User talk:Seidensticker

Hi Bob. Is there any reason for the Hoare's dictum page to exist other than to provide a link to your blog? You don't appear to have made any effort to link it to an existing part of the wiki. Also, just because you can paraphrase a quote that very clearly isn't actually intended to be applied to atheism or theism into an argument against complex, illogical arguments doesn't mean you have a particularly good reason to promote it here. Furthermore, the modified argument is really just a refutation of Argumentum verbosium, which we already have a page for. Unless you're proposing that the incredibly large number of irrelevant quotes you could modify into a relevant argument should all receive pages here?

For example, the Cookie Monster has famously sung, "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me". With a little adaptation, you can make it "G is for God, that's good enough for me". I don't see any reason to make a page to refute that particular argument for the existence of God. I'm not even sure what category it falls into. Argument from design? From desire? From nonsense? A horrible misinterpretation of the argument from goodness? Jdog 02:04, 23 October 2011 (CDT)

This is my first addition to this wiki, so I'm probably doing it wrong. Not linked with the rest of the wiki? Good point--never occurred to me.

I thought that this concept was a useful addition to counterapologetics. If you say it's not, delete it. Seidensticker

I'm a bit concerned that Jdog may be discouraging potentially useful contributors by being over critical. There are no clear rules about when external links become spam, different wikis have different policies. I personally think this link should stay because it is a well reasoned website promoting atheism as this site does. Proxima Centauri 03:01, 23 October 2011 (CDT)


 * On the flip side, I'm rather concerned that you aren't critical enough. A page with a list of atheist blogs would be just fine. Creating a page for each one, not so much. Now for the other part of my argument, which you haven't addressed yet:


 * The "Hoare's dictum argument" is an argument that someone paraphrased just yesterday on their blog. The dictum in it's original form has never been an argument used in counter-apologetics, nor is it likely to become so because it's a computer programming quote. There are literally thousands (millions?) of quotes that could be modified into an argument for/against God; how about we stick to the ones that actually are such arguments here instead of creating a page (or subsection) for every single one?


 * I understand that people want to contribute; we wouldn't have a wiki if they didn't. But there has to be quality control for ICW to remain a mostly well-reasoned website, which is a point that | you don't always seem to agree with. Jdog 05:09, 23 October 2011 (CDT)

You are free to promote Galileo Unchained on Your user page. Proxima Centauri 03:09, 23 October 2011 (CDT)

Again, I'll note that I'm a novice here, so if there are rules that I'm stepping on, I'm happy to have those followed.

Yes, I'm aware of Donald Knuth's use of "Hoare's Dictum." As I noted on my blog page, this would technically be Hoare's *Second* Dictum, but since the topic here is apologetics, that qualifier seemed unnecessary and distracting.

Sure, there are lots of quotes in other fields that could be tweaked to make a statement within the domain of counterapologetics. When those new statements are useful, I think that justifies highlighting them.

This wasn't supposed to be a plug for my blog. If it looks that way, delete the page. The reason the link seemed relevant is that my blog post had a more chatty discussion of the idea. I thought that a to-the-point description would be best here, with a link for more/background information.