Posted - 2006.11.22 14:13:00 - [62]

 

Edited by: Orionn Treet on 22/11/2006 14:13:37
This seems to be going nowhere.

Posted - 2006.11.22 14:41:00 - [64]

 

Edited by: BranBresil on 22/11/2006 14:52:55
Jasmine... I’m starting to lose any hope I had of getting a straight answer out of you. Again, you STILL haven’t addressed the last set of questions I posed regarding your beliefs. Let me remind you once more, this would be referring to the set which prompted your “alas you bore me”.

As to your accusation that you would be “hard put to find a sentence in your writing that wasn't tainted to the degree I describe,” I guess my reply has to be an echo of one of yours: “Care to back them up with specific criticism?” Again, to ensure you don’t waste time by making irrelevant references, I am referring specifically to within my first entry, the one concerned pretty much exclusively with Revan’s sermon.
As to my reply to your utterance reused above (“Care to back them up with specific criticism?”) I think I have. In fact I’m positive of it.

All my initial entries were made up entirely of my enunciating problems I had with your theories, followed by questions asking you to clarify specific issues. I won’t quote all of them here, but they are still on the record for anyone to check and ensure the veracity of this statement.

While you make an admirable attempt to hijack the issue and it turn it into a forum on my beliefs (“Not nearly so easy to express your own understanding of the universe in honest bold and forthright terms”), I am quite sure you realize that this cynical ploy has no bearing on whether you are right or wrong. Even if my belief structure is found to be flawed, it hardly follows that your must then be correct.

As to “Its easy to be the cynic preying upon alleged logical flaws in the words of others” well, I’ll admit it’s much easier when their position actually IS flawed, which so far you have failed to disprove.

Arges echoed my main complaint with the entire principle of complete and utter relativity quite well, and I agree with him fully on that point.

Finally, even though I think one should be able to glean a pretty clear view of the specifics as to what I personally believe by simply perusing my comments within this particular thread of discussion, if you can assure me that should I actually attempt to present the entirety of my views you would attempt to rationally and logically dissect it, I will do so.

If, however, you limit your responses to your latest style here, I’m not sure many people would be interested in hearing what I believe following by a series of baseless accusations of ignorance on your part.

Let me know whether you agree to attempt to be logical, precise and rational in the review and I will be quite happy to present my views. I even give you full permission to couch any valid criticisms with an abundance of sarcasm and rhetoric, I assure you, I won’t take offense, I for one view them as simply amusing flourishes to add character to a debate, and won’t take anything personally. If a position is flawed, ridicule is quite appropriate as long as one clearly refutes said flaws in the process.

Posted - 2006.11.22 21:34:00 - [66]

 

Well Tecam, you enunciated your position quite clearly which is more than I can say for some. And as it turns out, given that you admitted that your position is not fully logical, you are beyond criticism. While I can disagree with you, and can explain why, if you choose to believe what you believe regardless of logic I can’t touch you.

That being said, I do have a few things I’d like to point out, take them into consideration if you wish.

First this “But you say that God has given us free will and complete freedom after he created everything. In that case God has no purpouse (sic), and there is nothing without a purpouse(sic) in this universe. Therefore God does not exist.” Well, first of all who’s to say that creating everything wasn’t his purpose in itself? Second, I can think of several other, perhaps more traditional purposes. Now while this might not fit the mold of a benevolent deity, what if he simply wished to observe the interaction of everything he created? Then everything would serve his purpose by simply existing. Or his purpose was for us to acknowledge his existence and thank him for the opportunity to be alive.

Now, while this would be a most unpleasant assumption to live under, what if we really DIDN’T have freedom? I mean, there’s really no way to know whether we do or not without a direct answer from God. Simply stating or believing that we have freedom wouldn’t make it true.


As to this : “I simply refuse to believe in some omnipotent allpowerful being that created the universe and let us run freely, murder each other, eradicate worlds he created, defy death by invention of cloning, and so forth without retribution,” same as above, refusing to believe it no more makes it false than my refusing to believe you actually exist would make you cease to do so. And as I’m sure you know, I’ve previously explained why I disagree with the notion that cloning allows us to defy death.

I certainly thank you for clarifying that “When I say that nobody provided direct argument to Revan's sermon, it is because nobody did from my point of view described in my two last responses.” And might I simply ask that you consider whether your choice of words was interpreted in the above matter upon first perusal by third parties? I think we can agree that some extra clarification would have been useful in the first place. Now that we know the gist you were aiming for, that is one thing, but I am sure you can see why I questioned what I understood to be your intended meaning.


Finally, this statement of yours “But this is as logical as it gets when you are talking about a mythical being created by men for crowd control” makes the assumption that God is “a mythical being created by men for crowd control” which is a statement for which I still have yet to hear anyone provide a logical basis.