Isn't it fascinating that, just three days ago, John Loftus wrote quite differently about a paper of mine having to do with the problem of evil. See:
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...-from-
evil.html
He wrote:
"Dave, thanks for this detailed and educated response. Very well done. I've gotten a lot of negative responses to what I wrote at a discussion board. So you are in good company. I may be the odd man out on this one."
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...1030196/
#120941
The difference is that this paper wasn't directed towards his argument (only in part). so I was "detailed and educated" about a complex philosophical argument there, a mere three days ago. But somehow, remarkably, today the same person says about me:
"Any educated person would not state the things you do with such arrogance."
"I am annoyed by people like you, . . . pompous self-righteous know-it-all's"
"you are an uneducated, ignorant, arrogant know-it-all."
How, then, did I write the previous paper, which even he thought was "detailed and educated" and "Very well done"? How is it possible for an "uneducated, ignorant" person to write an "educated" paper?! LOL
Dave,
He's wounded. He needs to let your arguments marinate a bit. But that process can only start when the vitriol and hysteria settle. Who knows, once he has fully metabolized the implications of your arguments (and he's recovered from the embarrassment of having made less than a stellar showing), he may be beholden to you.
In extensive dialogues with Jehovah's Witnesses and ex-Jehovah's Witnesses so many of them have mocked me for being Catholic to then slowly come full circle and recognize the veracity of the Church's teachings and claims. As you well know, his superciliousness is not coming from a posture of strength.
Your brother,
James
PS. Watching you debate various folks with PhDs over the years and come out utterly victorious gave me the courage to never shrink back from dialogue with a person because of his putative superior credentials. You taught me a huge lesson; The splendor of truth has its own inherent power that manifests itself regardless of one's level of learning.
Hi James,
Thanks for the kind words. You always have interesting comments to make. Hey, if a JW can come around, why not an atheist, possibly, too, huh?!
By the way, I have the eqivalent of a Ph.D. degree, but yet it's not equivalent after all, since I don't have one.
No wonder I can't dialogue with you. Look at how you treat me. This whole post of yours is yet but another example of how juvenile you are. I will treat people with respect if they treat me with respect. Anyone who actually wants to wade through the Blog entry I made can read it and come to their own conclusions. But I have mine. And anyone who wants to read what I write can judge for themselves about me. There's no doubt in my mind you're smart, and that you've read a great deal. But you are immature. You should've heard this before from someone whose opinion matters to you.
As evidence of this, just think what kind of response you would be writing right now if I had posted something like you just did along with a crying baby...then compare that with this reasonable response of mine.
John and Glenn Dixon lecture me at length on the former's blog:
Glenn Dixon said...
Dave,
It is obvious that you're just way smarter than any theologian who has ever lived. Why waste time with the peons? We'll never learn...
7:41 AM, December 01, 2006
----------------------
John W. Loftus said...
Dave, I pose a problem and you answered it, even though you admit you haven't read the relevant literature, and you do so with overwhelming confidence. You take up a great deal of space so that no one else wants to deal with the problem and interact with it, and you call me schzioid?
And you point to something you wrote that did show some level of study as evidence you do this all of the time? But when you don't do it, it's because it was about me, eh? You have excuses for everything. The ignorance I'm speaking of, which has yet not crossed your mind, is the ignorance that thinks you are right about everything, or nearly so. That's ignorance. That betrays a person who has been indoctrinated, not educated.
Now listen. You have caused me to waste too much time responding to your stupidity. Go away. You annoy me way too much. You are not worth my time. If only you would be more reasonable. You have a fairly bright mind. It's too frustrating for me becuse it only degenerates into shouting matches.
John W. Loftus said...
About Joe Holman.
[here is what he wrote, that I objected to:
""No way I'm going to be preached at [at a funeral] by some shit-for-brains religious psychotic in a suit who thinks a ghost will set people on fire to torture them." ]
Dave, there is a context to everything. He's not making an argument at all. He's expressing how he feels. It's no different than when I say it's obvious to me that Christianity is false. You however, stated that something was obvious inside an argument. What I wrote about it still hotly contested within Christian philosophical writers. And if you had read the literature you would know that such things are not obvious to smarter people than you and I. No one on the opposing side of a discussion like this would try to come off as a know-it-all, like you do most of the time. I understand your personal feelings when you think what you believe is true, maybe obviously true, but you simply cannot come into a hotly debated issue and express those same personal feelings toward an issue and not be thought of as uneducated, which you are on this particular issue. If I were uninformed about an issue I would step in with a measure of healthy intellectual humility, or I would state what I do know about the issue, but I would never act like an answer man. As I said, this is a personality problem of yours, and it annoys me, because it treats me as an ignorant person. That's how it comes across. I'm not ignorant on this issue. You are. You admitted as much. So you can see how you have provoked my ire. What I think of you could be changed if y
(cont.)
. . . if you just admitted something to this effect, but your personality seems to be such that you can't do this. You will turn it back on me, as if this is my problem...but it's not. Whenever I am treated as if I'm ignorant, because my detractor states an argument as if it's obvious, or whenever I am treated as an enemy, I get upset. The reason I fire back at you, claiming you are ignorant, and you admitted this, is because you first treated me this way. I don't take kindly to someone who is admittedly more ignorant on an issue who treats me as if I am, when I am not. Then there is no possible way for a civil discussion from that point on. The thread gets sidetracked, and little light is shed on this issue, which is what I want. But this seems to be a contest to you, to see who is smarter...who has the answers...who is king of the hill. I, on the other hand like to learn something from people who can teach me. I don't think they can convince me I'm wrong, but I like to learn the best that the opposing side has to offer so I can argue more effectively against it. For me it's a learning process, even thoug I have my opinions, because I truly believe there is so much to learn about every topic I write about that I am ignorant about it. [Let me be clear here, I believe that when it comes to all the available information on most topics, that I know only a small portion of it, even on those topics I know a great deal about]. And what I write reflects this attitude for the most part, not always, but with you it comes across with everything you write. And that's the difference between us.
9:17 AM, December 01, 2006
---------------------------------------------
I responded:
Now listen. You have caused me to waste too much time responding to your stupidity. Go away.
Are you saying you don't want me to post on your blog anymore?
As to your opinion of me; whoop-de-doo. It's just yours. You have no basis for thinking that it is true across the board in how people relate to me. I have a long history of dialoguing with atheists; for the most part, amiably and constructively.
There is also a very common dynamic in atheist-Christian relations that I have long noted: someone like me goes into an atheist environment, making arguments, and a certain portion of the atheists will talk nicely and there is no problem, but another faction (usually smaller), think you are a pompous, know-it-all ass, precisely as you (and glenn dixon) are doing.
Two polar opposite reactions to the same exact behavior. The interesting thing is that I have seen this change after a certain amount of time passes. People who didn't like me at all when I first showed up, later came to respect me and even enjoy dialoguing. I distinctly remember individuals who have done this.
Most of that I chalk up to the generally poor relations between our camps and willingness on both sides to attribute base motives to the other, because of many b
(cont.)
. . . bad experiences in the past.
You've done this yourself, on exactly this basis. You've claimed that I supposedly think atheists are immoral, and hardly even people, and not devoted to seeking truth. All of that is rank falsehood. It's lies. Yet you spouted it, with nowhere near compelling evidence to warrant such cynical, despairing conclusions.
I get along fine, it seems to me, with several people on this very blog. I won't name them, because I don't want to draw them into your paranoid controversies, but they know who they are. There is even one I had trouble with here, with whom I am getting along relatively better in another place. It's not perfect, but there is hope. But you cut off any prospect for good discussion by your irrational, insulting outbursts.
If you say I shouldn't post anymore, I'll be more than happy to comply, but I will still check in and see what others are writing (because there are a lot of sharp people here, who are fun and challenging to dialogue with), and offer replies on my blog. They can then respond there if they wish.
Just say the word.
In the meantime, you are making yourself a laughingstock by your boorish, rude, hyper-sensitive reactions to me. This does you no good. I have no desire to see any thinker (atheists included) make a fool of himself. That cheapens intellectual discourse and turns people off of it. It's already tough enough to find a good discussion and thinkers willing to engage in the thrust-and-parry of challenging intellectual discourse.
just think what kind of response you would be writing right now if I had posted something like you just did along with a crying baby
I've had far, far worse done to me, by fellow anti-Catholic Christians.
I've had entire blogs (fake ones, done supposedly by "me") devoted to my supposedly nefarious character, with wholesale mockery and defamation.
Two caricatures were done by James White's artist comrade: one implying that I am spewing hatred towards White.
Eric Svendsen did a National Enquirer-type spoof which implied that I am in league with Holocaust deniers.
I've been accused of being a pretender, a fake, someone who doesn't work for a living, an out-and-out liar and sophist, insane, etc. Everything in the book.
Posting a poke-in-the-eye picture of a crying baby is NOTHING! The real question is, what would John do if he were subjected to all the insults that I have received in the course of my apologetics? I shudder to think, if he can't even take a vigorous counter-reply without wilting into goo and thundering like Thor on a bad hair day.
Insults? You admit that you insulted me? Where is the apology? And are we now discussing who has been insulted the most? You win, as usual. Without spelling then all out, I have seen my share. And I do my best to respond like I am now, but sometimes people get my goat.
More with John Loftus:
Dave, I meant "go away" if you want to continue in the same vein,
I deny that I am In any "vein" that you think I am in. I don't have this problem with several others here, with whom I have dialogued. Some people react that way; most don't. It's just a certain personality or temperament; I've learned, that has a problem with mine. I imagine we all have those clashes (not necessarily of the same type, though).
because if you do then I personally am not interested in dialoguing with you, even if others here may be so inclined.
Onviusly, nothing I do is good enough for you, so I'm happy to simply interact with others, who have shown they can do so without your personal attacks and histrionics. There was NOTHING in my latest reply that was at all personal or blameworthy, other than that it disagreed with your position (and, I think, soundly refuted it). You don't like that. You don't like confidence. You thnk confidence proves that I think I am a know-it-all. This is your problem, not mine. I don't apologize for being confident of my positions.
You think I am so cocksure that I can never change my mind? How, then, did I convert from Protestant to Catholic? You think that is insignificant? I think it is almost as great a change as from evangelical to atheist.
How could I change from liberal to conservative politically, or from pro-choice to pro-life, or from sexual liberalism to rather conservative sexual beliefs? I've done all this in my life, and much more.
I think I have been patient with you,
Isn't that obvious!?
but since you do in fact have something to say, I let it slide. I'm not into banning people if they have well expressed opinions like you do, for the most part. I want to learn from you (believe it or not). I just want it to be respectful of the fact that we do disagree with each other.
I challenge anyone here to look at my response on the God and time issue and fiond anything - ANYTHING - that could only be construed as pompous and arrogant. You tried to show that my simple use of the word "obvious" proved all this BS. But that was quickly blown out of the water when I proved that everyone here does exactly the same thing.
You object because I make definite statements. What do you expect me to do? There are such things as liberal theologians. Christians have agreed for centuries that God is out of time. Just because some fashionable new liberal theology comes around (process theology / open theism), doesn't change the definition of Christian orthodoxy or what the Bible teaches. You may think it does, because you have adopted an approach whereby things can transform into something essentially different and still somehow be the same thing. But we Christians reject that. And so that accounts for my strong language.
You think I am so ignorant about the God and time issue? I was reading and arguing about this twenty years. I've had extre
(cont.)
. . . twenty years ago. I've had extremely elaborate discussions on Molinism and middle knowledge: one with a guy who later became a philosopher: Alex Pruss (and he said he was convinced by my argument at the time). I took philosophy of space and time in college. So think again. I don';t claim to have read all the recent literature on this or any other philosophical issue; nor am I required to do so to have any opinion at all. I'm simply a lay apologist who likes discussion; not any kind of scholar.
If my reasoning was so terrible, then ANSWER it (I barely keep my composure here, because I am absolutely disgusted with whining and put-downs as a "replacement" of rational argument). Blow it out of the water! If I'm so damned stupid and ignorant as you make out, why wait? You'd love to put me in my "place," given your personal opinion of me as so arrogant and derisive of atheists as I allegedly am. What stops you? You have all your mighty education . . .
I'm willing to start all over with you.
There's nothing here. You take the lowest possible view of me, and refuse to interact on an intellectual level. It's all personal and melodramatic fluff.
I think we understand that our relationship is tenuous at best, so let's both understand that about it, and we'll do okay. Deal with the arguments. Leave personalities out of it.
I've already done that. A lot of good it did. When I critiqued the arguments in your deconversion, you claimed it was entirely personal. At least two others on your own blog didn't see it that way at all. RubySera tried to make a big deal out of it again, but when I showed that she was in basic error about what I did, she disappeared and was never heard from again. You are the only one making everything personal. You're making all the insults and calling names. You called me an "idiot" and a "joke." Basically, all I've ever said about you is that you overreact, unnecessarily make stuff personal, and refuse to make counter-replies.
Do not claim any more than your arguments conclude and we'll be okay.
MAKE a cotton-pickin' argument in response to me once in a while and we'll be okay. Daniel Morgan does that. DagoodS does. You don't see me fighting and wrangling with them. We simply have interesting discussions. Jon Curry (I think you guys know him) wants to get together for lunch.
I used to have an atheist come to group discussions at my house every two weeks for months. We got along fine. I really liked this guy. He was cool. Everyone else was Christian. But he kept coming back, because my circle of friends don't treat atheists like dirt. We treat them with respect, as fellow human beings and thinkers. You are WRONG about me.
I can learn from you.
You haven't shown the slightest outward evidence that you have ever done so.
Just don't act like you have a corner on the truth, that's all.
I do NOT. I deny this. Having
(cont.)
. . . confidence in one's beliefs, always subject to correction at a future time, is not wrong at all.
You may feel like you do all you want to.
You don't even know how I feel, since you continually misrepresent my alleged interior feelings and thoughts and dispositions.
But don't express this in an argument if you want a healthy dialogue with someone like me who objects to that kind of argumentation, and who can see it as the rhetoric that it really is.
Again, I deny doing this, and I challenge anyone here to look at my latest reply to you and find anything of the sort in it. It's simply confident. I felt I had a strong case and acted accordingly. If I feel I have less of a strong case I act differently. E.g., in the logical argument from evil thing I did recently, someone asked me a question about a point in Plantinga and I sinlpy pleaded ignorance and said I may not understand that element in his argument correctly.
Agreed?
There is nothing to agree with. You're the one who has to start acting differently, not me. All the time you are writing your put-downs, I'm discussing things with lots of other people with no problem at all. It's only relatively rarely that I run into these things. You happen to be one of them.
But if I'm going along getting along with most people I meet, and having huge problems with one, a rational mind would conclude that the problem probably lies in him, not with me. We all act this way. If we get along with 99 people and then have trouble with one, we conclude that it is probably his or her primary fault, because it is the exception to the rule (1% in that case). This is rational and common sense.
Insults? You admit that you insulted me?
Where did I do that? Point out an insult. All I've done is react to your drama queen histrionics and insults towards me. It's not an insult to simply point out that rank insults and lies about another's interior attitudes and positions are wrong. Did you think that it was?
What YOU need to do is admit that there was NOTHING in my formal reply on God and time to warrant you going off into the stratosphere and making out that this (like my terrible sin of using the word "obviously") proves I am the most arrogant, know-it-all cuss in the history of the world (or at least A.D.).
If you do that, then I'll take down the crybaby picture and Munch's Scream, etc. As far as I am concerned, they are precisely appropriate, given your behavior.
And I'll change the title. But the post itself will stay because it is important to document these little episodes. People have a habit of revising history later. I want people to see what actually happened, on both sides.
And you have the nerve and gall and chutzpah to ask me [i.e., on my blog] to apologize, with all the rotgut you have called and insinuated about me: not a single one ever - to my knowledge - taken back? I'm supposed to apologize basically for the fact that I have a lot more confidence in my positions than you do in yours, and you don't like that? Somehow it threatens you, and so you deal with it by pretending that I am an arrogant, presumptuous ass and intellectual pretender?
Sorry . . . . (that's the only "sorry" you'll get from me over THIS business). If I do something wrong towards you, that is clearly, objectively wrong (not all this subjective mush and goo), I'll be more than happy to publicly apologize. It'll be right on top of my blog. I've done it many times on my website and blog. But I can't apologize for something I didn't do.
Every major school of philosophy that existed since the pre-Socratics appears to still exist today because philosophy is a never ending game.
Also simply because every philosopher of each major school is ingenious enough to make it appear to him and his constituency that his view holds water while the other fellow's boat is slowly sinking, proves nothing. We are each greater artists than we realize as N. said, and blind to our own ingenuity, but instead see every belief we hold as self-evident.
Lastly, how is one to disprove theism? or free will for that matter? They are in "another realm" and hence are simply beyond reach of any solid proof or disproof. They are infalsifiable, and also have the greatest elasticity since they are "supernatural," and we all know that the supernatural is omni this and omni that, and whatever else someone wants it to be, and so such an explanation has every possible elasticity and ingenuity at its explanatory disposal. It's like the way people explain their belief in prayers, which can explained no matter how things turn out. It's like the way belief in a good God can explain any event from several mass extictions in deep time to the death of one's children from a painful genetic illness that doesn't allow them to lay down without their skin blistering up and getting infected and peeling off which the child then suffers for years until a final infection kills it.
Personally, rather than discuss philosophy I'd sooner just look around at the cosmos and simply grow aware of it. I love to experience nature, and I also am aware of how every moment in the nearest garden animals are preying on one another from the tiniest microbes upwards. The microbes seem to be doing the most preying since they attack the young of all species, killing a large percentage of them. I also prefer to be aware of geological history rather than salvation history. Salvation history differs from say, Zoroastrianism to Judaism (even within Judaism, the salvation history of the Jews and the Samaritans differed, since the Samaritans only accepted the Pentateuch as holy, not the prophets), and intertestamental Judaism and first century Judaism also contained different schools and sects. Christianity took matters further as did Islam and Mormonism after Christianity. Even within Christianity there was the famous Orthodox-Catholic split, then within Catholicism the Protestant-Catholic split, etc.
But GEOLOGICAL HISTORY is something geologists seems in agreement on, even concerning the six mass extinctions in the past on planet earth, and the ancestry of humankind from African bipedal apes. These thinks fascinate me far more, as well as the sociological and literary study of ALL of mankind's ancient writings, rather than attempting to squeeze and hug the primeval history portions of the book of Genesis to my chest as the be all, and an end all, of truth.
Please pardon my mistypings and mispellings, horrendous I know, I'm at an unfamiliar keyboard and only have a limited amount of time.
Another thing I find hilarious, in light of John saying that I am so excessively confident, pompous, know-it-all, utterly ignorant, lack nuance and intellectual humility, etc., are his comments just two days ago in another thread, directed towards me:
"You seem so confident, just like I once was. You defend the notion of hell. That's utterly ridiculous from my perspective. If you were not so blinded by your faith you would see it as I do. Hell is disproportionate to the sins, the purported atonement of Jesus cannot be made sense of, the incarnation has never been sufficiently explained philosophically, a trinitarian three separate consciousness Being is nonsensical, along with the concept of an all-perfect God who created this particular world with the amount of horrible suffering in it.
Defend this all you want to, but you are deluded."
http://
debunkingchristianity.blo...489542041134522
This is all, of course, marvelously charitable, objective, scholarly language; respectful of other positions.
But if I DARE to use the outrageous, offensive word "obviously" in reference to ONE particular argument I feel confident about (GASP!), then I am full of myself, arrogant, etc. ad nauseum.
I threw a Hissy-fit, eh? Would you please tell me what that is? Is it different from what you've been doing these last few days both here and on my Blog? ...I'm just curious.
his·sy /ˈhɪsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[his-ee]
–noun, plural ‑sies.
Slang. a fit of anger; temper tantrum.
Also called hissy fit.
[Origin: 1930–35, Americanism]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source
his·sy fit (hĭs'ē
Pronunciation Key
n. Chiefly Southern and South Midland U.S.
See tantrum.
[From hissy1.]
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source
tan·trum (tān'trəm) Pronunciation Key
n. A fit of bad temper. Also called regionally
hissy2, hissy fit.
[Origin unknown.]
=========================
I fail to see where I've done any of this. I've simply been showing how infantile and irrational your behavior has been. It's the same old fallacy of equating a critique of some silly thing with the thing itself. The two are entirely different.
I'm calm as a cucumber here as always.
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