Ok I think I might be getting to the bottom of the confusion here. "Some people use religion to explain things they don't understand. Some people use atheism as a way of explaining things they cannot understand." [the full quote of a framing of the thought 'religion and intelligence have no correlation] "Atheism isn't an explanation of anything." [which I took to mean 'I disagree with your framing of that thought'] "Framing aside, the thought's valid"[which I took to mean 'I agree the framing is clumsy, but the thought is valid'] "I disagree" [that's where I couldn't work out what you disagreed with]
So we're really getting into entirely irrelevant semantics here. I was making the point of the lack of correlation between faith and intelligence. I am happy to admit my wording here may have been clumsy.
So as I understood it we were either arguing about any correlation between faith and intelligence (which I didn't think we were and you have stated several times you weren't) or we're arguing about my use of a particular wording, which I have admitted was clumsy, which means there isn't really an argument. Hence my confusion.
But I see now that perhaps you were classing Some people use atheism as a way of explaining things they cannot understand. as a completely different point, which it wasn't.
I was simply saying that atheism isn't an explanation - whereas you seemed to be saying that it was. It's one of the reasons I get annoyed when people say that atheism is a religion - they seem to think that there's an atheist worldview of the same type as a Christian worldview or a Hindu worldview, whereas it's merely a statement that none of these worldviews convinced the atheist.
If you weren't saying that then no, we don't have an argument :->
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timeasmymeasure
Re: ???
Date: 2009-01-09 10:30 am (UTC)"Some people use religion to explain things they don't understand. Some people use atheism as a way of explaining things they cannot understand." [the full quote of a framing of the thought 'religion and intelligence have no correlation]
"Atheism isn't an explanation of anything." [which I took to mean 'I disagree with your framing of that thought']
"Framing aside, the thought's valid"[which I took to mean 'I agree the framing is clumsy, but the thought is valid']
"I disagree" [that's where I couldn't work out what you disagreed with]
So we're really getting into entirely irrelevant semantics here. I was making the point of the lack of correlation between faith and intelligence. I am happy to admit my wording here may have been clumsy.
So as I understood it we were either arguing about any correlation between faith and intelligence (which I didn't think we were and you have stated several times you weren't) or we're arguing about my use of a particular wording, which I have admitted was clumsy, which means there isn't really an argument. Hence my confusion.
But I see now that perhaps you were classing Some people use atheism as a way of explaining things they cannot understand. as a completely different point, which it wasn't.
Re: ???
Date: 2009-01-09 10:38 am (UTC)If you weren't saying that then no, we don't have an argument :->
Re: ???
Date: 2009-01-09 10:40 am (UTC)