Re: when Jesus became God?

David Bowie wrote:
rasqual wrote:

Maybe you didn't read the bit in my last post where i mentioned that
what we're dealing with is the sort of stuff that's considered so basic
in linguistics that it doesn't need a citation.

Maybe you've been missing over, and over, and over how I've been
asking not for recitations of principles but for specific application
of them to the issue at hand -- namely, any sense in which negation
doesn't imply mutual exclusivity, without assistance from
equivocation. You've NEVER produced such a thing, David, in years. In
November of ''99 you also cited being quite busy as a reason for not
supplying answers -- in a post that waxed at length in service, IMO,
of obfuscation and evasion.

I've said that I have no argument with the principle you wish to
adduce. I do have an issue with the fact that you haven't applied it.
You've applied it to barns, David -- then washed your hands of Jeff's
remarks as if you'd applied it. You haven't.

What's so hard to get here? Just as i would guess a physicist not only
wouldn't have to give a citation for kinetic forces existing in nature
but would in fact be hard pressed to *find* a citation for it because
it's such a given for the field,

So a field that ascribes so much doubt to the efficiency of language
in predicating in reliably truthful ways, finds enough leisure to take
things like that for granted?

Wow.

You're really not understanding what's going on here, I don't think.
The question isn't even whether I'd disagree with David's sources, or
find them instructive. Among other problems with David's frequent
recourse to these kinds of things, is that he doesn't apply the
principles he invokes to the issues at hand. He merely adduces general
theories, wipes his hands, and imagines that the conversation has come
to a satisfactory conclusion on the merits of how useless language is.

If the theories exist, and despite the difficulties in citing support
for them i can cite sources that you could go to for them, it strikes me
that you're simply being difficult here because you don't want to admit
that language doesn't work the way you want it to.

David, you haven't been reading me very well. I've said several times
now that I don't take issue with the principle at stake, simpliciter.
I take issue with the way you haven't applied it to the specific case
at hand. I've generalized your principle to its lampoonish conclusion
because your own general use of it permits me that amusement. You've
gone no further in treating Jeff's case than to invoke colored barns.

and you have nothing
to fall back on except to call me a charlatan. If you want to call all
linguists (and anthropologists, FTM) charlatans, that's fine with me--i
just don't get what the deal is with assuming that i don't know my own
field!

Your specialty within linguistics? No, I haven't in the least doubted
that. But you seem to use it in service of obfuscation and show-
stopper rhetorical gamesmanship, more than in honestly illuminating
points you instead quickly dismiss. Your prerogative, to be sure. Just
because you're a fine linguist doesn't mean you have to put that
talent to good use at SRM.

You continue to play the slippery-slope game here, claiming that i'm
saying that because *some* fuzziness of truth occurs in natural human
language exchanges, then i must be claiming that *all* natural human
language exchanges must use a system that makes communication of truth
(and, by extension, any communication) impossible. As i said before,
this is a strawman (and a fairly dumb strawman, at that). Try it again,
and i will feel completely justified in asking for an apology from you
for your continued public misrepresentation of me.

There you go predicating fuzzy truths again. ;-)

To the point, David: you cite red barns where Jeff's talking about
something quite different. You make no connection. You use chromatic
equivocation to illustrate a principle which you apparently wish the
reader to understand also applies to Jeff's remark -- though you don't
show why it should. You obviously intend that generalization to be
pregnant enough with meaning to birth an association where none is
explained.

In short, you're wishing to allow vague remarks bearing the mark of
your professional credentials to suffice as polemical means to dismiss
interlocutors' assertions.

How did asking about god lying turn into a conversation about
human subterfuge or disobedience?

But is it actually disobedience or subterfuge? It certainly appears to
me that God makes exceptions in specific circumstances--Samuel killed
Agag in cold blood,

David, I never understand the examples you cite. Aside from this not
being an example of God lying (which is not really the major point
here anyway, I guess), it's not even obviously a case of anyone doing
anything wrong. To the contrary, Samuel set right what Saul had set
wrong. Agag was a dead man walking, in God's eyes. Samuel merely
dispensed with the walking part.

God, however, has *all* sides of the story *all* the time.

Right, so it boils down to perspective, equivocation, and so forth.

Of course, if you're willing to make the claim that *you* have all sides
of the story all the time, maybe i'll have to concede that your use of
natural human language always approaches a perfect encapsulation of
truth. I doubt you're willing to make that claim, though.

Speaking of straw men.

David, I'm pleased to see you backing into the refuge of equivocation
and epistemic resolution to problems you once put in much starker
terms of contradictories actually being alike true -- APART from
perspective or equivocation. I should probably be content that you
toss up mere wraiths of your former irrationality -- perhaps for old
times sake, and I should be as content that you don't defend them to
the bitter end as you once did.

David cited three Bible passages!
Um, yeah -- and when I checked them out I sure couldn't figure why.
It'd sure be nice if he'd comment on their relevence. Consider how
frequently Jeff Shirton cites scriptures and then painstakingly
explains them...

This wins this week's
snarf-the-morning-beverage-of-your-choice-through-your-nose award. I
submit that the reason you didn't find my comments sufficient, and you
do find Jeff's sufficient, is that you happen to agree with him rather
than me--i *did*, after all, give some explanation, though brief, so
it's not that i simply dropped verses without any context.

The reason I find your explanations insufficient, such as they are, is
that the verses are as poor an example of what you wish to freight
them with as the one above is. And you're citing them in apparent
proof of a generalization about God, but you don't take the final step
of applying the principal you believe you find as a synthesis from
these verses to Jeff's concern (Moroni's challenge).

Oddly, this is what you accused Rob of when he agreed with me earlier in
this thread. Amazing how these swords cut both ways, isn't it?

Are you imagining that this bothers me as much as it seems to bother
you guys?

But curiously, I haven't said that I agree with Jeff. My primary
expressed concern has been that you cite generalizations (non-mutual
exclusivity, in this case) without tying them to the specific case at
hand. This leaves them as free-floating generalizations to be turned
on themselves, as I've dutifully done. You're rightly irritated, but
I'm only demonstrating your own method.

Strawman, again. I am claiming that natural human language doesn't use
the same sort of logic as propositional calculus. Why is that so
difficult for you to wrap your mind around?

What's difficult to wrap my mind around, is how you can imagine that a
contrast between natural human language and propositional calculus is
germane in respect of Jeff's belief about God's integrity and his
wonderment about Moroni's challenge.

I'm only trafficking in straw men if you're not plying non sequiturs,
David. And you are. Ergo . . .

- S

.

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