I will address some of your most egregious logical fallacies; however, I don't have the time or patience to address all of them.
First,
Ok, even though not everyone above agrees with it, I will grant you that Plato, Socrates, Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kant believed that there was "more meaning to life than life" (A suspiciously vague statement... was that intentional? If so, that's not fair because it blurs your argument and makes it difficult to argue against since you can continuously change the meaning of your statement. For the purpose of this response, I will assume you mean God or a supernatural power).
Well, Emma Goldman, Richard Dawkins, Alan Turing, Karl Marx, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell were and are all intelligent atheists. My list is longer than yours; therefore, atheism is the correct answer. Right? Wrong.
Therein lies the fallacy of your argument. Just because intelligent people believe or believed something, doesn't make that something correct. Many intelligent people have agreed with many things that we now know are definitely false. Does this mean we shoud be open-minded about whether or not the Earth is flat because an ancient philosopher believed to to be so? Of course not. There is no point in mentioning the support of theists to the question of God because it cannot be supported one way or the other. My list of atheists and your list of believers are both irrelevant.
Second,
By trying to bring in a discussion of the Dialectic you are (and you may appreciate this metaphor -- considering how interested you seem to be in Nietzsche) simply muddying your own waters. That's right, it's obfuscation. Perhaps some people don't know the basics of an argument, but why are you discussing this in the middle of your response? If someone makes a mistake or argues in an unacceptable way, you should highlight that mistake specifically. Just assuming that you're the only one that knows how to argue is extremely condescending and, in fact, inaccurate.
Ironically, you blame others for being condescending, yet you make statements like the following:
"I just have other things to occupy my time than justify my belief system to people I suspect haven't bothered to read even the cliff notes of people like Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, or Sartre"
Sorry if the incompetence of the rest of the world is wasting your time.
Third,
Your explanation of circular logic is illogical. You stated:
When arguing “faith” all arguments ultimately are circular. Start with a supposition and then prove it.
Basically persons of faith use
1.God is the greatest possible being.
2.It is greater to exist than not to exist.
3.God exists.
People who don’t believe basically argue
1. If something exist [sic] Science can prove it.
2. Science cannot prove God exist.[sic]
3. God does not exist.
First, there is no logical connection between 1, 2, and 3 of the "faith" argument that you postulated. I don't disagree that there can be a logic to faith, but that is not it. I would fix it, but I can't even figure out what you're trying to express.
Second, in the "people who don't believe" argument, there is no logical connection between 2 and 3. Just because science cannot prove God does not exist does not mean God does not exist. It means we don't have the tools or knowledge to know how to test God's existence. Seriously, did you just make these two arguments up on the spot? They're pretty lame.
That's all for now, hope this clears things up :)
Cheers
by
DaeguBill on
06/23/2009 12:52:13 AM EST
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