Sauron

1. Interesting thought. Pity you didn't take your own advice before doing your bait-and-switch routine with the definition of "preconceived." Or before creating a strawman position of skeptics in your opening post, and then trying to make skeptics defend it.

2.In fact, let's review that particular opening salvo one more time, to get an idea of what RPS' considers "good faith":

It's common for condescending atheists to claim that when really faced with an atheist's claims a Christian can only hide and deny or give in to atheism's obvious truth, that God-belief is necessarily irrational. That's a laughably irrational position itself but I'd love for you to try to defend it.

For someone who wants to preach the virtues of extending good faith in a debate, your choice of words shows an appalling lack of it. "Physician, heal thyself."

My credibility is doing just fine. Your statements, however, *are* in dispute and are often controversial. After all, you're the one who:

* tried to claim you had 20 or so scientific theories that were overturned -- yet when asked to do so, you could not produce them;
* tried to tell us that "only fundamentalists" hold the strict literal view of the bible. Yet you were wrong about that claim, as well as what the majority of evangelicals believe -- your own professed brand of christianity;
* quoted Richard Feynman out of context;
* when asked for proof of your claim that atheists operate with the same preconceived notions and agendas as theists, offered up an unprovenanced quotaton from Lewontin that fell miles short of proving the claim;
* and then managed to leave out the context of Lewontin's comment anyhow;
* tried to invoke mysterious hidding meanings in the Greek as your refuge, only to be reminded of the role of dictionaries and study aids;
* There are other examples.

So yes - there is plenty to object to in your statements; the idea that you should be allowed to toss out claims without any challenge is absurd.

One other point: you frequently fail to admit your errors; instead, you simply stop responding on those points and move on to the next claim. For example, you were flat-out wrong on your assertions about evangelicals vs fundamentalists. Yet no admission or concession from you. That is inconsistent behavior for someone who preaches the virtue of "good faith on both sides".

You'll have to provide proof of your legal credentials. Unfortunately you are tripped up here by your own behavior; since you have been caught twice doing a dishonest bait-and-switch over word definitions, I cannot afford to simply extend the benefit of the doubt to you.

It is not absurd; the statute is clear: the person wishing to testify must be able to prove that their testimony is rooted in personal knowledge of whatever matter they are testifying about. The claim of personal knowledge must be proven, before they will be allowed to give their testimony in open court.

Contrary to your misreading of the statute, the thrust of 602 is concerned about establishing a valid basis for the claim of personal knowledge, in relation to testimony.

Your link simply goes to the first general page on atheism. It does not support your specific claim that

If agnosticism is really about knowledge while theism/atheism is about belief

You made a very specific claim, one that differentiated atheism and agnosticism. I'm asking for proof that this is what differentiates them; I've been around atheists and agnostics for decades, and this claim is strange to me. If there is a specific paragraph on the page, then point it out. But simply tossing a generic page in my direction is not the same as supporting a claim. I would have thought your classroom time would have instilled better research habits.

Unnecessary. The claim needing support here belongs to you, not to me. I have no burden of proof; I simply don't recognize this characterization and asked you for evidence to support it. And linking to a general page about atheism does not support the specific claims you made above.

Incorrect. Your own first citation provides the clue to the flaw in your argument:

Atheism is characterized by an absence of belief in the existence of gods.

That's ALL gods. ANY gods. Invisible deities as a class of beings are rejected. Not just the judeo-christian god.

Nonsense. They are not an atheist, or else they wouldn't be shopping around for the god that they feel serves their spiritual needs the best. A true atheist wouldn't even bother to do that 'comparison shopping', since atheism rejects ALL such deities.

1. If you want to claim that this is the historical and/or most logically consistent definition, you'll need to show proof for both of those attributes.

2. There's a large library here at IIDB that goes into this very subject; you linked to one page, without ever noticing weak atheism.

No.
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism...finitions.html

Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god--both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter [...]

And:

If you look up 'atheism' in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.
[Michael Martin, "Atheism: A Philosophical Justification", p. 463.
Temple University Press, 1990.]


1. But I did mention it earlier. I mentioned several times that there were different definitions of evidence: scientific, 1st century NT, 21st century juridical, etc. You simply got onto your legal hobbyhorse and didn't read what I said -- even though I said it multiple times.

2. And as I already indicated: I am comfortable arguing the topic of "christian evidence" within either of the two frameworks for defining "evidence": (1) broad, or (2) lay definition. It's all the same to me. As long as the discussion picks ONE definition, and stays with that same definition for the duration of the entire debate. That's the only intellectually honest way of doing it.

3. But what I saw early on in the debate was a suspicious attempt on your part to use one definition, and then pull a switch later on to the other definition. A suspicion that has been confirmed twice by your subsequent behavior.

What you think is irrelevant. It does exist, as the citations from the thesaurus indicate. And as your own duplicitious behavior with regards to this word indicate. If the distinction didn't exist, you wouldn't have tried to use it to your advantage when you said the following:

And since you now concede that Christians do have evidence for their beliefs

So I'll repeat:
You've now changed the semantic context of 'evidence' again. In your statement above you are trying to use it to mean the lay definition ("facts supporting a conclusion"). Thank you for supporting my suspicions in such a public and unretractable manner.

But as for the "evidence" for christianity (broad def.), I've already pulled the plug on your semantic swaperoo:

My only concession here about christians and evidence remains what I said earlier. I concede only that christians have 'evidence' for their beliefs in the same sense that Area 51 devotees have 'evidence' for alien abduction and mind control. As I said twice already: As long as you aren't picky about the quality or the relevance, then it all counts as evidence. If that's your definition of evidence, then the claim "evidence for christianity" doesn't mean very much. Likewise, conceding that christians have "evidence" for their beliefs doesn't mean much, because the standard for what counts as evidence is so low and doesn't include relevance.

I'm not trying to exploit any misunderstanding -- *YOU* are the one who claimed evidence (broad def.) for christianity at the start of this debate, and then tried to switch the context back to evidence (facts supporting a conclusion) afterwards.

1. I did support it. That is what the thesarus entries were for.

2. In addition, if you spend any time perousing the creation-evolution section of this board (or other christian boards), it becomes immediately clear that there is another whole understanding of the word "evidence" at work in the mind of the average person.


Yes, it is. An online resource using Roget's.

Quote:

Quite different? Really? If you think there is a substantive difference between

(a) Roget's Thesaurus
and
(b) Roget's New Millenium Thesaurus,

Since you chose to quibble, then present evidence of that substantive difference. Hint: I am not going to consider a re-branded title as "substantive."

I did not say that. What I said was that the lay definition of evidence is "fact supporting a conclusion", as opposed to "data points of unknown value, collected and categorized now to be sifted for their worth later on."

For someone who claims to have been both an attorney and a professor, you do an atrocious job of restating the opponent's position.

But before we do that, we have to figure out why you tried to create a strawman

but the argument doesn't get reached because it is based upon a false premise -- that Christian faith isn't founded upon any sort of evidence.

If you were actually talking about evidence (broad definition), then you knew enough about skeptics already to know that few if any skeptics would claim zero evidence (broad def.) for christianity. Given that fact, why did you create a strawman position of the skeptic argument?

Answer:
* you set up the strawman yourself, then toss the fishing line in the water;
* get someone to bite on the line and argue with you; and then
* you remind everyone of the broad definition of evidence, and
* presto- you cleverly think you can score a point, because you the broad definition includes evidence of useless quality, poor provision, with no substantiation, under which even alien abduction stories can be said to have "evidence"