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Except no it is not. You are simply contriving to find offense in every thread you can because you refuse to engage with the topics and subjects of the threads you post on, choosing instead to erect a narrative of insult and offense which you can admonish people on instead.
The simple fact is we exist in a universe and we do not have any idea what the explanation for this is. So all any of us have are our "best guesses". The only difference between people like yourself, and people like myself, are that I base my "guesses" on the current data set at any time. And I change my "guesses" to reflect changes in the data set.... because I am not emotionally invested in my "guesses" at any one time. I am happy to change them openly and honestly when I am given new data I did not have before.
Contrast this to people who make guesses based on no substantiation at all. They tend (mostly) to hold on doggedly to those guesses, never changing them, and feigning "offense" whenever possible to divert discourse away from lending substance to those guesses. And this is, alas, well over 90% of your MO on this forum. You divert all discussion away from people asking you to lend substance to your assertions and narratives by feigning things like "offense" so you can go off on some moral high ground tangent of admonishing people on what you imagine is lofty human behaviour. All the while displaying a low level of behavior yourself.
There is and was nothing derogatory in the word "guess". You simply pretend there is to fuel one of those tangents.
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Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
it's condescending and insulting and derisive.
Further, not only is what you say here false.... but it is doubly so given mordant made it very clear that he was applying the term equally to himself as to you. A move that simply rubbishes the claims you are making here and you are fully aware of that, because you are a very smart intelligent articulate person with a fine command of language, and you recognize the nuance of word choice and what it conveys. MY observation is you seem reluctant to acknowledge the proper use of language that conveys dignity and respect.... when you see an oppertunity to simply pretend otherwise and derail the discourse that you are either unwilling, unable, or both, to engage in. Your choice of words is transparent in that regard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
yet you are doing the very same objectionable behavior here: imposing your religious views ("it's all just a guess") on me.
You would do well to learn the difference between EXPRESSING a view and IMPOSING a view. What mordant has done here is 100% the former, and 0% the latter. But you simply pretend the reverse is true in order to engage.... again as usual with 90% of your MO on this forum..... with a person saying things.... rather than engaging with WHAT the person is saying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
how would you like it if someone said to you "you're having a dark night of the soul, God can comfort you in your despair"
I would neither like it nor dislike it. Because I do not contrive to take offense whenever possible like you do. What I would do is simply evaluate the sentence for substance, find that it contains literally none at all, and inform you of the result of my analysis. The result being: "The sentence you have offered appears on the face of it to be unsubstantiated nonsense.... but I am open to hearing the substantiation for it should you ever wish to offer any".
See how it works? I do not feel offended by your sentence. Nor do I feel "imposed upon". I have simply read the sentence as an adult. Evaluated it as an adult. And responded to it as an adult.
Try it sometime.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
you'd have a fit. and rightly so.
How about some integrity and decorum here therefore...... by letting people tell you how they would respond to your sentences rather than presuming to tell THEM how they would respond. Because as I have just demonstrated I myself did not "have a fit" nor do I see any reason why I would "rightly so" do so. Because in my world view.... and I suspect mordants too having read many of his posts for some time now...... the "rightly so" response to it is to read your sentences, evaluate them, and calmly explain to you why they are abject, egregious, nonsense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
because no one gets to impose their religious views on you.
No. They do not. But ONCE AGAIN I have to point out that "expressing" a religious view is not "imposing" a religious view. You have given the impression...... above earlier in your post, and here ramified again.... that you genuinely do not see the difference. You actually appear to think that someone expressing a view to you is "imposing" that view on you. And all I can say to THAT is wow. Just. Wow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
they don't get to tell you that God wants you to turn to Him. and you don't get to tell them they are just guessing.
Except yes they do get to tell me that. And I have no problem AT ALL with them getting to tell me that. Just as I get to tell them that I see no substantiation for their claims. This is a free speech society. I personally have NO problem with people expressing outrageous, nonsense, or even offensive views. But I reserve the right to call their views outrageous, nonsense or offensive.... as well as the right to explain how and why they are so.
The "imposition" of their beliefs is something else entirely. And as I said you really need to learn that difference so as to stop being so wrong, so often, about so much. And I say that not with the intention of offending you, but HELPING you clean up your act.
The "imposition" of religious faith comes not from expressing that faith or those opinions.... but when such people seek to enforce adherence or acceptance of those opinions though things like law..... or implanting them in the education curriculum..... or in having them pandered to in public halls of education, power or law in the form of monuments and mantras endorsing them. THAT is imposition.
Merely expressing their views however.... is not. Please.... for your own sake if not for the sake of the quality of threads on this forum that you keep derailing and polluting with your error..... learn the difference.
Agreed. Sorry Snowball. I cannot see any point to get hold of in your post.
He is saying, if I understand correctly, that mathematically "nothing"'does not exist, so the Atheist's idea of "there is nothing after death" could possibly be scientifically incorrect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by skepticratic
Well, nothing isn't just a concept. Not really anyway. For example, there is no sound in space. There reason is because sound only travels when it has particles to bounce off of. Space has such a low density of particles that sound cannot travel, thus there is effectively nothing.
.
What a load of bovine excrement.
You are equating absense of sound in space to "Nothing"?
And by the way, have you heard the sound of pulsar stars in space?
[quote=GoCardinals;44242890]He is saying, if I understand correctly, that mathematically "nothing"'does not exist, so the Atheist's idea of "there is nothing after death" could possibly be scientifically incorrect.{/quote]
Equivocation. 'Nothing' (a total vacuum) in the material universe is not the same meaning as nothing after death (cessation of life). This idea certainly could be wrong, but until there is some decent evidence for it it is scientifically and logically correct - indeed mandated - not to believe it.
Quote:
What a load of bovine excrement.
You are equating absense of sound in space to "Nothing"?
And by the way, have you heard the sound of pulsar stars in space?
You are thinking of the Pulsar in the Quran? It was debunked.
Except yes they do get to tell me that. And I have no problem AT ALL with them getting to tell me that. Just as I get to tell them that I see no substantiation for their claims. This is a free speech society. I personally have NO problem with people expressing outrageous, nonsense, or even offensive views. But I reserve the right to call their views outrageous, nonsense or offensive.... as well as the right to explain how and why they are so.
The "imposition" of their beliefs is something else entirely. And as I said you really need to learn that difference so as to stop being so wrong, so often, about so much. And I say that not with the intention of offending you, but HELPING you clean up your act.
The "imposition" of religious faith comes not from expressing that faith or those opinions.... but when such people seek to enforce adherence or acceptance of those opinions though things like law..... or implanting them in the education curriculum..... or in having them pandered to in public halls of education, power or law in the form of monuments and mantras endorsing them. THAT is imposition.
Merely expressing their views however.... is not. Please.... for your own sake if not for the sake of the quality of threads on this forum that you keep derailing and polluting with your error..... learn the difference.
This is precisely the very reason we have "free speech", and not "approved speech", in western societies.
As I have attempted to convey to TZ and others, and have failed repeatedly I'm sorry to report, there is no obligation to accept, adopt, nor endorse a view stated to you. Least of all on a forum where the express purpose is to discuss the views themselves.
When fundamentalists tell me I'm a sinner, heathen, heretic, or just generally a person of low integrity because I don't believe the things they think their god finds acceptable....I'm not interested in shutting down the conversation. I, of course, do not accept or endorse their views, and in the interest of understanding how they came to believe such things about people like me....I challenge their views. They of course do the same with mine, with many fundamentalists not accepting science such evolution or the big bang, etc. and despite my own incredulity at their rejection of science....I'm not inclined to take offense to what I perceive as blatant and willful ignorance on the subject.
Yet calling something a "guess" by a person who openly states they do not trust the scientific method or epistemology as the most reliable ways to arrive at true conclusions....and to that end, has stated they see little value in debate in order to find truth....I'm equally baffled at how or why such a person would even engage in discourse with people who don't share such thinking. But my incredulity aside.....the more important nuance is that the notion of "accepted speech" is what this person believes the self to be the authority of. That, is the dangerous rabbit hole of thinking which concerns me.
...the scientific method or epistemology as the most reliable ways to arrive at true conclusions....
...debate in order to find truth....
debate does not find truth.
neither does science.
two big flaws.
in my experience the people who understand this and move beyond it are smarter and wiser and understand more about, well, pretty much everything, than the people who don't.
debate does not find truth. neither does science. two big flaws.
I am not sure that those facts are "flaws" and I think anyone above the level of total laymen to the subjects of debate and science are more than aware that neither conclusively offers us "truth".
What science and debate are however, are the best methodologies we have for TENDING towards truth on the continuum between truth and total falsehood.
Using the methods of science and debate we can evaluate a claim and decide where to put claims on that continuum. But we do so while understanding that we can never use them to place a claim AT the point of "truth" or "falsehood". Just on points in between them on the continuum.
When a claim comes before me..... say the claim that human consciousness survives independent of, or even following the death of, the brain...... I place it initially on the exact middle point on that continuum.
Then through debate and science I obtain the available relevant argument, evidence, data and reasoning to the claim in question (or, in the case of people like you I TRY to obtain it, only to be refused systematically and consistently, usually with a false narrative erected to blame me for this, rather than themselves).
I then use this to move the claim up or down this truth continuum. To return to the example above..... we do not know everything about human consciousness but 0% of what we do know shows a disconnect between it and the brain. So nothing pushes the claim towards "true".
But 100% of what we do know links the two quite readily and heavily. This pushes the claim towards the negative side of the continuum.
And the result is that the claim is now in the negative end of the truth continuum. It is not just unsubstantiated (the zero point) but it also goes against things we DO know to be true. So to the extent that use of the continuum allows me to, I can call the claim "false".
Does that mean I can 100% say using science or debate or both that the claim is false? No. Clearly not. But I am no less justified calling it, or filing it under the title, "false" in informal language or day to day conversation..... rather than the pedantic level od conversation that we find on forums and more intense in depth discussions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
in my experience the people who understand this are smarter and wiser and understand more about, well, pretty much everything, than the people who don't
I thank you for the compliment then. Because not only do I understand it, I have explained it quite a few times on this forum.
in my experience the people who understand this and move beyond it are smarter and wiser and understand more about, well, pretty much everything, than the people who don't.
I think you are holding to a very rigid definition as it relates to debate (and science for that matter).
Debate need not fit the formality of a high school debate club of presenting a side with the intention of persuading an audience. We debate the merits of many things we do whenever we talk about it, and have some different opinions.
You & I could discuss going to store A or store B right before the family gathering for a couple of last minute things. I might say, store A is closer and we're running late so its a better choice here. You might relay that you don't know that store A has precisely what you need, and argue (another word that need not be negatively viewed) that you know store B definitely does have the thing you need and the couple of minutes difference it takes to get to store B are negligible...especially if store A does not end up having it.
Again, the flaw as I see it, is insisting others adhere to your personal standards. We have formal definitions of words, and they are quite useful & ought to be pointed out when we observe that others are egregiously using them so we all understand each other, but holding to this narrow usage isn't helpful to anybody. That would be like me insisting you are also an atheist because you don't believe in Zeus. Yes, it is a fun soundbite remark, but it doesn't fit the way you see yourself nor the definition as more broadly used.
And you do in fact debate us....you just debate us on your opinion of forum decorum rather than the topic of the actual thread.
yet you are doing the very same objectionable behavior here: imposing your religious views ("it's all just a guess") on me. how would you like it if someone said to you "you're having a dark night of the soul, God can comfort you in your despair" or "when my friend lost her husband to a horrible violent death it strengthened her faith because she recognized she needed to repair damage that she had caused in a past life when her family perished in the Holocaust and she turned away from God and also caused others to become heretics."
you'd have a fit. and rightly so. because no one gets to impose their religious views on you.
You assume too much.
Why on earth would I "have a fit" over someone attempting to comfort me in their own way, even if I don't consider their belief to actually be in the least comforting? It is the human gesture of compassion that I would notice. Have you never heard of "it's the thought that counts"? And how would them expressing a view and trying to be helpful be an imposition?
If I "had a fit" over that it would be fair to judge me to be thin-skinned and looking to take up offense to support some sort of persecution narrative.
Now if someone told me that my anguish was god's judgment upon me for not believing their version of religious orthodoxy that would be a different story, obviously. Even then I would not "have a fit" because I generally deal with such people as beneath my contempt; I simply let it go and they become non-persons to me in the sense that I will not stew over it or loose sleep over it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
they don't get to tell you that God wants you to turn to Him. and you don't get to tell them they are just guessing.
Except that because I am in fact interested in open to the views of others and have a default assumption of good intent, they DO get to tell me their view that I might find god comforting.
"My best guess is X" is a very common thing that people (including me) say about themselves and I doubt very much that anyone here is buying the notion that it is derogatory in any way when it applies equally to them as well as to others. A good synonym to this phrase is "My educated guess is X". It is simply an estimation of probabilities where comprehensive data is lacking but you are bringing what IS known to bear as fully as possible, along with your experience and intuition.
But you are not only eager to attempt to control my speech but you are eager to do it based on your assumptions about what I mean rather than on my clarifications of what I actually mean. Apparently you are so certain you are empirically right in your views that you can't abide it being described in any way as an estimate of probabilities, despite your intransigent refusal to substantiate your views in any way. This is what is technically known as a "lack of epistemological humility".
You seem to me the sort of person who validates their views by their feelings to such an extent that you are frequently fooled by them. The word "guess" that I used presses some sort of button for you and therefore you are convinced it was a deliberate slight despite the simple and obvious fact that it was not and it overrides even the fact that my own post said we are BOTH "guessing". Because if FEELS like a slight, it must BE one.
In all honesty, I have been going easy on you in the last few posts, allowing a number of things for the sake of discussion that I could have legitimately called you on, and it would seem you are too fragile for these kinds of discussions even so. Having spent 15 years some decades ago sharing a household with someone with borderline personality disorder, I made a quality decision long ago not to walk on eggshells for those who demand it. This is crossing that boundary, so you are just going to have to deal (or not) with the fact of who I am and how I express myself.
.. thin-skinned...persecution narrative...too fragile for these kinds of discussions...walk on eggshells for those who demand it...you are just going to have to deal (or not) with the fact of who I am and how I express myself.
phrases such as "thin-skinned" "too fragile" "I'm not going to walk on eggshells" "this is who I am" "this is how I express myself" are routinely used by people who are unwilling to address the problem of inability to communicate effectively without denigrating others.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 05-31-2016 at 10:34 AM..
phrases such as "thin-skinned" "too fragile" "I'm not going to walk on eggshells" "this is who I am" "this is how I express myself" are routinely used by people who are unwilling to address the problem of inability to communicate effectively without denigrating others.
I leave it to others ... if they care ... to judge who is editing whose reality here. I don't understand your need to feel denigrated by hook or by crook, and I don't need to.
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