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Not what I said. Your post contained an admission that your belief was not logical on the strictest sense. That is it for your argument. I was talking about my discussion with you."</p>
<p>Yes you did. My admission was that my beliefs were not logically proven in the traditional manner. You then said that that was all that mattered because you are only concerned with “rational debate.” As if something that is not able to be proven in the strictest sense is automatically irrational. In addition, you seem to be expanding this way beyond the scope of what you had in the first post. There you were discussing a specific aspect of Christianity, but you seem to apply it to the religion as a whole.</p>
<p>"I did not make derogatory claims. "</p>
<p>Let’s see…Here you are making a generalizations about the beliefs of an entire religion (which encompasses countless different denominations, mind you).</p>
<p>“What Christians forget is that Christianity is just atheism + God.”</p>
<p>Yes, let’s reflect a completely unfounded statement like this onto, what 1.3 billion+ people. That makes total sense.
I should have said “many Christians”. I was not talking about all of them, though this is just a statement which is true, which you showed when you did this exact thing with the reasoning in your first post.</p>
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In addition, your entire post is dripping with condescension. I’m pretty sure that is a fair statement. You are using a very isolated and meaningless example in an attempt to discredit an entire belief system that doesn’t even depend on logic to function properly. Religion does not NEED a basis in logic to work. It may just not convince you. Remember that its purpose is not to be logical. I still don’t see what your point is. Religion is illogical. That’s nice. Does that make it true? No. False? No. Important? No. Unimportant? No. Stupid? No. Smart? No. Again, I question your motives.
If it can not be proven with logic it IS irrational. It may hold some value but it is still irrational. I want to show it to be irrational so people will cease to hold to the nonsensical premise of Christianity etc. It is almost surely false and does more harm than good in my opinion (case in point George Dubya Bush). </p>
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<p>"You are reading them into my statements because I am arguing against Christianity.</p>
<p>Ah, yes, even better. Simply because I disagree with you, I am totally misinterpreting you, either out of ignorance or desire, because I am that closed-minded and unable to comprehend people whose opinions differ from my own. I am constantly surrounded by atheists who do not make useless threads in a pathetic attempt to promote a particular point of view. Those people I respect and understand. You I don’t respect yet still understand. Again, I love how you can make such absurd claims and expect me to accept them.</p>
<p>“If I appeared derogatory it is because I think religion is illogical.”</p>
<p>Again, what is the relevance? You still haven’t justified your implied point of view that something must be traditionally logical to have any value. In addition, my suspicion was confirmed: This thread is clearly an attempt to push your own point of view on others.
Like a mission trip? It does not have to be logical to have value, but it is irrational if logic does not back it up. I did not mean to imply illogical things are valueless-just that they are irrational. It is sort of like Santa Clause. He is useful in that he makes Children happy, but belief in him is illogical. Same deal basically with god.</p>
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<p>“You may correct me and offer arguments against my view if you wish.”</p>
<p>I agree with your statement that religion cannot be justified in the strictest sense by logic. I really don’t like your attitude. I am pretty tolerant religiously, and I value the diverse points of view that I encounter (except at my school, which is entirely atheistic, so I must look elsewhere for diversity). What I don’t like are people who think themselves superior in criteria completely unrelated to religion, e.g. intelligence, because of their persuasion.
I think those that hold to irrational positions are deluded. I do not respect their opinion as it is unsupported. I do consider myself superior and think that is a perfectly understandable thing to think.</p>
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<p>“Something must be proven logically in the traditional sense, as no other kind of non traditional proof exists.”</p>
<p>Uh… Not really. Logic is a very structured form of rhetoric. But you haven’t justified this statement at all. We are not talking about reality within the confines of a debate. We are talking about universal truths and untruths.
Something must be proven before it is true.</p>
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<p>“Kant, a FAR greater philosopher than the ones you mention (and a Christian incidentally) would agree with me on that.”</p>
<p>I have read Kant, and he is one of my personal favorites. I assume that such an absurd claim is made from someone who has read those philosophers, especially the Summa Theologica? Otherwise, that person would not make claims without knowing about what he was talking.</p>
<p>In other words, I call your bluff by claiming that I don’t think that you can justify that statement through your own experience. Or is he simply far greater because he’s not as dogmatic and associated with religion?
Kant is great for a number of reasons. I think the following are most relevant:
His destruction of both traditional rationalism and empiricism.
The way he built on Hume.
His work with the transcendental dialectic
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<p>“I did post this to debate people. I enjoy debating. No one forced you to post did they? Though I admit I do think your beliefs are bogus.”</p>
<p>I never said that they did. And this post was obviously made to debate people. But there is a difference between wanting to debate and learn and wanting to debate and win. You clearly have your motive, and that’s fine. I just do not comprehend why you would rather adhere to your desire to win (as you have explicitly stated) when you could learn from the different, albeit possibly erroneous, beliefs of others.
I like to think I win and learn. If someone proves me wrong with logic or evidence my view will change.</p>
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<p>“Because when someone attacks a religious view it is automatically self-aggrandizement.”</p>
<p>Again, a completely false claim. Man, for someone who loves logic so much, brush up on your fallacies and please stop misrepresenting me (almost to the point where I can call it a strawman). You are attacking religion. I have no problem with that. But I am also saying that your purpose in doing so is to appear intelligent compared to religious people. My claim may be false, but I’m not at all saying that you are inflating your ego just by challenging religion.
My desire to show that religion is nonsense has little to nothing to do with my personal ego.</p>
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<p>"I have no desire to make myself look intelligent on a random forum. "</p>
<p>Then what was the motive? You wanted to debate, but to what end? You didn’t want to understand the beliefs of anyone else, you wanted to attack religion…Those are your own words. So are you just here to promote your own opinion? If that’s the case, then just say so. I’ll probably drop it. It just seems like this thread could have gone somewhere interesting, but instead you used it as a way to promote your own opinion.
As to using it discredit my opinion?</p>