In the comments in response to a post on New Covenant about whether scientists can objectively analyze creationist/ID positions , Matt Powell writes the following, in obvious reference to me and our recent discussion:
In some of the recent discussions on morality, religion and Biblical philosophy, the same crew was just as quick to mock, deride and question my education and knowledge, despite the fact that I am trained in those areas. That makes me instantly suspect similar statements they make regarding the expertise of people like Johnson, Behe and Ross.
For the record, Matt, at no time in our discussion did I ever "mock, deride and question" your "education and knowledge". I challenged your arguments, which were, as I said, silly, contrary to good sense, and even stupid. I explained the many reasons why that was the case. There is a difference between saying an argument is stupid and saying the person making it is stupid, and that is still a different issue than mocking someone's education or knowledge. I'm sure you're quite well educated and knowledgable on the subjects we were discussing, at least on one side of the question (I suspect that you know next to nothing about non-Christian ethical systems, but that was only tangential to the conversation). I'm sure you've read all of the relevant biblical texts and the major theologians and their interpretations of those texts. That gives you knowledge and education in that limited context, but your arguments were still irrational and badly reasoned. In fact, the only one to do what you are accusing me of doing was you, when you pretended that I must not be aware of "this strain of Christian philosophy" merely because I rejected what it said.
I did question your reading comprehension skills, for precisely the reason that I'm pointing out here - time and time again during our exchange, you attacked a straw man of my position rather than my actual position. Indeed, the only reason I responded to you in the first place was because on your own blog, you portrayed my position inaccurately when discussing your exchange with DarkSyde, and that was something that continued to happen several times during our exchange. I was actually being rather generous, I thought. I could have blamed it on dishonesty, but chose instead to blame it on a lack of careful reading. At any rate, I wrote this to correct yet another instance where you are portraying my statements as something different than they actually were. I don't doubt that you have knowledge and education on the subject of the biblical texts we discussed and the various theological interpretations concerning them; I just don't think that knowledge or education prevented you from making illogical and fanciful rationalizations in defense of the literal truth of those texts.
As far as Behe, Johnson and Ross are concerned, I will gladly debate their views in the same way and focusing on the same thing - are their positions true? Do they make a logical case that fits the evidence? Of the three, I regard Phil Johnson as an outright charlatan and I'd be more than happy to provide a great deal of evidence for that conclusion. Behe's work is interesting, but has been pretty conclusively disproven by his fellow biochemists. Ross does excellent work in his own field, but when he ventures into biology, anthropology and other fields, the results range from bad to worse. And again, I am entirely capable of supporting those conclusions with many examples.
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Ed,
You just derided my education in the same post where you said you never did.
If I said that you were only familiar with your own position on evolution and were ignorant of the other side of the debate, would you interpret that as questioning your knowledge?
Here's some quotes, Ed:
"it's an utterly idiotic analogy."
"If you want to claim that this is not punishment for David's sins, you're going to be laughed at, even by your fellow Christians, and rightfully so. It's a stupid little semantic game you're playing here. "
"And your second argument is even more stupid, that "short of showing that the child spent eternity in hell", it's not "punishment". Come on Matt, did you really type that with a straight face? "
You can dodge this to say you were attacking the position, not the man, but when you consistently refer to your opponent's arguments as silly, stupid, irrational and the like, pretty soon the subtext becomes "anyone who would hold to these arguments must also be stupid." It's a stupid, semantic game to say that you can attack my positions and arguments constantly in the way that you have and not be attacking me. In some of those quotes, you even make the connection by saying I should rightfully be regarded as stupid for having made the argument ("would be laughed at, and rightly so", etc).
And you also said this:
"By the way, I didn't think you were stupid until this last answer. Now I just can't escape that conclusion. And you're a minister, for crying out loud. "
And besides, I never even named you in the original post. The fact that you recognized it was in part directed at you is telling to me, but I was debating a number of people besides you. How about this gem:
"It is not surprising that Matt's 'argument' fell apart because frankly ALL that fundamentalists and evangelicals and other biblical literalists know is memorized buzzwords and trick questions with tricky answers, semantics, twisting of scriptures and all sorts of silly rationalizations. Often times, they have never been taught or encouraged to learn how to reason; they prefer memorization over logic."
Or this:
"Just curious, Ed ... when you argue with these creationists and Biblical literalists and similar moron-ists, has it ever once happened that they respond to one of your arguments and say that you are right?"
My point here was not to complain about my treatment by those on your side of the debate. I've rarely been treated any other way in all the years I've been doing this (I thought yours was supposed to be the tolerant side?). My point was to say that while I don't have the equipment to judge the expertise of someone like Behe, Ross or Johnson, I'm a whole lot less likey to take your word for their ignorance after our latest exchange.
If someone truly lacks knowledge on a subject, there's nothing wrong with pointing that out. I never said otherwise. But there are risks to doing so. The fact that you and your allies attacked my knowledge and education (and continue to do so) in my field of expertise undermines your credibility in my eyes when you do the same to your scientific opponents. It's not a moral problem I'm referring to here, but a credibility problem.
You just derided my education in the same post where you said you never did.
No, I didn't. In the context we were discussing, I'm sure you are quite knowledgable, meaning that you know the biblical texts and are probably quite familiar with how various Christian philosophers have interpreted those texts over the centuries. That has nothing to do with whether one is educated in an overall sense, of course, but I've never questioned that either. We all have areas in which we are not educated, even those of us with the broadest of educations. But in the context of our discussion, I never questioned, and do not question, whether you have knowledge or education in it. But that has nothing to do with whether your positions are logical, well thought out, or internally consistent. Knowledge and intelligence are hardly the same thing.
You quoted me saying your arguments were stupid many times. Well, they WERE stupid. They still are. But that has nothing to do with knowledge or education. Steve Austin, an ICR geologist, is very knowledgable and educated in the field of geology. That does not stop him from saying astonishingly stupid things about geology in his writings on the subject. When he compares engineer's canyon after the Mt. St. Helen's eruption to the Grand Canyon and tells his followers that the existence of the first is analogous to the second, that position is laughingly, absurdly, amazingly stupid. But saying that doesn't mean he doesn't have knowledge of geology; it just means he makes illogical and irrational statements that bely that knowledge.
How about this gem:
"It is not surprising that Matt's 'argument' fell apart because frankly ALL that fundamentalists and evangelicals and other biblical literalists know is memorized buzzwords and trick questions with tricky answers, semantics, twisting of scriptures and all sorts of silly rationalizations. Often times, they have never been taught or encouraged to learn how to reason; they prefer memorization over logic."
Uh, that wasn't said by me. Again, that whole reading comprehension thing continues to elude you.
Or this:
"Just curious, Ed ... when you argue with these creationists and Biblical literalists and similar moron-ists, has it ever once happened that they respond to one of your arguments and say that you are right?"
Uh, that wasn't said by me either. The fact that it was addressed to me might have been a clue.
One can be both educated AND stupid. One can be knowledgable and still make stupid arguments.
My point here was not to complain about my treatment by those on your side of the debate. I've rarely been treated any other way in all the years I've been doing this (I thought yours was supposed to be the tolerant side?). My point was to say that while I don't have the equipment to judge the expertise of someone like Behe, Ross or Johnson, I'm a whole lot less likey to take your word for their ignorance after our latest exchange.
LOL. You wouldn't have taken my word for it anyway because those guys say things you want to be true and agree with you on religious matters. So you'd opt for what they have to say anyway. Just like you opt for the kinds of absurd rationalizations you offered in defending biblical morality despite the fact that you could not defend it without making irrational and illogical arguments. And that has nothing to do with knowledge or education. Even the very educated do that.
If someone truly lacks knowledge on a subject, there's nothing wrong with pointing that out. I never said otherwise.
But again, I never said that you lacked knowledge. I said that you made stupid arguments and absurd rationalizations. And that was true. And there is a difference between the two. The fact that you do not understand that there is a difference, and continue to make stupid arguments as a result, only proves my point.
Ed,
Did you miss the part where I said those last two quotes were from someone else? They were part of my argument that I was debating other people beside you, and my statements on Rusty's blog weren't about you alone.
Matt, you weren't debating those people. Their comments were directed to me, and you never answered them at all (nor did I, by the way). They were just random comments aimed at a general group. You certainly weren't debating them. But regardless, the bottom line is this: if you object to being told that your arguments are stupid, you really have two choices: stop saying things publicly, which gives people the opportunity to respond to them; or stop making stupid arguments. It's really that simple.
Ed,
You said I falsely attributed those two quotes to you, when I did not attribute them to you. The fact that you are unwilling to admit even that simple error says a lot to me.
Matt, I thought that you were quoting those as examples of mean things I said to you. I didn't think you were quoting those as examples of others you were debating with because, well, you weren't debating them. You never responded to them at all, not they to you. They were random bystanders. So I misread your intent, but your depiction of it is still inaccurate. As your depiction of this entire exchange has been inaccurate from the start. So you finally found something to seize on that you could say "a ha, you made a mistake". That's great. But it doesn't really change the reality of the situation any.
You're missing the whole point of the original comment to Rusty.
I was talking about my subjective response to the way I felt you treated me, which was to trust your opinions on the expertise of others a good deal less. I'm hardly the first person here to feel unfairly attacked and rudely handled. So you can keep saying this is my fault all you want. It's not going to get your credibility back in my eyes, which is what the whole point was in the first place.
True to your background in comedy, all you're doing here is entertaining those who already agree with you. (Yes, that was ad hominem).
I was talking about my subjective response to the way I felt you treated me, which was to trust your opinions on the expertise of others a good deal less. I'm hardly the first person here to feel unfairly attacked and rudely handled. So you can keep saying this is my fault all you want. It's not going to get your credibility back in my eyes, which is what the whole point was in the first place.
Your subjective feeling is irrelevant to my response. You may have "subjectively felt" that I was deriding your education or knowledge, but I was not. I was deriding your arguments and rationalizations because they were illogical and inconsistent. If you think that means you were "unfairly attacked" or "rudely handled", there's not much I can do about that, nor is there much I care to do about it. And I don't buy for a moment that this has anything to do with gaining my credibility back in your eyes; your view of my credibility was set in stone the moment I said that I thought your beliefs were false. I am not the least bit concerned with your view of my credibility. I am only concerned with not allowing inaccurate statements of what I allegedly said to go unchallenged. This entire exchange began with me correcting your misrepresentation of my position on your webpage, and it ends with me correcting yet another misrepresentation of my position on Rusty's webpage. Everything in between that was you making silly arguments and me pointing out why they're silly.
Ed,
Try to tone down the ego for a second.
In that original article, I made one off-hand, "BTW" type referral to something you said (and which I admitted having misinterpreted), and it sent you into this whole righteous indignation act. The second exchange was likewise prompted by an article on my site on another topic that paid insufficient deference in your eyes to the invincibility of your logic. In this comment to Rusty, I was again referring to more than just debate with you, and it again sent you into paroxysms of defensiveness.
It is just so plainly, obviously clear that your own self-worth is so tremendous in your eyes that anyone who might deign to disagree with your highness is a knuckledragging simpleton. Any argument you don't like becomes "ridiculous", "stupid", or the like. Your whole debate on these subjects has consisted of repeating the same objections over and over and dealing only with the statements that you feel are easy to refute. You've constantly trumpeted your high level of understanding of the relevant issues, at the same time acting as if I should be regarded as a moron by my own religious community for proposing arguments that are commonly held in that community. You treated me like an idiot for positing the coexistence of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility despite the fact that millenia of philosophers both in and outside of the Christian world have asserted the same argument. You've refused to acknowledge even the slightest errors until forced to.
So goodbye. Your arrogance prevents you from having meaningful discussions with anyone who disagrees with you. I'm sorry I didn't see this a long time ago. Enjoy your little corner of the world.
Matt, methinks you doth protest too much. I seem to recall something about removing the log in one's own eye before the speck in someone else's. Remember that it was you who so presumptuously and condescendingly offered to "educate" me on matters I'm already educated about if only I would stop disagreeing with you and just accept what you have to say.
You are simply wrong to claim that I automatically think anyone is stupid when they disagree with me. There are in fact men and women who would agree almost entirely with you that I would absolutely not regard as stupid and for whom I have enormous respect. Men like Kurt Wise, Art Chadwick, William Lane Craig and many others. The difference is that they don't consistently misrepresent the positions of others and they don't make stupid argument after stupid argument and then feign outrage when someone calls those arguments stupid. I have meaningful discussions with people who disagree with me on a regular basis. But I do have a fairly low tolerance for nonsense, and you shoveled out a whole lot of that in this discussion. By my count, this is the third time you've said you were taking your ball and going home. Perhaps this time you actually mean it.
Ed,
Matt's horse died long ago. He's just not up to admitting it.
B