On Faith:
mickey1313, October 22, 2013 at 2:26 pm: "Agreed, I discount everything told to me by a Thiest, do to there unilateral ignorance. If one believes in a magic old white man in the sky, why would I hold any openions they have as valid."
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/
You Fail Logic Forever: Ad Hominem.
You can't condemn everything a person says to be wrong because of some unrelated anecdote about the individual. This isn't the total definition of Ad Hominem, but it's absolutely being invoked when you do this. You can't discount everything told to you by anyone. Logic comes from factual information being appropriately applied, and this information can be applied despite an individual's character, or even fallacious origins (note the Fallacy Fallacy, where even though someone can use logic in a fallacious manner, the conclusion may still be accurate, just for the wrong reasons).
This is where I get frustrated with people. We pendulum from one extreme to another in the field of tolerance. One moment, we're insane fundamentalists who believe only One Truth, despite all evidence to the contrary that the world is a little bit more flexible (at least complicated) than what our One Truth will allow ('homosexuality is unnatural', 'freedom is the absolute virtue', 'Sarah Palin is not an alien scourge sent to destroy us from the inside'). The next moment, we're pretending that those idiots on the other side have no reason, logic, or capacity for intellect, and thus everything they say is wrong ('homosexuality is natural', 'freedom is not an absolute virtue', 'Sarah Palin is absolutely an alien scourge sent to destroy us from the inside').
The reality is often somewhere in between; granted, not always (and rhetoric is often tempted to use that False Median as a way to justify ridiculously extreme ideas into still absurdly conservative/liberal ones by moving one goal post as far as possible away from a reasonable compromise). Homosexuality is unnatural, if you consider 'natural' to mean the usual way things happen for an obvious, logical reason; it's also natural if you consider 'natural' to mean it occurs frequently in nature and it has a rational alternative reason for its existence. Freedom as a virtue is a matter of opinion, and can be fairly argued as an absolute or non-absolute, and whether you consider it one or not, compromises can be made around it that don't create gridlock policies. And ultimately, no, Sarah Palin is not an alien (but she acts like one hell-bent on destroying our country from the inside, and we may want to set up something to counteract her actions, regardless what her true designs or origin are, to ensure our survival).
Look, guys, when you want to belittle and insult your opponents, I consider it bad form, but I do accept that it's just a part of debate. Passions run high. Some people don't care about politeness and civility (to what I believe is the detriment of finding solutions to our problems, but whatever). You can, and will, tell someone they're a bloody fool for believing in God (the difference between a Mormon and a Moron is only one 'm'; as a Mormon, I've always been a little conscious of that). Just don't make that the BASIS of your argument.
Case in point, the post to which I'm responding:
Mickey, you're a @$#%ing idiot. You can't over generalize an entire population of people, especially one as large as the one you're insinuating, as incapable of ever having a valid opinion. Honestly, I feel like a cliché just writing that, but that only compounds the insult that one would even be provoked into saying something so common sense. From Albert Einstein to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin to Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Copernicus to George Washington Carver (THE MORE YOU KNOW [sparkle&tm]), there have been many incredibly educated, thoughtful, world-changing individuals with, albeit varying, degrees in faith, all of which I mentioned were Christians. Your stupid post is stupid (redundancy department of redundancy), not least because you have SEVEN grammatical errors in it. (Notice, there's nothing wrong with telling a fool he's a fool. That doesn't make an argument ad hominem. As long as you correctly point out WHY he's a fool in the process.)
As a closing thought, I have a very shamanistic perception of faith. I still consider myself Mormon because I believe in the general concept, many of the tenants, and a good portion of the mythology as well. Other Christian faiths have never felt quite as modern, and are too attached to trying to hold onto an ancient, somewhat obsolete view of faith and the world. The Mormon faith, in contrast, tries to reinterpret that world view into something current along with reimagining the past, creating a church that is living and breathing in the Present (your mileage will vary on how successful that is). And I'm okay with the pieces that are inherently wrong because I know I don't have to practice them, due to the very tenants in the religion (the Prophet is not infallible, clearly evidenced by their actions). I believe in a power not greater than God, but either tangent or parallel to Him. The earth is alive. The sky is a live. The animals around us and their environments both bleed a power that fills me with too much passion and invigoration to not have some kind of phenomenal belief in it. But that's just me. The fact that I believe in these things, and the conflicts it has to my more structured faith, are not above criticism. And I'm okay with that, too. But I don't hold it against others when I view their beliefs extreme (in either direction). It doesn't invalidate their opinions, and my faith doesn't invalidate mine. I'd appreciate it if we all found a way to debate without arbitrarily dismissing each other's thoughts because of our tangent beliefs or dismissing those tangent beliefs themselves, and started appreciating each other for who we are.
