AuldSoul:
Your further explanation sets you as the judge of what is and is not rational.
If you think I am wrong about what should be considered rational, then point out the flaws. I do not see myself as the final arbiter of what is rational or not but I do think my beliefs are rational - if I did not, I would not hold them.
Therefore, you can start by ruling out anyone who believes that belief in God is rational and you are sure to confirm your prejudice through your arbitrary judgment.
My argument was not at all that belief in God is irrational or that those who disagree should be dismissed. My argument was that attributing a tediously mundane event to the intervention of a particular deity is not rational. I stand by that.
But the reality is that most people are not rational according to your standards of rationality, your prejudices are not regarded as rational by the majority.
Agreed. Once again, beliefs do not become any more rational if they are held by the majority.
Therefore, your argument never actually reached absurd, unless first you rid the sample pool of everyone who doesn't agree with you.
It is absurd to believe without evidence that the god of the Hebrews read someone's mind, and changed the universe to avoid a minor inconvenience to that person while simultaneously allowing millions to suffer and die. A billion people may think otherwise, the belief remains irrational and ridiculous.
Therefore, your "argument" was intellectually elitist ridicule, and nothing more, however much you wish it otherwise.
I have no problem being an intellectual elitist. I consider intelligence superior to stupidity, knowledge superior to ignorance, reason superior to superstition, skepticism superior to gullibility. I make no apologies for that.
Using latin phrases (that do not even apply to your statements) to describe your prejudicial and callous responses doesn't alter the reality. You were not using reductio ad absurdum to highlight a flaw. You were using ridicule.
Call it what you will. My point was that there was no merit in Annie's expressed belief that a Semitic war god interfered with the course of reality in order to ensure the safe return of a woman's purse. I have seen nothing to make me change my mind on that matter, but I will concede (again) that my methods may not be the most effective way of convincing someone they are wrong.
(You might also want to consider that I never claimed to be using reductio ad absurdum, or even that I was not using ridicule.)
Does it make you feel better, smarter, like a bigger person to have made Annie Over feel less or appear silly? I believe you want to think better of yourself than that, and you probably believe you used reductio ad absurdum as an argument in this case. But it was actually senseless ridicule of the sort that I have seen often from your fingertips on this forum during the months I have been here.
Senseless ridicule, now? You might get me to concede that it was ridicule (of an idea, not a person) but hardly senseless. I think, once I got arguing I made some good points, and I think I made them intelligently. I have no desire to make Annie Over or anybody feel small or stupid, but I do want people to stop seeing invisible friends and enemies everywhere.
Your initial comment was ridicule, not a throwaway comment:
Can't it be both?
Your later comments were ridicule, not reductio ad absurdum. Your style of interaction on threads of this sort is ridicule. You just like to believe it is something else. Anything else, it seems, "throwaway comments," "reductio ad absurdum," anything but reality; ridicule. For someone who uses ridicule so frequently, I find it odd that you have such an aversion to being seen as a ridiculer.
Ah, so everything I write is ridicule, not just in this thread but in all of them? I see. I guess I do want to see it as something else. I want to see it as me expressing my beliefs and questioning other people's claims for the purpose of intellectual enlightenment. But, according to you, that's a delusion. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that I'm something more than the Nelson Muntz of this board. Maybe this is just your new tack. In previous debates with you, I've found you to be tediously pedantic and our debates descended into endless squabbles over semantics until I couldn't take it anymore. This seems similar but with an added layer of hostility I haven't seen before. I'm not sure what purpose it's meant to serve, but the response seems disproportionate to the "crime".
I'd rather have a debate than a quarrel but I'm more than capable of either.