Pitts’ hypocrisy

Quite wrong Spoon. Faith is the magic "get out of reason free" card that believers like Pitts play when reality is piling up against them and their hand is losing. It's the ultimate, arrogant cop-out, nothing but a handy loophole and escape clause, and always a hypocritical finger in the eye of civil discourse. "I believe it so deal with it" is a breathtaking brush-off, the elevation of the personal intuition, local tradition and emotional preference into an arbitrary bludgeon over all reasoned argument. It is nothing of value, no matter how it flatters itself that it's the golden road to profound, eternal truths. We "debunkers" just see through the bluff and bluster, not a hard trick at all. Mystical hand-waving about what maybe might be true, followed by a leap of assertion, doesn't distract us.

Believers have it all backwards, when it comes to honest truth-seeking.

March 11, 2011 at 8:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Pitts’ hypocrisy

Cato:
Reading comprehension like Shewmon.

March 4, 2011 at 8:24 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Pitts’ hypocrisy

Faith is believin' what you feel like, and tellin' everybody else to "deal with it." A "leap of faith" is what an honest man calls "jumping to conclusions."

March 4, 2011 at 8:23 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Pitts’ hypocrisy

Shewmon:
You mean beyond your reading comprehension.

March 4, 2011 at 8:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Pitts’ hypocrisy

Don't misquote Twain.
"Faith is believin' what you know ain't so."

March 4, 2011 at 8 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Absurd model

No, Liberty_One, the author makes the correct assumption, proven by experience, that the private sector is inadequate to address the destabilizing, destructive and deeply inhumane conditions that result from a winner-take-all economy. Someone or something must work to restore a healthy social balance that doesn't abandon vast numbers of citizens to a hopeless condition. Government is best situated to do that corrective work, the institution we use to collectively debate, then attack with coordinated resources, social failures of broad concern. He correctly notices that the proposed budget solves nothing, only yanking the rug from under hard-working but unfortunate Kansans, exacerbating their troubles while conning them into thinking they are being helped. I wonder what the very-well-off will do when the pile of less-fortunates they depend on eventually crumbles beneath them. Their short-sightedness and failure to see how this plays out in the long-run shows that affluence is no sure mark of intelligence or wisdom -- and is often only the product of dogged greed and overblown self-regard. We'll all go together when we go.

December 15, 2010 at 8:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

New policy on gays could devastate military

Incidentally, fire the chaplains. They don't belong on the government payroll in the first place. If anyone is undermining unit cohesion, it's those parasites.

December 7, 2010 at 6:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

God works in mysterious ways

Funny, I was at that same game, sitting on the other side of God. When I turned to ask Him the same questions about what He was up to, God said "Who are you talking to? I don't exist and you have no reason to think I do. Shut up and enjoy the game."

So which theologian putting words in "God's" mouth you gonna believe, Pitts or me? Nothing mysterious about Pitts' god -- he's as transparent as could be. He is whatever Pitts needs him to be, like all gods are to their devotees. Imaginary friends are like that. They do what we tell them to.

December 5, 2010 at 10:33 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Treating like with like: Lawrence community increasingly turns to homeopathy

http://www.skepdic.com/homeo.html

'Nuff said.

September 27, 2010 at 9:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Burning more than the Quran

The man's theology is perfectly consistent internally, and with the attitudes conveyed in the Bible which nowhere calls for religious "tolerance," but touts just the opposite. If you accept the premises of this preacher's faith, hatred for Islam and its "false prophet" is an obvious, necessary outcome. If Pitts deplores this kind of hateful religious expression and wants to actually persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with him, he need to debunk the man's premises, which of course Pitts cannot do because religion has no objective criteria, only bald, competing assertions and emotional appeals.

Pitts always zeroes right in on the easy targets, the obvious fools and bigots, and has made a career of that lazy pastime. But he never engages the intellectually hard, socially awkward issues, such as how "liberal" believers -- like Pitts himself -- distort the actual content and character of their holy books to conform to modern, tolerant, secular values and humane intuitions, while dragging all the lousy baggage of their primitive traditions along, needlessly dignifying and perpetuating the whole poisoned mess. If Pitts thinks this guy has his Bible wrong, let him bring out his theological and exegetic credentials and prove it. Let him specifically repudiate the many revolting ideas in the Bible (and Quran) he considers invalid, and explain the basis for his editing choice. He can begin with Hell and vicarious atonement for original sin. Let him explicitly state and prove that Christians who accept those doctrines are wrong, or if he believes in them himself, explain his moral ascendency over a loud-mouthed guy who burns a few books.

Otherwise, he's just name-calling on an obviously tacky man, to no real purpose, and arrogating for himself the same evidence-free religious authority his adversaries claim. Yeah, the Quran-burner guy's distasteful and stupid, but can you demonstrate that he's wrong?

September 8, 2010 at 8:18 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )