Atheist vs believer research

@igm,

Ha! You're a laugh riot.

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

-- Anatole France.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Ha! You're a laugh riot.

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

-- Anatole France.

Easy to say not so easy to prove.... what's that I hear... the sound of Set's philosophical silence.

Perhaps you and Frank could refute this... this is only one philosopher much respected by many Western philosophers over many centuries.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/

1 Reply

@igm,

Quote:

Quote:
Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5244177)
Frank Apisa wrote:

The Buddha does come out looking bad, though.

You believe on the basis of your 'head in the sand' approach and your philosophy 101 comments that you have refuted Buddhist Philosophy

Here is a search on Google for 'Buddhist philosophy' the results are:

About 23,400,000 results (0.18 seconds)

You are a genius!!!! keep telling yourself that...

Nice try.

NO CIGAR.

If I told a Christian evangelist that his arguments were causing Christianity to look bad...I would be saying much less about Christian philosophy than about the arguments the evangelist was presenting.

My comment was directed at how you are portraying Buddhist philosophy.

In any case, I repeat:

Whether you include the word “conceptual” or not…if you are saying that “there is no absolute truth”…you are saying something that is logically impossible. If the absolute truth is that “there is no absolute truth”…then the statement “there is no absolute truth” is incorrect.

Actually, the statement is illogical.

You understand what I am saying…and you have no valid response for it…so you are indulging in as much personal reference as possible.

You oughta stop that, because it makes you look like you are squirming…and I am sure the Buddha would not approve.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

My answer is here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/

Get back to me with your refutation.

1 Reply

@igm,

First, i'm under no obligation to refute any of the bullshit you post here, so keep your snotty remarks about "philosophical silence" to yourself. Second, France was referring to a logical fallacy, which could either be argumentum ad populum, or argumentum ad numerum. The latter is often asserted to be the same as the former, but argumentum ad populum is also often an appeal to authority--the "everybody knows" kind of argument. France is pointing out that it is a fallacious, a bankrupt basis for any claim.

I don't have to prove France's assertion. Since you seem to revel in appeals to authority, east and west, for thousands of years the argumentum ad populum fallacy has been known, and discounted. That's why it has a Latin name. The Romans were big on rhetoric. Any 12 year old Roman school boy of two thousand years ago could make mincemeat of you.

No one is obliged to refute claims others make. Those making claims have the burden of proof. If you can't prove what you claim, there is no reason to take you seriously. I don't take you seriously. As i've already pointed out, i consider you a devoté of a superstition. Prove me wrong.

1 Reply

@igm,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5244961)
My answer is here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/

Get back to me with your refutation.

That wasn't even a nice try, igm.

You are squirming...and that really looks bad in debate. And passing off the baton, so to speak, looks even worse. (Use "appeal to authority" if you prefer.)

Laughably, you are trying to defend a statement that cannot logically be defended.

You obviously think the statement "there is no conceptual absolute reality" is true.

But that statement itself is "conceptual"...and it offers "the absolute reality" is that "there is no absolute reality." It contradicts itself.

I know...you guys are into that "sound of one hand clapping"...and think that kind of stuff makes you a huge cut above other stuff, like Christianity.

What is there about the air of the subcontinent....?

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

You have jumped to a conclusion and misunderstood what I have said. You haven't answered for example any of the important part of my post you have just dealt with the semantics of the issue. Why because you want to rubbish my attempt and Buddhist philosophy as a whole without knowing anything about it. It's the equivalent of you poking your tongue out at a quantum physicist... you know nothing and don't want to find out about anything other than your ‘party trick’ personal to you only agnostic view... you are a closed book.

I have studied Nagarjuna’s text for many years and this is my full answer. I cannot do it justice in any post and at the beginning I said as much.

igm wrote:

My answer is here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/

Get back to me with your refutation.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Refute my post or keep you vacuous, philosophical diatribe to yourself.

In other words put up or shut up!

1 Reply

@igm,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5244976)
You have jumped to a conclusion and misunderstood what I have said. You haven't answered for example any of the important part of my post you have just dealt with the semantics of the issue. Why because you want to rubbish my attempt and Buddhist philosophy as a whole without knowing anything about it.

I have no desire whatever to "rubbish" Buddhist philosophy. I saw one comment with which I disagreed (and have disagreed with on several occasions here in OS before this thread)...and spoke to it.

The comment is illogical.

You still have not acknowledged that...instead you keep making jabs at my intelligence and my motives.

Deal with the item itself, igm.

YOU deal with it...do not hand off the baton to someone I cannot engage in discussion.

I am interested in what you think...and said so in my first post on this issue.

This is not, by the way, an issue of semantics...except that you have attempted to make it one. You were the one who claimed I was essentially creating a straw man by not using the word "conceptual"...and when I included the word...you simply sloughed it off.

Deal with the questions I asked.

Quote:

...you are a closed book.

I doubt that very seriously. I suspect you need to come up with stuff like this because it is easier to disparage me than actually deal with the questions I have raised.

1 Reply

@igm,

Listen, bitch, you're the vacuous one here. If you make idiotic claims which you can't support, no one is obliged to take you seriously. No one is obliged to refute your bullshit. First you you sneered at me for being philosophically silent, now you accuse me of employing a philosophical diatribe. Get your story straight. Then you can get your little lace panties straight--now, apparently, they're in a twist.

0 Replies

By the way, this childish insistence on your bullshit being refuted is the equivalent of the theist who says: "There is a god, now prove me wrong." You're pathetic, and you're superstitious.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

YOU deal with it...do not hand off the baton to someone I cannot engage in discussion.

I can discuss it but first you have to understand it... you don't, you prefer semantics, if you didn't then you’d answer my post, I've asked you many times; if you can't then read my link to Stanford Uni.

You’ve continually sniped at Buddhism so don’t now say otherwise.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

By the way, this childish insistence on your bullshit being refuted is the equivalent of the theist who says: "There is a god, now prove me wrong." You're pathetic, and you're superstitious.

Setanta wrote:

Listen, bitch, you're the vacuous one here. If you make idiotic claims which you can't support, no one is obliged to take you seriously. No one is obliged to refute your bullshit. First you you sneered at me for being philosophically silent, now you accuse me of employing a philosophical diatribe. Get your story straight. Then you can get your little lace panties straight--now, apparently, they're in a twist.

Diatribe works because of the word ‘vacuous’ before it. Is that a first? Calling someone 'bitch', well I never, dude!

Setanta wrote:

By the way, this childish insistence on your bullshit being refuted is the equivalent of the theist who says: "There is a god, now prove me wrong." You're pathetic, and you're superstitious.

I said, "the definition of each individual word depends on other words so that means that each word in isolation has no meaning."

Yea, that sounds just the same to me as "There is a god, now prove me wrong." .. no wait a minute Set is making stuff up to belittle people again... doesn't have to be true and certainly doesn't have to be backed up by Set.

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Once again, you are the one who has something to back up, your claim about what you are pleased to call Buddhist "philosophy." You just added to that burden of proof with an unsubstantiated claim that words have no meaning in isolation. You just keep digging yourself a deeper hole. As for calling you bitch, if you get nasty with me, i'll get nasty with you in return. Philosophical diatribe, whether or not it was vacuous (another claim you have taken on as a burden of proof), was false in any event, because i was pointing out your logical fallacy, and not making any philosophical claim.

You're really piss poor at rhetoric, which is not a surprise from someone haunted by superstition.

1 Reply

@igm,

Quote:

Quote:
Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5244992)
Frank Apisa wrote:

YOU deal with it...do not hand off the baton to someone I cannot engage in discussion.

I can discuss it but first you have to understand it... you don't, you prefer semantics, if you didn't then you’d answer my post, I've asked you many times; if you can't then read my link to Stanford Uni.

You’ve continually sniped at Buddhism so don’t now say otherwise.

I have NOT sniped at Buddhism...and I am not even interested in discussing Buddhism.

You mentioned that the Buddha taught “there is no conceptual absolute truth.”

I asked you if YOU had any idea of how the Buddha KNOWS this…or if you thought perhaps he was just guessing.

It is a question I ask of people often…and it is an important question to ask, because it can often put the issue being discussed into a proper context.

I then called your attention to the fact that if “there is no conceptual absolute truth”…then that statement MUST BE FALSE. If the statement is true…then that IS THE CONCEPTUAL ABSOLUTE TRUTH…which once again would make the statement false.

There is no way I can work things to make the statement correct.

It is an illogical thing to assert.

The Buddha is not here to defend it…and since you agreed with the Buddha about the statement…I am now trying to get you to deal with it.

It is illogical.

Just acknowledge that…and be done with it. That…it seems to me…would be more in keeping with your Buddhist tradition than what you are doing here—which, more and more, is that you are trying to look the fool.

The statement is on its face illogical.

Acknowledge that and move on.

1 Reply

@MattDavis,

MattDavis wrote:

The black marks on Christianity and Islam and Judaism are not simply due to some of their followers being imperfect in their respective practice of belief. It is that within those practices it is JUSTIFIABLE to behave horrifically. You can justify killing and slavery.

You're just fishing to try to get me to agree with you in the rather simplistic idea that your version of atheism (non-nihilistic) is best for everyone.

The only Atheist nation of Earth was Albania, and that was hardly a bastion of human rights and freedom, but I think it would be going too far to say that the abuses committed by that regime were because atheism justifies such abuses.

You're no different from any other evangelical, you're just as convinced that your way is best for everyone as much as a fire and brimstone ranter does.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You just added to that burden of proof with an unsubstantiated claim that words have no meaning in isolation.

If you check the dictionary are there any words there not defined by other words? Answer: No (not such a burden was it).

So that's my proof. Now you counter with how an individual word has meaning without referring to other words.

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@Frank Apisa,

You appear to have deliberately misunderstood what I've said and refuse to refute my post (the one I have mentioned ad nauseam) so you keep repeating your misunderstanding and expect me to agree that you are correct... um.. no!

I want a second opinion, yours isn't worth the paper... etc... get someone to take what I've written and show how it is incorrect or just .... off.

1 Reply

@igm,

Quote:

Re: Frank Apisa (Post 5245000)
You appear to have deliberately misunderstood what I've said and refuse to refute my post (the one I have mentioned ad nauseam) so you keep repeating your misunderstanding and expect me to agree that you are correct... um.. no!

Ummm...NO!

I have not misunderstood what you have said. But just to be safe...let me kinda reword it...and you can tell me what I am misunderstanding.

I have asked you for YOUR opinion about what Buddha wrote about "absolute conceptual reality"...

...and you want me to read a text that you have studied for many years in order to find the answer to YOUR opinion.

With all the respect in the world, igm, if I have got that correct, that is ALMOST as illogical as the assertion of the Buddha with which you agreed.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

"absolute conceptual reality"...

Wrong.. not a promising start Frank.. get the quote correct.. then explain what those words mean... the actual meaning not one you've made up.

2 Replies

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