Bluejay

Hi, MsQwerty. Calm down! You’re blowing this way out of proportion. It certainly wasn’t my intention to accuse you of ignorance, and I apologize if I gave you that impression. I suppose it didn’t help my cause when I responded to a few of your peripheral comments with my irritable keystrokes. I’ve made a large number of such mistakes in a number of settings over the last couple of weeks, and I very sincerely wish I could redo the entire week, but alas, time only runs in one direction for me. I added that last section about other cases you should spend your time on in the hope that you would realize that I’m not antagonistic to animal rights, and am not your enemy, but just somebody who disagrees with you on the importance of one minor case study. Since it obviously had the opposite effect from what I intended, I wish I could take it back and try a different approach, but it’s too late for that now. I am a biologist, by the way, and I have spent a lot of time studying animal behavior: I am kind of speaking from expertise here. Granted, my experience is mostly with spiders and insects, but I have experience with mammals and birds, too. ----- A neurosis is a malfunction of the brain. Anything with a brain can have a neurosis. The signs of a neurosis are abnormal behaviors, which, for chickens, includes pulling out feathers, tics and twitches, over-alertness and excessive belligerence. (I’m not a chicken psychologist, but I did consider poultry science as a major in college). If the kangaroo had gone on a rampage, attacking everybody in its reach, you could easily make the case that the kangaroo was suffering from a neurosis. But, since it only attacked one person, and was otherwise very calm and peaceable, it’s clear that this kangaroo’s behavior was not abnormal. This shows that the kangaroo has not really been adversely, lastingly affected by this boxing performance. The only thing going on here was a kangaroo learning to associate the trainer and his boxing outfit with the group of things that need to be attacked. This is not neurotic behavior: it’s just learning. Boxing behavior is a normal behavior for kangaroos. This kangaroo was acting “normal” in an “abnormal” situation: as long as we’re anthropomorphizing animals, this sounds like the kangaroo’s character has been strengthened by the boxing. But, those of us who prefer not to anthropomorphize the kangaroo simply say that it has learned to associate one stimulus with a group of other stimuli, and react to them all the same way. ----- This is an appeal to emotions. Appealing to emotions is, by definition, not logical, MsQwerty. In logic, it is considered a type of red herring (irrelevancy) fallacy. I am somewhat trained in formal logic, too, by the way. My argument was not an appeal to emotions, but an appeal to you to recognize that you don’t really know the kangaroo psyche. It is folly for you to conclude that the kangaroo’s behavior is a tragic result of abuse. I didn’t make a value judgment about the kangaroo based on its emotional capacity (or lack thereof), and I don’t perceive animal cruelty to be a less noble cause than sweatshops in India because of difference in emotional or sentient capacity between sweatshop workers and kangaroos. I only attempted to make you understand that animal behavior is different from human behavior, and that anthropomorphization or emotional appeals are not the best methods for pursuing animal rights. Just because it bothers you doesn’t mean it’s unethical: the "shock factor" is not a meaningful analytical tool for diagnosing animal cruelty (or almost anything else, for that matter).

The same as my thoughts on killing plants for food. Either way, it's still killing.

Sorry, Dravin: there will be no sympathy for people who rough-house with clowns---it's only wrong when it's done to kangaroos.

Hi, Marts1. This sort of slippery-slope argument is quite pessimistic. People draw their lines in different places for different issues all the time, but the failure of their line to line up with ours doesn't mean they aren't drawing a line. Isn't the whole point of life for us to learn the principles behind the rules, so we can understand how to live our lives in a manner conducive with godliness? Doesn't this require us to ask questions about the rules, and about why the rules are the way they are? How can we ever reach the point of moral, spiritual maturity requisite to make the responsible decisions that we are expected to make in our next life if we don't ever ask the questions necessary to understand the principles behind the rules we are asked to live by? I think Justaname's question deserves serious consideration. Sweeping it under the rug in the name of obedient conservatism is not going to help anybody progress toward the enlightenment required of the gods we expect to become in the next life. My personal opinion is that we are not morally, spiritually responsible enough, as a whole, to live our lives according to the actual principles of the Gospel, so we are simply given metrics by which to judge our progress, and, just like the Hebrews of the OT, we apply all of our energy toward comparing ourselves with the metrics, and no energy toward comparing ourselves with the standards requisite of Godhood. [/soapbox]

Hi, CloudGate. You don't.

Hi, Wingnut. But, what is the distinction?

Hi, Mikbone. I would personally recommend avoiding the name "Napoleon": nobody deserves the ignominity of being simultaneously named after an evil dictator and a lame movie. ----- Well, as long as you're deciding your kid's political ideology before he's born, why not name him "Rush"?

Geez, Maureen---that's painful.

It's a capital P on every other website I've used. Thanks.

Hi, Mikbone. I'm not telling you any of the names I'm thinking of, because we're still planning to have another baby soon, and I have problems sharing. {AbE: How come my smiley didn't work? That totally stole my thunder.}

Hi, MsQwerty. Great, so why are you complaining about boxing, rather than about that prior case of animal cruelty? If that prior case of animal cruelty hadn't happened, would the boxing episode still be wrong? If so, argue your case on the merits of your case alone, and stop bringing in extraneous details. If not, then stop pretending that boxing is the real issue. ----- And you are capable of judging how upset a kangaroo is, are you? How do you judge this? By whether or not the kangaroo attacks? That's circular reasoning there. Furthermore, I hope you noticed that the kangaroo only attacked the trainer, even though there were at least two other viable targets. This animal has not be mentally or emotionally scarred by this trainer's actions: rather, he has only been convinced that this trainer is a competing male that needs to be put in his place. If the kangaroo was rampaging and attacking everyone in sight, you would have a point that this kangaroo has been severely affected by this; but, since the kangaroo's behavior is very precise and focused, this is only a case of making it perceive that one person as a threat. ----- American zoos have kangaroos too, you know. And, not all Australians are experts on kangaroo behavior. ----- But hey' date=' if you prefer to believe they make unprovoked attacks on people as this 'clown' is trying to convince you, go right ahead.[/quote'] Two things: One, conditioning goes both ways. Just as animals must be conditioned to fight a human, they must be conditioned to allow a human to pet them. If you don't believe me, go try and pet a wild boomer, and return and report to us the results of your encounter. I argue that it is better to train an animal to dislike humans than it is to train them to let humans come close enough to pet them, because docility toward humans has greater potential to get an animal harmed. So, it could be argued that petting zoos are more abusive than boxing matches. ----- Two, you are anthropomorphizing kangaroos. Boxing/fighting is an instinct for kangaroos: it is not an emotional, human response to abuse, as you are trying to portray it. Expose that kangaroo to another male kangaroo, and you may also see fighting. Repeatedly expose that kangaroo to another male kangaroo with which it has had fights in the past, and you definitely will see fighting. You are saying that it is abusive for the trainer to convince a kangaroo that he is a competing male, and let the kangaroo wallop him. This is how kangaroos live, MsQwerty. They don't have opinions on whether or not certain actions are right or wrong: rather, they simply respond in the way that is most conducive to their survival. You are transposing your own feelings onto the kangaroo, when, in reality, the kangaroo doesn't care. ----- I commend you for your sense of justice and ethics, but I feel that your effort could be better spent on other, more substantive cases of animal abuse. In this case, your emotional outrage is in great disproportion to the actual crime being commited. Please focus on more important cases, such as habitat loss for millions of animals in the tropical rainforests of the world, or animals developing bonafide neuroses after being chained up or kept in tiny cages for long periods of time, or even chickens at meat-growing facilities being kept in stacked in tiny cages so that the ones on bottom get inundating in the droppings from the chickens above them. Don't waste your time on idiots trying to get beat up by kangaroos.

Hi, MsQwerty. To you, there is a difference. To the kangaroo, there is no difference. He reacts to a human trainer the same way he reacts to a competing male in the wild (which is why I attached that video). If the trainer had been beating up on the kangaroo or malnourishing the kangaroo or running Frankenstein experiments on the kangaroo, I would agree fully with you. But, the trainer deliberately refrained from landing a single punch, and, if you watch the video, did not "aggravate" the kangaroo: the kangaroo came out swinging while the trainer's back was turned! Letting oneself get pummeled by a wild animal in front of a crowd while taking measures to prevent serious injury simply is not animal abuse in my book. Any actual abuse that did occur here was of such a small measure as to be a complete waste of effort to try to rectify. If animal abuse really upsets you, focus on Michael Vick and commercial pork farms.

Hi, Snow. I agree: someone should do something about this! Kangaroos shouldn't have to box: they should be allowed to roam free in the wild, and do this all day: Oh, wait...

Everyone here is so quick to judge this woman for trying to push the rules and get away with something. Why is nobody considering the possibility that she is just lazy or forgetful? Maybe she miscalculated the number of days or remembered the deadline incorrectly? Or, maybe she went home everyday saying, "Oh shoot! I forgot to get that test! Oh well, I'll do it tomorrow." Seriously, y'all, why does everybody assume there is foul play involved? Do y'all really have that bleak an opinion of people?

Hi, Snow. Well, after I was a jerk to everyone else, I had to make sure he didn't think I was on his side, or anything like that.

Hi, Roundearth. I should also point out that you have now reduced your argument to your personal assertion that your argument is obviously true. So, you have somehow managed to use three different logical fallacies to support your argument: 1. Argument from ignorance: "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" 2. Begging the question: "If my conclusion is equivalent to my assumption, my conclusion is true" 3. Ipse-dixitism: "My assumption is obviously true"

Hi, Roundearth. It's never logically valid for your conclusion to be the same as your assumption. They actually have a name for what you're doing. It's called Petitio principii or begging the question, and it's universally regarded as a logical fallacy.

Hi, Traveler. Likewise. When I get a reasonable, humble response like this, I feel completely embarrassed when I go back and read the belligerent tone of my posts in the thread leading up to it. We got off to a bad start, and it’s my fault. I’m sorry. ----- So, you’re leaning towards atonement being a natural possibility, but one that the Fall inhibits our ability to master? I suppose it makes sense: it only troubles me in that it makes it hard to decide what the words “natural” and “supernatural” actually mean. I would consider the Atonement “supernatural” simply because it seems to defy the common logic and empirical reasoning that I equate with the word “natural.” I have tried many times to figure out how the Atonement works, and I have concluded that it doesn’t follow any “natural” principles that I know of. For that reason, I have relegated it to the “supernatural” category until such time as I am granted understanding of it. The trouble there is that “supernatural” simply becomes a synonym of “unknown” (not that there is a clear way to distinguish the two concepts, anyway). ----- Ideally, science shouldn’t include faith, and, in general, I don’t think it does. However, individual scientists very often might do so. Trying to turn Ockham’s razor into an offensive weapon, for example, would be a more proactive approach than something that isn’t faith would normally entail. ----- I’m well aware of that: I’m one of those large egos.

Hi, Roundearth. No, it isn’t. But, even if it is, the non-existence of God still isn’t, so this is a complete red herring. ----- I repeat my conclusion concerning your argument: it doesn’t defeat the naturalistic God that Traveler, Vanhin, FunkyTown and company are talking about, and it doesn’t defeat the supernaturalistic God that you’re talking about. Everyone else has been arguing that you need to know the Mormon God. But, that comes in the testing phase of the logic process. Before you can test an argument, you have to make sure it’s a valid hypothesis to begin with. Your argument clearly is not, so it fails before the testing stage. If you took it to a Baptist forum, you would lose there, too. If you took it to a Hindu forum, you would lose there, too. It doesn’t matter that you happened to take it to a Mormon forum, because it doesn’t work on any God.

Hi, Traveler. An assumption is not a belief: it is a heuristic tool for providing the proper framework of a logical conclusion. An assumption is an implicit “if” clause in a logical argument. It is only treated as true in a default manner. Empiricism is devoid of “belief”: it is an epistemology that is only concerned with observable practicality*. That which is practical is treated as “true”; everything else is disregarded until such time as it can be demonstrated to be practical. *Note that when I use the word “practical,” I’m obviously not using the societal sense of the word, but the logical sense of the word. So, something is “practical” insofar as it can produce observable results, not insofar as it provides important solutions to human problems. Faith, however, is a belief. It requires the proactive affirmation of something for which there is no empirical evidence. ----- Okay, but this is different from what you originally said: you said he had to disprove the existence of “advanced intelligence and science.” We are not defining God by the level of His intelligence, but by the things He is capable of doing. Thus, a more appropriate question to ask would be whether or not increasing intelligence is capable of empowering a being to do what we purport our God to be able to do. ----- Well, I believe I objected to it. I repeat my earlier skepticism that God can be so succinctly defined by the quantity of His intelligence: for example, how intelligent must one be before one is capable of atoning for someone else’s sins? I do not think that all of God’s attributes can be explained as consequences of His greater intelligent: I think some radical type of change in substance will also have to be invoked at some point. ----- We don’t even have to specify what he’s arguing against, though, because his argument fails before it even gets that specific. It fails on simple logic, not on the peculiarities of Mormon beliefs. It is useless to continue to argue worldviews when there is a more fundamental reason why his argument fails.

Hi, Roundearth You haven’t actually added anything to your argument except more words: the concept and logic behind it haven’t changed. So, neither has my rebuttal changed. You are still saying that “natural” and “existence” are synonymous. As long as you make “naturalism” a prerequisite for “existence,” you can only be referring to “natural existence.” This is not the kind of existence that a supernaturalist thinks God has anyway, so why should he or she care that you have shown that their supernatural God does not have “natural existence”? I certainly don’t care, and neither does Traveler, Snow, Finrock, Prisonchaplain or any of the others on this thread (even though none of us is apparently a supernaturalist). You’ve produced an argument that is completely and utterly superfluous. The supernatural theist should have no qualms agreeing with you that his/her supernatural God does not have a “natural existence.” And, the natural theist need not concern him/herself with someone who thinks an absence of evidence for God proves that God does not exist. The proposition of atheism is not in a position to proactively demonstrate its own veracity, because it can only be arrived at by ruling all alternatives. Thus, strong atheism is untenable as a logical proposition. It is explicitly the belief that a universal negative can be, and indeed, has been, demonstrated.

Hi, Anatess. Not to put words in Travelers mouth but this exactly what we believe. That the advancement of science gives us a better understanding of the nature of God. Eventually, when the time comes, then we would have all the scientific knowledge required to see God... maybe not 10 years from now... but we are assured that even if we will not know the exact time this will happen, that it WILL happen. No offense, Anatess, but you completely misunderstood what I said. This has nothing to do with the discussion Traveler and I are having. Let me explain my statement a little more clearly: Traveler says that Roundearth has to prove that advanced intelligence and science do not exist in order to disprove God. But, there are countless examples of "advanced intelligence and science" that we could theoretically discover that are not God. For example, aliens who have figured out how to make better underwater vehicles than we have. Since nobody would consider that kind of "advanced intelligence and science" to be God, Roundearth does not have to disprove the existence of that kind of "advanced intelligence and science" in order to disprove the existence of God. The only "advanced intelligence and science" that Roundearth has to disprove are the kinds of "advanced intelligence and science" that could be considered "God's intelligence and science." Does that make sense?

Hi, Finrock. It's a pleasure to meet you, too! ----- Actually, his points were perfectly relevant. If you prefer to debate with him the meaning of "supernatural" and whether or not the LDS God fits this definition, that is your prerogative; but, given that empiricism can't distinguish between "supernatural" and "natural, but not yet demonstrated," his points are only nominally related to the definition of "supernatural." In the end, the error he is making is trying to transform an absence of evidence (Ockham's razor) into evidence of absence, and he's just using some fancy double-talk, combined with erronaeous semantics, to accomplish it. ----- The Mormon frame of reference is superfluous in this debate: the argument fails because it is logically unsound, not because, even if it were true, it wouldn't apply to our God. In fact, the way it is set up, it doesn't apply to any God---supernatural, natural, quasi-natural, multi-dimensional or otherwise. So, you and Traveler can continue to argue that our God is not supernatural, if you wish; but, you haven't been successful in convincing him, so I prefer to cut to the chase and speak a language that Roundearth is more likely to understand.

Hi, Traveler. Thanks for your response. I have a major problem with this. You are misusing the word "faith." There is no faith involved in disregarding things that you cannot confirm through physical experience. Neither a tentative conclusion drawn from lack of evidence nor an affirmative conclusion drawn from personal observation is a faith-based conclusion. ----- Yes, and the reason he thinks he can make this argument is because he thinks absence of evidence can be used as evidence of absence. That's the real mistake that he is making: it has nothing to do with how LDS perceive God. ----- I don't think that this is a strictly accurate statement. It is certainly a statement that we like to make, and it has a certain logical appeal to it, but it's hard to explain, for instance, the Atonement as simply "more advanced science and/or technology": there really has to be a difference in substance in order to explain why Jesus can atone for other people's sins, and we can't. ----- Thus it is Roundearth’s obligation to prove either that advanced intelligence and science does not exists or that they are improbable, according to the principle of Ockham’s razor. No, you've gone too far here. He doesn't have to demonstrate that "advanced intelligence and science" do not exist generally: he has to demonstrate that the specific intelligence and science we attribute to God does not exist, or that a being that can utilize that specific intelligence and science does not exist. Otherwise, you are saying that the existence of science ten years more advanced than ours would be support for the existence of God as you define Him. ----- This has very little relevance when one factors in the error Roundearth makes in thinking that absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Hi, Traveler. I've got to be honest with you, Traveler: you're not being half as clear as you think you are. I echo Roundearth’s complaints that your arguments contain too little substance to be debated meaningfully. And, based on your explanations of things, I’m not convinced that your touting of scientific arguments is not fraudulent. ----- Ockham’s razor: “The explanation that involves the fewest unevidenced entities is most likely to be correct.” Selectivity and shallowness are kind of the principle behind Ockham’s razor: you don’t base theories on things you can’t observe' date=' unless you can’t explain a certain phenomenon without them. Furthermore, Ockham’s razor has nothing to do with what one is willing to accept as possible: it has everything to do with ruling out things that you accept as possible in favor of things that you find more plausible. ----- But, Ockham’s razor demands that we treat these “things” as non-existent until such time as we either (1) discover that they exist or (2) discover that natural processes cannot be explained without them. This is what Roundearth is doing, and there is nothing wrong with his doing it. And, there is nothing wrong with his application of Ockham’s razor to the soul. As far as he can tell, there is no evidence of a soul, and a soul is not required to explain the natural processes associated with life, so he is correct to disregard it until such time as it is demonstrated to be existent or required. He is not correct, however, to use Ockham’s razor as proof of anything. It is a heuristic designed only to draw conclusions when conclusions cannot be drawn from demonstration, and, as such, has no proactive power on its own. That is his only failure on this thread. ----- You’re referring to string theory or M-theory? Ockham’s razor would demand that we not consider these, because neither of them has produced evidence of the additional spatial dimensions required. In fact, neither is even considered to be testable at this point, so neither is even a “theory” in the true sense of the word. And, there is currently no promise that this situation is going to change in the near future, either. I’m not a cosmologist, or even a physicist, but I have spent ample time discussing these topics with professional cosmologists as part of the greater “evolution vs creation” debate, and I’m quite certain that your explanations are wholly inaccurate. Furthermore, your applications of Ockham’s razor are incorrect and inconsistent. On behalf of Roundearth (whose position I do not support), I voice the objection that your arguments are neither relevant nor intelligible. You are not helping by spouting partially-coherent bits of science of dubious quality, then deflecting Roundearth's requests for clarification under the pretense that he is underqualified.