Argumentation is Healthy Back to Index
1) no arguing means no thinking
| If he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. | John Stuart Mill |
| "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments." Then he should have no time to believe. | W.C.Clifford | The Ethics of Belief {1877, i=p78} |
| A shipowner was
about to send to sea an emigrant ship. He knew that she was old,
and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes,
and often had needed reparis. Doubts had been suggested to him that
possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind,
and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly
overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense.
Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy
reflections. He said to himself that she had gove safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms, thta it was idle to suppose that she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was throughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance money when she went down in the mid-ocean and told no tales. What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts. And although in the end he may have felt so sure about it that he could not think otherwise, yet inasmuch as he had knowingly and willingly worked himself into that frame of mind, he must be held responsible for it. Let us alter the case a little, and suppose that the ship was not unsound after all; that she made her voyage safely, and many others after it. Will that diminish the guilt of her owner? Not one jot. When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that. The man would not have been innocent, he would only have been not found out. The question of right or wrong has to do with the origin of his belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how he got it; not whether it turned out to be true of false, but whether he had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him. There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in the exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honorable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion. Let us vary this case also, and suppose, other things remaining as before, that a still more accurate investigation proved the accused to have been really guilty. Would this make any difference in the guilt of the accusers? Clearly not; the question is not whether their belief was true of false, but whether they entertained it on wrong grounds. They would no doubt say: "Now you see that we were right after all; next time perhaps you will believe us." And they might be believed, but they would not thereby become honourable men. They would not be innocent, they would only be not found out. Every one of them, if he chose to examine himself in foro conscientioe, would know that he had acquired and nourished a belief, when he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him; and therein he would know that he had done a wrong thing. |
W. K.
Clifford {i=p 70-72} |
| For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. | H. L. Mencken |
| Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.<< bible | the "Saul" Paul | Ephesians 5:1 |
| I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it. | T. H. Huxley |
| It is as morally bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it. << x2 y stayed | Edmund Way Teale {Circle of the Seasons, 1950} |
| He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him. | Proverbs 18:13 (NKJV) |
2) argumentation assuages doubt
| He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. | John Stuart Mill |
3) on adopting and adapting to the best arguments
| Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth. | Joseph Joybert {1700's} |
| The recognition of our ignorance is the surest way to get rid of it. | W.C.Clifford | On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought {1872, i=p13} |
| The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him. << bible | Proverbs 18:17 |
4) hear THEN MOCK (as opposed to mock then hear)
| All truth passes through 3 stages: First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self evident. | Schopenhauer |
| Dogs bark at those they do not recognize. | Heraclitus of Ephesus |
| He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him. << bible | Proverbs 18:13 (NKJV) |
God ProofsBack to Index
Cosmologically RelatedBack to Index
| If they tell me [philosophers], that they have mounted on the steps or by the gradual ascent of reason, and by drawing inferences from effects to causes, I still insist, that they have aided the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination; otherwise they could not thus change their manner of inference, and argue from causes to effects; presuming, that a more perfect production than the present world would be more suitable to such perfect beings as the gods, and forgetting that they have no reason to ascribe to these celestial beings any perfection or any attribute, but what can be found in the present world. | David Hume | Inquiry ... {1748, p=p95} |
| The word represented by "cause" has 64 meanings in Plato and 48 in Aristotle . . . But I, at least, have never yet seen any single meaning of the word that could be fairly applied to the whole order of nature. | W.K.Clifford |
| Some foolish men think that a Creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was He before creation? | Jinasena | the Mahapurana (the Great Legend) {9th cen} |
| If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? | Art Hoppe |
| In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. | Douglas Adams | The Restaurant at the End of the Universe |
Teleologically RelatedBack to Index
| We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey. | Chucky D. (darwin) | {i=p182gld} |
| Can a conclusion, with any propriety, be transferred from parts to the whole? Does not the great dispoportion bar all comparison and inference? From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything concerning the generation of a man? Would the manner of a leaf's blowing, even though perfectly known, afford us any instuction concerning the vegetation of a tree? | Hume | Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion |
Ontologically RelatedBack to Index
| If there must be a noncontingent beginning which 'all men' or 'everyone' can call 'God,' then an argument to prove it is superfluous. | Dane Gordon | Thinking and Reading in the Philosophy of Religion {i=p29} |
Morally-Argumentally Related Back to Index
1) does morality decay without gods?
| Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are direspectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers. | Aristotle | Circa 350 B.C.E. |
| Do not say, "Why were the old days better than these?" For it is not wise to ask such questions. << bible << problem<< i know, i know, it is wise to ask any flavor of question (but i think it's cool that the buy-bull even mentions this topic :) | Ecclesiastes 7:10 |
| A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. << x2 should | Albert Einstein |
2) does "hell" or "jail" keep people good?
| Even highly religious people in the present day hardly expect to go to Hell for stealing. They reflect that they can repent in time, and that in any case Hell is neither so certain nor so hot as it used to be. Most people in civilized communities do not steal, and I think the usual motive is the great likelihood of punishment here on earth. This is borne out by the fact that in a mining camp during a gold rush, or in any such disorderly community almost everybody steals. | Bertrand Russell | Can Religion Cure Our Troubles? {1954, d=p195} |
| In a truly moral person, the desire to do what is right is not rooted in the fear of punishment. | http://atheism.webjump.com/ |
3) all people try to do good
| Injury to another man arises from anger, malice, hatred, revenge; these feelings are condemned as wrong. But feelings are not immediately under our control, in the same way that overt actions are: I can shake anybody by the hand if I like, but I cannot always feel friendly to him. | W. K. Clifford | Right and Wrong: the Scientific Ground of their Distinction {1875, i=p31} |
| Gott helfe mir, Ich kann michts anders.
(God help me, I cannot do otherwise) |
Martin Luther |
| No man does evil knowingly. | Socrates | Meno {78A-78B, io=p37} |
| Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themseves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capbable of enjoying ... | Mill |
4) "morality" is relative to the person or persons doing the judging of it
| There is nothing good nor bad, only thinking makes it so. << it's all in our head | William Shakespeare |
| Thoughts are rooted in the heart, and this sends out four branches, good and evil, life and death. | Ecclesiasticus 37:17-18 |
| Mental disorders arise from physical causes, and likewise physical disorders arise from mental causes. | Indian Sage Santi Parua {2000 B.C.E.} |
| I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. << bible << here, the yahweh god is neither good nor bad. here, She is relative | Isaiah 45:7 |
5) Evolution implies beastial and demonic morality
| Some men who call themselves pessimists because they cannot read good into the operations of nature forget that they cannot read evil. In morals the law of competition no more justifies personal, official, or national selfishness or brutality than the law of gravitation justifies the shooting of a bird. | Vernon L. Kellogg | Evolution and Animal Life { i=p170gld} |
| Nature is amoral--not immoral, but rather constructed without reference to this strictly human concept. Nature, to speak metaphorically, existed for eons before we arrived, didn't know we were coming, and doesn't give a damn about us. Thus, it would be passing strange if . . . nature generally reflected our moral and aesthetic preferences. | Stephen Jay Gould | Rocks of Ages {1999, i=p195} |
6) what is morality?
| Morality is doing what is right no
matter what you are told.
Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right. |
Jerry Sturdivant |
| The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. | Mill |
| Knowledge is virtue. << knowledge makes men "good" | Socrates |
| All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do laundry. Or something like that. << LOL | China Blue ??
saratoga@myremarq.com |
Random Arguments Back to Index
1) power of prayer argument
(the argument that says: i feel something :. it must be God)
(the counterargument here is: you feel something . . . maybe
it's not related to gods at all)
| Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning. | Mahatma Gandhi |
| They can because they think they can. | Virgil | Aneid {19 B.C.E.} |
| I think I can, I think I can. | The Little Engine that Could |
2) the many miracles argument
(the argument that says: there are lots of witnesses to certain miraculous
events :. they must be real)
(the counterargument here is: human testimony alone is insufficient
for any "existance" proof)
(or: human testimony is fallable and very prone to error)
| No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kin, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish. | David Hume | An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding {Section X, p=p122} |
| No experiences, ordinary, everyday, usual or unusual, whether impressions, ideas, dreams, visions or memories, strange, bizarre, familiar, weird, psychotic, or sane, are objective facts. << x2definitions | R.D. Laing |
| True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. | Gabrial Garcia Marquez {1992} |
| It is experience only, which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience, which assures us of the laws of nature. | Hume | Inquiry... {1748, p=p87} |
| A miracle, supported by any human testimony, was more properly a subject of derision than of argument. | Hume | Inquiry... {1748, p=p83} |
| There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par. | Mark Twain | Mark Twain's Notebook {1904} |
3) random defences
a) we can't be sure of much
| You weren't there for the beginning, you won't be here for the end. Your understanding of the universe is superficial and relative. | William S. Burroughs |
| Scrooge's defense against the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Morley, in Dickens' Christmas Carol: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an under-done potato." | Dicken's |
| The possibility of realities beyond our senses does not justify the belief in whatever fantasy can invent. << x2doubt | Manlio Tabellini or William James, IIRC :( |
| The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me that my own is also. | Mark Twain |
| I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. | Stephen Roberts |
| I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. | Thomas Paine |
Science Section Back to Index
1) what is science anway?
| There is a world, but it consists of as many worlds as there are individual minds; where those minds agree, one deals with the world described by science. | Gerhard Staguhn | God's Laughter {f=p170} |
2) how does science work?
| Test all things; hold fast to what is good. << def of science << def of evolution | 1 Thes. 5.21 |
| Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth. | O.W. Holmes |
| Every great adance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. | T. H. Huxley | Lay Sermons {1870} |
| The true scientist revises his beliefs
to fit the evidence.
The true believer revises the evidence to fit his beliefs. |
Unknown |
| Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years. | John Burroughs (American Naturalist) (1837- 1921) | The Light of Day |
3) chrisitian scientists destroy christianity and science
| In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science ... on the other hand, all untrammelled scientific investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion and of science. | Andrew Dickson White | A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom {1896, i=p102gld} |
| Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles. | James D. Watson |
| Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, ... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn. | St. Augustine | De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis) |
| If faith contends with science, trying to use its criteria, it is doomed to become a pseudo-science whose efforts are bound to be constantly frustrated and whose claims must be contradicted in every single step. | Leszek Kolakowski {f=p156GL} |
| My spell-checker lacks the word "creationism" in its dictionary, so each time that word is encountered, an alternative pops up at the bottom of my screen, "cretinism." | E.T. Babinski |
4) we fear the unknown. to many, "science" is the greatest unknown.
| Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinquishable from magic. << x2 y start | Arthur C. Clarke |
5) random theories (that sound poetically nifty :)
| A time came perhaps
2 or 3 billion years ago--when one being could incorporate another whole.
One would nuzzle up to the other, the cell walls or membranes would pucker,
and the little fellow would find itself inside the bigger. Attempts at
digestions, with varying success, doubless ensued. Suppose you are a largish
one-celled organism in the primitive oceans who in this way gobbles up
some photsynthetic bacteria, tiny specialists who know how to use sunlight,
carbon dioxide, and water to manufacture sugars and other carbohydrates.
You'll leave more descendants if you're better than your competitors in
acquiring sugar.
But suppose also that these ingested bacteria--the latest, sturdy, rustproof models--do not succumb to your digestive enzymes. For all they know, they've found their way into a molecular Garden of Eden. You protect them from many of their enemies; because you're transparent, sunlight shines into you for them; and there's plenty of water and carbon dioxide around. So inside you, the bacteria continue to do their phosynthetic magic. Some sugars leak out of them, for which you are greateful. Some of them die and their interior molecules spill out, available for you use. Others flourish and multiply. When the times comes for you to reproduce, some of them wind up inside your offsping. Not yet de jure (because nothing of this arangement is yet encoded in the nucleic acids), but certainly de facto, an accommodation has been reached between your descendants and theirs. |
Carl Sagan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors {f=p99} |