It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.
Alex Velenkin: Many Worlds in One: The Search For Other Universes
ANYONE WHO HAS spent time arguing with atheists will know their first and last resort to any reasoned argument will be "prove it," it is their all purpose demand along with another one that insists that they are exempt from having to present the kind of proof or even evidence because . . . and they will change the rules as to why they don't have to as suits the occasion or not, every claim suffices to exempt them from it. It's not unrelated to the old logical positivist tactic of declaring by fiat that questions they don't like are "meaningless" on the basis of their ideological holdings, holdings which are, as well, unevidenced and unproven, which are designed for the same purpose of making them not have to deal with the weaknesses of their claims and the problems with their holdings. Though the idea might have some merit in some limited cases, the practice of people like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins refusing to argue with their opponents is often a resort to a similar kind of intellectual cowardice masquerading as principle. Gould was one of those who popularized that stand in the late 20th century, he did so out of the mistaken conviction that his side held a stronger hand than it did. Dawkins may well know that he is intellectually unequipped to take on a really competent and tough opponent in a debate, even if they are willing to abide by the set up job that the Oxford Union kind of debate so often is.
One of the more surprising things I've learned from online brawling is the extent to which those kinds of tactics have taken over from the kind of evidenced based, reasoned arguments in which all parties agreed that there was a requirement of evidence or at least rational arguments presented and that those were evaluated on the basis of their merits instead of the basis of them conforming to the likes and dislikes of those involved. In many cases, maybe most cases, it would seem that everything from the merit of an argument to the capability of the person making the argument means no more than whether or not what is said agrees with the prejudices of those involved in the argument. If that habit were as widespread as it is today when I was a teenager and young adult, I don't know. I didn't encounter it nearly to the extent I have now.
I have in the past made a joke about the need to have a requirement of all college grads that they pass the kind of rigorous basic Freshman Rhetoric course that was being dropped when I was in college because it was ungroovy and not customer friendly with the TV trained idiots of my generation. Things got steadily worse after that and it's embarrassing to try to argue with the college-credentialed idiots of the English Speaking Peoples in too many cases.
The addling of the internet added to the vidiocy induced by the TV during my generation has left our allegedly educated class dangerously stupid. There's no reason for it, they could learn, if made to.
That a long answer to why I so often won't post the comments I answer. I don't feel any responsibility to present their nonsense anymore than I'd feel it was necessary to present lies told by Republican-fascists, not wanting to give them a repetition by doing so. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to use what such people give me to work off of. I can do that on my own terms without the trash talkin' and the lies and the attacks on third parties whose permission to post insults against I don't have.
The extent to which so many with college credentials are immune to any evidence or reasoned argument that doesn't match their prejudices is really disturbing, to the extent that they will claim that any evidence presented that doesn't support their prejudices isn't there. And it's not just the young'uns who do that.
Update: One of the things that set off my sense that I was listening to bull shit peddled as science was the talk about "one-dimensional universes." I doubt that physical existence is possible in one dimension, a straight line of no physical dimension. Every physical object I'm aware of, even on a subatomic level, has dimension in three dimensions, if physics has come up with something that doesn't, point me to where it's described in space. Space has dimension. These "one dimensional universes" would seem to exist in no realm of physicality that can be known to have the properties of actual existence, they are rationally believed to be no more than an imaginary thing which, since imagination must be imaged - images requiring dimension - can't be imagined in anything thing but a metaphor that can't really be imagined. The same thing applies to the absolutely flat surfaces of two-dimensions which would lack the third dimension that is required for something to have knowable physical existence. To imagine that one and two dimensional "universes" exist is probably an artifact of superstition based on mathematics and there are, in fact, no "one and two dimensional universes" and they can't even be imagined except through ignoring the three dimensions, more than that, really, to imagine physical existence.
I don't know how reliant the various flavors of crap that multiverse theory are on these imagined, non-physical "universes" are but if they are reliant on their existence, I'd think the entire thing as "physical theory" is a blatant illusion and superstition of the materialists. It would be ultimately ironic if their ideology foundered on the rock of them imagining things that could not have material existence. Though they've never let logical incoherence stop them in the past, especially those who take the stand of scientism, that only science can provide us with knowledge because that statement is, itself, not a statement of science but of ideology and, therefore, must be false if it is true.
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