On 1/8/2013 1:57 PM, Dutch wrote:
> 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,

He means existence, period - with no regard to the quality of the existence.


> 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.

He picked up this lame trick from someone else, and he doesn't know how
to manipulate it.