[General Battuta]

But you are rendering yourself more incompetent than what you really are.

Imagine that someone says something preposterously bigoted, yet entirely novel. You sit there, incapable of saying "hey dude, that's not cool at all", until that sentence creates something evil out of it? And how the hell will you even detect its effect? You won't.

I've already answered this - read back and see if you can spot it.

How do you detect its impact in a way that will assure you?

Once you've completed MP-Ryan's course in experimental design I think we can begin to discuss this!

[Luis Dias]

So Luis, why is your belief in scientific evidence any different than a belief in a god/goddesses/houseplant?

Who says I "believe" in scientific evidence? I don't "believe it". I accept most of it, depending on the strenght of it.

Do you "believe" that the sun comes up tomorrow or you just accept it as the most likely outcome of it given your past experience?

The difference lies upon that, for instance, I have some evidence for the existence of things called "atoms" and zero, zilch, none, nada, going for Zeus or Apollo. That's the difference.

And does that make the form of meta-reference in the human experience any different to confirm belief in evidence or a talking puppet?

I would say that experience teaches us that whenever people stop looking at evidence and start to blindingly trust anyone's babble instead, degeneration ensues. And this is demonstrably true everywhere I look.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah, Battuta, as I said, you are rendering yourself incapable of moral judgement of any kind except the ones that you already pressupose are true. Because I don't know of any scientific study that will try to detect the deterministic effects of the utterance of a moral prescription, nor do I know of any kind of attempts at doing so (if such attempts exist, either the scientists are ****ing geniuses or utter fools).

[General Battuta]

Yeah, Battuta, as I said, you are rendering yourself incapable of moral judgement of any kind except the ones that you already pressupose are true.

Brother if you think this is true you sure don't get reasoning.

[Luis Dias]

Or you are lousy at explaining your moral compass, how you reach your conclusions.

[General Battuta]

I've presented the criteria for evaluating the scripture you posted already: does it cause believing readers to engage in acts that transgress the rights of others? Do readers of the text take the passage as a literal instruction, and do they obey its orders?

Those are pretty concrete questions.

[Luis Dias]

How can you ever know about those things?

Imagine if you will, that there's a text comprised of a hundred of these lines. Some good some bad. But you can't tell, you see, because your criteria is just that awesome. Now, how can you *ever* even dream of ever making any single judgement upon any particular line or groups of lines of that text?

Specially considering that the people who read these texts may even be reading thousands more that are influencing their brain, but which are outside of this "sacred" hundred-lines-text.


As I said, you are rendering yourself incompetent when I don't think you should.

[Scotty]

He asks you questions, to which you respond with a question asking how he can never know.

Also, I love how you say that some lines are good and some bad and then go on to try and refute that you can call them good or bad.

[General Battuta]

You were the one who presented the single line test in the first place -you're now demolishing your own argument.

The test is, of course, meaningless - people read entire texts. They come away with not just the message of the text, if it can be said to have a single message, but also with the filtering provided by those who teach them the text, as well as their pre-existing beliefs and dispositions.

That's what determines what they behave. Picking out single lines is meaningless.

As I always argue - behavior is complicated, epiphenomenal. The fact that a given holy text contains a line or ten or a hundred of eyebrow-raisingly archaic hate speaks very little to its moral qualities. What matters are the behaviors of people who read those texts.

ed:

He asks you questions, to which you respond with a question asking how he can never know.

Also, I love how you say that some lines are good and some bad and then go on to try and refute that you can call them good or bad.

Yeah I thought that was pretty good. GIANT YELLOW SMUGFACE

[Luis Dias]

Really, it's like talking to a wall people for ****s sake. Where the **** did I say that I agree with Battuta's absolutely insane criteria?

I'm saying that with his criteria, he's rendered himself a completely incompetent person to judge anything morally.

I didn't say that I'm incompetent, because, surprise surprise, I don't ****ing use his criteria!!

Do you understand now, or do you need a ****ing map?

****, and I'm the one that is poor on reasoning, ffs.

[General Battuta]

So your argument is that my criteria don't work because they don't allow you to draw a moral conclusion about a person using a single line from a religious text they've read?

I'm pretty glad I don't meet those criteria thanks, and frankly that kinda puts the capstone on the towering phallic edifice of my entire argument: judging people based on a single line in a holy text they read is really dumb.

[Luis Dias]

*paaaaafffffff* facepalm.

Yeah, sure pride away at your incompetence.

judging people based on a single line in a holy text they read is really dumb.

Now, unlike you, I'm actually capable of judging this sentence as complete gibberish, since I've stated none of this.

[General Battuta]

Huh I seem to recall something like

Ok, let me try giving an example. Let's admit that the bible has the following passage:

But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

I naively say, this is an immoral passage.

Now someone comes along and says this:

"heeey don't say anything bad about that passage, because it's all metaphorical you see, and your literal eyes can't see anything intelligent, KTHNKSBYE"

Another dude comes along and says this:

"Ease up, dude. You can't really criticize that because that passage doesn't really matter. What matters is the behavior of the believers"

And I say, what the ffuuuuuuuuuu????

must've been someone else

[chief1983]

Relephant.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah people take notice: by "passage" one does not mean a sentence, but an actual person!!


(Do I REALLY need to put sarcasm quotes in that sentence above? Am I seriously overjudging your intelligence here?)

[General Battuta]

Yeah people take notice: by "passage" one does not mean a sentence, but an actual person!!

I just quoted you reacting with rage to the opinions of two people. Backpedal out of that please, it needs backpedaling out of.

[Commander Zane]

Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed every religion thread seems to do this.

[Luis Dias]

What? Did someone ate your brains while I went out to eat dinner or something?

You said this:

So your argument is that my criteria don't work because they don't allow you to draw a moral conclusion about a person using a single line from a religious text they've read?

But you will fail to see anywhere I said this. You are, again just like forever, making **** up.

So I said:

Now, unlike you, I'm actually capable of judging this sentence as complete gibberish, since I've stated none of this

In reply, you quoted another comment of mine, with this snarky comment:

must've been someone else

To which I obviously assume you are meaning to counter what I said, namely, that I never said that we could or should judge a *person* for a sentence he or she may have read or believed.

What can I reply but:

Yeah people take notice: by "passage" one does not mean a sentence, but an actual person!! 

And now you are saying that I wrote that thing out of rage and I was somehow backpedalling from something??!?


Get your grip, you stopped making any sense an hour ago.

[Sushi]

Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed every religion thread seems to do this.

Yep, which is why Marcov posted the flamebait, knowing perfectly well that it would lead to another Luis/Battuta trainwreck of a thread.

[General Battuta]

Pull your argument together. You've conceded that evaluating individual lines of scripture is irrelevant to assessing the behavior of readers, giving up the line of attack you began in what I quoted.

That leaves this statement:

Ok, I'm having trouble expressing my idea here. What I mean is that if Battuta is right in saying that "Words don't matter" inside the bible, what matters is the behavior that results from the interaction between the believer and the bible, then we are making a case for ignorance and irrationality, damning us to be stupid to not understand the book, while at the same time accepting that the believers are sufficiently "smart" in a "different" way to get good behavior out of what rational people would recognize as "pretty weak source for morality".

So there's an element of nihilism here. Relativism. As if the believer is in a "different" universe that we cannot really understand with the same tools we actually understand everything else.

totally unsupported and again completely confusing.

Do you have any other way to try to make it make sense, or are you conceding it as well?