Why arguing with some people is so frustrating

[Yahzi]

So I made this assertion that Xians do not actually believe, but rather hope in an afterlife. I claimed that you could tell this by they way they behaved; for example, they wore their seatbelts just as much as the rest of us, despite the fact that death for them allegedly isn't the same as death for us athiests.

We had a long argument, with various highlights of absurdity.

Finally, the argument was put to rest when someone found a study that showed that Xians wear their seatbelts more than the general populace.

Obviously, this evidence was taken as proving me wrong.



Is it always opposite day for Xians?

So anybody who disagrees with you is a 'Christian'?

[Fade]

That's the point you say "whatever" and stop trying

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Quote:

Originally posted by Whodini
So anybody who disagrees with you is a 'Christian'?

Not neccesarily. They can be good people instead

[Skeptical Greg]

Quote:

Originally posted by Yahzi

Finally, the argument was put to rest when someone found a study that showed that Xians wear their seatbelts more than the general populace.

Yes, but do they buckle up their dogs?

[Franko]

In the U.S. most states require passengers in motor vehicles to wear their seatbelts. Perhaps Christians are simply more likely to play by the rules then A-Theists?

But speaking of frustrating religious fanatics, why is it that an A-Theist claims that no evidence for "god" means NO GOD, while no evidence for "free will" means "FREE WILL" EXIST?

Why won't any A-Theists present ANY evidence for "free will", or explain this glaring double standard? Perhaps it would just be easier to have anyone pointing out the double standard BANNED from the forum?

[Upchurch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Whodini
So anybody who disagrees with you is a 'Christian'?

Whodini,

Are you serious or are you just messing with Yahzi?

[FireGarden]

Yahzi,
ADataGuy posted the research to win his own argument with you. Not to counter the "Belief=hope" thing, but to show that even the most mundane assumptions can be risky.

PotatoStew questioned your beliefs about seatbelt useage to illustrate that you yourself believe some things based on personal opinion and experience. These reasons for belief are not scientific, as has been shown.

Your problem is that you tried to prove something that is not capable of proof. Belief cannot be measured. The arguments against you were that

(1) People are not Vulcans, and so emotions are not dictated by logic. Hence crying is not limited to long seperations but also occurs at funerals - whether or not the bereaved believes the dead have gone to heaven.

(2) Their body is their temple. So they worship God by worshiping his creation, valuing the life he gave them etc. They don't let churches fall into disrepair and neither do they let their bodies go to pieces. Hence the behaviour of Christians is consistent with belief.

(3) Hope is to do with what you want, and does not exist between the extremes of belief and knowledge. You can believe that the world will end tomorrow but hope that it won't.

BTW
I agreed with you on seatbelt usage, but failed to see how it supported your statement that "belief=hope" as far as theists are concerned.

Quote:

Originally posted by Upchurch
Whodini,

Are you serious or are you just messing with Yahzi?

Messing.

I'm as sick of his rants as much as he is of mine, I'd imagine.

[Upchurch]

Quote:

Originally posted by Whodini

Messing.

K. It's just that there is so much sarcasm in the forum lately, it's hard to tell who is being genuine and who isn't.

Sorry for butting in.

Upchurch

[The Fool]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko
In the U.S. most states require passengers in motor vehicles to wear their seatbelts. Perhaps Christians are simply more likely to play by the rules then A-Theists?

But speaking of frustrating religious fanatics, why is it that an A-Theist claims that no evidence for "god" means NO GOD, while no evidence for "free will" means "FREE WILL" EXIST?

Why won't any A-Theists present ANY evidence for "free will", or explain this glaring double standard? Perhaps it would just be easier to have anyone pointing out the double standard BANNED from the forum?

Franko I thought I told you to shut up about free will until you could establish a consistent position. You did shut up about it for a while after your humiliation in the "Franko wants to know your opinion" thread. I suppose you feel everyone has forgotten your display of inconsistency and dishonesty.......And your hilarious line about knowing the answer but not being able to tell us because "Its a secret" I still chuckle about that one.

Since you are someone who believes you make your own decisions then you should simply look to your own experiences for evidence of free will.

You constantly peddle the lie that nobody has ever provided any evidence for free will. Well Frank, that is really just a demonstration of your ability to ignore what is in front of you...There have been page after page after page of argument posted here...you may not agree with it, you may not like it, you probably don't understand it but to suggest it doesn't exist just demonstrates your ability to ignore reality when it conflicts with your religious dogma.
I realise that a lot of these concepts are probably a bit of a stretch for a cable technician ...but do your best to keep up.....

[Tricky]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko
Perhaps it would just be easier to have anyone pointing out the double standard BANNED from the forum?

You know, it is interesting that you should bring up the subject of banning here. I'm sure you have seen posts by Interesting Ian. Ian has a... shall we say... confrontational approach. Also, he is one of the most vocal anti-materialists here. His battles with Stimpy and Victor have been quite cacophonous at times.

Recently, Ian had a computer problem and asked anyone here for help. Who jumped in to aid him and spent a lot of time giving him information and tips? Why those two avowed atheist/materialists, Stimpy and Victor. They could have let him twist in the wind, effectively banning him from the boards, at least until he got his computer fixed, but they chose to help.

Now I ask you, what possible motive could they have for doing such a thing? After all, aren't all atheists selfish and censoring?

[Yahzi]

GoodPropanda
Those are good points. However, to make them, you've had to abandon the absurdities they were originally offered with. No doubt a valuable thing to do, and what I should have done in the first place.

My original claim was that Xians behave in life-or-death situations the same as non-Xians. Seatbelts was simply an illustrative example. If we grant that ADataGuy has proved his case, then we must conclude that Xians actually behave entirely differently than what we consider the norm for Western society, and that all those accounts that make the news precisely because they are abnormal are in fact the norm for religious people and we just haven't noticed.

And then we have the general confusion of self-evidence and not requiring evidence.

Quote:

Belief cannot be measured.

Can knowledge be measured?

Can expectation be measured?

Can opinion be measured?

Can hope be measured?

Quote:

(1) People are not Vulcans, and so emotions are not dictated by logic.

I disproved this with my thought expierements showing how people's emotions are in fact radically altered by the content of their beliefs.

Quote:

(2) Hence the behaviour of Christians is consistent with belief.

That works for the narrow example seatbelts, but not for the general principle that people spend based on expectations of future income rather than on actual current financial resources. Why wouldn't the same effect be true for lives?

If I give you a dollar, and tell you it's the last one you'll ever see, do you value that dollar differently than if I tell you I'll give you a million of them tommorrow?

Substitute doughnuts, cars, cheesegraters, anything you like in the above sentence. Now substitute "life" and suddenly the answer changes?

Quote:

(3) Hope is to do with what you want, and does not exist between the extremes of belief and knowledge.

You've put belief on the continum, when that's what they want to keep off. Belief was defined as "things you think are true without evidence," but I've yet to see any explanation of how that is different than opinion. And given that Xians want the afterlife to be true, isn't an opinion that you desire to be true the same as hope?

Quote:

I agreed with you on seatbelt usage, but failed to see how it supported your statement that "belief=hope" as far as theists are concerned

The point is that people do not expect their to be an afterlife. When they drop something, they expect it to fall, because of their knowledge of gravity. When they are told they are due a tax return, they expect it, and spend accordingling. When they buy a lottery ticket, no matter how much they hope or believe it will win, they don't act as if they expect it to win. And when they talk about the afterlife, they don't act in ways that show they expect it, but rather, that they merely hope for it.

This is so obvious I have trouble understanding how people can argue against it. Even Billy Graham does not expect to go to heaven! But the issue seems to be that people do not want belief to be characterized as merely desired opinion. They seem to think that religious belief should be unique: it should be accepted as stronger than opinion, but not subjected to the rules of knowledge. Thus, it should justify action when desired, while never compelling one to act in certain ways.

[whitefork]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tricky
Why those two avowed atheist/materialists, Stimpy and Victor. They could have let him twist in the wind, effectively banning him from the boards, at least until he got his computer fixed, but they chose to help.

Now I ask you, what possible motive could they have for doing such a thing? After all, aren't all atheists selfish and censoring?

You missed the posts where Victor told him to try fixing it by sticking a fork into the wall socket while standing in a bucket of water.

[Yahzi]

Whodini

Quote:

So anybody who disagrees with you is a 'Christian'?

No, and in fact some of the people I was most annoyed with were not necessarily Xians. My mistake, and I apologize.

But after you've had to argue that we can believe in gravity without reading Kepler's papers, or that our concious mind has crucial influence over our emotions, or that self-evident is not the same as without evidence, or that people behave according to economic principles, you tend to get a little careless.

[c4ts]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko
Perhaps it would just be easier to have anyone pointing out the double standard BANNED from the forum?

We should ban people who continue to hold double standards. That would solve a lot of problems on the R&P forums.

[Skeptical Greg]

Quote:

Originally posted by Yahzi
They seem to think that religious belief should be unique: it should be accepted as stronger than opinion, but not subjected to the rules of knowledge. Thus, it should justify action when desired, while never compelling one to act in certain ways.

I like that ...

[Thanz]

Quote:

Originally posted by Yahzi

My original claim was that Xians behave in life-or-death situations the same as non-Xians. Seatbelts was simply an illustrative example.

And this is the claim that you have been singularly unable to support. The only 'illustrative examples' that you gave (seatbelts and funerals) were shown to be of little or no value whatsoever. You then resorted to the "its self evident! Can't you see?" tactic, which is ridiculous.

First of all, according to this 76.5% of Americans are Christian. So when you talk about comparing Christians to normal Western society, you are (more likely than not) comparing Christians to other Christians.

Next, I suggested that we might get a handle on things if we had data for life-endangering professions or heroic situations. You called the very idea that there might be differences here "insulting".

So, we never even get to the rest of your ridiculous arguments. You don't even get past your premise.

Quote:

Originally posted by whitefork

You missed the posts where Victor told him to try fixing it by sticking a fork into the wall socket while standing in a bucket of water.

What do you mean "missed"? It does work, you know.

[Franko]

Quote:

Recently, Ian had a computer problem and asked anyone here for help. Who jumped in to aid him and spent a lot of time giving him information and tips? Why those two avowed atheist/materialists, Stimpy and Victor. They could have let him twist in the wind, effectively banning him from the boards, at least until he got his computer fixed, but they chose to help.

Now I ask you, what possible motive could they have for doing such a thing? After all, aren't all atheists selfish and censoring?

Well ... maybe Stimpy and Vicky D. aren't quite as eager to cease to exist as they pretend to be ... ?

[Tricky]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko


Well ... maybe Stimpy and Vicky D. aren't quite as eager to cease to exist as they pretend to be ... ?

I doubt that they are eager to cease to exist, but I even more strongly doubt that either one has abandoned atheism. They are just altruistic atheists, as are most atheists in my experience.

[Franko]

Quote:

I doubt that they are eager to cease to exist, but I even more strongly doubt that either one has abandoned atheism. They are just altruistic atheists, as are most atheists in my experience.

Ohh Tricky All of you A-Theists want to pretend to be moral, but my problem is that you offer no evidence in support of this claim.

For example, Why is it that No evidence for “God” equals NO GOD EXIST; while No evidence for “free will” equals “free will” EXIST? That is a double standard, and one that NO A-Theist on this forum has had the honesty to acknowledge -- even after more than a year of me pointing it out.

And that is only ONE example of what I am talking about.

[Tricky]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko
Ohh Tricky All of you A-Theists want to pretend to be moral, but my problem is that you offer no evidence in support of this claim.

LOL. That's cute. What about the example I just posted? You can look for yourself if you don't believe me. Exactly what kind of evidence do you require?

[c4ts]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko


Ohh Tricky All of you A-Theists want to pretend to be moral, but my problem is that you offer no evidence in support of this claim.

For example, Why is it that No evidence for “God” equals NO GOD EXIST; while No evidence for “free will” equals “free will” EXIST? That is a double standard, and one that NO A-Theist on this forum has had the honesty to acknowledge -- even after more than a year of me pointing it out.

And that is only ONE example of what I am talking about.

Demanding evidence for something you know there is no evidence for is a double standard.

[Franko]

Quote:

Exactly what kind of evidence do you require?

You have to do more then just claim to be honest. You have to do more then just saying you are honest.

You have to actually Act in an honest manner.

... So how about acknowledging that Your religion is not much different then the rest? You believe in "free will" and there is no evidence for "free will". It is no different then a person beiving in "God" without ANY evidence for "God".

It is hypocritcal and intellectully dishonest for any A-Theist to claim otherwise.

[c4ts]

Franko, if everybody answered you honestly this board would be nothing but a big flame war becasue you would not accept their answers on account of their "A-Theism" and you would accuse them of your own double standards.

[FireGarden]

Yahzi,
I brought up the "their body is their temple" argument when you posted

Quote:

Also, Xians wear seatbelts, get triple-bypass heart operations and even transplants, and so on. They cling to this life with virtually the same amount of tenacity as athiests.

So I know that seatbelts wasn't the limit of your argument.
But any life saving action is consistent with their belief because they believe that life is precious (even their own imperfect, non-heavenly life here on Earth).

Quote:

If I give you a dollar, and tell you it's the last one you'll ever see, do you value that dollar differently than if I tell you I'll give you a million of them tommorrow?

Do I spend that dollar carefully? (After all, we are trying to "measure" internal states by external actions) If you only give away millions to people who are careful with their money, then I do spend that first dollar carefully. Perhaps God only gives eternal life in heaven to those who care for this short life. After all, he doesn't like suicide.

So the answer doesn't change when you substitute "life" for dollars.

Quote:

When they buy a lottery ticket, no matter how much they hope or believe it will win, they don't act as if they expect it to win.

I've never met someone who believed that their lottery ticket would win. But suppose Mr. X does believe that his ticket will win. I would expect him to start spending the money before he actually has it. But not if I learnt that he also believed that such behaviour was unlucky and could change the outcome of a lottery draw. And Christians certainly believe that their behaviour in this life will affect where they go in the next.

In short:
There are so many things that could alter behaviour in any of the examples that you gave.



On the belief/knowledge continuum
All I understood about that was that belief and knowledge both had to do with what you thought was real. (Each with different levels of certainty) But hope has nothing to do with that. Hope is purely about what you want to be true.

[Franko]

Quote:

c4tb:

Franko, if everybody answered you honestly this board would be nothing but a big flame war becasue you would not accept their answers on account of their "A-Theism" and you would accuse them of your own double standards.

Why don't you just post your evidence for "free will" nitwit and shut me up once and for all?

I'll tell you why you won't -- because YOU DON"T HAVE ANY EVIDENCE FOR YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!

but the funniest part is that you want to pretend that you aren't religious!!! hehehe ...

[Tricky]

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko
Why don't you just post your evidence for "free will" nitwit and shut me up once and for all?

I did. It didn't.

[c4ts]

In a purely hypothetical situation, if someone punched Franko in the face as an act of free will, would he recognize it as such?

Hello, All.

Hopefully Yahzi still has me on ignore, but I wanted to weight in on this thread as the irony of the topic was too great to ignore. Yahzi wrote:

Quote:

Obviously, this evidence was taken as proving me wrong.

The argument that Yahzi and I got into was about whether his claim that Christians and non-Christians were equally likely to wear seatbelts. My position was simply that that relationship had not been established -- I wasn't even claiming he was wrong. Some of his replies (these are just my favoriates really) were:

Quote:

This thread is about why they act indistinguishably from non-Xians, given that they assert a different belief. The fact that they indeed do act so is self-evident. The fact that people can dispute this just goes to show how far some people will go to win an argument.

Quote:

I do have evidence. I never said I lacked evidence: I said it was so readily available that I need not present it.

Quote:

What I just said was that asserting that evidence is easily available and it's not my job to hand it to you is NOT the same as beleiving something on faith. Saying that the evidence is readily available does not imply either that I lack evidence, or that I am taking anything on faith. In fact, it implies the exact opposite.

Quote:

I have not presented my evidence because I did not realize how deprived of ordinary daily expierence you were.

Quote:

When I said the proposition was self-evident, what I meant was that the evidence for it was both overwhelming and inescapable. This in no way makes it a truth I hold without evidence

Yahzi's basic contention was that his underlying premise (that Christians and non-Christians act identically in seat belt usage) was "self evident." As a result of this he did not need to provide the evidence that he always claimed he had, but was never willing to either present to the rest of us or share the method with which the evidence was collected. Both Potato and I found abstracts for actual statistical studies that found a stastically-significant difference in seat belt usage patterns.

Now while these studies may not indisputably put to rest the question of seat belt usage, I submit that they clearly demonstrate that Yahzi was indeed absolutely wrong about the self evident nature of his claim. Furthermore, I would suggest that his claims, lacking any evidence, were indeed entirely based on his faith that they were true. I would have hoped that he would have learned from this that simply asserting something is self evident does not mean you do not have to provide evidence for it when following scientifically sound methods. But I guess that was too much to hope for.

It is the lack of open-mindness and unwillingness to be critical about what we think we know (traits that Yahzi has continuously displayed) that makes it frustrating to argue with some people for me.

[Yahzi]

ADataGuy

Quote:

My position was simply that that relationship had not been established -- I wasn't even claiming he was wrong.

You don't seem to understand.

I made an claim that I thought was self-evident. It was a claim about ordinary daily expierence, so it was the sort of thing that would be hard to find a study on and also the sort of thing that people should be already know.

Now the point is that you objected to the claim, even though you did not actually think it was false. This is called "arguing for argument's sake." As it turns out, the claim is indeed false; and, as I maintained from the very beginning, it doesn't matter that the claim is false. The argument was never about seatbelts as a litmus test, which was obvious from the fact that I, an athiest, don't generally wear a seatbelt. The claim was merely an illustrative example of the principle under discussion. When you finally did show that seatbelt usage was different, not a single person thought it was for theological reasons. Furthermore, if the reason had been theological, your evidence would have supported my case. Yet you claimed victory.

This is like finding a spelling error in Hamlet, and denouncing the entire thing as trash.

This is not a logical flaw in my argument, because my argument never depended on this particular case. However, what you have done is establish that I cannot assert that Xians are ordinary people without proving it. You might as well establish that I cannot assert that Xians exist without proving it. After all, you might not disagree with the notion that Xians exist: but really, what prove have I offered for it? Why not object to that claim?

By focusing on a narrow detail, which was ultimately decided in my favor, you managed to completely derail the entire discussion. It's not your facts I object to: it is your inability to grasp what is being talked about.

I suppose it's my fault, for putting "Seatbelts" in the title. Some people just can't read past the first few words.

Quote:

It is the lack of open-mindness and unwillingness to be critical about what we think we know (traits that Yahzi has continuously displayed) that makes it frustrating to argue with some people for me

Nice strawman and ad hominen at once. I was never unwilling to be critical about what we think we know. I merely was unwilling to argue trivial details that could not be proved, particularly since no-one thought they wrong. I was unwilling to have my discussion sidetracked by narrow-minded point scoring. Of course, I failed, because too many people were interested in point scoring - as long as it was against me.

Once you did bring up your study, I gave it the weight it deserved. It showed that my example was not helpful - but it contributed nothing else to the actual discussion of whether or not Xians behave like people who expect a second life. If you weren't so interested in winning points, you might have noticed that.


And yes, I still have you ignore, but since this final post was clearly a response to me, I thought I should read it. I'm sure that my post will make no impact whatsoever on you, so I suppose I've just wasted both our time.

Quote:

Originally posted by ADataGuy
[b]Hello, All.

Hopefully Yahzi still has me on ignore, but I wanted to weight in on this thread as the irony of the topic was too great to ignore. Yahzi wrote:

He's put you on ignore after just 16 posts? Damn, you might even have broken my record!

Edited to add: Apparently not, I've just seen his response to you! LOL

Quote:

Originally posted by Franko


Why don't you just post your evidence for "free will" nitwit and shut me up once and for all?

I'll tell you why you won't -- because YOU DON"T HAVE ANY EVIDENCE FOR YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!

but the funniest part is that you want to pretend that you aren't religious!!! hehehe ...

Hi guy,

I think you and I can do this without quarrelling, and I really want to know what you think on one point.

Many people would say that the essential difference between a religion and a science is that a science when properly practiced will change its theories when evidence no longer supports them, and adopt a theory more solidly based on the most current evidence. (Note the words "when properly practiced".) They would argue that science is "bottom-up" in its search for the truth, while a religion is "top-down": once defined, it cannot be altered, if you get what I'm trying to say.

What are your thoughts on these definitions?

[Leif Roar]

Quote:

Originally posted by sundog

They would argue that science is "bottom-up" in its search for the truth, while a religion is "top-down": once defined, it cannot be altered, if you get what I'm trying to say.

Hmm... I seem to recall that there is a branch of Islam who think of Muhammed not as the "ultimate prophet", but rather as the "currently best". In a very real way they're waiting to have their religion redefined for them.

Also, once you move out of the dogmatic fringes of a religion, there tend to be a large body who believes that the religious teachings and rules must be understood in the context of the society they arose in, and can't necessarily be applied unchanged to other societies or times. So you'll have a continuous re-evaluation of the religion to follow the changes in society.

[urstardust]

Arguing with some people is so frustrating when they are always calling you names, any in mind?

Quote:

Originally posted by Leif Roar

So you'll have a continuous re-evaluation of the religion to follow the changes in society.

But wouldn't you say that, in general, this happens in spite of doctrine rather than because of it? That the existing doctrine usually resists change, rather than promoting it?

[Leif Roar]

Quote:

Originally posted by sundog


But wouldn't you say that, in general, this happens in spite of doctrine rather than because of it? That the existing doctrine usually resists change, rather than promoting it?

Well, yes of course. But I think that's in the nature of any doctrine as such, and is nothing that is pequliar to religious doctrine.

In all institutions there is conservative and revolutionary forces. It's quite possible that the conservative forces are stronger in all, or certain, religious institutions - but then again, if you consider the history of Christianity, it is striking how many reformations and renewal movements there has been.

I don't think there's anything fundamentally conservative about religious doctrine in itself (besides what's there for all doctrine), but it is possible that religious doctrine tend to be more conservative than other doctrines.

[Yahzi]

Quote:

I don't think there's anything fundamentally conservative about religious doctrine

I disagree. I think one of the important functions of religion is cultural preservation. I think by its nature, religion aims to preserve some ideal moment in the past; that moment when the Word was revealed. Also to preserve cultural values like who your enemies are.

I suppose a religion could be continously revelatory, but none come to mind.

[American]

Exactly - hope vs believe. I hope. But I know it's probably crap.