Reply #175: My response...

[arwalden]

For one thing, I honestly don't know how to communicate with you. I think you assume that whatever I say or how I say it is deliberate and comes with masked intentions when it doesn't.

Surely that must be the fault of the reader and not the writer, eh?

I don't know if you just personally dislike me, or if you just have a complete lack of concern about how what your posts makes others feel. It could just all be little more than basic amusement to be rude and condescending.

I'm unaware of any personal feelings I may have towards you, one way or the other.

Or maybe you feel I am rude or condescending or other things. I think you called me arrogant up there somewhere, so perhaps that's it.

I did not call anyone arrogant. Please do not put words into my mouth (I've seen this happen before to another skeptic in this very thread). What I said was that the meandering hyperbole comes off as haughty and being a know-it-all. (I did find it slightly amusing that the opportunity was not missed to correct my description and let me know that technically speaking, it was not a "run-on-sentence".)

But you know what? The fact remains that at no point, in all our conversations before today or today, have you ever demonstrated the willingness to give me even the smallest benefit of the doubt, nor even the slightest willingness to try and come together - even a little bit - at any point.

Frankly, I don't see that as being any sort of personal flaw. You obviously want me to "concede" that it's not the responsibility of the positive claimant to provide evidence that supports their claim. That is not, has not been, and NEVER WILL BE the case.

I think you've made an awful lot of assumptions about me that aren't true.

Like what? Maybe... your mind reading skills?

I write the way I write, because it is the person that I am, for better or worse - its the way I think.

And it's an astonishing insight into how your mind works. Thanks for the explanation.

I write too much because I think too much and say too much. I think about concepts and argue semantics because I'm analytical both for a living and by nature.

Well now that you mention it that is not by any means intended to deny or refute that if one thinks about it and ponders the possibility that the distinct possibility exists for some but not to grasp the meaning when read or viewed with ordinary common-sense that sometimes isn't so common and that the obviousness of the words in certain situations might be if not ought to be but not necessarily would have to be taken in context of the whole discussion that had come before but not after we have all examined the distinct possibility if not certainty or absoluteness that most if not all reasonable and rational people or human beings with would realize or recognize that what had come before but not after could use their cognitive abilities if properly honed and could imagine someone not unlike yourself using thirty or fifty or more redundant words arguing some mundane and irrelevant point about what the possible definition or meaning of what the word "assert" or "believe" is and how playing such distracting word games that over-analyze to the point of absurdity and that attempt to determine the impact the different varying interpretations and definitions and what other possible effects any alternate viewpoints however unlikely or unreasonable might have on how some independent and heretofore uninterested reader's perception of the events that had previously taken place or ocurred and that might possibly conceivably under some circumstances cause such person or persons to interpret or misinterpret the meaning of the original writer that ordinary rational people have no difficulty in comprehending or understanding in your realm such mundane words take on a whole new meaning.

Oh sure! THAT's productive.

I suppose some folks flatter themselves by thinking of themselves as being "philosophical" when in reality it's merely nit-picking.

I'm rarely trying to do much more than analyze the merits of a logical thought progression and raise questions.

Uh-huh... everything EXCEPT sticking to the actual subject at hand. And look where it's gotten you.

I never intended for you to take my original comment personally - to me it was just a statement of a truism that would just as good for me to remember as anyone else -- half the reason I wrote it was as a self-reminder.

Try post-its!

I have to confess, I actually did not expect your response to be anything other that agreement with what seemed to me to be an obvious truism. I am naive like that.

Hmmm. No comment.

I don’t know what it is that causes your every response to me to be deliberately insulting and disingenuous -- I mean you really work at it, hard.

No harder than one might do to write haughty sounding words.

Dissecting every phrase to make sure you can get the maximum number of insulting and disparaging responses squeezed in. I don't think there is any statement I could ever make, no matter what it was, that would meet with your satisfaction.

That's completely untrue. Now you're just feeling sorry for yourself.

Even now you've created this thing in me where I think, "he'll probably mock me for being self-pitying or say that I'm arrogant for writing so much."

I never said you were "arrogant".

I can't go around trying to meet your standards of perfect delivery in order to communicate with you in an adult fashion.

Whatever standards I have are my own. Not yours.

You can do whatever you want with this, or take it however you like, but I am in fact sincerely sorry for whatever I did to create such blatant disdain and hostility on your part to whatever I say.

Thank you.

I don't feel like our communication is ever fair - it is basically little more than you taking the opportunity to beat me around with rude and snide comments, for apparently little other reason than you just don't like me very much.

I am unaware of any personal feelings I may have towards you, one way or the other.

Therefore, it seems clear to me however that we are not capable of having a positive discussion on anything. Maybe that fault is mine. But even if it is some failing on my part that I don't fully understand, the fact remains that our conversations are nothing but opportunities for you to be rude and patronizing no matter what I could possibly say. So I guess I won’t continue talking with you.

Whatever. That's not my decision to make.

Sorry to leave it this way, but I hope you have a good night and a happy tomorrow.

Okay, no need to be sorry about that. Goodbye.

-- Allen

P.S. Those making the affirmative claim that something exists *always* have the burden of proof. It's not up to atheists to prove that deities or an afterlife doesn't exist... it's up to the people who claim these things do exist to provide evidence that supports their claims.