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Post by Rama on Jan 27, 2004 21:42:45 GMT -5
Well, at the very least he completely failed to spot my irony and my sarcasm in my parenthetical comments, showing that he is also unable to separate the two. His letter is so incomprehensible it's difficult to figure out exactly how much he 'gets' but he at least couldn't figure out my sarcasm with the baptist ministers comment, and I find it strongly possible that his being insulted come from having such absurd opinions as the ones I put forth in the letter as being identified as christian, because obviously they are mockeries of the faulty logic, carried to extremes to illustrate their dangerous and ignorant nature. He does not seem to understand I am not a Christian, and I am not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt in any matter.
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Post by the anti-myrmidon on Jan 27, 2004 22:19:31 GMT -5
The first few lines of his letter indicate pretty clearly that he's well aware of the joke, as well as that you are not a Christian. While there are logical flaws in his response, the main idea he is expressing is that the generalizations you made were largely false and inaccurate. Satire, after all, is best (and most effective) when grounded in fact. Sarcasm does little to help, and more to hinder, its effectiveness.
Of course, on the subject of logical flaws, I'd honestly have to say that I see little difference between the non-sequiturs of his response and the strawmen or ad hominems present in other posts. All are equally fallacious. Maybe it's just me, but I am not much in favor of double standards concerning the use of evidence, logic, and rational discussion.
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Post by Rama on Jan 27, 2004 23:20:39 GMT -5
Hmm, I'm still not 100% positive though. I think the fact that he apparently uses words the meanings of which he does not understand is throwing me off. Sanctimonious for instance. What the hell? My "paper" as he calls it was not hypocritically pious, it was just ironic. And sarcastic. I think the letter I wrote was sufficiently grounded in fact. Satire obviously requires a very significant bit of absurdity (Examine Swift's "A modest proposal" for instance) to be effective, and the base "logic" of my letter was that traditional must be better, so why not go completely traditional?
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Post by Valvilis on Jan 28, 2004 9:38:43 GMT -5
I'm not entirely sure iether. The whole thing can be read as though he took Nathan as a "bad Christian" and not neccessarily someone outside the church altogether. The later parts of the letter support this interpritation of the begining. I think he may well have written this just the same if Nathan had claimed (and was telling the truth) that he was a seventh day adventists or some other such sub-cult. This guy hopped a one-way mental trip to the deep-south of intelligence years ago, I'm hesitant to interprit his letter favorably.
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Post by the anti-myrmidon on Jan 28, 2004 15:29:36 GMT -5
--------------------------------------------------------------------- From: danny kusk <conceptcar3@yahoo.com> Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:48:49 -0800 (PST) Your bolligerant mockery of the Christian faith is both uncalled for, as well as moronic. In the letter, "Conservative values are American way," the Christian faith and moral stand points that it makes are not only mocked, many are falsified. That seems to indicate pretty clearly that he knows Nathan is not a Christian, at least in my interpretation of it. Otherwise, I doubt he would have called a "bolligerant (sic) mockery of the Christian faith." After all, that's basically what it was. So he seems right as far as that goes.
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