Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!hou5f!orion!houca!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!tim From: tim@unc.UUCP Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Rational discussion Message-ID: <5437@unc.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Jun-83 13:12:30 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.5437 Posted: Fri Jun 24 13:12:30 1983 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jun-83 20:51:05 EDT Lines: 106 Tim: I think your attitude of not wanting to reply to Larry's articles is not very rational either. It is not rational in its motivation. It comes from a very deep frustration. I consistently go out of my way to present intelligent and rational arguments, and Larry consistently responds by ignoring the points I am trying to make, preferring to take one (or at most two) sentences out of context and follow them with some Bible quotes, or tell me to "remember those words at the judgment". I am counterinclined to continue to bash my head against a wall. Larry is obviously not listening with his intellect, and thus my continued efforts would be a waste of time. I can understand your not accepting his throwing verses at you, but as far as reasonable discussion is concerned, I don't see why he shoudn't [sic] expose whatever flaws your arguments may contain. I don't either. I wish that he would at least try to do so. Instead, he ignores the argument as a whole and focuses on things which are at best exemplars. Further, all the evidence and argument that he uses rests on acceptance of the Bible; this sort of argument is by definition not rational. In any case, what may be a trivial matter for one person can be important to another, so to say that he is "picking at small things" and not answering the big ones (which I don't think is true) is very relative anyway. No it isn't. When I explicitly present A PARTICULAR ARGUMENT and Larry ignores it, it is not a relative statement to say that he has not responded to my argument. You often use a sarcastic tone which I don't think is proper to "rational discussion", as you put it. Personally, I don't mind it, but some people might. I'm glad to see that you have been appointed guardian for them. This sort of unasked-for restriction is one of my big gripes with the whole Judeo-Christian moral approach. (Not all Judeo-Christians are like this, but the brother's keeper attitude is encouraged by the idea of absolute right and wrong.) If you are telling the truth, that is, you don't mind sarcasm, then why are you even talking about it? If someone does object, they are capable of saying so themselves. Besides, I think you (and too many other people) tend to dismiss as irrational any conclusion that does not confer [sic -- read "concur"] with yours. Take for instance the resurrection case. Larry took his arguments from McDowell's book. Now McDowell was not a Christian to begin with; he studied the evidence and found it conclusive. Do you mean he has no use of reason? Or that his mind works worse than yours? C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer -- so many people have embraced Christianity on a rational basis! I disagree entirely. If the flimsy and pathetic arguments in "Mere Christianity" REALLY converted C. S. Lewis, then I have no qualms about saying, yes, Lewis's mind worked worse than mine. Those arguments have holes you could fly a cargo plane through. I find it hard to believe that they could convert anyone who didn't WANT to be converted. I don't think that these people's true motivation was rationality; if so, then their intellects must have been very weak. These are harsh words, but they are an honest statement of the facts. There is no rational reason to prefer Christianity to any other faith. To quote Bertrand Russell: "Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason." [From "Why I Am Not a Christian"] (I would like to make it clear that I have a religion, and that I have adopted it for reasons that are not rational but do not in any way conflict with rationality, for instance by forcing me to believe in possibly unreal historical events, or non-existent sentient beings. My choice of a lover is not rational either, and I would never degrade it by making up these spurious "rational" arguments for it.) The fact that someone became a convert is in itself no evidence for the truth of what they converted to. For instance, a good number of people have studied astrology with an eye to disproving it, but wound up converts. Does this mean that astrology is valid? Of course not, and neither does it say anything favorable about the rationality of the convert. I can't talk about Schaeffer, since I don't know anything about him, but about McDowell -- where have you been? There have been quite a few articles in the last few months about his "evidence", finding it wanting in a variety of ways. In particular, it seems that he does not examine evidence critically, ignoring the possibility of later Christian interpolations in historical records. In summary, the reason that I am no longer replying to Larry is not that he maintains his contrary position, but that my repeated efforts to get him to engage in rational conversation have always failed, both on the net and in private mail. Given this fact, I see no reason to continue to waste time when my arguments fall on self- deafened ears. Tim Maroney