On Jun 23, 2005, at 12:52 PM, William T Goodall wrote:
On 23 Jun 2005, at 7:22 pm, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jun 23, 2005, at 9:06 AM, William T Goodall wrote:
Of course the religious are keen to volunteer to interfere in the
lives of the unfortunate - this is a golden opportunity to
disseminate the virulent poison of their evil religious memes.
Isn't a perspective unassailable by argument, no matter how rational,
a hallmark of what we might call a religious mindset?
Or perhaps a hallmark of my being irrefutably correct?
:D
That's certainly possible, but to date I haven't really seen much to
support your conclusions except the dual practice of:
1. Selecting, carefully, anecdotes that appear to support your
perspective; and
2. Ignoring, carefully, any arguments that seem to show your
perspective is not wholly valid.
That doesn't constitute evidence of correctness; it's closer in concept
to the meaning of "there are those who have eyes, yet see not".
There's a reason arguing against religion is like shooting fish in a
barrel and that reason is that religion is a load of evil nonsense.
There's a reason vanilla is superior to chocolate, and that reason is
that enjoyment of chocolate is evidence of delusion.
Surely if I were to make such a statement you'd want to see some proof
to support my assertions.
Or is it more of a run-of-the-mill obsession?
Everyone needs a few hobbies.
True. They do while away the time.
Perhaps if you'd come to your atheism from an originally religious
background you'd have more perspective on some of the *merits* of
religion -- as well as considerably more justification to hate it. I
got over my hatred (I think), and it took me years to do it. But at
least, when I denigrate some of the religious practices extant in the
world, I do it from a perspective of experience, from having once
been an insider to those claustrophobic and self-righteous memes.
That could be why I can see evidence of those memes in your
statements, while you're apparently unaware of them yourself.
They aren't religious though, so they don't count.
Ah, but they're the same *kind* of memes encountered in the religious
thinking you seem to want to eradicate in others. There's a singular
insistence on absolute correctness, a refusal to accept that anything
that doesn't fit into a narrow and rigidly defined perspective is
invalid, and there's even a need to evangelize the memes.
All these are hallmarks of religiosity of the worst stripe, and
unfortunately these signs are prevalent in many of the statements
you've made. That makes it effectively impossible to accept as valid
your assertions.
They are not arguments; they are dictates of doctrine, effectively
declamations of unimpeachable truth. Rationally they are on par with
statements such as "God said it, I believe it and that settles it", and
are worthy of exactly the same level of consideration.
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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