[Vision2020] Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood

[Chasuk]

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 14:10, No Weatherman <no.weatherman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Respectfully, Pipes sought to refute Obama's "always" and "never"
> claim, which is a very low threshold to satisfy.

On the contrary.  Faith can be known personally, and in no other way.
This sets the threshold very high indeed, as the only person who can
answer it is Obama.

Obama's half-sister can no more know Obama's faith than I can know yours.

> I think the real issue here is that you have a tendency to use
> yourself and your life experiences as the measure to judge these
> things.

As do we all.  I have only my own ego through which to filter and to
judge, and this is the same for everyone.  Where I have explicitly
used these life experiences, it has been illustrative, or in the shape
of analogy, seeking to aid comprehension, not impede it.

Are you similarly dismissive of thought experiments?  They are useful
tools in exploring and understanding things that would normally be
difficult, for practical reasons.  What we accept about quantum
indeterminacy and the second law of thermodynamics is largely via
thought experiments.

But they do require the skill of inference, which apparently you have
not learned.  It must exclude you from understanding a lot.

Unless, of course, you do understand inferences, and you do understand
analogies, but you find it easier to dismiss mine than to
authentically respond to them.

> And since you call Pipes an idiot so easily, I have to wonder out loud
> how you define one.

I'm not using the word clinically, because Pipes doesn't exhibit
profound mental retardation, or even subnormal intelligence.

I retract it.

Pipes, instead, is actually an intellectual who uses his erudition in
a personally motivated attempt to paint Obama as a villain.

I don't have a single word descriptor for that sort of behavior, which
is why, I suppose, I lazily used "idiot."