Posts by Viviane

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

For the sake of argument, let's assume a monotheistic god akin to the Christian god, minus the whole god-became-man part. Let's call it Spanx, the Almighty. I wonder where do you want to take the discussion from there.

OK. Now define it.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

Why then should your authority be more credible than that of Mr. Cline? Just curious about credentials.

Ah, the appeal to authority. The last gasp of a failed argument.

Seems to me that there's confusion in the atheist side of the fence.

Since you can't seem to grasp the nuances of the terms and how it's applied, I am not surprised at your confusion.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

It was you who so insisted that we stick to 'agreed upon definitions'. That definition comes from an official page on atheism. What more can I say?

Official? Which official certified that? And yes, I did. No one but you is agreeing that is the definition. In fact, you've been told multiple times what the problems with it are. That you found a website that agrees with your mistake is irrelevant.

And "Sorry..." would be a good start.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

The traits I gave apply to both monotheist god or polytheist gods

To some deities. Others had wholly different traits altogether and thus would require an entirely new set of definitions and traits.

You could always say "For purposes of this discussion I choose Thor, and here are his traits and he is defined as ..." and replace the ellipses with the definition of those so we could determine whether or not there was evidence of him and whether or not we are lacking knowledge of this thing.

And still, why do I have to define?

Because you are the one who is trying to make claims about knowledge. You cannot claim we lack knowledge of a thing unless you can tell us what that thing is, how we could possibly determine if we lack knowledge of it or even if it exists to determine whether or not there is a thing we lack knowledge of.

Since expressed a wish to learn, this is a good lesson and example of building your argument. When constructing an argument for a debate, anything you wish to assert you have to have developed or borrowed (with proper accreditation, of course) and state that is what you are using for the purposes of your argument and debate. You also have to have developed any underlying arguments needed to support your position and have thought through any objections you may encounter to determine if they are valid or not, all without becoming emotionally involved with your position and argument.

This is why students have to defend their thesis and why in business, we have something called a rude Q&A, where we build an argument or position in just such a way and have friendly experts in the subject attempt to tear down our argument so we can find out where it may be weak or collapse, whether or not it is even valid.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

Atheism is a position about belief, while agnosticism is a position about knowledge.

As usual, you demonstrate you understand neither.

Extracted from atheism.about.com
.. you're welcome.

And you're back to trying to speak for other people even though you said you wouldn't. Both concept cover a wide variety of positions, you cannot hide your bad logic, platitudes, mistaken ideas and incorrect statements about others behind a blurb from a website that caters to your own misunderstanding by committing one of it's own, specifically that of conflating multiple ideas and a variety of concepts under a single phrase which gets none of them right.

Thank you for posting that, it aptly demonstrates the need to be clear in debate that I was mentioning to your earlier in the learning session.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

How am I supposed to define a deity which I don't believe in?

Beats me. But, until you can, you can't possibly hope to demonstrate your claim that lack of evidence leads to lack of knowledge because can't even define for us the very thing you claim we lack evidence for.

That's why, when you repeatedly asked me to define a deity, the best I could do was to give you some common traits of deities that are worshipped by a large percentage of the world's population.

Contradictory traits at that which by no means defines the thing in question.

I can't be any clearer than that

Then you can't possibly hope to rest your argument on such a profound lack of foundation.

Do you go around asking atheists: "define me god?"

First, I would ask a question that makes sense and is an actual question. Second, why would think I would go around asking atheists to define god for me? They lack belief in any deity so it's a nonsensical thing to think I would do.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

Agreed. So do you.

Which is exactly why I have only ever spoken for myself.

That tells me that you have an agenda, a mission to accomplish

And you said you were only going to speak for yourself. Shame on you!

Please don't assume (as you have done so wrongly so many times on this thread) to presume to know what I think or what my agenda is. (BTW, even though you claim to have an agenda, simply by starting a topic you clearly do have one. If you think that is untrue, look up the word "agenda").

Not at all. First, turns out that the person who asked did it as a personal insult.

Again, you're assuming you know what I mean. I stated a fact that had nothing in particular to do with what you perceive as a personal attack.

I was specifically thinking of when you wrote something to mean and, when it turned out what you wrote wasn't quite what you meant, you responded with "that's not what I meant".

You absolutely are asking people to assume what you mean. You're refusing to define what you mean, you're being vague and speaking for others. Seriously, how did you think trying to have a conversation like that would go?

No true Scotsman fallacy. We are debating and I have clearly told my ideas.

Clearly you don't know what the No True Scotsman fallacy actually is. As Mr. Drake pointed out earlier, you've already made the Fallacy fallacy and now you are doing it again. I said you've not been clear. You haven't. You've been vague and gotten upset when you were asked to be clear.

Until you are and we can all figure out what you are actually saying rather than just being contrary and illogical, no real debate can happen on your idea. It's not a fallacy to say something can't happen until conditions are satisfactory for that thing to occur.

So now you're learning how to have a discussion. Step 1, if you have an idea you want to discuss, think it through and then clearly state what it is you want to discuss along with the parameters of the discussion.

Do I have to take a Master’s degree before I can start debating any of my ideas? If I had set myself up to teach others, you might rightfully accuse me of lack of preparedness.

I correctly point out your complete unpreparedness to discuss this topic now. If you feel you need a Master's degree to discuss this with me on equal footing, feel free to go get one.

But this is a public forum, not the academia, and you’re no Bertrand Russell either.

I never claimed to be. Do you have a point here other than saying I am not a dead person?

Like I said before, I’m here to learn, but not to be lectured.

You're free to start learning anytime. Sometimes it even involves a lecture.

Your resort to inflammatory, derogatory language and minimization gets tiring, but I think you do it by design, so I won’t reply to you in the same fashion. All I can say is that you’re an expert in Strawman, Red Herring, Declare Victory, Reductio ad Absurdum, use of sarcasm and patronizing techniques in debate. I really can’t compete. You win – because no other result is admissible in your way of debating.

Well, you got one thing right in that entire screed.

Don't take that to mean you are unable to compete. You are clearly intelligent, but you are also clearly not prepared to debate and are letting your emotions get involved in the discussion of your ideas. You need to be able to look at your idea objectively without emotion in it and discuss and evaluate it purely on merit. You need practice in developing and writing clear points, defining the parameters of a discussion and defining exactly what you mean.

You've clearly the ability, but no experience. You can get that here if you don't let your emotions get in the way.

21

Gave blood today for the first time!

by Viviane in

red cross had a blood drive near me, i decided to go give blood.

i hydrated well, ate some red meat for the iron last night and at lunch, we and gave a pint of blood.

i felt mildly embarrassed, i had no idea what my blood type was.

Viviane

Thanks! I am happy to help. It's amazing to me how much civic responsibility and contributing mean when you've been denied it your entire life.

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

You know damn well what I meant and you're simply carrying on a tactic of subversion. At least now others can plainly see what you do. You don't merit my explanation.

Bingo. We get to the root of the problem. You're asking people to assume they they what you mean. When they refuse and ask that you plainly and explicitly define exactly what you mean, you get very upset.

Why?

233

What is BELIEF ?

by EdenOne in

stemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.

what exactly is "belief"?.

is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?

Viviane

Again, you seem to be taking upon yourself to be the spokesperson for the entire body of atheists.

Of course not. That would be ridiculous and I am frankly shocked that you would even try to make such a childish and ridiculous assertion. That's just comically bad to suggest that. I've no idea how you claiming to know how people feel, people you've never met, and me pointing out how that is impossible, means I am speaking for that person.

I mean, you aren't even getting the PoV correct of who WOULD be speaking for who since you've the person claiming knowledge of other people.

Seriously, is this your first debate with people that don't believe in invisible sky people, one you know, where facts, definitions and reality matter? Or are you trolling your own thread?

I've met enough atheists and read enough material to be sufficiently informed about what atheism stands for.

And only get to speak for exactly one person, yourself. You also have consistently attempted to conflate several points of view and gotten it wrong, so clearly you are NOT in ANY WAY sufficiently informed.

You construct what I debate as an attack on atheism, but you're wrong. I'm questioning what I perceive to be a misleading definition of what atheism is.

It's an attack on "making sense":

Anyway, you're hardly going to convince people to re-define a broad concept with many facets based the bad, very bad, ridiculous, silly and comical arguments you've presented here.