Well, re-reading my initial post, I really wasn't getting into a debate.
You misunderstand. What you WERE doing with your various assertions about Hitchens and atheists in general, by extension, was equivalent to someone saying "Liberals are attention-whores!" in a public forum and going on to say "They are all about eco-terrorism!" and then when an actual liberal shows up and says "Hey, I am a liberal and this is false all around.", you shoot back with "I did not want to discuss or debate this.". If you truly did not want to engage or substantiate your assertions then it is common practice to simply NOT MAKE such assertions.
That is NOT Hitchens' assertion. He is asserting that
all religion is bad in one way or another and stating explicitly why it is so in each case.
Straw man. No one is arguing the above.
False analogy and another straw man.
Speaking of poor logic...you are committing a series of logical fallacies here.
Not in the context I offered the analogy. You are taking me out of context here.
HERE is what I wrote:
See? I was not comparing religionists in general, nor your religion in particular, with gangbangers. I was making a very specific point above. How you got so confused I am not sure, but what I am saying is that YOUR logical faux pax was akin to someone saying "Not all gangbangers are murderers..." as if the argument that ALL religionists(gangbangers) are/were child molesetors/neocon fundamentalists/Creationists/assholes was central to my(or Hitchens') thesis/argument/point.
Let me spell it out for you: NO ONE is arguing that "ALL religious folk are like {any specific sect or example of extremist fundamentalist)!". Hitchens, and I, are arguing that religion provides NO benefit that is not had WITOUT religion and it DOES come with a whole heap of negative baggage in the form of justification/motivation for atrocity that no rational human would otherwise agree to so readily.
Think about it, there are extremes in politics, philosophy, sports, patriotism, nationalism, etc. as well as religion. But which of these can so easily drive otherwise rational people, be they Islamic, Christian, Buddhist or what have you to engaging in sacred martyrdom/suicide bombing/burning women and children at the stake/Stalinism(yes, Stalinism was a religion. Divine emperor worship with Joseph Stalin as the Godhead, much like Gaius Caesar/Caligula), and the like?? Only religion can achieve such ends. If Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh tried to convince people to blow themselves up and take out as many innocent children as they could in doing so, in the name of "Liberalism" or "Conservatism", they would be run out on a rail! people would laugh at them!
But Jim Jones, David Koresh, Torquemada, Charlemagne, Osama Bin Laden,and Adolph Hitler(an avowed Catholic) were able to achieve unimaginable atrocity by appealing to religion/spiritualism.
Not at all. My logic, I assure you, is sound. Unlike you, I spend ridiculous hours every week doing nothing BUT debate/critical thought exercises/logic. Any fallacy I commit will bite me in the ass tenfold! But I would love to be shown otherwise here! If there is some flaw with any argument...premise or conclusion, of mine then I want to kno0w about it.
No and that is why no one argues such an absurd position. If your straw man here was the best that I could come up with then I would not bother.
"True religion" is a logical fallacy called
The No True Scotsman fallacy. There is no such thing as "True religion". "True religion" is a subjective label that EVERY apologist for every sect/cult/religion imaginable slaps onto his beliefs to attempt to lend them unearned weight/credibility by denouncing all "other religions" as "untrue/false religion".
YOU did! You said that 'Nothing I("I" as in ME) can say will change your mind/make you question your faith.' remember? THAT is dogma! If you have a conclusion, especially one that cannot be justified rationally, which you determine
a priori to be beyond any means of falsification, then you have dogma friend.
This is a nonsense statement. What Alfred Jules Ayer called "a literally meaningless statement". "Transcendence" is the key ingredient for proving that God does not exist. Law of non-contradiction and all that. A fun little exercise for you: Try and define "existence" in a way that distinguishes the term from "imaginary", in concept. In other words, how do you tell an "imaginary rock" from an actual rock?
Next try and define "transcendence" in such a way that it is distinguishable from the mundane/non-transcendent. For example, imagine some pagan is getting it on with a REAL fertility goddess and you walked in on him. How would you know whether he was actually fucking this nymph-deity or whether he was jacking off?
The answer, of course is that actual things have sense contents. Imaginary things do NOT have sense contents. That is how we distinguish the two. "Transcendence", by definition, is to LACK sense contents/rational justification. In other words to be without the very thing which defines something as being actual.
Ergo, transcendent things ARE imaginary.
Nonsense cannot be explained because it is nonsense. It was not "brilling in the slithey toaves.". There was not a 40% chance of "brilling". Not even a 2% chance! Why? Because "brilling", "slithey" and "toaves" are all nonsense words created by Lewis Caroll in his poem
Jabberwocky. The words have no discernible meaning and the sentences constructed with these words cannot convey any real idea. Much like your "transcendence" meanderings.
You believe what you believe because of geography and humanity's pattern-seeking psychology. Very few people escape being whatever religious persuasion that their parents/family/social network belong to and this is for the most part determined, pre-birth, by the geographical area you are born into. You, just like every other religious person from every other sect and cult to have ever existed, may claim some "personal revelation" but I know better than to arbitrarily accept anecdotal claims as valid evidence.
No one can scrutinize an anecdote.
You are not making the least bit of sense here. What means, other than reason, do you rely on to understand ANYTHING?! Please explain how this "non-reason" works so that I may check it out. And if this...whatever it is, actually works then why are you using REASON to try and convince me of this?! Why not "faith me" the knowledge or "intuit me" some understanding? AS Asimov once quipped; 'use ANY means BUT reason to make your case.'
Bald assertion and demonstrably false to boot!
Begging the question fallacy. You presuppose that "why" is even a legitimate question. As if there MUST be some overarching intention/purpose behind our evolution from single celled, microbial life to the multicellular bipedal primates we are now.
There is no9 more a "why" behind MY or your own existence than there is a "why" behind the wind blowing outside. Sure there is causation and linear sequence. One thing leads to another and all that but your question was not about that. Your question is an esoteric/philosophical presupposition.
False! Laughably false!! There is NOTHING that exists which is "illogical".
Unknown...sure, but unknown does not = "illogical" or "senseless".