scottb on OmniNerd

RE: The true solution - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 18:51:16 -0500 2010

In the article " Scientology: We've had it with you," scottb wrote:

I agree that education is the way to go. Unfortunately, an education that teaches people to differentiate between Scientology and nonsense ends up pushing a lot of the more mainstream religions into the “nonsense” category, and people get pissed at that.

Homeschooling has gotten a very bad name because it appears that a substantial majority of homeschooling parents do so in order to more effectively indoctrinate their children into their religious beliefs. The most popular biology textbooks used in home schools very nearly reject evolution outright in favor of explicitly Christian creationist models.

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RE: Catholic Exorcist - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 18:39:52 -0500 2010

In the article "Catholic Exorcist Points Finger at Vatican," scottb wrote:

Out of curiosity what is the agnostic and atheist spin on people being possessed and exorcisms being performed?

Let me add to what VnutZ offered that very many of these supposed “possessions” and “exorcisms” are really just abuse and dominance.

A couple of years ago, a young woman named Laura Schubert sued her former church because of an “exorcism”. She was seventeen and somewhat rebellious at the time, and the pentecostal assholes that ran the place decided she was “possessed”. Over a two day period, the youth minister, his wife, and several other members of the church held her down, beat her, and chanted over her, with her screaming all the while to be let go.

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Busy guy - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 18:15:33 -0500 2010

In the article "Catholic Exorcist Points Finger at Vatican," scottb wrote:

Seventy thousand exorcisms in twenty-five years. Really?

If he worked eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year, as one would on a production line, it means he averaged two exorcisms every hour, including travel time and cleaning up the pea soup.

Or, looked at another way, it’s twenty-eight hundred exorcisms each year—if a team of six (one exorcist and five assistants to hold ‘em down as needed) can do two of these a week, with travel time and such, you’d need

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Continuing the discussion - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 16:10:45 -0500 2010

In the article "I Refuse to Embrace Ignorance," scottb wrote:

We conduct observations under the assumption that the universe is uniform.

As I said before, this isn’t so. It’s not an assumption, it’s an inference.

A universe in which consistent, stable laws did not apply could not hold beings such as ourselves. That we exist implies that consistent, stable laws apply.

We’re don’t have any inborn knowledge of what these laws may be, other than the intuitive notion that patterns that have repeated in the past are likely to continue into the future, barring some other repeating pattern getting in the way. Even that may not be in-born, but may be an inference drawn in infancy.

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RE: The Pots should stop calling the Kettles black... - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 15:04:43 -0500 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

When I use the term “atheist,” I’m using it in its typical US definition

Ok, then you’re arguing with a strawman. Those are incorrect definitions.

I suggest you read more about the problem of induction:

Gee, thanks, Mr. Wizard, but I’m familiar with it, and it’s a red herring. You need to do more than throw around impressive sounding phrases.

For the rest of my comment, see I Refuse to Embrace Ignorance

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RE: Discussing Book of Mormon anachronisms - Comment

scottb — Sun Mar 14 14:54:31 -0500 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

my point was that it can be rationalized to someone else as some thing else, except for me.

I’m not sure why I’m having such a hard time making this clear. What I’ve been saying is that the “except for me” clause here is unjustified.

Why are you an exception, here? You can’t simply refer to your beliefs about your god, because you were using this experience to justify your beliefs in the first place. That would circular reasoning.

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Faith in nonsense - Comment

scottb — Sat Mar 13 14:30:31 -0600 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

That’s pretty much utter nonsense.

We have plenty of terms that identify people and things by what they are not. “Bald” means an absence of hair, “bachelor” means not married, “sober” means not drunk, “dark” means the absence of light.

“Atheism” comes from Greek, which has two different prefixes to indicate negation. The “a-” prefix in “atheism” indicates a complement—everything that’s not “theism”, while the “anti-” prefix indicates an opposite polarity.

Belief comes in 3 types

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RE: The Pots should stop calling the Kettles black... - Comment

scottb — Sat Mar 13 14:11:47 -0600 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

I am not a theist, atheist or agnostic, so none of the questions apply to me.

False. The terms “theist” and “atheist” are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. You cannot be “neither”. If the statement “I believe in one or more gods” is true when you are the antecedent of the pronoun, then you are a theist. If it’s not true then you are an atheist.

The term “agnostic” (and its opposite, “gnostic”) lie along a different axis. It’s an epistemological category, rather than an ontological one. It’s possible to be both agnostic and theist, just as it’s possible to be both agnostic and atheist.

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RE: Discussing Book of Mormon anachronisms - Comment

scottb — Sat Mar 13 01:03:46 -0600 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

I’m not declaring myself infallible at all. Though I do believe that the few powerful experiences I’ve had are infallible TO me and me alone.

I think you missed what I said, there.

There phrase “X is infallible to me” is meaningless. Your experience is not being questioned, here, it’s your interpretation of it. When you’re saying “it’s infallible to me”, you’re really trying to say that you cannot possibly have misinterpreted it, but that’s only true if you’re infallible.

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RE: The Pots should stop calling the Kettles black... - Comment

scottb — Fri Mar 12 16:35:45 -0600 2010

In the article "God before Country in the Military," scottb wrote:

It seems we have a case of mistaken identity here. I assumed you were the same anonymous poster that I’ve been conversing with for more than a week in this thread. I don’t apologize, because I think the context made it a reasonable assumption.

However, this mistaken information led me to attribute an incorrect context to your original post.

Looking back on your original post, I still see a lot of nonsense.

Of course, as a Theist, I’m already considered wrong for simply believing in God, but for those out there who still possess an open mind, I hope that my objections ring true.

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Programming experience? - Poll

scottb — Wed Oct 17 10:58:40 -0500 2007

Cast Your Vote - Programming experience?

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Science - Not So Sloppy - Article

scottb — Tue Oct 09 12:11:33 -0500 2007

Recent Wall Street Journal coverage¹ has revived interest in Dr. John Ioannidis’ 2005 PLoS article, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False."² Somehow, I missed it the first time around, but this time the paper got me to thinking. In short, I don’t buy his argument; I think the whole foundation is wrong.

Background

First, for those who haven’t read his paper, or don’t follow the math, let me outline what he’s saying.

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Best zombie flick? - Poll

scottb — Tue Aug 21 15:53:00 -0500 2007

Cast Your Vote - Best zombie flick?

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