Peterson Misleading Again

[_cksalmon]

You seem to be getting a bit overwrought. Sit down and sniff your smelling salts for a bit.

Why do you feel the instinctive need to go in for the MB kill?

I don't get it.

[_beastie]

I'm not overwrought, Daniel, I'm actually having fun with this. I think it's funny that I fell for the parody. I was dead serious when I said I tend to be gullible, and dead serious when I said it's why I joined the Mormon church. I do work on it, but I definitely slipped tonight. But it was a fun slip.

So here's the gullibility scale:

Fun and Easy to Use Gullibility Scale


1 – believing what you read on the internet
2 – buying lottery tickets
3 – believing aliens are visiting the earth
4 – believing aliens are regularly abducting mass numbers of people
5 – believing commercials tell the truth
6 – believing politicians tell the truth
7 – believing late night “get rich quick” schemes
8 – actually buying a late night “get rich quick” scheme
9 – believing a telephone psychic can give you useful information about your life
10 – paying a telephone psychic to give you the winning lottery numbers


So where would you rate “falling for Arnold’s parody” on this scale? In retrospect, I put it at a 5.

Where would I rate “believing in disappearing gold plates with reformed Egyptian on them that someone translated with a peep stone” ? 10.

[_Daniel Peterson]

You seem to be getting a bit overwrought. Sit down and sniff your smelling salts for a bit.

Why do you feel the instinctive need to go in for the MB kill?

I don't get it.

Why do you think that I feel some instinctive need to go for an "MB kill"?

Do you lack a sense of humor? Do you really imagine that I'm the vicious brute of Scratch's fantasies?

Beastie is flatly (and quite gratuitously) insulting my religious beliefs, and I respond with the message board equivalent of dipping her pigtails in an inkwell, and you think I'm being horribly cruel?

I don't get it.

But I'll try to be as somber and sober as a Puritan divine, at least for a few minutes, if it'll make you feel better about me.

(Incidentally, our shared belief in a dying and resurrecting carpenter won't fare much better on her "gullibility scale" than will my belief in modified Egyptian writing on gold plates that are not available for beastie's inspection.)

[_Trevor]

(Incidentally, our shared belief in a dying and resurrecting carpenter won't fare much better on her "gullibility scale" than will my belief in modified Egyptian writing on gold plates that are not available for beastie's inspection.)

Except that we can positively state that there were Jews in Judaea at the time of Jesus. ;-)

[_cksalmon]

You seem to be getting a bit overwrought. Sit down and sniff your smelling salts for a bit.

Why do you feel the instinctive need to go in for the MB kill?

I don't get it.

Why do you think that I feel some instinctive need to go for an "MB kill"?

Do you lack a sense of humor?

Sometimes. I just was under the impression that she already copped to the fakery.

Do you really imagine that I'm the vicious brute of Scratch's fantasies?

No.

Beastie is flatly (and quite gratuitously) insulting my religious beliefs, and I respond with the message board equivalent of dipping her pigtails in an inkwell, and you think I'm being horribly cruel?

No.

But I'll try to be as somber and sober as a Puritan divine, at least for a few minutes, if it'll make you feel better about me.

Ooh! Jonathan Edwards, please. (I would also, secondarily, accept John Owen.)

(Incidentally, our shared belief in a dying and resurrecting carpenter won't fare much better on her "gullibility scale" than will my belief in modified Egyptian writing on gold plates that are not available for beastie's inspection.)

'Tis the fate of the pre-Modern.

[_beastie]

Except that we can positively state that there were Jews in Judaea at the time of Jesus. ;-)

But there weren't any in Egypt. :O

So, Daniel, why are religious beliefs privileged in a way that other beliefs are not? Why can you delight in my gullibility by being taken in by the parody, and I'm not allowed to point out the gullibility your religious beliefs require?

Personally, I've never accepted that religious beliefs are in a special, precious, black box, labeled "keep your mean critical hands off". Religious beliefs are like any other belief - open to inspection, criticism, and, if warranted, mockery. I deserved to be mocked for falling for the parody. You deserve to be mocked for believing in disappearing gold plates written in reformed egyptian, translated by a peep stone. The only reason the resurrected Jesus is not as obviously as worthy of mockery is due to the fact that our entire culture swallows it. But yes, I think it rates right up there with your disappearing gold plates. I'm sure that makes you feel much, much better. But all it means is that you are a product of the same culture that puts "resurrected Jesus" in the black box. I mean, really. You Christians think God's or the universe's sense of justice couldn't be sated unless he agreed to allow his son to be killed? Gotta have that blood, that blood makes it all right. If only a half-god could be killed, then all would be right with the world. Yeah, that's a 10, as well as a very familiar myth.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I'm not overwrought, Daniel, I'm actually having fun with this.

So am I. And I'm sorry that CKS took it so seriously.

I think it's funny that I fell for the parody.

So do I.

So here's the gullibility scale:

Fun and Easy to Use Gullibility Scale


1 – believing what you read on the internet
2 – buying lottery tickets
3 – believing aliens are visiting the earth
4 – believing aliens are regularly abducting mass numbers of people
5 – believing commercials tell the truth
6 – believing politicians tell the truth
7 – believing late night “get rich quick” schemes
8 – actually buying a late night “get rich quick” scheme
9 – believing a telephone psychic can give you useful information about your life
10 – paying a telephone psychic to give you the winning lottery numbers

It's an amusing scale. None too scientific, I'm afraid.

So where would you rate “falling for Arnold’s parody” on this scale? In retrospect, I put it at a 5.

If you say so. I won't object.

Where would I rate “believing in disappearing gold plates with reformed Egyptian on them that someone translated with a peep stone” ? 10.

Obviously, I disagree.

It depends, to a certain extent, on background assumptions, worldviews, and supporting evidence.

Some weird and deeply counterintuitive things are nonetheless true:

Physical processes slow down on objects approaching the speed of light, such that a man on a spaceship returning to earth after ten years of travel at near light-velocity would be less than ten years older than when he left.

Everything in the universe -- every nebula, star, and galaxy -- emerged from a point far smaller than the tip of a needle several billion years ago.

Diseases really are caused by little animals that you can't see. (I cited an amusing passage on this very topic from John Stackhouse's Oxford book Humble Apologetics in a recent introduction to the FARMS Review.) Or else by little things that aren't really animals but aren't plants and aren't really alive or dead.

And so forth.

[_beastie]

Some weird and deeply counterintuitive things are nonetheless true:

Physical processes slow down on objects approaching the speed of light, such that a man on a spaceship returning to earth after ten years of travel at near light-velocity would be less than ten years older than when he left.

Everything in the universe -- every nebula, star, and galaxy -- emerged from a point far smaller than the tip of a needle several billion years ago.

Diseases really are caused by little animals that you can't see. (I cited an amusing passage on this very topic from John Stackhouse's Oxford book Humble Apologetics in a recent introduction to the FARMS Review.)

And all those things happen to have what your religious beliefs do not: empirical evidence that successfully passed the test of the scientific method. (you know, one of those things that helps save us from our gullible natures)

[_Trevor]

But there weren't any in Egypt. :O

I guess I missed the joke.

[_beastie]

I guess I missed the joke.

There really isn't any reliable empirical evidence that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt in the first place, much less saved by Moses. Silly joke.