[Vision2020] Coulter's Dream - from CNN

[Joe Campbell]

Crabtree,

You are deliberately misconstruing and mischaracterizing my views. 

I never said that my BELIEFS were ambiguous. It is my words that are deliberately 
ambiguous. This is because they often appear out of context and on the website of your 
friend, Dale -- a website where people openly post thoughts about the justifiable killing 
of gays. You don't want to discuss issues with me. You want to create opportunities 
where my views are deliberately misrepresented and publicly ridiculed.

More examples?

You keep repeating the lie that I favor abortion, another lie that is repeated on Dale’s 
website. I've addressed this issue on a number of occasions in town crier columns and on 
these pages but you ignore these words. Legal distinctions are deliberately cast as moral 
distinctions; knowledge is conflated with belief. 

I sent you a private e-mail that is not posted on Dale's blog. It is not possible for me to 
make a point without Dale bringing it up. Does he bring up the fact that I quickly 
apologized? Or that recently you INVITED me, CHALLENGED me to come to your 
place of work when I asked you to meet with me? These are never mentioned.

I'd be happy to discuss the matter in more detail if you'd give me some sense that your 
goal was to understand my view and not ridicule it in public. As long as I get 
mischaracterized, I won’t engage with you in conversation, won’t answer your questions. 

Which is not to say that I won’t point out your fallacious arguments!

--
Joe Campbell

---- "g. crabtree" <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote: 

=============
And what exactly would be your point here, Mr. Moffett? The comment I made did not express any opinion good or bad about religious ambiguity. That was left for the reader to determine. The point I was making in the original post was that Mr. Campbell was in no position to determine how I might feel about any given topic were I Jewish (or black, or female, or homosexual, etc.) as was his assertion. Aside from the absurdity of such speculation (If a fish had feet instead of flippers, how would he feel about formal footwear?) I'm fairly certain that I am ever so slightly more expert in all that is me then most others can be. Philosophy teachers included.

g
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Ted Moffett 
  To: Joe Campbell 
  Cc: g. crabtree ; vision2020 at moscow.com ; Donovan Arnold 
  Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 10:34 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Coulter's Dream - from CNN


  Gary wrote:
   
    I don't recall making any comment as to whether I believed your assertion of being a Christian or not and I certainly make no judgment with regard to your level of commitment to whatever it is you do believe but,It certainly seems to me that reasonable people could come to the conclusion that you are disposed toward a certain religious ambiguity. 

    g

  If Mother Teresa (Agnes Bojaxhiu), winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, can have moments of doubt about God, faith and religion, so can anybody who professes belief about anything:

  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

  "...the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain. In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God." 

  "The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.) Yet Kolodiejchuk sees it in St. John's context, as darkness within faith. Teresa found ways, starting in the early 1960s, to live with it and abandoned neither her belief nor her work. Kolodiejchuk produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act." 
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  Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett