In what will surely be joyous news to many at VoxWorld, I officially resign my role of honorary judge in the PZ Myers Memorial Debate [with a caveat I’ll explain at the end of the post].
September 23, 2011
In what will surely be joyous news to many at VoxWorld, I officially resign my role of honorary judge in the PZ Myers Memorial Debate [with a caveat I’ll explain at the end of the post].
September 22, 2011
The interlocutors submitted their second round of arguments and this time, they limited themselves to one piece each. You can read both pieces in their entirety over at VoxWorld. If you don’t read their arguments first, my judgment won’t make as much sense.
September 5, 2011
In honor of Paul Zachary Myers publicly declaring that he won’t debate creationists anymore, Vox Day has offered the PZ Myers Memorial Challenge. Long story short: PZ wussed out, said a bunch of mean-spirited personal crap about Vox’s dad, and qualified himself as a “coward” by his own definition. PZ, always the friendly and gentle atheist, wrote:
Who is Vox Day? He’s a recipient of wingnut welfare, a pretentious nobody who had a rich and rotten crook for a father and who writes cheesy fantasy novels in between penning cheesy political discourse.
Now that’s weird. Does anybody remember what PZ said when J.J. Ramsey insulted his daughter before being censored into Darwinian oblivion?
August 24, 2011
A passive agnostic by the name of Andrés Ruiz / Deux Ex Machina runs this blog. Warning: it’s addictive. I recommend the posts on the evidential POE. Much food for thought, with plenty of slow and careful philosophy (in contrast to the “buckshot” approach I’ve been indulging in lately).
Andrés: Are you the same “Ex Machina” I occasionally tangled with at Daylight Atheism, before, you know… Ebonmuse brought down the iron fist of censure? If so, howdy, and no hard feelin’s. Either way, nice blog.
August 23, 2011
So you might have heard that the Loftus put out a new book pompously titled, The End of Christianity, which includes a chapter from self-proclaimed infidel Richard Carrier, titled, Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them). Can we agree that this is an empirical claim? If so, can you imagine the consternation that might ensue if a reputable physics journal published a paper titled: The Higgs Boson Exists, And Science Could Find It?
July 25, 2011
Along the lines of what we’ve been talking about, I’d like to highlight a selection from the blogosphere that I think is typical of the atheist position. To a commenter who challenged the Muehlhauserian use of emotional imagery to score rhetorical points in the POE, an atheist blogger who’s name is not worth repeating recently wrote,
The problem with your logic is that you fail to acknowledge the assumed premise. In this case, the assumed premise is that God is good. No. Better than good. He’s perfect. He is goodness exemplified. He is omni-benevolent. He is who all goodness tries to emulate. A good god insures that there is only goodness in the world. etc. etc. blather blather, etc. IOW, with a benevolent god there should be no evil.
July 21, 2011
So I’ve been cleaning out my notes, and I came across the following accusation from somebody calling themselves Hermes:
Why spend time on a detailed and thoughtful response when the other person is unwilling and also unable to comprehend or even attempt to engage what you have said?
Of course, the implication is that I am unwilling and unable to engage Hermes’ points, but you can find evidence to the contrary, here. As JS Allen also points out, Hermes was directing all sorts of believers to this thread and challenging them to respond to the points, yet, Hermes seems to have disappeared, and it’s been over a year now. So who is unwilling and unable to engage what’s been said?
July 16, 2011
I recently stopped by DD’s blog to see what sort of arguments are on offer, as I usually do every few months or so. Today, I’d like to raise some questions relating to DD’s standard of evidence as delineated in his post, Alan Roebuck and the Covert Materialism. DD writes:
…if there is some evidence that is better than the rest, believers could and would bring that evidence to the forefront. This fact invalidates the Courtier’s Reply because if there were good evidence, then the dialog between believers and unbelievers ought to focus on that. If good evidence does exist, then there’s no point in complaining that skeptics have failed to study the bad stuff. Bring out the good stuff, and let’s see how they deal with that. And conversely, if it’s all equally bad, then an exhaustive study of all the bad evidence would be merely a waste of time.
First off, we seem to have differing opinions about why people use the so-called Courtier’s Reply. I’ve never been of the opinion that the Courtier’s Reply is for skeptics who haven’t studied the bad stuff. Rather, any so-called Courtier’s Reply I’ve given is usually towards skeptics who’ve failed to study the good stuff.
March 31, 2011
I was commenting at CSA the other day, when Tige Gibson responded to commenters who mentioned the problem of induction:
Shady thinkers who pat themselves and each other on the back drive away people who would be interested in more interesting contributions. Some of us might faintly hope that these people actually learn something, but when even a pointed statement (I mean how can I be the first one to point out solipsism) doesn’t wake them up to their own error, there is little hope of this conversation becoming elevated. Solipsism is a concept that is not merely absurd because of its own definition, but because it justifies inserting absolutely anything in place of reality, since you have purposely sabotaged your ability to know anything with any certainty.
How do insecure fundamentalists reply when their dogmas are questioned? Why, I think it’s safe to say they often respond exactly like Tige Gibson and John W. Loftus: some combination of misconstruing the argument, insulting their interlocutor, and acting as if they’ve been attacked. This is beside my point.