Flash, let me address this directly because your ability to turn simple points into convoluted messes is impressive, but not in the way you think. You’re still avoiding the actual issue while pretending to occupy some superior intellectual ground. The topic is whether religious reasoning can be trusted—not whether you can score cheap rhetorical points by repeatedly misrepresenting determinism or tossing in petty digs about “zealotry.”FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:59 pmThis is the internet, conversations started with one question typically spawn many others. The matter I mentioned arose naturally from your own bombastic oversold OP. Your own reasoning is grounded on a certain sort of faith, everyone except you seems to see that.BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:26 pm Flash, your entire response is an exercise in hand-waving and smug deflection, and it's exhausting. You’ve openly admitted that you’re not addressing the central question—Can the religious be trusted?—so why are you even here, apart from stroking your own contrarian ego? This isn’t about your tedious "aside" on my supposed fanaticism; it’s about the inherent reliability of reasoning grounded in faith versus evidence. Stick to the point or move along.
You seem to be challenged in the comprehension department. I am not sneakily changing this thing into a belief in an underhanded effort to win an argument, it quite obviously is one and you are making yourself look quite mad by fighting that. You should perhaps take a step back and think for a moment because you are making a common mistake of just picking every worthless hill to die on over and over again.BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:26 pm You keep trying to reduce determinism to a “belief,” as though slapping a simplistic label on it wins you the argument. Determinism isn’t a "belief" in the same way that faith in the supernatural is—it’s a conclusion grounded in observable, consistent evidence. You’re right about one thing: I hold it to be true, because the evidence supports it and no credible alternative has been presented. Meanwhile, you sit on the sidelines, smugly claiming it’s “undecidable” without bothering to engage with the mountain of evidence that supports it. If you think determinism is false, say so and back it up. If you don’t, stop pretending your intellectual indifference is a valid critique.
You don't need to argue about whether your belief in determinism is a belief or not - that's a given, so it is a bad move - you need to argue that it is a well enough founded belief that everyone who disputes it must be suffering the sort of cognitive dissonance that you have been ascribing to your foes willy and nilly. Wasting your effort foolishly denying that it is even a belief suggests that you are out of your depth.
I don't know why you cannot cope with this, it's fairly simple. Determinism and free-will are not important, I don't take a side because it is a nothing question. Constantly challenging me to take a side won't make me suddenly think one of the sides is good, the problem is caused by overinterpretation on both ends of the debate and the matter is not just undecidable (but you would need at least two universes to decide the issue...), but arguably meaningless and entirely unimportant either way.
Again, I can't explain how you are failing to grasp this, but you misrepresent me. Stop adding layers to my arguments, you aren't talented enough to get it right. As I wrote already: My point was only that they arrive and that you have no reason not to expect a new one to arrive some time. I don't need more point than that.BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:26 pm Your "paradigms arrive unbidden" argument is a cop-out. Yes, science evolves, and better paradigms emerge when evidence demands it. But the idea that we should just sit around waiting for some hypothetical paradigm to materialize so we can question determinism is absurd. It’s not philosophy—it’s a lazy excuse to avoid engaging with the current framework. Until there’s evidence to the contrary, determinism holds, and hand-waving about what "might" happen doesn’t change that.
You can indeed argue without complaint from me that determinism is compatible with all available observational evidence and fits with the best available scientific theories. The question of best would arise with others, but I wouldn't make a fuss over it because that argument would be used for what it can do - namely making a case for why you happen to believe in determinism. But it doesn't progress to what you are not able to do - show that everyone who disputers it must be mistaken.
To have an argument strong enough such that everyone who disagrees is known to be categorically mistaken would require stronger reasoning and evidence than you have access to. You can whine that this is "philosophical quibbling" if you want, but it won't fix your faulty argument.
Sure, I can assent to that.BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:26 pm As for trust, let me spell it out for you one more time: faith-based reasoning is inherently untrustworthy because it starts with conclusions and works backward, prioritizing belief over evidence. That’s not a leap of faith on my part—it’s a demonstrable pattern. If you think otherwise, provide an example where faith has outperformed evidence in reliably explaining reality. I’ll wait.
I do oppose determinism, it's a pseudo-problem. But just so we are clear, I would oppose what you have written on this site even if I were a determinist for much the same reason as Alexiev wrote about atheist horsemen...BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:26 pm Finally, your repeated insistence that I "look in a mirror" is the ultimate irony. You accuse me of blind faith while refusing to confront your own avoidance of the actual question. If you’re not defending the trustworthiness of religious reasoning, and you’re not opposing determinism, then what exactly are you contributing here, other than empty contrarianism? If you have a substantive response to the actual topic, let’s hear it. Otherwise, save the pseudo-philosophical grandstanding for someone who finds it impressive. I don’t.In your case, your zealotry in pursuit of your tyrannical belief exceeds reason, and even if I sided with your starting point I would reject your excesses.
You claim I’m making “tyrannical” arguments by demanding intellectual rigor. That’s laughable. Determinism isn’t some wild leap of faith; it’s the result of consistently applied evidence and logic. You say it’s “undecidable” and “unimportant,” which is nothing more than a hand-waving way of refusing to engage with the implications of cause-and-effect relationships that underpin all physical phenomena. If you think it’s meaningless, then why are you still here, derailing this discussion with circular arguments and faux detachment?
And no, determinism is not “just a belief.” This tired equivalence between scientific frameworks and faith-based reasoning is both lazy and false. Belief in a framework supported by evidence isn’t comparable to belief in miracles or dogma. Your argument boils down to "you believe it, therefore it’s the same as faith," which is as shallow as it is wrong. Frameworks like determinism are open to falsification—show causeless events, and the framework changes. Faith, on the other hand, doesn’t evolve in light of evidence; it clings to conclusions despite evidence. That’s the fundamental difference, and your refusal to acknowledge it is precisely why this debate keeps going in circles.
Now, back to the main point, since you’ve finally conceded that faith-based reasoning is unreliable. If you agree that reasoning grounded in unverifiable claims is inherently untrustworthy, then the question of whether religious reasoning can be trusted answers itself. Faith starts with conclusions and defends them at all costs, which undermines intellectual integrity. That’s the core issue here, and it’s the reason faith-based reasoning fails to meet the standards required for trust in debates about reality. You’re free to quibble about determinism all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that faith and evidence operate on entirely different planes.
If you’re opposing determinism because it’s a "pseudo-problem," fine. But that has nothing to do with the trustworthiness of religious reasoning. Your attempt to conflate my arguments with “zealotry” or “tyranny” is just another distraction to avoid confronting the fact that faith-based reasoning doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. If you’re going to keep engaging, do us both a favor: stick to the topic and stop trying to turn this into an endless debate about determinism when the point has already been made. Otherwise, you’re not adding to the discussion—you’re just wasting time.
I think his art is pretty good. It's obviously not supposed to be realism.
