Then you're never going to win an argument, nor live up to the standards that you claim humanity must ultimately reach. It is neither respectable nor best for mankind to spout irrationality to support your positions, which, in the absence of logical support, are irrational as well.

Even though you are not a robot, turning your back on reason (and even celebrating such a thing) pretty much destroys your credibility and usefulness in any debate or argument. You're also turning your back on the legacy and proper behavior of humankind, regardless of the person or position you are opposing.

Christians just don't get it. Your position is so ridiculous and indefensible that I can say things like "Well we've never seen anything like that before so it probably isn't true" and still win the argument. Winning an argument or debate isn't 100% about logic. It's about persuasion and rhetoric aswell. Quite frankly, it's easy to win an argument against someone who believes in a story that some Jewish guys made up about a sky God that chose Jews (big surprise) to be His chosen people.

If I made up a story that a 50 armed blue woman created the universe, it would not be up to the opposition to prove that that DIDN'T happen. Of course, they could throw tons of evidence out to disprove it but simply saying "well we've never seen anything like that so it probably isn't true" would do the job. The argument is won by the opposition just because of the ridiculousness of the premise.

Of course, if we were in an official debate, then I'd just lay the smack down on you with the mounds of evidence disproving ghouls, goblins, sky Gods, etc...just for a good show.

Christians just don't get it. Your position is so ridiculous and indefensible that I can say things like "Well we've never seen anything like that before so it probably isn't true" and still win the argument. Winning an argument or debate isn't 100% about logic. It's about persuasion and rhetoric aswell. Quite frankly, it's easy to win an argument against someone who believes in a story that some Jewish guys made up about a sky God that chose Jews (big surprise) to be His chosen people.

If I made up a story that a 50 armed blue woman created the universe, it would not be up to the opposition to prove that that DIDN'T happen. Of course, they could throw tons of evidence out to disprove it but simply saying "well we've never seen anything like that so it probably isn't true" would do the job. The argument is won by the opposition just because of the ridiculousness of the premise.

Of course, if we were in an official debate, then I'd just lay the smack down on you with the mounds of evidence disproving ghouls, goblins, sky Gods, etc...just for a good show.

Well, for what it's worth, I'm not a Christian. I was raised Catholic, but left the faith for a lot of the reasons hat people have been critiquing religion in this thread, among others. I have no religion, and do not take the tenets of any faith to be factual. So it's not my position that any branch of Christianity, or any faith, is an accurate representation of reality.

Why would you have such wildly different standards for an "official" debate versus a discussion in any other forum? Because we don't have a moderator and a 6-3-7-3-4-6-3 speech time limit structure (including corss-examinations, of course), logical support and evidence become unnecessary? I don't think so-- those are the things that get us closer to the truth and further from unreasoned posturing.

Outside of an "official" debate round, winning is meaningless. Discussion and debate are about using principles of rationality to get closer to the truth in a way that can be supported, critiqued, improved, or invalidated. Persuasion and rhetoric can either increase the precision of your argumentation or obfuscate the lack of it. You, as a human being, have the capacity to understand the difference between logical and illogical. You are therefore charged, if you want to have a meaningful discussion of any issue, contested or not, to employ the former and eschew the latter.

It doesn't matter what position you've taken, the position you're opposing, or who any of the participants are. You used several logical fallacies above, stated that you didn't care that they were fallacies, and that it's OK because people on the opposing side engaged in fallacious reasoning as well. That's hypocritical (fallacies are OK for you, but shred opposing arguments?), and does not advance reason nor humanity.

If you want to say that you think something like, say, speaking in tongues, is not what people claim it is (and I don't buy the phenomenon), there are plenty of reasonable grounds for making such a claim. If you're divinely inspired to speak another language, why do those "languages" seem to always consist of fewer than 5 phonemes, with no tonal variation? You can even engage it on the broadest possible level, questioning the existence and nature of God and the validity of religion (which seems to be your preferred approach, and it's a valid one to use). But you never need to resort to a fallacious and unreasoned approach.

Why do people go on for 18 pages on their opinions on religion? Don't they know they probably won't be able to change the other's opinion regardless of how long they go back and forth?

Religion and politics conversations should be strictly banned from every forum besides forums that are specifically reserved for religion and politics arguments. That way people won't start flaming each other for their religions over a game development forum.

These kinds of threads usually just end up making everyone who participated in sharing their opinion worthy of a ban from the moderators, because they typically end up attacking each other.

EDIT: Oh, I just made it 19 pages...heh

Why do people go on for 18 pages on their opinions on religion?

Once again, I don't get it, Hodgman..
You like making points through pictures, don't you?

Once again, I don't get it, Hodgman..
You like making points through pictures, don't you?

His point is 100% valid in this specific discussion - but you need to know what that picture symbolizes.

That is so true. The term "troll" is overused these days anyway. The number of actual, high quality trolls is sadly quite low compared to the mass of stupid noise.

I can't tell the difference between the stick figures.

I'm still lost : /
I think I need an explanation through words, not titled scenes.

[quote name='nilkn' timestamp='1303098164' post='4799740']
... who perform exorcisms (all fake).

And you know this, how exactly?
[/quote]

Because people, alarmed by the severe child abuse, have investigated and found it all to be cheap fraud. For instance, in the story

http://news.bbc.co.u...rica/575178.stm

it was found that

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]Children are made to vormit up things that have been inserted into them unnaturally.[/font]
[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"][font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]Two eyewitnesses have told us of objects like bars of soap being inserted into the anuses of children. It all shows just how vulnerable children in Kinshasa are, if they get thrown out their families accused of being child witches.[/font][/font]
[/quote]

and

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,]The Prophet denied all of this, but he was happy enough showing his Polaroid photos of items he claimed to have forced children to vomit up - and one photograph in particular was distressing to see.[/font]
[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"][font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]
[/font][/font]
[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"][font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]A boy with a massively bloated stomach grinned at the camera. But a part of the picture, just over his right leg, had not come out. There was a white flash over his shin.[/font]

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]"The white is there because the spirit of the demon was inside his leg," said the Prophet.[/font]

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]"He had to be given several exorcisms. Now, he is fine."[/font]

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]Quite what "several exorcisms" would do to a boy who could not have been more than 12 is anyone's guess, but the charity thought they knew - his insides were so badly disrupted, they believed, that he died.[/font]

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]The "demon" in his leg was nothing more than a fault when the photo was developed.[/font]

[font="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif,"]We stood looking at that picture for a while, wondering when the suffering of Congo's children would ever end.[/quote][/font]

[/font]
The situation is extremely bad.

The people are so gullible that there is now a group that performs fake exorcisms, convincing entire villages at once, and then shows them how the trick was done, so that they understand both how the trickery is done and how vulnerable they were to it. I'll try to find the link--a lot of it has been videotaped and is on YouTube.