain subject area, that’s a great starting point. But you need to look at what they argue, not just who they are.
Oh dear. I set out clearly for you the fallacious and the non-fallacious use of the argument from authority – and if you’d bothered to read the articles you linked to you’d have seen the differences set out for you there too.
From the Wiki argument for example:
“
Some consider that it is used in a cogent form if all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context,[2][3] …”
I explained to you too that the argument can be sound when the expertise is relevant, but unsound when the expertise is not in the field about which the inductive claim of likely reliability is made, and hilariously your second link makes exactly this point for me too:
“
Isaac Newton was a great scientist and an alchemist, so we should take the discipline of alchemy seriously.
We would never deny that Newton was a great scientist. His work on gravity and optics? The boy done good. But Newton’s belief in alchemy doesn’t mean we can change lead into gold. To argue that this were possible, we would need evidence. And there is none.” Thanks for the citations that agree with me, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your intention right?
Look, let me try to make it simpler for you: imagine (heaven forfend) that you were diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and were referred to a consultant for treatment advice. Would you:
A.Take that advice, perhaps seeking a second opinion too (note that word “opinion” rather than "evidence" here by the way) to be sure your consultant isn’t an outlier; or
B. Cancel the appointment, take a medical degree plus gain further academic qualifications, build a lab and undertake fundamental research of your own, have your results peer reviewed and published, commission a pharmaceutical company to design and manufacture from scratch the drugs you’d (re)discovered etc?
Or, to put it another way: would you accept the argument from authority as more likely true than not?
Can you see now what the non-fallacious use of the argument of authority actually looks like?
You are really struggling with the concept of evidence despite the number of times I have had to school you on this. You even linked to an organisation's website that presented absolutely no evidence for its assertion about valid consent in employer / employee personal relationships and then doubled down on your fallacy by claiming that the size of the organisation and the work it has carried out means that its assertions about consent in an employer / employee relationship must be true, even if you can't present any evidence that society has implemented the assertion that "Unequal power dynamics, such as engaging in sexual activity with an employee mean that consent cannot be freely given" into policy norms at work.
I had a moment of hope when you claimed that this assertion has been widely adopted, in the US at least, that you were going to present some evidence of this but you seem to keep running away from linking to any actual evidence to prove that an employee's consent "cannot be freely given" has been widely adopted.
So, do you or do you not have an argument or evidence to support your above assertion?
If you do then tell us what it is; if you don’t, then all you have is wishful thinking. Your choice.
I don't know why you are doing this to yourself or why you seem so unaware of how out of your depth you are but let me help you out. Why don't you email the organisation in the US that you linked to and ask them for evidence.
Such a shame that you have no grasp of irony – this collection of bad reasoning, straw men, false claims etc is an irony goldmine if you did but know it. Your epic, buttock-clenching, profoundly dim-witted mistake about continually demanding evidence and then (hysterically) claiming that someone
else struggles with the concept is that you’re
still looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
The only evidence I needed to produce here is that ethics guidelines exist, that they are authored by authoritative sources, that they say what I say they say, and that they have significant real-world effect because they’ve been adopted (for example by the US Department of Defense). I did that. You could do that too if you could be bothered to try.
What I
don’t have to provide “evidence” for though is the validity or otherwise of what those guidelines actually
say. Why not? Because ethics as a discipline
isn’t evidence apt. Really try to understand this because until you do you’re like a moth endlessly flying into a lightbulb no matter how many windows I open for you. You might for example agree with the moral statement “murder is wrong”. What though if every time you said it I replied like a demented speak your weight machine with “where’s your evidence?”, “where’s your evidence?”?
Again, really try to understand this – you can have reasoning and argument and gut feel for ethical positions until they’re coming out of your ears,
but what you can’t have just as a matter of principle is evidence.
I think that covers everything but I may have missed out one or two of your usual shtick.
Yes, you’ve got pretty much everything wrong again – see above.
