beyelzu

If someone is hitting you in the face with a baseball bat, he is unlikely to stop when you ask politely.


see anyone can play this game of false analogy. In fact I quit like it.

beyelzu

I suppose that I am the only person in this thread who understands the word intersubjective?

morality is intersubjective.

truelies

and exactly who would enforce this outlawry? Seems to me that what you are suggesting is a recipe for blood in the streets. A philosphy does not meet with your approval so you want to use the State to suppress. it would appear that atheism also has its quota of fundies who feel entitled to stamp out opposing beliefs by physical force.

beyelzu

really??


one word response, you ready?


turkey,

in spite of being very relgious they have outlawed certain religious practices in order to be a more secular nation. such as wearing a burka. No I dont have a site for this information, rather, I know what my three turkish friends have told me. I do realize that turkey does have a history of relgious tolerance going back to the ottoman empire.

take desegregation and racism, now I am generally a libertarian and I am against aa, but our government has been successful at lessening racist veiws and marginalizing those same veiws. in short governments can and do legislate morality.


It just takes time to affect the masses of people.

Wiploc

I like to open by asking whether he is open to persuasion himself. If he is asking you to have an open mind, to be vulnerable to persuasion, he should come to the table with an open mind himself, willing to be disillusioned, right? If he says no, then ask why not; why should you be willing to give him a fair hearing if he is not willing to give you one?

And if he says yes? Ask what it will take to change his mind.

Point out that the world would be better off without hellfire. If we had a choice of whether Christianity was true, every good person should choose that it not be true.

If he asks what it would take to convert you, you are entitled to ask for a coherent vision of what it is you are being asked to believe. How does he get around the problem of evil? Because of the problem of evil, nothing counts as evidence for a god that is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Ask him straight out which and how many of those claims is giving up in order to have a non-self-contradictory concept of god.

When he makes a bad argument, and you point out that it's a bad argument, point out also that he would only use bad arguments if he didn't have good arguments. Christianity has had 2000 years to provide him with good arguments, and yet here he is making bad arguments. Doesn't that suggest something to him? (This is a cumulative-effect type argument. The more times you remember to use it (that is, the more different bad arguments you use it on) the more effective it gets.)
crc

Heathen Dawn

A war on terrorism should also include a war on the source of terrorism, which is Abrahamic monotheism.



Seems to me you're getting overly dramatic.



Would it were just a philosophy. It's not. Millions of Christians think it's perfectly OK for the majority of mankind to end up burning in hell for eternity. If that's not anti-humanity, then I don't know what is. The same goes for Islam. Those religions are just wired for hatred and global warfare.

A double negative makes a positive. Intolerance should be shown the greatest of intolerance. Only tolerant religions should be tolerated.

I did not suggest stamping out Abrahamic religions by force; all I suggested was to safeguard politics from them, that no-one's political decisions would be influenced by their doctrines. We are in the 21th century, yet we have both Bush and Ben Laden managing politics according to doctrines of the Bronze Age. This mixing of religion and politics must be outlawed; as for the religions themselves, let people believe as they wish, but with a provision by the government for secularising and deconverting the religious over time.

wade-w

Heathen Dawn and Truelies:

Your discussion is off topic. If you wish to continue your discussion, start a new thread.

Queen of Swords

Well, unless my mother has taken it upon herself to protect the dear innocent fundamentalist relatives from the evil atheist stranger, the debate is tomorrow.

After our little clash, she said that if I couldn't respect them, she would cancel the debate. That pissed me off; the debate was arranged without input from me and now it may be cancelled without input from me? I'm not a puppet.

Anyway, I'll let you all know how it goes.

Nowhere357

I agree. Has something I've said led you to believe otherwise?

? I'm playing no game and I made no false analogy. What are you talking about?

beyelzu

here you go