YOU CAN’T HAVE A RATIONAL DISCUSSION WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER READ

 I have long concluded that you can’t have a proper discussion on any complex issue such as abortion when most of the population never read at all, and many of those who do, only do so to pass their school exams or graduate in their narrow professional field. So why do I even bother with this blog? For one thing, because truth needs to be told. For another, because if through this blog I manage to make at least one person think, and perhaps seek further knowledge on the topic, not through social media or internet fora, but through actual books, then it will all have been worth-while.

Here’s an example of an interaction I had in the comments sections of online newspapers – and mind you, I did not choose the worst of the response I got.

 

Kenneth Cassar:

Essentially, Dr Dingli’s claims may be summarized as follows:

1. Life is sacred – a religious claim that is not supported by any evidence.

2. Foetuses at any stage of development have a right to life – an unsupported claim that is essentially the claim being contested, and therefore cannot be used as a premise.

3. Natural Law dictates that a foetus has rights from conception – A Pantheistic belief that treats “Nature” as a conscious agent with intentionality or alternatively a distorted way of saying “God said so”.

All three claims are just religion-derived assertions lacking any evidence. In the words of the late Christopher Hitchens, “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”.

 

John B Pace:

 

Mr Cassar, you follow the philosophy of the notorious atheist Hitchens; and you disdain religious wisdom at your own risk. You blatantly deny the right of a living organism, no less human than you, to live and continue living unmolested! Why is that?

Do you claim that, without the slightest twang of conscience, people can be free to abuse and kill human embryos at will, treating them as rubbish like useless inanimate "things"?

"To test an argument in philosophy, extend it to infinity". Your anti-life argument could lead to the gradual extermination of the human race!

Regarding Nature, this is replete with intelligent designs that indicate it's origin from a supreme Intelligence. Science has found out that the universe had a beginning but cannot explain how the first life on Earth started and developed . Einstein's theory of evolution instigated a materialistic view of life progression leading to atheism, but belief in it is in decline among scientists and does not exclude direction by an intelligent Cause.

Thank God for "religious assigned assertions" that elevate humanity away from its primal savagery to make people humane, merciful and wise.

 

KC:

 

1. Hitchens wasn't a philosopher.

2. If I were to list where I get my philosophy, the reading list would take several pages.

3. My premises are all logically connected and reach a logical conclusion, unlike the ridiculous premise that "everything that lives has a natural right to live to its full potential" that you produced on my blog, which you yourself falsify by the simple act of eating.

4. Anything without a developed brain neither knows it exists, nor cares. This fact is obvious.

5. I never mentioned "religious assigned assertions", whatever that means.

 

JP:

 

Yes, you did mention "religion assigned assertions" in your last paragraph.

You are wrong to think that religions are not reliable assessors and scientific interpreters of existence. Try getting into serious Christian philosophy without the prejudice you obviously have; you will find a lot of wisdom which you seem to value and provide balance to your one-sided ideology.
Good luck!

 

KC:

Anyone with a decent eyesight can see that I never used the phrase "religion assigned assertions", but you can keep lying as long as lies that may easily be checked are permitted here.

You also seem to have the impression that all I read is atheist books. A common prejudice from those who rarely read at all. Which is why you keep producing blanket assertions without any supporting arguments, and keep spouting prejudicial claims about me, some of which I have already demonstrated to be false. That's what happens when people think other people who don't subscribe to their religion are evil.

This is not the place for me to go off-topic and debunk the "intelligent design" theory. As for Einstein's theory of evolution, I must look for a book about that. All I know is Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, which is supported by all the scientific evidence. But apparently, you are an evolution denier too, and are so not because you have evidence that disproves it, but only because you fear it leads to atheism. Truth is truth, wherever it leads, but apparently you can't handle the truth.

Hitchens wasn't even a philosopher, so your first sentence cannot be true. My philosophy is based on countless philosophers through books you certainly never read and yet would deign to judge.

You ask me to prove why a foetus that does not even know it exists cannot have rights. I will not waste any time giving a reasoned detailed argument only for people like you to mark it as spam and have it deleted.

If you are the same John Pace, you are free to continue our discussion on my blog, where you failed to even try to understand the several reasoned arguments I made.

 

If you are not the same John Pace, then I invite you to visit the blog if you really wish to have a discussion there. I only ask of you to rationally argue your case, and not make blanket assertions and prejudiced judgements like you are doing here. I somehow doubt you are capable of it though, given that you can't even quote me correctly.

 

 

Here's what’s wrong with Pace’s reasoning, without even going into detail regarding the veracity of any of his claims. 

 

Pace clearly takes my first comment (not even addressed to him) as a personal attack on his religion. This is made abundantly clear in the whole conversation. Pace, like too many people, isn’t capable of seeing things from another’s perspective, which is a common problem with those who rarely if ever read. He has his own deeply held beliefs which he probably has clung to since childhood, and any argument that contradicts those beliefs he sees as a threat. Anyone who habitually reads, especially philosophy, would welcome arguments that put his beliefs into question. It is the only means to either confirm your own truths or correct your errors. Which brings me to his second fault.

 

Pace apparently believes that quoting an author means that one gets all his opinions from that author and agrees completely with anything that author says. He also assumes that a reader of Hitchens, for instance, would not read anything that does not agree with whatever Hitchens says. He assumes this because he projects what he does himself on the person he disagrees with. He must have never read Hitchens, for instance, given that he mistakes him for a philosopher, and also thinks he cannot say anything that is true just because he was an atheist.

 

Pace also displays his one-track mindedness by repeating the faulty logic that has already been shown to him to be such. For instance he says that my “anti-life argument could lead to the gradual extermination of the human race”, when I had countless times in my one-to-one discussions on this blog made it abundantly clear to him that my stance is pro-choice, not anti-life (I’m a vegetarian, for God’s sake!), His narrow view blinds him to the fact that the claim that being pro-choice is anti-life is as true as a claim that being pro-life means spending every second of your whole life creating babies.

Pace also resorts to a common logical fallacy, which is to assume the truth of a proposition and then cloak it as an "argument".  For instance, Pace says "thank God for 'religious assigned assertions' that elevate humanity...to make people humane, merciful and wise". Pace unfortunately fails to notice that this is no argument at all, but simply a blanket assertion that he believes unquestionably. He might as well have just said that only Christians can be humane, merciful and wise, and it would have been equally untrue.

Pace, just like someone who rarely if ever reads, and given that his only intention is to insist his religion must be right, also attempts to debunk scientific facts he knows nothing about. For instance, he mentions the absurd “intelligent design” hypothesis as if it were fact, and misrepresents science by claiming, for instance, that “science has found out the universe had a beginning”, when, despite the common mistaken belief, the “big bang theory”, unlike the fact of evolution, is just one theory (the most popular perhaps) out of many. To clearly demonstrate he knows little if anything on the subject, he even attributes evolution by natural selection to Einstein, instead of Darwin. And to make matters worse, he even says that “belief in (evolution) is in decline among scientists”, when in actual fact, at least 98% of scientists believe humans evolved over time, and virtually all the top scientists take evolution as fact. But of course, because Pace fears the acceptance of the truth of evolution might lead to atheism, then it must be false.

 

The sad truth is that knowledge through reading extensively is just like haute cuisine. You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve tasted it. And you can’t taste it if you’ve spent your whole life being indoctrinated into fearing it will do you harm. Until one sheds one's prejudices and fears, and starts reading and following a logical argument wherever it leads you (truth does not care about your feelings), then discussion with such people is perhaps like talking to a brick wall. And the irony is that they probably think the same of those who read, learn and follow reason and truth unconditionally.