Look Neocon, you deliberately attempted to draw me out. After a full day of ignoring my posts you started the cycle of posts in question, waited until I made a positive statement that I believed something that you had defined as contrary to the spirit of theism, then pounced. You baited your trap and waited for me to walk into it.
"Since you had gone to great lengths not to make even a minimal concession that might be used to suggest the existence of God..."
You were not "suggesting" the existence of God, you were offering fallacious reasoning in some apparent attempt to "prove" the existence of God. I had already stated that I did not believe one way or the other about the existence of God, but you nonetheless felt compelled to offer your specious "proof," ie:
Nothing can come from nothing;
--->therefore the universe came from something.
The BB theory implies a discrete beginning for the universe;
--->therefore the universe came after some "when."
That which exists outside of space and time we call "God."
--->therefore God created the universe.
As a mental exercise this is certainly intriguing, but as a "proof" it's clearly fallacious for a number of reasons. Your first premise is unproven, therefore the conclusion that you draw from it is suspect. Your second premise simply relates one of the interpretations of BB theory, while disregarding any other, so your second conclusion is also suspect. And your third premise is simply semantics posing as truth. As I said before, I refer to that which is outside of space and time as "void."
My mistake, and I believe the mistake you were hoping I would make, was to allow you to draw me in beyond this point. In all reality there were no reasons other than playing the game of logic and consideration for you for me to continue. I had already stated my lack of a belief, and your weak pseudo-syllogism had done nothing to dissuade me from that view. But in the spirit of it all, I went along and allowed you to draw me in until I made the apparently grievous error of, in response to some really bizarre nonsense on your part about the ethical nature of the universe, stating that I believed that the universe was simply an aggregation of matter with no particular "ethical nature," and WHAM! I have proven myself by this one statement, in your eyes at least, to not be that which I claim, ie an agnostic.
I would just mention in passing again that by attacking my claim to my view, you attack my integrity; you attack me. This is clearly a shameful thing for you to do.
However, you express stunned amazement that I would take such an attack personally. This implies on your part either a complete disregard for the feelings of others (an interpretation that your behavior on the threads as a whole tends to counter) or that you genuinely didn't mean it personally (which again, you have proven yourself on these threads to generally be more aware of the effects of your actions than that) or finally that the issue of my feelings was moot as you were fighting for a higher principle. This last interpretation makes the most sense.
So your problem is not with me, but with agnosticism. You have an apparent need to deny the concept of agnosticism. But since, by its very nature, you cannot prove agnosticism wrong, you must instead discredit my claim to that view. In doing so you insult and deride not my belief, but my claim to that belief. You don't say that the belief is false, or illogical, or even stupid. Instead you assert that I don't really believe what I claim-- that I am (mistaken? confused? lying?) when I make that claim. And this in the face of the obvious fact that it is rude and callous (not to mention self-defeating) to attack the person in place of the viewpoint, and despite your claim to being "preternaturally polite." The fact that you would do such a thing that is so clearly contrary to most of your behavior on these boards implies that you are in some manner threatened by agnosticism. There genuinely is no other interpretation that makes as much sense. You feel no expressed need to dispute claims of belief made by others, so why me? If it's not me, then it's agnosticism, so why agnosticism? The only interpretation that fits the circumstances is that my agnosticism is some kind of a threat to you-- one that is so real and offensive that you must discredit it, even at the cost of our cyber-friendship.
Okey dokey. That's a shame, but ultimately it is of little concern to me. And it is nice to know that my view of the world can stir up that sort of response. That certainly implies that I am indeed on to something.
-BLT |
