Excuses, excuses for God! (Muslim, quote, faith, Biblical)

[rifleman]

I've heard most all of "them" now; the official Godly Excuses used to dismiss a good, logical argument for some scientific truth or pathway. One of the more egregious [and most un-Christian...] include outright Lying for Jesus..., Moderator cut: edit....or outright hypocrisy, or...

There's the ad hominem (desperately) used to deflect the argument when a debater is cornered with no way out of the impending philosophical "slaughter".

Or, the straw argument that over-exaggerates and demands the obviously impossible, like "I'll believe evolution when some totally implausible event happens!"

Or, vast over-reaching exaggerations or conclusions in support of some Godly theory. Mention of a behemoth = PROOF of biblical dinosaurs. Thx, Ken Ham, you criminal! (Imagine letting him into your kids' school room?)

Or, quote-mining a valid scientific article, pulling a line or two out and telling the inarticulate and gullible reader what was meant, but which is not what was meant by the original authors....
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One wonders then; is it ever possible to enter into a decent, valid, intellectually honest argument with a dedicated fundamentalist Christian or Muslim here on C-D where their identity is protected?
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Alternately, can you imagine actually going head to head, "mano-a-mano" with one of these Moderator cut: edited to "members" in a properly adjudicated open forum? That would be truly be fun. I was at one of those about 20 years ago, where some supposed expert on Creation faced off with one of my profs who had written THE book on mammalian evolution. You know; full of facts, evidence, duplicated proofs, a bibliography, peer-review, etc.

Well....It was a bloodbath, and the embarrassed and truly humbled Christian (with his faked PhD, which was exposed about mid-debate...) flipped over into yelling insults at my prof, who had remained quiet and polite, but relentlessly logical. You know: dates, names, species, fossils, etc. All against "Edit:"God"" say-ed, verily, thou shay-alt be but a hum-bell-ed deyed-mind and ob-eyah me!" Never had I seen so many one-syllable words turned into 2 or 3 syllable words! Phu-Nee!

The Christian eventually stomped off out of the lecture hall about one hour early, to the loud cat-calls of all the open-minded students there, and even from some embarrassed Christians, who probably finally saw the true light of their position and its scuttling defenders. It's always good when a edit: Fundamentalist Christian only succeeds in converting several of their own over to The Side of Enlightenment.

But here? On C-D? They can skulk off into the Darkness, like La Cucaracha, and return another day to start again with their hopeless shrillery.

So... what have you experienced as a run'n'hyde strategy?

[TRANSPONDER]

What I'd like is to be able to explain this stuff reasonably, point out logical fallacies, misrepresentations and false assumptions and have them taken on board without the sort of evasion that gets things heated, leads to mutual abuse and eventual closing of a thread. Which when you think about it is a scraped draw for the theist.

But where deeply held personal convictions are involved, it is to be expected that the losing side will use any method to try to keep their worldview together and their personal street - cred from ending up in the gutter.

It don't help when the same points have to made again and again and again, often to the same people, repeatedly.

[catman]

As long as 'respect' must be given to arguments which are undeserving of it, there will be no satisfaction. Stubbornness and close-mindedness are made into virtues. Faith vs. reason is an unequal contest which can only be brought to a draw by assumptions, which are held so dear by the faithful that no amount of reasoning can pry them loose.

[Miss Blue]

June we are doing it again

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by miss blue

:djune we are doing it again

Oiy!!! Off topic!!

[Avasa]

Originally Posted by catman

As long as 'respect' must be given to arguments which are undeserving of it, there will be no satisfaction. Stubbornness and close-mindedness are made into virtues. Faith vs. reason is an unequal contest which can only be brought to a draw by assumptions, which are held so dear by the faithful that no amount of reasoning can pry them loose.

I submit that there is faith as well as reasoning envolved in both creation and evolution. Depends on what we choose to believe.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by Avasa

I submit that there is faith as well as reasoning envolved in both creation and evolution. Depends on what we choose to believe.

Seems to me that there is very little faith is required when someone shoves evidence that you can see and touch in front of your face, but it takes a whole lot of faith to turn around and deny the existence of that evidence.

[Avasa]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Seems to me that there is very little faith is required when someone shoves evidence that you can see and touch in front of your face, but it takes a whole lot of faith to turn around and deny the existence of that evidence.

What evidence? Man making things out of things that have already been created? If all has come about because of a big bang, I wonder why man can't find the ingredients that made the big bang. I also wonder why man can't come up with their own creations. If it didn't take an intelligent being, it should be easy.

[shyspider]

I feel like I'm on Facebook looking at a bunch of cryptic status updates. Anyone mind if I ask what this is all about?

[Ilovechrist]

One wonders then; is it ever possible to enter into a decent, valid, intellectually honest argument with a dedicated fundamentalist Christian or Muslim here on C-D where their identity is protected?

The questions is rather whether or not it's possible to show truth to raving evolutionists. The evidence against science is just way too high to ignore.