[Vision2020] Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood

[No Weatherman]

Chas:

Thanks for the email but ultimately it is your experience that you use
to discredit the eyewitness testimony of Obama's half sister.

Me, I believe her testimony rather than your experience.


On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Chasuk <chasuk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>