I may not be smart enough to debate you point-for-point on this, but I have the feeling about 60% of what you say is crap.
David Letterman, To Bill O’Reilly, in discussion about the supposed War on Christmas, as quoted in “In Letterman appearance, O’Reilly repeated false claim that school changed ‘Silent Night’ lyrics”, Media Matters for America, (2006-01-04) (From Wikiquote)
I imagine this is getting up-voted here in response to the sentiment, and I’m not going to vote it down. But this approach is more often used by deists against rationalists, and the next step is book-burning.
This quote, for me, shows two ideas: The I defy the data that khafra mentions below, as well as, on Letterman’s side, an ability to accurately detect bs and dismiss it without having spent significant resources on formal debate. That ability seems incredibly useful to me, and definitely worth cultivating.
Do deists really go around telling people how unintelligent they are? Around here they tend to be insecure about their intelligence and try hard to act smart. But the intellectual status of religious belief is something that varies by culture.
David Letterman, To Bill O’Reilly, in discussion about the supposed War on Christmas, as quoted in “In Letterman appearance, O’Reilly repeated false claim that school changed ‘Silent Night’ lyrics”, Media Matters for America, (2006-01-04) (From Wikiquote)
I imagine this is getting up-voted here in response to the sentiment, and I’m not going to vote it down. But this approach is more often used by deists against rationalists, and the next step is book-burning.
This quote, for me, shows two ideas: The I defy the data that khafra mentions below, as well as, on Letterman’s side, an ability to accurately detect bs and dismiss it without having spent significant resources on formal debate. That ability seems incredibly useful to me, and definitely worth cultivating.
I associate the second idea with the Prior Information Chapter of HPMoR
Do deists really go around telling people how unintelligent they are? Around here they tend to be insecure about their intelligence and try hard to act smart. But the intellectual status of religious belief is something that varies by culture.
I saw it as a real-life example of I defy the data.