Originally posted by Kymar
You see, the reason you continually get the goats of whatever atheists, agnostics, or believers in other faiths is that your phraseology clearly presumes that you are right and they are wrong. We all know that you actually believe exactly this to be so, and most of us can cope with that idea, but it's as though you've already built "the last word" into the sentence. Others feel compelled to reply, and inevitably, at least to this point, seem to compel you to reply, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, world without end, amen...
It's never "I believe that you will only find God" or "I believe that the ultimate decision...," but rather the naked categorical assertions. Sometimes you throw in an "I know" - which only emphasizes an implicit assertion of superiority, at least to whatever extent one holds having knowledge to be superior to remaining ignorant.
The statement "I believe I know..." may sound like an absurdity, but such qualifications remain embedded, if often unstated, within the scientific worldview, which, once accepted, refuses to accept any categorical statement except as contextualized within some theoretical relativistic framework. At least, I believe I know that I believe that it appears that I know that I believe that it appears that I believe that...
I can recognize further that for you this position also contains its own presumed "last word" on the subject - in effect a seemingly paradoxical "there can be no last word on the subject" that, if allowed to stand, represents an implicit denial of any claims to certain knowledge. I confess that that's my position, or at least I believe that it appears to be my position... It may amount to a linguistic or philosophical form of the Goedelian paradox that appears to eat away at the roots of mathematics, but does not, all the same, prevent sound mathematics from being performed.
In this sense, the argument may be definitionally irresolvable, but, in another sense, no real argument is taking place, as the two sides may not even be speaking the same language. The discussion would have to begin an end with an acknowledgment that the alternative position can NEVER be accepted. Such a discussion would not really qualify as a discussion (or debate, or argument) at all. At best, it might qualify as a fight or a clash of wills - a characterization which many on both sides may find unacceptable...
