Libertarian, is there no limit to your hypocrisy?

[Ben]

Libertarian recently tore into me with this little rant:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=71504&pagenumber=2

Originally posted by Libertarian**
Oh, no! He believes in divine creation? He believes that biblical metaphors can be reasonably interpreted? Why, the man hardly deserves to live.

I don’t expect you to agree with Dr. Ross, but to smear either his faith or his science credentials, listed at his site, is a most unfortunate tactic. The Inquisition-level tolerance displayed by faith-bashers is eventually going to so isolate science that politicians will feed the need to regulate the field, lest their constituency vote them out. With respect to bigotted scientists, fighting ignorance needs to begin at home.
**

Now, what horrible, “bigotted” comment did I make? I pointed out that Libertarian’s description of Hugh Ross was “more than a little disingenuous,” since Ross is a creationist, not an evolutionist. As a creationist he twists science and religion in order to make them fit- hardly the vision Lib had presented of a man who had no problem reconciling science and faith.

I pointed out that Lib’s post was riddled with lies and false accusations, to wit:

1. Contrary to Lib’s claims, Ross doesn’t just see the Bible as metaphor; like any creationist, he takes sizable chunks of Genesis literally.
2. I never “smeared” Ross.
3. In particular, I never “smeared” his credentials, since I didn’t discuss his credentials at all.
4. Lib’s comment about “Why, he hardly deserves to live!” is simply putting words in my mouth.
5. To compare my comments about Ross to the Inquisition- in which people were tortured to death for their beliefs- is in such grotesque poor taste as to be akin to Nazi-baiting. (Incidentally, the fact that atheists like myself were killed by the Inquisition makes his Inquisition-baiting all the more disgusting.)
6. My comments about Ross aren’t “faith-bashing”; I was bashing dishonesty, not faith.

Did Libertarian retract his false accusations? Did he apologize for making them? No, of course not- if he had, I wouldn’t be making a Pit thread! Instead, he merely apologized for hijacking my thread, and slunk off.

The subject arose again in this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=71822

I stated, ‘Let me guess- they (ie. science and religion- Ben) are still at odds because “bigotted scientists” have an “Inquisition-level tolerance” for religion, right?’

To which Lib replied:

Originally posted by Libertarian
**I can sense from your sarcasm and rolled eyes that you still harbor a grudge against me for the points I made in your thread, despite that I left from it as you requested. **

Of course, this is dishonest in the slimiest fashion imaginable. My sarcasm and eye-rolling came from Libertarian’s lies and false accusations. But, writing in a thread where most people wouldn’t know the earlier context, Libertarian stated that I must harbor a grudge simply because of the “points” he made in the other thread, as if I he had simply made reasoned arguments, and I couldn’t handle the sight of intelligent disagreement. Moreover, he suggests a certain measure of unfairness: I hold a grudge “despite that (Lib) left from it as (Ben) requested.” Never mind that I didn’t ask him to leave per se; instead, I told him to take his accusations to the Pit. Never mind, too, the bizarre moral logic Lib seems to be using: so long as he leaves the thread “as requested,” he doesn’t have to retract false accusations. By that argument, Lib is no more moral than, say, Der Kommissar, who made a false accusation and ultimately left the SDMB without retracting it.

As if that weren’t enough, Yue Han started a Pit thread over some snotty comments Lib had made to him:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=71813

Libertarian explained that the reason he overreacted to Yue Han was because he thought Yue was making a false accusation of bigotry. Libertarian then told the tale of his dispossessed ancestors, concluding as follows:

Originally posted by Libertarian**
The thing is that I find a charge of bigotry to be a whole lot more weighty than a charge of say, careless reading comprehension. If you call a man a racist, you ought to be damn sure because it means he is down there with the child abusers as far as I’m concerned.

**

Libertarian, did you ever think of practicing what you preach? If charges of bigotry are so weighty for you, why do you make them so quickly? Why did goboy say of you:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=71504&pagenumber=2

Originally posted by goboy**
Lib, I do wish you would stop misusing the word “bigoted” in these debates. Bigotry means unreasoning prejudice, something far more apt of creationists, not scientists.

**

And if charges of bigotry are so serious to you, and false accusations so offensive that they prompt you to make snotty comments, then why do you not only refuse to apologize for your own false accusations against me- you also try to make it look as though I’m only angry at you because I can’t handle your arguments?

-Ben

[SPOOFE]

Maybe we should get a new forum: “Anti-Libertarianville”.

[Redboss]

I’d join.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Though I typically (ok, pretty much always) disagree with Libertarian, I thought I’d help him out here.

I looked up bigotry/bigoted in my thesaurus. It references the following categories 1) hostility 2) hate 3) unfair treatment 4) severity
as well as
5) intolerant 6) opinionatedness 7) narrow-mindedness 8) convinced and 9) conviction

Following up with numbers 5, 6 and 7 we get
oppresive, dogmatism, rigorism, zealotry (good one there), fanaticism, ruling passion, idee fixe, blindness, deafness, closed mind, illiberality (horrors!), obscurantism, strait-laced, shallowness and small-mindedness.

So what’s a derogatory term for a skeptic? I opt for “rigorist”, but I may have a blind spot on this issue.

[Liberal]

I’m glad you linked that thread so it can be seen that just before you evicted me from it, Hardcore listed some quotes from Ross’s site that showed Ross doesn’t believe in biological evolution, taking the sort of approach that I had said early on in the thread one ought to take, an approach of civility and empathy.

To quote him:

Libertarian, I agree with you that there are many fine examples of people who have successfully reconciled science and faith.

I responded that he was right and I was wrong about Dr. Ross.

To quote you:

I said nothing about his credentials, liar. Your gross misuse of terms … has already been explained to you, nine-commandment liar. You’ve hijacked my thread long enough as is.

Your thread asked about the best way to fight creationist pseudoscience.

To quote me:

The problem with the arguments I have seen against Creationists have to do with the fact that some evolutionists are not content merely to defend the science; they feel compelled to attack the faith. This is unnecessary and flies in the face of the experience of the person you’re trying to convince. He falls prey to the Creationists easily because they treat the faith with respect and the “science” as augmenting the faith.

You never bothered to respond to that post. Instead, you used your own thread to hijack Great Debates itself to call me a liar, and then you hijacked your own thread to advertise this one. Not enough for you, though. You went around and did another advertisement of your Pit rant, cross-posting a link to it in ChoosyBeggar’s Chronos thread. Rather than being such a bitter, self-righteous, and vain man, you should be grateful you got no warning from a moderator.

As far as I’m concerned, you can get behind me.

[Eutychus]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
Rather than being such a bitter, self-righteous, and vain man, you should be grateful you got no warning from a moderator.

We’ll pick our own fights, thank you.

[Liberal]

That much is certain.

[pldennison]

In this Pit thread, Ben said:

5. To compare my comments about Ross to the Inquisition- in which people were tortured to death for their beliefs- is in such grotesque poor taste as to be akin to Nazi-baiting.

(emphasis mine)

In this GD thread, Ben said in re: cmkeller (who is, by the by, Jewish, and Orthodox at that):

We live in a society where plenty of people are killed, in this day and age, simply for being homosexuals- and CMKeller has stated that doing so is a praiseworthy act. How, then, is CMKeller any different from the neo-Nazis who praise Hitler for “serving God” by exterminating homosexuals?

If that isn’t “Nazi-baiting,” I don’t know what is. Apparently, such a thing is only in “grotesque poor taste” when engaged in by Not-Ben. Also, please note that Ben contributed in large part to getting Danielinthewolvesden (of whom I am no friend) banned from the SDMB for a much less invidious comparison involving little more than the phrases “your buddy Goebbels” and “the Big Lie.”

I guess situations like this explain why I really only lurk these days.

Link coding fixed - UB

[Edited by UncleBeer on 05-25-2001 at 01:12 PM]

[jab1]

Well, look who popped his head up like a prairie dog! Howdy, *pld, how ya been?

Pointing out that a person’s opinions are similar to, if not identical to, that of the average Nazi is not Nazi-baiting. He’s pointing out that bitter enemies can have opinions in common. It’s sort of like a Christian fundamentalist applauding when hearing that the Taliban is restricting women’s rights and destroying pornography. The person’s reliegious beliefs makes no difference. If you find out your opinions are similar to that of your worst enemy, it behooves you to find out why.

If this is the best you can do, dennison, go back to lurking. If you can’t do any better, I’ll make you eat a Burger King Double Whopper with cheese and a side of chicken strips! (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

[Liberal]

Phil

The board is measurably weaker by your absence.

Jab

Do you think there is more than one answer to the question of whether Chaim Keller is any different from a Hitler-praising Neo-Nazi?

[Sterra]

Pointing out that a person’s opinions are similar to, if not identical to, that of the average Nazi is not Nazi-baiting.

It is because thats not the opinions of an average Nazi. Nazies would torture and “use” homosexuals because they felt they were inferior. I doubt the Jews did this.

[pldennison]

jab, I don’t intend to get into this at lengths; like I said, I’m just lurking these days, for my mental health more than anything. (BTW, could you do me the courtesy, when addressing me, of not referring to me by my last name like a familiar or a subordinate? Thanks.) Suffice to say that:

1. Ben would have to be possessed of a shocking naivete not to realize that asking an Orthodox Jew how he differs from a neo-Nazi is patently offensive. Not that Chaim needs me to fight his battles for him, but I’m certain Ben was quite purposeful in phrasing his question the way he did.

2. Chaim, frankly, made some excellent points in the thread I referenced, and I admire his ability to continue discussing when others keep changing the scope of the question on him. Isolating homosexuality from the litany of sins the OT claims that other tribes were guilty of is not arguing fairly. As someone else noted, Ben didn’t seem all to eager to take up the banner of the bestialists or Baal-worshippers.

Further to the point, as Chaim said, if one is willing to accept for the sake of argument that the various genocides occurred as described, why not accept for the sake of argument that they happened for the reasons given; to wit, that those tribes were in fact patently evil and God saw fit to destroy them? Accepting the first but assuming away the second makes Opus, Ben and anyone else guilty of precisely the kind of selectivity in Biblical reading they accuse others (particularly Christians) of.

3. Ben, as I long ago noticed, has one set of rules for himself (and a select few other Dopers), and another for anyone else when it comes to the form arguments may take and how quickly one may resort to ad hominem. It only takes a couple of trips around the block to discover, much like the WOPR computer in Wargames, that the only way to win is not to play at all.

[jab1]

*Originally posted by pldennison *
jab, I don’t intend to get into this at lengths; like I said, I’m just lurking these days, for my mental health more than anything.

Okay, I’ll lay off you. However, this has me puzzled:

(BTW, could you do me the courtesy, when addressing me, of not referring to me by my last name like a familiar or a subordinate? Thanks.)

Okay, but I always thought I was supposed to address my familiars by their FIRST name. I call all my relatives by their first names. Everybody thought Walt Disney was weird when he asked them to call him “Walt” instead of “Mr. Disney.” It’s false familiarity to call someone by their given name when you don’t really know them. Or are you asking that I call you “Mr. Dennison”?

[andros]

Or are you asking that I call you “Mr. Dennison”?

Probably “pldennison” would be best. I’ve never considered offensive or demeaning being addressed by my last name, but when in doubt, I use the name presented on introduction.

[Fenris]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jab1 *
**

*Originally posted by pldennison *
**Or are you asking that I call you “Mr. Dennison”? **

I’m guessing he’d prefer PL, PLD, etc (or whatever that stands for…I can’t remember). To me, and possibly to PLD, you call an underling by his last name only. Think Mr. Burns and Smithers from Simpsons. It’s not really rude, but it has the connotation of speaking to a subordinate to me at least.

And that’s MR Fenris to you

[jab1]

Fine.

Now let’s go back to throwing tomatoes at Libertarian.

[Liberal]

Are they home-grown? Wait! Let me grab my Dukes, Merita, and pepper mill!

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Can’t we all just get along? For, deep down, we all agree that Libertarian is a humorless, witless jackass.

HiLibby!

[Drastic]

By way of a borrowed tomato:

 He believed in a door. He must find that door. The door was the way to...to...
 The Door was The Way.
 Good.
 Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.

–Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Also, asking someone about similarities to Nazi justifications may very well be insulting to someone. Being insulted, however, does not invalidate the question when the question’s about genocide and justifications of same.

Calling someone “Mengelean” and such, on the other hand, because of a philosophical dispute about science and truth, or (see quote above) Science and Truth, however, is beneath contempt. The mind that can’t tell the difference between the two is a mind that I’m pretty glad belongs to someone else and not the one I’m saddled with.

[Ben]

*Originally posted by Drastic *
** The mind that can’t tell the difference between the two is a mind that I’m pretty glad belongs to someone else and not the one I’m saddled with. **

Thank you, Drastic. I think it should be obvious that there’s a big difference between saying:

1. You justify genocide on the grounds that some of the people involved were homosexuals. How is that different from a neo-Nazi justifying genocide on the grounds that some of the people involved were homosexuals?

and

2. You say that Hugh Ross is a creationist? Your bigotry is comparable to that of the Inquisitors who tortured people to death for their beliefs!

But hey, apparently that’s not clear to some people.

Incidentally, Lib, nice way to completely avoid addressing the issues in any way. You’ve made false accusations, pure and simple. For all your talk about how false accusations of bigotry are so hurtful to you, you have neither retracted nor justified your false accusations against me.

Moreover, Libertarian is piling on even more false accusations. If someone lies about me in a thread, how is it “hijacking” that thread to point out that he’s lying? If I make a Pit thread criticising Libertarian’s behavior in two threads, and provide links in both those threads, how is that “hijacking Great Debates”?

But what do you expect from a NCLOC (Nine Commandments Libertarian Objectivist Christian)?

-Ben