On the Internet, I have encountered a prominent Philosopher of Religion called Alvin Plantinga who was once described by Time Magazine as a America’s leading orthodoxist Protestant Philosopher of God. He has made many anti-naturalistic arguments and theistic arguments in the past, has engaged in Public Discourse with atheists, rather like William Lane Craig. And also, William Lane Craig seems to be a fan of Plantinga’s misguided “Reformed Epistemology”. But that’s another story altogether. In our particular case, I intend to refute the various fallacious absurdities of Alvin Plantinga’s ”Evolutionary Argument Against [Metaphysical] Naturalism”. Or rather more specifically, I will be critiquing all six parts together of a six-part series of lectures on YouTube. It is a talk by Plantinga entitled “An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”. –see here. I may not be able to address every point as meticulously as I would like to, but I will give it a fair shot. Of course, it is doubtful that he has not simply ignored these criticisms if they have already been made in the past. Oh well… also, for expediency, here is an overview of Plantinga from Wikipedia. You will notice that like William Lane Craig, he is a Christian apologist, and has authored such books as God and Other Minds, and has even written a book entirely dedicated to the argument he presents in this 60 minute lecture. :)
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Archive for the ‘YouTube’ Category
Critique Of Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism
Ray Comfort is 180 degrees from reality
Ok so i had a really good laugh today. I decided that a watching of Ray Comfort’s “180 movie” would be a good way to waste 33 mins of my life. The best synopsis of the contents of the film at present can be found on RationalWiki. But i can boil it down to two arguments Ray presents:
1) Hitler is Anti-christian.
2) Abortion in America is really akin to the Holocaust.
The second argument is really little more than the application of godwins law into a debate, furthermore the connection between abortion doctors in America today and the Nazis in the 1930′s and 1940′s is more silly and superficial than what Ray and his fellow religious propagandists make it out to be. Yes it is true that the Nazis used forced abortions upon women deemed “unAryan” (women who were Jewish or Slavic, etc.) in order to decrease their number as part of their eugenic policies, however for healthy Women of the Volksgemeinschaft it was a different story, because for them abortions were banned. Indeed in 1936, Heinrich Himmler created a Reich Central Office just for the purpose “for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion”! You know those two things Ray and his fellow religious fundamentalists don’t like. Being sarcastic here like i sometimes am, Does this mean that by ray’s logic he may be *shock horror* akin to a Nazi? In the real world, of course he isn’t!
But for the purposes of this, im going to attempt to rebut his other argument, that Hitler was no Christian.
I have a few Questions about arguing with idiots
Ladies and Gentlemen: Let me introduce you to “Onefodderunit” [I'll call him OFU for short]. He is by far and away the most Batshit crazy person i and my friends have ever had the displeasure of arguing with [the debate in the comments section of the video]. He’s a 9/11 truther. He’s a Creationist who regards atheism [and presumably Darwin's ideas] itself as a “belief in Coincidental Chemical Creationism.” [Im not kidding] even though he also claims “Im not religious”. He’s a Holocaust denier. He regards the Nazis as Socialist [A silly piece of anti intelectual history revisionism in and of itself that i can deal with] and clearly regards himself given his “Anti left” rhetoric as something of a right winger. I regard him as a Neo-Nazi lunatic due to the clear and deep anti-semitism he displays though he denies he is a Neo-Nazi. Well at least to me he proves his type belong on the Far Right.
But in Short, He’s all my Nightmares wrapped up in one disgusting cowardly person who’se level of insanity approaches and possibly exceeds that of a “Nephilimfree” or “VenomFangX”
A NY’rs reflections on 9/11
I’ve been asked by AndromedasWake to say a few words on the entire 9/11 Ground Zero debate and give a New Yorker’s perspective. I thought it would be appropriate to wait until time has passed since the Ground Zero anniversary, considering the content of this blog post.
I have lived through a decade of Ground Zero controversy. From the moment the dust settled, individuals and groups with political agendas descended on the wounded carcass of lower Manhattan, cutting out and dishing up great slabs of suffering to serve at the gluttonous feast of their ambitions.
“All of Ground Zero should be declared hallowed ground”, “The memorial in light should remain until the towers are rebuilt”, “it should be called the Freedom Tower”, “THIS tower design is a better memorial than that one”, “A design contest will show the true spirit of American freedom”, “The stairway to heaven can’t be moved, it would be disrespectful!”, “The beams that form a cross cannot be moved, God placed them there!”
It has gone on and on, year after year. (more…)
Multiple Conversions – The quest for Sanity and Security.
The saga that is TheWoodsOfJordan on YouTube has come to a temporary lull with his announced conversion and temporary leave of absence from said site.
He has been a controversial character since he first came onto the YT scene.
Originally preaching a message generated by an internal Christ that was clearly representative of his internal demons he was ridiculed and loathed by many.
Recently he announced his deconversion from Christianity to Atheism. Just the other day he posted a video.
On Thunderf00t, Park51 and the elusive point
This poor old blog; it just hasn’t seen much action lately. I myself have several unfinished posts in the edit bin which need attention. Hopefully the problem will atrophy as the blogging team expands before the year is out.
In the mean time, I have been blessed with a topic that’s perfect for a blog post; too big for a rant on Facebook, and too opinionated and irrelevant for a YouTube video. That topic is of course Thunderf00t’s videos about Park51. I will also be focussing on my role as a subscriber and commenter, as I have apparently become central to a debate about miscommunication.
Before getting started, I should note that I see Park51 as a complete non-issue blown up out of all proportion for the sake of sensationalism. Many of my favourite commentators on religious and rights issues have left me disappointed with the use of “they have the right but…” arguments, where what follows the “but” has been universally superfluous or just plain incorrect. False attribution, red herrings and appeals to emotion are popping up all over the place and making a mockery of the actual debate.
But of course, we all think in chorus, this is the Internet!
LiberalViewer to discuss Copyright and Fair Use at VidCon
VidCon 2010, a conference themed around the rising internet video media phenomenon, takes place this coming weekend. I know, it’s the World Cup Final and British Grand Prix, so you won’t be seeing much of me over those two days, but something that should be of interest to all Leaguers is that Communist-Nazi-Liberal-Nazi-Scumbag LiberalViewer will be attending as a panelist to discuss the state of Copyright, YouTube’s policies, and what “fair use” really means with YouTube’s own Head of Communications and Community Policy, Victoria Grand (as well as a former EMI representative Joe Felice).
This is a great opportunity for LV to bring forward questions on behalf of the community, and that’s exactly what he’s offering to do (what a scumbag!). Even if you don’t have any questions you would like to hear asked, please head over to the video embedded below and support it. It is my hope that popularising this discussion will increase the pressure on Google to address its policy surrounding anonymous abuse of the DMCA, flagging system and rating system.
If you can cast your memory right back to January of this year, you may remember that I posted two videos on the subject. The first received widespread attention thanks to Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula) but despite us remaining the top “technical issue”, Google have stayed suspiciously quiet.
The second video was posted in response to Google’s own invitation for site suggestions. The free speech loving community once again dominated this forum, but Google’s canned response only indicated their serious lack of understanding of the issue (and perhaps ability to read?)
Content owners who file copyright infringement notifications under the DMCA do so under penalty of perjury. When we receive a DMCA notification, we remove the posted video, send email to your registered address, and provide notice in your account. Sometimes individuals abuse the process, or are simply mistaken, because determining copyright ownership can be tricky. If you believe your content was misidentified as infringing or is a fair use, you may file a DMCA counter-notification.
Wow. Don’t they understand the word “anonymous”? We know full well how the damned thing is supposed to work Google; we’re telling you that it is open to abuse when anyone can use an unverified identity to file the notice. You know if anonymity wasn’t an option when creating an account to file such a claim, the vast majority of censorship-inspired, false DMCAs wouldn’t be filed, right?
I will be contacting LV directly with this background, just to make sure he knows how YouTube has utterly failed to respond to this issue properly in the past.
Clicky link
Oh Censorship, when will you learn?
This is the Internet.
“Woah! Slow the fork down! What does that mean?”
It means that when you try to get someone’s opinion removed, instead of constructing a mature response, said opinion will come back with force. There is no bullet to the head of popular internet content. It appears, it thrives, and if it suspiciously disappears, memefication occurs. Yes. Memefication.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
Many moons ago, a YouTube user named DannyMendlow posted a comical advertisement parody entitled “Religion!”. You can tell where this is going, can’t you? The video became hugely popular, making Pharyngula and other blogs if I recall correctly. I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was originally posted, but I’m willing to wager that it was quite some time as I’ve seen this video all over the place.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Digg. It’s a website designed to direct people to popular internet content. By Digging something, you increase its ranking on Digg, increasing the likelihood that it will be brought to the attention of the Digg massive.
DannyMendlow’s video was Dugg (Digged?) to the extent that it reached the front page. Let me make this abundantly clear: that means the video in question was well liked by a large number of people, who felt that others should see it. By some magic shortly after its arrival on the front of Digg, the video was pulled by YouTube as being ‘inappropriate’. Stupidity abounds at the YouTube HQ (which I have on good authority is manned by a crack team of ducks) because the only thing inappropriate about the video is that it’s so depressingly true. Yesterday, DannyMendlow reposted the video for the first time, and in my opinion it deserves support. I urge you to head over and favourite/rate/comment the original. Oh, and why not Digg it too? Enjoy…