I think Anderson Silva might actually be the Roy Jones Jr of UFC

In this case it might not be a good thing.

The most action we saw in the first 14 minutes of the Anderson Silva-Thales Leites main event at UFC 97 was when the two middleweights touched gloves before the start of each round.

With one minute left in the third, we saw Silva come with a flying knee. The rest of the time we saw very little, unless you count Leites dropping the mat every 14 seconds to try and pull guard "action."

Seriously, we've seen better fights in the parking lot at the Meadowlands between Jets fans after the Jets won a game.

So boring was this fight, at the two-minute mark of the third round, the Bell Centre crowd started a "GSP" chant. Georges St-PIerre, Montreal's favorite son and a guest in the crowd. Not even on the fight card.

If any of you remember back in 1998-2000 when Roy Jones jrs speed, reflexes and athleticism put him in a different category than his opponents, each fight, from Lou Del Valle in 1998 to David Telesco in 2000 was Roy facing mediocre, decent, 'nothing really special' types of fighters, one would assume that such a lopsided fight would produce an exciting, skillful, entertaining boxing match, but like most of you know, these fights were for the lack of a better word, boring, throughout the fights he would show glimpses of his superior skills and athelticism, short bursts, a flurry here a flurry there, but that was it, after these short revelations of his almost inhuman hand speed Roy would slink off into a defensive, inactive, "I am bored" mode, earning him titles such as "reluctant Roy."

Enter Anderson Silva, current UFC middle weight champ, who also possess the same skill and athleticism as Roy, and also similar to Roy, Silvas' last 2 fights have been snooze fests, like Roy he posses the same qualities to make his lopsided fights entertaining, skillful and exciting and just like Roy, Silva slinks off into a defensive, inactive, "I am bored mode." Now Silva has yet to earn a title I am aware of, but from the way things look I won't be surprised to see a couple of titles floating around like "Apathetic Anderson," or "Spiritless Silva," or "play it safe silva."

Like Roy, Silva should be taking advantage of these lopsided matches to put on a show, do something memorable, like an off the cage sisscor kick or something, but I think like Roy, Silva is reluctant to engage for fear of the underdog getting a lucky shot or a lukcy K.O. and being a fighter myself I can kind've sympothize with that, and the blame can't fall soley on Silva or Roy, as the promotors should be doing a good job in reconginzing how their fighters respond. If their fighters don't want to fight mediocre opponents for fear of getting knocked out by a lucky punch, the promoters should find more skilled opponenents, but therein lies the problem, Silva, like Roy, beat the most skilled opponenets in his weight division, so there's really nothing left, but this circles back to the fighter again, either take advantage of the mediocre opponenents or play it safe, in Silvas case it looks like the UFC is doing a better job at keeping their fighters competing at the top level as there are talks of Anderson Silva fighting George St. Pierre.

Dana White recently said in an interview that if Georges St.-Pierre is able to defeat B.J. Penn at UFC 94, he will then set up a fight between the number one welterweight St. Pierre and number one middleweight Anderson Silva.^[34] St.-Pierre did defeat B.J. Penn, so it remains to be seen whether St.-Pierre will be matched up against Silva after their respective fights with Thales Leites and Thiago Alves.

Let us hope that Silva learns from Roy and doesn't play around with his weight too much, since Roys career started to decline after started jumping weight classes.

On a some what similar note Anderson and Roy both expressed fighting each other.

Following his win over Dan Henderson, in an interview with MMA Weekly, Anderson Silva's manager stated: "Anderson would love to fight Roy Jones Jr. in a boxing match up under boxing rules to prove that MMA fighters are technical, too."^[35] UFC president, Dana White, later expressed that he would use his veto power to stop such a match from taking place.^[36] Anderson, however, has commented: "After my contract with the UFC is finished, I will set up the fight with Jones Jr. The fight has already been permitted by Jones himself." In April 2009, Jones himself confirmed he is still interested in fighting Silva: "I'm going to try and make it happen. He's saying he wants to fight me, so, OK, I'm ready. Let's brawl." Silva, when he was fighting in PRIDE, had promoted himself as "the Roy Jones Jr. of MMA." He even said he has a good chance at knocking out Jones because of Jones' age.

How very interesting that these 2 have so much in common and are talking about fighting each other, how intriguing is it that these 2 atheletes whom both dominate their respective sports are looking to challenge each other, one can almost call it poetic, or destiny.

One would think that someone who had studied Christianity and has the equivalent of a P.H.D would have better arguments than this!

Enter John Loftus, a pastor turned atheist who has the equivalent of a P.H.D in the philosophy of religion. He mentored under Christian apologist William Lane Craig and James D Strauss, but when it comes to actually presenting a valid rational argument this means little to nothing. Now don't get me wrong as these accomplishments are great and I do not seek to diminish them in anyway, but they have nothing to do with the merits of his claims, nothing, not one thing. Now I am not here to discuss his academic accomplishments, I am here to point out his glaring errors and support my claim that his book and the arguments at his blog 'debunking Christianity' are for uneducated ignorant Christians. Any Christian with a basic grasp of logic, history, theology , common sense and life experience should be able to see through these bad arguments, but enough of the pre fight hype, as I like to approach discourse the way I approach fighting, getting right to the action, and like all fights the combat takes place over multiple rounds, just like the exposure of his errors will take multiple blog posts.

Round 1

On page 85 he states "David Ramsay Steele reminds us that according to quantum mechanics "Things begin to exist without any cause all the time." So if some things can begin to exist without a cause, the universe could be one of them, which does not require a creator at all"

This might seem plausible to one that is ignorant in quantum mechanics, however there is no such thing as NOTHING in quantum mechanics. "Nothing" in reference to quantum mechanics has properties and a measurable existence as part of the quantum-mechanical vacuum, so there is SOMETHING there, but it is referred to as 'nothing' because there is no matter, but there are physical fields, so there IS something there, not to mention an entire universe of existence around it. Furthermore, the things he is talking about that exist without a cause are quantum fluctuations, but to say they exist without a cause is outstandingly incorrect, since they pop in and out of existence due to the uncertainty principle, not to mention that these things happen when there is ALREADY something in existence, principles, fields, physics, etc.

On page 85 he also criticizes william craig on his premise (Kalam cosmological argument) that the universe began to exist. Loftus states "Craigs second premise is that the universe began to exist. It too has difficulties when it comes to scientific discussions abotu time, relativity, cosmic singularities and quantum mechanics." Then on page 266 he states "There is overwhelming evidence our universe originated from a big bang."


He quotes Wes Morriston on page 84 in response to william craigs assertion that 'tigers don't spring into existence uncaused' (they were talking about the kalam argument, premise 1. Everything that beings to exist has a cause of its existence) "We have no experience of the origin of worlds to tell us that worlds don't come into existence like that. We don't even have experience of the coming into being of anything remotely analogous to the 'initial singularity' that figures into the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. That is why the absurdity of tigers and the like popping into existence out of nowhere tells us nothing about the utterly unique case of the beginning of the whole natural order."

But on page 85, as I noted above me, Loftus tries to use quantum mechanics as an analogy that the universe could exist without a cause.

On page 85 he cites Richard Carrier as saying "though there are a few philosophers and scientists on his side, Craigs theory of time still goes against the current scientific consensus, and is far from being established," Richard Carrier is a historian and citing him in regards to realitivity, quantom mechanics and singularities qualifies as an fallacious appeal to authority.

On page 90 he brings up the multiverse which is a nonscientific concept, if we accept Dawkins’s naked assertion that a universal designer is more complex than the one known universe, a designer is probably less complex than any two universes and infinitely less complex than an infinity of them. Dawkins does not inform us of the degree to which God’s complexity exceeds the complexity of the universe, but if we concede, for the sake of argument, that a universal designer must be 1,000 times more complex than the universe in order to create it, and therefore 1,000 times more improbable, a universal designer is still more mathematically likely than the squared improbability of there being two universes of similar complexity. For example, if the probability of one universe is one in one million, then the probability of the universal designer would be one in one billion, but the probability of there being two universes of similarly complex natures would be a much more improbable one in one trillion.
-vox day the irrational atheist

Not only that but appealing to the multiverse is hypocritical since it goes against Loftus own control methods

1. The scientific method is the most reliable (and probably the only) guide we have for determining the truth about the world."

Since the multiverse cannot be observed, verified, and is untestable and as unfalsifiable the God hypothesis, and was created specifically to get around the telological argument, one wonders why Loftus would be appealing to it.


In his summary of the book Loftus states "a distant God is hardly distinguishable from no God at all" it is interesting however that a God that interacts with the universe but is hidden, is hardly distinguishable from no God at all."

After all a God hidden from us is completely biblical based (Isaiah 45:15) even Blaise Pascal said “what can be seen on earth indicates neither the total absence of God nor his manifest presence, but rather the presence of a hidden God.” As Loftus so erroneously states that moving from the deist God arguments to full blown Christianity is like trying to fly a plane to the moon, but since the Christian God is a hidden God which is hardly distinguishable from no God or a distant God (as Loftus puts it) it seems that the deist god arguments that Loftus so happily concedes also favor a hidden God. So Loftus should correct his statement: a distant God is hardly distinguishable from no God at all which in turn is hardly distinguishable from a God that interacts with the universe but is hidden. Just as a good portion of the covert operations that go on against terrorists and drug lords are hidden from the American public, which to the American public, is no different than no covert operations being done at all.

It is interesting to note that I think arguing Gods existence is silly and pointless, since theists will use X as evidence God exists and atheists use that same evidence as God doesn't exist, the universe for example, theists point to the unvierse as evidence that God exists and atheists point to the universe as evidence that God doesn't exist, however this is no excuse for Loftus's errors regarding these arguments.

stay tuned for round 2.

Update: Fixed some grammatical errors, thanks Keith, however the errors in Loftus book are still there, my grammatical errors does not make them go away.

While personal experience is insufficient in convincing people, it is not completely insufficient.

From the evaluating Christianity website:

http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/the-summary-case-for-atheism/arg1long/

A. Subjective Experiences Are Hearsay

As a threshold matter, when one person claims to have had a direct, revelatory experience of God, that claim is direct evidence only for that person. From my perspective, it is hearsay. I can’t evaluate your experience; all I can do is evaluate the fact that you’ve claimed to have such an experience.

Now, I have no doubt that religious believers who claim to have experienced God in some subjective or visionary way are, on the whole, generally sincere about those claims. But those claims are, of course, not restricted to Christians. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus – people of every religion claim such subjective experiences, and they can’t all be true.

The key part here of course is 'direct evidence only for that person,' logically of course, it is quite poor in regards of convincing others, however this does not discount the personal experience as genuine or true, it could in fact be true, it is also interesting that he uses the word 'hearsay' since hearsay is admissible in court under certain standards.

http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/more-criminal-topics/evidence-witnesses/hearsay-evidence.html

B. Subjective Experiences Can’t All Be True
Because all sorts of believers have the same sorts of experiences — and they can’t all be true — we resort to methodological naturalism (see part 4) to evaluate these sorts of claims.

Critically, even Christians themselves use these techniques to evaluate claims of personal subjective experience when raised by non-Christians. One particularly compelling counterexample comes from Mormons, who believe that seekers should pray about the Book of Mormon to see if they receive a “burning in the bosom” – a subjective verification – that it is true. Here’s how an evangelical Christian apologist evaluates that argument:

What we must understand is that Latter-day Saints (LDS) believe these things for the same reason that people everywhere believe the things they do: they want to believe them. … This should come as no surprise to evangelicals who have read the Apostle Paul’s revelation of the roots of human idolatry in the first chapter of Romans. Fallen humans have affections and inclinations that they then prop up with beliefs, convincing themselves that their systems are true.

Another evangelical is a bit more direct:

Remember also that Paul never asked any potential converts to pray about his message. What he taught was found in the Scriptures and they could verify it and join the group of wise people, if they would repent and submissively place their faith in Jesus Christ to follow him. See Acts 17:11,12 cf. Acts 20:21; etc. … Yes, the devil can duplicate peace. That is what he does in transcendental meditation (TM) and also in Catholicism after one receives the Eucharist. The devil uses these and other experiences to deceive.

This is misleading and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity, since it specifically states that other religions have their own set of signs and personal experiences. In Genesis 7:11-13 it shows the Egyptians turning the sticks into a snake, just as Moses and Aron had.

¹¹ But Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers; so the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments. ¹² For every man threw down his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods. ¹³ And Pharaoh’s heart grew hard, and he did not heed them, as the LORD had said.

The point here of course is that personal experience found in different religious groups can be true.

In the most extreme cases, we think people who hear divine voices are suffering from paranoid delusions. Consider the sad case of Andrea Yates, who (apparently) sincerely believed that she heard the voice of God commanding her to drown her five children. On face, her case isn’t any different from what Abraham claimed to have heard directly from God in Genesis 22:1-10. Why, then, does virtually every Christian have no difficulty concluding that Ms. Yates was insane?

Actually I don't concede Yates was insane(there goes your 'virtually every Christian assertion) since I am not qualified to make that decision, of course I concede that Yates did not hear the voice of God in any way similar to Abraham since God stopped Abraham from killing his son, something the author seems to have omitted.

¹¹ But the Angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
So he said, “Here I am.”
¹² And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

I mean really? honestly? it was just 2 lines down(this is called quote mining). God stopped Abraham from killing his son so if the authors assertion that "On face her assertion isn't any different than Abraham," had any truth to it, God would've told her to stop.

I submit that whatever our “worldview” — in day to day life, we are called upon to evaluate claims like this from a variety of religious, spiritual, and other sources. Uniformly, we reject these sorts of experiences, standing alone, as being sufficient justification for the truths of the beliefs asserted in those experiences.

For all of these reasons, I conclude that this first set of arguments is insufficient to warrant belief in God

The conclusion should be changed to 'this first set of arguments is insufficient to warrant a convincing argument to believe God exists.' It is important to note the purposes of a personal experience, if someone asks why I believe Christianity is true I sometimes respond with "My prayers are usually answered, I have felt Gods presence etc," the atheist replies "well those are personal experiences, how do I know they actually happened," to which I reply, "You don't know they happened, but you asked why I believe Christianity is true and I gave you an answer," it is interesting how some atheists I have encountered don't know the difference between simply stating information and an argument to convince them the information is valid from their worldview, there is nothing wrong with stating you have personally experienced God, both atheists and theists need to realize that personal experiences aren't convincing arguments.

Kicking off the blog

My name is theological discourse as I do enjoy talking about theology along with fighting, hip hop music, current events, video games and many other things, all which will be extensively covered in this blog, I prefer my credentials to be unknown since I do not enjoy appeals to authority (or any logical fallacies for that matter). An argument, or anything for that matter, should stand or fall on its own merits, not on the credentials of the person giving the argument, nor his origins.