anti-christ discussion, from middle p. 3 to end.

[Philo Sofee]

A boo-boo on your frontal lobes......

SUH-LAM DUNK on you Kiwi!!! I predict he (Kiwi the Kwiq) will come back with something lame like a high intelligent response like "Nuh-uh!"

[Lem]

I know this is gemli's thread, but where else can one note that Midgley and his wife(!) were STONED in Jerusalem? And not once, but TWICE! How they lived through it is a miracle.

....If one has not been to Israel, the fact is that stoning is very easy for anyone at all interested to doing it to someone. And while we were having a look at the garden, some kids tried hard and failed to inflict bodily harm on the Midgleys. We found it prudent to run, rather than stand our ground. We fled to the Garden of Gethsemane.

We were also stoned on another occasion...
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5189044032

I don't think I can roll my eyes further, but sheer logic obligates me to try...

[Lem]

A tender mercy for gemli....

Louis Midgley Michael Hoggan 13 hours ago

I have now thought about the request made by Michael Hoggan again, and I have changed my mind. I will cease commenting on and also responding to gemli at least until the end of December and perhaps longer. For reasons that I will not go into, I like the idea of a moratorium (or cease fire)....

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5188703879

......which lasted a mere 7 hours...

Louis Midgley gemli 6 hours ago

I suggest that gemli could actually read some intellectual history. Or gemli could read a history of Christianity, or the Roman Catholic Church, or the Protestant Reformation. He might be stunned to actually know something about first universities, or about the rise of modern science. If he had managed to actually qualify for a PhD, gemli would have had to pass a test on his reading knowledge of German and French, or Russian. The experience of having to learn a language other than what one learns in the home in which one is raised is a liberating experience.

twice...

Louis Midgley gemli 6 hours ago

...however constantly opining on sic et non, given one's dogmatic ideology, does not see pointless or strange?

Midgley's short term memory is pretty short term. I'm sure gemli understands.

[Moksha]

Our journeys through this life take many different routes, but frankly, I think We're All Bozos on this Bus.

My first clown was not Bozo, but Clarabell, because I watched Howdy Doody as a tot.

Gotta love Gemli. I remember listening to the Firesign Theater's We're All Bozos on this Bus as well. Same with Clarabell the Clown and his alter identity as Captain Kangaroo. No matter what side of the religious divide you are on, we could all appreciate Clarabell squirting Kiwi with some seltzer and giving some flowers to Lem.

[Dr Exiled]

I kinda have a soft spot for our stalker, the Midge. He is nasty to the end, even when he is losing a step. Kia ora Bro Midge.

[Moksha]

Gemli's logic will always cut through their platitudinous offerings no matter how much they jazz it up with non-applicable scholarship. Given enough time, MIT students armed with sturdy protractors can deconstruct the Harvard Divinity School brick by brick, although they might require welding tools when they reach the plumbing.

[Lem]

Gemli's on a roll...

DanielPeterson Mod > gemli • 13 hours ago

gemli: "I suspect that Christopher Hitchens was smarter, better educated, more experienced in world politics, philosophy, history and religion than both of us and any ten people you could name put together."

Oooh! Can I play?

Give me sixty seconds, and I'll name ten people who could easily hold their own in terms of intelligence, education, world political experience, philosophy, history, religion, with Christopher Hitchens.

Heck, William Lane Craig -- Ph.D. (Birmingham), D.Theol. (Munich) -- would easily make that list. Incidentally, his German is excellent. (I've heard it, and my German is . . . well, I can still sometimes persuade people that I'm a native speaker.)

gemli: "The fact that he disdained your theology is certainly cause for you to disregard him"

Bill Craig disdains my theology.

gemli: "I imagine that you've never actually listened to him speak for any length of time."

I have!

"But his command of the English language was magnificent, his knowledge of history was first-rate and his ability to rattle his opponents was a joy to behold."

He was a very skilled polemicist.

----
gemli > DanielPeterson • 3 hours ago

Ah, this is very interesting! It explains why there's such a disconnect between our world views. Anyone who thinks Craig has a superior intellect to Hitchens clearly lives in a different universe!

Of course Craig disdains your theology, but everyone disdains everyone else's theology. Fluency in German isn't a good indicator, because even German children are fluent in German. And listening to Hitchens with--I can only assume--your fingers in your ears is no way to evaluate his smarts.

So in a gesture of universal good will, I welcome you to our dimension, and hope that you will become accustomed to our strange ways.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5190017700

[Philo Sofee]

A tender mercy for gemli....

Louis Midgley Michael Hoggan 13 hours ago

I have now thought about the request made by Michael Hoggan again, and I have changed my mind. I will cease commenting on and also responding to gemli at least until the end of December and perhaps longer. For reasons that I will not go into, I like the idea of a moratorium (or cease fire)....

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5188703879

......which lasted a mere 7 hours...

Louis Midgley gemli 6 hours ago

I suggest that gemli could actually read some intellectual history. Or gemli could read a history of Christianity, or the Roman Catholic Church, or the Protestant Reformation. He might be stunned to actually know something about first universities, or about the rise of modern science. If he had managed to actually qualify for a PhD, gemli would have had to pass a test on his reading knowledge of German and French, or Russian. The experience of having to learn a language other than what one learns in the home in which one is raised is a liberating experience.

twice...

Louis Midgley gemli 6 hours ago

...however constantly opining on sic et non, given one's dogmatic ideology, does not see pointless or strange?

Midgley's short term memory is pretty short term. I'm sure gemli understands.

You almost can't even make stuff like this up......
So his commitment cannot last a mere 7 hours. That tells you why he isn't much of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints man now doesn't it........ his commitment to Jesus couldn't last out an entire 7 hours either.

[Lem]

A very serious comment from gemli.I copied it when it went up, but it has since been deleted from the SeN blog. I wonder why.

gemli DanielPeterson • 22 minutes ago
Dr. Craig's academic credentials are not at issue. He could well be a first-class scholar, but his belief in spirit beings should put an asterisk next to any claim of worldly wisdom. The disparate and generally unyielding beliefs of theists can differ in fundamental ways, and yet they'll bond together against a common enemy when their beliefs are critiqued, or when people have the temerity to ask for objective and demonstrable evidence. I must agree that listening is important, but evaluating what is heard is even more important than that.

Part of the deleted comment was somehow 'preserved,' and a SeN mod responded. Note the response was not to the difficult part of the comment. Note also that the SeN proprietor seems to know who wrote the deleted comment. Maybe he copied it over before deleting it?

DanielPeterson Mod > Guest • 9 minutes ago

gemli: "Dr. Craig's academic credentials are not at issue. He could well be a first-class scholar, but his belief in spirit beings should put an asterisk next to any claim of worldly wisdom."

At least you're open about the fact that, in your rigidly dogmatic opinion, those who disagree with you are unworthy of serious attention because they're wrong and incompetent. And you know that they're wrong and incompetent because they disagree with you.

In my universe, reasoning in a circle and begging the question are considered logical fallacies. Obviously, that principle of elementary logic doesn't hold in your universe.

http://disq.us/p/2du9kwl

There is a considerable amount of projection in that comment.

[Doctor Scratch]

The hill that DCP repeatedly insists on dying upon is this whole idea that you can be both smart/well-educated *and* you can still believe in Mormonism. So much of his life and his Mopologetics have been devoted to trying to advance that argument, and I can only guess at the depths of insecurity that are behind that particular obsession. You have to laugh, though: I mean, they are basically in a pissing match over whether William Lane Craig is smarter than Christopher Hitchens, which is the sort of argument you would expect the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons to make.