I decided to go back and clear up a bunch of your misrepresentations, Curtis (inadvertent or otherwise), in this earlier post from you (breaking Barry's Rule again; oh, well!):
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: <snip> > > You asked me to "clarify" a very straightforward comparison > > based on our views of MMY as expressed in our posts because > > you figured you could then play around with the clarification > > to make the comparison much more complicated than it really > > was, since you couldn't rebut the simple, straightforward > > case. > > And you are mindreading again. And to no one's surprise > you are reading evil in my intentions. Not "evil," just human, an instinctive protective response. > I did rebut it Nope. You "rebutted" your own elaborate reframing, not my original comparison. > and as I found out your case was neither simple nor > straightforward including concepts with a high probability > of being true that are in a sub-belief category. Which had nothing whatsoever to do with my original comparison. > I have never heard such a convoluted method for distancing > yourself from ideas that you hold to be probable. I think > it allows you to play both sides retreating to your > internal classifications when any idea is challenged. Oh I > don't really believe believe that...and so on. It may be different than the way you evaluate what are beliefs for you, but it isn't "convoluted," it's quite straightforward. See my response to Barry's dittohead agreement with your take. BTW, I might point out that you don't have to deal with the challenge of evaluating the probabilities of metaphysical premises since you dismiss them all out of hand as epistemologically unworthy. It's perhaps understandable that you see my approach as "convoluted," since it is of necessity more complex and more nuanced than yours. But that it's not as simple doesn't make it any the less straightforward or rational. And again, none of this has anything to do with my original comparison. > > You then manipulated the complications to arrive at a > > conclusion favorable to yourself that was patently absurd > > in light of the on-the-record evidence of our respective > > posts expressing our opinions of MMY. > > You are making an artificial distinction between his > personal life and his cosmic role. Since I do not > believe or even hold as a probably metaphysical > concept that he has such a role I see them as one and > the same, your view of the man Maharishi. It is a > contrived distinction and an imaginary one which > allows you to hold the contradictory views of him. Let's look a little more closely at the maneuver here. Because *you* don't believe he has any kind of "cosmic" role, therefore you feel perfectly justified in conflating *my* sense of MMY's human traits with my view of his "cosmic" role (that phrase is a significant exaggeration, but we'll let it stand for now). Somehow that turns my very balanced view of his human flaws and virtues into an extreme positive view of him purportedly equivalent to your extreme negative view of him. Talk about "contrived"! I've been explicit that I don't take whatever speculations I may have about his "cosmic" role into account when I express my views of him as a human bean. You simply don't get to import the former into the latter in order to make the latter into something as extreme on the positive side as your view of his human traits on the negative side. Even if you're correct that he had no "cosmic" role, it wouldn't change my view of his human traits one iota. It's utterly irrelevant. > I get how you use it personally but it doesn't translate > for me. That's fine. But it doesn't translate into my having an equivalently extreme view of his human traits; that's entirely unwarranted. > It also served as a tool for you to claim that your > view of him was not as positive as mine was negative > until my questions clarified that this is not the case. Your questions "clarified" nothing of the kind. I was comparing your view of his human traits with my view of his human traits. His "cosmic" role didn't enter into that comparison. You tried to shoehorn it in where it didn't belong, where it had no relevance. > And that point didn't really matter I just used it to > figure out how you were insulating certain beliefs > from critical thinking. It turns out you are making > the same move many Christian moderates make which is > actually more interesting to me. And now we get the guilt-by-association tactic... > I understand Sam Harris's concerns much better > concerning people who take make a show of being > rational while holding a class of beliefs safe > from scrutiny. Especially when it is this sub-class > of beliefs that is actually driving much of a > person's behavior as they do in your case. ...followed by ad hominem in which you denigrate my rationality. Again, see my response to Barry on this. And again, it has nothing to do with how I see MMY's human traits. <snip> > > This has been your SOP when you're challenged, Curtis, ever > > since I first encountered you. You've just gotten much more > > sophisticated in your manipulations since alt.m.t. The > > terminology of epistemology and philosophy has significantly > > expanded your obfuscation toolbox. > > The terminology of epistemology and philosophy were > actually much fresher in my mind on AMT because I had > studied it in college and then again when I left the > movement. Our discussion didn't really even scratch > the surface of the field. I can't recall your even mentioning epistemology or philosophy in our alt.m.t discussions. > Although I can never get you off the nefarious agenda > you see behind all my posts I have no idea what you think my sense of a "nefarious agenda" on your part is. Dictionary definition of "nefarious": flagrantly wicked or impious : EVIL That's just off the wall, Curtis. I've said it before and I'll say it again: When you're challenged, you typically resort to intellectually dishonest argumentation, "debating tricks," to protect your position. You do it instinctively, not with malice aforethought. How you transform that into "flagrantly wicked or impious," "evil," I can't imagine. It's either paranoid or a straw man. > I was actually trying to understand how you put your > beliefs together. I accomplished that to my own > satisfaction. You "accomplished" the understanding you wished to have, but it bears very little relationship to how I *actually* "put my beliefs together." Again, see my response to Barry. And in any case, that's an entirely different issue from the one we started with--a comparison of my view of MMY's human traits with yours. > Since understanding my point is not your agenda you > failed again to understand what my point was or why > I was making it. I think I may have understood why you were making it better than you do. And of course I *do* understand the point itself; I just disagree with it. But what I'm objecting to is the way you used it to magically transform my balanced view of MMY's human traits into one as extreme on the positive side as yours is on the negative side. That's the intellectually dishonest "debating trick" I'm calling you on. > I have accepted the limits of communicating with you > and no longer have you understanding me as one of my > goals. You would have to want to or assume I had > something valuable to say. You have plenty of valuable things to say. The way you used your understanding of how I put my beliefs together (an inaccurate understanding but not objectionable per se), in an attempt to put our respective views of MMY's human traits on the same level of extremity, wasn't one of them. > Instead you cling to a comfortable caricature of me > as a villain with a nefarious agenda. Again the ridiculous hyperbole. That's your caricature, not mine. Much easier to reject a caricature than a measured evaluation, ain't it? ----- Note: The post to Barry I referred to several times above (#253743) begins with my elaboration on the "resentment" theme. It was written and posted before I saw your post about your affection/resentment conflict; after reading it, I'd amend what I wrote to Barry in that regard along the lines of my response to your post. The part about my "beliefs" begins about a third of the way down with Barry's question, "Where's the problem with just admitting that you have beliefs?"
