These posts are getting entirely too long, so you'll excuse me I hope if I cut out a bunch of stuff from yours and only answer the stuff that really popped out at me.
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Originally Posted by Yakk
Hmm. Random question: do you value truth, or your own well being, higher?
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Both.
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But you don't seem to have any problems insulting their belief system. Is this correct? You find it acceptable to consider the "whackjob" UFO cultists to be whackjobs?
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First off, I was making a point. Second, assuming I was trying to convert UFO believers into non-believers, my first step would not be to march into a place where I KNEW the UFO believers to be and start insulting them.
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Are you saying that "I want to destroy and eliminate the power of religion, I just don't want to say that, because I think telling people that will reduce my ability to destroy and eliminate the power of religion"?
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No, I'm saying that YOU have said YOU want to eliminate the power of religion. OK. Fine. If that's what you really want, you're going about it in a very stupid way. To change their beliefs, you must win the religious people over. You're not going to do that by starting off the conversation accusing them and their beliefs of being ridiculous.
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I'm sorry, but I value truth more than I value this particular victory.
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In that case, as you have mentioned, no one can ever know the truth. Until that changes (and it won't) stop insulting people who have no more absolute knowledge of the truth than you do.
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They are wrong because they are religious. Their wrongness is a not-good thing that takes away some of my respect for them. What again is the problem with this?
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The problem is that you just don't know if they're wrong or not. There's no way of knowing for sure. Hell for all we know we're all just some simulation running on some immensely powerful computer system. We don't know, and we won't ever know. And since we can't truly know, it would behoove us not to look down our noses at others who don't truly know just because they don't happen to believe in the unknowable thing that we believe in.
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Ad homeium attacks are when you say "this person is a git, therefor they are wrong". Saying "you have a ridiculous belief" is not an ad homeium attack.
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I think you're confused here. I was accused by KM of making an ad hominem attack. I never accused you of it.
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Prove that one must have faith to believe that god does not exist.
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Because you cannot prove that god does not exist. Therefore you must take it on faith that your conclusions are correct.
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You consider the spaghetti monster belief to be crap?! My god, you are being disrespectful of a ridiculous belief system!
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If it were a religious belief system, then I would be guilty of that.
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I was asking you a particular question. Do you consider religious belief to be ridiculous?
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I don't think it's ridiculous, no. I don't think something has to be ridiculous just because I don't personally believe in it.
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Do you consider UFO cultists belief to be ridiculous?
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I would have to take the individual who believes it on a case by case basis to answer that. If he just dreamed it up, then maybe it's ridiculous. If he's been told all his life by all his relatives and all his friends that UFO's exist and they're going to come take him away to paradise, then that's not quite as ridiculous.