“you are a ******* liar. Atheism is NOT ‘dead’. You have zero credibility. And you can beat your ‘logical fallacy’
drum until donkeys talk”
—ExChristian.Net commentator
Of all of the diversionary tactics one was unique in that someone decided to become a literary critic in writing,
If you are looking to write something or gather information for your argument, point of view, or writing, you have entirely missed the mark.
The first thing you must do, is grab the attention of the reader, if we want to discuss literary development and persuasion. I am not only put-off by your intellectual maturity, but you have nothing that interests me other than appealing to controversy.Another literary element you must have, beyond the attention of the reader, if you aspire change, is to get the reader motivated. You have failed in this as well, actually you have done the opposite, I am motivated to ignore anything that comes up on this site with your name attached.
Well, they are quite right; I most certainly failed to motivate any of them from actually considering any information that contradicted their beliefs. Note that they are mistaken in thinking that I was seeking to write something or gather information for my argument; I was presenting my research which was already prepared. However, I have subsequently realized that since my experiences at ExChristian.Net were a case study in every sort of logical fallacy, I decided to write this parsed essay.
Note also that this was merely another form of an ad hominem as they conclude that they will simply ignore anything with my name attached based on 1) their misunderstanding of what I was doing (I was not looking, gathering, etc.) and 2) I did not meet their arbitrary personal preference for an acceptable literary style. Thus, yet another ExChristian.Netist found a logically fallacious excuse for not bothering to confront the issue on the issue’s own grounds and this one blames me for not motivating them towards actually engaging in skepticism.
Recall my statement, “Or in typical activist atheist form are you simply incapable of engaging upon reasoned discourse?” Two personages responded to this,
Or in typical activist atheist form are you simply incapable of engaging upon reasoned discourse?Oh, that’s bloody rich! “Hello, Pot? This is the Kettle. You’re black!”””And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?””They should just change the name of the religion from “Christianity” to “Cognitive Dissonance” and get it over with.
Or in typical activist atheist form are you simply incapable of engaging upon reasoned discourse?Hahahahahahahahaha, ha, ha, ha. Reasoned discourse?If you could reason with a religious person there wouldn’t be any religion.Using critical thinking and reason please supply objective evidence for snakes and donkeys that have command of the human language.Using critical thinking and reason please supply objective evidence that a person who was dead and buried for three days was resurrected alive and well.[Who thinks apologeticus’ reason will include circular logic, massive conjecture and bloated rationalization?]
Someone had to chime in with the following erudite elucidation, “The Church of Cognitive Dissonance. I love it. Surely those members would be the true True Believers. Lol.”
I most certainly did consider the beam that is in my own eye in that I went into ExChristian.Net and began to engage them in reasoned discourse—although I failed to motivate them towards actual skepticism. Note that I am asking them if they are willing to engage the issue or are incapable and they respond with ridicule and red herrings. Indeed, this gives us a hint as to the red herrings which many of them were beginning to cook up. However, when they served them the red herring was undercooked in fact, it was raw.
Issues of snakes, donkeys and resurrections are diversions from the issue at hand and I made this very clear to them, as we shall see after I state that I threw them a bone in responding to some of their red herrings:
…the only way to deny miracles is to presuppose that all reports of miracles are somehow false. Yet, in order to make this claim one would have to have examined all reported miracles and conclude that they are all false. Have any of you done this?If not then you are engaging in circular logic whereby you, a priori, claim that miracles do occur and so no miracles happen. Thus, you claim that no miracles happen because you do not believe in miracles and you do not believe in miracles because miracles do not happen.
Natural theology, aka natural revelation, via the best of science and philosophy imply that a creator created the material realm which functions according to laws and wherein there functions cause and effect.When this regularity (which atheism cannot account for beyond claiming that “it just is–it just happened to happen”) is broken we are thereby alerted to the possibility or the supernatural.
This, of course, only fed the fuel of the fires of their diversionary tactics via raw red herrings such as:
Yes, this is the same faulty reasoning that says, “one has to search every inch of the entire universe (and beyond), to disprove the existence of a god”.Some assertions can never be disproven 100%, so therefore when dealing with these uncertainties, one has to ascertain their likelihood instead…
After referencing Big Foot, space aliens, UFOs, the Bermuda-Triangle and the Loch Ness monster, etc. the comment continued thusly,
True, we can’t discount 100% that “miracles” of a supernatural origin are real.However, if such miracles were real and occur more than on a very rare basis, then they would be quite evident to everyone by now, considering how many folks believe in such miracles.It’s not like jesus [sic] would only replace the leg or arm of some hermit, who lives deep in the backwoods and never has contact with anyone else.If god/jesus [sic] is doing miracles, then these miracles should be obvious to even the skeptics, but instead these so called miracles always resemble the very same acts of nature that occur, all without any divine intervention, or resemble the same hearsay lame evidence we have for Mr. BigFoot.To believe in miracles, takes a boatload of faith, as there is no credible evidence that such miracles are occurring, or have occurred in our history.Your god stays hidden from view and does nothing pro-active to make us aware of it’s [sic] presence.With that, I bid you adieu…..i.e. TAKE A HIKE
So, you see that I was correct, “Some assertions can never be disproven 100%…we can’t discount 100% that “miracles” of a supernatural origin are real.” From this, however, follows arbitrary parameters which allow this person to discount what they know to be true, that “we can’t discount.”For example, yes indeed we would have to “search every inch of the entire universe (and beyond), to disprove the existence of a god” which is precisely why so very many “atheists” are actually “agnostics” but do not know it, do not realize it, do not admit it, or what have you.
On the other hand, if someone states that there is no gold in Fresno but you found gold in one square inch of Fresno you have, by merely examining one square inch, proved that there is gold in Fresno and may conclude your search then and there.
By definition, miracles occur less and not “more than on a very rare basis” that is why they are called miracles and not “What else is new?” But let us play the “if” game and consider that “they would be quite evident to everyone by now, considering how many folks believe in such miracles.” Well, this statement answers itself since many folks believe in such miracles they are quite evident to everyone. Ah, but not “everyone” since if even one single human being on the face of the Earth did not believe in miracles then we could not claim that “everyone” believe in them. Thus, this standard is not only arbitrary but impossible (does “everyone” on Earth agree on anything at all?).
Also, arbitrary is the statement “It’s not like jesus [sic] would only replace the leg or arm of some hermit…” But why not? Why not help the helpless while leaving those in first world countries to the medical profession?
But “If god/jesus [sic] is doing miracles, then these miracles should be obvious to even the skeptics, but instead these so called miracles always resemble the very same acts of nature that occur…” If miracles resembled natural effects they would not be considered miracles. This standard is also arbitrary and impossible because it should be “obvious” and “obvious to even the skeptics” (this ignores the Judeo-Christian skepticism praised in the Bible-Acts 17:11). A “skeptic” could always witness a genuine miracle done by the very hand of God miracle but could then merely state that it resembles the very same acts of nature that occur, that it was merely an as of yet unidentified natural law at work, an odd and rare combination of natural laws, etc., and simply state that we must wait for science to catch up and we will someday be able to explain it materialistically.
But why does God not perform miracles that do not resemble the very same acts of nature that occur? Like what? Let us take a big one: what about God parting the heavens and saying, “Hi, I’m God and you’re not”? Big deal; I could think of materialistic explanations for this such as technologically advanced aliens or the Illuminati (or something/someone) manipulating humanity via holograms.