"Gino" and "Christine" (For Beastie)

[_Pahoran]

Good idea.

That way, Beastie can stop cluttering up the thread with novel-length posts re-hashing old discussions that are only tangentially relevant to this one, anyway.

I am going to ask you yet again, Beastie, to try to resist the temptation to control both sides of the conversation. If you really don't think you can get anywhere without doing that, then it might be as well for you to give up now, because I am not going to let you get away with it.

My position is mine to own and elucidate, and for the second time, will you kindly refrain from cobbling together convenient pastiches of my comments and calling them "Pahoran's thesis." They are no such thing.

I draw your attention once again (since your attention appears to be wandering) to the topic of this thread, Beastie. The question is not, "Who said what to whom seven years ago," but "Is Pahoran's argument with regard to the Manna case morally equivalent to the 'Christine Jonson' [sic] argument employed by DrW?"

On that topic, I invite you to respond to my last post addressed to you. For your convenience, you will find it on the second page of the thread, sixth from the botton.

Regards,
Pahoran

Well, gee, since you won't let me use your own words from the original Z thread, there is no point, is there?

That's right. I'm glad you're starting to open your mind to the possibilities somewhat.

Think how short-lived many marital arguments would be if spouses were unable to use "historical" utterances against each other.

But apart from that, did you just admit that you've got no argument if you can't control both sides of the conversation?

You've declared that I have to ignore all the comments you made that you now prefer to ignore, and if I don't, I'm "lying".

Why do you misrepresent my position so vigorously? Can't you help yourself?

I said that you don't get to cobble together convenient pastiches out of essentially disconnected statements and pass them off as "Pahoran's thesis." Because I did not offer those statements, or any combination of them, as my "thesis" at the time.

Had I considered that my task was to formulate a "thesis," I would've course have gone about things differently.

I guess this is how you convince yourself you win.

Not at all. It's how I let you focus on stating your own position, and leave me to state mine.

It is not as if you have to work out what my position might be, based upon what I wrote at the time, Beastie. I'm right here, and I'm more than willing to set it out for you.

The context of the thread was important to highlight the fact that the thread was about two ideas: is apostasy justification for divorce, and do apostates become abusive and unbearable to their believing spouse. Your comments should be judged within that context.

But you now declare that the context of the thread is, itself, irrelevant to your comments.

Not at all. I in fact said that I have no objection whatsoever to people familiarising themselves with that context.

However, I will waste just a little bit more time on this:

Pahoran

I briefly mentioned the Manna case as merely one of a number of examples where the Church had been wrongly accused of causing a family breakup.

You mentioned the Manna case within the context of defending this categoric statement:

Pahoran, from Z

Speaking from my own experience, I have known a number of disgruntled apostates who have claimed that the Church "broke up" their marriages. In many of those cases I have obtained reliable information that it was they who broke up their marriages by their own abusive and/or unfaithful behaviour. Sometimes I have had first-hand knowledge of the fact; and in every case, their own spiteful and abusive attitude towards the Church of Jesus Christ has provided persuasive evidence that for a believing Latter-day Saint, being forced to live with them would be hell on earth.

Notice you were clearly talking about apostates.

Notice also that I was clearly talking about people I personally knew. I did not personally know Mr Manna, nor did I claim to know him.

Therefore, when I mentioned the Manna case, I was not then speaking specifically and only about the exact wording of that statement. I was speaking to my general view that the Church is wrongly blamed for such events.

And before you resort to your usual thinly veiled insinuations of dishonesty, just remember that it was your idea to delve into lawyerly dissections of the exact meanings of words.

I challenged you with:

So just what, then, are you basing this categoric statement on? What are your sources of information, if not the parties involved? And just how many cases are you so knowledgeable of that you feel comfortable making this categoric assumption?

You responded:

Sorry to burst your bubble, but when apostates decide to malign the Church by falsely accusing it of breaking up their marriages, they do not usually confine their slanders to confidential disclosures that I would only learn if I were the close personal confidant of each one of them. Rather, they tend to broadcast these accusations quite promiscuously. Ed Decker is a rather well-known case in point--he made this accusation almost as promiscuously as he lived his personal life. However, his much-maligned ex-wife reports that her bishop kept encouraging her to forgive him and stick by him through all his string of affairs, and even after he fell away from the Church. Which not only refutes Ed, but it has added credibility (not that it needs it--Ed has negative credibility, which means that his disagreeing with any assertion adds weight to the claim that it is true) because it is consistent with the clear, unequivocal and emphatic policy of the Church.

But I do not rest my categorical statement upon that case alone. I know of many others. One occurred in my own family. Another occurred in a family I home-taught. Still another happened in a matter where I sat on the disciplinary council. One rather notorious case happened when I lived in Australia, wherein the apostate husband murdered his wife and children, then burned the house down with them in it. In that particular case, the bishop in question did in fact finally advise the wife to leave her increasingly abusive husband, but she didn't move quickly enough.

Notice again, you are talking about apostates and their bad behavior which destroys their marriages while they blame the church. The only apostate in the Manna case was the mentally ill Manna. As you stated to Dr. W:

Mentally ill people do irrational things. In an effort to make some sense of their own irrational acts, they attempt to explain them in terms of their beliefs, but they do irrational things because their minds aren't working properly.

Yes, and?

I have patiently waded through all of that to see how what I previously said materially changes anything. It doesn't.

I already admitted that I could, and should, have been more clear on that occasion. I said "apostates" when I should have said "apostates and/or anti-Mormons and/or others unjustly criticising the Church." Or something like that.

Note that when I made that admission, you were exactly as ungracious as I would expect you to be. Instead of simply accepting my clarification and moving on, you seized upon it, and have been making sarcastic little asides about it ever since.

That's why I don't believe that you would be very willing to admit that you are wrong, Beastie. Since you yourself respond to such admissions by being petty and vindictive, you naturally expect others to do the same to you; if for no other reason than that you have so richly earned it.

Why don't you try it anyway? You may be pleasantly surprised.

Pahoran

No part of my argument relied upon misrepresenting Gino Manna's irrational actions as the normal or logical product of apostate/ex-Mormon/anti-Mormon beliefs or practices. At no time did I state or imply that apostates/ex-Mormons/anti-Mormons are somehow prone to murderous rampages.

I didn't say you stated or implied that. I said that you have a history of associating the worst of human behavior with apostates. Do you actually deny this?

Sigh. Item two of the first list is juxtaposed to item two of the second list. I'm contrasting my argument to DrW's.

Recall, yet again, that the topic is not "Is Pahoran mean to apostates." It is "Are Pahoran and DrW making morally equivalent arguments."

Try to focus, Beastie. You seem to be having trouble with that.

Pahoran

On the contrary, Gino's mental illness (and abandonment of his medication) provides sufficient explanation for all his actions. This actually reinforced my point about the causes of the tragedy not being found in the teachings of the Church or the actions of those of its members who are making a good-faith effort to follow those teachings.

You are persistently ignoring what your own words demonstrate to be part of the argument you were making: that apostates are actually blaming the church while they engage in abusive behavior.

While you are persistenly ignoring the fact that I pointed this out to you years ago.

Whose position are we discussing, Beastie?

Whose position is it to elucidate, Beastie?

And furthermore, the entire thrust of my argument was to defend the Church of Jesus Christ against calumny, not to calumniate anyone else. Granted that my defence may well have been worded in terms that criticised attackers for making such attacks (and I see nothing wrong with having done so) the fact remains that my argument was defensive, i.e. apologetic (in the classic sense) and not offensive, i.e. polemical.

You see nothing wrong with having done so. And yet you don't want to be held accountable to those same words while judging whether or not you exploited a tragedy caused by mental illness to score your point (by the way, polemics can be defensive, but who would argue that your characterization of apostates was defensive???) When being judged for whether or not your use of the Manna case was exploitative, you will only be held accountable for "people who blame the church for the dissolution of a marriage are invariably wrong" (depending on your hypertechnical use of "the church", of course) and you refuse to be held accountable for all the statements you made within your argument accusing apostates of all sorts of vile behavior. There was only one person in the Manna case engaged in vile behavior, since you now concede that Joseph cannot be so castigated. That one person was Manna, and his vile behavior was caused by mental illness.

Just like Christine's.

And DrW argued -- strenuously -- that "Christine's" irrational actions were caused directly by a "logical" understanding of LDS doctrine.

I did not argue anything parallel about Gino's irrational actions. If anyone's argument with regard to Gino's actions is in any way parallel to the Wertlos argument, it was Joseph Manna's.

Note above when I wrote:

No part of my argument relied upon misrepresenting Gino Manna's irrational actions as the normal or logical product of apostate/ex-Mormon/anti-Mormon beliefs or practices. At no time did I state or imply that apostates/ex-Mormons/anti-Mormons are somehow prone to murderous rampages.

You then rather snarkily replied:

I didn't say you stated or implied that.

And I didn't say you said I stated or implied that. But DrW did both state and imply that accepting LDS teaching logically leads to murderous rampages.

And that one fact alone -- which fact you have explicitly admitted -- means that our two arguments are not morally equivalent.

And thus I am cleared of the charge of "hypocrisy" you keep trying to pin on me.

Thank you.

Regards,
Pahoran

[_beastie]

I have one question for you before I wrap this up (I have wasted just about enough time on this inanity as I plan to):

According to LDS theology, are Christine's children in the Celestial Kingdom?

[_DrW]

I have one question for you before I wrap this up (I have wasted just about enough time on this inanity as I plan to):

According to LDS theology, are Christine's children in the Celestial Kingdom?

An on point and insightful question. When all is said and done, this is what really matters.

I await Pahoran's novel length response with rapt anticipation.

[_Pahoran]

I have one question for you before I wrap this up (I have wasted just about enough time on this inanity as I plan to):

According to LDS theology, are Christine's children in the Celestial Kingdom?

No. According to LDS theology, they're in the spirit world, awaiting the resurrection.

An on point and insightful question. When all is said and done, this is what really matters.

I await Pahoran's novel length response with rapt anticipation.

Since that's "what really matters," what's your response now?

Regards,
Pahoran

[_beastie]

No. According to LDS theology, they're in the spirit world, awaiting the resurrection.

An on point and insightful question. When all is said and done, this is what really matters.

And after the resurrection, will Christine's children be in the Celestial Kingdom?

[_Black Moclips]

Not to butt in, but I would say they would be in the spirit world awaiting their Celestial resurrection.

[_Pahoran]

No. According to LDS theology, they're in the spirit world, awaiting the resurrection.

And after the resurrection, will Christine's children be in the Celestial Kingdom?

Yes.

And so, it is understandable that a person who is mentally impaired, for whatever reason, might find in that a plausible explanation for having killed her children.

Now Beastie, I've answered two questions of yours, and you've not responded to much of mine lately. So I think it's about your turn, wouldn't you say?

DrW has a thing about "unintended consequences." Suppose some depressed/suicidal or otherwise impaired parent comes across this thread, reads DrW's argument and is impressed by it, to the extent that she thinks, "Before I top myself I'll do my kids in to make sure they go to heaven." After all, if she's thinking irrationally, she wouldn't even need to be LDS to make that connection. Would DrW then have to take responsibility for the "unintended consequences" of his calculated demagoguery?

We all know that the intended consequence is to make underinformed people think ill of the Church of Jesus Christ, and to bignote himself at the same time; that's what demagoguery is all about. But since his intentions are completely malicious, shouldn't he be responsible for whatever arises? Keep in mind that the hypothetical parent is not LDS, so is therefore fully human even by DrW's standards.

Regards,
Pahoran

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hello,

Wow. Mr. Pahoran just gave moral justification to a Psychopath to kill his/her children.

Insane.

V/R
Dr. Cam

[_Pahoran]

Hello,

Wow. Mr. Pahoran just gave moral justification to a Psychopath to kill his/her children.

Insane.

V/R
Dr. Cam

Really? What "moral justification" was that?

Are you referring to this sentence?

And so, it is understandable that a person who is mentally impaired, for whatever reason, might find in that a plausible explanation for having killed her children.

In what dictionary -- in what universe -- is "plausible explanation" synonymous with "moral justification?"

And you do know that "having killed" is a past participle, don't you?

Perhaps you'd like to look up "past participle" and find out what it means.

Whatever the faults of the posts in this thread, there is actually some substantive discussion going on. Since you don't seem to have any of that to offer, I recommend you take your silly one-liners to another thread.

Regards,
Pahoran

[_beastie]

beastie

Well, gee, since you won't let me use your own words from the original Z thread, there is no point, is there?

Pahoran:

That's right. I'm glad you're starting to open your mind to the possibilities somewhat.

Think how short-lived many marital arguments would be if spouses were unable to use "historical" utterances against each other.

But apart from that, did you just admit that you've got no argument if you can't control both sides of the conversation?

So quoting your very words from the original thread constitutes my attempt to “control both sides of the conversation?????

This is utterly bizarre. We are discussing the argument you made years ago on Z, and comparing it to the argument Dr W made in the past, as well. These are both past events. And yet, somehow, you cry “foul” when I quote your own words????? At least now I understand why you said, in response to me quoting your own words

Pahoran, after beastie quoted his own words

So now you're going to take it upon yourself to tell me(!) what my(!) argument was.

Actually my argument is what I say it is (and always was.) We've done this discussion before, Beastie, and as I recall even you were ultimately forced to admit that it was the case.

!!!!!!!!

I scarcely know what to say.

For one thing I wasn’t “forced” admit that was the case. I decided to accept your insistence that you meant one thing, although your fuzzy and imprecise language clearly conveyed an entirely different thing. I was tired of fussing with you, as I am now, and didn’t see the point to continuing, so I let it go. But you admitting that you used fuzzy and imprecise language that confused your point is hardly the equivalent of me being “forced” to admit anything.

Since you brought up marital arguments, I can just imagine what kind of person would benefit from this sort of fiat. “You are forbidden to use historical utterances against me.”

Wife: “I want to see a counselor. You are verbally abusive to me and I want it to stop.”
Husband: “We don’t need a counselor and I’m not verbally abusive to you.”
Wife: “I think it’s verbally abusive when you call me names (cites example from the past), belittle me, (cites example from past) and scream at me (cites example from the past).
Husband: “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BRING UP HISTORICAL EVENTS. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL BOTH SIDES OF THE CONVERSATION. ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT I SAY TODAY ABOUT MY BEHAVIOR, AND I AM NOT VERBALLY ABUSIVE.’

Sweet. It’s like your own personal gaslight.

How in the world can we possibly have a discussion (which you whined for) about what you said in the past if I can’t mention what you said in the past.????

Pahoran

While you are persistenly ignoring the fact that I pointed this out to you years ago.

Whose position are we discussing, Beastie?

Whose position is it to elucidate, Beastie?

Discussing and elucidating does not mean that one can simply ignore the words that have been said and their meaning. By all means, if your current position is different than your past position, say as much.

Pahoran

And I didn't say you said I stated or implied that. But DrW did both state and imply that accepting LDS teaching logically leads to murderous rampages.

And that one fact alone -- which fact you have explicitly admitted -- means that our two arguments are not morally equivalent.

And thus I am cleared of the charge of "hypocrisy" you keep trying to pin on me..

Wow, how shocking. Pahoran clears himself of the charge. Imagine that.

My argument is not that you are a hypocrite because your arguments are morally equivalent.

My argument is that you are a hypocrite because you both used a tragedy caused by mental illness to make your respective points. And when Dr. W did that, you expressed moral outrage. I believe I’ve clarified that repeatedly.

I only delved into the details of your argument and the Manna case to try to demonstrate that it wasn’t even a good fit as an example to support your argument. The fact that you have responded by “clarifying” that you never meant certain things you clearly said in your primary argument, and that other things weren’t part of your “thesis” but just the ebb and flow of conversation, as well as the fact that you’ve had to resort to excusing your fuzzy and imprecise language as well as invoking hyper-technical definitions leads me to suspect that, underneath all the protests, you really did understand my point after all.

by the way, Joseph probably wasn’t even completely wrong if he blamed the church for his brother’s worsening symptoms. (If, however, he blamed the church for creating his sickness to begin with, that was completely wrong, obviously.) As Baker said earlier:

It is a dangerous thing to lead a schizophrenic person to believe that the voice in his/her head is that of the lord or the holy ghost. I've seen examples of bizarre experiences being recounted by mentally ill members on home teaching visits and in testimony meetings. In my experience, these people are often left to their delusions so long as the experiences motivate them to continue belief in the church. There are times when the magical aspects of the faith can become all too real to those incapable of applying a certain degree of skepticism to their own religious experiences.

That said, to call these incidents the fault of the church would effectively render religion in general for everything done in its name, no matter what other factors may be at play. To me, that's a bit like blaming video games and heavy metal for the crazed, murderous rampages of those that espouse them.

It’s not the church’s fault that they happen to teach something that could be dangerous to schizophrenics, but Joseph’s accusation still could actually have been at least somewhat correct. Even the neighbors alluded to as much.

Pahoran

Yes.

And so, it is understandable that a person who is mentally impaired, for whatever reason, might find in that a plausible explanation for having killed her children.

Now Beastie, I've answered two questions of yours, and you've not responded to much of mine lately. So I think it's about your turn, wouldn't you say?

DrW has a thing about "unintended consequences." Suppose some depressed/suicidal or otherwise impaired parent comes across this thread, reads DrW's argument and is impressed by it, to the extent that she thinks, "Before I top myself I'll do my kids in to make sure they go to heaven." After all, if she's thinking irrationally, she wouldn't even need to be LDS to make that connection. Would DrW then have to take responsibility for the "unintended consequences" of his calculated demagoguery?

We all know that the intended consequence is to make underinformed people think ill of the Church of Jesus Christ, and to bignote himself at the same time; that's what demagoguery is all about. But since his intentions are completely malicious, shouldn't he be responsible for whatever arises? Keep in mind that the hypothetical parent is not LDS, so is therefore fully human even by DrW's standards.

Now, keep in mind that I have argued against Dr. W’s use of this example because it is fundamentally flawed. Yet, at the same time, one must admit that, in fact, Christine did achieve her goal, didn’t she? So there is some element of truth therein, albeit burdened by the flaws.

In the same manner, there is a nugget of truth in your assertion that Joseph unfairly blamed the church for his brother’s problems, with the concession that this particular religious belief may not have been helpful to his schizophrenia. However, as your retreat to “fuzzy and imprecise” language and “you can’t quote me on the original thread” and hyper-technical definition of “the church” shows, the nugget of truth is overshadowed by all the flaws.

In the end, I conclude that both you and Dr. W used a tragedy to demonstrate your points when the tragedy didn’t really demonstrate your point that well, due to the burdens of the example. Yet you both chose to use the tragedy, nonetheless. That’s why you were a hypocrite to so harshly criticize him for having done so.