Winston whips the Australian Skeptics in debate!

[Scepcop]

Guess what all? Last night, I had a series of debates with many pseudoskeptics on the Australian Skeptics group on Facebook. I brought out the big guns and totally wasted them. They were overwhelmed by truth, logic, facts, reason, etc. to the point where they started grasping at straws. They started playing semantics when the truth wasn't on their side, and used cheap low ball tactics.

At one point, they even DENIED that the 2000 architects and engineers existed on AE911Truth.org! LOL. When I pointed out that those architects and engineers signed a formal petition with their full names, and even appeared on two documentaries produced by AE911Truth.org, they then demanded that I show NOTARIZED statements from these 2000 architects and engineers! Is that a cheap lowball denial tactic or what? LOL. I couldn't believe it. It's sad that these folks are not just closed minded and narrow, but they resort to extreme denial, fraud and dishonesty as well. This can only mean that they are NOT interested in seeking the truth at all.

Anyway, you can see my debates with them here under three posts I started. They might have been driven down by newer posts though.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/SkepticsInAustralia/

But I totally blew them away. They were overwhelmed that I threw so much irrefutable evidence at them. All they could do was mindlessly spout "There is no evidence! There is no evidence!" like brainless automatons, as usual. LOL. These pseudoskeptics are like programmed robots, not even human. LOL

I'm going to issue a challenge to them. I would be willing to debate some of them on a skeptics radio podcast, such as The Skeptics Guide to the Universe with Steven Novella, if they can arrange it with him.

I will post this thread on their Facebook group too, to rattle them up. LOL

These folks are funny and predictable, and the funny thing is, they think I'm funny and hilarious as well. LOL I guess that's the only thing we have in common. LOL

[Nowoowoo]

Indeed Winston did visit the Australian Skeptics. That is about the only acccurate statement he made.
He then got very upset when the skeptics were skeptical, and challenged him ! Shock ! He met REAL skpetics who werent taken in !

He became irate at being asked to justify his claims, which he couldnt and wouldnt, and instead just repeatedly spammed the page with debunked nonsense.
He failed to address any of the substantive isssues raised, and failed to rebut the ninety page analysis of his logical fallacies.

In short - the only whipping was done by Winston upon himself. he has been invited to return, but upon conditions :
1) He limit the number of posts - not just spam the page.
2) He limits the posts to ONE topic per post.
3) He provides ACTUAL evidence to substantiate the claim. Belief is NOT evidence. Argumentum ad populum etc is NOT evidence.
4) He learns what logical fallacies are. If he fails to learn - we will repeatedly point them out - as we did do.

If he refuses to abide by those terms (which seem to be reasonable), he will likely be banned. At the moment he is viiewed as an amusing troll - nothing more.
If Winston wants to understand what "TRUE" skepticism is we are happy to enlighten him - but whatever he is now, "skeptic" isnt it.

[BillPerron]

Sounds to me the Australian septics are about as thin skinned as the American septics.
Do things according to their rules or they take the ball and you can't play anymore.
Not one has ever had the guts to ask Randi why he lied to weasel out of the Bill Perron challenge for the publicity stunt million.
Such pseudo skepticism is a weakness they all choose, rather than face the truth that their ugly little hero is a phony liar.

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]

Yea, I was right. Winston spamming and posting so much unsupported crap it makes your head spin with frustration. Sorry.

[Scepcop]

[SydneyPSIder]

I'm not sure those are the topics I would have ventured into a skeptics forum with!

[NinjaPuppy]

Bwok, bwok, bwok, the skeptics are chicken!

[NinjaPuppy]

[SydneyPSIder]

More irrelevant modes of argumentation from yet another user on the internet wittily nicknamed 'justintime'. (chortle chortle, get it. I might name myself 'Holden Back' ha ha. Oh the lulz.)

Convicts were sent to Australia from around 1780 to 1848. Far greater numbers of free settlers arrived after that period. While there were social welfare reforms in Britain from about 1820 when they realised that 'excising the convict genetic stain' wasn't working — as a kind of early eugenics experiment designed to make Britain crime-free especially around crimes of property — they nonetheless kept sending convicts for another 30 years or so. The reason more and more people turned to petty crime was the population explosion following the agrarian revolution coupled with the lack of a welfare state that meant many desperate people had no jobs and no supports.

The main classes of prisoner sent out were:
- workers who did poor quality work who turned to crime to supplement their income from all walks of life
- general 'lumpenproletariat' from the slums of London who had turned to crime
- Irish political prisoners
- Luddites and rural poor who turned to crime or smashed machines due to losing their jobs to automation.

The main reason convicts were no longer sent after about 1850 was the discovery of rich gold fields in Victoria, meaning people were trying to get transported for trivial offences for free to Australia, then they would earn a ticket of leave within a year, and were free to go prospecting. It was a cheap fare from Blighty to riches. It was also starting to be seen as a 'summer holiday'.

Convicts were sent to the US for many decades before losing the US War of Independence, and American colonials complained about receiving shipload after shipload of convicts up to that time, so there is a fair share of the 'convict stain' in the US also.

I find Australians generally more law-abiding, honest and left shifty than the Brits left behind in their outlook, due to a fairer social settlement that does not encourage operating outside the law to supplement income.

[SydneyPSIder]

[SydneyPSIder]

there were different reasons for the genocide. once the intent of the colonists became obvious to the indigenous people -- that they were taking the best hunting land for crops and livestock, crowding people off, starting settlements, and more and more kept arriving on ships -- then they started warfare against the new arrivals, with the outcomes that you might imagine with the 'guns, germs and steel' of the arrivistes.

while the earliest records of the governor involved orders treating the natives with the utmost respect, that obviously cannot jibe well with the colonialist project.

very similar things happened in the US in new England, where natives' heads were used as footballs by the wave of settlers who came after the first religious pilgrims.

Noam Chomsky has a lot to say about Anglosphere colonialism, but of course the Spanish and French and Germans and Belgians were up to it as well.

A lot of the genocide in Australia came about under orders from the landed gentry, in fact, who had been granted huge tracts of land by the king because of their inherent deservingness of course. They then proceeded to remove natives from their lands to turn them over to agriculture. it was technically illegal, but it happened a great deal nonetheless. note that the article you cited points out that the convicts who were indentured to a noble land-owner who was probably granted free land were following orders of their superior. and as I pointed out, it was illegal and 7 of the 12 men involved were hanged.

methods including handing over blankets infected with smallpox, or just shooting them in their camps. as happened in the US also, since that is where the ideas particularly about smallpox came from in the 1778-1788 handover from US to Australia.

freed convicts were given tiny plots of land to cultivate on soils inherently poorer than back in Europe, and were not allowed guns as they were recent ex-convicts, meaning the aboriginal people raided them at night. altogether not a very pleasant settlement, and there are still strong tensions in the regions today.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gippsland_massacres

[SydneyPSIder]

Maybe so, justintime. But exactly the same thing happened in the US. and in South America under the Spanish and Portuguese. And in Africa. It's called colonialism, and it was a feature of European international relations for centuries up until WWII.

You need to do some sort of liberal arts or humanities historical studies, and maybe read some Noam Chomsky, to get a broader appreciation of world happenings at that time, the European colonial project, etc. Your last quote is just another perspective, it's not 'right', it's just someone pushing their own take on it. I've already explicated in great detail from works like The Fatal Shore the background of the earliest settlers, the role of the agrarian and industrial revolutions, and so on. After 1850 a great many more 'free settlers' arrived. There is a constant influx of new arrivals also, not that they all join the Australian Skeptics. You will find it a difficult project to discredit the Australian Skeptics on the basis of their being 'descended from convicts' and 'genocidal' when exactly the same thing could be said about the entire US population, just as inaccurately.

[SydneyPSIder]

[ProfWag]