[Vision2020] Atwood Responds

[Scott Dredge]

Where exactly is the Atwood response?  Do you have a link to it or did you just not want to post a private email.  If the latter, then why post your response publicly?  A lot of context is missed by listening to one-half of a conversation.

-Scott

----- Original Message ----
From: "nickgier at adelphia.net" <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Cc: dratwood at nsa.edu
Sent: Monday, December 3, 2007 2:36:46 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Atwood Responds


Greetings:

I had given up hope, but Atwood finally responded to Joe and me.  I'll
 let Joe take care of himself, but here is my reply.

Dear Roy:

Thank you for your response. We cannot go forward unless you and Wilson
 take responsibility for past actions and proclamations. We cannot go
 forward to the truth on a path that is littered with falsehoods,
 distortions, evasions, and deceptions. It just doesn’t work that way.

Let me start with this one: “Every time I tried to suggest an
 alternative understanding to your claims, you twisted and distorted what I
 have said. So I saw little point in continuing our interactions.” Since
 November, 2003, when you said that there would be no communication, you
 offered no “alternative understandings” at all. Please tell me
 where I have twisted or distorted anything.

Since you have not written to me, it would be impossible to do anything
 with non-existent replies. Since you failed to respond, you have
 4-years of detailed responding to do. I eagerly await your individual
 replies. You failed miserably in the dialogue that you now seek. It should be
 very easy to correct “absurd accusations.”

With regard to NSA accreditation, I challenge you show any untruths in
 my report. I wrote only one letter, not multiple ones. My focus in the
 report is on intellectual honesty, integrity, and academic
 collegiality. I was horrified that the head of TRACS would share my report with you
 after I requested confidentiality. I was also amazed that you were
 allowed to essentially work for TRACS (pitching “Trinitarian”
 accreditation) while NSA was still only a “candidate” for accreditation.

Why didn’t you correct the record when Dickison said that NSA was
 accredited in public testimony. (Tom Hansen recently posted the recording
 of his voice.) In your May 23, 2003 letter to the editor, why did you
 disguise the fact that TRACS was your agency, not the fine liberal arts
 associations mentioned in the letter that you obviously preferred?

With regard to comparisons to the Taliban, here are the parallels:
 women are second class citizens; God’s law will become the law of the
 land; execution of homosexuals and adulterers; and the destruction of
 one’s enemies.

It would help very much if Wilson took back his belief in the limited
 franchise and his recent reaffirmation of executing gays. What would
 really help is for all of you to repudiate Greg Dickison’s “when we
 have our way” articles in “Credenda Agenda.” These are fundamental
 axes to grind, and I will keep grinding them.

In my column in the Statesman, all that I did was state that the League
 of the South frequently appears at protests with Sons of the
 Confederate Veterans (one of whose officers was married by Richard Butler), and
 the Council of Conservative Citizens. When editors put “neo-Nazi”
 in the headline, I immediately objected, and the editors refused to run
 a strongly worded letter of correction. A version of that letter ran in
 the Daily News.  In that letter I also accepted Wilson's
 self-profession that he is not a racist.

With regard to my views on evangelical Christianity, all you have to do
 is read “God, Reason, and the Evangelicals” and see how I have
 been very careful in distinguishing ones that I respect and the ones that
 I do not. (Please read the book!) One does not become the president of
 a regional theological conference, which has many active evangelical
 schools, if one is perceived to have a prejudice against evangelical
 Christianity.  If I have a bias against Christianity, why would I support,
 with a substantial monthly stipend, an Indian Christian graduate
 student for five years?

In one of my internet essays, I have shown 15 differences between
 Wilsonian Christianity and conservative evangelical Christianity. You know
 just a well as I do that many other conservative Christians criticize
 you, and I hear from them regularly praising by work of exposing Wilson
 for the theological fraud that he is.

As an emeritus professor I am not “former” (you should know
 better), but I continue to use my academic skills to teach and write and to
 call people such as you to account.

I do not wish to communicate with you off-line as you suggest. I will
 keep my part of this new exchange fully within the public eye.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick Gier

=======================================================
 List services made available by First Step Internet, 
 serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.   
               http://www.fsr.net                       
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================