Originally Posted by CutterJohn
Why can't you people accept there might not be something higher out there?
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That would go against everything they've convinced themselves of in the past years. His entire world and frame of reference would collapse.
Because this is a religious debate thread.  |
Indeed. Debate, which brings us to the other point, in the Duke-quote posted above, Duke argues that he brings "knowledge" (LOL, knowledge, yeah...) and then COMPLAINS THAT WE USE LOGIC, KNOWLEDGE AND ARGUMENTS.
ZOMG HOW EVIL OF US. D:
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And you dismiss with logic that has been presented by ancient intellect. You spit out bible passage and things that have been written by everyday people long ago.
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Tbh, Duke doesn't make that grade of logic and doesn't do them justice. I've seen far, far better representations of religious views in debates.
For instance, there was one who made for some interesting debate - though requiring the logic of circle argumentation as starting point ("there is a god, [...], therefore there is a god") and prefered the concept of Intelligent Design. That's his to believe, of course in the actual debate, the concept of ID itself was consistently under fire, as were other things. Note, it went as deep as trying to find alternative explanations to the walls of Jericho (Jericho actually lies on a natural fault line, much like San Francisco).
He however, was critical and did not dismiss our arguments off hand. He was willing to debate, look at both sides and bring up a large amount of source materials he uses as reference. The only thing was that he still used induction as a primary method of reasoning and never dismissed the chance that a divine entity used natural forces to make stuff happen. Of course we had to disagree.
But for instance, he admitted he could not deduce Christianity or any other faith from scratch using just observations of the natural world. However, he argued that everything he observed, fitted with his frame of reference if he started with the starting point of a god. There are people in this thread who'd not be willing to admit to anything.
In the end, we still respectfully disagreed as he based his faith on "personal experience" which we could not hold up for scrutiny since he would not share it and if he had, we'd not be able to verify it. But overal the debate was much more intellectual and satisfying and basically all the big topics were handled. The point of the debate is not to convert, but to exchange ideas and hold things up for scrutiny. Unfortunately for the religious, they are usualy pushed into the defense without much ammunition for rebutal.
Mind, Christianity is often the center point of debate due to the amount of Christians on Western internet sites (especially the evangelicals), but we also debated Sumerian mythology, Norse, Greek, pagan American and Indian religions.
If only religions had more fact based and could use natural observations to their advantage...
Duke's posts though seem the ramblings of a drunk man, not a philosopher, or someone willing to at least be open to alternative interpretations and being able to admit he might be wrong.