There is no China.

[Eclipsing the Son]

I've never seen China. You can not provide proof of It. Therefore It doesn't exist. Many people talk about It but I have never seen any hard evidence that can convince me of It's existence. It's probably just a big hoax and all Chinese people are just well bathed Mexicans.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...telliteMap.jpg

I dare anybody to present me with proof that China really exists.

[JCC]

Most logically flawed analogy that should be immediately forgotten due to its ridiculousness award for 2008 goes to Eclipsing the Son, a late entry.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Wooohooo! you got it boy Congrats!

[Eclipsing the Son]

A lot of people have claimed to see China and even visited it. These people are probably all schizophrenics and attention whores. No rational person would believe such a place exists or ever existed. You can site historical references all you want, but you cannot site any hard evidence otherwise. People who believe in China are just trying to fill a void in their intellect with an imaginary continent.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

What about the chinese pattern SKS?

[MollyMac]

China is akin to Trans-fat that way. Everyone talks about how their product doesn't have it as a mean of proof of quality and health, yet I have never seen a product with trans-fat in it for a basis of comparison.

"As always, no trans-fat"

Their proof of a lack of trans-fat on their label in no way proves that trans-fat ever was, never was, or may have been. They make a big deal of NOT having something which may not exist anyway; but their lack of having it is not proof of it not existing.

I may simply eat too healthy to recognize trans-fat to have ever existed. Else, I may not have a dire need to make everyone see it my way so I feel safe in my nutritional philosophies. Just because I have never seen a trans-fat food, does not mean it is not there. But there is no harm in letting others have at the Twinkie that I choose to ignore.

Such is the individual anarchism of Josiah Warren

[Eclipsing the Son]

China is nothing more than a government plot to influence productivity in western colonies. An international boogeyman dreamed up by government leadership to scare it's children into following it's orders and keep productivity up "or else the Chinese market will succeed us and turn the world communist".

OOOoOooOooOOH! The Spooky Communists are going to get you, Democracy!

[MollyMac]

If all the little kiddies aren't well-behaved, the Chinese will make their Christmas toys with lead-based paint.

[Eclipsing the Son]

Yes, and they will all be sneezed on by chinese workers with "SARS".

(a fictional disease if there ever was one).

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by Eclipsing the Son

I dare anybody to present me with proof that China really exists.

http://earth.google.co.jp/

[Eclipsing the Son]

Obviously photoshopped and set up to deceive you.

Anyone with half a brain can see that.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Nice rhetoric, but you know it's not true, as in the end that site does not become self-defeating by asking you to have faith for it to be real.

[Eclipsing the Son]

That only goes to show how misled a majority of the population is.

They are completely ignorant to their own blind faith in a non-existent country.

They're so deeply brainwashed they don't even think to be skeptical.

[Drake Dun]

Uuuh. They're satellite photographs.

And it's embarassing that this requires pointing out, but the two claims are not remotely in the same ballpark.

Suppose I tell you that I have a mechanical pencil in my pocket (I just put it there for purposes of this demonstration). What evidence do you have that this is true? Well... nothing, in the direct sense. But you know that mechanical pencils exist. You know that pockets exist. Somebody or other is writing this post, and whoever that person is, he's identifying himself when he says "I". Obviously he exists, and it's hardly impossible that he's wearing pants.

From where you're sitting, you don't have proof that I have that mechanical pencil, but it's not a stretch of the imagination to suppose that I well may. My word for it should be enough for you, and if you had some strange reason to doubt my word, you could in principle get on a plane, come to Tokyo, and see for yourself. Or I could send you a photo, if I hadn't left my cell phone at a client's place last week.

The same goes if I tell you that I live in a place called Omori. You've probably never heard of it. But you know that places exist, people give them names, and "Omori" is a string of ordinary sounds/letters such as might well form a place name. And if you really wanted, you could again look it up, or ask me for photos or whatever.

The case with China is even easier, because in addition to the fact that it's not outlandish to claim there's some place which happens to be called China, you do have loads of direct evidence: satellite photographs, photographs from people on the ground, first-hand reports from people who've been there, Chinese people, the Chinese language and Chinese culture, Chinese restaurants, imported products from China, etc. ad nauseum.

Notice how quickly things change when I tell you that what I have in my pocket is some pixie dust which allows me to fly bodily around, which I acquired in a country called Xanadu, in which everyone is seven meters tall and gravity works backwards (not as outlandish as the idea of gods, but still...). Just for fun, we'll say that Xanadu is "outside of space and time". I have no idea what that would even mean, but I've heard it somewhere before and it sounds cool. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that these claims are a just tad harder to take at face value than a mechanical pencil being in someone's pocket.

This is what Sagan was after, quoting a previous thinker if I remember correctly, when he made the often quoted remark that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

All of this is academic, and my best guess is that you're already well aware of it. So suppose we stop these pretenses and feeble attempts to tear down even the most basic standards of serious thought. Or how about this as an alternative - we agree that it's just as reasonable for me to believe in Xanadu (maybe not the pixie dust, since that's easy to test) as it is for you to believe in YHWH. I would settle for that. If people don't want to pursue the purist standards of thought that I aspire to, that's fine, but only until they start holding other people's beliefs to those standards and carving out special exceptions for their own.

[Eclipsing the Son]

Yeah. Anyways, back on topic.

Did you know that half the food you get at "Chinese" restaurants are actually American takes on other oriental foods? Most of them are either Thai or Russian dishes, simply drenched in soy sauce. Take Chop Suey for instance. It was founded by a Mexican immigrant supposedly from "China" as a 'chinese' meal. This was later debauched and he was deported back to Mexico. The fortune cookie was also founded by 'Chinese' people in America, but cannot be linked back to the east.

There are many other startling facts pointing against the existence of China if you dig a little deeper.

[Drake Dun]

Okay. Now that we're down to you just flat out ignoring my points, in addition to implicitly admitting that what you really want is to believe the things you happen to have a hard on for while rejecting the similarly groundless beliefs of others, I think we can call it a wrap.

Thank you for playing.

[ÇâlegaDominú]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

Uuuh. They're satellite photographs.

And it's embarassing that this requires pointing out, but the two claims are not remotely in the same ballpark.

Suppose I tell you that I have a mechanical pencil in my pocket (I just put it there for purposes of this demonstration). What evidence do you have that this is true? Well... nothing, in the direct sense. But you know that mechanical pencils exist. You know that pockets exist. Somebody or other is writing this post, and whoever that person is, he's identifying himself when he says "I". Obviously he exists, and it's hardly impossible that he's wearing pants.

From where you're sitting, you don't have proof that I have that mechanical pencil, but it's not a stretch of the imagination to suppose that I well may. My word for it should be enough for you, and if you had some strange reason to doubt my word, you could in principle get on a plane, come to Tokyo, and see for yourself. Or I could send you a photo, if I hadn't left my cell phone at a client's place last week.

The same goes if I tell you that I live in a place called Omori. You've probably never heard of it. But you know that places exist, people give them names, and "Omori" is a string of ordinary sounds/letters such as might well form a place name. And if you really wanted, you could again look it up, or ask me for photos or whatever.

The case with China is even easier, because in addition to the fact that it's not outlandish to claim there's some place which happens to be called China, you do have loads of direct evidence: satellite photographs, photographs from people on the ground, first-hand reports from people who've been there, Chinese people, the Chinese language and Chinese culture, Chinese restaurants, imported products from China, etc. ad nauseum.

Notice how quickly things change when I tell you that what I have in my pocket is some pixie dust which allows me to fly bodily around, which I acquired in a country called Xanadu, in which everyone is seven meters tall and gravity works backwards (not as outlandish as the idea of gods, but still...). Just for fun, we'll say that Xanadu is "outside of space and time". I have no idea what that would even mean, but I've heard it somewhere before and it sounds cool. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that these claims are a just tad harder to take at face value than a mechanical pencil being in someone's pocket.

This is what Sagan was after, quoting a previous thinker if I remember correctly, when he made the often quoted remark that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

All of this is academic, and my best guess is that you're already well aware of it. So suppose we stop these pretenses and feeble attempts to tear down even the most basic standards of serious thought. Or how about this as an alternative - we agree that it's just as reasonable for me to believe in Xanadu (maybe not the pixie dust, since that's easy to test) as it is for you to believe in YHWH. I would settle for that. If people don't want to pursue the purist standards of thought that I aspire to, that's fine, but only until they start holding other people's beliefs to those standards and carving out special exceptions for their own.

Are you seriously this stupid?

[Hades]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

Okay. Now that we're down to you just flat out ignoring my points, in addition to implicitly admitting that what you really want is to believe the things you happen to have a hard on for while rejecting the similarly groundless beliefs of others, I think we can call it a wrap.

Thank you for playing.

Lol, while you may make some good points, i think you took this thread a little too seriously besides, it's loads of fun getting all paranoid and solipsistic, mistrusting everything you've been told ^^

However, where do you propose the chinese-looking people crawled out of, then? xD And are they speaking a made-up language? :0 Fallacy! FALLACY!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!


EDIT: On another thought... dude, you should totally write my essays xD c'mon! I'd pay you in hugs and cheesecake?

[Eclipsing the Son]

Can you tell the Chinaman from the Mexican? Try it out.

1. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/34/71...2f9d36.jpg?v=0
2. http://www.kaichang.net/images/chinesemexican_2.jpg
3. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1099/...c2b35a.jpg?v=0
4. http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/C...9p.hmedium.jpg
5.http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/...cu6tR/610x.jpg
6. http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Page...and-burro.jpeg

Well can you?

[Hades]

Originally Posted by Eclipsing the Son

Can you tell the Chinaman from the Mexican? Try it out.

1. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/34/71...2f9d36.jpg?v=0
2. http://www.kaichang.net/images/chinesemexican_2.jpg
3. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1099/...c2b35a.jpg?v=0
4. http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/msnbc/C...9p.hmedium.jpg
5.http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/...cu6tR/610x.jpg
6. http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Page...and-burro.jpeg

Well can you?

Yeah, i believe i can it's not that hard, really... and my God there's this ad right on the left of this box... with all these boobs! Distracting... @_@

[ÇâlegaDominú]

Originally Posted by Hades

Yeah, i believe i can it's not that hard, really... and my God there's this ad right on the left of this box... with all these boobs! Distracting... @_@

.......What?

[Pineapple_Juice]

Some of them!


Edit: this was supposed to go to EtS

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by ÇâlegaDominú

Are you seriously this stupid?

You need to like, make a point, or ask a question if you want to have a dialog with me. Quoting a wall of text and calling me stupid doesn't get us anywhere.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

And it's embarassing that this requires pointing out, but the two claims are not remotely in the same ballpark.

Well, no. In all honesty, this is really the skepticism point zero of logic, and it's precisely how one ought to treat China at first. After all, we are not born with the knowledge of China and when we hear about it the first time we think of something along the lines of "what is that?" or "I've never heard of it"
So the two claims are really in the same ballpark. The difference is that he is using reductio ad absurdum by denying all the direct and circumstantial evidence he would otherwise use in any other daily life conjecture to try to make a point.

[Eclipsing the Son]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

You need to like, make a point, or ask a question if you want to have a dialog with me. Quoting a wall of text and calling me stupid doesn't get us anywhere.

Serious post is serious

By the way. NERD!