Knight_of_BAAWA,
You’ll have to do better than that. Your response is not even a serious or credible refutation by describing it as “magic”.
Tell me EXACTLY what is wrong with my reasoning so we can all see it. I like to learn too!
Now, it so happens that I study mathematical logic. Logicians don’t employ a term “reductionism” in this context, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to - and reductio is not invalid, it’s the informal version of proof by contradiction, which is accepted by all but the constructivists. That said, I don’t think my response to you was a reductio. Now, certainly, it is a requirement of a good argument that it not necessarily lead to a contradiction, and you are right, your argument doesn’t do so. But this is not all that is required for an argument to be accepted; it also has to be of valid form and begin from true premises. Now, your premises might be true, but they are controversial, and so they’d need to be argued for too. What I was challenging was the form of your argument, which I took to be the following:
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We have B
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If A were true, then B would follow
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Thus, A is true
This is an invalid form of argument. Is this not the form of your argument?
Well, I don’t know that I have sufficient knowledge to say that about this particular movie. I know there are movie studios, and producers (although no one I met, up until 3 months ago when my friend got a job in a theater, knew what a producer does) and things go on there, but maybe Twilight is different. In any case, my Twilight argument fits the form I presented above, that’s an illustration of why it’s an invalid form of argument. That it is invalid, though, has nothing to do with knowledge of how movies are made. It would be invalid even if it had true premises, as in:
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We have this Twilight movie each year
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If movie studios operated the way the books describe, that would explain the existence of these movies
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Thus, movie studios operate the way the books describe.
This has true premises and a true conclusion, but remains invalid. Similarly, you might believe, for reasons having nothing to do with this discussion, in the existence of sin as described in the Bible and in the Biblical God - but your argument would do nothing to prove your beliefs correct.
Argument from authority? Certainly, there have been conflicts, well attested to in the Bible, between church and state - but does this mean that they are necessarily separate? Many times, the conflict has to do with the state banning some particular practice - and there would have been no conflict had they banned some other practice instead. My point, though, was about the formation of states and the granting of legitimacy to states. For an illustration, consider the beginning of most tellings of the Arthur legend. The King of Wales has died, and there is no king over Britain. Chaos breaks out, with lords fighting across the land. Why is that? It’s because they expect that a new king will be chosen, and whichever lord is winning at the time will be that new king. Further, they expect the new king will have legitimacy - that is, he won’t have to fight so much to maintain his position. Why will he have legitimacy? Because he will be crowned by the archbishop - who is believed to be the voice of God on earth. Now, in later years, the state has gained strength and turned on its source of power - but that doesn’t imply that the way to keep the state under control is the increase the power of the church.
It might be that more is needed than what has been said (although I find a lot of answers to have good explanatory power) but just because something is explanatory of an observation does not imply that I should believe it to be true.
I didn’t see any reference to human relations in your first argument - and avalanches do not involve human relations either.
You’re not going to get much more from him. He may through in the occasional “non sequitur.”
Okay, and Bishop Mariana was calling for the assassination of any leader who debauched the currency and taxed without consent. Catholic Jesuits also denied divine right, and were the first true libertarians defending their positions with logic and God. What’s your point exactly?
No, I won’t. Your appeal to magic cannot be taken seriously, nor is it even credible.
Knight_of_BAAWA,
May I ask if what I have stated is a true intellectual barrier for you or are you operating on prejudice and bias?
You could try asking without using a false dichotomy. Might help.
The latter. I’ll answer for him, it’s more honest that way.
Without consent of whom? I don’t see how the desire of religious figures to change the form or nature of the state says anything about whether or not the state originally came to be through the power of religion. I don’t know much church history, but I do know that the scholastics are usually invoked when defending the idea that liberty arose from religion - are the Jesuits connected to the scholastics? I defer to Juan, or more specifically, to Juan’s signature, on the question of just how libertarian the scholastics were.
I smell troll bait.
Now all you have to do is prove it. Go for it.
Without consent of the citizens; I thought it was quite obvious.
No one has ever said that.
Are you sure that human behavior has this much to do with genetics?
Okay? I’ve never seen Bawa actually answer anyone’s question. He throws meaningless one-liners and berates those he’s conversing with. Merely mentioning religion sets him off–entirely irrational and emotional.
This thread is crazy, people are talking about genetics and God and liberty…insanity.
Really? No one, ever? I could swear I heard Alan Keyes say it just last year.
Of course you have.
No, they have meaning. That they are one-line just means I’m far better at being to-the-point than most.
Only those who deserve it.
No it doesn’t.
Now then: we’re all waiting for your evidence. Failure to produce means that you’re just lying your ass off. And you certainly don’t want to be seen as a liar, do you?
Here’s a question for you guys: under what conditions do people want freedom from the state?
Under what conditions might people find it more advantageous to bow to the state?
I don’t think this question of ‘why human beings don’t all choose the an-cap form of liberty’ requires looking to God or genetics, I think we need only to think about self-interest.
You’re familiar with the teleological and cosmological arguments, so please. The latter, by the way, is the same methodology employed by Austrian economists.
If you are a theist you probably shouldn’t mention the cosmological argument.