GrowingSmaller
Muslm Humanist
"Grinding down" can mean almost anything, so we need a definition of it please.
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As it is presented there (and if I am not missing something), it is a non sequitur, in the first place.It's been a long time
Can nobody answer the argument presented in the last paragraph? The preceding paragraphs provide an excellent definition, so there's no equivocating; but surely other fallacies could be introduced with a little effort.
Straw Voltaire.
I can read. I do not equate an atheist prince in general with an atheist prince with an interest in killing Voltaire, as you do. You know this, yet you persist in straw manning.If you want to discuss his argument, you're going to have to actually address his argument. He states that an atheist prince would want to kill him, as would atheist courtiers. This is not a straw man, this is what he actually says.
Why don't you calm down and try to compose something plausible at this point in the discussion?There is no reason for mentioning this if he wasn't saying that atheists (at least in politics) have an interest in murder.
Or possibly, if we want to take what he said completely literally, that atheist princes want to physically grind down Voltaire. Regardless of how literal or metaphorical you take it, this is a strawman and a non sequitur, and it is his actual argument. If you continue to deny what you posted in the OP then I can only conclude you're here to flamebait and not to discuss.
It won't hurt to clarify, for those unfamiliar with the straw man fallacy.I can read. I do not equate an atheist prince in general with an atheist prince with an interest in killing Voltaire, as you do. You know this, yet you persist in straw manning.
I see three potential possibilities:
1. Prince with an interest in keeping Voltaire alive
2. Prince with an interest in grinding Voltaire
3. Indifferent Prince
Straw Voltaire claims only the second is possible; the real Voltaire addresses one without mentioning the other two. Perhaps the real Voltaire has overestimated the capacity of readers to figure out simple things?
See? Voltaire does not insist all atheist princes would find it in their interest to grind him to powder. He only complains about one who would. Obviously Voltaire would feel quite safe if an atheist prince were dependent upon him to stay in power.
No it isn't. Voltaire's reasoning is rock-solid. A prince who meets the criteria he specified might have an interest in grinding him to powder, yet be stayed from committing such a sin - not by external human threat (for he is the prince!) but by internal concerns, as listed.However, if what you say is what Voltaire actually intended on saying, then I'll go with it. In that case, the fact that the prince is an atheist is irrelevant.
Well assuming he wasn't talking about atheists when he was and whatever else it takes to get to your new nebulous straw version, I don't think such an interpretation is going to say anything when you're finished. I don't think it a coincidence either.The focus is on avoiding princes who want to grind him to powder, not on atheists. The entire final paragraph, assuming that it says what you think it does, becomes a non sequitur.
Huh? The only way to make sense is to warp it into nonsense? I understood it just fine the first time I read it. I have presented it to other audiences, and such nonsense was never advanced against it. Here obviously, desperation has inspired a fad.The only way this argument would make any logical sense (and I use "logical" very loosely) is if he was talking about all atheists, which you deny he is.
No. See under "I am right" we stick to Voltaire. Not straw Voltaire; not straw me. I don't need your words in my mouth, and we've all seen the results when they're inserted into Voltaire's.So, regardless of whether I am right or you are right, Voltaire's argument is a non sequitur. If I'm right, then it's also a strawman argument. Either way, the argument is weak.
I think it would be helpful if you´d sum up what you perceive as being the simple,straightforward and rock solid premises and conclusion (in a more simple and straightforward wording than Voltaire´s).Two simple, straightforward premises, and one rock solid conclusion.
I believe that this is satire from Voltaire, and there isn't much of an argument present.
I don't see such premises. Mind pointing them out?There are unfounded premises, such as "the only reason why one would not become a murderer is the threat of a really big, angry God" and "Christians would never even contemplate regicide". (LOL!)
Voltaire can be mighty stupid when he puts his mind to it, perhaps even competitive. But in this example he does well.Voltaire isn't that stupid, so I view this as satire.
eudaimonia,
Mark
Wonderful, sound, thinking, nothing remotely similar to the text that followed, certainly the only profound insight to be found between the covers."The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural' is STATED, FIXED or SETTLED; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once."Butler: "Analogy of Revealed Religion"
There are unfounded premises, such as "the only reason why one would not become a murderer is the threat of a really big, angry God" and "Christians would never even contemplate regicide". (LOL!)
Please Darwin Please
I don't see such premises. Mind pointing them out?
Voltaire's god is not accurately described with terms such as "really big, angry". [a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger]
See?
No it isn't. Voltaire's reasoning is rock-solid.
History has demonstrated that theists are just as capable of murder and evil as anyone else.
Now that's impressive!Exactly. Voltaire knows that his readers know this, therefore he isn't being serious, and doesn't expect his readers to take him seriously. It's all part of his French wit.
eudaimonia,
Mark
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?" - Thomas Jefferson
"The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability.
The ambitious, the sensual, have hardly time for reasoning, and for embracing a bad system; they have other things to do than comparing Lucretius with Socrates. That is how things go among us.
That was not how things went with the Roman senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous, who ruined the republic. Epicureanism existed under the emperors: the atheists of the senate had been rebels in the time of Sylla and Cæsar: under Augustus and Tiberius they were atheist slaves.
I would not wish to have to deal with an atheist prince, who would find it to his interest to have me ground to powder in a mortar: I should be quite sure of being ground to powder. If I were a sovereign, I would not wish to have to deal with atheist courtiers, whose interest it would be to poison me: I should have to be taking antidotes every day. It is therefore absolutely necessary for princes and for peoples, that the idea of a Supreme Being, creator, ruler, rewarder, revenger, shall be deeply engraved in people's minds. " - Voltaire
That's the inadvertent beauty of Voltaire's writing here. His definition doesn't allow you to classify Hitler as "a Christian", for it is obvious Hitler did not believe in a supreme being concerned with justice.It's still an non sequitur. History has demonstrated that theists are just as capable of murder and evil as anyone else. Belief in God, therefore, evidently stops neither of these. This is especially true in the case of the deistic god which Voltaire believed in.
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