Witnessing versus Debating

Originally posted by TexasCowboy
... it won't take much digging to see that, since the beginning of history, men, both godly and godless, have found it necessary to go to war.

....and my amusement continues. It has to. I will cry otherwise. To what end "gentlemen"? Civil and respectful tongues are in short supply these days. Atleast in the good 'ol days we could incense each other with class. Alas, that was then, this is now. I must admit, I am less than impressed with the fumbling and vague attempts with history and the inability to present anything which is not abstract.

More amusing than anything else to me, is that the most common pattern I see is people being unable to tie together the doctrines of science and religion. The non believer will frequently make claims on the basis of scientific evaluations, but it is very rare that they will step outside of that comfortable box of the physical and mathmatical definitive. On the other side, we have a frequency for believers to proclaim their beliefs vehemently on the basis of their doctrine and abstract logic, but seldomly do we see them point towards any scientific or mathmatical facts that would lend credibility to their views.

Yes indeed. I am very amused, and not impressed. Perhaps someone around here who has the intellectual capacity and knowledge to engage in a well rounded discussion of theology will pick up this gauntlet and make my day by engaging in productive and civil dialogue. I will not be holding my breath, however.

Best Regards,

Omnislash

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
It may be worth noting that the debates are not at all fair. They pit an atheist with an IQ of, let us say for the sake of argument, 150, against a Believer. The Believer in a personal God has an entity of unlimited intelligence, knowledge and wisdom on his side, guiding his fingers on the keyboard. (It goes without saying that the Believer will make no e ...[text shortened]... te, that in and of itself points the finger at the Believer as the one who is on the wrong side.

I do agree with the original post that there is very little debating going on in the religious-themed "debates". Arguably this is also true of the political debates, but the desire for point scoring rather than any attempt at understanding seems particularly acute in the religious sphere.

I don't know what people think I am doing when they read my posts. I certainly know that my FIRST post on a thread is aimed at explaining/proposing my point of view, which is essential to getting a debate going. Whether I manage to maintain that afterwards, is something that's hard for me personally to judge.

I do also know there are times when I wish people who are ostensibly "on my side" would just shut the hell up and go away, because they aren't helping. Most of all it's astonishingly hard to prevent threads going wildly off topic. Any thread on religion becomes a forum for ALL religious debates, any thread on politics becomes a forum for ALL political issues, etc.

Originally posted by orfeo
...shows a basic misunderstanding of the beliefs to which many people subscribe...

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
I deliberately stuck 'personal' in front of 'God' in my post so as to leave Deists and other liberal Believers out of it. The core of a personal relationship surely has to be two-way communication 'on demand.' I chuckle when people who witness a personal savior to me shy away from claiming that their deity actually speaks to them. Doesn't sound very personal to me.