User talk:Jdog

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Thanks for pointing out how much Christian apologetics there was in the article Crisp. I haven't deleted it, instead I revised it and moved it to Can freethinkers believe a religion?. I think the article is now worth keeping, I will go through the other articles you flagged for deletion when I have time. Proxima Centauri 06:09, 22 September 2011 (CDT)

You helped improve the wiki by showing many theist arguments here unrefuted and that shouldn't happen in an atheist wiki. Just taking theist stuff out is better than nothing but we should show that our arguments are better, after all we follow the scientific method. Putting theist stuff back in and showing why it's unreasonable is a long job but that improves the wiki more I feel, thanks for drawing attention to where work is needed. Proxima Centauri 13:28, 22 September 2011 (CDT)

I think my main issue with the pages is that they don't link to anything else but other stuff he created. He seems to have made them purely to promote his view of Christianity and a couple of authors that he agrees with; this is not the place for him to do so. I'd love to rip the concept of "Christian Atheism" to shreds, but I don't see a reason to allow him to set up his own little "CrispWiki" here if he can't even be bothered to fit it in to the rest of the wiki. Jdog 17:43, 22 September 2011 (CDT)

Taking over part of a wiki when someone else is paying is a serious issue, if he wants to spread his own ideas and his favourite authors he should pay for his own website or create his own website with free hosting. Perhaps an effective way of dealing with him is to use the wiki to show how his ideas and his favourite authors are wrong, since he uses someone else's website he can't prevent that. It's the middle of the night here, I'll consider your comment more carefully later when I've rested. Proxima Centauri 19:34, 22 September 2011 (CDT)

I've deleted 3 of Rdaley06's articles together with a load of spam, I couldn't keep the articles and remove the references. Proxima Centauri 08:24, 23 September 2011 (CDT)

Please do not misrepresent, when you made this edit Kazim had not removed what I wrote. It may be that you plan to persuade him but as of now this has not happened. Proxima Centauri 08:12, 4 November 2011 (CDT)

• I'm not misrepresenting anything at all, you're misunderstanding me. I haven't editted out anything you've posted on the "WotM: family members" episode page, nor it's discussion page, and you should know this. Does my username appear in the editing history? No, it doesn't. When I said "Ray's page", I was referring to the following edit of the main Ray Comfort page:

17:03, 20 October 2011 Jdog (Reverted edits by Proxima Centauri. You just got told not to do this sort of thing; where does this relentless hatred of Ray Comfort come from? He's easily refuted and not worth so much of your time.)

I took out a biased sentence [[1]] you'd just put in at the top of the page [[2]], then you stuck it back into the Favorite Arguments section a few hours later [[3]], and the first edit Kazim made to the page afterwards removed it again [[4]]. It's not a straw man, you just appear to have a serious problem with Ray Comfort (because you don't continually attack any other apologists this way, even ones more deserving of the effort, like WLC) and it's distorting your ability to think rationally. I'm sure you also don't like having writings that you spent a lot of time on criticized (but that doesn't mean they should be immune to valid criticism) and that may also be clouding your judgement.

• As to your claim that someone could read one of the transcripts here of Ray's videos and suddenly decide to become a Christian because the rebuttal wasn't right there (as opposed to being on a linked-to page about the argument), I say you have no understanding of the vast difference between the non-Christians who visit our wiki and the non-Christians who might watch Ray's videos and potentially find them convincing enough to become Christian. Furthermore, you also misunderstand the purpose of this wiki. From the main page:

Our ultimate goal is to provide a robust and definitive resource for:

atheists seeking responses to common apologetic arguments theists who are questioning the efficacy of their beliefs

apologists who feel that their "pet" argument is above reproach individuals of any philosophical ideal who have an interest in religious studies

There's nothing in there about transcribing (for rebuttal or not) every single piece of trash an apologist spits out and I suspect that doing so violates copyright laws (full transcriptions of copyrighted material have been successfully challenged as being well beyond the scope of "quoting for review" that would normally be allowed). Ultimately, I think we should delete all the individual pages of the WotM episodes and just edit the main page about the series so that it gives a list of the episodes with the actual arguments made and links to the appropriate pages about those arguments (where they can be rebutted). From what I've seen of the transcripts, there's an awful lot of filler in his videos where he's either repeating an argument he's already made in that episode or just plain not really making any point at all. Like the "dress up like an old lady" bit; I had pulled up the video on youtube to see if you were justified in your comment or not and all that bit was was a walkthrough of a suggested slight variant on the "are you a good person?" argument that Ray's made dozens of times before.

• Lastly, I'm not trying to persuade Kazim of anything and I resent the accusation of such; he's already stated in comments that he doesn't want you doing this stuff, yet you keep doing it. The only time I've ever had contact with Kazim was when he replied to my e-mail to AETV about Sans Deity accidentally blocking me when I deleted a bunch of spam articles at once. I wouldn't have even had to do that if you accepted e-mail from the wiki, because you'd just been made an admin at the time and I tried to contact you first.

Jdog 16:48, 4 November 2011 (CDT)

The Problem of Heaven

note: I'm trying to decide what the best page is for this argument (Heaven? Free will? Faith? Pascal's Wager? Something else?), once I'm happy with the way it reads. Thoughts and criticisms are welcome. I haven't run across this argument before, but I think it would be hubris to say I'm the first to make it, so I'd also be interested in knowing if someone else has made this argument.

Some theists argue that faith is required for us to freely choose to follow God and that the evidence for God is deliberately insufficient. However, this argument is contradicted by the fear of hell/reward of heaven because these are incentives offered to choose to follow God. Why would a god that values our free choice even make us aware of the possibility of changing our destination in afterlife based on that choice, instead of providing unrefutable proof of its own existence and not offering incentives? Jdog 13:53, 18 November 2011 (CST) Moved to my talk page, reworded argument. Jdog 10:36, 19 November 2011 (CST)

Drive-by Administrating

See my latest comment at User talk:Proxima Centauri#Deletions and restorations. I wasn't sure Russell (Kazim) had even noticed the deletions, since he'd only made one small talk-page comment since the deletions happened. - dcljr 14:03, 21 November 2011 (CST)

fine-tuning rebuttal?

note to self: Discussion notes from youtube, look into them, organize them coherently, and add them to apologetic arguments for fine-tuning.

"The important ones are the ones that explain that any omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would not have created the universe that we have" your claim is absurd, how can you possibly know which universe is the best? Perhaps we need a universe this big and empty to allow for Gods ultimate plan, maybe God wants us to explore other worlds, who knows?, all I know is that I can give you a dozen reasons as to why the universe is just right the way it is.

Accusation of plagiarism

An accusation of plagiarism is serious. When the block expires please give evidence for any such accusations or stop making them. Proxima Centauri 09:08, 13 December 2011 (CST)