Who asked you to care? Don't read it. :idunno:
Who cares? I do. When someone doesn't set out something with my name attached to it correctly I'm going to correct the mistake. Else, I guess AB and zip, since they were the ones talking about it.
But if someone truly doesn't believe he is a lawyer, why would that convince him?
The question should be, is it reasonable to hold that opinion? And if it isn't, why is it being held?
There is no proof in any of it, is there?
To a reasonable man there is reason to believe, to apply a razor and come to the most likely result even absent documentation, more so given that documentation is offered.
And the attestation is by no means from mutually respected sources.
Look, Sod could say the only source he respects/believes is himself. Doesn't make it reasonable. A man of God, a man of good and long standing has given his attestation on the point. It's unreasonable to suspect that evidence without some substantive argument in support of the doubt.
Some seem to be saying, "Sod you are a coward because you won't make this wager." That seems to me to be poor reasoning, and I laid out why above.
I think it reduces, more accurately, to a demonstration that he lacks the courage of what he passes as his conviction but is, to anyone seriously examining his record, only a continuation of a poor method.
But since you just scrupulously dissected that in unthinking disagreement,
Rather I honestly corrected a mistakenly or intentionally skewed misrepresentation of the dispute.
why not just cut to the chase? Why does sod dislike you so much? Where are the roots?
I've set that out more than once over the length of our differences. Anyone following much of our disagreement should know that. Anyone not possessing that degree of familiarity with our exchanges doesn't likely have enough of an understanding of what and why to speak intelligently to it. It makes them much more likely to grab the tail of it the elephant and believe they have a snake.
a. Because sod is evil and you are good.
I don't subscribe to that point of view. I'd put it this way, because long ago I disagreed with his race baiting, mistakenly went to him as a friend and called for him to be and do better than that and when he refused declared my intent to oppose him on that whenever I noted it. It went downhill quickly, beginning with his easy transition from declaring my opposition "game playing" to crying retard and culminating in the ever popular, "Seek Christ" attack on the sincerity of my faith.
He's already begun doing much the same to others who've taken strong stands against his practice. So it isn't a question of me reading in as a practice. He's recently called bybee a pretend Christian. Anna had that treatment a while ago. He eventually does that to people who insist on speaking against his methodology. I simply got there a few years ago. So it's a longer, deeper anger with me. And there may be an element attached to my profession, which plays a role in his "pretend" business and also surfaced in a long, strident attack on that profession prior to finding that note. Or it may be something simpler, an anger fueled by my habit of cutting at that practice with sarcastic humor.
No one likes to be laughed at. No one likes to be insulted. And responding to a low, crude insult with a humorous, sarcastic barb may not be as malicious, but it's likely as or more wounding.
b. Because something in you is disagreeable and particularly sour to sod.
Supra.
Last I checked, TOL is split on the issue.
Depends on how loosely you're using the term. I know a lot of people were tired of the feud, but I don't know how many people followed most of it, so many missed the worst of what he had to offer. Some of them have had an education on that in this incarnation, given the Balzacian outpouring of angry one offs (frequently approaching a hundred in a day) has given many here, like bybee or our mutual friend, a real eye opening.
Given I haven't called his faith into question, given I have both forgiven his treatment of me and professed my belief that he could and should have a powerful witness here, that I stand ready and desirous of us having the relation that those in Christ should have and given that TOL is a mostly Christian affair, I'd hope most would be pulling for my hope and be able to distinguish it from his incessant method.
I think the answer is fairly obvious, though not uncomplicated. You don't give (b) near enough attention.
I expect you'd think that. But you have a habit of missing the mark when you try to state my part. You miss it here.
And I don't think sod takes his own sin in this debacle at all seriously enough. Defaming or inciting someone is a serious sin, and cannot be used as a means to any end.
I suspect he's working out a frustration that is neatly summed in me and/or in my profession, compounding his normal response to opposition on principle and taking it, between us, to absurd levels.
We were friends for a good while. The difference began with that stand.
Dostoyevsky's paradox placed in the mouth of Alyosha Karamazov is quite right, "No, I was the cause of it all, I am terribly to blame!" Grace gave him the sight to see that fact. I continue to hope that you will both see it soon.
I find fault in how I objected, but I was right to object. I find fault in how long it took me to forgive and to extend a hand of reconciliation, but I note his determination to continue regardless and wonder if it would have mattered. I don't believe it would. I don't see him responding to much more careful and long suffering attempts by some I've already mentioned who are already being treated to the edge of his contempt for opposition.
So forgiveness and a call to the better angel in him results in being told Satan is speaking through me and that though I profess Christ I lack Christ. When someone is that deeply entrenched in their anger you can't reach them. Then it belongs to God.
I've put Sod on ignore. Unlike my prior efforts, absent some reason to believe he has relented in his practice and desires the relationship Christ would have between us, I will never undo it. It may be the kindest thing I can do for him.
