Subj : Extent of the Torah
To   : Curtis Johnson
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Mon Oct 23 2000 08:24 pm

 > When are you going to start answering mine, Todd, especially the
 > ones that call you on your lapses in reasoning?  Well?  You also
 > ran out of Holysmoke leaving hundreds of honest questions
 > unanswered, you know.

 CJ> While leaving the assertion that asking him to answer
 CJ> unanswered questions was a hateful act.

 JV> Exactly.

 CJ> Compare the standard evidenced here (as well as there) when
 CJ> someone doesn't answer *his* questions to his standard.

 JV> Yep, Todd is a hypocrite.  Even in THIS echo he won't answer
 JV> honest questions that have been asked of him.  Yet he expects
 JV> others to answer HIS (usually) invalid questions.  I'm still
 JV> waiting for him to answer the ones that call him on his lapses
 JV> in reasoning.  He won't answer.  I'm also still waiting for
 JV> him to explain just HOW his god would be granted the right to
 JV> legislate "decency" as per his claim. LOL.

 CJ> Maybe if enough people in enough echos keep telling him in
 CJ> enough different ways about this, he might begin to see the
 CJ> beam in his eye.

 CJ> I would pay really good money to send Todd back in time for a
 CJ> dialogue with Socrates.

 JV> As would I.  Todd would call Socrates' questions hateful and
 JV> refuse to answer them, then he would ask Socrates silly
 JV> questions and Socrates would roar with laughter... and Todd
 JV> would run away, yelling all the while, "You're a hateful
 JV> little man."

 CJ> Yep.

        Actually, the response of Plato's Socrates to preaching was
quite standard and repeated in more than one of the dialogues.  He
first professed shock that in Athens of all places a man should not
be considered free to speak his thoughts.  This would be followed by
a plea (grin) for HIS freedom to walk away until the companion in
debate had agreed to cease forthwith his preaching (he called it
"speechmaking."   That, of course, is what, in the Gorgias finally
brings the second-rate intellectual rogue, Polus, into a debate
which is, of course, over his head.  Callicles, who takes up the
cudgels KNOWS that such will not work so he takes up HIS position
from the standpoint of one who is "in the know" of what Socrates is
REALLY up to and accuses SOCRATES of being what Callicles REALLY is,
i.e., a dishonest intellectual.  Once again there is the theme of
"mend your ways" or dire things may happen to you from the
Callicles, the sophisticate who is "in the know" of everybody's REAL
intentions and has in the background the basic sophistic theology
that "nothing exists; if it exists it cannot be known; and if known
it cannot be communicated" which Plato reports as "no gods exist; if
they DO exist they care nothing for man and if they care about man
they can be bribed" and turns against it HIS type of theology which
ran "the gods DO exist; they DO care about man, and they CANNOT be
bribed by attempting to provide them with a share of the profits."  

        Of course, we know the end of the story.  Neither Socrates
nor Jesus will agree to "mend their ways."  The culture is pretty
demanding!!!  

Frank

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

.