Is Third Idiot a troll?

Why don't you ask him the next time he's around.)))

His name, his persona, his actions are all strongly suggesting that to me.

lol

Oh come on, that one was funny.

He's also been adding nonsensical tags.

Linky please.

@Billare I edit my answer adding an external reference... (talking about your q.v. question) Is it ok like it is now or should I give more explanations inside the answer?

Ach, gtg, sorry talk to y'alls later.

My name, my persona, and my actions all strongly suggest that I'm a gay British knight.

You guys haven't seen real SE trolls.

(Those are real quotes of his answers and comments.)

How's that trolling? There are millions of people out there who actually hold those beliefs.

Lustig.

Also, you can be an unintentional troll. Key word: troll.

Even though that user was an intentional one, but you get the point.

"Was" as in "got suspended"?

Was, as in his account on Atheism.SE is gone with Atheism.SE.

We haven't had pro tempore mods during beta.

Hahaha.

Seriously? On that site?

Yes.

Best choice ever.

Now I understand why I had close-vote powers there.

Huh?

They wanted to have at least some control.

Even Robusto could close-vote there, and has.

@Billare did the same to me; I now simply ignore him in the chat

The community kept asking for pro tem mods though.

@Fx Uh, I think a 'he' between 'Billare' and 'did' would greatly clarify your meaning.

@Martha Yeah, for real.

I don't think we ever got a response from Cartaino.

Though Cartaino himself was doing some mod stuff, but I can't say he was within our community. An external mod doesn't sound as good as one who is from the community itself. :-/

In other news, I need to acquire exactly 60 points, and then stay there. :)

@Martha Certainly you mean 58060 points.

@RegDwight That's the long-term goal.

Whatever happens to people's plans to just stay at 666?

We could have a whole nice site of 666ers.

I dunno, for me 666 came and went so quickly (and so long ago) that I hardly noticed.

Interesting article on the new punctuation: slate.com/id/2293056

@Reg: In other words, I think the SE team is responsible for Atheism.SE's failure to acquire traffic due to almost nonexistent content management (at least from what I know).

@Martha indeed!

@Vitaly I think they know very well what they are doing.

The Atheism Subreddit is way worse than Atheism.SE could ever be, yet it thrives.

That's because Reddit is a discussion board. SE is a Q&A site.

@RegDwight I can't see how their not giving us any pro tem mods could have been good for our site. Care to explain?

My point is that there are no mods on the Atheism Subreddit, either.

The SE format just doesn't work for Atheism.

The Subreddit is not a Q&A site and doesn't need mods.

Atheism.SE did.

You can only ask "I hate God, how about you?" so many time before it gets boring.

@RegDwight So you are saying we need new ways to hate...

@MrHen No, I'm saying that Reddit offers you all the ways in the world to hate, while SE offers you none.

You can only see questions of that sort so many times before you decide to go somewhere else, where they have mods to delete that.

no mods → no good content → users are going elsewhere → no good content → no traffic

My point is that if you leave this type of "questions" out, you don't have a site.

@Vitaly "no good content" isn't the fault of mods; it is the fault of the users

We had good resources questions.

"all bad content" may be a mod thing...

@RegDwight I would star that for the sheer irony of it, if it were understandable out of its context

@MrHen Partially, but the SE team knew the majority of our users were first-timers to any SE's at all.

@Vitaly Yes, but that's still pathetic. That's like saying, we have a nice CW list of useful English-language tools, we don't need any more questions.

Oh, and we had good debate-points questions.

And debate points are innumerable in that context.

I don't personally "get" the point of Atheism.SE or Philosophy.SE. I could see the latter being a great resource for real philosophers... but I really don't think that is what would happen. But that may be more of a reflection of how I use SE.

Well, again, every single user on that site could close vote.

@Robusto Heh, interesting indeed.

If the community as a whole can't keep the site clean, no amount of moderation will help in the long run.

@RegDwight Not to mention it isn't really fair to expect the mods to do all of the work.

Because then you have mods acting against the community, or at least against significant parts of it.

Why would the mods want to be part of a site like that?

So the site falls apart yet again, just in a different way.

Meh. Good points.

However, having someone with authority always helps.

@Vitaly Agreed.

(In this case, with the lozenge.)

Damn, now I have missed my bus because of you petty heathens. <shakes fist, most furiously>

@RegDwight I am sure there is a joke here about prayer or somesuch.

What MrHen said. :P

There are jokes all over the place here in this room. Someone just needs to pick them up, but people are either too lazy or too afraid to bend down.

@RegDwight Oh and you can't hate something that doesn't exist.

@MrHen Old.

I saw that on Reddit two years ago.

If not three.

@RegDwight So?

It was a birthday present to Gabe.

If I cared enough I would have trimmed off the caption

@Vitaly See how long it took you to come up with that retort?

Not to mention severely underestimating the power of hate.

@RegDwight I was a-hatin' the SE team. I wasn't reading what you were writing.

Anyhow, before I go, in the spirit of rounding up this conversation rather nicely: Hitler no longer exists, and yet lots of people hate him. Q.E.D.

There is a difference between something that existed at some point, and something that has never existed.

Hold your horses.

@Vitaly True, but there's no difference in the hate involved

It's hard enough to prove that God doesn't exist, and you suggest that he never existed?

Read some Nietzsche or something.

Gott ist tot.

It's not hard to prove that the Biblical deity doesn't exist.

@Vitaly Some people hate unicorns.

@Vitaly Snerk. But let's not go there in chat.

As for deities in general, you are correct.

@Vitaly You have four minutes. Go.

All you will prove is that the Bible is just an inconsistent book. Which, given its nature, is no news to anyone.

@RegDwight Well... don't forget the people near where I live.

@Vitaly Your point being? God invented all of these.

Besides, everyone knows that Wikipedia is written by Lucifer himself.

@RegDwight So then he is a liar. In which case, the Biblical deity doesn't exist, because you cannot be a liar and not a liar at the same time.

And “the Biblical deity” means the deity described in the Bible. So as long as the Bible is inconsistent, its deity cannot exist.

@Vitaly As I said, the Bible is just a book.

@Vitaly: More or less every politician going is both a liar and not a liar.

@Vitaly It's amazing how you make the exact same error violent religious fanatics make: you take that book literally.

That's not Atheism.

Also, so long as you read the Bible literally you are failing Theology 101 just as badly as the Creationists

Jinx.

Jinx!

Meta-jinx.

Double-jinx

Meta-meta-jinx.

@RegDwight That's not. But you are missing the point. I am not talking about gods in general. Just the particular deity described in the Bible, out of thousands of gods humanity has ever invented.

Damn, got me that time

Ayahwish would be a more apt word.

The Bible is a collection of random stories told and re-told by millions of people over the course of millenia, then written down and re-written, and re-written again by anyone who felt like re-writing it.

And you take it literally?

/sigh

@Vitaly: that's like saying "Just because you've describe rabbits incorrectly, they can't exist."

Haha.

Even if some deity exists, it's not the Biblical deity (as described in the Bible).

Now you understand?

Of course I do, because that's exactly what I'm saying the whole time.

We understand what you're saying, we merely think you have an odd idea of what "as described in the Bible" actually means.

@RegDwight — Word. Or, perhaps in this case, The Word ... mmmm, OK, just word.

God (deity in general) ≠ Yahweh (the Biblical deity)

Oh ye gods and little fishes.

@Vitaly just to be clear, are we arguing that the Bible is self-inconsistent, or is inconsistent with archaeology, physics, etc. ?

@JSBangs Both.

Moo.

I will let this speak for itself.

Gotta go!

TTYL.

I will let this speak for itself too.

Epic fail

Way to go, @RegDwight. Light up a room and leave.

@Vitaly but proving either of these things does not prove the non-existence of the God described therein. in order for the non-existence of god to be provable from the imperfections of the Bible, you have to include the minor premise that the Bible is a complete, consistent, and perfectly accurate description of Yahweh. and now we're back to what @RegDwight said: you're making the same mistake that the fundies do

it is possible that Yahweh exists, but that the Bible describes him imperfectly or inconsistently

or incompletely

@JSBangs I hereby describe an object: it is an apple that is both elongated and perfectly round (as in a perfect sphere). Does that object exist?

similar to how your chat avatar is an inaccurate representation of you, but its inaccuracies do not prove your non-existence

@Vitaly Insufficient information. There are geometries in which it is possible, I think (though my geometry never was much good).

@Vitaly no, and i see what you did there. you still need to prove (a) that the Bible contains statements with the same sort of mathematical referents as above, and (b) that those statements actually contradict

Euclidean 3-space.

@Vitaly The difference is that religious descriptions are more akin to "Look, an apple! It is both elongated and perfectly round!"

Your response is, "Such an object cannot exist. Therefore, there is no apple."

But you are getting hung up on the description instead of the object.

@MrHen No. My response is, “Such an object cannot exist. Therefore, there is no apple that is both elongated and perfectly round”

suppose that two non-mathematicians describe an apple. one says that it's round. the other says that it's slightly pointy on one end. only an idiot would insist that such an apple couldn't exist -- anyone else would recognize that the statements are (or could be) consistent, since normal human language allows us to use the word "round" to describe objects which are not perfect spheres, etc.

The Biblical deity is a deity that, if existed, had all properties attributed to it by the Bible.

@Vitaly Right. But Reg and Rhodri don't care about apples that are elongated and perfectly round. They just care if an apple exists or not.

@Vitaly Not really. The descriptions in the Bible are just descriptions. It isn't really concerned about "properties" as you think of them.

see, this is why i don't bother debating religion on the internet. i'll readily admit that many of the arguments for $diety are fallacious and puerile. but many atheological arguments are also fallacious and puerile, and it's way too much effort to sort between them.

(Not that I am disagreeing with your point; I am just trying to help show the difference between what you are saying and what they are saying.)

I'm afraid you're still in the realms of literalist reading, which dooms pretty much any theological conversation.

@JSBangs Agreed.

anyway, back to work. enjoy your mathematically perfect spherical apples

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace

rekindling the fire !

Wow.

I am an idiot.

I always keep forgetting the response to “prove that God doesn't exist.”

I should have said that he is the one who had to prove its existence. :-/

@Vitaly Meh. That as much of a copout as saying my personal experiences prove the existence of X for myself.

Not in this case, no. You had claimed God never existed, which is rather stronger.

So I should have claimed that God existed at some point but doesn't exist now? ;)

@Vitaly "God does not exist."

That is the simple form.

Hitler does not exist either.

Existence proofs. Love 'em or hate 'em, proof by counter-example is always easier ;-)

@MrHen. Serious question time.

@MikeVaughan Go for it.

What the hell is your gravatar?

@MikeVaughan It is an obscure reference to something I enjoy.

Which is....?

lol

@AlainPannetier that's a rather gross misrepresentation of the purpose of the bible

@MikeVaughan That's the fun part ;)

sigh

'twould be better applied to Descartes' Pensees, for example

Descartes' problem like that of many other people is that he was raised in the creed that God existed and then, like Pascal for instance, he had to spend his whole life reconciling his experience with this core part of himself.

@AlainPannetier The Bible isn't supposed to be a book that proves God. The idea of proving God was completely foreign at the time the book was written.

@MrHen. I have to agree 100% with this.

Disproving the Bible is as pointless as disproving Lord of the Rings.

It's like a book of wisdom The Book. Hence the capital B.

I was just reacting to the metaphors about rabbits and apples - which I did find very funny anyway ;-)

Although I'm not a believer I did read it a lot.

If only because I love art and this is the first book you have to know when you study art history.

arguably the god(s) of hinduism are harder to disprove than the abrahamic god, since there is less dependence on an authoritative text and the historical record

if mean, if you proved that the events of the ramayana were completely fabricated, that wouldn't necessarily derail much by way of hindu devotion

So New Age gods (or whatever) are the most difficult to disprove?

@JSBangs The reason for this is because the Christian faith posits more in the way of definition/truth about the relevant supernatural being(s). Specifically, the interactions with the natural world tend to have heavy implications on what can and cannot happen.

I suspect this is the angle Vitaly was aiming for.

@Vitaly yes. native americans and buddhists have it pretty easy, too. (and the overlap with new agers is pretty wide, there.)

@Vitaly Yeah, since they are more than happy throwing out all of anything. It is hard to argue with a group that feels okay throwing out the law of non-contradiction.

with buddhism, even if you proved that buddha himself never existed, it wouldn't necessarily discount the four noble truths

I would not really think of Buddhism as a religion. More as a philosophy.

@AlainPannetier Eh. That may work in some areas but others seem to be okay just thinking up multiple deities.

@AlainPannetier It counts as a major world religion. "Religion" is sort of an annoying technical term but most definitions will include Buddhism.

This is partly because of its various denominations.

It does not have a god. Does it ?

@MrHen right. christianity makes the most by way of specific historical claims, which makes it the most vulnerable to discrediting by way of historical argument. this is a legitimate avenue of attack. but the rubbish about "contradictions" goes nowhere, especially since most of the bible is mytho-poetic rather than historical-propositional, and talking about poetry contradicting itself is missing the point by a wide margin

@AlainPannetier "God" isn't necessarily required for "religion" in the way we tend to think of gods

@JSBangs Agreed.

@MrHen +1 to everything you just said. excluding buddhism from the definition of religion is pretty pointless

In a similar vien, many of the traditional beliefs about God are not necessarily from the Bible but from later theologians.

Mahomet and Jesus say they are prophets and base their own authority on their middle man roles. Siddhartha does not.

@JSBangs The fun one is classifying Confucianism.

@AlainPannetier Jesus essentially claimed the power and authority of God. "Middle man" may not be the appropriate term.

I might have been overly provocative in my phrasing. Agreed.

;)

Since we seem to have calmed down some, here is a good fire-starter: Is atheism a religion?

@MrHen still a religion, imho. though i'm of the camp that says that secularism should be classified as a religion, so i try to draw my circle pretty wide.

That one seems to get some interesting emotional responses.

ha! i wrote that before i saw @MrHen's question

@JSBangs You'll get no argument from me but it sure bugged some of my classmates.

@AlainPannetier yes, that was exactly my point. you could eliminate Siddhartha completely without necessarily discrediting the core tenets of buddhism

also, you should add Moses to the list of those claiming to be prophets and deriving their authority therefrom

@JSBangs And for all practical purposes, Paul. But his focus and methodology was a little different.

@JSBangs Agreed.

@AlainPannetier No worries. I never assume anything about another person's beliefs.

@AlainPannetier Dude. For the religious, you are a militant atheist as long as you use the word atheist to describe yourself.

@MrHen Paul tends to describe himself as an apostle, but that's just a little matter of directness of connection.

Even if they are arguing for or against something... arguments are (or should be) agnostic.

@MrHen hmmm, i'm not sure about that. paul doesn't evince the quality of being self-aware that he's handing down authoritative teaching, unlike moses and jesus and mohammed. i think paul would be rather surprised to find out that his letters became scripture

@Vitaly That isn't really true. There is a big difference between types of atheists and anyone who thinks otherwise is just blind. The same thing is true for "the religious" or "politicians" or any other group.

Well let's phrase it that way. I am an atheist who loves religions.

Because, you might have gathered that by now, I love the past.

@JSBangs Ooh, good point. I hadn't thought of it like that.

@AlainPannetier Loving the past is easier than loving the future.

;)

@AlainPannetier amen to that.

@AlainPannetier That directly translates in my mind to “I am an atheist who loves belief systems that claim that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.”

@Vitaly i appear to be the only theist in the room, but you're the only one i would call a militant atheist.

@JSBangs: that's what makes his letters so useful. One of the biggest problem with reading them is remembering why he was writing those brickbats and bouquets in the first place, and not taking the wrong things away from them.

@Vitaly No offense, but I think your translator is broken.

Or at least not very accurate.

@JSBangs Why, because I stated that God doesn't exist? So that is enough to be called a militant atheist? Great, because I don't want to go to the trouble of suicide bombing, burning “holy” texts in the streets, etc, etc required to be called a militant religious person.

@Vitaly: yes, that was a very bald, bold statement indicative of a militant stance. You'll notice if you read back that you've only compounded it since then.

i think a comparison of the responses of @Vitaly, @AlainPannetier, and @MrHen in this conversation suffices to demonstrate the differences between militant and non-militant atheism

It's the sort of approach that gets labeled as "trolling" in non-religion-related discussions, as a rule of thumb.

@Rhodri Eh... I think "trolling" is a little strong. I don't think Vitaly is trolling.

But really, as much as I enjoy talking about these topics I don't particular care for talking about a person.

@JSBangs Do you think the militant in militant atheism is as strong as the militant in militant religiosity?

I think that carries things too far.

@Vitaly Is it not the same word? I guess I don't understand what the distinction would be.

> the trouble of suicide bombing, burning “holy” texts in the streets, etc, etc required to be called a militant religious person

(There are different methods and degrees of militant behavior, naturally.)

A religious person has to actually do something of that sort to be called militant

the militant atheist is the counterpoint to the fundamentalist. not only is he convinced of his correctness, he believes that all contradicting opinion is a matter of stupidity or moral inferiority

@Vitaly I don't think of the term "militant" as "acting like a military" when applied to belief systems.

@MrHen: trolling does imply intent. The trouble is I do read intent into what's been written. And please bear in mind that from my perspective, this is all about a person :-)