Argue against your own position!

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Almost. You still have to make the case specifically for Arminianism over both Calvinism and Open Theism.

I think I told you privately that I did make that case. I referenced Isaiah to assert foreknowledge, and I asserted free will from the beginning.

I did this in the IRC once. Was a fun way to waste a few hours.(I did pretty well I think, can't remember if I convinced anyone else though.)

EDIT: Actually I didn't exactly do this it was assumed that a god(omni-potent/prescient) existed for that discussion.

Last edited by ikorack on 01 Jan 2011, 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hunh, what arguments did you use?

It was more a dare that I couldn't create a scenario where free will existed. It basically went you have your god he makes the souls necessary for our universe to exist for however long it needs to exist. He presents these souls with foreknowledge comparable to his own and asks them how they want their lives to play out. He takes that info and sets off the big bang in accordance with the plan the souls have set off. Most of the time was spent countering questions about the scenario itself. Questions would be welcome though as this was months ago and I would prefer to be able to remember most of it.

Hunh odd.

Btw, is it wrong of me to want xenon to argue for conservatism and inuyasha to argue for liberalism?

<.<
yes that could perhaps put more weight on their regular arguments if they could prove an understanding of their opposition great enough to put forward an intelligent argument.
>.>

In the spirit of this thread. I will stridently have a go.

You are undermining your own argument here with reference to evolution and Good/Evil. Your argument for God is morally incomplete, therefor fallacious. Referencing the virtue of expression hardly amounts to any sort of proof, anywhere. Basing your argument upon general feelings is not very convincing.



If you are making a case that one should deal with the incomplete nature of logic and mathematics by giving ones entire life over, then you are taking this argument to far. Especially since a rational person can simply anchor themselves in the fact that we have an incomplete understanding through a lack of scientific understanding. The fact that there are still things that are unexplained does not get you within 50 feet of a proof, since its far more rational to accept that there are things we don't know and presupposing something to fill the gaps ad hoc is the least best of all possible explanations.




This is simple begging the question. You have to prove the existence of freewill and not just cite that 'everyone believes in it, therefor it must be true'.

Not wrong at all, but extremely unrealistic. You know that neither of them is really capable of understanding or engaging the other side's ideas.

Still waiting on Dox's pro-gun-control argument. My censorship argument is in the works.

I'd almost pay to see that, but it would require the two of them to come out of their respective rabbit holes, which they have both heretofore resisted doing. I would be very impressed if either of them took up the challenge.

I'm still working on my own argument for gun control, I think I'm going to have to come at it from a fairly novel direction unless I can make myself forget that much of the commonly cited data is bad.

I think this thread is 0% pointless!

Yeah, it is not easy to argue against ones own position. Especially one that you dedicate your entire life to.

I must admit that I am happy that you are.


I am possibly undermining my argument with the reference.

"Morally incomplete"? Please clarify. All I argued for was that God can provide grounding for this by connecting the two processes.

Given that I am not making a proof, but rather arguing from things taken for granted as true, I don't see the issue. I mean, GE Moore could be similarly criticized in his argument against skepticism, as the skeptic isn't taking for granted the facts GE Moore is using, however, the basic point is that certain intuitions are more solidly grounded in our psyches than others.

Every place we start with an argument begins with a basic feeling about the truth of it. Certainty is really a product of our emotions, and if we do not receive the right emotional responses to stimulus, we end up with major problems, as noted in capgras syndrome. As it stands, we do justify the existence of many things, such as other minds, because of our "general feeling" about it. Some have argued that even the notion of God is pointed to by a sensus divinitatis, which I didn't invoke as I felt it would beg the question on the matter. However, to start with the known is not a bad methodology.


Not aiming for a proof, 91. I am not the kind of person who actually believes in proofs. If you give me a proof, I suspect a flaw. If you suggest probabilistic issues, then I start feeling engaged.

Well, I can see how you might think this is the least best of all possible solutions, but the general problems with finding grounding for logic and mathematics are long-standing. Many mathematicians believe that the problems found in the early 20th century make rational grounding impossible, and given an impossibility, it is justified to think that some other force is at play. If I only suggested one argument, I could see the problem with the leap, but this is one of many.


Heh, I find it kind of funny. In terms of doing philosophical evaluation, we are consistently still so very far away from each other in the very method.

I didn't state "everyone believes in it, therefore it must be true", but rather I claimed it to be true, and that this matches with our experience of realty. GE Moore didn't state that everyone believes in hands, therefore hands must exist. Rather, the aim is different. I am aiming to point out that we do have pre-existing beliefs about what is going on here. We can't just pretend to start off at the position of "no understanding", and work our way up because that's just not part of any sane person's way of understanding reality, especially since we don't understand it all at once. But rather, I know free will exists, and frankly, so do a large number of other individuals. We start off with this knowledge. It is a basic instinct, and the existence of God makes sense given this instinct. Now, you might *disbelieve* free will, but I would argue that the burden of proof is on you, because I am not asserting anything to claim that it exists. We all grow up KNOWING it exists. To claim it does not exist is the real struggle.

OK, since AG argued relatively* successfully for Arminianism, I will now argue for censorship.

*You did not even attempt to engage the conflict between God's foreknowledge and free will. While we both recognize that this is a nearly impossible thing to do, it was also kind of the point of my challenge.

Anyways. I will probably have to elaborate on this a lot further later, but here is a first draft of a pro-censorship argument.

Although we all agree that a free and open press is essential to the workings of our democratic society, there are obvious limits and places where absolute liberty of expression must be curtailed. The most famous example, first articulated in a Supreme Court decision regarding Schenck v United States, was when speech posed a "clear and present danger." A great deal of speech does indeed pose a clear and present danger; in that particular court case the issue was actually in regards to anti-conscription political activities by an unpatriotic and anti-American Socialist. The Supreme Court later upheld further restrictions on speech by Communists, and only buckled on this stance when a case involving a KKK rally was brought before them. I would argue that this reversal was because the KKK at the time was seen as a relatively more "American" movement, and the dangers it posed were not as obvious to the Court as those presented by the Communists. However, it is clear from a variety of court cases (Schenck v US, Dennis v US, etc) and early US government policy (such as the Sedition Act of 1798 that was signed by none other than John Adams himself) show that American law permits for curtailing harmful speech. Indeed, the Schenck decision even demonstrates that political advocacy, if contrary to state interests, may be forbidden.

A prime modern example of such harmful speech is found in the concerted misinformation campaigns of certain so-called "news" outlets. By perpetuating false rumors about duly elected officials and misleading their viewers into supporting pernicious policies, the Fox News Corporation poses a clear and present danger to our government. Specifically, it seeks to promote policies that will cripple our government's finances by reducing tax revenue to a trickle, while destroying the social safety net on which millions of lower-income Americans rely. They have even advocated resistance to the government, especially with references that harken back to revolutionary days (eg "tea parties") and talk of a "second amendment solution" (meaning armed revolt) which was ruled to be impermissible in Dennis v United States, as speech which furthers attempts to overthrow the government cannot be allowed. Even further, studies have been performed demonstrating Fox's audience to be badly misinformed on basic questions of fact relevant to political debates, and when they vote based on these misunderstandings our government policy suffers a detrimental effect. The government has a responsibility to ensure that prudent and appropriate policy is enacted, and that the electorate is properly informed about all relevant issues. Therefore, all news and opinion coverage must be vetted to ensure its accuracy so that all voters will understand the truth behind a given issue. The spreading of lies and misinformation directly harms our system of government and thus poses a clear and present danger to the entire nation.