Journey of Faith: The New World review

[_Daniel Peterson]

It's the summer.

Anyway, is this Stephen Jones you're talking about? If so, he's no longer at BYU.

And I seem vaguely to recall that Wade Miller may have retired -- though I could certainly be mistaken about that.

[_beastie]

All I have is their BYU addresses. You expect me to somehow find out their private emails or something? Or was your amazement that I hadn't emailed Dr. Miller feigned?

[_Daniel Peterson]

All I have is their BYU addresses. You expect me to somehow find out their private emails or something? Or was your amazement that I hadn't emailed Dr. Miller feigned?

I expected you to make an attempt.

I don't know whether Wade Miller has or has not retired.

It just occurred to me that I thought maybe I had perhaps heard that he had possibly retired.

You wanted me to contact them.

It's as easy for you to do that as it would be for me.

[_beastie]

I expected you to make an attempt.

I don't know whether Wade Miller has or has not retired.

It just occurred to me that I thought maybe I had perhaps heard that he had possibly retired.

You wanted me to contact them.

It's as easy for you to do that as it would be for me.

No, it's not. You work at the same university at both of them. Suggesting that it would be just as easy for me to do it as you would be the equivalent of suggesting it would just as easy for you to contact, and expect a reply from, one of my educational colleagues as it would be for me.

Besides that, you are in a position that means you have some interest in maintaining the quality and accuracy of claims made by fellow apologists. Or, it would seem that you should have that interest.

What I really wanted you to do was to explain how, despite the errors I pointed out, you still maintain that the dvd in question is of high quality and should be viewed as offering reliable information. I understand, of course, that is asking you to make a comment about substance, and you would far prefer instead to spend interminable amounts of time on snarky comments, talking about my personal flaws, and dealing with scratch.

[_Daniel Peterson]

It's as easy for you to do that as it would be for me.

No, it's not. You work at the same university at both of them.

This is a big place, beastie. I don't know either one of them. I've never, to the best of my knowledge, met either one of them.

Would you have to look up their e-mail addresses? How painful. But so would I.

Would you have to look up their telephone numbers? How horrid. So would I.

Would you likely look these items up on a website? Unspeakably intimidating. Yet that's exactly how I would most likely do it.

Your issue. Your problem. Your solution. Or not.

And I notice that, despite your denials, you still desperately want me to respond to you.

I predict that you'll go on complaining that I'm not interacting with you, not contacting people for you, not answering your questions, not dealing with your issues, all the while claiming that you're doing nothing of the kind.

[_beastie]

The problem is, Dan, that you don't ignore me. You do respond to me - just not about substance. You seem to want the right to respond to me as you choose while demanding that I not respond back in turn.

I'm going to give you a helpful hint. If you don't want to interact with me, don't respond to me. Because as long as you continue to respond to me, I will, as much as I see fit, respond back. Then you'll whine about me "desperately" wanting you to interact with me, when, in reality, all I'm doing is responding back to you. I apologize for not being willing to give you the privilege of responding to me while refraining from answering back.

I suggest you put me on ignore, since you can't manage to actually ignore me otherwise. It will save you time, because you spend quite a bit of it complaining that I'm not ignoring you. If I wanted to ignore you, I'd put you on ignore.

[_beastie]

Dan's cavalier attitude towards what at least appear to be very serious errors in apologia could explain why such errors tend to exist within apologia in general. Other apologists may not seem interested in working together to ascertain a higher degree of accuracy in the work in general. So what if a fellow apologist claimed that "they would have found horses here" and then didn't mention the scholarly consensus on that particular claim? It's not their problem. It, apparently, is the province solely of critics.

It's the loss of the apologetic community, of course, because when these simple and obvious errors are, in fact, detected easily by critics, it makes the whole apologia appear suspect. I think apologists would be better served if they didn't view possible serious errors in the work of their comrades as "not their problem".

[_Daniel Peterson]

I can well imagine, beastie, that you'd like to talk about me, explain my motives, etc., without my giving any input. Tough luck. You have no guarantees.

But you're ambivalent. The post above seems plainly to read something along the following lines, stripped of its ornamentation:

"Dan, please respond to me. Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody knows that this board exists. But you're here. Please respond to me."

[_beastie]

I can well imagine, beastie, that you'd like to talk about me, explain my motives, etc., without my giving any input. Tough luck. You have no guarantees.

But you're ambivalent. The post above seems plainly to read something along the following lines, stripped of its ornamentation:

"Dan, please respond to me. Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody knows that this board exists. But you're here. Please respond to me."

LOL. You have quite an imagination. I have no idea how you constructed your summary based on my comments. I really don't care whether you respond to my points or not. I don't care if you, or anyone else, takes me seriously. I don't care if nobody knows that this board exists. You seem to have me confused with someone who has serious aspirations in this field. I don't.

But I'm certainly not going to allow you to respond to my points unchallenged, and I'm certainly not going to let you go on interminably about why you won't respond to substance due to my personal flaws unchallenged.

Since you really don't want to ignore me, I suggest you just buck up and quit whining.

(PS - in case you haven't figured this out, it is in the best interest of critics when apologia contains sloppy errors. So I'm not whining and pining in the hopes that apologists will listen to me and fix their errors. I'm just pointing out those errors. I hope they continue with their current sloppiness.)

[_huckelberry]

Beastie, I am trying to imagine any reason why you would want to try and make the contacts Dan is suggesting you should. I am unaware of any convention that requires a person to get the ok of an author before expressing criticism of an authors product. I suppose you could be curious but then perhaps not really.

Dan appears to be yanking your chain just for entertainment. He is back again through that saloon swinging door.