Exactly, so why the confusion about Iams being able to respect people who he thinks are deluding themselves?

Yikes, it's like pulling teeth. I can't explain this again... my head will implode.

What's ironic is that you find my confusion confusing.

I'm off to greener pastures...

Well seeing as the title of the thread is asking you to explain why you debate another's belief then you going off to greener pastures means you can't explain why you are debating Iams beliefs.

You just won't accept them and reject them based on your own bias. So since you can't understand it then you dismiss his explanation.

This thread was about asking ourselves to look at why we do this to other people. Not yet again asking others to explain their beliefs.

But enjoy the pastures.

turning ones attention away from the facts in arguments to the person participating in them is the norm around here and in most political debates as well.. rather than discuss the the issues soberly, percieved rivals seem to find it easier to discuss personalities( of which they know nothing) and mudsling..Its not surprising that this abuse ad Hominem is often used especially where its about ones emotions and the way they percieve....true you have decided that we "need 'to look at our sinful ways based on what you think not in fact.....

Why must it be that my mind is closed?

If I know 2+2=4, but I find someone who is sure 2+2=5, I can be quite curious about understanding what thought pattern could lead someone to the conviction, and even come to appreciate the reasoning that led them to their conclusion, but if I can still take 2 pencils from the drawer on my desk and 2 pencils from the pencil holder on top of my desk and count them and still only get them to add up to 4, why should I change my conviction?

I state again, that it seems you look at things this way, so you assume everyone else must think this way also.


Excuse me, but I never said I was being picked on, nor have I asked anyone else here to say so, therefore if someone, or several someones believe I am being picked on, it must be because they are perceiving it themselves.

Sometimes when I am in a debate with someone...that someone happens to be a christian (for example)...I notied before, that if i ever snapped at that person for acting the jerk....I was accused of christian bashing!!!!!!! When I wasn't christian bashing...I was getting that the guy for acting a total jerk...push aside the belief system...when someone acts a tosser...then i treat them like one...im getting at them for acting like that...not their beliefs............but that is so easily twisted around into making it look as though, I am getting at his belief....

I dont think its ok for someone to bash christianity...like making threads just to have a dig at it...not right at all

Just in the same way, I dont think its cool for someone religious, to do the same towards the opposite side


If you are dead against bashing...why not be dead against ALL BASHING of ALL KINDS then?? why be one sided??...why is it ok for religious people to bash and not ok for others to do it??

There is no need for bashing I agree...but when you are on a debating board like this, you can expect it to get heated from BOTH SIDES..not just one side BOTH

Mathematics is an expression of values (if you hold one apple in one hand, and two in the other you will understand that there is a different amount of apple value being held in each hand), relationships (one apple is LESS THAN two apples), and actions (you had to ADD one apple to the first one in order for holding two apples to be the result in the second hand), between representations (numbers) of observable facts. Much like poetry can be an expression (verbal representation of an emotion, an action, a place, a person, an idea, etc...)

Language is another way of representing things. If math is a belief system, then so are letters because in all actuality letters don't really exist, man had to create them to represent sounds. Man created math to represent values.

Math is to a made-up belief system, as language is to a made-up belief system. Technically, man-made, but representative of something real. The sounds we make are real, so we created the written word to represent those sounds on paper. Values and amounts are observable, and it was neccesary to create a description of the language that already really existed and was observable.

Is it a belief system or is it a representation of something that is real?

I have to admit she generally snaps at ME for being a jerk! .......B








halfhandshuffle:Smashing Pumpkins-I Am One
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kc__oUqoPu8