The Pope out of control?

Originally posted by ivanhoe


What I was talking about is the views and opinions of the majority of the Freethinker Movement. Of course I know that there are different opinions within the Freethinker movement. If you take a look on the internet I don't think that you will find many Freethinker Internet sites dealing with anti Active Euthanasia stances. If they exist, please give me ...[text shortened]... site of this simple truth they look upon this as an insult and an accusation .......

Ivanhoe, I'm sorry to say this but I find your here your characterisations of freethinkers are at best strawman carricatyres.

You talk of the "Freethinker movement" as if there was some coherent organisation that freethinkers belong to, with coherent goals and policies. I know a great many freethinkers, many good friends of mine, but have ever only known one person assosiated with a freethinker club. In my experience, a great majority of freethinkers are unasosiated with any political organisation composed of freethinkers, or even mostly of freethinkers. What's more, in my experince, freethinkers welcome dissent, and reasonable debate.

What really pushes freethinker's buttons, in general, is a debate opponent who argues his views persistantly despite being unable to (or is unwilling to) provide reasonable arguments to support his views, and refuses to concede any point even if it is soundly refuted. Most freethinkers that I've debated with would call someone irrational only after they have actually displayed such irrationality in practice.

I don't agree with those freethinkers - or Christians for that matter - who call others irrational or stupid merely on the basis of their dissenting views, without actually qualifying their claim. I think that is just bad manners, and totally counterproductive as a debate tactic. It certainly won't lead to any productive discussion. If your opponent is being irrational, you should be able to show this with factual arguments, without stooping to unnecessary name-calling yourself.

Now if someone has called you irrational, and not qualified that claim with any argument, then the right response is to ask them to qualify their claim - if you are confident that your views are reasonable, there is nothing for you to fear from counter-arguments. If your views truly are reasonable, then your "accusers" will soon be put into a position to have to retreact their statements. Certainly getting into a petty name-calling feud, and collectively insulting the proponents of an entire world view is not the way to go about it.

Ivanhoe said:

We all have our preset opinions, because a person cannot function without them. The difference between me and the prominent Freethinkers on this site is, that I acknowledge this. If I remind the Freethinkers on this site of this simple truth they look upon this as an insult and an accusation .......

First, what do you mean by "preset opinions"? Do you mean opionins which cannot be changed, or perhaps intrisic biases in favour of the views you currently hold? If you mean the latter, then I would agree - of course we have biases. What's more I think that it's one of the important features of freethought that those biases are not only acknowledged, but also fougth against, by subjecting one's views to frequent scrutiny by others, and also being mentally prepared to concede a point and reshape one's views should they be shown to be inconsistent or unreasonable.

Secondly, you say that the "prominent Freethinkers on this site" don't recognize this "simple truth" - in other words, by your own statement, the "simple truth" is in fact a matter under contention; it is your opinion that others (supposedly the ones you refer to) disagree with. So what you are doin is "reminding" freethinkers that something not generally agreed upon, something that is your opinion, is "the simple truth". Don't you see how people might take offense at that?

-Jarno

Originally posted by ivanhoe
rwingett: "Now I am going to make this very simple for you. I am going to repeat my question one last time. You may respond with only a "yes" or a "no", I will ignore any other response. Now once again...do you think 473 saints in 25 years is too much? " rwingett

In case you missed my answer: The answer is "no".

I didn't miss your answer. I'm not ignoring you. I just don't have nearly as much time as you to type away nonstop in the forums. Plus, I think I've made my point. You've finally answered my question. I don't see much point in continuing to beat the topic into the ground. Unless you were really looking forward to another round or two...

Originally posted by rwingett
I didn't miss your answer. I'm not ignoring you. I just don't have nearly as much time as you to type away nonstop in the forums. Plus, I think I've made my point. You've finally answered my question. I don't see much point in continuing to beat the topic into the ground. Unless you were really looking forward to another round or two...

Let's call it a day, Rwingett .....

Originally posted by Pyrrho
Ivanhoe, I'm sorry to say this but I find your here your characterisations of freethinkers are at best strawman carricatyres.

You talk of the "Freethinker movement" as if there was some coherent organisation that freethinkers belong to, with coherent goals and policies. I know a great many freethinkers, many good friends of mine, but have ever only know ...[text shortened]... inion, is "the simple truth". Don't you see how people might take offense at that?

-Jarno

About Freethought in general this is my criticism :

Freethought tries to deal with complicated matters such as philosophy, religion, the question does God exist yes or no, the question does the three-O God exist, social processes, political matters, matters of life and death, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, other moral problems, it deals with these matters as they were matters of pure reason, mathematics and logic. They want to treat philosophy as it were a science ruled by mathematics and logic.

The fact that philosophy cannot think and reason in numbers and relations as pure mathematics does, but rather in words, terms and as a result of that in sentences, poses a big problem.

The fact that things in reality like hope, sin, life, death, eternity, time, future, past, present, space, omniscient, omnibenevolent, attitude, truth, lies, etc. etc. cannot be defined in a way that is possible in the case of mathematical entities poses a problem that is extremely underestimated by Freethought. Freethought is not enough aware of this problem. Freethought should criticise their own conclusions much more. It idolises reason and logic in a way that is unacceptable to me. This criticism of mine must not be mistaken for disdain towards reason and logic on my part. On the contrary. Reason and logic are absolutely necessary in finding the truth, both in science , philosophy, social science and religion. However logic has its limitations. I'm not only referring to the fact that logic cannot prove it is logical, "The Leak in Logic", I'm also referring to the fact that, especially in philosophy and political science the phenomena that are being studied, cannot be described and defined in an exact mathematical way. Therefore the resuls of logical Freethought must be taken with much more than one grain of salt. My objection is that Freethinkers, both here on the site and in politics as elsewhere are selling the results of this reasoning as "the rational truth" or even as "the scientific truth". These conclusions become "rational dogmas" for the freethinker or the Freethinker group in question.These results of Freethought are true because of the mere fact that they are rational and "logical". The Freethinkers have thus become the dogmatic believers they claim nót to be. They have become believers not so much in their own conclusions but rather in their "Method". I referred to this method as "The Logical Thinking Machine". They idolise the "method of reason and logic" and are condemming other people who acknowledge the fact that in these areas such as philosophy it is almost impossible to reason in that strict logical way because of the ambiguity of the definitions of used terms. For instance if we investigate political processes we see the outside. We cannot see any hidden agenda.We cannot see what people want or we simply and conveniently ignore this. We cannot instantly detect any lies. We cannot see the whole of the process, we cannot see all of the relevant sides or relevant facts of reality.We cannot make any realistic mathematical model of these complicated processes. Therefore my discussion with bbarr about one of such processes ended more or less with bbarrs remark that philosophical projects tend to be theoretical. In the case of the reasoning of the Hemlock Society, a Freethinker organisation, an organisation preaching the moral autonomy of the individual. the human being becomes the moral authority instead of God. Why doesn't Freethought proves first that God does not exist and after that, as a necessary and logical conclusion, proclaims the human subject as being the Ultimate Moral Authority. Thát would have been the correct Freethought way. Because they fail to do so, they've become believers themselves.

I visited this site:

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/skepticism/blfaq_fall_ambiguity.htm

and I found the following:

Fallacies of ambiguity,

With these fallacies, some sort of ambiguity is introduced either in the premises or in the conclusion itself. This way, an apparently false idea can be made to appear true so long as the reader does not notice the problematic definitions.

It is because of these fallacies that getting clear definitions of key terms is often very important. People discussing a matter while using different or even incompatible definitions will often just end up talking past each other, creating misunderstandings, hard feelings, and ultimately not accomplishing very much.

Of course, some ambiguity is unavoidable in any discussion, since many common words have multiple meanings. It is therefore important to keep in mind that the mere existence of some level of ambiguity is not enough to render an argument fallacious - otherwise just about all arguments would be fallacious.

Instead, we must here focus upon ambiguity which creates important changes in the meaning of the thoughts being conveyed. If changing the meaning of a word leads to a conclusion unsupported by a premise using an earlier meaning, then we have a fallacy of ambiguity. If the scope of modifiers changes when moving from the premise to the conclusion, then we have a different fallacy of ambiguity.

Originally posted by ivanhoe

However logic has its limitations.

Just like philosophy, social science and religion has limitations.

Can't you guys agree to disagree sometimes?

Originally posted by Bookworm
Ivanhoe stated: "The Church wanted to give people and especially young people in our days inspiring "role models" of how they could realise their own ideals of following Christ in their own lives ....... How they could follow the God-i ...[text shortened]... act as role models to the young people of our days. Right.

Even the Bible warns us that we should listen to priests because they preach the Word of God but we should not follow their ways .....

It should be the case that priests could act as role models but they are not. The only role model that really counts is Christ Himself because He is without sin. The other role models are Saints in as far as they have followed Christ. Nobody is without sin except Jesus Christ.

Originally posted by ivanhoe

About Freethought in general this is my criticism :

Freethought tries to deal with complicated matters such as philosophy, religion, the question does God exist yes or no, the question does the three-O God exist, social processes, po ...[text shortened]... onclusion, then we have a different fallacy of ambiguity.

My previous post was mainly about the method that is used by Freethought.
What I reject strongly in its ideas is of course the fact that Freethought proposes killing as a way to "solve" our personal problems. That is the reason why Freethought is an advocate of what is known as the "Culture of Death".

Originally posted by ivanhoe

That is the reason why Freethought is an advocate of what is known as the "Culture of Death".

This is an rather unfair insinuation
Are you an advocate of the "Culture of Endless Suffering"? I don't think so.
We should stop throwing dirt.
The same counts for your usage of the word "killing". Killing is what happens in wars, fights and robberies etc. and has nothing to do with euthanasia.
I hope we can discuss such topics with respect for our different opinions

Fjord