Cy Ten Bruggencate emailed me back
Offline Just wanted to see what everyone thought of this.
I don't claim to have made the most intelligent responses, nor the most rational, but please critique me any way you want. I am most curious to see how you think I did. I'm sure any of you guys could have shot him down with pure reason and evidence. I just went with my gut. Should be laughable anyway.
I went through his "Proof That God Exists" site, and I saw right away that he wanted people who visited his misleading "proof" to admit there are absolutes, so I just didn't. He couldn't handle it! (For a really intelligent review of his site go here: http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/2010/08/critique-of-sye-ten-bruggencates.html) Now on with the show :
From: Nude0007 To:[email protected] Sent: Monday, October 17, 2011 3:15 PM Subject: Please Keep This Up!
ME: Your logic is incredibly, ridiculously faulty. reaching a page that claims morals are not material things doesn't prove god's existence. No thoughts or ideas are material, so you have proved nothing. Please keep using this non-sequiter set of pages. I am sure it is showing people how illogical and deceptive you guys are. I am quite sure it is pushing people away in droves. Stating that claiming to not believe in god is really just denying him is also helping our cause. The fact that you cannot entertain the possibility that you are wrong proves you couldn't see the truth if it was presented to you. The truth can stand up to any criticism. The fact that you can't entertain any criticism ensures us that you are wrong. Laughable! Carry on! Thanks for all the help!
CY: Thanks for your e-mail. I'll add some comments in red.
ME:Your logic is incredibly, ridiculously faulty.
CY:According to what absolute standard of logic, and how do you account for that standard according to your worldview?
ME:reaching a page that claims morals are not material things doesn't prove god's existence.
CY:Acknowledging ANY absolutes does.
ME:No thoughts or ideas are material, so you have proved nothing.
CY:Perhaps you'd like to account for immaterial entities according to your worldview then?
ME: Please keep using this non-sequiter set of pages.
CY:Non-sequiter assumes absolute logic, which cannot be accounted for outside of God.
ME: I am sure it is showing people how illogical and deceptive you guys are.
CY:"Illogic" assumes absolute logic, which cannot be accounted for outside of God.
ME:I am quite sure it is pushing people away in droves.
CY:Nope, but keep in mind that the same sun that melts wax, hardens clay. That some may be further hardened by the truth is taught in the Bible.
ME:Stating that claiming to not believe in god is really just denying him is also helping our cause.
CY:Just telling you what the Bible says (Romans 1: 18-21)
ME:The fact that you cannot entertain the possibility that you are wrong proves you couldn't see the truth if it was presented to you.
CY:Well, at least you believe in the concepts of "proof" and "truth." Care to tell me how they make sense in your worldview?
ME:The truth can stand up to any criticism.
CY:I agree. What is "truth" according to your worldview, and how do you know anything to be true? If you appeal to your senses, memory and reasoning, pleas include how you know them to be valid.
ME:The fact that you can't entertain any criticism ensures us that you are wrong.
CY:I entertain lots of criticism. Go to my multimedia page and listen to the debates I have done. See how well those criticisms fare 
ME:Laughable!
CY:I urge you to repent of denying the God that you know exists. You won't be laughing in Hell.
ME:Carry on! Thanks for all the help!
CY:My pleasure! Cheers.
From: "[email protected]" [email protected] To: Nude0007 nude0007 @ yahoo.com Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 10:43 AM Subject: Re: Please Keep This Up!
ME:"There's nothing absolute about that statement."
CY:Is that absolutely true? 'nuff said. Cheers.
From: Nude0007 To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2011 11:27 AM Subject: Re: Please Keep This Up!
ME:My statement still stands, waiting for an intelligent rebuttal. It is STILL not an absolute statement. AS I said, you won't engage it because it blows your ridiculous argument to hell. Still waiting...
From: "[email protected]" [email protected] To: Nude0007 nude0007 @ yahoo.com Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2011 11:50 AM Subject: Re: Please Keep This Up!
ME:"It is STILL not an absolute statement."
CY:Is that absolutely true? You don't get it because your have not repented of denying the God that you know exists. I urge you to repent and seek the Truth, rather than remain in your foolish "reasoning."
From: Nude0007 To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 9:47 PM Subject: Re: Please Keep This Up!
ME:you can repeat your nonsensical sentence all you want, it still won't make my statement into it. It's called "floundering" as in when you can't refute what I said. I don't get it because it still is meaningless. Again, I did not make an absolute statement. Continually insisting on inserting the word "absolute" in it only proves you have no real argument. I have had beter arguments from 3rd graders. Why don't you actually address one or any of my points, or are you only able to "defeat" people who agree with you? Again, no denial here, something has to exist to be denied. Is this all you have? if this lame bs is all you can come up with, I have better things to do with my time. One more chance to say anything besides esoteric bs, or I'll not respond anymore. I have been more than generous with my time and you are wasting it with repeated nonsense.
LAST NIGHT (he again repeats the idiotic line):
ME:"I did not make an absolute statement."
CY:Is that absolutely true? You keep ducking my questions (for obvious reasons). Repent while you still can. Cheers.
So I sent him a reply saying a lot of stuff about how flawed his beleifs are, how evil they are and how I expected a reasonable discussion or exchange. I said him and his god should repent for all the evil stuff in the bible. (I forgot to save myself a copy) and that I won't acept his emails again. If he sends me a reply again, I'll post my part, but I'm done with this idiot.
(mod edit: formatting; removed mailto links to nude0007)
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Hey Nude0007!
Only one minor critique:
Well, actually it only shows that he cannot present good reasons for his beliefs. It doesn't necessarily prove he's wrong. Maybe he's just so happens to be right, but he's unable to entertain the possibility that he's wrong. It's not likely, but logically speaking, it is not ruled out, and so logically you can't actually say his dogmatism proves he's wrong.
But what it does show is that we have no particular reason to believe that he's right. He's just as likely to be right as the possibility that monkeys could fly out of his butt. Brian37 has a lot more funnier examples like that. Maybe he'll chime in with a good one about snarfwidgets or Lamborghinis or something
Actually, there's a fallacy called the Fallacy fallacy, or argumentum ad logicam (here and here) which explains this better than I just did.
My response to his question here would be simply:
No, it's not. What makes you think every statement must be an absolute statement?
Furthermore, do you have any examples of actual absolute statements? And if you think you do, how do you know they are absolutely true or false?
He will be unable to come up with anything defensible. He cannot really know which statements are absolutely true, any better than anyone else can--which is to say that nobody knows any absolute truths. And no, that last statement is not an absolute either.
Since he cannot identify any absolute truths, he is no better off than you are. In fact he's worse off, because he believes his worldview depends on absolute truths, but he can't identify them, so he has no idea what his worldview is based on.
And here he has completely fucked up and let the cat out of the bag. This is called Special Pleading. This is what his argument boils down to: You can't understand my logic, because only I understand logic, because I'm the right kind of Christian.
"You don't get it because you don't already agree with me!"
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
Oh, by the way. It's good to post this email debate for others to see. If you only debate one-on-one with a hardcore theist, you are unlikely to break them out of their thinking much, and the time and effort is probably not the best investment (unless you're just trying to improve your debating skills, in which case it is good practice). But when you make the debate public, you get a much wider audience than just the one theist you're debating, and some of those people might be more on-the-fence type people, and so your arguments can have more impact that way. Plus it exposes more people to the stupidity of theist apologetics.
Another thing you might want to try is to send him a link to this forum post, so that he can see his argument is being taken apart publicly on an open forum. He may actually come here and engage with more people, so you don't have to feel like you're dealing with it all alone, which can be a bit demotivating.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
Hah! That blog is pretty interesting*: Incinerating Presuppositionalism
I found this bit here (http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com/2010/06/was-i-ever-presuppositionalist-myself.html ), and it gave me an idea
What a great word to twist into a nickname for presuppositionalism: Presumptionalism
Heck, it's even shorter to write! And it sums up their arguments so well:
P1 I presume that God exists.
C Therefore, God exists!
* I note with regret that it seems to be an Objectivist's blog. Oh well. Probably still good at debunking presumptionalism.
Wonderist on Facebook — Support the idea of wonderism by 'liking' the Wonderism page — or join the open Wonderism group to take part in the discussion!
Gnu Atheism Facebook group — All gnu-friendly RRS members welcome (including Luminon!) — Try something gnu!
Presuppositionalism, the breakfast of the credulous.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Whenever a theist attempts to throw absolute around, respond with throwing subjective around. Most things theists consider absolutes are actually subjectives.
Also deny the absolute status of anything, logic included. Something can be entirely logical and still be wrong.
Science is anti-absolutist, it's constantly being tested and attempts to prove it wrong are unending.
You might be surprised just how quickly the theist ties him/herself into knots.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
"No, it's not. What makes you think every statement must be an absolute statement?"
That's what I was trying to say or at least imply. I guess I did it poorly? Or did I just expect him, and others to get it, and I needed to explain it better?
I will have to send him the link, but I wanted to get you guys responses first. I was just kinda interested to see how well I could do against a supposed experienced debater, and is argument seemed so ridiculous because its base assumption was that all arguments are absolute. Seemed easy to refute. I never expected him to get it, but I did expect a better argument than refusing to address any of the other things I posted against his arguments.
I haven't ducked anything except an infantile word trap. I answered it every time. There is nothing absolute in this world. There is infinite diversity.
If you cannot accept an answer you don't like, too bad. gave you every chance to expand upon it and you either can't or won't. I apologize, I thought you were someone wanting an intelligent discussion, but I was wrong. You just want to bury your head in the sand and swear the hole is the universe.
If anyone needs to repent it is your fictional god. He killed billions, told people slavery is good (even in the new testament), degrades women to property and not even valuable property at that, says rape is ok, teaches you should kill people who disobey you or him or disagree with you or him, and tries to lay the stupidest guilt trip on people to think THEY need redemption for an action He is responsible for.
You look at the evidence against your religion or just the true origins and it is blatantly obvious that it cannot be true.
YOU repent. Atheists do good because it is the right thing to do, and not out of fear or hope of some reward. We do what's right even though your god would tell us to kill, etc..
Remember, the truth can stand up to criticism, so why not look at the evidence that has presented itself to us? If your belief is true, it will stand. I think you are too afraid to take an honest look. You might look at some creationist nonsensical pseudo-science, but not real, hard evidence, but I will ask you to anyway.
Again, thanks for the help. All we have to do to win more people over to the side of reason is send them to church, or your obviously deceptive site. Even kids see it isn't a fair test on many levels. I love it when you guys do our work for us! Carry on and thanks again. You are a wonderful resource. I will send many to you so they can see the deceptive ways of the religious for themselves.
Thanks to mods for deleting my email. I don't care, but idk if I would get spammed or something.
I don't care if anyone goes ahead and passes the link along to him. I may get around to it, but I was hoping for a few more inputs on what I said. I don't claim to be very good at rebuttal, but I try to stand up for what I believe in.
That's something you need to learn to expect when talking with a theist who attempts to justify their beliefs. Each and every one of them is grasping at straws.
Not all the straws are the same, and sometimes more than one is present, but they all fall apart under scrutiny. They are ALL based on some ridiculous notion.
Whether it's based on misdefining a term or a logical fallacy, there is at the heart a total misconception. The longer you talk with theists the less often you'll encounter a new ridiculous notion, but you'll still get surprised every now and then.
The key to quickly defeating an argument is to exposing the ridiculous notion as ridiculous.
If the notion is absolute, like with this guy, then the fastest exposure to ridiculous is found by pointing out that whether there are absolutes has absolutely no impact on the discussion of a god. If god is all powerful, it could
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
have chosen either way, and we'd be none the wiser.
The only way the existence of absolutes would even imply a god is if it were first proven that absolutes do exist AND that they are contradictory to the nature of the universe/multiverse, in whole or in part. But even that would just raise more questions and god wouldn't necessarily be the only possible answer.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
And it presumes that there is only 1 god, so that there can be no 'dispute' among gods as to right/wrong.
Arguing that 1 god's personal opinion is 'objective' on the basis that there is no 'equal' to him is simply special pleading to remove the distinction between subjective/objective and 'arbitrary' when their god would supposedly express his opinion on what is morally correct.
They certainly don't like to admit that their god is bound by the 'laws of logic'.
They try and sidestep this dilemma by special pleading that it's his 'nature' to be logical.
Total ad hoc.
These presuppers are an intellectually pathetic bunch.
The main theme of their apologetic is simply an argumentum ad hominem on 'worldviews' as a basis to assert that their thoughts have the intellectual 'high ground'.
Things are what they are, and are not what they are not. This is necessarily so.
It would be the case even if there were no sentient beings, therefore a 'worldview' doesn't alter reality.
Their claim that they have the intellectual high ground does not exempt them from their burden of proof.
Too bad, so sad...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris