Well, that's why I said ideally. Lots of people believe evolution as a matter of faith rather than reason.
Sorry, I was saying I agreed with them. You don't have to know every argument for a position to hold it, you just have to be right.
Mind you, I generally do learn the arguments, but I'm weird like that.
I consider someone who, without good basis, tells you that there's an answer and doesn't even point you in its direction, to be acting in bad faith. That's not all religious people but it seems to me at the moment to be the set we'd be talking about here.
I'm talking more about the set of everybody who tells you to read the literature. Sure, it's a perfectly good heuristic as long as you only use it when you're dealing with that particular subset.
What grounds do you have for trusting pastors, or whoever, know much about the world - that they're good and honest producers of truth?
Well, I was thinking more theologians, but to be fair they're as bad as philosophers. Still, they've spent millennia talking about this stuff.
No, I'm saying that to my knowledge no Christian has yet corrected someone who's reasonably rational on their reason for disbelieving.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to call No True Scotsman on this. How many theists who were rational in their reasons for believing have been corrected by atheists? How many creationists who were rational in their reasons for disbelieving in evolution have been corrected by evolutionists?
I don't think that people who believe in god are necessarily worse off than people who don't. If you could erase belief in god from the world, I doubt it would make a great deal of difference in terms of people behaving rationally.
Point.
Um ... as a rationalist and the kind of idiot who exposes themself to basilisks, could you tell me this argument? Maybe rot13 it if you're not interested in evangelizing.
I do yes, I was made to read Dawkin's awful book a few years back in school. =p
Man, I'd forgotten that was the first place I came across that. Ah, nosalgia ... terrible book, though.
Comment too long - continued from last:
Point.
Um ... as a rationalist and the kind of idiot who exposes themself to basilisks, could you tell me this argument? Maybe rot13 it if you're not interested in evangelizing.
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Gur svefg guvat abgr vf gung vs lbh ybbx ng ubj lbh trg rivqrapr, jung vg ernyyl qbrf, gura V'ir nyernql tvira bar: Ybj cevbe, (r.t. uvtu pbzcyrkvgl,) ab fhccbegvat rivqrapr. Crefbanyyl gung'f irel pbaivapvat. V erzrzore jura V jnf lbhatre, naq zl cneragf jrer fgvyy va gurve 'Tbbq puvyqera tb gb Puhepu' cunfr, zl pbhfva...
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