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In article <47ed44c8@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] san rrcom says...
> I actually found this page pretty interesting:
>
> http://www.joethepeacock.com/2008/03/how-to-actually-talk-to-atheists-if.
php
>
Yeah. The guy talks a lot of sense, *then* dives off the deep end by
presuming that witnessing by example will get you any place, unless your
example is **far** superior than, say, someone that doesn't believe in
any of it but does more charity work, is more helpful, spends more time
doing good, etc.
Mind you, there may be some small possibility of that being improbable,
but more due to other factors: 1. Not *needing* to do those things to
justify themselves, 2. Recognizing that there is a difference between
doing good and doing what *seems* good, and 3. People that don't
believe, may, do in part to 1 and 2, have more time to do stuff "other"
than trying to go around making themselves look good, to witness for
their position.
Besides, its also rather unclear how showing that your church, following
one of hundreds of thousands of variations in rules, can be good people
and do good things, somehow leads to the main premise they would like it
to.
In other words, while 90% of the stuff on the page is quite true, the
other 10% represents assumptions that do not logically follow from
either his own position, or any presumption that might be made about how
that action would be interpreted *by* the people they want to talk to
about it. Its still presuming that there is some core difference between
"their" acts of charity and virtue, and others, and that this should be
so obvious to anyone, that witness by action would mean anything at all,
other than, "Well, yeah, you manage to be a good person, despite the
*reason(s)* you have for doing so, but how does that prove that it was
in any way related to what you believe in?" Oops!
Anyway, PZ, or someone in one in the comments section, once posted the
link to that page before, and we had a fairly interesting discussion of
both why people that would act that way wouldn't bug us quite as badly
as those that don't, as well as why their where serious disconnects
between the action proposed and the outcome they thought would naturally
derive from it (not the least being that you would have to shred the
Bible and invent a whole new religion, to make such behavior *not*
contradict most existing religion's own writings).
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void main () {
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call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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In article <MPG.2257742ce7c7959298a133@news.povray.org>,
sel### [at] rraznet says...
> In article <47ed44c8@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> > I actually found this page pretty interesting:
> >
> > http://www.joethepeacock.com/2008/03/how-to-actually-talk-to-atheists-i
f.php
> >
> ...
Interestingly, while the post header says it was posted this month, I am
*sure* I have both seen this argument, and much of the text, other
places, which is why I said it was linked to before. Maybe the guy is
just channeling some of out discussions. The, "I am atheist about
unicorns too", statement is fairly common on PZ's site. More than a few
times its been stated that we wouldn't be bothered by people that led by
example, instead of by obnoxiousness. And, we *have* discussed why this
approach is still not going to work. One of his own post responders even
said why, that appealing to our logic isn't going to work, when logic
doesn't support the underlying presumption being defended, from any
perspective that doesn't, on some level, presume it to start with.
I was absolutely sure I had seen that post linked to before... Hmm.
Maybe it appeared in some form some place else.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Yeah. The guy talks a lot of sense, *then* dives off the deep end by
> presuming that witnessing by example will get you any place,
Well, yes. If there was *actually* something in religion that you could
*actually* point to as leading to consistently superior behavior, then
you wouldn't need to convince other people of your faith, as that would
be scientific evidence.
All you're saying is "living the example" won't work, because religion
doesn't actually make you live noticably differently.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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