Creationists

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the same can be said of places in both norse and greek mythology, does that make them as real as your god?

Err, I don't think you got the point of what Dawkin's was saying. At all. Like, really missed the point.

And, no I stand by militant atheists. I don't judge someone for fighting, but I do judge them by what they're fighting for. Reason, science, and acceptance are all good causes. And let's face it someone needs to ridicule the religious extremists, and the moderates have a good track record of ineffectual polite mumbling.

Benbob, Thank you for your reply, allow me to respond generally to your objections then specifically:

It is refreshing to see that someone so vehemently opposed to an argument be so completely unprepared to discuss it logically and with intelligence on such a forum. It makes the rest of this easy

1)Definition of "Special pleading"
"Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in circumstance(s) C.
Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
Therefore A is exempt from S."

please fill in A, S, and C as to how you believe my statement fits. (hint it doesn't)

2) there are 2 Sentences in the quote, to which one are you referring, you comments are ambiguous at best
3)No one said anything about goat herders, further if you want to be properly insulting from the typical response of those of your seeming ilk its derelict castoff children of hittite wanderers who bastardized an entire region. Still not true but closer to what many anthropologists believe about the origin of the Hebrew people.
4) You can refer to #1 yourself

(you stopped numbering here but I will continue)
5)In hebrew anything that is a flying creature with wings in s a flying creature with wings. I apologize on behalf of whatever language idiot translated it poorly. Your knowledge of hebrew is abysmal, ever consider taking a class? To one significant figure pi is exactly 3, to 2 significant figures it is exactly 3.1. When you are measuring things with the palm of your hands how many significant figure would you like there to be?
As an aside, current taxonomy is a wonderful thing, through genetics we have been able to show relations which are not obviously visible to the naked eye. It is a pity my ancient ancestors simply classified things logically instead of trying to use knowledge that would not be gained for a few thousand years.

6) Ignorance of history shows through here as well, to whom was the Bible the property of during the dark ages? (hint they still have a little country in side of Rome) How widespread was it? Where was it kept. From where did the learning that sparked the renaissance come from?

7) OK a kilo of salt, salt in the ancient world was very valuable though and the responses given were quite dismissive

8) Compass points are arbitrary regarding N and S. You will find that magnetic north moves around quite a bit (taking magnetic south along for the ride) and East wobbles throughout the year as it used to be defined as where the sun comes up. Neither lines up with true north or true east as defined by cartographers.

Extra post to those that greeted me:

Thank you very much. I look forward to getting to know you all, I have known about WP for a few years but for some reason never came in to really check things out though I have sent a few people over when they asked me about their children who were diagnosed as Aspies.

Please excuse the back to back posts, I wanted my thanks to be a separate entry.

For the most part, I agree with your statement; that does not mean that everything you are saying can claim axiomatic status.

It assumes that nihilists, egoists, luddites and libertarians are all irrational. It assumes that all rational agents would agree with your statement; which if taken as an argument against the positions mentioned, is massive question begging (you are just assuming that the other views are necessarily false without demonstrating it). This is only an issue if one believes that rational consensus is the basis of moral ontology.

I understand that Dawkins is trying to show that religion is silly by contrasting it with an equally silly argument. However, he states that geography being the main factor for a person's opinions is a fact. It is not a fact.

As for militant atheists: in fighting for acceptance, they are remarkably intolerant, and thus hypocritical, themselves. I accept that standing up for things like equality and acceptance is fair; however I consider that trying to 'beat militant Christians at their own game' by ridiculing, belittling, and demonising them isn't the way forward. As I said, it makes both sides equaly unreasonable. Also if you were able to win your case peacefully, then it makes the militant Christians look bad, because according to the Bible, Jesus was a peacemaker. In such a case, I think you could rightfully claim the moral high ground for that particular victory.

Last edited by CrinklyCrustacean on 12 Jun 2011, 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

@RKBrumbelow

You probably guessed, but if you show up arguing for the supernatural, you don't get much of my time. Sorry if my reply seemed rushed, but, it was. But you are right, it wasn't special pleading in that sense it was a BS attempt at a pretentious cop-out

I'll try

"Person A accepts standard that disbelievers will just disagree with whatever A says dogmatically (regardless of the caliber of A's argument) and applies that logic to others (disbelievers) in circumstance where a normal person would be required to back up their claims with more than empty horse s**t .
Person A is in a debate
Therefore A Feels exempt from giving evidence to support an argument and relies of fatuous philoso-babble. Any request for supporting evidence A is unable to give is invalid (in A's mind).

Translation: "It's not my fault people don't agree with what I say."




Why would I do that, I don't have the time nor money to be wasting on that. Ever thought about getting an applied science degree? Oh and the rest of your paragraph was stupid. In a "divinely inspired" book there's utter nonsense in place of math or science, and you still believe it? Unless you can point one major scientific breakthrough that came directly from scripture, s**t, even something simple like the germ theory of disease.

My compass point er point was only to debunk your apologetic explanation for the four corners of the earth BS.

and Crinkly, dude, you really miss Dawkin's point he was implying that classifying faith by geography was stupid and illustrated that by the science example. Same with the theistic arguments he put in the mock journal.

Unfortunately, much of religious belief, to a person acquainted with facts and how they are verified and how they fit into a rational concept of the universe, do look totally foolish. When they point this out it is taken as an insult rather than a simple assessment.

Okay, so he's picking an idea which nobody supports, asserting that that is what people believe, and then debunking it. What a waste of time. Why would anyone bother to disprove something which nobody believes anyway?

The over arching thing was that culture influences religion, geography and culture tend to go hand and hand, hence the map. This is stupid and clearly shows the weakness of religion and how it's a result of indoctrination, not thought - hence scientific opinion doesn't follow that distribution. However, when people see geographic maps displaying religion, it generally slips by unnoticed, people don't tend to stop and go "that's stupid".
Faith = mindless indoctrination and asserted truths. Results in clear geographic distributions.
Science = Thought about carefully without sacred truths passed down from generation to generation. No clear geographic distribution.

Last edited by Benbob on 12 Jun 2011, 4:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

well then explain me this:

every person in the netherlands knows that people living "beneath the great rivers" are catholic and "above the great rivers" are protestant....

not implying that anyone in the netherlands will get killed if they should choose another religion than the rest they live amongst....

and what about ireland... dublin... any thoughts about the more militant kind of religious territories? hint: orangemen...

or how about israel?



as you see the dawkins geographic thing is just on a slightly other scale... he thinks a bit more global.

Regarding the Netherlands: Why would anyone infer that, for example, being a Muslim "beneath the great rivers" would lead to your death? It doesn't follow from a simple statement about religious distribution across a country.

Regarding Northern and Southern Ireland: the situation isn't a simple as the Catholics hating the Protestants. There is a lot of historical political background behind their antipathy as well. And for Israel...well I don't really know enough about the situation, but I believe that, like Ireland, there are other issues at play than simply the land they stand on.

In any case, none of this really contradicts my point that geography doesn't determine faith. If you removed the population of a Muslim country and replaced it with Catholics, the Catholics wouldn't become Muslim because of the ground they are standing on.

i am afraid you don't catch the clue...

the distribution of (the main) religion can be divided according to geography... and each geographic religious location is convinced that their view of the world is the correct one... and nobody wonders - as dawkins states - why this world view is dependent of where you were born.... (and as you clearly added: the people who you grew up with!)

this is never the case in science.

he then shows the same map with the same distribution... but with new labels of where people believe which potential cause of death of the dino's is prevalent....

such a map would be insane... but not when it regards (main) religious views of the world and the universe...

there are very outspoken and clear religious territories (= geographic locations)... but there are no science territories. that's all.

You can show which areas have the greatest concentration of a given faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean the the piece of land has anything to do with the choice of religion practiced on it. That is what I understood Dawkins to be claiming: that the land somehow determined the faith. You could, for example, put a family of Catholics in a Muslim or Jewish country, and the landscape would not convert them.

No no no no no. That map was just a geographic render of where particular religions thrived as a significant majority of the population. If you swapped the Muslims in the middle east with the Christians in the USA, the map would change, not the people.

*better way of saying it

Richard was only demonstrating geographic correlation, not geographic causation.