Prejudice and bias, which are preferences for one thing over another, are good things if they're rational, that is, derived empirically. That's what learning is - arriving at a set of preferences. People that have learned to evaluate evidence properly and come to sound conclusions - critical thinkers - have a justified prejudice against other methods of deciding what is true. They try to avoid thinking in those ways themselves, and they reject it in others. Yes, that's a prejudice, and one of the better ones, just as the prejudice against creative adding is a good one, because it is rational, and is part of learning how to add.
And this is exactly where believers in science went wrong. People believe what they want to believe and every single person wants to believe they can act rationally. This is a characteristic of consciousness to which modern people are blind. Consciousness is life, consciousness is rationality imposed on the "mind" which is difficult for us to see because we think in a language that is no longer rational. We each look around for the beliefs we choose to adopt and those who choose science do so for excellent reasons; it is highly rational. But many of us do not choose to believe in science because we know "science" can not answer any of the big questions and might never. It can't even shed any light on whether there's a God or not but it certainly can't tell us to marry Sharon or Marylyn. It can't tell us why we're here or how we got here and even if we choose to accept the shallow and facile explanations we are no closer to the truth.
You can have all the rational explanations you want but believing in science can't even tell you how gravity works. Indeed, believing in science can even close your eyes to things like the wonder of creation if we lose our ability to see anomalies completely. If you have no ability to see what you don't understand then everything you see is limited by your beliefs.
Did you want to rebut the claim made? You haven't. Nothing you wrote makes my comment untrue or less true.
I've spent some time recently investigating the various forms that disagreement takes, and recognized that only rebuttal has any value in resolving differences. Rebuttal is a specific form of disagreement, one requiring the presentation of a counterargument that, if correct, makes the argument refuted incorrect. I think I gave a few examples in this thread recently using a courtroom debate as an example, but maybe it was elsewhere. The prosecution makes a case for guilt. If everything presented is correct, the defendant is guilty. The defense cannot merely say nuh-uh, a primitive form of dissent, because the jury will convict if he cannot rebut. So, the defense attorney offers an alibi. The defendant was seen 100 miles from the scene of the crime when it was committed. This constitutes rebuttal, because if this is correct, the prosecution cannot be correct. The rebuttal and the position rebutted must be mutually exclusive for the rebuttal to be considered that. Other forms of dissent are irrelevant to debate.
To take it a little further, perhaps the prosecution now offers cellphone evidence that the defendant was in fact in the area, and the testimony of witnesses is false. That's a rebuttal, because if correct, it make the alibi claim wrong. The can't both be right - the defendant was 100 miles away and that he was pinging off a neighborhood cell tower. This might be rebutted with a claim that that the defendant never used that phone, that it must have been somebody else, restoring plausibility to the alibi. Next, the prosecution offers forensic evidence that that is incorrect - perhaps fingerprint or DNA evidence. The point is that the back and forth must be in the form of rebuttal to the claims made, not mere dissent, or the debate is over and the jury should now vote, as nothing that doesn't rebut the last plausible claim is relevant to the jury or the process of determining guilt.
Your answer is an example of what I would call the third level of dissent. Rebuttal of the main thesis is the highest and only meaningful form of dissent. Second is rebutting a piece of the argument- perhaps one of the examples used in its support - but not its central thesis, which thesis may still be correct even if one of the examples presented doesn't support it.
What you have done is to go off on a new tangent, making new claims that don't address what was posted. Even if everything you wrote were correct, the thesis remains unchallenged, just dismissed. Other forms of this are answers like, "You don't know what you're talking about" or "You do not have the gift of discernment" They are barely more than pure dissent: "That's not how I see it," which could be called a fourth level. Please note once again that nothing but rebuttal can advance the discussion and propel it toward resolution, as with the courtroom example. No comment that is not a rebuttal to the charges or the defense of them is relevant in coming to a verdict. The last unrebutted plausible theory prevails if the jury understands its responsibilities and how guilt is decided in a court of law.
Now perhaps you'd like another shot at explaining why you didn't agree with my comment, what it contains that you think you show to be incorrect. Maybe you'd like to explain why you consider, "
Prejudice and bias, which are preferences for one thing over another, are good things if they're rational, that is, derived empirically" incorrect if you do, or why that isn't the very definition of learning as I suggested. Because at this point, those claims stand unrebutted, and your position that calling something biased without qualifying if the bias is rational (derived empirically, experientially) is defeated. Many biases are rational and desirable. My bias in favor of reason over faith is one such example. I acquired it empirically, and it is demonstrably the better method for deciding what's true about the world (learning).
, we can conclude that God is playing solitaire
