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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Violating The First Rule Of Critical Discussion

Recurrent claim from Christians in comments:
"you seem to be questioning God. Why didn't God do this? why did God do that? The short answer is, because God does what he pleases and since he is infinite in knowledge, then God knows best, not us."
10:41 PM, August 23, 2008

According to Van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Walton, the first rule of a critical discussion is that

1. Parties must not prevent each other from advancing or casting doubt on each others viewpoints.


[Rules for Critical Discussion by Frans Van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst, taken from "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" by Douglas Walton,Cambridge University Press, 2006.]


But what we see here is that some christians don't have a problem with trying to shut down critical questioning of biblical principles. When Biblical principles don't accurately reflect reality, then one of two things are happening. Biblical principles are flawed or reality is flawed. Pick your poison.
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