Benefits of being a skeptic and anonymity

[cyghost]

I don't want to tazer you in the face. I don't own a tazer.

What has given you the impression that I want to tazer you in the face? Is this kind of violence a common response for the inept?

Perhaps a good thing after all that I don't have my name and address out there?

a nick btw I have been using for 20 years.

[Midd93]

/relief

Oh I must apologize for "What are the benefits of being a skeptic?
Religious folk seem to benefit from their beliefs by being happy, comforted and perhaps less scared of death?"
I seem to have assumed that skeptics = atheists, which is not necessarily true, right?

Any of you guys man enough to own up to religious beliefs?

cmon, do it

[BoogieMonster]

I have no theistic beliefs.

Your turn.

Edit for clarity: I have no beliefs in anything we conventionally would refer to as "supernatural" whatsoever.

[cyghost]

I am an agnostic atheist with no belief in the supernatural.

[Irreverend]

So far mdg is the only person who has answered that question at all... the rest of the responses have been pretty silly.

Please be so kind as to elucidate this "silliness" you so readily point out. Thanks.

[Peter Grant]

"You're less likely to be screwed over by the unscrupulous."
You mean like with medical stuff and psychics?

Skepticism can be applied to any field.

[Owen Swart]

So far mdg is the only person who has answered that question at all... the rest of the responses have been pretty silly.

Please be so kind as to elucidate this "silliness" you so readily point out. Thanks.

Oh, whoops... I neglected to mention your response to the question alongside mdg's. I don't consider your response silly at all. My apologies for that oversight.

I was referring to the responses by cyghost and Jane of the Jungle which I quoted, which I think are ill-conceived and fallacious. Let's play Name That Logical Fallacy:

That is just the done thing on InterWeb forums.

Argumentum ad Populum

Just by the way, are we to assume Midd93 is the name it was born with and that it'll provide a street address to anyone who ask for it?

Et Tu Quoque

Would you kindly supply us with links to xtian sites where users use their own names and not nick names?

Argumentum ad Populum

[Midd93]

CaptainKlingon, please use English (UK) on these forums.
kthxbai

[Irreverend]

Okay, but I'm not sure the glibbish replies are wholly undeserved. Given 20+ prior posts, I have a yen that Middy's purpose is to push a smoldering ember into a hornet's nest just for the heck of seeing a swarm.

ETA: Well, I could have said, "Told you so."

[cyghost]

Argumentum ad Populum

It wasn't an argument at all. It is the done thing on InterWeb forums. It is an observation.

Et Tu Quoque

Yes, that was because after wards it stuck me as a funny sort of question in the first place. Again not an argument.

Consider it silly as you wish. I remain unconvinced.

[Rigil Kent]

I believe in the truth, because everything else is wrong.

I'm happy that you are a truth seeker.

Now, how do you know what is true, and what is not?

Mintaka

[cyghost]

In a further response to the Captain:

You are more than within your rights to consider my responses silly. All I am saying is it wasn't intended as silly as such.

I have also never before heard of Et Tu Quoque. Thanks for that.

From the wiki article I am now considering that Midd93's original question suffers from the same Et Tu Quoque. Is this correct and why wasn't he taken to task for that?

Reading this part:

Not all uses of tu quoque arguments involve logical fallacy. One convenient and not fallacious way [to use tu quoque] is by pointing out the similarities between the activity of the criticizer ... and the activity about which he is being questioned. To label one [something] and not the other is ... itself a fallacy [of equivocation]. [...] Tu quoque is only a fallacy when one uses it so as to divert attention from the issue at hand, or to avoid or fail to respond to an argument that non-fallaciously gave one the burden of proof

I think this is a legitimate use of Tu quoque all around really. No one was trying to say it is wrong to be anonymous.