I added (at 2:44 PM EST on Thursday), a lengthy, mostly humorous middle section chronicling Steve Hays' extreme verbosity (compared to my own relative silence, that my opponents carp on and on about), sophism, and propensity to personal insult, as well as a quotation from Cory Tucholski near the beginning.
Once it occurred to me that, spiritually and intellectually, they're basically just kids, it's become a lot easier to show mercy on them. The behavior you're encountering is just a bunch of high schoolers showing off in front of their buddies. You've seen it before, you know what it looks like, and that's all this is. I recognize that the presumption is that adults should behave like reasonable people, but when it's clear that they aren't, then you should treat the behavior for what it is. S&S's response to you isn't serious, except in that immature way that adolescents consider their own subjective feelings to be the most serious things in the world. It isn't really about anything other than to make S&S look like the cool kid who can really take on Catholics.
I think you've just got to see it for what it is. This is not another reasonable adult interested in serious dialogue with another reasonable adult. This is a guy trying to win the approval of his peer group by negative behavior towards outsiders. Until he shows that he is serious, there's no reason to think otherwise.
If you have any ideas of how to deal with this sort of behavior constructively (apart from just laughing it off and ignoring it), I'm all ears!
http://crimsoncatholic.blogspot....oh-grow-
up.html
Johnathan,
I have said this before, but I will say it again: Anti-C Protestants have been trained with the idea that Catholics are just a bunch of morons, SO once they encounter a Catholic who takes them head on (eg using their own logic against them) the anti-Catholic PANICS and runs away.
This is very very clear to me. Many of them operate on the principle as long as it SOUNDS BAD (regardless of if it is true) then they think it is worth posting against the Catholic. The Catholic is then left with the tiresome task of cleaning up their smeared name, in which the anti-C usually shrugs off the rebuttal anyway. It is the GUILTY until proven innocent mentality.
It is also amazing at the number of Protestants I see NOT interested in reading "long" articles...what does this tell you? That they are not here to discuss or even learn, but to get in a few cheap jabs. Do they honestly think theological issues should be limited to a page or so? Do they visit apologetics blogs looking for a discussion of serious issues or a "word of the day"?
I have to bring up Robert Koons again, he wrote 95 pages explaining why he converted and yet I have yet to see a protestant actually critique the paper. This says a lot about which side is interested in actual discussion and investigation, and which side continually settles for cheap shots.
Generally true, Nick (sadly enough).
Slam dunk!
Looks like S&S is setting the stage to ignore my paper and avoid defending his own positions:
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Here’s Dave’s attempted rebuttal [link to my long reply]. I would encourage everyone (who has the time!) to read my post [link], write down the specific points/arguments/counter-arguments that I made, read Dave’s post, and see if he actually responded meaningfully with anything I said. Good luck!
Voluminous writing tends to obscure the real issues, divert the topic elsewhere, and make one’s opponents look like they said something they didn’t.
Also, here [link] is Turretinfan’s analysis of Dave’s ‘rebuttal’.
http://contra-gentes.blogspot.co...hurch-
part.html
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I'm of a mind at this point to end my participation in this sham "dialogue" if he goes ahead and ignores my reply. That would amply qualify this as a Pauline "vain conversation", as far as I am concerned. My patience with this runaround with anti-Catholics and their intellectual cowardice and lamebrain excuses for same is just about at its end by now.
Randy asked over there:
"So Dave's rebuttal is 27 pages and you find it too long? I hope you don't plan to do any serious work as a theology scholar. That requires a lot of reading which you seem incapable of."
S&S replied:
"It's not that I find it too long. It's just that he rants and raves ad nauseam and ends up drifting away from the issue. Nevertheless, I will give a short response later."
https://www.blogger.com/
comment.g...094199069946462
I'm through right now with this farce-of-a-pseudo-"dialogue". I was stupid enough to be drawn into it. But it was worthwhile to demonstrate once what little substance these criticisms of my book had, and how indefensible they are (judging by my opponents' apprehensive behavior and evasions).
I won't even read S&S's "short reply". We know that even it will be filled with straw men and obfuscation and obscurantism, seeing how he characterizes my reply. There is no hope of achieving a true, constructive dialogue with these clowns. Jonathan Prejean is exactly right.
I've known it for a long time, too, but idealism dies hard. I am nothing if not an idealist: always hoping that reason and dialogue can break through any error.
Probably the only way you could keep these guys on-topic and focused at all would be a live chat dialogue, but they always refuse that. White has twice, and Swan refused too, when challenged.
Turretinfan adds, responding to Randy:
And, of course, while you tell S&S he needs to read a 27 page meandering document, Dave refuses in advance to read S&S's response:
Yes, exactly. If he wants to mock and deride my lengthy response, and make only a "short" reply to it, then I return the favor by not reading his at all. In other words, I "upped the ante" to make a point: one person denigrates and mocks the effort of the other even before he responds, then announces that his response will be inadequate to the task, and so I respond in kind by taking it one step further and not reading his at all. He decided to stop the dialogue from advancing; therefore I depart from it in protest, because it has become a farce (precisely as I predicted was likely).
he prejudices himself and his readers (like you, Randy) by judging the matter before he has heard it.
It has nothing whatever to do with prejudice. It has everything to do with principle. If S&S insists on not holding up his end of a true dialogue and manfully defending his own beliefs and ideas, then I refuse to play along. It would be an insult to my intelligence and that of my readers to do so.
Perhaps what is even more odd is that while Dave requests "intelligent discussion" he fails to meet his own standard ("Intelligent discussion is where both parties understand the other's point of view, so that there are no straw men. Each grant the other basic intelligence and sincerity and the benefit of the doubt. And each truly responds to the other, rather than try to preach and engage in one-way monologues."
I more than met my own standard, by my lengthy, point-by-point response. I gave S&S the courtesy of an extended reply to his thoughts. I get no such courtesy in return. Instead, my paper is mocked as too long and off-topic. S&S describes it as: "he rants and raves ad nauseam and ends up drifting away from the issue." It's an act of intellectual cowardice. I called it before it happened, and S&S proceeded to act precisely as I predicted, right before our eyes.
But press on S&S - continue to demonstrate the fallacies in "Catholic Verses," and go ahead with your short reply to the few on-topic remarks in Dave's 27 page document. After all, the rebuttal of his book serves a valuable public function that is independent of the prejudice and hostility of the writer of the book.
Right. I am supposedly prejudiced and hostile, when Turretfan (as I recently documented) is the one writing sewer scum such as:
"Steve Ray hates James White, and that is because Dr. White preaches the Truth and exposes the errors and delusions of Rome. May we all be labelled and despised by those who hate the truth, . . ."
(9-24-07)
"Take courage, brother White! God has chosen to bless your ministry with resistance by those who oppose the gospel. . . . Even more, though, be encouraged to cast off your consideration of the vain babbling of those whose hatred of the truth carries over to hatred of those who preach the truth. If you can, redouble your diligence to shine the light of truth on the accreted darkness of Rome, so that perhaps some may be set free. God knows how many of the elect may be under the oppressive shadow of that regime, and how many true Christians may be deluded by the false claims of that apostate body."
( 8-10-07 )
The above was posted, as is, on S&S's blog (currently the 4th comment, right after Turretfan's, to whom it was directed). Let's see if it remains.
https://www.blogger.com/
comment.g...094199069946462
http://contra-gentes.blogspot.co...hurch-
part.html
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