In a message dated 3/9/99 3:56:51 AM Central Standard Time, proftim@speakeasy.org writes:
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You haven't even offered enough of yourself here to even be wrong, much less right.
<< I hold my primary assumptions on faith and I believe faith is good. So my ideals are not in conflict with one another, they are consistent one to another.>>
If you hold reason and rationality as a primary value, which I would assume by your indignant demands that I rationally criticize some of my assumptions (and which I would find difficult to see how one couldn't and continue to exist as a human in our civilization), then it would HAVE to be in conflict with the holding of anything on faith.
<<You hold reason and rational scrutiny as ideals, yet still (again, in this post as well, to my chagrin and dismay) refuse to apply them to your own primary assumptions.>>
It is difficult to engage in rational criticism of primary assumptions with somebody else who doesn't hold their own primary assumptions likewise in principle subjectable to rational criticism. If you wish to rail against me for refusing to publicly think not only for myself, but by myself as well, while you stand aloof and dissect somebody else's ideas without engaging your own, . . . well so be it. Mental masturbation only goes so far for me, and I usually prefer to do those things in the privacy of my own mind. If this is going to be public, it would need to be mutual for it to be worth something to me. I am sorry, I am just not going to put on a show for you if you are only going to play the role of critical voyeur, your chagrin and dismay not withstanding.
<<One of us lacks internal consistency in the practice of our ideals. I wish you well in your practices.>>
I assume that you are indicating me. That is always a possibility that I consider. I would suggest, my gentle dismayed friend, that it is more likely that there are two of us that lack internal consistency in the practice of our ideals. However one of us does so deliberately and intentionally by holding "articles of faith" that are in principle not subjectable to rational criticism. The other may do so unintentionally by failing to completely put into practice what he holds in principle.
I certainly welcome opportunities that seriously challenge me to this practice, unfortunately this one just didn't hold much promise to be anything more than a performance for a disengaged bystander. My brief to-the-point exchanges with Richard were far more fruitful than the boring drawn-out one man exhibition that you seemed to be requesting. Even though Reed may get annoying with his all-over-the-landscape unrefined ramblings, and even though he has spent considerable time pricking, annoying, and intentionally aggravating others, he has been far more engaging than you have been.
-Jake