And I apologize <BP>. I didn't mean to be funny with you in your own forum by saying you love arguments, I should have worded it differently. I just meant you <probably> (key word) changed my mind on the Ali Tyson debate by sheer persistence elsewhere on the site,lol I didn't mean no offence I was just pissed over England's performance today. We won, we'll qualify, we still won't win the tournament though! Anyways.. It was this that made me say you "love arguments"....

<UNF, he *didn't ko* James "Bonecrusher" Smith! >

That guy was one brutal puncher to be sure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGN...

Maybe I can find it on Youtube.

111 total bouts by Ramirez.

Only kayoed once.

Man, that's really old school.

This is pretty good. Ali's phantom punch, why Liston took a dive. And I never realised Liston died over 40 years ago, I'm educating myself on all things heavyweight boxing for my upcoming Boxing Historian YouTube channel. I know how to get footage of fights and football past the censors now, I can't do it with interviews for some bizarre reason.

Tga, you are appealing to old line verificationism. This is about 80 years out of date and modern philosophers don't use this kind of argument anymore. It went out with its twin brother Logical Positivism.>

OK, First of all, I took you off of ignore to validate a claim, and to my surprise you did not delete this post of mine (see Rogoff forum for context). OK then, I am pleasantly surprised.

Second of all, there are TWO distinct viewpoints expressed in my post, so are you making the verificationism argument against one or both? If only one, which one?

Thirdly, I am not "appealing" to verification or anything else, and I don't really give a rat's behind what modern philosophers do or don't do.

The topic was Kalam. Kalam relies on an assumption. That assumption is unproven. Therefore Kalam is unproven and is not valid as a proof or as an argument to validate the existence of God.

Look, really, you have Saint Paul against you when you want to get into the realm of proof or science. To wit, Paul wrote that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen" NIV. Also, that by faith are you saved.

There is an old saying, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Saint Paul was no angel, but he was also no fool, and he wrote about 2/3rds of the old testament and is second only to Jesus Christ in importance to the foundation of Christianity and even <he> doesn't try to get into the realm of scientific method to establish Christianity.

So forget what changed about philosophy 80 years ago or so, forget philosophy altogether, or trying to prove the existence of God or god or the correctness of Christianity. The fact remains you cannot prove a universal negative nor can you prove universal causality, so out the window with Kalam.

After all, you summarized it well:

<3. The Kalam Cosmological Argument (as formulated by Craig)

1. Anything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. The universe has a cause for its existence.>

And #1 is not proven, <NOR WILL IT BE PROVEN>! Q.E.D.

<The reason is that verificationism itself is self defeating.>

Verificationism is whatever it is. Honestly, I don't care. Verification, however, is something different. Verification is a step in the scientific method. Please do not confuse the two.

The problem with your approach is that you want to dance in two nightclubs at the same time. You want to engage philosophically or theologically, and then you want to also present what you believe is evidence in an attempt at a proof (empty tomb and so forth).

And don't think for a minute that your attempt to jump from one to the other, when it helps you tactically, goes unnoticed. No sir, I don't miss much, even if I do let some people's crap slide (gotta pick your battles).

The truth is, nothing about my post is self defeating. I merely point out the flaw in Kalam. That is my entire point. I am not debating early 20th century philosophy (I have neither the time nor the desire to do so).

<Verificationism says that only those statements that can be empirically verified have meaning,>

Not at all what I said. <AT ALL!> Emphatically not what I said.

<but the problem is that this statement can't be empirically verified! It's not a scientific statement itself.>

Hmmm, exact same thing I said about step 1 of Kalam. You are arguing against Kalam - is it unwittingly?

<Philosophers of science have moved past verificationism because it raised the bar as to which statements are meaningful too high.>

I am not rejecting Kalam as part of the discussion. Sorry, was that not clear? I was merely pointing out that the foundation is unverifiable.

<It made it so that virtually no statements could be considered meaningful and actually worked to undermine science.>

Being meaningful and being scientific are not the same thing.

<Furthermore, absolute certainty isn't the criterion for knowledge.>

You should mention this disclaimer when you start trying to argue for absolute certainty of the resurrection.

<For all these reasons verificationism died out almost 75 years ago>

Good thing I don't give a rat's behind about "verificationism". So it is irrelevant, but thanks for the exposition on it. Wasn't boring, I'll grant you.

<......So to conclude, both verificationism and the falsification principle (what your objection is based on)> Wrong, sorry. I'll explain why.

<...ran into two problems:

1. It was too restrictive and would wipe out vast tracts of obviously meaningful discourse, including scientific statements.

2. The principle is self refuting.

The inadequacies of these principles led to a total collapse of logical positivism during the second half of the century.

Today, these arguments which once towered the philosophical world are barely a blip on the radar and no top philosophers would argue as you did against premise one with these arguments.>

This last part was irrelevant. But there was lots of good stuff here, <Biggy>. Kudos.

I feel a little twinge of regret - most of this really does not apply as a rebuttal to my post, but that is partly my fault for not being more explicit in making my point.

I did get more specific today, in part 1 up above (or below, depending on how you've arranged your kibitzes).

My point is that Kalam does not belong on the same page as your empty tomb argument <...b. Jesus tomb was discovered empty by a group of women ...> because you are switching back and forth between a supposed piece of experimental data (empty tomb) and an unproven logical argument (Kalam) and the two things are of a different nature.

A logical or philosophical argument is just that, and argument, and not a proof. When you try to conflate that with an attempt at a scientific or legal proof based on evidence, then you are just being inconsistent.

<Thirdly, I am not "appealing" to verification or anything else, and I don't really give a rat's behind what modern philosophers do or don't do.>

I will look your post over carefully later and respond to you points, but I want to take a moment now to say that even though you don't realize that you are appealing to verificationism, you are. I understand that you don't care what modem philosophy or the history of philosophy tells us, but you are appealing to old line verificationism none the less.

<So forget what changed about philosophy 80 years ago or so, forget philosophy altogether, or trying to prove the existence of God or god or the correctness of Christianity. The fact remains you cannot prove a universal negative nor can you prove universal causality, so out the window with Kalam.>

This is an argument against the first premise?

You appeal to old school verificationism (yes you do) and then when I show you why it has fallen out of favor and why no modern scholars accept it, you just say, "So what?"

<can't prove a negative>.

First premise:

1. Anything the begins to exist has a cause.

Your <can't prove a negative> does not apply.

<I am not rejecting Kalam as part of the discussion. Sorry, was that not clear? I was merely pointing out that the foundation is unverifiable.>

Verificationism is not sufficient grounds for objecting.

You should read up on logical positivism, the falsification principle and verificationism and see why your thinking is a century out of date. Modern scholarship in this area has moved light years beyond this.

A very interesting feature is the star rating for each fight. You'll see 0 to 5 stars (yellow) on the right hand side for each fight listing.

<Bout Star Ratings

All bouts are rated with 0 to 5 stars.

Men

5 stars = both opponents have 250 ratings points at least ~ best 100 boxers 4 stars = both opponents have 150 ratings points at least ~ best 300 boxers 3 stars = both opponents have 75 ratings points at least ~ best 900 boxers 2 stars = both opponents have 24 ratings points at least ~ best 2700 boxers 1 stars = both opponents have 1 rating point at least = rated boxers 0 stars = one opponents has not even 1 rating point at least = not rated boxers>

This rating system is done by computer; not by boxing experts or fans. It's not subjective at all. Check out how they do it here:

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/B...

If you look at Ali's boxing record,

http://boxrec.com/boxer/180

you'll see if you start at the bottom that the first seven fights were pretty much no stars or one star. This means neither he nor his opponent were highly rated. After this you can see that he fought top quality opponents all the way up.

Here is Mike Tyson's boxing record,

http://boxrec.com/boxer/474

You'll notice that even by the time he had fought 24 fights he was still fighting one start opponents. After that he was fighting quality rated boxers until his defeat by Douglass.

A look at Marvin Hagler's record http://boxrec.com/boxer/8684 shows from fights 50 to 67 (his last) he fought 5 star fights. That's pretty good! Don't mess with Hagler!

I registered there (free) so I can see all the info like how many rounds the fights went and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfc...

Note the crowd reaction after he was proclaimed Champion:

Leonard had Hagler sitting among the audience (Hagler probably thought he was going to fight Leonard) when he made his surprising announcement of retiring in 1982.

Only after he saw Hagler's skills eroding in the Mugabi fight in 1986, did he finally want the bout.

Leonard won it, (close bout) but I lost respect for him for taking advantage of Hagler that way.

(He also made Hearns wait 8 years before giving him a rematch)

But what goes around comes around.

When Leonard chose to fight light hitting Hector Camacho, he got this:

My apologies - been busy. Not with anything important, mind you, just Euro 2016 soccer.

But if you don't obsess about soccer then you don't really fit in with other soccer fans.

Errr, I mean "futboll" fans

Tyson vs Buster Douglas.

Ali vs Bugner.

Buster Douglas vs Evander Hollyfield.

Ali vs Tyrell.

I'm still agreeing Ali is the greatest heavyweight of all time but if you re watch the Buster Douglas fight you'll see that Douglas should have been counted out. He got knocked down and got to his feet 10.1 second's after going down, not only that but the refs supposed to look at the boxer to see if he's all there after a knock down before letting the fight go on, and then the bell rang! I thought he was exceptional against Tyson and Tyson took some heavy punches but like Douglas said at the end of the fight "You want to be a tough guy and get hit? Okay but now look at him... Over there on his ass!" Lol. And that was Tyson's first fight without Rooney in his corner, that was the beginning of the end for Mike. Apparently before that fight Douglas said "I just want to make it through the 1st round!".

And everytime I watch Ali I'm more impressed! He does everything a boxer shouldn't. No guard, doesn't bob and weave he just flicks his head backwards, I've only ONCE seem him throw a body shot but he had an Iron chin.

Hollyfield destroyed Buster Douglas and Bruno was commenting. Within 10 seconds <literally> he says that Hollyfield will destroy Douglas just by looking at their bodies, I've never seen a boxing commentator get it <so> accurate.

And I thought Bugner did well against Ali he took him 12 rounds. In fact most Ali fights went the distance from the ones I've seen, he wasn't an exceptionally hard puncher but his lateral movements were outstanding, he was just soooooooo fast for a heavyweight.

The Tyrell fight bored me a little but Ali hit Tyrell with a body punch in the first round, that's the only time I've ever seen Ali hit the body! Genuinely the only time.

Yes, they went 75 rounds sometimes and that is totally insane. Although, back then, the rounds ended when a fighter went down, in some cases.

Ali vs Tyrell was a little boring. I watched it with my father the other day actually. Since Ali died we've been watching one of his fights every night (may dad only lives 5 minutes from me) in chronological order.

Ali vs Cleveland Williams is something to study!

Ali whooped Patterson so bad right after he beat Sonny Liston it wasn't even funny. It was terribly brutal. Patterson was the #1 ranked heavyweight at the time too.

You are right; Ali wasn't a hard hitting boxer and even he said that. Instead, he would just hit and not get hit. Somehow he managed to knock a lot of people out though. Check out the rather ugly and sloppy fight against Bonavena. Oscar Bonevena went the distance with Frazier twice, even knocking Joe down once or twice, and he had never been stopped. Then he fought Ali.

I like to go to Ali's record http://boxrec.com/boxer/180 and start from the bottom, watching all of his fights in order.

In order to get a good sense of the magnitude of the Foreman fight, it's good to watch Foreman's 12 prior fights, each going just 1 or 2 rounds, including his fights against the two people that beat Ali, Frazier and Norton.

Foreman was the Tyson of his time. Just *look* at his record here, http://boxrec.com/boxer/90

If you are really digging these old fights, then I highly recommend you find Rocky Marciano's old TV show where he watches a classic fight, sometimes his fights, and gives great, insightful analysis. He'll be watching one of his fights and someone will hit him with a jab and say, "Gee, that doesn't look like a hard punch at all, but boy let me tell you, it felt like a piece of the ceiling fell on my head..."