Essay talk:A response to Sasayaki/Archive1

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(discussion of complaints about general approach/style of essay)

This essay me realize something, but it's probably not the realization you intended the reader to have. Simply put, there is just no reason at all to respond to arguments like these in such excruciating detail. At least 90% of the stuff discussed herein is entirely irrelevant to whether or not there is a god. Engaging these arguments is nothing more than a waste of time and print. Instead of going on about someone's stance on swearing, just cut to what matters. This is not directed at this essay or your writing personally, but rather at a whole bunch of people who do the same thing - it's all over the "religion vs. science" debate.

The source of the problem is that both sides of this abyssal cultural divide cling to the same framework of attacking every argument made by the other side and then trying to give the "burden of proof" to the other side like a game of hot potato. If you just stop for a minute and think about the problem in a fresh, new light instead of examining your opponents' verbiage word by word, it's apparent that this question is not hard at all. It may take some prerequisite material to establish the proper framework for analyzing such problems, but once that's out of the way the question of whether there is a god can be resolved in a few paragraphs.

I suppose what I'm really saying is, "don't waste my time." Essays should provide the arguments and evidence that are actually meaningful enough to update on, not blather that gets crammed in along with them for no good reason. (I've been a culprit of this myself, but no longer.) Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 16:51, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Essays to me, are lots of things. they are a place to vent, when the world seems out right stupid. They are a place to practice my own personal arguments about things, and see how others would reply. And they are a place to express something that is unique to me, even if it's been said 1000 times by 1000 other people. for that moment, it's *my* idea. so though this argument has "been there, done that", the author has found value in what he's writing, saying, or exploring. or he was just pissed off enough to write it.:-)En attendant Godot 17:41, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. It was quite arrogant of me to tell people what essay should be about and what should or shouldn't be included. What I was trying (and failing) to express was my frustration at the amount of irrelevant information that tags along with good arguments and evidence. I should not have suggested that this standard must apply to everyone, or that an essay cannot be "good" without being concise. In a certain sense, I mistakenly tried to impose my opinion on reality. That said, I stand by the general theme of my previous comment if not its anger and presumptuousness. Substanceless fluff, in both my own writing and in the writing of others, still seems grating to me.

Thank you for pointing this out, I was badly in need of being corrected. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 18:35, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey Tetronian, it's a fair criticism. I think, one of the issues is, when one is responding to someone else's writing, sometimes one feels like one has to respond to all of it, or most of it, rather than just picking out a few points to respond to and ignoring the rest. Maybe that's not a good thing, but I see its both what I have done, and maybe to some extent what Sasayaki's original essay did too (being a response to an essay of Conservapedia's Conservative.) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Understandig own errors :)

This is what reading essays is good for. Mine, the one about "Gravitation demystified", is also much too long, unnecessarily describing the "history" of gravitation and cosmology, but the important parts having to be fished out from it, "while wading through shit" (as Eira aptly noticed). One doesn't even know what the important parts are not knowing any physics. Essays are good though for getting answers to questions that the author doesn't know. So they may be structured just as the list of questions to which readers may answer and then the author may respond, which is good in the above essay.

So to pratice what I preach, here are the points on which you seem to be wrong, in my opinion:

You say: "there is objective, universal standard of morality, independent of our own beliefs, culture, preferences, desires, goals, etc. Theism: Yes; Atheism: No", while you should say "Yes" as well", though it is not as clearly visible and only through the analyzing the evolution of species, societies, and ideas.

"12. Some Creationists point out that science has been wrong before about a great many things, and therefore, could be wrong about things like evolution, too."

No, you can't. It was not science that has been wrong but people as e.g. most of them are wrong about the expansion and creation of the universe, since the universe neither was created nor expands. Both are illusions proved as such in 1985 but without much publicity for certain reasons. The similar illusion as the illusion that the Earth is fixed but the Sun runs around it. 'Science is what is established experimentally as being true an then it never changes unless it is not science yet. E.g. as the Big Bang is not yet science even if most uninformed astronomers belive it is. The same about math and uninformed mathematicians though they are tought that math is not science but astronomers aren't yet, unless by JJ.

"14. The Burden of Proof ... on atheists to disprove God. Well, I would say the burden cuts both ways."" It it is not cut both ways since it is not symmetric and it's much easier to prove that something exist than that it doesn't (often impossible). So the burden of proof stays naturally with the theists. JimJast (talk) 17:02, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, you make three points here:

(1) That atheism implies that there is an objective, universal standard of morality. I really don't see how it does. You suggest "analyzing the evolution of species, societies, and ideas". If evolution makes us feel that X is right or wrong, does that automatically imply that X is right or wrong? Maybe you will say yes, but if someone else says no, how do you demonstrate that you are right and they are wrong?

(2) You argue that science is what is proven experimentally true. The problem with that definition is no experiment can ever completely prove a theory true. It can only prove it true to a certain degree of confidence, a certain degree of accuracy, within a certain range of parameters (such as temperature or energy levels), etc. The more experiments we do, the more confident we can get, but we can never exclude the possibility of some future experiment showing the theory is mistaken. So, if we took science as what is experimentally proven, then nothing would be science, because experiment can never prove anything conclusively. I think a better definition of science is the contemporary consensus of the scientific community.

(3) You argue that a positive assertion should have the burden of proof, not a negative assertion. I don't agree with you. We have different standards of proof. Whose standards of proof is correct? How could we prove or determine that? Is there, say, an experiment we could perform? Or is standard of proof just a matter of personal choice, and anyone can pick whatever one they prefer? Are standards of proof objective or subjective? You argue that the standard of proof should be determined by who has the easier case to prove - why so? Why should that matter to what is the correct standard of proof? (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:51, 28 June 2011 (UTC)