Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:49:04 -0500, the following appeared
> in sci.skeptic, posted by dh@.:
>
>> What do you want people to think is preventing you from benefitting from
>> life?
>
> Goalpost shift? Your assertion was that "life is a benefit",
> not that "one can benefit from life"; I certainly have no
> argument with the latter. The answer to your *actual*
> original assertion that "life is a benefit" is by
> counterexample (two of them, actually; there are more
> available on request):
>
> The fact that you think there's some nebulous "benefit" in
> being born with a painful heart defect which kills you
> before the age of one, or born to abusive addict parents who
> beat you to death at the age of two (neither of which is any
> sort of "benefit"), is sufficient to reject your conjecture
> that "life is a benefit". A short life of nothing but pain
> isn't a "benefit".
>
> Now stop snipping the answer and claiming I've given no
> answer, you lying sack of shit.
>

If by "life" one means the circumstances around you then they can be a
benefit or a harm. But he doesn't mean that, he is equivocating. He
means the very process of living, and that can't benefit you, because it
*is* you. But honestly, I don't think he knows he's doing it, he's too
stupid, he has just rehearsed all these different tortured wordings to
escape facing the utter stupidity of what he is saying for so long that
he thinks they make sense.