Why be good?

[Randy Carson]

I don't think you fully appreciate what has happened here today.

Randy, I understand exactly what went on here, though I certainly do not appreciate it: you impugned the character, personally, of a number of people here, whom you don't know, simply to make a cheap rhetorical point. In doing so, you demonstrated that the real human beings here on this forum, many of whom I've known for years and like a great deal, are less important than your feeling of being constantly correct.

How did I impugn anyone? If I did, it was accidental, because I was very careful in what I wrote and how I phrased my questions. But if you disagree, please quote me verbatim in context so that I may see my error.

Almost immediately after you took your ridiculous point to its ill-fitting conclusion, I posted a response detailing the many, many reasons one should dismiss the gospel testimony, while accepting that of my friends here. Here it is, it took me maybe twenty minutes from your post to write it. Your very next post- I hope you didn't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back there, by the way- asserted that nobody had addressed what you said, which is a complete lie, as I had done so literally two posts after you had hunkered down over a heap of newspapers and unclenched the argument in the first place. That's lie number one.

Why do you call me a liar? I've read your posts...you write almost as much as I do...and I wasn't impressed with the response you gave. So, yeah, you responded, but you didn't really refute my point.

I will say this...and this is not a courtesy that I think many will extend to me...I will go back and re-read your post CAREFULLY a second time. Okay?

The thing is, you can't even claim to have missed my rebuttal, because that's the post you're quoting to respond to me. You just deleted all of the actual rebuttal, as if you can just pretend it was never there. So you're claiming that nobody has addressed what you said, while having laid eyes on a post that addresses what you said. That's lie number two.

Ah...see above. That's zero lies so far.

So to recap: you begin by insulting all of us, for no reason other than that it serves your infantile, equivocatory purposes. Then you lie about it afterwards, multiple times, to make yourself look better, as though the rest of the thread isn't recorded for anybody to look at and link to anytime they like. It's not that nobody addressed what you said, it's that you're too busy declaring victory, that you're too much of an intellectual coward, to pit your baseless, fiat assertions (Randy's patented "because I said so!" style of argumentation) against the actual facts, and scholarly consensus surrounding these issues. You want the appearance of having intellectual justification for your beliefs, while cheating when it comes to the hard work, and this is aptly demonstrated by the fact that your responses are either nothing but claims, or "you don't actually disagree with me, you're just biased against me," which is toddler logic at its finest.

Now, if you want to come back and address the rebuttal I actually wrote, that's fine, though I doubt you can do it adequately. But what you can't do is sit here and pretend that nobody has written one, unless you like being the new forum charlatan, in which case by all means, encourage people to join you in the solipsistic echo chamber you call a life. We won't do it, but it's so very entertaining watching you swan around in your little imaginary world, chest all puffed up at victories against strawmen opponents using equivocations instead of arguments.

<snort>

People throw so much crap at me in these threads that I don't bother to respond to most of them. But if you watch carefully, you will note that from time to time someone like Julia or Jenny or Jorm or somebody will ask a decent question to which I try to provide a courteous thoughtful reply.

And I LIKE being challenged in a serious way because it makes me think my own positions through more carefully. So, one of the reasons I'm in the forum at all is to challenge myself to learn, etc. IOW, I WANT people to respond on a serious, intellectual level. Instead, it's all epithets and ad hominems and the latest filibuster about some thing eating stuff...perhaps the thinking is that if they derail the thread long enough, I'll go away. Silliness, really.

But, yeah, as I said, I didn't see anything of substance the first time, but I will go back and re-evaluate your post. Now, in fact.