Who is Sye TenB? (quotes)

Sye is either truly sick, or he is a "troll for Jesus."-(get_education)

Recently I posted a link to a debate with Sye. After all the 'emotional' comments I got, I decided to search though past posts on the Raytractors blog of all the debates with Sye.I decided to collect a few choice quotes


Some like him-

"I should say, Sye, that I think you are a bright, and nice, bloke - and obviously concerned for our well-being too, which is why you are pursuing this - but are using your intelligence to create a sort of intellectual black hole from which you cannot now escape.

In this case, you seem to have constructed a kind of script...... Cults are fond of these scripts too... They have little to do with logic, and much to do with - marketing.

I guess you, Sye, think I am simply under the influence of Satan..."
-Stephen Law

"presup-pwnage"
-MrFreeThinker

"Debating, or arguing philosophy and philosophical viewpoints with......syetenb is mental masturbation."
-Benjamin Franklin(the raytractor)

"Sye's got an unbeatable argument ........He's got all of you beat and all that's left for you are ad homs..."
-Dani'El

captain howdy:How many people on this blog think that scmike is just sye tenb with a different screen name?""

Scmike:You do me too much honor. Thanks for the compliment. God Bless ;)

Some dislike him-

"I would rather have a root canal WHILE listening to polka music than hear or read one other wor from that ignorant bastard.
He has nothing to say. He is not a Christian. He is a sociopath that has only one motive and that is to think that he has won an argument."
-Froggie


"God actually has spoken to me....., and said in no uncertain terms that Sye is a tosser."
-Whateverman


'I'm 90% sure that SCMike is a Sye sockpuppet.'
-Maragon (notice she is not completely certain):-)

'What is really realy realy hard to believe is that Sye ACTUALLY thinks he has won all of the arguments, all of them. His delusion is way too strong.
....I find his delusion and trickery interesting. I am pretty sure he would make a fantastic case for a psychoanalytical thesis.'
-Get_education

"That is the image I get when I see Sye's arguments: the braying of a donkey echoing through cyberspace for all to hear......................Oh, no offense meant to the donkeys."Get_education


"I keep hoping he'll present someone with a paper titled "How I confused a bunch of philosophers by being an arrogant pressuppositionalist dickwad," and reveals his name to be Poe.Then, at least, the world will make some sense."
-Theshaggy

"Sye reminds me of the kid who comes to a park with a soccer ball and says lets play. Then when he starts loosing he takes the ball and says, “ this is my ball, you guys can’t play with it anymore”, and before he leaves the field he kicks a couple goals with everyone standing dumb founded and proclaims he’s the winner. Of course everyone knows he lost, but in his mind he’s the victor.................
Sye, along with Ray, are insecure Christians. You’ll never win with them, they are the toughest, they have the most money, and they’re penises are bigger then ours. Of course they’ll never prove this, but just you trust they’re word."
-Andrew Louis

"My favourite thing about the Sye debates was when he realized I wasn't swallowing his bullshit and that a 23 year old girl was making his look foolish. He then changed his tactic to calling me ugly and disappeared shortly after from our blog."
-Maragon

"Maragon, I think you're much cuter, and orders of magnitude smarter than Sys.

This from a broad who's had a thing for bald guys since I was about half your age."
-Weemaryanne


What do you think of Sye?

Cheers :-)
Obsidian

More waste paper to recycle...

As we all know, Ray is going to be putting out some more of his concentrated brain-farts in book form in the new year. According to the sidebar on his website:

"COMING SOON: The Atheist Bible (Holman Publishing), and, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (WND Publishing)."

You can be sure that both will be as vapid, dishonest, fallacious, irritating and self-righteous as his blog, but let's have a look at these 'major' publishing houses, shall we?

Holman Publishing:

A subsidiary of Lifeway Christian Resources, presided over by Dr. Thom Rainer (former Dean of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary which, incidentally, is where he received his 'doctorate').

According to Wiki, Holman Publishing is; "Specializing in Christianity pertaining to fiction, homeschool, youth, history, and other interests", So he's gone to the right place there.

&

WND Publishing (otherwise know as WorldNetDaily):

Again, from Wiki: "The website's Commentary page features editorials from the site's founder, Joseph Farah and other social conservative authors such as Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Chuck Norris.", so Ray's keeping in good company there too.

If you look through the works of some of their published writers, you'll see how they could believe that what Ray has produced can be considered a 'book' - you'd never get this shit past Penguin.

I guess none of this is particularly surprising, eh? It's that same old story. Ray taunts, misrepresents, insults and generally winds up atheists. Atheists respond. Ray quotemines the responses and concocts a 'book' out of re-hashed arguments and faulty logic. Some intellectually and ethically vacuous publishing house prints the book. Ray's fanbase buys the books. Ray makes money. Repeat.

For fun, let's have a guess at some possible Chapter Titles for Ray's two up-coming best-sellers.

"The Atheist Bible"

&

"You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think"

I'm sure we can think of something...




Cheers,

Matt

"I have a severe case of Deja Moo; I've seen this bullshit before..."

Another Quote mine? Naaahhhh

Thanks to Don and Chuck for putting Thomas Nagels quote into perspective.

"IN SPEAKING OF THE FEAR OF RELIGION, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper -- namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God, and naturally, hope there is no God. I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that." -- Thomas Nagel.

*sigh* It saddens me, because a True Christian(TM) wouldn't be so dishonest. So Ray's going to burn for eternity. Repent, Ray, before it's too late.

EDIT: Since this post, Ray Comfort has silently updated the original post to include the entire context.
"Congratulations Ray: you're an asshole!" (Extra points if you've seen Episode 87 of bonus stage and know what I'm refering to)

Anyone gullible enough to think he really understands what Nagel is saying here? I think Steven J put it best:

"This raises the question, what does Nagel think a universe with God would be like, that he does not want the universe to be like that? You presumably suppose that he means that he does not wish to be accountable for his sins, but the passage quoted does not imply that.

After all, one doesn't just "believe in God;" one believes particular things about God. Some creationists believe that God created the universe with the appearance of a false (apparently evolutionary) history, weaving one vast and superfluous lie into the very fabric of the heavens and the Earth. One ought to understand why a philosopher would object to that sort of universe and that sort of God." -- Steven J

Ray Comfort Admits He's an Atheist

"The God you don't believe in doesn't exist." -- Ray Comfort (October 10, 2008)

And you doubted Dave's earlier proof.

Ray Comfort is a filthy quote miner...

...anyone surprised? Anyone?

As par usual, he has the reading comprehension of an ADD inflicted 3rd grader who's all hopped up on half a jug of craft glue. The quote in question is mined from a book review of Dr. Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark."
Of course, Dr. Richard Lewontin wasn't stating that science will believe anything simply so they can denounce god. Sagan's book deals exceedingly little with any deity, and focuses on skepticism, irrational belief and pseudo-science in a more broad manner. Lewontin was discussing how although some claims of science may be counter-intuitive or hard to believe, that we are forced to accept them because of the evidence presented to support them.

I encourage all of you to read the article, but it is rather lengthy, so I'll quote more in context here. What Ray posted will be bolded so you can be as baffled as I am at the sheer scope of his dishonesty.

"With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn’t even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one’s prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity “in deep trouble.” Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

Comforting Quotes Project

In the header image of my blog I have the following quotes:

I'm what you call a bigot; a fundamentalist.

I have never said that Einstein was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus or a personal God. He wasn't dumb.

To say that you believe such fantastic stories [of biblical accounts] would mean that you would have to surrender your intellectual dignity.

I think that "great" teachers don't say the sort of weird things [Jesus] said."

I am always keeping my eye out for more quotes of his I could take out of context or use in a misleading way, much like he does all the quotes he uses. With all the vigilant eyes we have on this blog for his books, blog, articles, and comments, I thought we could make a bigger project out of this. So, do keep your eye out (what an odd phrase) for anything of his we can construe and/or take out of context and make a new post with it here in The Raytractors.

Sourcing Quotes and Lying for Jesus

As I pointed out in I Crossed the Line..., Ray changed an unsourced quote from Plato to an unsourced quote from Newton -- one about atheism and one about "atheism." This was done after he had already approved at least three comments, and he made no note of it. As I predicted, several people tried to source the Newton quote in response.

Scott In Vegas
Two readers, though, didn't think sourcing was important. The first commenter, "scott in vegas" writes:

"Source?" If he provides it, will you concede he's right? [...] And come on... don't ask for a source...that shows weakness. Just assume he's wrong.

Concession of what? The the quote is authentic or that "atheism is a disease of the soul"? I ask for a source because I want to know firstly (a) that it is authentic and secondly (b) to get the context of it. Ray has a horrible track record for quoting people. He has on times not bothered to check the authenticity of the quote, such as the Plato ones (more below).

He has, frequently, quoted people either entirely out of context or quoted them to mislead the reader as to their intention. This is the essence of quote mining. An excellent example is the recent quote he made of Hawking wherein he quotes him as stating that the universe began. He, luckily, provided the source for that quote. By reading the lecture you learn, just as you would if you had read any of Hawking's works, that he is speaking of an entirely different sort of beginning than Ray is.

That was an example of the latter, quoting to mislead the reader as to the author's intention (such as when Einstein uses the term "God"). A more frequent quote mining is with the former, quoting them out of context. He uses the following quote mine from Darwin in almost all of his materials, including his Atheist Test:

To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

This gives the uninformed reader the impression that Darwin is responding to some challenge to his theory, or is stating that there is some other cause for this. This particular quote is, perhaps, the most famous example of quote mining. So much so that even creationist organizations (here and here, for example) urge other creationists to stop using it. Wikipedia's article on quote mining even gives this quote as a common example of quote mining.

To the point, now, of "just assuming he is wrong." Are quotes supposed to persuade us? If you are given a quote by Newton on alchemy, would that change your mind as to its validity? Or Plato on his gods? What will convince us is evidence of it. Quotes are always a nice rhetorical strategy within a greater argument, but the quote cannot be an argument in and of itself. Furthermore, Ray incorrectly quotes Einstein as being a deist (which he wasn't). Is that quote supposed to make you become a deist?

Saying that we shouldn't ask for a source and simply assume he's wrong gets us nowhere. By the very fact that we are requesting a source shows that we are not simply assuming he is wrong; we want to look further into it. If Ray wants to quote someone, we need a source to at least verify it and then investigate it. Given Ray's dishonest track record, are we supposed to simply trust him? How many times does it take for you to get burned before you learn not to trust the fire not to burn you?


Brittany
The next commenter, brittany, first writes:

just copy and paste the quote into google....it shouldn't be to hard to find...!

To this, Pvblivs responds:

Perhaps you would like to source the Plato quote that Ray had originally. Ray got caught in a lie and edited his post. Good grief, the http address of the post reveals the original wording.

After this, Brittany makes a lengthier reply in which several questions of point I think are worth replying to:

"Perhaps you would like to source the Plato quote that Ray had originally."
[...]
Although as I said earlier; just copy and post plato's quote into google; it shouldn't be to hard to find.

It is incumbent on Ray, the poster, to provide the source. Anytime Ray (or anyone else for that matter), posts some quote or excerpt (including Bible verses), I immediately look them up for reasons outlined above. If I am asking for a source, it obviously is hard to find, which is why I don't ask for sources on everything he posts. You should try copying and pasting this into Google for yourself:

Google query of Plato's quote.

I tried pages of results and found no source for it, just it being used over and over unsourced. I did find many places saying they could not find a source and others saying there is no source. Quotes are often misattributed or unscrupulously attributed to famous individuals and intellectuals to add credence to the quote. For example, allow me to give you one that atheists often use and appears almost as frequently as the Plato one:

The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites. -- Thomas Jefferson

Just as I hate when people like Ray Comfort posts fictitious quotes or quotes out of context, I hate it when atheists do it too. It does not take much time to verify the validity of a quotes one use. Using such a quote is either dishonest in effort or integrity.

"Ray got caught in a lie and edited his post. Good grief, the http address of the post reveals the original wording."

Perhaps Ray decided not to use that particular quote because he decided that it did not go well with what he was trying/wanting to say.

"edited his post."

It is indeed his post...He can edit it all he wants, and he does not have to have permission from you or anyone else who wants to challenge him over it.

This doesn't go to quotes, but I want to address it nonetheless. He should have either rejected the comments we posted correcting him, or he should have made an entirely new post. In either case, he should have noted why he chose not to use it. Failing to do so makes him dishonest. He should acknowledge his mistake, instead of just pulling out a bottle of white-out, as he did when he realized he was wrong about quoting Einstein as believing the Bible was the Word of God.

Ray, though, seems to be very dishonest, or part of the "it's okay to lie for Jesus" camp. For example, years ago he conceded the banana argument because the only reason bananas look the way they do is because man improved them to have those design features. Ray knows this as I have heard him corrected on it (which is why he conceded it) and yet he continues to use it claiming that God made those features. Or, the Darwin quote... corrected many times on that. Or, Einstein's or Hawking's views on God... corrected many times on that.

This is why I ask for a source and simply request to acknowledge when he is wrong, rather than trying to cover it up until he can use it again on a lesser informed crowd.