Thats fair. I dont take many things seriously, life is a tragic comedy.
Anyway, you can not be taking me seriously and still be honest. You aren’t being honest, thats a choice you are making. Even if you just insulted and mocked me that would be preferable to dishonesty. Dishonesty is poison to discourse, you the poisoner.

And what's even worse, is that I'm the only fucking around jerk on the forum!!! Shame, shame, controversy, food fight, M E L O D R A M A!!!!!! — Foghorn

Exactly as I said:

You’re a self declared asshole who wears his inconsistency like a badge of honour, who cares what you think of anyone? Or anything? — DingoJones

We find agreement! Yes, all the other threads contain insulting snooty comments too, often by the mods . Yes, this is the Internet. Not a philosophy forum. — Foghorn

Exactly as I said:

Thats the difference between you and I, I’m engaging honestly and you engage in service of your bruised feelings, mental masterbation and ego. — DingoJones

This is a philosophy forum is on the internet, and you know that but pretended that you didnt so you could make a dig about this forum. Thats dishonest.

This is hilarious!!!! Thank you so much, I literally just broke out in laughter. I see a big career in stand up comedy in your future... — Foghorn

And this little gem wasnt on my list but Ill address it anyway.
This is an ad hom, you take a cheap shot rather than engage with the specific criticisms I made.

Your response to the criticisms was to immediately display the accuracy of those criticisms.
Pretty weak, and its kinda sad that I’m funnier not trying to be than you are with your best effort. You’re welcome for the laugh, maybe take some notes.

You’re a self declared asshole who wears his inconsistency like a badge of honour, who cares what you think of anyone? Or anything?
You excluded your opinion from consideration when you confessed to purposely acting like a jerk and fucking around.
The reason why this thread exists is precisely to have a place where the mods can explain bannings and discussions can take place around reasons for doing so. If the comments are insulting or snooty then that is perfectly in line with all the other threads and comments. This is the internet…people talk shit. Thats not a mod trait or a thread trait thats a human trait.
You’re just making it about the mods and quality of character of posters because you were scolded early on for your own posting quality. That is a particularly petty projection on your part, and obvious.

I didnt make a claim of my authority on philosophical value, you made that up. All I did was make a judgement about someone elses philosophical contributions, which is what we all do here when we engage and what you are doing right now. (Passing judgement on the philosophical value of mod posts)
Do you know why I didnt call you out for claiming authority on philosophical value even though I could have used the same semantic strawmans you did? Intellectual honesty. Thats the difference between you and I, I’m engaging honestly and you engage in service of your bruised feelings, mental masterbation and ego.

Lol, you did. Repeat this mantra “Bartricks believes in squared circles”.

Lol, it was a good call. The language barrier helped disguise the lack of philosophical value I think. Even ignoring the grammar and structure the ideas being expressed were wanting, and delivered in an obnoxious evasiveness.
Don’t give up until you take care of Bartricks. Then you may lay down your sword

The point I was trying to make is that even if you haven’t gone through a logical process to arrive at atheism logic is still present in the sense that your lack of belief adheres to the basic principals of logic such as non-contradiction and excluded middle.

I don’t think so. I’m starting at a position of non-belief prior to even hearing any of the arguments. It’s the position of ignorance, which seems to necessarily be the default position, since one can’t start at a position of knowledge. Right? — Pinprick

I wouldn't say ignorance is a “position” you have. To me “position” implies a transition from ignorance perhaps, but it doesnt seem like “I don’t know” is really a position/stance/belief. How would I have a position about something I had no knowledge of.

Logic is strictly applied only to arguments. What argument is being presented when you simply find theism’s argument unconvincing? — Pinprick

Ah I see what you are saying now. I wouldn't restrict logic for only arguments, in my view logic is a broader concept that just happens to be present in argumentation.
If you are defining logic only as it is used as part of argumentation then I think what you are saying follows from that. With no argument present no logic could be present.

You would still be applying logic to arrive at your position of non-belief right? It is logical to withhold belief in the absence of evidence.
I don’t see why logic wouldn't be applicable.

Ya was very disappointed in you myself. He’s well fed and he won’t go away if people keep feeding him.

Its not one particular god an atheist for which they lack belief, its all of them. Not Zeus, not Odin, not Ra, not Yaweh…none of them. Not mother nature, not Giaea, not the combined love of all mankind or universal mystery. All colourful flights of fancy the atheist does not believe in.
Asking an atheist to define the god they do not believe in is like asking someone who doesnt watch TV which shows they don’t watch on TV. None, they don’t watch TV.

Lol, we are having way too much fun at his expense. Its not mean if its accurate…right?

:lol:

So accurate.

Having a debate about what so many atheists are not philosophically inclined and can't really justify their atheism might be a more rewarding line to follow. — Tom Storm

Because atheists are people and most people can’t really justify their positions.
Well stated post btw.

Well you gave him the rope I suppose.

I think there were parameters about his role we aren’t privy to, limiting his responses.
The interesting part to me is how people like Amen cannot recognize how disingenuine they are being, blind to their dishonest engagement. What do you call that, and what do you say to them? Trying to help them see it is just seen as an attack, a mean angry atheist attack that…I don’t know I guess they feel justified acting like cunts in return?
Does Amen really think he acted fairly and in good faith in that? Its just so hard for me to believe he does yet its just as hard for me to believe someone would be so committed to trolling or-messing around.
Religion right? Straight up mind poison.

Its pretty bizzare that he could conclude “we’ve” conceded to an even score based on whats in that thread. Private messages maybe?
Originally he said he won by TKO which is even more preposterous. His last comment was vomit inducing. Just gross.

You don’t have to worry about flaming people, the mods will give you a warning about any problematic behaviour except in the most egregious cases.
Almost every time someone is banned its because they were warned about something and continued doing it snyway.
This site is pretty good about any flaming and insults, people get away with alot and judging by your example I would say you have nothing to worry about.

Just a thought experiment, to each their own if you do not enjoy them.
The purpose of the question was to get a sense of peoples opinion on what extreme action they think one side or the other would take if they could.

I made no assertion of it being helpful.
So you would say that if either or got the magic button they would genocide the other side? They would both kill every man, woman and child on the other side?

Ok, looks like its done for. Short and worthless to all us spectators.

So lets take a poll, maybe a mod could make one in the OP of this thread.

Who won the debate? Sound off everyone.

My take is Amen didn’t show up to the debate. Everything he said was posturing, my guess is he was hoping to barf out enough words that he could have plenty of weeds to hide in when he inevitably evaded addressing the actual topic of debate. That's what it looked like to me.
As I predicted, condescending and disingenuous was met with short patience and dismissal. Same old shit.
I was so hoping that we could get an honest discussion from Amen but we did not. He did declare himself the winner though which was pretty funny. Im sure we will be hearing about how it wasnt fair and 180 was the one who didnt show up and how atheist should try and calm down and think rationally and blah blah blah.

Lets say I have a magic button. Its a kill button. When the button is pushed whoever I want dead, dies. Its the perfect weapon, there is no defence against it, its just push button, death. Lets say there is no consequences, no way of proving the magic button was used so the consequences of the murder are minimal.
Now lets imagine this button in the hands of the leadership of Israel, then imagine the button in the hands the leadership of Palestine.
How do you think the button would be used by either side?

Sadly I suspect Canada is already lost. States too. We are only now seeing some more drastic changes but China has seeded the world economy for thier eventual ascension for many decades. I think we’ve already lost to whatever endgame agenda they have and just din’t know it yet.
Governments are controlled by corporations, corporations are controlled by the markets, china has a massive chunk of the market they complexly control (their people) and therefor a massive control over corporations which give them massive control over governments.
China has been playing at an advantage for many years, their hands not tied by pesky distractions like their peoples freedom or humanitarian rights or the rights of corporations to autonomy and/or intellectual property the way most of their competitors do and so have been able to expand their influence without people much noticing at all. They are far enough ahead and so successful that I think its safe to say the war is over and we’ve lost. Now we are just going through the motions of whatever new structures they decide to put in place.

End of the debate due to the same old shit you n 5…4…3…2…

Lol, I never take gambling advise from anyone so all good.

No its not (dogma), you are taking what Im saying and reframing it to these “typical” atheist responses and tilting at windmills and strawmen. Lol, I mean come on your mode of engagement is to ignore what I’m saying because you know it all already. Thats a neat way of not having to defend anything you say or points made against you.
Anyway, I din’t take it personally Im just not a fan of wasting my time. Since you already know everything on the matter I would imagine a waste of yours as well.
Glad we nipped that in the bud.

Ah, I gotchya now. Slow on the uptake sometimes.

Ya see you aren’t acting in good faith here. I made a number of points that you havn’t addressed, you have not been engaging with what Im saying. I pointed this out fairly plainly and your response was to ignore that as well.
Im done, but to show clearly which of us is not being intellectually honest here I will rebut your question:

Do you believe in Zeus? I hope not.
Well Zeus is a god and I’m happy to abandon reason for whatever method you used to determine that Zeus doesnt exist and apply it to all of them.

Good day sir.

This is the common atheist error, the assumption that because reason is proven good for many things (agreed) it is therefore automatically qualified for everything. And because they hold this typically unexamined assumption, they see no need to inspect or challenge those qualifications. — Foghorn

I explicitly did not make that assumption. I said repeatable patterns of reliability. Thats true, reason has that and that reliability can be tested in real time, pretty easily. It is neither unexamined nor an assumption im afraid. This is not the same as saying it is “automatically” qualified for everything, you inserted the automatic part all on your own.
Also not true that it is a trait of atheism to not inspect or challenge the qualifications of reason, this is a human thing not an atheist thing.

And so, ok, let us reason together. Let us apply the very same degree of challenge we reasonably aim at theist authorities to atheist authorities. This process is often called intellectual honesty. — Foghorn

Im not sure what you mean but I’m game. Im not sure how much we actually disagree here, but I did notice you are somewhat cherry picking my posts for responses.
Ive been patient because you seem a decent fellow but since you mentioned intellectual honesty I would be remiss if I didn’t bring it up now. Please address my arguments instead of just making more of your own.

I predict no derailment. It would be a miracle (ha!) if the train ever leaves the station. — Kenosha Kid

Id be willing to place bets that it derails lol
We have a historical pattern of it, why would this be any different?

What does that mean? You don’t think there is a problem?

Ok, a tool if you prefer, and the atheist belief is that this tool can generate meaningful statements on the subject of gods.

In the same way, the theist believes that holy books, or perhaps their personal experience, are tools which can generate meaningful statements on the subject of god.

Competing claims. None of which can be proven. — Foghorn

If a person is using books and personal experiences to draw conclusions they are still using reason to do that. You made a false equivalence here, to draw an actual equivalence would be for the theist to use faith as their tool. As I started this side bar off with: faith is a garbage tool.
In any case, I’m not making a claim about atheism or theism generating meaningful statements.

The primary problem atheists typically have is that their faith in reason (for this particular task) is so deep, and so unexamined, that they don't realize it is faith. They take reason's qualifications for considering the very largest of questions, those most far removed from human scale, to be an obvious given. And so it doesn't occur to them to questions those qualifications. — Foghorn

Nobody has faith in reason. People have very repeatable patterns of reliability that prove its efficacy. It is the foundation of all of science and knowledge. It is as “proven” a thing as here is. Zero faith needed.
This is another false equivalency, where you have used “faith” in two different ways so that it appears faith is common to both theism and atheism. “Faith” is used in everyday speech to talk about reasonable confidence in something. People say they have faith in spouses, faith public transit system etc. “Faith” is also used as a basis for believing in something as when the theist is asked why they believe in god and they answer “faith”. It is given as a reason, which I’ve argued it is not.
This is an important distinction and let me make it clear that it is the latter usage that I am using and it is the latter usage that negates the point you make in the quoted portion.

So from my perspective my initial point stands, but please point out where ive failed to address a rebuttal you made if thats the case.

Reason is not an authority, it is a tool one uses when one wants to make sense.
Regardless, how one comes to be an atheist isnt definitive of atheism. Atheists can be atheists through bad reasoning, its not a position on reasoning it is a position in belief in god.

Atheism references no authority, you are making that up. Atheism IS a lack of belief, and thats all it is. Whatever else an atheist might believe about religion or authority is irrelevant, what makes them an atheist is simply a lack of belief in god or gods.

1) the atheist has no such burden, they are not asserting anything. They simply lack a belief, lacking a belief is not an assertion.

2) the theist certainly cannot, but again the atheist has no such requirement. The atheist isnt asserting anything.

3) it collapses only because you redefined atheism specifically so it would collapse.

Yes. You are very rational in saying faith holds the place of good reason. In my opinion, the word love holds the place for an unintelligible condition that is inexplicable, most analogously to how faith holds the place for any condition that is beyond understanding. We can analyze the meaning of the words, but we can never access the actuality of living under such a condition, except subjectively. Perhaps all subjectivity is delusional, yet love and faith are not important to the subject because of how they can be understood, but for their actuality. I guarantee that people will kill for love much faster than they will kill for faith if given the opportunity. — Merkwurdichliebe

I didnt say it holds the place of good reason. I said its a placeholder word for the good reason the person just doesn’t have. Meaning, they do not have a good reason and so they say “faith” instead of a good reason.
You actually didnt address my points at all with that.

"No quality control." Now that is the greatest description of faith ive ever heard. Faith is also not quantitative, and for that reason, it is immune from all metrics that might validate any reason for any position. In fact, faith is solely concerned with the qualitative because the actuality of faith qualitatively changes the individual who believes by removing the concern for quality control which makes for "no quality control". Faith is extremely fatalistic and paradoxical despite the moral obligation to observe the demands of ones faith, and the demands of one's faith can often be radical and illogical, which can be of great offense to those of us trying to make sense of things. — Merkwurdichliebe

Again you miss the point. Not having quality control is a criticism of “faith” for the reasons described but you seem to have ignored that and instead once again resort to describing faith.
Please address my points.

Love isnt that analogous, love can be investigated and explained. Emotions are intangible sure but that doesnt mean they are as mysterious as you would have me believe.
I know it does little to dull the harshness of what I say to say I mean no offense but your description sounds more analogous to delusion.
You’ve at best described the placeholder word I referenced. “Faith” is indescribable and mysterious and subjective and beyond reason and understanding…well such a diluted word has no real meaning but to hold a place for the good reason (faith is not a good reason to believe in anything at all) that the persons just doesnt have.
And of course none of that matters since regardless of how you describe faith my point still stands: its a garbage reason to believe anything, as was cleverly put by someone else as faith having “no quality control”. You can use it to defend any belief, even awful ones. Thats how feeble faith is as a metric fir believing in anything.

I can’t tell which one your disdain is for lol
Probably a good thing.

This is why a moderator is necessary. To keep those two things from derailing the discussion like every other time. Without one we are into the same old shit as before.

A troll of the axe grinding variety I suspect.

I believe his main point is that the atheists lacks the necessary sense/understanding to see the truth of gods existence like a theist does.
Also some kind of equivalence between theistic and atheistic reasoning.
Very verbose though. Difficult to read

He got banned?