LifeOnaPlate wrote:
That doesn't answer the question at all. Not by a long shot. Here it is again: Do you engage in messageboard polemics to improve your life as a Latter-day, or your "skills" as a Mopologist?
No. I engage in message board discussions as part of my overall interest in religion. I have found a lot of good references, met good friends, been advised to read great books (Gad, for example, got me to finally finish Kuhn, for example) better understood my point, argued against people I felt were wrong, helped people find information they wouldn't have found otherwise, seen other viewpoints, argued for and against other viewpoints, etc. and etc.
LoaP, you are dodging the question yet again. You specifically mentioned *improvement*. Remember? And this took place within the context of your motivations for acting as an amateur Mopologist. Right? You went on to explain that your Mopologetics occur in a manner similar to a swimmer or a rugby player, i.e., that you are "practicing," and hoping to "improve" in some way. Do you understand? My question is thus: What is it that you feel you are improving? Your above post makes it seem as if you are trying to shift the goal posts yet again, positing yourself as some kind of pure, idealistic, and very earnest student, who engages in Mopologetics only for self-improvement and intellectual enlightenment.
But, obviously, that is complete nonsense. The kind of aggressive argumentative tactics employed by you and Maklelan on the discount thread, for example, or by DCP, Hamblin, Midgley and others in FARMS Review are about as far away from positive learning and education as one can get. Thus it makes zero sense for you to claim that the bulk of your posts here, on MAD, or elsewhere are related to some kind of self-improvement and education. (Self-empowerment, maybe, but not self-improvement, unless attacking others and becoming a better sadist somehow encapsulates that for you.)
In the context of Mopologetics, a guy like you is not interested in reading Kuhn merely for the sake of reading Kuhn. Sure, you will learn something in the process, but that is merely a supplement to your primary goal, which is to hoard knowledge so that you can use it to attack enemies of "your" Church. You value something like Kuhn not because it is enlightening; you value it because you feel that you can use it to help reaffirm your testimony. You admitted to all of this to Gad in the other thread, in fact.