Preserving a portion of a response I made to some buddies stuck arguing with numbnuts on facebook:
You have my utmost sympathies. This is exactly like conversations I’ve tried to have here and elsewhere on the net. It soon becomes merely an exercise in banging my head on the wall. What I’d hope would be good conversation becomes sad and dysfunctional. I hope to learn more ideas but it quickly becomes readily apparent the other person(s) in the thread ‘arguing’ with me is incapable of understanding what I’ve written, unable to reason and follow rules of logic, given to ad hominem and strawman arguments, criticizing with gross mischaracterizations and blindness to their own inability to engage intelligently. All that is accompanied 3/4 of the time by their spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors in abundance.
I believe those very faults in those we try to interact reasonably with are, along with greed and selfishness, at the very root of the problems we face in society and with our government today. I know I can’t be right all the time but I know for certain that what is correct is never derived from the ridicule, abusiveness, anger and mocking that you two and I so often encounter in our perhaps futile attempts to reason with those who would choose to call themselves our ‘opposition’.
I am however greatly heartened to read of the growing disregard Americans have for the increasingly minor tea partiers and the growing majority support there is for the occupy movement. Money, fear and anger may repeatedly steal progress from us as a people but I know the only true solutions and betterment will come from people learning to value intelligence, eloquence and reason.
Me commenting on some moron’s insistent splattering of idiocy at a HuffingtonPost.com article related to Christopher Hitchens that isn’t worth linking here:
“You lack a grasp of logic and don’t even understand what you yourself are saying, Harley.
You’re claiming not having proof of something somehow positively supports what you have no proof of. That’s absolutely idiotic. If you are a believer in something, the burden of proof is upon YOU, not those who don’t share your belief. You must demonstrate the validity of what you are proposing. It is simple logic!
Science indicates what there is proof of and doubts what there is no proof of. It refines or restates matters as evidence is either further validated, invalidated or unavailable. Science doesn’t ‘believe’. It tests. It verifies. It postulates and extrapolates based upon existing knowledge and then seeks to prove it or disprove it.
There is no proof of what you most likely appear to believe in. If there were, it would be fact and demonstrable by science and supported by repeatable, verifiable evidence. This is how reality works, Harley.
I’ll repeat: Not knowing something does not support in any way the existence of it AT ALL or discredit those who do not believe in it. What there is no evidence of, most probably doesn’t exist.
I know there is no evidence of unicorns. It is therefore reasonable to say there are no unicorns. It doesn’t matter whether I don’t ‘know’ if there are unicorns or not if there simply is no evidence of unicorns.”
*lesigh* I really don’t even care how the person replies. The limits of their IQ has already been demonstrated.
When does stupid season start? (ala duck/rabbit season)