This 2015 paper ought to provoke provoke an interesting discussion:
On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit
Abstract
Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullshit statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”). Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bullshit statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural belief). Parallel associations were less evident among profundity judgments for more conventionally profound (e.g., “A wet person does not fear the rain”) or mundane (e.g., “Newborn babies require constant attention”) statements. These results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bullshit and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity.
Exactly you keep bringing up my presuppositions. Even starting threads to discuss them. Its like you are obsessed or something
That is not how it looks from my perspective. You did not even explain your theory of truth comprehensively. You can’t expect him to show were your error is unless you share your position.
Ive shared mine why not share yours
How do you know stuff?
peace
keiths:
fifth:
No, share the URL. If it’s up to you, you’ll sugar-coat your abysmal performance. They should be able to see for themselves how much of a liability you are to the faith, and how you struggle to keep up with the atheists who are running circles around you here.
keiths:
fifth:
No, because you’ve told us that it is only the physical Jesus that can interact with the material world. The physical Jesus exists within time — that was his whole reason for incarnating, according to you — and he incarnated in the womb of Mary some 2000 years ago.
And since he only incarnated once, as you maintain, then the physical Jesus must have traveled back in time in order to moon Moses and to impregnate his own mother, Mary.
Of course, you didn’t anticipate any of this. You’re bad at thinking things through, and you didn’t realize the implications of your incarnation argument. An atheist had to spell it out for you.
Now you’re embarrassed by the heretical position you’ve inadvertently adopted and ashamed to share the URL of this thread with your pastor and fellow congregants.
Meanwhile, God is clearly not helping you. He let you screw up yet again, in a very embarrassing way. Why is he so fond of seeing you defeated by atheists again and again?
keiths:
fifth:
I didn’t ask him for an evaluation of my position. I asked him to defend his position:
Focus, fifth. These distinctions are not difficult.
Wrong. Some of us are capable of understanding that we need to support our claims.
You still don’t understand the burden of proof. You are making positive claims here. It is up to you to support them. If you cannot, intellectual honesty requires you to retract them.
Actually it’s on what you don’t do: Support any of your claims.
You’ve been challenged by multiple people here and yet your only response is to attempt to change the topic to what other people think. You are not behaving like an honest person with confidence in his views would.
Yes, we’ve noticed. This is, however, The Skeptical Zone. Your proselytizing is not aligned with the goals of the site. You need to start supporting your claims or retracting them.
No, you keep making claims, calling them presuppositions, and refusing to support them. It’s intellectually dishonest behavior. Apparently people other than me are also getting tired of it.
Speaking of not supporting your claims, FFM, how did Saul die?
When did I ever make a claim about Saul’s death?
Apparently not only do you think that presuppositions are claims but you think my silence is a claim as well.
Is my pointing out the silliness of your demand a claim as well?
peace
You claimed that your bible contains no contradictions. I provided the contradictory verses about Saul’s death. Your claim has been refuted.
once more into the breach
no I never said that only the physical Jesus interacts with the materiel world. You are being way too woodenly literal and deliberately obtuse, To the point of misrepresenting your opponent wildly.
I interact with God all the time yet Jesus physical body is not present in my living room.
What I said was that incarnation is necessary for God to interact with the physical world.
Incarnation is much more than just a deity having a physical body it’s about a relationship between the creator and creation.
I can interact with you with out being physically present at your location. But I can’t interact with you unless we share some cognitive compatibility and common understanding.
check this out
quote:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
(Heb 4:15)
and
He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.
(Heb 5:2)
end quote:
God did not suddenly become gentle and able to sympathize at Bethlehem.
Since God is omnipotent and Atemproral he was always able to be gentle with us. There is never a time that he was not able to be sympathize with our weakness
However if there was no incarnation he would not be able to be gentle with us.
This is not rocket science.
quote:
whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
(Rom 3:25-26)
end quote:
God passed over sins that happened before the incarnation but the only reason that God can pass over sins while remaining righteous is because of the incarnation
Surely you are not as dense as you are pretending to be
The incarnation’s benefits were applied retroactively. That is how sins were forgiven before the crucifixion and that is how revelation was possible before the birth of Jesus.
no time travel required
peace
Nope you made a claim that the verses are contradictory you need to provide support for your claim. We Christians are not unfamiliar with the verses you provided but we don’t think they represent contradictions
The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that you are right and conservative biblical scholarship is wrong.
Yet you have not even interacted with the scholarship you wish to dispute with your claim. All you did was present verses and assume your interpretation of them was the default
At the same time you demand that I support claims that I did not even make.
Talk about hypocrisy
peace
all you do is make demands of others you never reciprocate. Even when asked repeatedly and nicely
Is this considered appropriate behavior according to your subjective morality?
Because the rest of the world thinks it is boorish and rude
peace
FMM, keiths is indeed boorish and rude. I have never actually understood why he feels the need to ridicule everyone he disagrees with. I find his style extremely distasteful myself, and I speculate as to what would make a person so unpleasant.
But that doesn’t mean his comments are not often correct. In particular, many of his criticisms of your posts on this thread seem right to me, and his obnoxiousness is beside the point with respect to the substance of his remarks (when you can find them amid all the garbage).
You actually DO make arguments (hence the syllogistic form), and they are often clearly unsound. When you say things like “that’s not an argument; it’s a presupposition” you should know that a bad argument cannot be saved that way. It’s like saying, “Well, it may have fallen down, but it’s not actually a house; it’s an example.”
It is, however, to your credit that you generally don’t respond in kind–either to keiths’ shit-slinging or to patrick’s.
I’m not surprised that you agree with his criticisms. You do share his worldview after all.
I would enjoy discussing this stuff with you I think you might do a better job of communicating criticisms than he does
However I just don’t think an internet forum would be the best place for that kind of interaction. If we could sit on a front porch with a glass of lemonade we might do a better job of crossing the considerable divide between our presuppositions.
At times I do make arguments. like when I argue that knowledge is possible or that conflicting consciences bear witness to objective reality.
However I will not ever intentionally make arguments to support my one presupposition that the Christian God of Scripture exists.
I think the reason you think I’m making an argument is because you don’t take for granted the truth of what I’m sharing.
If I was coming from your perspective you would quickly recognize that it’s not an argument it’s an axiom
I assume you presuppose the law of non-contradiction
So if I said that “I know that X can not be non X or I can know nothing at all.” it would not strike you as an argument but simply as a starting point for rational thought.
But if you did not presuppose the law of non-contradiction it might sound like a claim or an argument of some kind.
Does that make sense?
peace
Yes
Wrong, again. I provided evidence in response to your claim that your bible contains no contradictions. Here it is again:
No claim there, simply contradictory verses from your own holy book.
Now, the intellectually honest thing to do is either explain, in your own words, why those are not contradictory, or retract your claim. Which is it going to be?
That’s simply not true. When keiths makes a claim he does at least attempt to support it. You never do. When you aren’t trying to evade your burden of proof by renaming claims as “presuppositions” you’re squirming like this to try to deflect attention from your failure to support what you’re saying.
Is this really how you think your god wants you to behave?
You misspelled “claim” again. Your refusal to even attempt to support it speaks volumes about your intellectual integrity.
Yes, just assuming that you’re right would make your life easier.
This is The Skeptical Zone, FFM. Claims get questioned, arguments get challenged. It’s past time for you to man up and participate honestly.
all you did ——again—–was post some verses with your naive minority interpretation.
here is a dumbed down summary of the conservative scholarship you claim to have refuted
quote:
This would be the correct order of events: Saul is wounded in battle and then kills himself by falling on his own sword. An Amalekite comes across his dead body and takes his crown and armlet. The next day, the Philistines find Saul’s body, behead him, strip him of his armor, send the report, and fasten his body to the wall of Beth Shan (1 Samuel 31:10). Men of Jabesh Gilead travel overnight and take Saul’s body and those of his sons and burn them at Jabesh. The bones are buried under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and the men of that city fast for seven days. The Amalekite arrives at David’s camp on the third day with the crown and armlet, reporting his story. David and his men fast and mourn until evening. David then has the Amalekite killed. David would soon become king and honor the men who buried Saul’s body (2 Samuel 2:4–7).
end quote
This very basic summary could have been located in seconds with a simple google search
https://www.gotquestions.org/death-of-Saul.html
But you made absolutely no effort to even interact with scholarship instead you acted as if your silly uncharitable out of context interpretation should be the default .
talk about hypocrisy.
If you want to support your claim you need to demonstrate why the very basic summary I posted could not possibly be correct.
good luck
peace
Great.
So hopefully you have a better Idea of where I’m coming from.
You are back to being my favorite
peace
you claim they are contradictory.
No one on my side of the fence agrees with you.
Now support your claim or retract it.
Do so or you are being intellectually dishonest.
you hypocrite
peace
I presuppose the Christian God not to make my life easier but because I know of no other grounding for knowledge that is consistent and sufficient to do the job.
If you know of such grounding please——–please ———present it here. I would be happy to presuppose it for the sake of argument
However so far you have offered nothing so I have no choice but to go with my own presupposition.
peace
you have not despite my repeated inquires even offered an answer to the “how do you know?” question.
Is that because you are unwilling to question your own “claims”?
peace
I’ve never really understood what “how do you know?” means, which is why I haven’t answered it.
keiths:
fifth:
Not only is that false generally, it’s even false in this particular instance. As you already know.
I responded to Erik’s demand:
That is not in accordance with the actual text. The actual text contradicts itself no matter how you squirm.
fifth,
When the truth is inconvenient for you, you deny it. Do you think Jesus approves? Are you “bringing glory” to him when you behave this way?
Please share the URL with your pastor and fellow congregants so they can see you in action.
You don’t have to agree, but if you say those verses don’t contradict each other you’re being willfully dishonest.
You have yet to support your claim that your god is necessary and sufficient.
Face it, FFM, it’s just you being very attached to your childhood indoctrination. You can’t actually defend your views. At least be honest enough to admit it.
KN,
It’s a basic question of epistemology, which asks things like “what can we know?” and “how can we know it?”
Many people, including me, have addressed fifth’s question. He pretends we haven’t, because Jesus.
fifth, to Patrick:
That’s because you’ve defined “your side of the fence” as the side where inerrancy is assumed.
You assume inerrancy, and when Biblical contradictions are presented to you, you claim that they are only apparent, not real. Why? Because you’ve assumed that the Bible is inerrant.
It’s standard, simple-minded, fundagelical circular reasoning.
Patrick,
Were you ever exposed to religions indoctrination? Did you ever believe christianity was true? If so what caused your beliefs to change?
walto!!!
There is a downside of using Patrick’s argument against him.
Walto’s reached the pinnacle.
While we all seethe and rage in jealousy.
Glen Davidson
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
To incarnate is to take on a physical body. You’ve stressed that Jesus had to do this so that he could enter into time, since — according to you — an atemporal, immaterial being cannot interact with the temporal and material, including humans.
So Jesus took on a physical body, in the form of a fetus in Mary’s womb. Yet you’ve also told us that when God mooned Moses hundreds of years earlier, it was Jesus’s physical butt that Moses saw.
Conclusion: The physical Jesus had to travel backward in time in order to moon Moses.
Similar reasoning applies to the incarnation itself. The physical Jesus had to travel backward in time in order to impregnate Mary with his own fetus.
It’s goofy shit, indeed, and it’s the direct result of your goofy theory about the necessity of the incarnation.
As I said above:
I think you’re misunderstanding FMM here. FMM cannot support this claim, because his entire methodology is committed to presupposing it.
If it could be justified on the basis of some other claim, then it could not play the role of epistemic foundation that he ascribes to it.
What you want FMM to do is think that rational evaluation of evidence and argument is itself neutral between theism and atheism. But that’s simply an outright rejection of presuppositional apologetics. And he’s not going to do that, which means he an’t do that you want him to do. Continually hectoring him isn’t going to change his attitude here.
colewd, to Patrick:
My own answer to that question.
KN, to Patrick:
KN,
You’re confusing fifth’s claim with his presupposition. (Fifth does this also.)
His claim is that the Christian God is a necessary basis for knowledge. His presupposition is that the Christian God exists.
Do you see the difference? It’s crucial.
well at least you are not ignoring me,
That is a start
😉
peace
Addressing the question is not the same thing as offering a consistent answer that is not subject to further regress.
I can’t assume your presuppositions for the sake of argument until you can do that.
peace
no your uncharitable out of context interpretation of the text contradicts it’s self.
Your claim is that the actual text contradicts itself no one on my side agrees
you need to support your claim or retract it
you hypocrite
peace
yes of course I assume that an omnipotent God can reveal stuff with out error.
That is part of what it means to be omnipotent
peace
I am a hot shit. (And in case there are people who don’t realize it, that’s supposed to be a GOOD thing.)
That is not a claim that is a hypothesis. It will be falsified if an alternative basis is offered that is sufficient and consistent with itself.
The “how do you know?” question is how the hypothesis is tested.
peace
fifth,
It gets very boring when I have to explain the simplest of concepts to you again and again.
Here’s the definition:
This is a claim:
It’s an assertion of the truth of something, and what you’re asserting is disputed.
On the basis of that claim, you make a further claim, which is that it’s either “Christianity or absurdity”.
You use that second claim to justify your goofy presupposition that the Christian God exists.
Your whole presuppositional house of cards collapses if you can’t demonstrate the truth of that second claim.
You can’t.
So your presupposition is grounded by your presupposition? That kind of sounds like an infinite regress.
fifth:
Nice quote mine. We were talking about Biblical inerrancy, as you know perfectly well:
keiths:
Quote mining is a sign of desperation, fifth.
Just to point out, whether something is a claim (assertion, statement, etc.) is a question of its semantic and also pragmatic properties. “Please pass the salt” is a not a claim, but a request — it’s neither true nor false. Likewise, “I see a rabbit!” is not a claim, because it’s not something that anyone can make — it’s my seeing a rabbit, an observation report.
Whether a claim is functioning as a presupposition, hypothesis, conclusion, etc is a question of its epistemological properties, and specifically its function in inference. A claim can function as a premise, or as a conclusion, or as a mediating claim between premises and conclusions.
When a presuppositionalist takes it that there cannot be objective knowledge unless God exists, she is taking that claim as a presupposition, because she is not attempting to justify that claim on the basis of any other claims. That is, she is saying that God is a necessary and sufficient condition for rational discourse, which means that one cannot engage in rational discourse without already admitting, in the very act of doing so, an implicit acceptance of the existence of God. Thus the presuppositionalist attempts to convict the atheist of a ‘performative contradiction’.
What the presuppositionalist must deny, therefore, is that idea that rational discourse can function as a neutral space from which the existence or non-existence of God can be assessed.
And that is what makes presuppositionalism fundamentally anti-philosophical.