Yes, that destroyed what little credibility
Davey might have had, I think.

There's nothing wrong with helping a brother
along, Carson.

I don't have David's patience for your disingenuousness,
misdirection, or use of loaded statements, so you'll
forgive me if I'm a tad brusque from time to time.

Well, Sienky was just your soque poupet anyway...

No, he wasn't and you're a liar. Still, you need that
argument because it's the only one you've got.

Give me your evidence.

[Snip]

Of course, I never said anything about "helping a
brother along," nor did I indicate that there was
anything wrong with it, in and of itself. However,
there is a difference between that and a complete
compromise of integrity and honesty while doing so.

I don't think my review was that.

Of course it was!

Give me your evidence.

I only gave it only supportable positive comments.

Did you? Repost it here and we can examine it and I can
take it apart.

That's what I challenged you to do. I didn't even keep
a record of where I sent it to.

If you want we can pick the bones of it right here
in this thread. I would prefer that to your JCSM
Watch group, where I cannot respond.

It's not my group. I haven't even joined it, but as far as
I know, no one is preventing you from responding.

You set the thing up.

Of course you "joined it".

It's a resource for the common reader, not the
theological specialist.

Is that so? Jason seems to represent that it can
fill all of those niches. Are you disagreeing with him?

I think it would be over optimistic for any work to answer
everyone's aspirations other than the Bible itself.

Where something is useless or not depends on the
audience. You should know that, being a writer yourself.

Indeed, some things might find a use in some environments,
but Jason's work is useful only as an example of bad and
anti-intellectual apologetics.

It's not for intellectuals, it's for the sort of people
who were swayed by the SAB in the first place.

The pace was set by the SAB.

Now, I know that shortly after I said I had a copy and
would post a review, someone named "Carson" posted a
favorable review at Amazon and that was a little *too*
coincidental for my tastes. In fact, since Jason claims
he keeps a list of those to whom the "resource" has been
sold, I wonder if he'd be willing to let an independent
evaluator look at it to determine if anyone named "Carson"
had actually purchased the thing. But I don't mean to digress.
The fact is that no one is disputing that some might feel
that Jason's book is be something that they might like to
have and would be able to purchase it.

Well, maybe Dr Don Carson bought it and read it.

As I wrote, "that was a little *too* coincidental for my tastes."

Well, the way you write identically to Sienkiewicz...

...and have an identical profile of topics and responses
is a little *too* coincidental for my tastes, too.

I may be a "fundy" (I'm not, actually, but the difference
won't be of interest to you lot)...

...but that doesn't make me gullible. Okay?

I expect he would have been encouraging, although his
academic level is up in the clouds compared to most
evangelical believers.

Given the glowing review that "Carson" posted, I wouldn't
be too impressed with his academic level, and your own
evaluation is far too tainted for me to find any value
in it, either.

I think you would find Don Carson a pretty hard opponent
to debate.

I don't know if he does any of that stuff though.

And no one claimed that there was anything wrong
with writing a review; but unless you are much less
intelligent than I think you are...

And you are, so that's moot.

Do you think being cleverer than most people is gonna
make you enjoy hell any better?

There is a difference between doing a friend a favour
and prostrating oneself.

Yes, there is; but you don't seem to see the difference
when it gets a little close to home. You've become a
simpering lapdog for Jason Gastrich. I'm not the only
one who sees it.

I've seen all over Usenet, not just in Christian-non-
Christian discussion, that whenever one side wants to
discredit the other, they never allow that side to have
friendships.

The side one is one are all just good buddies,
but the other side's alliances are always "lackies",
"sycophants", "homoerotic", "henchmen", "simpering
lapdogs", etc etc. It really is so transparent.

You should have a bit more class.

We wash each others' feet, we don't prostrate ourselves at
each others' feet.

And denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Well, I never heard that one before. My, it must be a pun
between "denial" and "the Nile"! How very clever of you,
Carson! Congratulations on your originality!

I think that, deep down, you know as well as I do
that Jason's "book" is incredibly deficient in a
number of areas and that it is a poor apologetic.

There are one or two things I might have written
differently...

Out of (allegedly) 4,000, you can only think of one or two?

I might have written 25% of it a bit differently, of
which 20% would be style and 5% actual differing
thinking, but that's not a problem.

...but we cannot all have the same opinions on
everything.

Disingenuous rhetoric. No one expects that you would
have the same opinions on everything.

It looks that way.

I think his book will accommodate the requirements of
many believers.

While I think that it serves only as an embarrassment to
the evangelical and apologetic community--an opinion
that appears to be widely shared, if the reviews from
Christians and sympathetic readers is any indication, at
all.

It gives pretty standard answers...

...which are used by Christians all the time.

In fact, I think we, together, even know that any
poor Christian who attempts to use the "answers" in
forums that involve skeptics, agnostics, and atheists,
will have their heads handed to them, because, in
general, those people know the Bible better than most
Christians.

If someone wants to take on this kind of forum, they need
to be more prepared than that book will make them.

Jason seems to think that it will provide adequate preparation.
Are you disagreeing with him?

I don't think that winning arguments equates to saving souls.
You wanna win an argument with me? Just keep arguing with me,
you'll win plenty. It doesn't matter.

But look at what I told them at the end of the review,
that they'll need a lot more than winning arguments.
Winning arguments is not what all this is about.

Apologetics is supposed to be about intelligent defense of
the faith. That is not offered in Jason's book.

It's an Apologetics 101 for Fundamentalists.

They also tend to know history and science better, as
well. The fact that these "answers" are insufficient,
disingenuous, dishonest, misleading, and even often
irrelevant is underscored by the fact that Jason
has avoided any detailed discussion of them at every turn.
This so-called "minister," holder of a doctorate in
theology, advanced degree holder (at the Master's level)
in "biblical studies," and a self-proclaimed "Bible scholar"
*runs* from all detailed examination of this self-described
"masterpiece."

Not at every turn.

At every turn.

Google will show that he entered quite a few protracted
discussions to answer people's questions.

One case in point was that he discussed at length with Grinder
about the resurrection chronology. I didn't agree with his
resurrection chronology, and I'm on record for that but still
I have to say he stood and presented answers to the questions
Grinder had.

And there were other examples, but I only need one to give
the lie to your earlier statement.

When he came back the record shows he had some quite
protracted conversations.

You have a strange view of what constitutes "protracted"
or a "conversation." Simply asserting something is not a
"conversation" and the alacrity with which he fled those
"conversations" supports my assertion.

He didn't have to spend the rest of his life in them.

In the main people were plonked by him only when
they started to become abusive.

It was demonstrated over and over again that Jason
quickly plonked those who asked him tough questions
that he couldn't answer (or didn't want to answer)
while he tolerated the more obviously abusive (and less
substantive) writers in the groups. When you're done
polishing his boots with your tongue this morning,
perhaps you might consider going back into archive
to see if this isn't so.

No class.

Now Jason doesn't understand why I don't plonk
for abuse, but then he doesn't understand how
smoothly and how easily the insults I get flow
off me like water from the proverbial duck's back.

He still takes the abuse seriously. I just laugh
at it, because I know what's behind it.

I don't think you have any clue what's behind it,
but in some cases, it's easy enough to discern.
Jason is an abusive punk, and he gets what's coming
to him. Still, quite a few of us were civil enough,
and the *alleged* killfile just got bigger and bigger.

He was civil enough to everybody.

In one case he stepped over a bit with Robyn, but
he said sorry after.

[Snip things that didn't get a response]

...I see someone struggling to make ends meet...

Well, now, wait a minute! What about all this talk
from Jason that his is a growing, thriving, incredibly
successful ministry with a world-wide outreach? Even
*you* have parroted some of that. Now, when it's
convenient, it's not so successful and he has to struggle
to make ends meet?

And here comes the back-pedal:

It's just a clarification, no back pedal. You are just using
emotive language.

I was talking about the quality of his communication
to the entire world, not in that it was like a successful
business.

If we evaluate it on that basis, there is very little quality.
The site is poorly designed, ponderous, difficult to navigate,
and aesthetically too simplistic. Jason prides himself on
site numbers such as hits and the number of pages, but quantity
is not quality. There is nothing at the site (other than Jason's
nonsensical, self-serving commentary about himself) that can't
be found in more useful form elsewhere. Furthermore, site
traffic does not indicate any real outreach to the "entire world,"
since most of the hits occur from within the site and the
IP domain. Finally, the existence of anonymous surfing mechanisms
and IP spoofing make any superficial logging and tracing of IP
addresses to determine source all but useless as far as determining
any real demographic. Now I have little doubt that there are some
people in other countries whom have seen the site and partake of
some of the resources there, but given that the site is mostly
in English, most of the world's web participants will find the
vast majority of the "material" there to be useless, and Jason's
very parochial attitudes and thinking make it unlikely that there
is any *real* world-wide outreach going on.

English is still the best language for world-wide outreach assuming
you have to pick one.

...but giving a lot of his time to getting the
truth out there.

Loaded. We don't all agree that it's "the truth,"
and, in fact, most of us find Jason to be consistently
untruthful.

Well, since your view of the truth is in opposition to our
evangelical view of it, I'm sure you do.

And if you are as incompetent in conveying truth as you have
thus far demonstrated in these groups, even to the point of
compromising your personal integrity for "truth," you should
be sure.

I'm not sure that parses.

That was identical to certain sentences of Sienkiewicz, which
didn't parse in exactly the same way.

Most people putting in the effort he does , and many
who put in a lot less, are paid full time salaries off
of their churches and out of their offering plates. This
guy tries to do it by trade and stands on his own two
feet and look how everybody whinges.

I think it's more significant that people like you look
the other way at his consistent record of dishonesty and
deception and then whine when someone calls him (and you)
on it.

He's made one or two mistakes which I put down to lack of
experience.

I have no interest in your excuse-making or your *****-kissing.
There are mistakes and there are clear breaches of integrity
and honesty. More often than not, Jason Gastrich commits
the latter.

One of them was the way he handled the Hot Lava matter.
I don't see that he stiffed that brother, and even that
brother still had some praise for him, and you (as Sienkiewicz...

Liar.

Give me your evidence.

...at that point) had to climb down over it. But you
popped back up again, just like we all knew you would.

I'm not as familiar with that episode as some, but I know
what I read. I don't buy your excuses, and your lies won't
cover up those excuses.

Of course you are. You researched and wrote the whole thing.
Don't give me that guff.

I see that differently than you...

That's true; and I have the facts on my side. So why
do you think your arguments will be persuasive?

If you want to call someone dishonest, the place to do it
is a court of law.

A dishonest act is not always an illegal act, and even in
those cases where it might be, there is a practicality issue.

As an ex-policeman, why do you need to be told that by a
layman like me?

See above. I obviously didn't need to be told that by someone
like you.

If he has not broken the law, then why the libel?

...and I don't see why it needs to affect my
credibility.

It's pretty obvious that you followed Jason into those
discussion areas and then compromised whatever intellectual
integrity you might have had by posting a favorable review
that was disingenuous and even outright dishonest (unless
you are seriously less well-informed than I thought you
might be, which I find to be more plausible every time I
read one of *your* apologetic efforts). You almost certainly
did so at his urging; but has it never occurred to you that
his being a "brother" does not excuse you from the responsibility
to see to it that he represents you and those who believe as
you do with honesty and integrity?

If you think I was dishonest then let's cut and paste the review
I made right into this thread, and we'll pick the bones out of it.

As you are so confident about it, I'm wondering why you haven't
done that already.

I see you're in no hurry to do it.

I need to know where I'm being less than honest...

How did you represent the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, for example?

The way I think of it.

It's a crockashit, but I was more polite than that, in the
review.

...so that I can be more honest in the future.

I only have so much patience. How long should I expect to
wait?

Until you morph into your next creation.

Don't bother whining at me that he does those things
and that you've never seen otherwise. You *have*
seen otherwise and all you can do is avoid the issues
and make excuses. He claims a credential and uses a title
to advantage. He stole the atheist list. He is consistently
hypocritical. He even plagiarized a portion of text from
a web site in his latest response to Doug Krueger and was
caught at it. He is at least borderline sociopathic, but I
don't expect much sympathy from you on that score, since you
are, as well.

No. I might be a bit autistic, but I am not sociopathic in
the classical sense. My first wife told me I was autistic.
She said that quite a lot. That's one of the reasons she
gained the title "first". But no-one who knows me thinks
I'm a sociopath.

And this should impress me or influence me because...?

...you wrongly ascribe to me conditions I don't have.

But as long as you are willing to compromise any intelligent
or moral principle at all in such public ways and in such
a sycophantic fashion with such consistency, your credibility
is damaged, if not destroyed.

Do you see *now*? You don't have to agree, you only have to
see how it is perceived. And if you want to argue that that's
not an issue, we should return to the discussion we were
having before you disappeared. I was making a point there,
after all.

I think you only consider the friendly help I have tried to
give Jason as sycophantism because you want me to stop doing
it and leave him isolated.

No, I think you have behaved as a sychophant because you have
behaved as a sycophant. I don't care one way or the other what
you and Jason do.

Ha ha hah. Then why the obsession?

It's like the people who bandy the word "coward" about to
try to sting people into doing what they would not do if
they were thinking straight.

Not hardly.

Precisely.

I thank God, actually, that I don't need to do the things
Jason needs to do to make ends meet, and that I have a
much easier financial ride with god than he seems to
have.

Calvinists tend to think that G-d provides material rewards
and earthly success, right? So if Jason's "ministry" isn't
as successful as you and he have both claimed, do you suppose
that could be because G-d doesn't find favor with him?

There are some Calvinists who think that, but it is in fact
not the case.

For those Calvinists, it *is* the case. But I see you'll not
be that kind of Calvinist because, at the moment, it's convenient.
Tell me why I shouldn't believe that.

When in my 10,000 postes on Usenet have I ever suggested that
the elect will be better off?

In my discussions with Charles Casey I already demented
that type of Calvinist, and I don't think I've ever written
anything contradictory to that.

It is appropriate behaviour that brings earthly success...

So is Jason's behavior not "appropriate?"

He's not going the right way about getting rich, that's for
sure, but that isn't his aim, I would say.

...but you can have appropriate behaviour and still not
gain earthly success because of the inappropriate behaviour
of others.

I see. So we're going to blame Jason's lack of success on
everyone else? That's what he does, you know.

If he were trying to achieve wordly success, then he would
certainly do things differently.

There is a correspondence between the most well to do
nations of the world and the presence of protestantism,
but there are nations that buck that trend, such as Japan.

There have been nations in history before the advent of
protestantism that also "buck the trend."

I wouldn't like to be in his position at all, and to
need to do things like put paid adverts on sites and
stuff like that. I feel sorry for him needing to do it.
Especially as people often latch onto it as an excuse
to discard his sincerity.

Again, you're being disingenuous. It's not the advertising,
by itself, that causes us to question his sincerity.

Oh come off it...

I will not "come off it." You shut the hell up. It does not
fall to you, my pudgy friend, to decide these things for others.

I will not shut the hell up.

What have I tried to decide for others?

You are the one who takes the domineering tome around
here.

And I'll have you know I was in the gym working out 11
times last month.

...how many times have people been going on and on about
those adverts.

Now what did I write? I wrote that it's not the advertising,
by itself, that causes us to question his sincerity. That
means, you fatuous idiot, that it's *part* of the reason--a
big part, to be sure--but only part. If Jason behaved as
one might expect of a Christian, an evangelist, a minister,
and even an apologist, and acted in a manner that showed
integrity and honesty in all other things, the advertising
wouldn't be a big deal. People make noise about the advertising
because it's a major indicator of what Jason is believed to
be about, and that's making money by whatever means he can
envision.

Let his Church give him a stipend for his work like
so many other people get for much less effect...

What "effect" do you really think Jason has? All we have
ever had for this is his word on the matter, which isn't
worth a thing. On the other hand, we have observation,
which would indicate that Jason's "ministry" is, and
should be, a failure.

Nevertheless, his buttons are placed willingly on over 300
other Christian sites around the world.

Which "button" is that? The OCCM button? The JCSM button?
I didn't even know there was a latter. I do know that even
Jason doesn't claim that extensive a membership in OCCM.
Then again, against the number of Christian web sites in the
world that almost certainly exist, 300 doesn't seem like much.
And regardless of that, Jason claims over 100,000 pages
at his site, alone. I guess you're becoming as enamored with
numbers as Jason, but it still doesn't address *quality*.

So you don't know about this service, then:

http://www.jcsm.org/top1000/in.php?id=154

They seem to feel differently than you do.

The real measure of the success of a ministry is not in the
appearance of a "button" on a web site. If you think that,
you're as shallow as he.

I've got one potentially earning affiliation on my site,
just for curiosity's sake really...

...and do you know how much I made off of it so far?

Precisely nothing.

Still, no one begrudges Jason making a living.

End of topic, for me...

What? *Again*?

Is there really any point in continually discussing someone
who isn't even participating on Usenet at present as far
as I know?

Then why do it now?

Good question.

, other than to ask that someone who is able to post
there, which I'm not, puts this response of mine on
record at JCSM Watch, where the same point above has
been made against me.

I'm not aware of anyone preventing you from posting there.

I have tried, and failed to post there.

I can't address that. As far as I know, there are three or
four managers. Ask one of them.

They are welcome to address it, and as the creator of
Sienkiewicz, who set it up, you are also welcome to
address it.

Now, have you ever prayed, and, if so, how did you
go about it, and what did it feel like?

I'm not interested in discussing whatever prayer life I
might have had, as I believed very much in Jesus's
instructions at the time.

But if you don't believe them now, what stops you from
discussing it?

Because I don't want to waste my time on it. I only post
on weekends, and it doesn't serve my purpose. Furthermore,
it's not a part of my life *now*, so it doesn't matter.
It's irrelevant and useless to explore.

Whereas spending these weekends of yours turning f.c. into a
proselytising centre for atheism isn't a waste of your time.

I see.