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Can Atheist justify calling me liar?

There are at least two issues wrapped up within the tile “Can Atheist justify calling me liar?” and they are 1) can the Atheist who called me a liar justify the claim that I lied and most importantly 2) can he justify condemning lying in the first place.
Hereinafter I will do three things: 1) lay out the basic issues and how they came about, 2) give examples of the various manners whereby I sought to get him to understand what it means to justify condemnations by providing an ethical premise and 3) explain what lying is (since may people seem to not really understand what it is) and I am leaving this for last since his statements were so unbelievable that I could not have invented them even if I were to have invented a fictional Atheist character for the sake of making fun.

BACKGROUND I have yet another encounter with an Atheist regarding morality or more accurately ethics with regards to the fact the condemned my actions and when I asked him time and time again (and again and again) for the premise upon which he based his condemnations I got a typical reply.

The reply was more condemnations, more personal besmirches, the inability or unwillingness to engage the issue or perhaps the inability or unwillingness to even understand it even though I explained it to him in many different ways.

Overall, he expressed the following merely emotive reactions:

I think it’s pretty low…low…I do find it to be ‘low’ and unethical…I find it cowardly…brain wash more religious people…supporting their delusions…you are a liar…You are an unethical and dishonest person…completely incapable of being honest…You are a liar and a slimeball…You are a damn liar, a damn slimeball…You are a damn liar just like every other religious person I’ve ever spoken to…Dude you are frickin nuts…You are a liar. And obviously nuts…delusional religious nut…

Our discussion pertains to him having posted his personal story on the world wide web with his real name about why he became an Atheist. I critiqued his claims within my project at When and why they became Atheists.

Well, his story essentially amounted to name calling—he peppered his reasons for becoming an Atheist with various and sundry condemnatory besmirchments of religious people—and subjectively asserting words to the effect of since I cannot understand ____________ (this or that) then it must not be true. Thus, I certainly understood why he did not like it when I critiqued it.

At one point I expressed the following, “I am saddened and yet no surprised that you are unable to provide a premise upon which to base your emotive condemnation of me. I was hoping for some reasoned discourse.” This is something which I repeated time and time again in various forms. Here is a sampling of his replies on this point:

I’m not interested in identifying the premises for which I base my condemnation. I’m not interested in a dialogue with you. I’m not interested in answering your stupid questions…I’m not interested in a dialogue or identifying anything that you’ve asked me…I’m not interested in a philosophical debate.

The problem with Atheists in general—and I have been through this same basic discussion with various Atheists at various times and it is always the same—is that what Atheism has done to them or, has done with them or rather, what they have done to themselves is that they have accepted a concept which has left them utterly unable to even condemn well, anything at all.
Sure, they can vocalize condemnations all day long but their inability to formulate a premise for doing so is an ethical tragedy. Lacking a premise means lacking any reason for us to think that their condemnations have any meaning at all.

One thing he noted it that “Atheism is simply the lack of believe in gods” which is obviously inaccurate as even if it is merely that, the problem is that Atheists take that and turn it into a worldview as I point out within this video:

CONDEMNATIONS: JUSTIFICATIN AND PREMISE
Here is one way that I attempted to explain it to him—and this is after simply asking for justification and/or for a premise time and time again.

Friend, you do not seem to grasp the primary issue related to condemning well, anything at all. I keep asking you for the premise upon which you base your condemnations and you just keep adding more condemnations to the list. Look at it this way: you say A, B, C, D. So, I note that you are listing portions of the alphabet and ask how you premise the listing in the first place. However, you simply reply with E, F, G, H. Thus, you have only added items without having provided a premise upon which you build the category in the first place… Thus, you can keep calling me all sorts of ethically condemnatory things but you keep failing to provide your basis, premise, foundation, etc. For instance now you call me a liar, dishonest, etc. but do not tell me how or why lying or dishonesty is wrong, bad, evil, bad, etc. You reference the ethical thing to do but do not tell me upon what basis you demand that I adhere to something you cannot even define nor who you are to demand that I act according to your assertions. You refer to my lack of ability to reason but offer no basis upon which to base reason in the first place.

In other words, you are just listing a bunch of stuff but keep on failing to provide any reason for me to think that you are doing anything but being emotive.

Here is another attempt:

Friend, I wish I could say that your replies are unique but I get the very same replies from Atheists all of the time. They feel an emotion, instantly jump to condemnation, I ask for the premise from which they condemn and they reply with more condemnations peppered with some new ones including childish taunting, name calling, etc.

You seem to miss the point which is that if you cannot justify condemning lying, for example, then calling me a liar is literally meaningless and condemning lying is as well. It is as if you had written to me to tell me that chocolate ice cream is wrong because you personally prefer vanilla.

And another:

Friend, you cannot justify a condemnation merely by repeating it. I have asked you numerous times for the basis, the premise, the foundation, etc. for your condemnation and you have not been able to offer one.
Telling me your perception as to why you think that I am a liar says nothing about why you think that lying is wrong in the first place and most importantly says nothing about why lying is immoral or unethical and whether it is absolutely so.

And again:

Friend, you do not seem to be actually applying facts to your statements and it may be because you are reacting emotively. You do not seem to understand that you cannot even call me unethical unless you can tell me upon what you base your ethics, why I should agree, how I am held bound by them etc.

I worked with your step by step and when I asked you to prove that I lied you could not do it. Also, indeed, you never said lying is wrong but did call me a liar so you must have not been saying that I did anything wrong by lying. This is the corner into which you have painted yourself by your unwillingness or inability to answer a question as simple as “Why is lying wrong?” This is what Atheism has done to you or rather what you have done to yourself and simply calling me even more childish names is no way to remedy that fact.

WHAT IS LYING?
As we had a discussion he asked whether I am “completely incapable of being honest” and called me “a liar and a slimebal…a damn liar, a damn slimeball…a damn liar just like every other religious person I’ve ever spoken to…You’re a liar…You are a liar…you did lie….you are a liar.”

throne_of_lies_elf-3262512

In short, I wrote this to him so as to explain it:

Friend, I am afraid that you have miscomprehended two things, so if I may: 1) My question has been, to put it simply, “Why is lying wrong?” 2) Also, a lie is when a person says something that is not true, they know that it is not true, and they try to pass it off as if it was true. However, when person says something that is not true but they are not aware that it is not true, they are not lying but they are merely wrong. Thus, you really need to be able to read the person’s mind or otherwise somehow know that they know that they are not telling the truth on purpose. Otherwise, someone is just wrong and you are calling them a liar.

So, “Why is lying wrong?”

Eventually, as you just saw, I broke down my question about premises to a very simplified “Why is lying wrong?” and after a LOT of back and forth on the issue in general he actually, believe it or not, wrote, “I never said lying is wrong. But you did lie.”

Yes, you read it correctly and it went like this 1) hey you are a lying liar you liar that lies! 2) but I am not saying that lying is wrong 3) but you lied!

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