From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: Spreading Christianity (Re: Christian Extremist Kills Doctor)
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Lines: 146

Most of the key issues in the 284 line post to which I am following up are
dealt with in the following post I made on talk.abortion yesterday,
modified to correct the next to last paragraph.

Message-ID: <nyikos.734890344@milo.math.scarolina.edu>

References: <nyikos.734360987@milo.math.scarolina.edu> <nyikos.734640769@milo.math.scarolina.edu> <1993Apr13.122356.3612@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>

In <1993Apr13.122356.3612@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz) writes:

>In article <nyikos.734640769@milo.math.scarolina.edu>, nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>> In <CS132073.93Apr9160836@cslab1g.cs.brown.edu> cs132073@cs.brown.edu (John Bates) writes:
>> 
>> >In article <nyikos.734360987@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>> > perhaps out
>> >of dedication to your convictions. I never, *never*, thought that you
>> >would be consciously intellectually dishonest, though.
>> 
>> I am not.  Can you show me anything that would lead you to think 
>> otherwise?

>See the "Spreading Christianity" thread, in which he says I
>ignore certain statements that I specifically acknowledged and

Dean did not.  He called them "the Great Commission" but this is NOT
descriptive of Jesus's words in Matt. 10:15.

Matt. 10:14, Jerusalem Bible translation:

	"And if anyone does not welcome you or listen to what you have
	to say, as you walk out of the house or town shake the dust
	from your feet."

Matt. 10:15:

 	"I tell you solemnly, on the day of Judgment it will not 
 	go as hard with the land of Sodom and Gomorrah as with 
 	that town."

In the post to which Dean is referring above, I said:

"> The above is a good description of Kaflowitz, who keeps harping on
 > shaking the dust off the feet but ignoring what Christ said next."
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                                ^^^^

The highlighted words refer to Matt 10:14 and 10:15 respectively.

And Dean countered:

"Actually, this comment of your's is a perfect example of what an
intellectually dishonest little sparrowfart you are, since I
specifically acknowledged the Great Commission and the entreaty
to spread the word.  In fact, it is the combination of the two
statements I was addressing, and not just the one, and for you to
characterize that as "ignoring" the instruction to spread the
word is a good example of what a dishonest little fellow you are."

Of course, Matt 10:15 [quoted above] makes no mention of "instruction
to spread the word."

All these quotes btw are from:

Message-ID: <1993Apr13.121624.3400@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>

>in which, at the end, he claims I did not answer a question
>which I answered, and which he deleted (to get the chronology
>right, he deleted the answer and then said I didn't answer).

And I claim it correctly, because my question went:

"Do you, too, measure
the goodness of a post by its entertainment value, and care not
a whit for such mundane things as truth and falsehood?"

and the closest Dean came to an answer was:

"Peter, Peter, Peter.  You're just so stupid, pretentious, dull,
and generally unworthy of the value you place on yourself that
the sport is all there is."

Of course, this does NOT answer my question, which has to do with posts
in GENERAL and not my posts in particular.  Surely even Dean knows this,
yet he brazenly asserts otherwise, reinforcing his claim with an insult:

"So I now restore the answer to your question
that you deleted.  If you're still unable to figure it out, ask
a nice kid at the local junior high to help you.  It really
doesn't take much sophistication to understand."

On top of which, I doubt that the "answer" is at all representative
of Dean's true frame of mind.  The insults you have seen quoted thus
far are but a small sample of the stream that oozes out of Dean's 
mind throughout the 284-line post from which these quotes were taken.
One wonders whether Dean's mind is so warped as to find sport in all
this.

He even dredges up a falsified account of
events that transpired earlier on another thread:

"You made an ass of yourself by claiming that it
				^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
was in the tradition of Lent to make public announcements of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
the "sins" of other individuals."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

False.  I said it was the tradition to recall and atone for one's sins.
That I made public announcements of the "sins" of others
--"sins", BTW, that were a matter of public record, documented in
the posts of others-- is a different matter.

Many of the individuals involved are so nearly amoral that
they do not see as sins what morally upright people see as sins, so
I pointed some of them out.  And I expressly set up a whole thread,
YOUR TURN, to let people point out MY sins to me.

Dean again:

"You made an ass of yourself
by saying that my statement of the tradition of tzedukkah was
somehow an attempt to "paint Jews as plaster saints," thereby
revealing your inability to understand the discussion as well
as showing your dislike for people saying positive things
about Jews, and now you show your intellectual dishonesty by
repeatedly ignoring the simple argument being made, and then
claiming I am ignoring the very argument I acknowledge."

Actually, what happened was that Dean made it seem like ANY Jew
who gave alms or did other acts of charity in public was a hypocrite
according to Jewish customs.  In doing so, he was caricaturing
Jewish customs as being almost impossibly demanding, as well as
implicitly slandering all Jews who make public their acts of charity.

I went very easily on Dean for this, giving him the benefit of
the doubt in a post following my initial crack about "plaster saints", 
suggesting that he had been merely careless in his wording.

In an astonishing act of ingratitude, Dean now serves up an incredibly
distorted picture of what took place between us, and using it as
the basis of one insult after another.

Peter Nyikos




