Just a small side thing, about reading and disagreeing with an opponent fairly.
A reader pointed out to me a post by Damion Reinhardt at Skeptic Ink about a post of mine. Here’s how he paraphrases my post:
Her argument seems to be something like this:
- Skeptics assent unquestioningly to moral propositions of the form “You must not [commit atrocities against humans]” without stopping to ask for further evidence.
- Checkmate, skeptics!
I may have missed out a step there, but that seems to pretty much cover it. My answer to this is twofold.
Here’s what I actually wrote:
One of the things that proud or “movement” skeptics like to say is “you have to be skeptical of everything.” No sacred cows!
But I don’t think even proud or “movement” skeptics really believe that, apart from a few psychopaths. I can think of lots of things I think no one should be skeptical of, and I’d be surprised to get much disagreement.
- you must not push small children in front of speeding cars
- you must not punch a child in the face
- you must not kill all the Jews
- you must not commit genocide
- you must not kidnap and imprison women
- you must not force a woman to abort a pregnancy by first starving her and then repeatedly punching her in the abdomen as hard as you can
- you must not set fire to people’s houses
- you must not enslave anyone
They don’t match. What I wrote is not what he said I wrote.