User talk:(S L)

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, (S L)! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Welcome to the party. Your created article seems okay but needs to be wiki-formatted. Badly. Please read the above guides for help.Zero (talk) 14:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Y U NO H8 MANZ MOAR?Femilisk (talk) 18:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

ManRebelNews (S L) (talk) 19:08, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm going to have to ban you. Femilisk _{is watching} 17:06, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Homage

My signature is an homage to our trolling. Shh_{notearsonlydreamsnow} 09:33, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I cri evry tim (S L) (talk) 00:22, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Demotion

Apologies. Hobbes has decided it is your time. ·Femilisk™ 10:19, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Signature

The Sovereign bestows upon you a state-backed signature for use on official Leviathan duties. ·Femilisk™ 16:20, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you might Femilisk! 16:28, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Poking it with a stick

That's what this is. It's unproductive and borders on trolling. Please reconsider your intent to follow such a path. Hugs and kisses, Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 16:53, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Given the drama that occurred between Psy, Laurelai, Femilisk, etc hours ago, their comments seem like obvious baiting/trolling. I'll stop if you want me to, but understand the context in which my comment was made. 17:00, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Hours ago was hours ago. It is now hours hence. Moreover, that list of names does not include you, so I fail to see how that situation is relevant to your conduct. Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 17:04, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Not my place, but I know a bit of the back-story here. A lot of my friends are on high-alert because of much drama and tears quite a bit of abuse aimed at me (both off-site and on). For perhaps obvious reasons, I do not want to go into it, but sometimes it's required to at least touch it gently explain people's behaviour. Anyway, this came out of it, as well as a lot of solidarity. Facebook not even once! ·Femilisk™ 17:23, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I have literally no awareness of events on the RW Facebook page besides glancing at the threads that broke out here after the events on Facebook metastasised onto the wiki. I think I was a member of that page maybe 2-3 years ago, but I certainly haven't looked at it since. I am sorry you encountered abuse over there, and can see why someone might want to therefore look out for you here. But the edit in question does absolutely nothing to prevent abuse from being directed at you on this website, and still reads like an attempt to revive a local spat that had pretty much run its course. Father Vivian O'Blivion (talk) 17:32, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

(ec) So "on high alert" = making preemptive, unwarranted trollish comments. Got it, thanks for clearing it up. For that matter, what was the abuse aimed at you on that topic? I was adding an example to the OP. Perhaps you should take your friends to one side and tell them to calm the fuck down. PsyGremlin^Praat! 17:35, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Psy, I didn't defend. I gave back-story. I am not in the same country as my friends. It's not easy to ring them up, or take them aside. And why should that be my job anyway? I was just explaining context.

Father, I think we should all get along. But sadly, it's tricky to get along with people who don't want to get along with you. Anyway, let's not let people trying to look out for me get blamed for perhaps mildly badly looking out for me. To give you an idea of the shit, it ranges from people telling me to commit suicide, to people wanting to cut me out of admin positions with a blunt knife, to many people being banned (for horrible behaviour and by other admins) immediately blaming me and sending me aforementioned abuse even though I'm not even involved. Suffice it to say, many if not all of the people involved in the recent chicken coop drama were in one way or another part of some of the aforementioned FB drama/abuse. Anyway, I hope that gives some kind of overview. I'm not as bad a person as many of the threads on here suggest, nor am I actually that influential, neither in general, nor on FB. I'm just a person. But a person who seems to get singled out for their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, etc., because they are all pretty salient to bigots. ·Femilisk™ 17:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Psy, unwarranted? You behaved poorly, so I assumed, based on your actions, that you wished to be treated poorly in return. If you don't want to be targeted, don't go out of your way to piss people off. It's really that simple.Raysenn: questions other's integrity, doxes people. (talk) 16:26, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

As a newcomer to RW, I find it amusing how worked up the old guard gets when the topics of gender and social justice are brought up. Lager (talk) 19:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Except, of course, that this had absolutely fuck-all to do with social justice or gender. So, as a newcomer, get your facts straight before posting. PsyGremlin^Praat! 11:25, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I thought this was cis-het-safeplace wiki not Genderwiki. 20:24, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

*menacing cracking of gender knuckles* ---Dgener8 (talk) 21:03, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Save up the tears you collect

·Femilisk™ 11:03, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I pledge my eternal jimmies to Femilisk. 11:14, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Here's a massive fist for no reason. Use wisely. ·Femilisk™ 16:44, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Ooooooh, you could change sig to: ·Femilisk™ 16:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Knock, knock

Just chekan up on you komrade.---Dgener8 (talk) 00:25, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

You must be a Trotskyist because you've got my jimmies in permanent rustlelution. 00:34, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Social media accounts

Hi there. Please don't post links to or screencaps of individuals' social media accounts. Doxxing is a path this project generally tries not to take. Thanks for your understanding. Father Vivian O'Blivion talk 20:33, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

YOU AWARDED HERO OF SOVIET UNION

POSTHUMOUS - David Gerard (talk) 15:26, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Sam Harris and William Lane Craig's "knockdown argument"

You recently edited the Sam Harris article and inserted a claim that William Lane Craig provided a "knockdown argument" of Harris' "specific type of reductive moral naturalism". I'm extremely suspicious of any claim about Craig's "knockdown arguments" given Craig's sordid history of misrepresentation and sleazy debating tactics. I undid your edit for three reasons:

1. Because of my general scepticism of Craig.
2. Because it was vague (Which reductive moral naturalism? What argument? How did it knock down Harris' framework? etc.)
3. Because it was badly sourced - especially since there's a full transcript of the debate is available from Craig's website

If Craig really did provide a knockdown argument, you ought easily to be able to describe it and how it worked by citing the relevant bits of the transcript, rather than through a vague claim and a YT video. ScepticWombat (talk) 14:55, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

If you're going to ad hom Craig and be too lazy to look up what reductionist naturalism is to understand what Craig is arguing (and then understand WHY this argument is a knockdown to Harris's very specific and wrong version of reductive moral naturalism) maybe you aren't ready for philosophy. Regardless I'll type something up later, as Craig's criticism is just an indictement of Harris's very specific brand of reductive moral naturalism and there are ways to get around this objection for actual academic philosophers.

but who am I to talk? I'm just some idiot funDIE who dared to criticize Ayatollah Harris right? 16:30, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

No one said you're a fundie, but you're citing William Lane Craig in an argument, which isn't complementary to your intelligence. The guy is perfectly willing to recurringly lie and misrepresent his opponents in his arguments, and to me, has developed a negative baseline credibility at this point. To not "answer" him is pretty damned reasonable. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 16:36, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Look, I'm not coming in and claiming to be smart, so smearing my intelligence isn't really relevant to the discussion we're having, which is whether or not WLC's arugment against Harris's type of reductive naturalism is valid (which it is). Show me one time when WLC has lied. One. And keep in mind that lying isn't "oh I disagreed with that". Even if we accept that WLC is a lying evil snake who misrepresents Harris (which he does NOT in the video I linked as you can see from the transcrips that wombat linked earlier, this is not a strawman, if you think it is, you HAVE to explain what Harris is arguing and how it's different from what Craig is arguing HArris' possition is), it doesn't fucking following that Harris can just ignore a reasonable criticism of his ethical system and the way he stipulates reductionism. Which Harris does. Look at the transcript or watch the debate, in Harris's first rebuttal, he literally ignores WLC's arguement that Harris equivocates the moral definition of what is good with nonmoral definitions of what is good. He also rightfully points out that Harris is trying to cache out what is good as what constitutes human flourishing. Craig then gives a valid modal logical argument as to why Harris's claiming that flourishing and moral goodness are identical is logically incoherent, as a possible world where A isn't identitical to B, it follows that A isn't identical to B. So he comes at Harris from two point, neither of which Harris addresses. Seriously, detatch yourself from this mindset of "WLC is an apologist so he can't possibly be right!" and look at what he's actually fucking arguing. If you've ever taken any philosophy courses, get a refund. 16:57, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

SL, the easiest way to resolve this is to quote Harris' argument and then quote WLC's response. If it's truly a knockdown, then it should be readily apparent. oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 17:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

(EC) 1. I'm not watching an awful youtube deconstruction. Sorry. Not happening. 2. WLC is a bullshit laden, intellectually dishonest manipulator, and that's entirely separate from him being an apologist, of whom there are many I can respectfully disagree with, because they aren't trying to slip "Actually atheists hate the god they totally know exists" into every damned argument. 3. This "possible world" thing is nuts, and just take a look at Ontological argument to see how regularly that phrase is abused to extrapolate bullshit. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 17:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

1. Look shitlord, It's not a deconstruction, it's a section from the fucking debate that is 5 minutes. If you're too lazy to do that you're not ready for philosophy. 2. loldontcare. 3. HAHAHAHAHA. MODAL LOGIC DONT REEL I GUESS. You are possibly the stupidest person I've run into on this website. Go back to reading your Dawkins books about how you can reject modal logic because you can use it to prove that a theistic conception of God is real. Also that ontological argument article is a giant piece of shit so citing that to me is an inane exercise. Perhaps you'd like to try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or something. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/ Learn about this shit before you spout off on my talk page and make yourself look like just another /r/atheist jack off who can't be bothered to do more reading that skim wiki articles.

Fuzzy, it's not going to be apparent if you have a preconcieved notion about WLC (as has been demonstrated by the greatest philosopher on this website icantread). WLC properly represents Harris's arguement and knocks it down in the video I linked in the Harris article, but also in the transcript provided by wombat at the beginning. If you're too lazy to go read that, it isn't my fault. It starts here "Now Dr. Harris says, 'But we can imagine creatures being in the worst possible misery, and it’s obviously better for creatures to be flourishing—the well-being of conscious creatures is good.' Well, of course, it is... " and ends here "Dr. Harris’s view becomes logically incoherent.". It's in First rebuttal which I'll link to you here, because you're apparently too lazy to seek it out yourself, even though I already explained this to icantreed in my last post in a shorter version. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-the-foundation-of-morality-natural-or-supernatural-the-craig-harris#section_3 17:19, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the needless insults and thanks for actually pointing to the section of the argument. αδελφός ΓυζζγςατΡοτατο (talk/stalk) 17:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

"Show me one time when WLC has lied. One." Okay (S L), if I'm allowed to include straw manning to the extent of deliberately misrepresenting your opponent as lying (and given Craig's record I don't see why not), I'll give you an example from the very Harris/Craig debate itself also listed in the RW article on Craig:

(Harris) "Now, I’m obviously not saying that all that Dr. Craig, or all religious people, are psychopaths and psychotics, but this to me is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own."

(Craig) "He also says it’s “psychopathic” to believe these things. Now, that remark is just as stupid as it is insulting. It is absurd to think that Peter van Inwagen here at the University of Notre Dame is psychopathic, or that a guy like Dr. Tom Flint, who is as gracious a Christian gentlemen as I could have ever met, is psychopathic. Uh, this is simply, uh, below the belt."

(Harris) "Well, you, uh, perhaps you’ve noticed Dr. Craig has a charming habit of summarizing his opponent’s points in a way in which they were not actually given, so I will leave it to you to sort it out on Youtube. Needless to say, I didn’t call those esteemed colleagues of his psychopaths, as I made clear."'

Back to the matter at hand; I was quite clear about why I deleted your edit: It's vague, because it doesn't give any detail. It just assumes that Harris' lacking response is an admission that Craig's objection is valid and salient (the former is a standard Craig trick: "My opponent didn't answer my claim X, hence I'm correct in X"). Especially when dealing with Craig, it's important to check for misrepresentations and other sleazy tricks which is why I asked for context and details.

This is why I'm not terribly convinced by your "the best defence is a good offence"-counter attack, since it fails to actually address any details in Craig's argument or Harris' supposed errors. I don't have any problem with Harris being wrong as I happen to disagree with him on some issues, for instance his weird "torture is kind of okay"-ticking time bomb argument (a hypothetical and seldomly very realistic scenario often used by torture apologists). Nor am I very partial to Harris' moral arguments (I simply don't think that any sort of objective morality is plausible, God or no god). So, rather than accusing me of being lazy, why don't you do a wee bit of work and actually present Craig's knockdown argument rather than just YouTubing it? ScepticWombat (talk) 17:34, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

All of your problems with Harris and character assassinations of Craig are irrelevant to the disccusion at hand. Never once did I make the claim that because Harris didn't respond to Craig's argument, Craig is therefore right, that would be inane. The point is that Craig provides a very strong argument against Harris's particular form of moral naturalism and Harris did not respond. If this were the other way around and Harris had presented a well thought out argument against one of Craig's positions that Craig never responded to, do you relaly think you'd be making the same point? Check your bias against Craig at the door and look at what he's arguing via the links that you've provided and the explinations I've given ITT. "since it fails to actually address any details in Craig's argument or Harris' supposed errors. " The reason I'm not going into this is because Craig already fucking did it. There isn't anything more that needs to be fleshed out. Craig already did the work. The reason I linked you the snippet youtube video was because that is presenting Craig's knockdown argument, for fucks sake. 17:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Pointing out WLC's documented dishonesty is not character assassination, FWIW. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 17:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah cause there's no such thing as an unintentional strawman or someone just not understanding something? Are all of your editors on this website REALLY always ascribing malice to these sorts of things? for fucks sake. 17:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

When one of his points is refuted in one debate, and he acknowledges that is has been refuted, he then uses that same point, without alteration or acknowledgement of its error, in subsequent debates. That is neither unintentional strawmanning nor a lack of understanding. I've read some of his essays - they are very poor, and dance around that fact that key assertions are not supported by the evidence he cites. He's a hack. He has about as much intellectual credibility as Christopher Monkton or Deepak Chopra. Queex_{chthonic murmurings} 18:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

This is all a bit heavy to go through - but have we heard the "knock-down argument" yet? (And not via youtube)--Bob^{"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that."} 18:06, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry (S L), but your extremely charitable interpretation of Craig using "an unintentional strawman" would mean that Craig wasn't actually listening to and/or understanding what his opponent is saying. Harris was pretty damn clear about what he meant, yet Craig distorted his words in exactly the way Harris explicitly said they were not to be understood(!) Given Craig's other multiple examples of similar stunts (also referred to by Queex and with its own section in the RW article on Craig) being cautious about taking him at his word is not unfair bias it's simply good sense. Citing Craig is a cut above relying on Ken Ham, Ray Comfort or Kent Hovind, but not by much since Craig is in the same category of used car salesman apologetics albeit with the advantage of a couple of PH.D.s (à la Norman Geisler or Alvin Plantinga). ScepticWombat (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

New readers can begin here for the Craig/Harris thing

For Bob and others who want to know what the (supposed) "knock-down" argument is, I'll do (S L)'s work for him and actually cite Craig:

“”But Dr. Harris has to defend an even more radical claim than that: Uh, he claims that the property of being good is identical with the property of creaturely flourishing. And he’s not offered any defense of this radical identity claim. In fact, I think we have a knock-down argument against it. Now bear with me here; this is a little technical. On the next-to-last page of his book, Dr. Harris makes the telling admission that if people like rapists, liars, and thieves could be just as happy as good people, then his “moral landscape” would no longer be a moral landscape.17 Rather, it would just be a continuum of well-being whose peaks are occupied by good and bad people, or evil people, alike. Now what’s interesting about this is that earlier in the book, Dr. Harris explained that about three million Americans are psychopathic.18 That is to say, they don’t care about the mental states of others. They enjoy inflicting pain on other people. But that implies that there’s a possible world, which we can conceive, in which the continuum of human well-being is not a moral landscape. The peaks of well-being could be occupied by evil people. But that entails that in the actual world, the continuum of well-being and the moral landscape are not identical either. For identity is a necessary relation. There is no possible world in which some entity A is not identical to A. So if there’s any possible world in which A is not identical to B, then it follows that A is not in fact identical to B. Now since it’s possible that human well-being and moral goodness are not identical, it follows necessarily that human well-being and goodness are not the same, as Dr. Harris has asserted in his book. Now it’s not often in philosophy that you get a knock-down argument against a position. But I think we’ve got one here. Uh, by granting that it’s possible that the continuum of well-being is not identical to the moral landscape, Dr. Harris’s view becomes logically incoherent.

— Craig vs. Harris debate transcript from Craig's website

And here are a couple of people who found Craig's "knock-down argument" unconvincing and why:

“” In defense of Dr. Harris, a moral landscape populated with peaks amounting to sociopathic ideals would not lead to the well being of conscious creatures. Here consequentialism comes into play. What matters here is not what the peaks of the moral landscape correspond to, but rather what the consequences of the morals that the peaks correspond to. Because sociopaths get pleasure from harming other beings, a moral framework consistent with their beliefs would not result in the well being of conscious creatures. Many creatures would suffer at the will of these sociopaths. And some sociopaths would suffer under the will of other sociopaths. So Dr. Craig’s “knock down” argument, falls flat on its face.

— Atheism and the City

“” Indeed, Garren. It sounds like Craig’s “knockdown argument” rests on a hypothetical world in which psychopaths are happy. That would surely be a good thing. And yet Craig claims that it’s problematic for Harris’ theory. Why? Yes, Craig’s knockdown argument is deeply flawed, and that struck me when he made it. I have no problem with “evil” people being happy; I want them to be happy, just not at the expense of others. I think the issue is that William Lane Craig equates a system of divine retributive justice with “good”-ness; he actually thinks it’s good for evil people to suffer, as most religious people seem to when they justify the concept of hell.

— Two comments from Common Sense Atheism's review of the Craig vs. Harris debate

(I can't get Common Sense Atheism link to translate in the reference-thingy above, but this is the one.)
Now we can perhaps get an argument going about the merit of Craig's objections rather than his shady character. ScepticWombat (talk) 19:04, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

It is based on pseudologic, and misrepresents Harris' position, entirely in keeping with the problems Craig has had in the past. A, being a fucking variable, can share an identity relationship with B, and someone getting a D grade back from an intro-to-philosophy course ought to be able to spot that kinda flagrant error. Moreover he conflates identity with equivalence, which aren't the same.

It isn't an argument at all. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 19:13, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

And here is an archived version of a blog post going into more detail on Craig's "knock-down argument", suggesting that Craig misrepresented (Oh, say it isn't so!) Harris' argument and ending with: "So, to conclude, it would appear that Harris did not in fact concede in his book that “it’s possible that the continuum of well-being is not identical to the moral landscape”. Therefore, Craig's "knock-down argument" fails to show Harris’ thesis is “logically incoherent”." ScepticWombat (talk) 20:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)