Tektonics Misery "Jimbo"/Brooks Trubee Dishonesty -- we got it!
express disgust with this topic here Brookee my man, ever under that delusion of competence, has a bone to pick: He thinks I lie a lot. Hmm. Funny thing is, I've been online for more than 7 years now, and it seems he can find no more than ONE example for each of those years I've allegedly "lied". In fact he is so unsure even of these examples that he put a question mark after his "Dishonesty" heading at one time. Maybe he's uncomfortable with the possibility of a libel lawsuit. Anyway my man start with the usual: [J. P. Holding] uses a number of deceptive and dishonest rhetorical tactics in his efforts to "win" religious debates. Among other things, [Holding] will make up answers off the top of his head; Horse huckey. What Brookee means is that he doesn't have the mental cajones or resources to know the scholarship behind the answer, and that leaves him drooling in his soup and thinking the answers are just made up. Not that that isn't his best option, as if Brookee is gonna become any sort of expert or reader on life in the ANE. Fer sure. he will hide damaging information from his readers; Like what? That Brooks has contagious diseases? We'll see what nonsense he comes up with shortly. he will take another person's argument, make a caricature of it, and attack the other person on the basis of his misrepresentation; I.e., I will draw out the implications of someone's stupid argument, which will cause them to backpedal when they realize how stupid it is and how they made it based on such ignorance of Biblical contexts. It's Daffy Duck's hobby. he will employ insults with the goal, apparently, of both distracting people from the topic Now get that. Brooks claims you're so stupid that you can be easily distracted, whereas genius babycakes Brooks has a clear mind. Doesn't that make you feel good to know Brooks' best recourse is to call you stupid? and minimizing those who disagree with him (see here and here, darn right); he will make unreasonable demands in exchange for answering a question or questions that he does not want to answer; Reference here to me telling Brookee to go read 150 books I recommended in return for him demanding that I deliver some opinion on evolution, which I refused to do without being reasonably and adequately informed. In other words, Brooks isn't bright enough to realize that being informed requires more than just spitting sound bites. he will rewrite his responses in debates after the other person has already responded; False. It's a standard charge this crowd likes to throw around, but they never seem able to produce documentation. he will claim to have answered a question when in fact he has not; I.e., I will have answered it in a way that is over Brooks' pointed little head, usually by asking a parallel question that exposes the absurdity of his own and so on and so forth and so what and so there, nyahh nyahh. Not all of these actions are blatantly dishonest-but many of them are and all of them, taken together, reveal a basic dishonesty in his approach to discussion and debate. What these reveal is a frustrated little skeptic who can't take it anymore, but doesn't know his way out of the kitchen.What is fascinating about [Holding]'s behavior is that he seems to have little to no shame about it. Why? Perhaps he just doesn't realize how transparent his dishonesty is to others or perhaps he is the type of person who just doesn't care about lying to people. Perhaps Brooks doesn't realize he is an ignoramus lacking all pretense of critical subtlety. Naturally all this psychologization destroys any argument he makes and we can all go home. Of course, there are several other possible explanations for [Holding]'s behavior, or a combination of explanations. Whatever makes him feel good.
Blankey, Brooks? For one thing, it is clear that [Holding] believes that he is fighting a holy war with the ultimate goal of saving people's souls. He's part right. Ideology is always war, even in politics; as for souls, no, the main purpose is to expose neophytes like Brooks as idiots. People fighting religious wars with such grandiose goals can rationalize away virtually any behavior. Skeptics fighting anti-religious wars with such self-centered goals cn rationalize away any destruction of their arguments. That's part of being a freethinker. It is almost certainly true that [Holding] regards the saving of souls as an end that amply justifies the use of dishonesty. Nope, sorry, as stated above. In any event it's been 500 paragrphs of frustrated psychoanalysis and we're still waiting for example A-1. Be patient.
A less dramatic explantion for [Holding]'s dishonesty is that he is trying to protect a very fragile ego that is nurtured by the adulation of Christians who praise his apologetic efforts. Yaaaaawwwwnnn....I know nothing of ego. Mine is dead. Ask those who have met me in person, such as TheologyWeb mother hen Dee Dee Warren. A more accurate explanation for Brookee's frustrated rant is that he is projecting his disease onto others. To maintain this praise from his Christian brethren and keep his ego nourished and protected, he has to appear to win religious debates, and in order to appear to win religious debates, he is forced, by necessity, to resort to less than ethical tactics. In other words, all you people are stupid because you think I'm winning. There's no other explanation for why you're not deconverting in droves due to Brookee's rampant and humble scholarly genius.
Of course [Holding]'s income is now more or less dependent on how successful people perceive his "argumentation" to be. Could this encourage him to use the kind of deceitful tactics noted above? It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility. It certainly is. My income isn't dependent on any such thing; at my level of education and skill I have innumerable options for income, and I don't need much of it, so all that donations relate to is exactly how many hours a week I can spend on apologetics. So how poor is Danny Boy Barker on that 500K take his org gets every year?
Regardless of the reasons for his actions, the fact that [Holding] engages in fibbery and deception is undeniable. Therefore, people who try to have honest, open and fair discussions with him should be forewarned and should take what he writes with a very large grain of salt. "Regardless of the reasons for my frustration, the fact that I can only come up with 7 questionable examples of this in 7 years proves that I have serious problems with delusions." The honest ones like Kyle Gerkin know better.
Below are just a few examples of [Holding]'s dishonest debating stratagems. It took him 75638 paragraphs but he finally gets off his tuckus. Now watch this --
Internet Infidel Jim Lippard describes how [Holding] criticizes him for arguments that he never made and avoids the one argument that he did make. Lippard points this out to [Holding], but [Holding] ignores him and writes, "...let it be noted that Lippard has not even acknowledged his errors delineated above! This is as much as saying, 'Well, you got me on points one, two and three, but YOU FORGOT POINT FOUR! HA HA HA HA!'" Naturally Lippard does no such thing. He speaks of "arguments he never made" which I take to mean that he denies that I understood his argument correctly. I obviously didn't. If Lippard is not saying this, but trying to blame Robby Berry for misattributing arguments to him, then whose arguments are they, and why are they attributed to Lippard? Frankly I don't care, and there are enough examples of Lippard's ignorance exposed by Glenn Miller (including the precious "Point Four" which was not in my topical consideration anyway) that the word "botched" requires a picture of Lippard next to its dictionary entry anyway. In any event try to figure out what wondrous advantage this gives me in saving souls, as Brooks would have it.
Steven Carr explains that [Holding] quoted him on his site, but altered a link in his quote to direct readers to an article on the tektonics.org site rather than to the actual article Carr cited. Steve claims that when he caught this and spoke up about it, [Holding] quickly restored the link, but didn't make it active and explained away the link change as a perfectly innocent mistake, entirely beyond his control. Not even half correct. Brookee or Carr or both are confused. I did not alter a link to be a re-direct; I fouled up the code so that two links -- one to Mojo Jojo's site, and one to my own (now explain my advantage in THAT) disappeared from the browser window while still being present in the code. I said nothing about "beyond my control" -- I'm still not an expert at coding, as persons who advise me will tell you. In any event see more on this here and see if you can see the secret message. Brookee went into more detail on this of late, and can't figure out why I would copy direct from source code (I find it easier than copying and pasting from a browser, personally; sometimes I find that when I do the latter, it doesn't "take" -- don't ask me why), but the bottom line is that I botched the code and this is little more than Brookee looking for salves on his self-esteem.
The "actual article" referred to in the above paragraph. The article is about an explantion [Holding] used for a repeated word in a Bible verse. The word, it turned out, was not repeated twice-it was just [Holding]'s buggy Bible software that repeated it. So [Holding] was shown fabricating an explanation for a non-existent problem. That's spin-doctorese for, "I appealed to a known literary practice to explain what I thought was a doubling of a word." The Hebrew language uses doubling and tripling of words (like "Amen, amen" and "holy, holy, holy") for emphasis, so how in the world Brokkee gets "dishonesty" out of this will have to remain one of those Mysteries of the Century.
[J. P.] "no link" [Holding] doesn't link to many of the responses of those he debates with and he avoids linking to many of the articles that he attacks. Till examines [Holding]'s various improbable and unbelievable explanations for his behavior. And then gets his rear kicked here. Poor Till couldn't even remember what he had been told, even as he quotes me on it.
Where are [Holding]'s claimed explanations? Farrel Till writes:
"He (Holding) is using a tactic of cutting and pasting irrelevant comments over and over to make the debate so long that some readers won't remember whether he has answered specific points 'above and below.' His dishonesty has become so flagrant that it amounts to outright lying." Crybaby statement. Foo Foo Farrell has been challenged time and time again to show specifically where something was left out that hurts him, and explain why, and the best he could do was on a point where I did not disagree with his assessment of another attempted explanation. Meanwhile all Farrell does is explain how confused and unable to follow the debate he is, and he assumes you're as confused as he is.(snip)
"So [Holding] cut and pasted another evasive comment. Why didn't he just cut and paste his explanation from 'below'? If he actually had an explanation, he could have pounded me mercilessly by just putting it into all of the places where he has cut and pasted his evasive comments like those above. Well, he didn't do that because he knows that he has not explained anything 'above or below.'" Essentially, more statements of Farrell's confusion. The whole idea was to make a point of Foo Foo's "master debator" tactics and to make him sit on his own cactus. Now that that's been done, he's crying about it. Hint: The fluff-free versions provided contain all the explanations in a format so short and simple that even Farrell could follow it. The amazing thing is that Farrell describes here his OWN obfuscatory tactics of laying out diversion after diversion and side issue after side issue, and when it gets shoved in his own face, he doesn't like it.
"In a word, [Holding] is a liar, who hopes that inattentive readers won‘t notice his lie." So there you have it again: You must all be inattentive and stupid, otherwise you'd be falling at Farrell's feet.
[Holding] shows again that he makes things up as he goes along. An account of little Timmy's confusion, already rectified here and here.
In this lengthy debate reponse to [Holding], [Daffy Duck] documents various dishonest rhetorical games that [Holding] plays. And which I mercilessly crush here showing the extent of Daffy's frustration, special pleading, and spin-doctoring evasion. In the introduction to this page, the Secular Web describes [Holding] this way:"This is [Holding]'s modus operandi: he avoids linking to or even naming the essays he rebuts, and usually avoids so much as naming the author he is attacking. "Usually"? Call that twice, actually; Daffy and Foo Foo are it. The rest I clearly name, along with providing names of essays or enough quotes that anyone can find it. He also routinely changes his essays after being refuted, yet rarely announces the changes or concessions in any way False, as noted above., and he also employs childish insults and other rudeness. In other words, I call a spade a spade and have no qualms about it. Because this unethical and shameful behavior "Because he keeps goring our oxen" of [Holding]'s has truly run amok for too long, "and we have no oxen left now" the Secular Web has seen fit to publish this essay to document his behavior,..."we have decided to throw a spin-doctored hissy fit." I imagine it still hurts from the time The Jury Is In was driven into the pigpen.Unsurprisingly, [Holding] does not name {Daffy Duck] in his replies nor does he link to this or to any of [Daffy Duck]'s responses. Unsurprisingly, our intelligent readers have found Daffy's essays on their own, and remain substantially unimpressed.
to be continued...Meaning, Brookee will strain for more examples as soon as he can. Don't hold your breath.
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