Rant! haha
04.11.08 (5:19 pm) [edit]
Time for the monthly post. Being a fairly far-right conservative on a multitude of issues, I entered the blogosphere about a year ago with a small amount of trepidation. I don't visit all that many liberal blogs, but, for whatever reason (commenting in German, perhaps), the authors view me with disdain. While some of them are merely content with dissecting my comments and applying their liberal logic, others become more annoyed than that. Hence the list at the right, "Banned from..." - granted, the ban has lasted generally only a week or two, but Thinking Meat went so far as to ban the entire set of IP addresses of my current school. Today I was able to access his/her blog from home again, but not the comments pages of any posts. Sneaky!
Should I reveal my commenting pseudonym? Not yet - perhaps next month.
posted by: thoolou (reply)
post date: 04.11.08 (3:28 pm)
I heartily welcome you to the secret world of conservative bloggers! :)
posted by: PastorDave (reply)
post date: 04.11.08 (3:38 pm)
There's a bit of a scoundrel in you, I see! I've been blogging around here for a while, although I do not go around visiting other places very much. I've noticed a trend with liberal bloggers when you offer a thoughtful and rational disagreement. It will not take long before the facade of conversation among equals is dropped. Then you will be called "stupid", and then will be lots of emotional ranting and name-calling. Before long, the effort on the part of the other person will be to tweak and irritate you- en masse with their similar liberal friends joining into the tirade- and any semblance of debate is long gone. I find it an interesting devolution, considering these are the guys who pretend to lean mostly upon logic and reason.
Happy pestering!
posted by: squirrelzone (reply)
post date: 04.11.08 (3:49 pm)
Reply to: PastorDave
PD, I couldn't have said it better myself.
posted by: bipolarexpress (reply)
post date: 04.11.08 (4:19 pm)
unblock . com gives you a new ip addy so you can get into sites you were blocked from.. only there are a crap load of popups..
posted by: pcbiologist (reply)
post date: 04.11.08 (6:41 pm)
Thank y'all very much, thoolou, PastorDave, squirrelzone, and bipolarexpress (especially for that hint...but being blocked is a sort of status symbol for me, so maybe I'll try it later)!
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.12.08 (7:22 pm)
Reply to: PastorDave
I love it when conservatives claim "logic" for their team and then self-congratulate each other for their clear thinking superiority. There is no such thing as "liberal logic" anymore than there is a such thing as "conservative logic" -- there is just "logic".
I don't really see that either you or "pcbiologist" have so much reason to celebrate as I haven't read anything on either of your blogs except the tired slogans of smarmy self-righteousness. From my experience, logical debate is just as impossible with right-wing conservatives as it is with left-wing idealogues. You both practice political religions which claim some sort of unexplained claim upon truth without a giving a iota of logical justification for your claims.
Still, it must be nice to find friends so that you don't get tired of patting yourselves on the back! lol!
Wouldn't it be more "logical" to simply state your case without the idealogical code words attached? The truth isn't "liberal" or "conservative", after all. The concept of "truth" itself is an illogical concept. At best, we can only get at the very best evidence on a given subject we can discover and then we make temporary assessments of the availabe evidence which we know in advance will neccessarily need to be further adjusted based on future evidence.
Of course, this makes no sense to a person is certain they already know "the truth" and that God gave us all the a priori facts we need to determine Truth using some sort of ancient document as our guide, which is likely full of the worst kind of illogical stories one could ever discover.
Who needs "logic" when you've got "Divine Revelation", right guys?
posted by: PastorDave (reply)
post date: 04.12.08 (8:04 pm)
Reply to: kurtmaddox
You are not fair in your conversation with folks like myself. Summarily you dismiss the Bible as the Word of God, Jesus Christ as Savior and Son of God, and the necessity of faith. These are chosen and unapologetic foundations for my identity. One either believe, or he does not, and stakes his life and eternity thereupon. Therefore we have little in common. We can converse, but I'm rather sure my mind is not more closed than yours. You seem just as unwilling to set aside your Trinity of Reason, Self, and Agnosticism. I believe I've found the answer.
posted by: PastorDave (reply)
post date: 04.12.08 (8:06 pm)
Reply to: kurtmaddox
You are not fair in your conversation with folks like myself. Summarily you dismiss the Bible as the Word of God, Jesus Christ as Savior and Son of God, and the necessity of faith. These are chosen and unapologetic foundations for my identity. One either believe, or he does not, and stakes his life and eternity thereupon. Therefore we have little in common. We can converse, but I'm rather sure my mind is not more closed than yours. You seem just as unwilling to set aside your Trinity of Reason, Self, and Agnosticism. I believe I've found the answer.
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.12.08 (11:03 pm)
Reply to: PastorDave
That's a legitimate point, but, it actually makes my case for me. I would never ever take you on, PD, if you presented your arguments in the way you just did -- that you believe in the primacy of divine revelation via personal experience over reason, logic and scientific evidence. You just don't do that -- you are certainly a very honest debater and I've stated that over and over and over -- it is just that your positioning isn't intellectually honest.
For example, your reply to me is a classic logical equivocation whereby you illogically equate my insistence on the primacy of reason with your belief in a mystical Deity that manifests itself in 3 forms (somehow they are still one God, of course, by another magic trick you can't explain but we must accept "on faith"). You may not accept it, but, most any logic professor would consider your response a fallacious argument according to the rules of logical inquiry.
That's why I took the time to make exactly that case here again because once again you presented yourself on the same side as logic as if someone being a Conservative Christian is more "logical" than being a non-religious Liberal. The exact reverse is true if we were sticking purely to logic and reason.
In other words, my simple contention is that you can't have it both ways -- you can't claim divine revelation as the basis which informs all truth which guides your opinions and perceptions and then at the same time claim to be more "logical" than "Liberals". (As you know, I'm not a Democrat or a "liberal" in the American political sense of that term.)
You can be a Conservative and logical and you can be a Liberal and be logical. There are legitimate disagreements between the two political philophies which have much less to do with logic than they have to do with a priori assumptions about the nature of mankind and how best we can all live together peacefully and seek sustainable prosperity.
The key is that once anyone on either side makes any supernatural claim to being on the side of "Truth" with a capital "T", then you've logically given up the right to claim any logical basis for your arguments since you fill in any gaps in your logic via the "deus ex machina".
Also, if you've found the "answer" via personal divine revelation then shouldn't rightly abandon any pretense that you're arguments are "logical"?
Of course I dismiss the Bible as the Word of God and the neccessity of faith just as any logical person would. Not because I'm mean or because I hate religion -- I'm not mean and I don't hate religion or religious people -- but, because the Bible is absurdly illogical and indefensibly immoral and replete with some of the most heinously criminal acts recorded in the history of mankinds relations with one each other. I come to those conclusions precisely by using common logic, reason and straight rendering of the actual words of the Bible itself.
I once believed all the very same things that you believed and I believed them absolutely sincerely. It is difficult for me to NOT believe them because of the years of mental conditioning I've experienced from being taught to fear God if I chose wrongly about what His name really is or about which book He really wrote. When it became absolutely apparent to my logical mind that no Divine Being could possibly be responsible for the acts recorded in the Bible, it is a very short journey to then seeing the Christian faith for it is -- another highly evolved Cult which has recycled a good number of ancient myths and which operates exactly by the same mechanisms as does Islam or any other major religious tradition.
There are extremely few Christians or Muslims or others who believe their faith is the "True Truth" because they attmepted to examined the evidence logically and could easily see the one as the Truth and the others as the Lie.
The mass of humanity is born into their religious tradition or cultured into their beliefs. All religious people report identical heart-felt conversions and personal revelations of truth that they believe absolutely with every ounce of what is best about them as human beings -- JUST LIKE YOU DO! No loving entity of any kind could damn those who are born and cultured to fear disbelieving their family's faith to an eternity without God. To even suggest such a hateful thing proves the malicious conditioning of the cult belief infected mind.
Also, you absolutely do have an enormously more closed mind than I do and it is any easy bit of logic to prove that point. Of course, just as I don't accept the primacy of your Divine Revelation in such matters, you don't accept the primacy of logic and reason in such matters.
On every single subject, I am open to the truth about a particular subject -- let's say "Homosexual Marriage". If there became evidence available that homosexualality truly is a dangerous condition which caused humanity and society great harm, I'd be more than willing to examine that evidence and align in agreement around social contracts whereby we'd seek to repress homosexuals via all manner of legal tools at the disposal of a freedom loving democratic Republic.
You, however, are not open to the same function of evidence, logic and reason because you have a book that says homosexuality is an abomination to God and therefore is a danger to God's sanction of a "family" as having to be only between a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman. Therefore you band together and repress homosexuals strictly on the basis of your clearly irrationally bigotted scriptures regardless of the evidence and the millions of law abiding, kind, generous and loving homsexual relationships that exist throughout the world.
You are the one who places yourself in that tiny box -- not me. The problem for you and those who believe as you do and as I once did is that you want you want your cake and you want to eat it, too!
You don't want to be boxed into the camp you've self-selected -- which is the side of the witch doctor. You want your rational arguments right along side those arguments of reason that have allowed mankind to understand how the world might actually work because they respect the evidence and the scientific method and the primacy of reason based on the best available evidence. There are disagreements all the time between rational human beings about what the evidence indicates which are logical and only about the evidence without invoking Chapter 19 of Leviticus or Matthew Chapter 9 and Verse 11.
This is why I continually challenge you that you are never even true to your own beliefs in these arguments and that by your own faith, you should be convicted of the time you spend making such arguments. Your beliefs represent a clear and complete abdication of reason and logic as having hardly any value whatsoever. There are Christians honestly struggling with reason and faith -- your Southern Baptist tradition isn't part of that movement and by your own statements I don't think you'd argue with that assessment.
With apologies to C.S. Lewis, there is no defense of Christianity availabe using reason and there is even less of a rational defense available to collection of writings you call your Bible, which you believe is the very "Word of God".
Notice that I haven't claimed even once that you are WRONG in your belief because I certainly can't prove that you are, in fact, wrong. You could very well be right. I can only prove that there is a mountain of easily available evidence that the book you reference as the "Word of God" is replete with factual errors, heinous crimes ordered by your God, easily dismissed claims about creation, the Earth, the Sun, disease, history and on and on and on and on. The best scholarly research now has a very good understanding of the history of these texts you revere as "God's authoratative word" and the evidence does not help your cause in any way, shape, form or fashion. The very process by which the collection you believe stand pre-eminent above all Words ever written and above all claims to Truth ever made since the beginning of time is as sordid a scandalous tale as any fiction writer, including Dan Brown, could ever conceive.
Passages clearly added decades and centuries later, stories appearing in later versions of documents not found in earlier versions, rampant and intentional translation liberties and outright changes to the original meanings of the earliest known documents. (Of course, these "earliest documents" are themselves translations and random collections form verbal traditions passed via a process of the biggest game of Chinese Telephone ever played.)
Then, even after all this evidence rooted in the honest scholarship, hard won archeological finds and peer reviewed scientific inquiry -- you stand up and claim that modern man has it wrong and that you are the true man of logic and reason because you have a revealed divine truth which is the eternal trump card to ANY POSSIBLE EVIDENCE that can ever be produced to the contrary.
If you've "found the answer" then your "answer" has absolutely NOTHING to do with LOGIC whatsoever and everything to do with the very fortunate event of your having the Truth divinely revealed to you by the Holy Spirit.
Again, you can certainly logically suggest to the rest of us that we will certainly perish and not be granted eternal life if we don't repent of our sins and accept your Christ as our Lord and Savior. You can suggest that our entire life boils down to this single decision and that your God planned the whole thing this way. You just can't suggest that logic is on your side in the equation or that anyone should accept your scriptural based arguments as "logical".
Now, you can certainly be logical and participate in discussions whereby you engage debate on logical grounds so long as you agree to put aside scripture and divine revelation as your source material. I've simply rarely seen you do this. When you do, I don't challenge you on it. I may disagree, but, I don't challenge your intellectual right to the point.
In this case, I do challenge your intellectual right to your implication in this statement in your comments above:
"I've noticed a trend with liberal bloggers when you offer a thoughtful and rational disagreement. It will not take long before the facade of conversation among equals is dropped. Then you will be called "stupid", and then will be lots of emotional ranting and name-calling."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black ;-)
But, I still love you like a brother!
posted by: PastorDave (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (4:10 am)
Reply to: kurtmaddox
It's a busy day, however this conversation is not over! You may be interested to know the title of the morning sermon: "Born Again - What Does It Mean?" Basically my encompassing point is that all need this experience, even kurtmaddox. I'm sure you agree! Also, I am aware we are coomenting on this particular person's blog, and I am not aware where our friend pcbiologist stands with religious matters- there is a very good possibility that his/her conservatism does not include my matters of religion. That's o.k.- I'm conservative in lots of ways, including how I wear my hair. I'll be back...
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (11:10 am)
Reply to: PastorDave
I've meandered over to pcbiologists other blogs and there's lots of scripture quoting going on in the midst of your basic right-wing grandstanding. So, I think your conservatism matches up pretty well with pc's.
We can move the discussion to tmail if pc doesn't want to play with us.
You know that there are issues upon which I'd be considered ultra-right wing -- National Defense, Law Enforcement and the Constitution would be a few examples. However, my view of National Defense would not include being Global Agent for Democracy or Global Terrorism Police, my view of Law Enforcement would not include warrant-less wiretapping of anyone and my view of the U.S. Constitution would immediately eliminate most of the funding that enables the Bush Administration to do most of the damage it has done -- or the Clinton Admin or the whatever the coming Admin. might happen to be.
I'm not much for labels, but, I guess I'm a Progressive Anarchists or maybe a Law and Order Libertarian?
Good luck with the sermon and I hope the flood down the aisle like the bussed in church groups that attend Billy Graham crusades ;-)
posted by: pcbiologist (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (2:13 pm)
Goodness, kurtmaddox! I just finished reading through your long, somewhat vitriolic (perhaps you care to disagree with that?) comment. By all means, keep up the discussion. That's what I recommended in my first post. Keep it up; I'm enjoying it.
Re: PD ("I am not aware where our friend pcbiologist stands with religious matters"). Ask! I will happily debate and/or argue with commenters over theological as well as other matters. The 5% or so of Scotch-Irish blood I have has given me a two-inch-thick skull with horns...perfect for butting heads.
I checked back at Liberal Avenger...one comment (a bit gloating, I must admit...won't try that too many more times) got me banned again as of today.
posted by: pcbiologist (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (2:14 pm)
Or we all can go over to The Renaissance Biologist; I'm sure she'll love arguing with us too.
posted by: bipolarexpress (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (3:45 pm)
Reply to: kurtmaddox
Hey now.. no cheating by going to tmail...
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (7:23 pm)
Reply to: pcbiologist
Well, I guess one person's "vitriol" is another's "cogent logic" ;-)
Since I'm not bitter or angry or making an angry ad hominem attack, I'm not sure "vitriolic" would be technically accurate. Still, vitriol's a cool word. I like "vective" better and if I were to aspire to angry prose, I'd prefer the charge of "biting vective" or "fulminating vective".
Hey, that's probably the accurate descriptor for my comments -- "fulminating".
I wouldn't think you'd mind that at all from reading your own style of debate in other forums. Of course, you've as much as stated such with your welcoming comment and I appreciate that spirit.
I'm a good bit more the 5% Welsh, so we are likely closer cousins than most random pairings in the general population.
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (7:27 pm)
Reply to: pcbiologist
...this exchange caused the following phrase to pop into my head:
Benign Fulmination
I think I'll need to create a blog with that title sometime soon...
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (7:28 pm)
Reply to: pcbiologist
Well, I guess one person's "vitriol" is another's "cogent logic" ;-)
Since I'm not bitter or angry or making an angry ad hominem attack, I'm not sure "vitriolic" would be technically accurate. Still, vitriol's a cool word. I like "vective" better and if I were to aspire to angry prose, I'd prefer the charge of "biting vective" or "fulminating vective".
Hey, that's probably the accurate descriptor for my comments -- "fulminating".
I wouldn't think you'd mind that at all from reading your own style of debate in other forums. Of course, you've as much as stated such with your welcoming comment and I appreciate that spirit.
I'm a good bit more the 5% Welsh, so we are likely closer cousins than most random pairings in the general population.
posted by: kurtmaddox (reply)
post date: 04.13.08 (7:28 pm)
Reply to: pcbiologist
The Liberal Avenger blog has been "suspended".
posted by: pcbiologist (reply)
post date: 04.14.08 (4:44 pm)
"I'm a good bit more the 5% Welsh," (kurtmaddox)
Are you sure you didn't mean Scotch-Irish? Ah well, they're all Northern European.
posted by: bipolarexpress (reply)
post date: 04.16.08 (3:03 pm)
streaking thru your blog...