[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by horn

this is complete rubbish. that getting "poorly informed information" is a bad way to go when trying to learn about something is tautological bollocks. ofcourse getting "poorly informed" information is a bad way to get informed about something. the point is that not everyone is poorly informed, and to suggest that people's critical faculties that enable them to differenciate between the poorly and the well informed should be (and end at) whether what they're listening to comes with a bibliography and reference to "scientific studys" is possibly the dumbest thing i've ever heard. not only do you appear to have completely disregarded the moral, or "opinion" aspects of these (and every) discussion simply because they may involve assumptions that have not got scientific studys to hand, but you have continued to neglect the fact that empirical data is not understanding in itself. it's concepts that act as the mental glue to link our past experiences and current interactions with the world (i.e. data) that gives meaning and understanding to the world around us. scientific studys can help us weed out faulty assumptions or missed guesses, but only to an extent. they are still pieces of data that need to be interpreted.



let me clear this up for you. you were listing reasons for why alcoholism exists. not reasons for why it's actually a problem (in the sense that it's a "bad" thing). the discussion i was a part of was concerned with the latter.



no, i haven't had scientific training at a high level.
i'm not saying these studys couldn't/can't follow the "scientific method". the problem is you suggesting that the conclusions you draw form these studies are scientifically proven. they aren't.


showing an action(drinking) occurred after another action(not going to church) doesn't mean you've overcome the problem of proving causation. you haven't actually answered what he asked. i'll ask you. what if these people are just depressed? they feel low and start to neglect their responsibilitys such as acheiving sales targets at work, going to church and taking the kids out on the weekend. as their mental "health" and life in general starts to deteriorate they start drinking. now you've got correlation between drinking and non church attendance (which you've decided to conflate with atheism), but have you got causation? was this guys reach for the bottle made after dropping sartre to the floor? probably not, dace.






ok. here's what you're now going to do to help ease your desperation and help me see what you're seeing. you're going to go up to one of the posts i made in reply to either nod or t&f (whichever one really set in stone for you why i'm pig ignorant and haven't a clue what i'm talking about), then you're going to click quote, reply to it and hopefully show me up for the clown you know i am.



ok. i'm getting a bit confused here, lets see if i've got this straight...
you're raging against the standard of debate in this thread. however, you've targetted me out in particular because i have a MASSIVE hardon for it. you won't reply to my specific posts however because you're making a general statement about the standard of debate in the thread?
that almost sounds like as fun a merry-go-round as
does.

If I had written this post I would ritually cut off my fingers.