I was a fan of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, so militant atheists don’t bother me. Vicious people do.
I have no expertise in language. I do have brain damage which I have talked about often here. That’s why I took early retirement.
So why do you keep harping on his not really being a Professor? You appear to be the only one who believes this. He had offered to have a mod verify his credentials if I am not mistaken.
Please feel free to dislike him if you think he is vicious. However, challenging his credentials in many threads appears like stalking to this observer.
BTW: Nice to know that you admire someone who said: “The agnostic is gutless and prefers to keep one safe foot in the god camp.”
What a great old lady she was. Real polite and not at all vicious in her writings.
Jim
Please note that I have frequently openly acknowledged my particular problems with spelling. Are you new here or something?
.
I barely know who you are outside of stalking pseudotriton ruber ruber. Should I know who you are? I think I have seen you in some of **Ahunter3’s ** threads. That is the limit of my recognition of you. Sorry.
Jim
You haven’t been keeping up.
Calm yourself.
Retest in a week.
I agree. What Exit apparently has taken on the role of judge and jury, leaving the messy business of execution to someone else.
I’m a little surprised by this, Poly. It’s true that I don’t hold your core beliefs in very high esteem, and find it simpler to categorize them as “delusional” rather than “ordained by the Creator of the Universe,” given that choice, and it’s true that I’ve defended Badchad, even though he’s often been rude and harassive to you, not because I dislike you in the least or have any personal affection for him, but simply because I believe this place operates best when people’s arguments are valued over their reputations for decency and civility, admirable as I find those qualities, and he was getting attacked (and mistreated by a Mod) in a way I found disgusting.
But I think I’ve mainly been civil to you, certainly over the years. I’m sure you can find a post or three over the last few months that you found personally offensive, but in the main, especially apart from what I’ve posted to defend badchad from the lynch-mob and pile-on mentality that I find so appalling, I’ve always had a good deal of respect for you, not least for your broad and deep and genuine love of learning, and for your willingness (most of the time) to share that learning with others. I’ve benefitted from that many times, and I’m grateful to you for sharing it with me and for setting me straight (sometimes) in areas where I’ve displayed ignorance.
If I haven’t been public enough for you, or haven’t been clear enough on this, all you needed to do was to request that I clarify my position in public, and I’m glad to do so. I will continue to defend atheists from pileups of which you may be a member, and even when they are personally abusive to you, not because I think so highly of abuse but because I think so highly of environments supporting free speech. Sometimes abuse is just the price we have to pay for hearing voices we need to hear.
I mean, look who some of your staunchest supporters are here in this thread: Zoe and Liberal, two very abusive and insincere posters. I wouldn’t shut them up for the world, because I think they put on display their own worst qualities the more they post. It is (as I’m sure you’ll agree) distasteful to be repeatedly correcting malicious statements about oneself that get repeated despite one’s previous corrections, so it’s true that I wish they’d move on rather than simply keep repeating the same tired and thoroughly discredited memes–alas, there’s a limit to how many times one can demonstrate one’s lack of character on the same narrow subject. But those same repetitions are more forceful coming directly from them, as opposed to coming from my assertions.
Now, Lib’s been demonstrating through this thread, if not through his entire posting career, that he’s almost completely insincere, yet it would be wrong I think to castigate you, just because he’s supporting your position. You’re you and he’s him. And Zoe’s addled brains have let slip, I guess, her public announcement that she would no longer be stalking me, no longer be asserting falsehoods about my profession (which you should know to be utterly without foundation), and is intent of maligning me despite my oft-repeated challenge that has no downside whatsoever for her, AFAICT: report me as a troll for asserting falsely that I teach college and help administer a department in a major university. If she’s right, I get banned --but if she’s wrong, she shuts up and accepts banning herself. Very little interest in that from her–which should tell you what? Yet she supports you and I don’t hold that against you personally. You’re still a decent, affable, thoughtful scholar for whom I have respect despite a fundamental disagreement in the ways we choose to view the world. It may please your vanity to assume much more animosity from me than I happen to hold, but I’m sure you can moderate that, given time and effort.
Isn’t that equivalent to congratulating someone for being predictable? As I understand it, similarly dubious accolades have been extended to you on a number of occasions (i.e. “Well, there goes prr yet again”) and I don’t recall your taking them as complimentary.
Sorry, don’t follow. What antecedent does “that” take? Including them in the Pit thread? Allowing for their having made that leap? Something else?
Yes, though I now realize I’m breaking the standard I set for myself in my post #24. If I may ask for a clarification, who exactly are the “Pitters” referenced in the thread title? The posters making ignorant statements and doggedly standing by them? The posters who castigate them for it? What is “eventual” about either of them?
I was commenting on how strangely brave (not how predictible, btw) it was of all Dopers, in several threads including and excluding the Pit, to argue positions that serve to reinforce contrary conclusions–since I was discussing them IN a Pit thread (which I think you’ll agree I had to do, as mild as my criticism was of them, since all of the subjects were eminently Pit-worthy, and I wanted the latitude to discuss latesters etc afforded me only in the Pit) they were perforce “Pitters,” whether they had started out there or not. The fact that I was referring to them in a Pit thread made them “eventual” Pitters. So it would be “The posters making ignorant statements and doggedly standing by them” who wound up in this Pit thread.
Can we please be done with this? I’m glad to clarify as long as you like, but I hope it’s clear what my intent was by this point. If not, continue asking and I’ll continue answering, though I fear I’m mostly repeating myself at this point.
There are elements of this that continue to escape me, i.e. dopers that argue positions that may seem to reinforce contrary positions if one is inclined to interpret them as such, even in threads outside the Pit, that makes them eminently Pit-worthy? Doesn’t that rather flexibly translate to a license to call people who disagree with you ranters in search of the Pit? It’s a convenient way to dismiss someone.
If you have a specific comment about the check-kiter or Quiddity or Hilarity or some other individual(s), wouldn’t your point have been served by naming those individuals rather than vaguely link this to the theism/atheism kerfuffle?
I beg your pardon, I’d assumed this relatively civil conversation in which you’re given ample opportunity to explain your views would be a nice change of pace. You are of course free at any time to return to your regularly-scheduled dogpile, already in progress.
Not, I think, when I’m explicitly including atheists, and specifically myself, in the category. Am I conveniently dismissing myself in my OP? I hope not.
At the time I started this thread, I had no issues with those threads that I wasn’t content for the time to delay pitting very specifically. They were just convenient examples of the type of odd courage I was noting. I provided in the hope, perhaps vain hope, of discouraging people from thinking I was off on another rant about atheism and its virtues, but apparently I have not reached the point where people see my username and think anything other than “That flippin’ asshole who always tries to argue that Xians should be put to death on principle, I’ve got to interject here and let him have it,” a group which you, Bryan , seem to be removing yourself admirably from.
No, no. This is fine. I much prefer to have a conversation with someone who actually reads what I post and discusses it civilly. Thank you. It’s just that we seem to be going around in very small circles. I’ve asserted my small point several times now, and you appear to be questioning my lack of malice in claiming that the small point was the main purpose of the OP, also several times. If you want to do this further, feel free.
“Judge and jury” only to the extent of judging the actions of others. This would normally just be classified as opinionated. Like you I am happy to share my opinion on the Dope.
I have no axe to grind against you or Zoe. I am simply calling foul to the behavior you displayed in this thread and the behavior **Zoe ** has specifically had towards **PRR ** in many threads. I believe I manage to get along with you fine throughout most of the dope with one large exception well over a year ago. I barely even know who **Zoe ** is. You do not need to agree with my observations, but you fully appeared to have behaved very immaturely and in bad faith in this particular thread.
Are my claims that extraordinary? Wouldn’t you get annoyed if some poster was following you around harping on some detail? I think his has actually happened to you and the poster(s) got smacked down. To my point of view, **Zoe ** has been acting like a stalker. I do very strongly think she should stop.
As far as the execution, well if there is to be any, than we know who hands out sentencing around here and there are ultimately the real judge and jury anyway. Maybe I am just providing some evidence to the grand jury as a witness. 
Zoe, I am glad you are keeping your sense of humor in this thread. It makes me think more highly of you at least. I was quite calm last night. None of this personally affects me or gets me angry. Thank you for caring.
Jim
Who do you [prr] think you’re engaging?
Who do you think you’re persuading?
If you don’t have specific answers to those questions, when will you get off the fucking cross?
Clearly not you. So kindly fuck off and read some other thread that you find engaging and persuasive.
Is that specific enough for you?
No, not at all. FWIW, I’m an atheist. And an academic. If you are attempting to engage or persuade people - posters or lurkers - I suggest you alter your rhetorical approach: this isn’t working. If you are not, you should consider your dignity: you may think you’re coming across as a righteous iconoclast, but you just look like a right tosser.
No one, least of all me, Frank, is asking for (or finding reasonable) a fresh start from absolutely neutral with each blessed post. You know better than that.
But it would be utterly unreasonable to engage with every poster primarily on the basis of past issues with that poster, too, wouldn’t it? It would seem that you’re encouraging stalking and harassment as a virtuous practice by taking that absurd standard, which I’m guessing is not (despite the above-quoted post) representative of your actual view. If it were fine and dandy to apply that standard, then you’re claiming that if Poly starts a thread on biology, say, it’s fine for me to come on and fulminate on his selective reading of the New Testament, not because it makes any sense to do so there, but simply because I have an issue with him on that subject in some previous threads? That’s extremely counter-productive for a discussion and, even though I would have my head handed to me by other posters, would still make the job of moderating any discussion a nightmare if that practice were to be adopted generally.
It seems to me that my OP here was too unengaging and too uncontroversial, as Bryan has correctly noted, though he doesn’t seem quite to believe my assurances that such a reading is correct, to be Pitworthy (though I’ve explained why I put it here nonetheless), but most of the early responses to it seem to me to have been written by mindreaders who think they know in advance the arguments I intend to make, and which they’re attacking prior to any such argument from me. That’s their privilege, but if I choose not to engage much with them, and continue to explain my OP’s mild intent, why would it please you, as a Mod, to encourage such a pile-on? You’ve seen a lot of bad behavior and bad faith in this thread, very little of it stemming from me, so why not dish out a word or two of criticism of it? I don’t see the point of encouraging people in general to begin engaging with any poster PRIMARILY on the basis of that poster’s past or of poor perceptions of that poster, etc. If I started shit here, sure, I’m going to deserve to catch some shit coming back my way, but why not let me say at least one truly offensive thing before getting offended?
Thank you for your unsolicited and unwelcome advice. If you would care to hear my advice to you, just ask me for some. Otherwise, as I keep saying, kindly fuck off. I’m well aware that my manner of engaging people strikes some as ineffective. If that’s your point, it’s long been noted.