Moderated Infinity!!!

[Leumas]

Ah ha! I see the problem. You seem to think anyone having a little fun with you rather than arguing with the fantasy outrage you are railing against is somehow supporting that fantasy outrage. You DO know this war is all happening inside your head...right?

To be clear: I would not know a Christian apologist or indeed any other religious apologist if I tripped over one. I don't mix with such people, and I'm not one myself. I would not give a rat's arse what they think or say. I would not bother to defend any of them, except perhaps against a ravenous badger or something. So you have got the wrong person if you think you have found someone supporting the fantasies you carry about in your skull that seem to bedevil you. So you can give up with those sorts of accusations. Are we quite clear?

Uhuh... I do not believe a word in the above post except for the admittance of ad hominem attacks and goading and mick taking of another member of this forum... thanks for admitting that.... all in defense of christians... QED!!!

So now... STOP doing that... I am not the target of your repeated and concerted CONCERN to defend christianity.... ok... are we quite clear?

Stick to arguing the OP not as you admitted repeatedly being concerned to take the mick and ridicule and engage in ad hominems.

Ok... are we quite clear now???

 

[Steve]

Uhuh... I do not believe a word in the above post except for the admittance of ad hominem attacks and goading and mick taking of another member of this forum... thanks for admitting that.... all in defense of christians... QED!!!

Of course you don't. You cannot comprehend that not everyone sees and experiences the world exactly as you do, with no allowance for variance.

So now... STOP doing that... I am not the target of your repeated and concerted CONCERN to defend christianity.... ok... are we quite clear?

If you really think that Norman Alexander, or any other poster in this thread, is defending christianity then your written word comprehension skills are quite pathetic.

Stick to arguing the OP not as you admitted repeatedly being concerned to take the mick and ridicule and engage in ad hominems.

The OP is a fallacy. There is precious little to argue.

Ok... are we quite clear now???

A lot of us here are quite clear, but we do seem to have one voice crying in the wilderness.

(OMG! A reference to a biblical phrase! Accusation of being a christian or christian apologist in 3...2...1...)

 

[Foster Zygote]

I don't know if the above post rife with nothing but strawmanning was out of not bothering to read the OP or deliberate... but whichever case... QED!!!

I'll go ahead and take that as a tacit admission that you can't actually explain why my statement "the OP assures us that Christians keep telling us that they reject the concept of infinity" misrepresents your opening sentence in any way.

 

[Foster Zygote]

SIC ERAT SCRIPTUM!

SOL

WTF

 

[Leumas]

A lot of us here are quite clear, but we do seem to have one voice crying in the wilderness.

Yup... thanks again for the confirmation... QED!!!

And by the way... when as you say

the OP is a fallacy. There is precious little to argue.

Then why are you so CONCERNED to ridicule and goad and spend so much time and effort spreading fallacies instead of just leaving it alone then???

Actions bespeak a lot louder than CLAIMS... so yet again... QED!!!

 

[Leumas]

I'll go ahead and take that as < snip yet another strawman>.

Yup... you carry on strawmanning and I will carry on being confirmed in saying... yet again... QED!!!

 

[Foster Zygote]

Uhuh... I do not believe a word in the above post except for the admittance of ad hominem attacks and goading and mick taking of another member of this forum... thanks for admitting that.... all in defense of christians... QED!!!

So now... STOP doing that... I am not the target of your repeated and concerted CONCERN to defend christianity.... ok... are we quite clear?
Stick to arguing the OP not as you admitted repeatedly being concerned to take the mick and ridicule and engage in ad hominems.

Ok... are we quite clear now???

I dunno, you still seem to have some engrams stuck in your teeth there. No, other side. To the left a little. Sorry, my left.


Not thinking that your arguments are the brilliant rhetorical triumphs that you apparently do does not constitute a personal attack. And pointing out that your argument is based on a strawman is not a defense of Christianity. If you want to proffer criticism of Christianity, or any other religion, that's fine. But do it with a fact based argument.

Had you offered any or all of the links you posted in a previous reply to me, and stated an opinion regarding their arguments and asked others to offer their thoughts, then we might have had an interesting philosophical discussion. But you opened with a strawman argument strongly implying that Christians (yes, and others) commonly reject the concept of infinity as a fantasy. But the majority of us here are quite familiar with Christianity. Some of us have learned through proximity, some (like myself) from having been raised Christian, and some who still are Christian. And no one else has described any experiences confirming your assertion that the concept of infinity runs counter to Christian orthodoxy, or even that it's a commonly held position. Quite the contrary, in fact. Christians, in general, are entirely comfortable with the concept of infinity, especially as it pertains to their vision of God and his creation.

 

[Leumas]

I dunno, you still seem to have some engrams stuck in your teeth there. No, other side. To the left a little. Sorry, my left.

Yes... thanks for that yet more confirmation of the extent of your CONCERNS to defend Christian Apologists by incessant derailing of this thread.

QED!!!

 

[Foster Zygote]

Then why are you so CONCERNED to ridicule and goad and spend so much time and effort spreading fallacies instead of just leave it alone then???

How is pointing out that something is an informal logical fallacy equivalent to spreading that fallacy?

And you do realize that this is a forum where people argue about things, yes? If you want to present your arguments without them being exposed to criticism, start a blog.

 

[sackett]

SIC ERAT SCRIPTUM!

VIDELICET!

 

[Foster Zygote]

Yup... you carry on strawmanning and I will carry on being confirmed in saying... yet again... QED!!!

QED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huzzah! Now I have the upper hand.

"In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces." - Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War

 

[Leumas]

... If you want to present your arguments without them being exposed to criticism, start a blog.

The posts below are not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument.

Just be sure to sweep up all that straw when you're done. And don't leave that thesaurus out where someone could trip over it.

Oh and look- CONCERN is yet again on the menu. How unexpected.

We know, of course, that infinite boredom is an impossibility, along with unbounded indifference and everlasting ennui.

But logic is sometimes -- nay, much too often -- at variance with our subjective experience. Let our consolation be that our experience is not everlasting.

It's not, is it? No, QED & all that. Goddle mighty.

And beyond!!!

And back again!

To infinity and beneath! Alongside! Right through that sugger!

To infinity to pick up a six of Molsons. Grab some freetos while yer at it.

Whatever happened to Jell-O wrestling anyway?

To Bed, Bath...

oh wait. never mind.

Why is there yet another thread full of gibberish railing against an idea no one here has put forth and arguing as if this is somewhere like RaptureReady rather than a board mostly populated by atheists?

Compulsions are difficult to explain. We have a poster on this very board who appears compelled to pontificate, in thread after thread, on concepts that no one here, and very few people in real life, actually hold. Who can explain that?

Foster Zygote quoted the essence of part of the opening post. You may recall, it was:

You expect us to believe that when someone quotes back your very words, that you are being straw-manned (and deliberately so)?

Sometimes some soapbox preachers get so cross-eyed steamed up about their subjects while ranting from atop their crate on the corner of some lonely street that they completely fail to see when they are being heckled. Instead, they think the noise is support for their ranting, and thus their chosen rant topic. From there, the leg-pulling can only get worse.

QED.

SPQR!

QDBV

ID EST!

SIC ERAT SCRIPTUM!

That whooshing sound is the point flying over your head.

SOL

WTF

VIDELICET!

dupe

QED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huzzah! Now I have the upper hand.

"In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces." - Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War

I dunno, you still seem to have some engrams stuck in your teeth there. No, other side. To the left a little. Sorry, my left.

 

[Myriad]

The posts below are not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument.

The first sentence and fundamental premise of the thread is a misrepresentation so thorough as to constitute.a falsehood.

You then proceeded to falsely characterize those attempting to correct that falsehood as Christian apologists.

What improvement in the discussion, following that, were you expecting?

 

[Foster Zygote]

Yes... thanks for that yet more confirmation of the extent of your CONCERNS to defend Christian Apologists by incessant derailing of this thread.

QED!!!

In this case, yes - I will defend Christians, apologist or otherwise, or any other religious persons, from claims about them that are utter ********. I'm all for criticism of religion, but it has to be based in truth. Want to talk about hypocrisy among Christians? Go for it! I can offer numerous supporting examples. Want to talk about how the supposed source of perfect, objective morality condones slavery, misogyny and genocide? Me too! But if you try to push an argument based on something that isn't true, like that Christians commonly hold the belief that infinity is a fantasy construct, then I'm going to point out that that's not true.

All you're doing is confirming that your own attacks aren't concerned so much with truth as they are with simply denigrating religion. You are indicating that you don't care if something is a lie, as long as it targets religion.

 

[Foster Zygote]

The posts below are not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument.

Like I said, no one is obligated to see your arguments as you do. And people are free to use humor in expressing their opinions, or to comment about the style of argumentation being employed.

But for the record, my first reply to you was a criticism of your argument, in that it alluded to the strawman fallacy with which you opened the thread.

ETA: Oh, and don't pretend that the sample you assembled represents all the responses that you've received. Don't pretend that you aren't deliberately excluding all the actual criticisms of your claims.

For example:

No, it's making a necessary distinction between abstract concepts and physical objects. For instance, there's no contradiction between saying the number of integers is infinite, and pointing out that the number of integers that have ever been individually specified in human language (for instance "141" or "the smallest prime with a million or more digits") is necessarily finite.

Foster Zygote quoted the essence of part of the opening post. You may recall, it was:

You expect us to believe that when someone quotes back your very words, that you are being straw-manned (and deliberately so)?

You're thinking like an atheist here. If you believe in a creator god who exists outside of the physical universe, and in fact created it, then the fact that the physical universe is finite has no bearing on the infinite qualities of that god.

It is quite within the bounds of theism, I think, to presume that God and his spiritual realm, whatever that might be, are infinite in all sorts of ways, but also that the very fact of the creation demands that the universe be lesser, and it cannot in any way have existed before it was created.

This has nothing to do with any argument about the actual existence or nature of gods or the actual existence or nature of infinity.

On the contrary. When a sentence states that "Christian apologists" do something, it clearly implies that doing that thing is characteristic of typical Christian apologists. Not "all" Christian apologists of course, but more than "a few" Christian apologists or some very specific sub-type of Christian apologist.

Thus the otherwise unqualified claims that "Christians apologists refuse to eat pork" or "Christian apologists pray on Wednesdays" would be at best misleading. Of course there are a few Christian apologists who for various reasons are not willing to eat pork, and there are undoubtedly many Christian apologists who pray every day including Wednesdays. But neither refusing pork nor praying on Wednesdays compared to other days of the week are characteristic of typical Christian apologists. If the writer's intention is to mislead, "Christian apologists refuse to eat pork" and "Christian apologists pray on Wednesdays" become dishonest claims.

It is not true that rejecting the concept of infinity as nonsense is typical of Christian apologists. Appeal to infinities inherent in such concepts as omnipotence and eternity is in fact nearly universal in apologetics. So while there are probably some number of Christian apologists who reject the concept of infinity as nonsense (though you haven't shown any), the phrasing clearly implying that rejecting the concept of infinity as nonsense is typical of Christian apologists is misleading. (Leading with a word such as "some" would have avoided that false implication.) If the misleading is intentional, it's also dishonest.

It seems to be railing against an idea that hardly anyone has put forth, let alone here. The OP assures us that Christians keep telling us that they reject the concept of infinity, as though this is a common part of Christian orthodoxy. But I've yet to encounter any Christians redundantly claiming that infinity is "a nonsense concept that is not in reality". Then it gets really weird when the subject of coin tosses is brought up, as though his other thread has anything to do with theism - as though the (mostly) atheists in that thread are somehow invoking a god by disagreeing with him.

Please point out specifically what parts of my summary misrepresent you're position.

"The OP assures us that Christians keep telling us that they reject the concept of infinity."

Which part did you not actually claim? And don't complain that I used different syntax than you, show me fundamentally how your statement differs from my summary.

 

[Leumas]

The first sentence and fundamental premise of the thread is a misrepresentation so thorough as to constitute.a falsehood.

The only falsehood is the above statement... as can be clearly verified by reading these posts

• http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14081679#post14081679
• http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14082517#post14082517
• http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14082854#post14082854

You then proceeded to falsely characterize those attempting to correct that falsehood as Christian apologists.

(1) There was no falsehood to attempt to correct
(2) Derision and mick taking is not correcting anything
(3) The falsehood is in the above statement that I called anyone deriding and goading an mick taking, a christian apologist.
(4) So the falsehood in the above statement is three fold.

 

[Steve]

dupe

 

[Steve]

Yup... thanks again for the confirmation... QED!!!

And by the way... when as you say




Then why are you so CONCERNED to ridicule and goad and spend so much time and effort spreading fallacies instead of just leaving it alone then???

Actions bespeak a lot louder than CLAIMS... so yet again... QED!!!

Not sure what I confirmed other than there is more than one poster here, but ok, whatever floats your boat. And whatever makes you think that I am CONCERNED (in upper case letters yet)?

The posts below are not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument.

Your argument is irrational, and unsupported. Rational criticism is not required.

 

[Leumas]

ETA: Oh, and don't pretend that the sample you assembled represents all the responses that you've received. Don't pretend that you aren't deliberately excluding all the actual criticisms of your claims.

Yet again more deliberate strawmanning... I did not "pretend" anything... I gave samples of the posts that as I said:

The posts below are not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument.

So that means the ones I did not list are NOT in the list of "not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument"

So yet another egregious strawmanning.... QED!!!

Like I said, no one is obligated to see your arguments as you do. And people are free to use humor in expressing their opinions, or to comment about the style of argumentation being employed.

You incorrectly call it humor... I call it goading and mick taking and rude insults... as actually was admitted by one of the goaders.

Just be sure to sweep up all that straw when you're done. And don't leave that thesaurus out where someone could trip over it.

Why is there yet another thread full of gibberish railing against an idea no one here has put forth and arguing as if this is somewhere like RaptureReady rather than a board mostly populated by atheists?

Compulsions are difficult to explain. We have a poster on this very board who appears compelled to pontificate, in thread after thread, on concepts that no one here, and very few people in real life, actually hold. Who can explain that?

That whooshing sound is the point flying over your head.

Sometimes some soapbox preachers get so cross-eyed steamed up about their subjects while ranting from atop their crate on the corner of some lonely street that they completely fail to see when they are being heckled. Instead, they think the noise is support for their ranting, and thus their chosen rant topic. From there, the leg-pulling can only get worse.

dupe

I dunno, you still seem to have some engrams stuck in your teeth there. No, other side. To the left a little. Sorry, my left.

 

[Steve]

Yet again more deliberate strawmanning... I did not "pretend" anything... I gave samples of the posts that as I said:




So that means the ones I did not list are NOT in the list of "not by any standards of skepticism or civility or ethics what any rational person would call criticisms of my argument"

So yet another egregious strawmanning.... QED!!!


You incorrectly call it humor... I call it goading and mick taking and rude insults... as actually was admitted by one of the goaders.

Sit back away from your computer, take a few deep breaths, and perhaps take some time to ponder on why you see such posts in the myriad of rather repetitive threads that you start.