Why he is dishonest.

Originally posted by RJHinds
They are all bad. It is just a matter of "terms" in the language. It does
not make one worse than the other except in our own minds.

Nonsense. Genocide is "worse" than an instance of murder.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Yes, I was able to see and read the page fine with Firefox.

However, I have to beg off on my response to this website for the day because I have far too much on my to do list and the day has already grown too short for me from all the reading I did on this website today.

Tomorrow, I promise.

No Problem, I am interested to know what holes you think you can poke in his argument and I don't mind waiting. :-)

Originally posted by FMF
Nonsense. Genocide is "worse" than an instance of murder.

I would like to second this, killing many people has to be worse than killing one.

Originally posted by RJHinds
I believe FMF said Dasa did not consider it genocide because Muslims should
get what the deserve.

P.S. Don't we all agree with that?

No. We don't.

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
any god who desires worship doesn't deserve it. any god who deserves worship wouldn't desire it.

[SNIP]
any person with a logically sound mind and a familiarity with religion would immediately see the flaw in pascal's wager and that site has as good a refutation as i've seen, but i'm curious, what is the connection of pascal's wager with what suzianne said?

"any god who desires worship doesn't deserve it. any god who deserves worship wouldn't desire it"

Good quote... should be attributed ;-p

Suzianne said
"The main problem here is that when you finally have your proof, the offer will have already expired.

The test is whether you can have faith. Not whether you can believe once handed the proof. Clearly, anyone can do that."


Which as I said is a soft version of pascals wager, she is saying that you should (have to) believe on faith without proof
so that you don't get fried in hell.
Pascal was saying you should believe on the off chance that it was right.

The trouble is the same flaw applies... believe in what?

Without any evidence for the existence of a deity let alone a particular deity how are you supposed to know which
god you are supposed to have blind faith in or even the this 'offer' she talks about (the offer about not being burned in hell
see this video for why that sucks YouTube&feature=related ) even exists.

There is no way for me to know that any deity exists, that heaven or hell exists, that I have a soul that has the option on death
of going to either (and evidence that points strongly to the non-existence of a soul) or any way for me to know what the criterion for
getting into heaven and avoiding hell is.

And this system was devised by a 'loving god'????

Total whackjob is more like it.

The similarity is that they are similar arguments that fall down to the same counter argument.

Originally posted by FMF
Nonsense. Genocide is "worse" than an instance of murder.

actually, that's probably the most sensible thing ron has said. what is better or worse is just a subjective state of mind. as bad as it may be to you, some people can justify genocide in their minds. some of the discussions that have occurred here have been proof of that.

Originally posted by Pianoman1
Thanks - this is interesting. I stand corrected.

🙂

No problem,
it's a common mistake, or should I say, deliberate miss-propaganda propagated by theists.
The American Christian right does this a lot, and very deliberately too.

It's easy to argue against someone claiming to know their is no god... it's just not the position
anyone I know or have watched or listened to who is an atheist actually holds.

Originally posted by googlefudge
"any god who desires worship doesn't deserve it. any god who deserves worship wouldn't desire it"

Good quote... should be attributed ;-p

Suzianne said[b]
"The main problem here is that when you finally have your proof, the offer will have already expired.

The test is whether you can have faith. Not whether you can believe once handed the proof ...[text shortened]... arity is that they are similar arguments that fall down to the same counter argument.

that's a great clip.

Originally posted by Agerg
It's a simple concept Mr 2200+ [b]there are more than three positions of belief in gods!. As such the terms atheism, agnosticism, theism must have degrees within if they are to serve as a cover for the human species.
Indeed for some premise A, one can have at least 5 stances:

1) belief that A is true
2) lack of belief that A is true
3) belief that A ...[text shortened]... is not true
4) lack of belief that A is not true
5) indifference

Those 5 are all different[/b]

I don't think 5 needs to be there... one can indeed be (and many are) indifferent to a subject.

And I would welcome a day when we can all be post theists and not know it.

But if you are indifferent then you don't have a belief in god (that A is true) which is covered by 2.

Which in this instance is covered by Atheist. (I know you want your own personal definition
which requires you care or have thought about it but that is not the definition used by any
of the major atheist organisations and they will when asked specifically state that you don't
have to have thought about it to qualify.)

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
actually, that's probably the most sensible thing ron has said. what is better or worse is just a subjective state of mind. as bad as it may be to you, some people can justify genocide in their minds. some of the discussions that have occurred here have been proof of that.

Whether "some people can justify genocide in their minds" or not does not alter the fact that the murder or attempted eradication of a group of people because of who they are or because of perceived 'collective guilt' is worse than a single instance of murder.

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
that's a great clip.

It's a great talk

YouTube&feature=youtu.be

but yeah that's probably the best bit.

I posted it earlier in another thread as well, I just thought it seemed appropriate to this discussion.

Originally posted by FMF
Whether "some people can justify genocide in their minds" or not does not alter the fact that the murder or attempted eradication of a group of people because of who they are is worse than a single instance of murder.

I concur, if killing a person is considered bad, then killing many people must be considered worse.

There may be instances where you can morally justify killing someone (self defence for example)
but we don't use the label murder or genocide for such instances.

And I don't think that there can ever be any moral justification for eradicating an entire people/race
/ethnicity/ect for the simple fact of belonging to that group. Genocide thus can't ever be moral, and
is mass murder, which has to be worse than singular murder.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I don't think 5 needs to be there... one can indeed be (and many are) indifferent to a subject.

And I would welcome a day when we can all be post theists and not know it.

But if you are indifferent then you don't have a belief in god (that A is true) which is covered by 2.

Which in this instance is covered by Atheist. (I know you want your own p ...[text shortened]... ill when asked specifically state that you don't
have to have thought about it to qualify.)

My own objections to your definition of atheist aside (for now) I disagree with:

But if you are indifferent then you don't have a belief in god (that A is true) which is covered by 2.

Which in this instance is covered by Atheist.

because we can also play the same game and conclude it is covered by theist merely by pointing to 4 instead of 2. Consequently we would have that indifference is both atheism and theism 😕

Originally posted by Agerg
My own objections to your definition of atheist aside (for now) I disagree with:

[b]But if you are indifferent then you don't have a belief in god (that A is true) which is covered by 2.

Which in this instance is covered by Atheist.

because we can also play the same game and conclude it is covered by theist merely by pointing to 4 instead of 2. Consequently we would have that indifference is both atheism and theism 😕[/b]

nope because it points to both, you both don't believe A is not true and you don't believe that A is true.

You don't believe that there is a god, or believe that there is not a god.

That is the position of atheism.

Originally posted by googlefudge
nope because it points to both, you both don't believe A is not true and you don't believe that A is true.

You don't believe that there is a god, or believe that there is not a god.

That is the position of atheism.

This doesn't make sense. Your fundamental premise is that there is a binary partition of people: those who are atheists and those who are not atheists (i.e. theists)
In this case (with respect to my previous post) we have either:
a) not believing there are no gods is equivalent to atheism - which with no amount of creativity looks tenable to me.
b) not believing there are no gods is equivalent to theism

If (a) then I won't be buying that unless I see a good argument to back it up
If (b) then my previous objection stands.