Yes it was a comma splice.

It wasn't, and I explained why. If you can't read that far, should I even bother with the rest of your arguements? How can I be sure that you actually read anything else I wrote that you didn't want to hear? (Pay attention to those last two sentances, I'm going to come back to them later.)

The rules. It's introductory. But, the rules are so unclear, even if we assumed that I was using ellipses in order to add an independant clause in the form of "[implied: That is a] nice job, that was the stupidest thing I've read yet today", it wouldn't be so simple as to say whether it's incorrect or not.

"Stupidest" isn't so easy to answer. I understand where you're coming from here. Most people simply go by the two-syllable rule, which says that any word with two or more syllables not ending in 'y' gets 'more' and 'most'. But that simply isn't true. The only iron clad rule in this regard is that three-syllable rules require more and most. Two-syllable words can be more discretionary. Furthermore, it just sounds wrong. This is because of the -id ending which sounds like the -ed of a past participle. Those always use more and most.

Now that the grammar is aside, Lets do rhetoric! Now, the first thing to remember with rhetoric is that it is at it's core all about illocution. Not what you said, but what you meant. Rhetorical purpose as they taught us back in whatever class that was.

That's not even close to what I claimed. I was saying it was similar to how religious people think of the bible. Many of them don't care if it really was a king who said the message of the new testament- they just like the overall message and follow it. The overall message of the bible, at least the new testament, is love and sacrifice. Whether or not you believe Jesus was a God or even existed, those are the messages he left behind in the stories.

Here is the problem with not being clear. When you are not clear, everything you say is loaded. I inferred the logical conclusion of what you meant form what you said. What you just said, the above quoted text, would not be reasonably inferred from your comparison. BUT, we'll treat it as if it was, and continue from here.

You say that the religious and the non religious are similar because it does not matter to them whether the text they're reading has a reputable author so long as the text itself has intrinsic value. So long as the message is good regardless of who wrote it. This would be true, with one caveat. In this case, the similarity has nothing to do with whether they're religious or not, nor is it any sort of rumination on their similar ways of thinking. This in no way relates back to belief in god, and to place it as a comparison between the religious and non-religious is a complete non-sequitur.

Now, i'm going to stop for a second and mention something. when I say, "you say..." I am not claiming to know what you think or feel, I am doing the only thing I can, and logically inferring as to what the things you're saying mean. If what I'm saying you're arguing, and what you feel you're arguing don't match up, think long and hard about how clear you are, and how you can get your meaning more precisely expressed.

Ad hominem never ever works in favor of your argument and is a logical fallacy. The largest piece of your rebuttal is devoted to it.

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

You would do well to read this. To summarize. I did not say that you are wrong because you are an idiot. I simply said that you are both wrong and an idiot, but made no claim to a relation between the two.

Ad hominem is not name calling, it is subverting an argument. There's nothing illogical about telling someone they're being stupid.

I can just imagine how crushed most people are to learn this, thinking to themselves, as if they're this self aware, "But.. but... how am I supposed to wantonly accuse someone of doing it when it has a specific meaning!?"

Remember those two sentances I told you to pay attention to? I made the assertion that because you didn't pay attention to one of my arguements, you may not pay attention to other arguements and thusly your rebuttals could be disregarded as misinformed.

Now, THAT was ad hominem on my part. People like to define Ad Hominem as simply "Character Attack" but that is incomplete. It is more precisely attacking the character in place of the argument, but can not be applied when both the argument and character are attacked.

You say we don't know who wrote the quote but are willing to accept it as truth. Then you say that we don't know who wrote the bible and therefore cannot accept it as truth. Derp.

Yes. that's exactly the contradiction I said you drew.

You then took this view and drew the following contradiction: We can not verify who wrote this quote, but are willing to accept it as having intrinsic value. But given the bible, we are not willing to accept it as having intrinsic value because we can not verify its writer as being God.

Now, the parts that I am going to give the bible in having truth are those that make no unfalsifiable claims. Those parts that are simple philosophy, like Jesus' love and peace, and the topical quote. But this isn't a discussion on the nature of god, it's a discussion on the nature of belief.

To be clear, without knowing the the author of the bible, I am perfectly willing to accept its assertion that you shouldnt kill people as having intrinsic value. However, it is a religous thing to say that this has weight because of the writer. So then, what parts of the bible are made invalid by its indeterminant authorship? Everything that is based off of the writer being God. When someone says that morality comes from their religion because God deems it so, when a historical claim is made because God said in the bible that it happened, when God is evidenced by his own bible, these are claims that require the bible to be written by God to be taken as true. The topical quote makes no such claims. Nothing in it requires an authority to have merit.

So all we're left with is the same wet fish sort of argument from a couple paragraphs ago. Are theist and atheists comparable because they can both take intrinsic value in literature without requiring an authority? No, because that similarity has nothing to do with their belief or lack of belief.

But I'm sure writing that made you feel all fuzzy inside and ironically was smug as hell. So feel free to ignore what I just wrote. You're coming from the emotional standpoint that religion and there really isn't any point in arguing with a hateful person.

Fuzzy? Not also warm? Because it did. Am I smug? Quite. A man should enjoy his vices. Hateful? Aah, alas here I can not agree. Judgemental perhaps, but not hateful. I once dated a girl who was rather relgious. We would debate belief all the time, and I loved it. In fact, I'd much rather be have this argument with her (Unless of course you're an attractive twenty-something young lady!)

However, you should know that you're implying that my supposed hatefulness detracts from my arguments, and I would further instruct you that such ad hominem will never ever work in favor of your own argument, and is in fact a logical fallacy.