
Well, he's back folks! The ill-tempered king of illogic is roaring new accuations at yours truly.
For those who don't remember him, it's "Bob/Peter" the filibustering phoney philosopher, the abject relativist who accuses God of absolute wrongs, the great unread scholar who had the gall to declare Mother Teresa (Now Blessed Teresa) "a hypocrite of the highest sort."
We're treated this time to more vaccuous assertions, ad hominem attacks, hissy fits and feminine retreats from actual discussion.
Bob continues with the tired accusation that I have edited damaging evidence from our exchanges and ups the ante by falsely claiming that I stated to have published every jot and tittle that proceeded from his keyboard. This, though, is manifestly false.
On my blog one can read the following:
http://studiositas.blogspot.com/2007/01/metaphysicssilly-and-boring.html
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"Hi Bob,
I intend to deal with your email Socratically, as is my custom. First, though, I'd like to address your false accusations to the effect that I'm stonewalling or omitting parts of your email that "blow my arguments away."
It is a fact that I deal with every single one of your thoughts with the exception of those thoughts tied to your Johnny-one-scripture obsession."
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Notice, I never said that I publish every single word of his email. But that I deal with every single one of his thoughts. Those thoughts I didn't deal with were the ones "tied to" his "Johnny-one-Scripture obsession."
At the time he was making a case against God, declaring Him absolutely immoral for certain commands He gave to the Israelites regarding the destruction of another people. I wished to have him FIRST establish how he went about determining right from wrong, his philosophy of morality, whether he was an absolutist or a relativist.
In fact, in my very next words I say as much. We read:
"Those questions will be fielded when we get you to consistently hold to one worldview."
In other words, he claimed on the one hand that man was the measure of all morality, that morality came from his own ideas of what was good or bad, the sum total of his own invention of what best works for society. On the other hand, however, he launched out on a moral tirade against God who was said (according to him) to be absolutely wrong to command x, y and z.
So, my desire was to figure out FIRST whether he was a moral relativist or a moral absolutist. That is, I wasn't going to let him talk out of both side of his mouth - something he proceeded to do throughout the rest of our dialogue.
The above demonstrates that I did the following:
1. I openly admitted to omitting parts of his email.
2. I stated which parts were ommitted.
3. I furnished a logical reason for so doing.
4. Expressed complete willingness to deal with the omitted parts once he conceded a philosophical positon on the nature of morality.
My guess is that Bob/Peter still is not sure if he's a moral relativist or a moral absolutist. Or that he even understands the difference given his limitations with conceptual thought.
If he declares himself the former, I'm quite certain he would not follow the logical implications of such a position and admit that he has no leg to stand on in charging God with absolute moral evils.
If he declares himself to be the latter, then I'd love to know in what he grounds his moral absolutism. As my readers have seen, however, a thirty-thousand some word exchange couldn't get him to come to grips with any of those matters.
What follows is our latest series of exchanges. In them he huffs, puffs, asserts, ascends the moral soap box and runs away like the cowardly lion that he is.
His presentation is proof positive that we are living in intellectually limp-wristed times, that intellectual cowardice has emasculated a generation of men.
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Hi Bob,
Thought you might be interested in this given that you're reading Erhman's book:
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrection debate-transcript.pdf
I hope this email finds you healthy and of good cheer.
James:)
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(Bob's Email to me)
I have heard so much more about you after I had the misfortune of interacting with you, and the more I hear the more I wish I had never given you a second chance. I am sure if I could have met you in a face to face dialogue, I would have seen through your facade much quicker. The more I find out about you and your demeanor, integrity, honesty, etc, the more I see why you were given the boot. Find someone else to play games with, then cut and paste your edited bullshit on the web and then go pat yourself on the back. Maybe, just maybe you can get someone else to read it who doesn't know just how full of yourself you are to pat you on the back too. Wouldn't that be great!! I am really surprised and actually quite honored that a person of your great intellect and being so well read, that you would have to resort to that kind of BS to in your mind "win a discussion.
> I hope this email finds you healthy and of good cheer.>>
Yup, I believe that. They say you attract more flies with honey, but growing up on a farm, I would say BS does a damn fine job too. You apparently been around it so long you can no longer tell the difference.
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Bob,
I merely sent you a link to a written transcript between two scholars given that I read on Channel C that you had purchased a book authored by one of the scholars. No where did I attempt to engage you in dialogue. The salutation at the bottom of the email was in good faith.
In our last exchange you accused me of misrepresenting you by editing the damaging evidence purportedly found in your email submissions to me against the views I advocated. Yet no evidence to that effect was ever brought to the table on your part. Not one sentence, in fact.
I, on the other hand, shored up my position by furnishing reams of evidence to the contrary - basically, the larger part of our email corpus. I even did a bit of inductive reasoning to demonstrate the fallaciousness of your claims. See here:
http://studiositas.blogspot.com/2008/05/inductive-reasoning.html
I have no desire to discuss anything philosophical or religious with you. I don't perceive an open mind and dispassionate spirit. But I am happy to learn that you're reading books. So, I do offer my sincere kudos to you on that point.
I will step out on a limb and predict that you'll follow the same modus operandi in the case regarding my alleged bad character as you did in the case of my alleged selective editing of your email. That is, all the bravado and stridency of your claim to have learned so much about me, my demeanor, lack of integrity and honesty etc. will be followed by a deafening silence as it relates to actual names of people and the actual cases admitting of evidence supporting the claim against me. The arrows shot from the fog will prove to have no concrete origin, nothing open to public scrutiny and mutual discussion. yours,
James:)
Dear Bob,
Over a week ago I predicted the following:
"I will step out on a limb and predict that you'll follow the same modus operandi in the case regarding my alleged bad character as you did in the case of my alleged selective editing of your email. That is, all the bravado and stridency of your claim to have learned so much about me, my demeanor, lack of integrity and honesty etc. will be followed by a deafening silence as it relates to actual names of people and the actual cases admitting of evidence supporting the claim against me. The arrows shot from the fog will prove to have no concrete origin, nothing open to public scrutiny and mutual discussion." END QUOTE
This is becoming quite a disconcerting and predictable pattern. You have a hissy fit and charge me with an unconscionable act (ex: editing all the "damaging evidence" from our exchanges) or call into question my character (ex:"The more I find out about you and your demeanor, integrity, honesty, etc.") to then run in the other direction with your tail between your legs. Not a very manly course, my friend.
I'm honestly not upset with you, though. I believe this phenomenon is owing to a certain type of psychological make-up. You probably are of the view that I really did edit damaging evidence from our conversations even though you can't seem to produce one example thereof. That is, you genuinely believe it even though you don't have any proof for it. If you had the proof, you'd simply furnish it and that would be that. I'd have mud on my face. But you don't. So, you up the emotion and the rhetoric in an effort to keep yourself convinced of the veracity of your claim in the teeth of evidence to the contrary.
http://studiositas.blogspot.com/2008/05/inductive-reasoning.html
The same goes for this whole calumnious claim against my character. You've been publicly beaten pretty bad in debate by me and you're feeling kind of lumped up and sore. Hence, I must be evil. I mean, it can't be that you don't have a philosophical leg to stand on, or that you're talking out your derriere on topics about which your interlocutor (ie. Yours truly) is much more educated and well-read. No! The problem is that I'm evil. I edited all the damaging evidence, the very evidence that would have vindicated you and your position if my readership only had access to it. Furnish evidence for my evil character? Never! It's enough just to make the claim and hope it sticks - that is, hope I don't actually call you on it and - heaven forbid - publish our exchange to the Internet thus revealing you to be (yet again!) all hot air.
James:)
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Hi Bob,
In my last email I stated that due to the lack of evidence of your claims against me, your modus operandi is to "up the emotion and the rhetoric in an effort to keep yourself convinced of the veracity of your claim in the teeth of evidence to the contrary."
And that's precisely what you've done again. That is, you simply assert without ever giving me anything tangible to discuss.
>>In fact none of the other people I mentioned want to have anything to do with a dishonest person such as yourself.>> (Good Font Color for the Cowardly Lion, me thinks)
You didn’t' mention any "other people" or furnish any evidence for my alleged dishonesty. Nothing in the above sentence admits of evidence furnished by actual people with names. It's bald assertion.
>> You denied doing ANY edits OVER and OVER again and demanded I prove otherwise.>>
I didn't deny doing ANY edits. I've never claimed that I include every sentence written by interlocutors when I engage them Socratically. I know of no one who does so. It would make online dialogue unruly and cumbersome.
My claim is that I didn't edit what you allege to be "damaging evidence," evidence that would upend the position I was advocating. You've yet to furnish evidence toward that end. You merely assert it.
>>You denied doing this over and over again till I went back and pulled up only of couple of our emails and pointed out many of your edits and this was in only in the first two of the dozens of emails we exchanged.>>
I don't remember your doing any such thing. Please produce these edits in the first couple of dozen of email and I will engage them.
Remember, for your assertion to stick, you'd have to do much more than simply assert that the edited evidence is damaging. That's simply declaring victory before you go to war. You'd have to prove as much, which is a whole other ball of wax.
You're illegitimately trying to forward your case by a sleight of hand maneuver.
1. You assert that I claimed to include every word of our dialogues in my Socratic responses published to the web. This, though, is false. I made no such claim.
2. You then merely assert that those things which were allegedly edited constitute "damaging evidence." That, though, must be proven. Not merely asserted.
3. Instead of actually furnishing evidence to shore your claims, you engage in ad hominem arguments by calling into question my honesty and integrity. This is intellectual cowardice, a trap-door that allows you to avoid engagement with my arguments against your claims.
4. What's worse is that such ad hominem arguments follow your usual pattern of making claims all while refusing to furnish evidence for them. So, we're left with a two-story assertion on the order of "You did x, y and z. But since you're so dishonest, lack integrity, etc (all things for which I won't furnish concrete evidence), I'm going to turn on my heels and refuse to talk to you.
The rest of your diatribe is but another hissy fit. It's an unmanly retreat from genuine exchange. It demonstrates that you're an intellectual coward who disguises his cowardice behind a spurious moral indignation which rests on a string of demonstrably false assertions.
You can't keep equanimity in your tone because there is nothing to back up your claims but bluster and name-calling. Anyone who reads these exchanges and has a modicum of logical acumen will recognize that much.
Wishing you well,
James:)