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His words will be in blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n I had already established beyond all doubt from his own words<\/a> \u2014 three months ago \u2014 that Seidensticker (who runs the popular Cross Examined<\/em><\/a> blog at Patheos) is one of the distressingly common condescending atheists<\/a>, who thinks Christians are (on the whole or generalizing) dishonest, hateful, infantile, anti-evidential (\u201cChristians might sidestep that whole evidence and argument thing\u201d<\/span>: 7-31-18<\/a>), anti-scientific, anti-intellectual fools and simpletons, who worship a morally atrocious \u201cgod.\u201d I discuss the phenomenon of the \u201cangry atheist\u201d ad how this wrecks dialogue, at length in my Discussion Policy<\/a> post.<\/p>\n He has proven it all the more with recent posts. In his latest post<\/a> (yesterday), he wrote: \u201cChristianity supports hateful social policy . . .\u201d<\/span> Like many atheists, he takes the epistemologically naive and stunted view of scientism: that science is the only legitimate means of knowledge. Hence he stated four days ago<\/a>: \u201cScience is the only discipline that tells us new things about reality.\u201d\u00a0He engages in the tired, slanderous \u201cpie-in-the-sky\u201d polemical schtick in a post from July 31st<\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [T]he Christian worldview is the one that devalues life. Of what value is tomorrow to the Christian when they imagine they\u2019ll have a trillion tomorrows? What value are a few short years here on earth when they have eternity in heaven? . . .\u00a0a shell of a life, with real life waiting for you in the hereafter . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Christians are essentially dishonest and reality-denying (post of 7-27-18<\/a>):<\/p>\n Apologists imagine God belief as this kind of obtuse puzzle, not because the evidence points that way but because they\u2019re forced to. They have no choice, . . . Unwilling to give up their beliefs or to admit that they\u2019ve been wrong, they<\/span>\u00a0assume God<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0double down on faith<\/strong><\/a>, and invent these bizarre\u00a0<\/span>rationalizations<\/strong><\/a>. . . . A loving creator god who desired a relationship with his creation would just make himself known. We have insufficient evidence to overcome the default hypothesis, that God is yet another made-up supernatural being.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s an example of how he caricatures and savages God Himself: (7-25-18):<\/p>\n Consider the Mr. Hyde Christians make for their god and notice the childish dependency. . . .\u00a0Let\u2019s imagine that a child from a Christian household dies in an \u201cact of God\u201d sort of way. Maybe it\u2019s leukemia or a birth defect or just an accident. If that family finds comfort in the belief that this was all part of God\u2019s plan, they\u2019ve now created a new problem: they\u2019ve made God into a heartless jerk. This just turns one problem into another.\u00a0Why can\u2019t God get what he wants done without killing people? He\u2019s morally perfect, so he\u2019d\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0to avoid killing people, and he\u2019s omnipotent, so he is\u00a0able<\/em>\u00a0to achieve his purposes without killing people<\/span> (more<\/a>). And yet he still kills people. Is \u201cMy god is a jerk\u201d really easier to live with\u00a0 . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the same paper he pulls out the ancient, idiotic \u201cChristians are gullible and infantile\u201d card:<\/p>\n But as she becomes an adult, she must grow up. We leave behind wishing wells, Santa Claus, blankies, and other false comforts as we become independent. No longer are the necessities of life given to us; as adults, we must fend for ourselves\u2014indeed, we\u00a0want<\/em>\u00a0to fend for ourselves. Religion infantilizes adults and keeps them dependent. That\u2019s a good thing for the 100-billion-dollar-a-year U.S. religion industry, but what is best for the individual\u2014a pat on the head and an unevidenced promise of the supernatural, or reality? . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Do people get a dose of some neuropeptide when they curl into a fetal position and have Mommy take care of them? . . .\u00a0You don\u2019t need to be born again; you need to grow up. Christianity infantilizes its devotees. Putting faith in God has never produced anything. [Dave: of course<\/em> not!: only trifling things like colleges, hospitals, modern science, the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, most of the great art and music (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.) and a host of other things spearheaded by Christianity ]<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He even sinks so low as to mock and lie about the Christian concern about legal childkilling (7-19-18<\/a>):<\/p>\n Abortion makes baby Jesus cry, so apparently Christian voters must step into the breach since Jesus is just a baby and can\u2019t do anything about it. But notice the irony: the\u00a0last<\/em>\u00a0thing conservative politicians want is a society with no abortion because they thrive on anxiety about abortion. If they couldn\u2019t claim that the sky is falling, these Chicken Littles wouldn\u2019t know how to rally their base.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Examples are legion and could be multiplied like the loaves and the fish. All of the above occurred in just a 20-day period.<\/p>\n That established, let\u2019s now discuss his blocking. He obviously wasn\u2019t blocked merely for disagreeing<\/em> with Christianity or being a manifest bigot<\/em> against it and inveterate liar about All Things Christian, since he\u2019s been allowed to rant and rave on my blog since at least May. It\u2019s equally obvious that I am not \u201cscared\u201d and \u201cterrified\u201d of interacting with atheists (much less his own facile, inane arguments), since I have engaged in scores and scores of debates with them<\/a>\u00a0(often with professors) over the 37 years I\u2019ve been doing apologetics.<\/p>\n Seidensticker was free as a bird to interact here, provided he simply observed the usual protocol of the Internet: exhibiting at least rudimentary respect for the views of the site where one is commenting. To not do so is to be a troll<\/em>: defined by the Urban Dictionary<\/em><\/a> as follows:<\/p>\n Not interested at the moment in a huge debate with an atheist about slavery.\u00a0I\u2019ll simply note that it just so happened that Christians were always or almost always in the forefront of banning it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No matter, he went right on with a goading, provocative comment<\/a>. I guess he hadn\u2019t figured out that I don\u2019t fall for that sort of baiting. I\u2019m interested in serious<\/em> discussion with open-minded<\/em> opponents: not sophistry and one-way nonsense. Someone else<\/a> chimed in and Bob answered with a longer comment<\/a>. In it, he made a false statement about the ancient Hebrews:<\/p>\n What we know for certain is that \u201clove your neighbor\u201d covers a lot\u00a0fewer<\/i>\u00a0subjects than you\u2019d think at first. \u201cNeighbor\u201d only meant \u201cfellow Israelite.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019re completely full of hot air. It so happens that I just refuted Richard Dawkins<\/a>, spouting the same kind of inane, asinine biblically illiterate nonsense:<\/p>\n \u201cJesus limited his in-group of the saved strictly to Jews, in which respect he was following the Old Testament tradition, . . . \u2018Thou shalt not kill\u2019 . . . meant, very specifically, thou shalt not kill Jews. . . . \u2018Neighbour\u2019 means fellow Jew.\u201d (The God Delusion<\/i>, p. 254)<\/p>\n I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. Where to begin?! This is an absurd, asinine, ignorant, completely false claim. Let\u2019s see, for starters:<\/p>\n [then I cited a lengthy argument from my earlier paper against Dawkins, ending as follows]:<\/p>\n Once again, Dawkins flails away at the straw men of his own making. He does that throughout his whole book, as I have repeatedly shown in these four critiques. In a word, he doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about (hardly even has a clue), and doesn\u2019t know that he doesn\u2019t know. It\u2019s sad and beyond pathetic that such an educated man (a scientist) \u2014 indeed, the most renowned atheist in the world \u2014 could exhibit so much disinformation and lack of comprehension of that which he professes to be intelligently critiquing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, his response to this thorough treatment of the aspect of \u201cneighbor\u201d in the Old Testament was what proved to be his undoing (in terms of freedom to comment on my blog), because it demonstrated beyond doubt that he had not the slightest interest in the actual truth of the matter. He is the typical hostile atheist who thinks he\u2019s an expert on the Bible, but approaches it as (I always like to say) a butcher approaches a hog. Rather than interact with my extensive presented reasoning (a direct reply to something he<\/em> asserted), he ignored it and blew it off<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Oh, come now. We know each other well enough that you needn\u2019t be coy. Drop the Christian charity and tell us what you really thought of his arguments.\u00a0Dawkins is right\u2014\u201cneighbor\u201d means fellow Jew. . . .\u00a0This is how a courtroom lawyer makes a case\u2013finding bits here and there and then cobbling together a case. Any contrary information he ignores. That\u2019s how it works in the courtroom, but someone trying to find the truth looks at all the evidence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n After a few other exchanges that can be read on the thread, Bob stated<\/a>:<\/p>\n What\u2019s startling is that neither God nor Jesus set the world straight on slavery or even abolished the institution instantly. It\u2019s almost like they didn\u2019t see much wrong with it.\u00a0Christians did their work against slavery and for civil rights 1800 years after Jesus\u00a0in spite of<\/i>\u00a0the clear teachings in the Old Testament, not because of them.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I replied<\/a>, knowing the game he was playing, and so resorting to some sarcasm:<\/p>\n It\u2019s complex, which is why I gave you a bunch of links for you to explore, that deal with the issue in sufficient depth. I know how very concerned you are always to treat Christianity with the utmost fairness, so knock yourself out reading!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And he comes back with<\/a> passive-aggressive BS:<\/p>\n Did you give me resources to help me out with my lack of understanding, or was that just a smokescreen<\/strong>?\u00a0Sure, I could wade through<\/strong> all that. Given past history, however, I doubt I\u2019d learn anything new<\/strong> relevant to my question: what do you think about God\u2019s support for slavery for life in Lev. 25:44-46? If you can cut to the chase, I\u2019d be interested to hear your thoughts. Or, if you don\u2019t have time, that\u2019s fine. [my emphasis]<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This was the usual routine with atheists who don\u2019t give a damn about truly learning the actual Christian position<\/em> on things (rather than toying with mere caricatures of them that they can mock and dismiss, in an illusory show of alleged argumentative \u201cstrength\u201d). I\u2019ve seen it dozens of times. If you provide the typical hostile \/ angry \/ \u201cknow-it-all-about-the-Bible\u201d atheist with serious material to actually learn<\/em> something (after they<\/em> inquire and start the discussion), they complain that they don\u2019t have time<\/em>, and only want to hear your<\/em> opinion.<\/p>\n This is a dead giveaway that they are either engaged in sophistry or some other sort of trolling: not honest discussion. Otherwise they would offer thanks for the resources and get busy reading, so the discussion could advance to the next stage, with knowledge<\/em>, not atheist talking-points and salivating \u201cgotcha!\u201d rhetoric only. Since\u00a0his \u201canti-dialogue\u201d motivation was utterly obvious by that point, I called him out<\/a>:<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have time to do the necessary research on a complex topic, I don\u2019t have the time to play your \u201cgotcha\u201d games. We know you\u2019re a bigot against Christianity. That was already established from your own words on your site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This was, of course, too much for him to handle, and he started in on the gratuitous insults<\/a> (whereas my statement was purely based on documented<\/em> facts of how he had acted<\/em>; what he had written<\/em>, per the above information). He pretended that the whole problem was with my<\/em> approach, not his (i.e., the projection game):<\/p>\n You couldn\u2019t just go with the \u201cAn interesting question, but this requires more time than I have at the moment, sorry\u201d brushoff? You had to give me the Armstrong love bombing approach?<\/span><\/p>\n Tip: find a trusted friend who can read and summarize your comments\u2013either for a week, or maybe just your interactions with antagonists, or maybe just this one brief conversation with me. Ask them how they think you come across to objective readers and see if there isn\u2019t a little room for improvement in your approach.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I replied to someone else:<\/p>\n As I told Bob, it\u2019s complex (and it\u2019s also a matter of definition: slavery in the Bible is not identical to that in the South in the 1750s, etc.), which I why I provided all the links. This is much more complicated than mere fodder for yet more atheist \u201cgotcha!\u201d polemics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bob then basically accused me<\/a> of one of his pet charges against Christians: intellectual dishonesty, then I responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n Interact with the actual Christian argument for once and cease with the smart ass sound bites. I think you\u2019re capable of it. I showed at length that you (just like Dawkins: another biblical \u201cexpert\u201d) don\u2019t have a clue what you\u2019re talking about, with this \u201cneighbor\u201d business. The wise man learns when corrected. You were educated about how the ancient Hebrews viewed \u201cneighbors.\u201d And so you ignore it and go right on with your usual schtick. It just doesn\u2019t work here. You\u2019ll have to make actual on-topic arguments. I don\u2019t play the hit-and-run games.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He replied<\/a>: \u201cYou\u2019re playing some kind of games.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t at all. I was trying in vain to have an honest, open discussion with him. He wasn\u2019t interested, and we know why<\/em> he wasn\u2019t (his existing bigotry against Christianity).\u00a0This was the final straw and so he was blocked. He flatly refused to have a real dialogue, so I decided to no longer allow his anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-Bible bilge on my Catholic site. That\u2019s trolling, and is universally understood to be unethical.<\/p>\n I wrote this piece, because whenever I block a prominent atheist I catch hell either from the person involved, or his comrades, who then engage in tirades, lying about how I did so because I was scared or because I am an arbitrary censor who wants to shut down critiques of Christianity. The reason has nothing whatsoever<\/em> to do with either<\/em> of those bogus claims, and is exactly what I laid out above.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Photo credit:<\/strong> katutaide<\/a>\u00a0(7-1-09).\u00a0Anti-Christian graffiti in Tampere, Finland<\/span> [Wikimedia Commons<\/a> \/\u00a0Creative Commons<\/a>\u00a0Attribution 2.0 Generic<\/a>\u00a0license]<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" His words will be in blue. I had already established beyond all doubt from his own words \u2014 three months ago \u2014 that Seidensticker (who runs the popular Cross Examined blog at Patheos) is one of the distressingly common condescending atheists, who thinks Christians are (on the whole or generalizing) dishonest, hateful, infantile, anti-evidential (\u201cChristians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":22182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[3808,745,258,335,1575,4126,5543,93,5537,5540,2626,5546,1576],"class_list":["post-22176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism-agnosticism","tag-anti-christian","tag-anti-theists","tag-atheism","tag-atheists","tag-bigotry","tag-bob-seidensticker","tag-condescension","tag-dialogue","tag-dishonesty","tag-insincerity","tag-intellectual-dishonesty","tag-patronizing","tag-prejudice"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
Trolling \u2013 (verb), as it relates to internet, is the deliberate act, (by a Troll \u2013 noun or adjective), of making random unsolicited and\/or controversial comments on various internet forums with the intent to provoke an emotional\u00a0knee jerk\u00a0reaction from unsuspecting readers to engage in a fight or argument[.]<\/div>\n*<\/div>\nTrolling on-line forums as described above is actually analogous to the fishing technique of \u201ctrolling\u201d, where colorful baits and lures are pulled behind a slow moving boat, often with multiple\u00a0fishing lines, covering a large bodies of water, such as a large lake or the ocean. The trolling lures attract unsuspecting fish, intriguing them with the way they move through the water, thus enticing these foolish fish to \u201ctake the bait<\/a>\u201d. Not unlike unsuspecting internet victims, once hooked, the fish are\u00a0reeled\u00a0in for the catch before they realize they have been duped by the Troll\/Fisherman[.]<\/div>\n.<\/div>\nThis guy made a really rude and\u00a0off the wall\u00a0comment about my\u00a0You Tube\u00a0video, I think he was just\u00a0trolling for\u00a0a response, but I ignored him<\/em>[.]<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nMore simply, I define a troll as one who isn\u2019t serious about discussion: either out of apathy, or inconsideration and rudeness, or being so bigoted against a particular view that he or she cannot possibly fairly or constructively interact with it. Hence, the one who comes to a site with that hostile outlook is essentially a game-playing sophist. My blog isn\u2019t a platform for various hostile opinions to be preached, minus legitimate discussion.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nHence in the present instance, Seidensticker wanted to talk about slavery<\/em><\/a>, in a thread devoted to the killing of the Amalekites<\/a>. Someone else introduced it first<\/em>, and then Bob took it up, which was fine. But he soon showed that he wasn\u2019t interested in open<\/em> and honest<\/em> discussion, even when I took up his challenge. I referred the first questioner to an extensive treatment of\u00a0Slavery laws in the Old Testament <\/i><\/a>from the very thorough Protestant apologist Glenn Miller. Seidensticker, true to form, blew that off, calling it \u201ca thorough commentary\u201d<\/span> but then singling out one line and ignoring it otherwise.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSo I thought (not wanting to get into the rather complex topic at that particular moment) I would offer him my own collection of links on slavery<\/a>. The idea was to educate him on the relationship of Christianity to slavery, so that he can be disabused of his prejudices. But precisely because of those biases, he wasn\u2019t interested<\/a>. I made my intentions clear<\/a>:<\/div>\n\nThis was something I had recently addressed (thus could easily reply to with a cut-and-paste without taking up too much of my time), so I responded<\/a>:<\/div>\n\n