Posts by BenWilson
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
<continued>
"because evidence exists that supports such existence"2. The evidence that exists to support the claim is not credible.
The only evidence you gave is to say that "given the number of witnesses who support the idea of theism". You said nothing about those witnesses, or what they witnessed. So you were challenged on the only piece of information about them given, that there are many of them, and why that should matter. Moz's approach was an obvious one. There are also many witnesses against. That instantly makes it an argument that you need to flesh out more. You'd have to say how many, what they witnessed, etc. Of course you didn't bother.
But it still doesn't address the other most important thrust of Moz, which was obvious from the tone when he laughed at you for saying your God's existence is democratic, which is that the existence of large numbers of people believing something is not evidence at all for the truth of that thing. God didn't come into existence when the first person believed in him, nor will he disappear after the last one stops. His existence or non-existence is not contigent on the number of believers. Large numbers of people have believed things that are empirically known to be false now. They were wrong. Indeed even now you'll find that an enormous number of people believe things to be true that are false a priori because they're not so hot on the logic. It's a specialist subject after a certain point and easy to get wrong. Completely, totally, logically wrong.
And that's it. The crutch of your argument, addressed again.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
Yeah, so what? There’s no argument of substance there.
FFS, that's because you just cherry picked the argument off it. Following the snippet you just quoted are hundreds of words of argument, referring back to the thousands of words of argument that you still haven't done a damned thing to address.
Like I said before, I genrally go for the crux and don’t bother with the incidentals. It’s not cherry picking when there’s no other relevant line of reasoning.
Yes, but it is cherry picking when there is another line of reasoning and that is what you have repeatedly done, and are still doing. Everyone can see you're doing it.
Referring to another post doesn’t directly address the actual meaning.
Yes, it does. You're just too lazy to read the other post and understand that, or too disingenuous. I don't know which it is. It's not on me to rewrite the entire argument every single time you obtusely refuse to answer it. It's quite sufficient to refer to it.
but apparently there isn’t any meaningful criticism here for me to engage in.
There's thousands of words worth of meaningful criticism. You're just too lazy or disingenous or maybe just too dumb to bother with them. It's impossible for me to know which is true.
I’ve identified what I believe to be the crux of Steve’s argument. If you think that I’m avoiding the argument then it’s up to you to specfically identify the true crux.
That's been asked and answered several times now. You find where, it's not hard.
Argument S
the crux of the issue is that it is more rational to believe that deity exists than not because evidence exists that supports such existence, but no evidence to the contrary has been shown.
I'm naming this to save you requoting it later. Argument S, and why it's ridiculous:
1. You can't logically or empirically PROVE a generalized negative existence claim.
No one disputes this. It's simply impossible. Which is WHY it's not the basis of rationality. Because you CAN'T use it. No one can use that method for anything at all. It's not a useful method. Therefore, it's not an effective argument about the subject at all.
To elucidate this, you have been given many examples of such claims, all of which you can't refute. But you also haven't ADDRESSED any of them. You haven't because you CAN'T. Because that line of argument is WORTHLESS.
Since everything after the "but" in Argument S is unnecessary to the point of WORTHLESSNESS, let us proceed by ignoring it. Nobody disputes it. Then we come to your ONLY argument <continued in next post>
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to izogi,
it’s an example of how overseas NZ citizens could be motivated to vote on NZ’s parliament with little or no interest in what’s actually happening in NZ
Sure, but I do that too, even from within NZ. My beliefs about NZ foreign policy are part of my choices. What NZ does in Afganistan matters to me. And what it does with respect to expats in Australia definitely matters to me.
It's a big win that we finally managed to get the Australians to allow us to bring our super back here, and a big win for the country too. My brother and his wife lives and works in Australia with 2 of their kids, and it matters to me what happens to them, and it matters to them what happens to us over here. Probably, they will return one day.
It also matters to Kiwis who are currently in NZ what the Australian government does with respect to Kiwis, because they might also want to move to Australia, so having a strong lobby here is not a bad idea.
I don't think it would work, but I also don't think the democratic right to asking for it is eroded by absence. It might be the only voting right they actually have. I never got to vote in Australia.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
It might. I'd be surprised, though. There are many drivers of house price inflation, it's a real Hydra. Not surprising since it's an investment class worth more than everything else put together, several fold. Not sure how many fold. I guess we've got over a trillion dollars in houses, if the average prices are in the half million range and there's nearly 2 million houses. In the whole stock market there's only 100 billion or so. Of the other asset types, all the real estate that isn't dwellings is surely also a big chunk. We're talking about all the land under every farm, and every industrial and commercial building.
It's mad money. And a really big proportion of that is just debt. Our national debt is almost as big as the stock market. I don't even know how to find out how much of that trillion in houses is debt. Scary to think of all that money, how little you'd have to charge in interest to make a huge profit, and then how much over the risk free rate banks actually do charge.
I don't think taking a fair tax on capital gains will even make a blip. If property goes down, there won't be any capital gains to take. It only happens if they're going up. So I really don't think it's going to puncture anything.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to nzlemming,
Getting there.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Danielle,
I left for four years and my visits back were fleeting, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t invested in my country.
Indeed. I only use soldiers as a particularly clear example of how unrighteous the idea is, since they could actually be dying for the country, but I don't think you need to be dying for it to have rights in it. I'd say your rights should be perpetual, and simply optional. If you really have no interest in the country, then you just don't vote. If you vote, almost by definition you have an interest. Hell, you have more of an interest than 25% of the population who don't vote but happen to live here. At least you actually care.
Personally, I didn't vote when I lived in Australia for 5 years. But that was because I actually didn't care enough.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
How is that relevant?
Because it directly answers your question. That's virtually the definition of relevant.
In which post?
Eh??? Seriously???? It fucking happened an hour ago, how can you have already forgotten? this post. This kind of obtuseness is exactly what I mean by you not engaging. It's right there a few inches above where you type.
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Up Front: Oh, God, in reply to UglyTruth,
Yes, but the question was in what way do you think that.
Which I then gave a long post on.
So what do you think that the salient point is that refutes my argument?
I explained that.
Generally I go for the crux of the argument and don’t bother with the incidentals.
No, you entirely missed that the crux you chose had in fact been answered.
No, he didn’t show that.
Oh, but yes, he did.
What my argument does is to show that existence of deity is more probable than non-existence of deity by showing that while evidence for existence exists, no evidence of non-existence exists.
I know that's what you think it shows, and I just spent the last post pointing out that that had already been answered. It doesn't become a stronger argument by you repeating it. You have to actually answer the criticism, which is that the same level of evidence exists for practically every stupid non-existent thing that anyone claims to have seen. Let's go back to the poo-monster. I saw him last night in my dreams. No, really, I did. Can you prove he doesn't exist? Engage with this point.
Now, consider why you should reject the poo-monster's existence, even though you can't prove it. You evoke Occam's razor. Well, I invoke the same thing on God. Everything can be explained without him. The Universe. Morality. Laws. Goodness. You. Me. Goodbye God, you might exist, so might the poo-monster. Who cares, really?
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Ah, shit.
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