Monday, July 14, 2008

Fairness and my poll

     I have put up a poll asking if Sye Tenb is a troll. One christian has stated that she thinks it is unfair because she considers it unlikely that christians will stop by to cast their vote.
     It is certainly true that this is a poll of readers of my blog -- not of the population at large. I still consider it more fair than Sye's own internal survey of those who agree in advance that he is not a troll. (I still expect Sye will respond. He has visited this blog before.)

20 comments:

dede said...

hold on pvblivs...if i recall, even the president of the united states can cast a vote for himself.

yah, yay, i know...it's ur blog.

i'm burning my dinner...really gotta go.
thanks for letting me post.

Pvblivs said...

Dede:

     Yes, he can. I state only that I expect him to vote that he is not a troll. I do not mean to suggest he should be disqualified. I did mean to suggest that in Sye's own survey, he automaticly disqualifies anyone who says "yes."

Sye TenB said...

Oh, he's a troll alright :-D

flinging dust said...

How do you define troll in this instance?

Clostridiophile said...

Tool or Troll? After destroying Sye's arguments a few months ago, he left and came back with the same shit. kinda like Peter Popoff, who took time off after being exposed as an evangelist fraud..only to come back a few years later with the same tricks. He's making millions from poor, stupid Christians who either can't or haven't thought of doing a simple google search of him before licking their envelopes. Luckily, Sye has a group of skeptics who picked right up exposing his "how can you know anything according to your worldview" excrement. Hi, Sye, your not fooling us!

Pvblivs said...

Flinging dust:

     I am inclined to let people consider whether he fits the term as they understand it.

Sye TenB said...

Colostridiophile said: "Hi, Sye, your not fooling us!"

Hey Clos! Well, being the troll that I am, that would be "you're not fooling us!"

Thankfully the record of your 'destroying' my arguments is still available for all to see :-)

How is it again that you can know anything according to your worldview?

Cheers,

Sye

PhilG said...

Sye,

Only in your magic, restrictive, bullying, inconsistent, morally reprehensible, bronze-age fantasy of a worldview is there any problem with ours.

Go and find somewhere else to sell your snake oil.

Phil

Reynold said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Reynold said...

Sye...the reason that you're considered a troll is that no matter what arguments are presented, you just disregard them and keep repeating your questions over and over ad nauseum.

Yet you refuse to explain how this "divine revelation" bs is supposed to work.

How would you deal with a person of some other faith who claims "divine revelation" for their views as you do for yours?


You keep asking "how do you know your reasoning is valid" while claiming that god is the basis for reason: yet he uses the same rules for logic that we do (after all, you claim that he is the basis for the rules of logic in the first place).

If you question the validity of logic for us, aren't you just shooting yourself in the foot as well?

After all, the only thing you relay on, "divine revelation" has never been shown by you to be verified?

Sye TenB said...

Reynold said: "Sye, you idiotic brainless fool...the reason that you're considered a troll is that no matter what arguments are presented, you just disregard them and keep repeating your questions over and over ad nauseum."

{Ahem} speaking of repeating arguments :-D

This is like you, with your pea-shooter, going to fight someone with a gun, complaining that he won't put away his gun.

As I have said many times, you may not like how I justify logic, but you have no basis in logic to even challenge my justification.

Cheers,

Sye

Gabo said...

The difference Sye, is that Reynold does understand your justification, and he does not change your meaning to just repeat the same argument/question over and over. You do that.

So, just so you see:

Your logic is:
Since there is logic there is a God, otherwise everything is viciously circular.

Did I change your meaning?

Now, let us see if this helps:

This is circular:
--God created logic <- no proof whatsoever, so could be false. There is "no experience" to back it up.
--There is logic <- true
--Therefore God exists <- no proof whatsoever, and this is what where the first argument fails, it assumes that God created logic.

For the thing above to work, the first argument should not be under dispute.

How is this different from:
--The sun has risen every morning <- TRUE!
--The sun will rise tomorrow <- reasonable conclusion given that the above is true.

Not a circle, simple observation and inference.

I know this will not convince you, but that is that.

Then, of course, you will say, I know because God said the rules would be kept (you even cited a verse about it).

So, how do you know?
--it is in the Bible
So what?
--The Bible was written by God.
But you have not proven that there is a god!
--Yes I have, he created logic

Which becomes a double circle.

But you still might come out with,
--No, evolution means everything is random, and thus you have no basis for expecting uniformity of nature.

Wrong Sye,

1. Evolution is not about "uniformity of nature." (in the sense of "its properties are stable" <- I can see you changing my meaning)
2. Evolution is not about the properties of the universe.
3. Evolution is about the diversity of life.
4. Evolution does not state that the whole process is completely random, it implies that there is no purpose. That is different, it also implies that life diversity is historical, rather than purposeful, in other words evolution does not lead to humans.
5. Yes, underlying processes can be thought of as "random," as in random variability, but it is not truly random, nothing is, it is rather historical, and there is a level of selection, variability stays within the realms of survival. If some random mutation would kill an organism, well, that mutation will not be seen. Mutations might be thought of as random, but success changes the "landscape."

Going back to your "justification" thing. There is no need to justify everything, there is no need for everything to have come from somewhere or just be a property.

Now, if you show your trollerism, I will not answer. You, of course, will say that I do not answer because you "demolished" my arguments. But that is fine.

G.E.

dede said...

good day pvblivs,

i believe the "reallllll" reason you created this poll is that you secretly wanted sye to return to comment.

me thinks you enjoy his reasoning. (smile =D )

dede said...

hi again,

just wanted to compliment you on providing a fairly decent blog here. i only had a small bit of time to scroll the through the threads.

maybe i'm a bit premature but i'll admit that the threads that i have read thus far have good dialog between you and some of your colleagues minus the smut of some other atheistic blogs.

Reynold said...

Me to Sye:

You keep asking "how do you know your reasoning is valid" while claiming that god is the basis for reason: yet he uses the same rules for logic that we do (after all, you claim that he is the basis for the rules of logic in the first place).

If you question the validity of logic for us, aren't you just shooting yourself in the foot as well?

After all, the only thing you relay on, "divine revelation" has never been shown by you to be verified?

I guess Sye never looked at the second post I made which has the above comment in it (I took out the first one because of the name-calling...needen't have bothered)

I think get_education pretty much has it when it comes to Sye, whose gun isn't loaded.

dede said...

i thought i'd come by and check on the poll results. i noticed is hasn't move for awhile.

see, my prediction was correct...this poll is slanted and considered void by me.

thanks for the opportunity of "free speech".

Pvblivs said...

Dede:

     If you want to tell your christian friends to stop by and vote that Sye is not a troll, you are welcome to do so. I haven't been "stuffing the box." (I only get one vote, myself.) As near as I can determine, you consider my poll invalid because christians don't visit the blogs of non-christians as they don't like to hear other points of view. If I got any of that wrong, be sure to let me know.

Sye TenB said...

pvblivs said: "If you want to tell your christian friends to stop by and vote that Sye is not a troll, you are welcome to do so."

You'll need someone more famous than me (or with SOME fame) to drive traffic to your blog :-D

"If I got any of that wrong, be sure to let me know."

Well, for one, you got the whole premise of the poll on Ray's blog wrong. There was a professed atheist posing as a Christian on Ray's blog, accusing me of being a troll. I simply asked those who were supposed to be on the same side as both of us (Christians) to vote on who they thought was the real troll. The imposter lost :-D

As far as this poll goes, it does not trouble me one iota that you folk think I'm a troll. In fact, I did not expect otherwise.

Cheers,

Sye

Pvblivs said...

     "You'll need someone more famous than me (or with SOME fame) to drive traffic to your blog."
     You may be surprised to learn that it doesn't really matter much to me. I only responded to her accusation that it was unfair because christians don't seem to be responding.
     "There was a professed atheist posing as a Christian on Ray's blog, accusing me of being a troll."
     If he was pretending to be a christian, then he was a professed christian. To call him a professed atheist means nothing more than he says he is an atheist.

Sye TenB said...

Pvblivs said: "To call him a professed atheist means nothing more than he says he is an atheist."

Actually, I call him a professed atheist, because it is my position that there are no real atheists (Romans 1: 18-21), and that he likely professes atheism when he is not posing as a Christian.

Cheers,

Sye