rusmeister wrote:
No, Orlion.
I am not doing the same thing. I am NOT saying that you believe in fairy tales, or even that you are idiots, something constantly implied in my direction.
As you shouldn't, because I don't believe in fairy tales nor am I an idiot
At this point, I'll distinguish between a 'fairy tale' and the fantastic. It namely has to do with perspective... or rather, a 'fairy tale' is something that I've all ready decided is fiction and involves the fantastic. Something that is fantastic is a thing that wouldn't/shouldn't happen in normal reality. Example: Producing enough food to feed hundreds from a couple loaves of bread and a few fish should be impossible in normal reality, as a result the act is fantastic. If I don't believe it happened, it is to me a fairy tale. If I do believe it happened, it doesn't change the fact that such an event would violate natural law.
When the question is, "Have you stopped beating your wife?", then "dodging it" (insisting on a rephrasing so that the answer can be put into a logical framework) is the only sensible thing to do.
That doesn't fit. In your example, it is implied that you don't beat your wife and the question erroneously/falsely implicates you in at least past beatings. HLT and my question, "How can you expect us to believe in the fantastical points of the Christian story?" Does not have that problem. That is because
you do believe that Jesus did fantastic things like heal the blind with his spit mixed with dirt, cast evil spirits into pigs, walked on water, and rose from the dead. All those things do not happen in real reality and are therefore fantastic, and you believe it. HLT and I are asking for justification in believing these fantastic claims over an equally fantastic claim of an old man that delivers toys to all the children of the world in a flying sleigh in one night. Now, if you don't believe Jesus did all those things, say so and the question will be withdrawn. If you don't have a reason beyond faith, that's fine. Just don't expect us to accept any argument based on that faith.
When you say that 'Weez "whines", you project an unreasonable attitude onto his quite reasonable one. We treat you as reasonable, but wrong. You treat us as unreasonable from the get-go.
'Weez "whines" because he makes assertions without backing them up and moans when we don't accept them. "Jesus and Santa Claus can't be compared!" He says, "Why not?" We ask, "Because he said don't cast pearls before swine and Planck says blah blah blah and have I told you how upset I am that no one takes MMT seriously in the Tank?" That is not reasonable, nor is it treating anyone else as reasonable.
And I had to heckle you before you would go beyond anything superficial like me calling Aslan a Jesus lion (and BTW, what else would you call him? He pretty much makes the claim that he IS Jesus at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader... and he's a lion... who sometimes appears as a lamb that offers children honey at world's end.
All of that is true, and you know it and you still take offense, but I'm going off topic...)
I have expounded before on how the idea that "ideas are outdated" is silly - that if something is true, it does not then become "stale" or "moldy". It does not have "an expiration date". So the unreasonableness is decidedly not on my side there.
I do NOT see any of you as actually crazy (with the possible exception of Holsety, to the extent that he himself admits), despite Fist's continual misunderstanding of my speaking of ideas leading to insanity if followed to the end (as Nietzsche actually did, and people here, I believe, have not). The treatment really is one way in that respect. So my respected colleague from Westchester County is mistaken, and it is not disrespectful to say so. But it is to say that what he believes has just as much basis as a belief in the modern conception of Santa Claus does, for it reveals an abyss of ignorance.
If your respected colleague from Westchester has a belief that has as much basis as a belief in the modern conception of Santa Claus and you don't say so, you are being dishonest and a moral coward. If your belief (or mine or any one else's for that matter) deserves respect, it should earn it. It doesn't get it just because we are engaged in a debate.
Respect may NOT mean "treating other views as equally true as my own" It CAN mean "taking them under serious consideration (and ceasing to speak of Flying Spaghetti Monsters)". I take paganism, atheism and agnosticism quite seriously, I think their adherents, for the most part, to be quite uninformed, especially in regards to history, above all, the history of the Christian Church they attack (so Murrin will get his response, as he is showing himself at the moment to be reasonable and able to think through to what the really important issues must be).
Funny thing Rus, as far as I can tell from all the posts I've read, you are as ignorant of history as you claim everyone else is. Prove me otherwise, but you have yet to do so.
I do believe you are a good person, and your debating skills have improved orders of magnitude since I first started posting... but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you a break
This was my solution there as well. I'll start with a few old topics that are in need of clarification, and add any that may come along. Nobody else needs to so much as open this thread, much less participate. But anyone is free to jump in on ehther side of the fence whenever they want.
)
. Just thought I'd add it for no explicable reason.