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Monday, November 13, 2006

Don't Quit Your day Job

One of our little anonymous atheist T-blog groupies commented in my post on Chewbacca:



"Anonymous said:

Good call!!!

That is what I call a RIDICULOUS idea/belief.

What a nut!!!

Now, let's talk about the credible evidence for talking plants, snakes, and donkeys. Maybe we could also examine the "true" stories of the Tower of Babel and women that transform into table condiments."


http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/end-of-chewbacca.html

Good point. Though we have already discussed those things here many times in the past, before we take up those things again we were going to talk about:

a) Lizards turning into birds.

b) Talking descendents of ape-like creatures. Talking birdies.

c) Whales walking on land.

d) The trustworthiness of our monkey brains.

e) The eating of Big Mac's as a form of "speciesism."

f) The idea that bats and humans had a common anscestor. Really, what's the problem with believing in Dracula?

g) The evolutionary possibility of donkey's developing the ability to speak.


So, stay tuned for those posts, and then we'll get into your horrible exegesis.

15 comments:

  1. Wow...great response, Paul!

    I'm sure it will keep lots of atheists up at night, wondering if they are on more solid ground for believing in the theory of evolution instead of women transforming into salt statues.

    Don't quit your day job.

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  2. Paul,

    I was a hardhearted atheist for many years. I recently came to see that belief in talking snakes and donkeys is on more solid epistemological grounds than evolution, because "so-called evidence" is always filtered through our presuppositions.

    I have repented; I now believe.

    I now see that belief in the Bible as the Word of God, since it says it is, stands up to any attack on the faith. Circularity? No! Coherentism! Never mind the fact that any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be internally consistent.

    The Bible is the Word of God, because it says so! I believe it!

    Thanks Paul!

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  3. Anon wrote:
    ---
    Never mind the fact that any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be internally consistent.
    ---

    I'd like to see you prove that...

    ReplyDelete
  4. No, it's *you guys* keep theists up at night. I mean, it's not like we haven't read the story of Lot's wife a thousand times, but when you say it, boy, do we feel dumb.

    I don't believe in "talking snakes and dnonkeys" as that's fleshed out, but my evidence is the infallible word of God.

    Got any more questions to beg.


    Oh,

    "Never mind the fact that any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be internally consistent."

    How about the belief that there are no beliefs?

    :-D

    Thanks for the fodder guys, we can do this all year long.

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  5. Was Lot's wife an autobot, or a decepticon?

    Since she was a transformer....

    Its so much more exciting to believe in talking plants, and animals that impart verbal wisdom, than boring old science.

    Atheists are dumb....always expecting to have evidence, and facts, for believing wacky things.

    You're SO right Paul. It makes much more sense to believe in transformers than in science.

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  6. CalvinDude & Paul,

    Aside from self-refuting statements, it is indeed possible to form internally consistent beliefs that nonetheless fly in the face of evidence and induction.

    The Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster sorts of parodies are useful for pointing this out. I can create a belief system -- Fristianity or FSMism or whatever, that is not logically contradictory, but that nonetheless has...how should I say it? Less than compulsory evidences to support it.

    Same with your presuppositionalism.

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  7. I never said it wasn't possible.

    So what.

    I'm not the one who didn't give the caveat.

    So that's another refuted atheist. Too dumb to think things through. To careless to be cautious.

    I'm glad that you guys are now admitting that my Christian beliefs are coherent.

    Too bad your guys' beliefs are not.

    Furthermore, despite your mere assertions to the contrary, my poisiton is true as well as coherent.

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  8. Daidalos said "Aside from self-refuting statements, it is indeed possible to form internally consistent beliefs that nonetheless fly in the face of evidence and induction...."

    Of course consistancy is not the acid test as to whether a position is true or not. It is certainly one aspect, but other factors are involved such as arbitrariness, correspondance, etc.

    The Christian worldview takes these things into account.

    Once the "worldview" of Spaghetti Monster, etc. are spelled out, we can see these things for what they are - silliness.

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  9. Yeah...FSM is ridiculous....next thing you know there will be stories of women transforming into salt and pepper shakers or something....what a crazy belief system...

    Paul...you loose.

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  10. Prophet:

    You said "loose".

    ReplyDelete
  11. Only losers say "loose" instead of "lose," prophet.

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  12. Oh yes....Christianity, Christian faith everywhere, indeed the very word of God itself defeated by a ......typo......

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  13. you should have capitalized 'word' above.

    Heretic.

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  14. Daidalos said:
    ---
    Aside from self-refuting statements, it is indeed possible to form internally consistent beliefs that nonetheless fly in the face of evidence and induction.
    ---

    But the original statement did not include "aside from self-refuting statements." It said: "Never mind the fact that any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be internally consistent." As you tacitly admit in the above, there are indeed beliefs that are NOT internally consistent.

    Daidalos said:
    ---
    The Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster sorts of parodies are useful for pointing this out.
    ---

    If by "useful" you mean "trivial" or "pointless" I agree. Firstly, no one believes in Invisible Pink Unicorns or Flying Spaghetti Monsters. Secondly, IPUs and FSMs aren't necessary for things such as logic to be valid, whereas the Presuppostionalist claim is that God is necessary for Logic to be valid. Thus, IPUs and FSMs in no way correlate to the concept of God.

    In short, you are assuming that Presuppositionalism is only interested in self-consistency, when that is only half the story. Presuppositionalism is interested in answering questions such as how morality and logic are valid in a self-consistent manner. So your building of strawmen that only deal with the second half and not the first half don't solve the problem.

    If you were going to rectify the problem, you'd have to stipulate an IPU or FSM that also formed the grounds of logic or morality, not merely that it could exist self-consistently. And in order to form those grounds, the IPU or FSM would have to have certain attributes--attributes that would make the IPU or FSM indentical with God.

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  15. Presuppositionalism is interested in answering questions such as how morality and logic are valid in a self-consistent manner. So your building of strawmen that only deal with the second half and not the first half don't solve the problem.

    Yet God does? God "solves the problem" of how "morality and logic are valid in a self-consistent manner"?

    So you take circularity from one area and move it to another?

    I'd love to see how the "interest" is translated into "arguments". So far...

    ReplyDelete