A Check of Paula Kord's Posting to Me
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Mon, 12 Oct 1998 18:52:39 -0700 (00908261559, 2.2.32.19981013015239.008b2ba4@midwest.net)
At 01:15 PM 10/12/98 -0700, Donald T Scott wrote:
>>M.BELL
>>Nice try Farrell. Truth is I don't have any reason to believe you, and
>>I
>>suspect that those who read the recent events with first Adnan and now
>>P.K.
>>will not believe you either.
>>
>
>DTS
>Gotta love how inerrantist tactics take familiar recurring forms:
>
>1) Convince themselves that they are not morally or intellectually
>obligated to listen to a critic (usually because intellectual responses
>to the critic are often nonexistent)
>
>2) Convince others that critics are inherently inferior, morally or
>"spiritually", again undeserving of attention (another variant of the
>I-cant-answer-but-even-still-i-dont-have-to-answer-because-critics-arent-hu
man-anyway
>routine)
>
>3) Convince themselves and others that they and their beliefs have
>senority, special rights and privileges, or other reasons why they are
>entitled to preferred treatment and need not use a level playing field
>("this is a Christian nation" "the Bible has been around for almost 2000
>years" "Christians are involved in charity work" ad nauseam)
>
>4) Use the "if God could have POSSIBLY done it as told in the Bible, HE
>DID!" apologetic (e.g. inventing absurdly contrived theories to make the
>Noah's Ark myth just barely plausible enough to go on believing.) It is
>because of this rubbish that Till has to spend countless paragraphs
>hermetically sealing each and every pore of inerrantist wiggling and
>fudging room in advance.
>
>5) The best defense is a good offense. (Demanding detailed citations
>that only full time experts like Till can muster, then claiming "victory"
>when the errantist finally runs out of details)
>
>6) The best defense is an extended time-out. (Derailing the debate
>into a pointless "Is so!" "Is not!" spat while loading each sentence up
>with snide accusations. Unfortunately the errantist is often drawn into
>this diversion him/herself.)
>
>7) The best defense is a good dead end. ("Study Hebrew and Greek!", as
>if the Bible translators who have given us the KJV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, TEV,
>NIV, NASB etc did not understand Hebrew and Greek when preparing all
>these Bibles)
>
>What all these devices have in common is they keep the discussion well
>away from what the inerrantists know is a doomed fantasy world:
>inerrancy.
>
TILL
And in this case, Bell has added another one. Paula Kord's posting seemed
to be an expression of Christian faith as sincere and honest as I have read
in a long time, but because she had sent a posting to me from the CCBE list,
Bell called her a dishonest liar. I showed how that he could have
misinterpreted her denial that she had "leaked" information to this list in
that she could have meant that she had not forwarded any CCBE
counterarguments to me but only a copy of Bell's screening test, but Bell,
who always knows how to interpret biblical passages to show that they don't
really mean what they obvious said, has apparently rejected this
possibility. In his book, Paula Kord is just a liar, and it wouldn't be
possible to convince him otherwise. She made the mistake of cooperating one
time with an enemy that Bell is obsessed with proving wrong in at least
something.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net