I’m a Muslim, have an Arabic username, and have gotten into several huge pissing contests with Valteron because Val has been a virulent anti-Muslim bigot and Dio and I got into a fight over him classifying to brave Muslim academics as “Islamophobic douchebags” so unless he’s even more ignorant that I thought or suffering from Alzheimer’s he should have recognized that I’m not Val.
Nevertheless, he confused me, a Muslim American with a rabid Canadian bigot.
Good lord, he really does live in a fantasy world in which he ignores reality and ignores facts that interfere with his vision of what the world is.
That said, I should say I wasn’t offended by his confusing me with Val, it actually made me laugh at him revealing just how ignorant he is.
It was almost as funny as watching him getting spanked and humiliated by Champion-of-Truth(hardly a rocket scientist) when Champ made him so mad he lost the ability to spell and was sent running from the thread like a whipped cur with his tail tucked firmly between his legs and his cheeks red with humiliation.
You’re ruining my line, you bastard you. I said he had “reality on ignore”.
But seriously, of all the reasons to pit Dio, doing so for one of the few times he actually admitted making a mistake is not what I would have chosen. Especially from the rich array he’s strewn before us.
Yeah, this is lame. He suffered from an instance of mistaken identity, which he then recognized and acknowledged.
I’ve done it before. You’re in a fast-moving debate with multiple people, and you mix up one poster for another, and respond to the wrong person. You then realize your error (or have it pointed out to you by someone else), and make the appropriate corrections.
Yeah, I gotta admit, this one of those very few instances where mhendo actually knows what he’s talking about. (Then again, the data was right there in black & white.)
Anyway, no big deal. Dio screwed up, admitted it, end of story.
I think Diogenes has a lot of valuable stuff to say and is pretty knowledgeable, especially on matters like religion. His problem as a debater, though, is that he regularly overstates his position. It’s a common thing to do, especially if you get overinvested in the argument. Take the thread that was linked to in the OP, for instance. Diogenes’s original argument was that domestic Muslim radicalism isn’t a threat in the US. This is an eminently defensible position, and personally, I agree with it. When he was challenged, though, he moved from that position to the position that “there’s never been a homegrown radical Islamic terrorist in the US”. That’s obviously a much harder position to defend, and I think both I and Ibn Warraq were able to show it wasn’t true. Unfortunately, at that point, instead of retreating back to the more defensible original position, he decided he was going to die on the new hill he staked out for himself, and the debate became a matter of moved goalposts and dueling definitions.
I think this happens a lot, and it hurts him as a debater…both the tendency to overreach and the disinclination to back down. It’s a shame, because he is knowledgeable and I think if he could be a little more tentative and cautious in his assertions he’d both have more fun and be more persuasive.
Apparently not. I’ve challenged you I don’t know how many times to prove these assertions of yours that I’m dishonest. And your response? Bupkis. Every time.
And as for being full of shit, I wouldn’t be talking if I were you. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, if someone gave you an enema you could be buried in a matchbox.
I’ve explained it dozens of times. The fact that you refuse to believe it, and remain mired in your own delusions and dishonesty, is your problem, and not mine.
While I can easily guess the personal reasons why Dio confusing you with Valteron in the process of attempting to score a debate point would rankle, these things just happen when we don’t have faces to attach to the written names. I didn’t read it as malicious. BTW, when did Valteron accuse you of practicing Taqiyya? I’d like a laugh.
I would have thought that actual argument that you and Captain Amazing were having with Dio would have irritated you more, and not unjustifiably.
I agree with Captain Amazing - Dio is the rhetorical equivalent of Leeroy Jenkins, charging into battle without hesitation or plan, leaving those nominally on the same side behind to marvel at the chaos.
You’re ruining my line, you bastard you. I said he had “reality on ignore”. 