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hpslugga

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Posts posted by hpslugga

  1. 34 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    Yes, by changing the definition of supernatural you offered evidence of the supernatural. Quite the accomplishment.

    “You know, ice cream is made from burning hot milk, right?”

    ”No, dude. Ice cream is made from milk that’s frozen...that’s the fucking word “ice” is in the name”

    ”Well my definition of “burning hot” is any temperature above Absolute Zero.”

  2. 4 hours ago, Aphelion said:

    I gave a very clear and simple argument for my claim.  Was it a valid argument?  If so, which of the premises is false?  It is an argument with four lines.  If it is so crazy then it should be easy to attack.  

    That's not how it works. You made the positive claim, and you have to demonstrate it. Besides, I actually did attack it. I told you precisely why it was wrong. The fact that you want to pretend that I didn't speaks only to your obsessive need to play Make Believe and Pretend.

    4 hours ago, Aphelion said:

    I'm familiar with the god of the gaps argument and hitchens razor and most of the other flimsy new atheist rhetoric.

    How is Hitchens' Razor "flimsy?"

    4 hours ago, Aphelion said:

     You may be interested to know that the god of the gaps argument was actually developed by a 19th century theist (and not by one of the awe-inspiring new atheist horsemen) to attack lower grade versions of theism.

    I was aware, and I was also aware of its total irrelevance to the conversation. The point is that God of the Gaps is a fallacious line of reasoning, but that's the perceived "default position" taken by people who ascribe to faith.

    4 hours ago, Aphelion said:

      Hitchens was best when he preached to the choir and not when his ideas were opened for scrutiny by others who've thought about them at any length.  This is one of the reasons why he did so poorly in a public debate with William Lane Craig according to most atheist observers.

    Geez, you make it seem as if I was quoting him because I hold him up as a God. I don't think that way. I found his political opinions, especially in his later life, to be absolutely immoral and deplorable. The only reason I dropped his name is because that Razor is attached to him, and not entirely rightfully either. To repeat, the entirety of it is:

    Positive claims require positive evidence (they do because the only available alternative is proving a negative, which is inherently fallacious)
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (same thing)
    What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. (again, if you give me no reason to believe you, I therefore have no reason to believe you)

    To use your words,  you may be interested to know that the first 2 of those 3 lines aren't even his. He was quoting Carl Sagan, and only that last line truly is Hitchens'. I'm sure you feel that you've explained everything by calling that "flimsy," but the reality is that it isn't. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that assertion, and you will never in your life be able to convince any serious person otherwise, including the useless allusion to his debate with Craig. Hitchens was far from a master debater and there are plenty of other anti-theists who people like Craig wouldn't even dare to engage (Aron Ra is probably the best example).

  3. 12 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    Well there's a huge blinding example of begging the question.

    Start with proving that only natural objects exist.

    He's already shown a tendency to assume the role of the pot calling the silverware black, so I wouldn't hold out for such a relatively lofty concept.

    16 minutes ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

    His definition makes it so any object you conjure up in your brain is supernatural, which means that if you conjure up the idea of God in your brain, the God must be supernatural and must exist.  Walla*, God is proven!  

    Seriously, this conversation has devolved into some serious dishonest shit, which is typical of faith people. They will never adhere to standard definitions of the very concepts they want to argue, and that in their own mind allows them to make such idiotic proclamations as "An object is supernatural if it is not the case that it is natural." 

    That's a paradigmatic example of a false dichotomy. It, again in the mind of the author, is a "cleverly" concealed version of "it's either natural or supernatural." What both I and Huck stated was perfectly accurate. If it's a tangible creation of humans, it's not supernatural; it's artificial. An automobile, a cotton gin, even a fucking pencil are all artificial. They are not supernatural. But they aren't natural either because "natural" means "existing or caused in nature." Artificial is "made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural." "Supernatural" is the exact opposite of "natural," but for a different reason. "Supernatural" is "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature."

    If something occurs in nature, it's natural.
    If something occurs because a physical being within the natural realm created it, it's artificial.
    If something occurs because an anthropomorphic immortal that exists outside of the natural realm used what amounts to an incantation, it's supernatural.

    This really isn't that difficult.

  4. 2 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

    Natural and supernatural are not exhaustive of all things. The longer a conversation or debate goes the higher the likelihood that words and terms will change meaning throughout.

    Man-made items are neither natural nor supernatural, they are artificial.

    That this is so difficult for some to comprehend is...incomprehensible.

    Seriously, a car isn’t natural either. That doesn’t make it supernatural.

  5. Hate to rain on the insane parade of the "numbers are supernatural," but that's complete and utter horseshit that is so horribly ludicrous that it carries with it the stench of Kent Hovind.

    Mathematics can exist without numbers, but it cannot be expressed by intelligent creatures without numbers. The actual names of the numbers themselves are merely cultural/linguistic expressions, but they're representative of tangible quantities that exist in the natural realm. Yeah, it's true that when I count "twelve" eggs in a box, a Spanish-speaking person calls that "doce huevos," but it's the same expression nonetheless, and again, it's representative of tangible quantities. Just because there isn't a literal, physical, natural "number 11" that we can see does not mean that it's a supernatural concept. That's a tremendous leap in logic that veers off from sanity entirely. It's the same reason that colors aren't supernatural either.

    "Hey, I've got 5 oranges in this bag"

    "You can't prove that! 5 is supernatural!"

    Seriously? I mean if you can turn numbers supernatural, then there's nothing to stop you from labeling anything as supernatural.

    Look at it this way: suppose there are two guys walking around and they see 12 rocks. One of them says "hey, there are 11 rocks." The other one says "no, there are 12 rocks." Guy A is wrong. He's not expressing a deeply held religious conviction, he's not expressing an opinion; he's expressing a misstatement of fact because he didn't count one of the rocks. Well if he's factually wrong about it, then that means there's a factually right answer, and if there's a factually right answer, that means it can be demonstrated. If it can be demonstrated, it by definition cannot be supernatural.

    And none of that changes the fact that every intelligent human can identify 5 oranges or 12 eggs, nor does it change the fact that no intelligent human can physically see a magical, anthropomorphic immortal living on a different plane of existence that not only knows everything, but has a personal opinion about everything that occurs on planet Earth, and gets super angry when humankind (aka his so-called greatest "creation") veers from his likes/tends towards his dislikes.

    The material difference between they who choose faith (which is the most dishonest root for a position that there is to take) and they who choose reason is that they who choose reason understand that they are not born to believe in a supernatural deity. The default position is known as the null set; not the mega-dishonest logical fallacy commonly referred to as "God of the Gaps." In other words, if you cannot give me a reason to believe you, I have no reason to believe you. Or to phrase it in the terms of Hitchens' Razor:

    Positive claims require positive evidence
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
    What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

    jameswzegan85_2017-Mar-30.jpg

     

    • Like 1
  6. 4 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

    Trump claims to be an isolationist who wants out of NATO. Yet he wholeheartedly supports giving billions to Israel and is moving the embassy to Jerusalem to inflame the Middle East. 

    Sort of inconsistent there. 

    Claiming to be an “isolationist” implies the possession of an ideology. Trump has none.

  7. 1 hour ago, Orca of Peace said:

    Israel has killed 2 medics, one a girl shot in the back, 2-4 well tagged journalists and lots of innocent unarmed protestors - 2 guys in wheelchairs shot in the head.  They have killed about 150 protestors on the Gaza border this year alone. Not to mention the weekly killings of West Bank protestors, home demolitions, settler burning crops, vandalizing cars, smashing home windows etc. etc. For 50 years. It's understandable why the Palestinians are pissed off at the daily dehumanization. 

    MANY SIDES!!!

  8. Just now, AbeFroman said:

    What is that 4 straight times on Isner's serve he goes down 0-30 and comes back to win the game.

    Yep, and then Anderson comes to serve and dispatches him in less than 2 minutes. It's almost like Isner is just hoping Anderson fucks up on his serve.

  9. 1 minute ago, HoustonFrog said:

    Although it seems like Isner has no shot at the moment. He is on last breaths

    At this point, "fumes" would be an improvement. I have no idea how he's keeping his serve.

  10. 50 minutes ago, Helobious said:

    The first guy said he was the worst “by every metric imaginable”, which simply isn’t true if you’re going off who won the most games. The correct thing to say would’ve been “by almost any metric”, or “by every meaningful metric”. Hyperbole has no home on this site. 

    Again, number of wins isn't really a metric because it has limited historic parallels and it doesn't tell the whole story (percentage is way more important). Fielding Yost, for example, won 198 games, and it was out of 245 which gave him a winning percentage over 80. All of that is impressive, especially considering that it took him 29 seasons to do it, which translates to 7 wins a year. Find a coach that can last a single school for 25 years winning just 7 games per season in the present era. 

    When you consider that some guys coached as few as 5 games in a season and Charlie was coaching fucking 12, getting 16 wins means precious little when your winning percentage is fucking .433, and it means even less when almost every pre-WW2 UT HC coached only for one year regardless of how good that one year was. What you're suggesting is analogous to "well this guy was the greatest QB in football history because he has the most passing attempts." The fact that he won 16 games elevates him over absolutely no one. You show me a person who thinks that Strong was better than Frank Crawford and I'll show you a professional bullshit artist.

    That's not hyperbole at all.

     

  11. 11 hours ago, Helobious said:

    Factually incorrect. He had more career wins than several previous coaches. 

    Yeah, 11 of them only coached for one season because that's how shit was done back then. You coached a year, then you left. Hell, Frank Crawford never lost a game at Texas, and he left too. He coached 6 football seasons...at 5 universities. Of the 16 coaches who have fewer wins to their name than one Charles Strong, 9 of them didn't even coach 10 games and none of the 7 who did got to 30 (Strong coached in 37 games). And btw, all 16 of those coaches, including the terrible Jack Chevigny, had better winning percentages than Strong did, as did every other coach beyond what I just went over. Charlie Strong's .433 winning percentage is the worst in Texas history, which renders your charge of "factually incorrect" to be factually incorrect. He most certainly was Texas' worst coach ever. Worst winning percentage, never had a .500+ season, never won a bowl game. Or to put the ball in your court:

    if Charlie Strong wasn't the worst HC ever, then who the fuck was?

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