Mike is back! Clearly in all his glory, as evidenced by the stuff above, the name calling that he made the original Jesus thread devolve into. Welcome back, Mike, meet Ezechiel, who in my opinion trades in the same derision and historical absurdities. I think you brought up the Council of Nicaea, too, Mike.
Argumentum ad verecundiam indeed! A little knowledge is dangerous. I taught a mini-course once on all those argumentum ad things. Fascinating and fun. There's little you and Ezechiel can put past me, but both of you ridicule and deride scholarly endeavors and mock intellectual honesty. I would apply argumentum ad hominem as the clear method you two use, and of course there's reductio ad absurdum. Mike, you showoff, found that Latin somewhere and look at me, folks! I can use Latin and call Kim a retard again. But then, Kim was "leering at me as I burned." I taught Latin, Mike. And there's Mike's penultimate argumentation method: "haaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaahahaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!" But I may not have spelled that right, Mike!
His ultimate argumentation is name calling and derisive contempt when confronted with any facts or correction.
I wrote a sympathetic post in response to an experience Mike had, and provided two links to very scholarly research on sleep paralysis. He was sarcastic in reply. I ask you, Mike, how you can even leave open the barest, tiniest chance that an actual alien visited you? But you clearly have expressed doubt on the matter:
"or something else? I can't tell you"
"honest answer, I don't know"
"maybe of an abduction"
If you subscribe to such hardcore rationality as you profess, how can you even entertain that it may have been an abduction, as the quotes above more than imply?
And trained, you seem to have abandoned all the strict statements you made: you are "a secular humanist." "Neuroscience holds the key to understanding human reality and not mystical revelation." "I believe that the tales of gods are human fantasy or misinterpreted altered states of consciousness."
Yet regarding Mike's experience, of which he posted a photograph of a large sculpture which he created to show what he saw, you say:
"is this really about extraterrestrials or just some aspect of life on Earth that we do not yet understand?" "we are blind to a large part of the reality that we exist in." "I am not above entertaining the notion that some of these experiences are due to contact with something outside our sphere of perception." "there is more going on out there than we can casually observe." "are some of these kinds of experiences hints that something we can't perceive is minding the farm that we don't even know we're on?"
Really, now, you can't have it both ways. To show ridicule, contempt, and, yes, Mike, derision, to mock scholars and scholarly research, to proclaim your no holds barred and strictly rationalist and humanist stances, but to then make your method of discussion not facts but ridicule of the other person's beliefs, and all the more ironic because in none of my posts have I pushed my "Jesus thing," among other accusations.
Well, I suppose this will cause Angelo to close the thread. Something tells me he would not have closed it based just on Mike's posts above, but my post, clearly showing some facts that exhibit hypocrisy, will trigger the closing of it. So be it. I was actually relieved, as I said, that the Christianity and Jesus topic seemed to be drifting off the new posts list, but up it comes again. I just think flaws in the arguments certain posters have made is perfectly appropriate when their beliefs are duplicitous to say the least, and contempt is their chief method of discourse. Kim
