Arden Chatfield
Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (deadman_932 @ June 18 2006,16:02) | Well, I think it's pretty obvious what he's doing...everyone sees his tactics, dishonest as they are: redefinition, avoidance, pretense, red herrings, straw men, claims of victimhood, things that would get him tossed out of a debate or courtroom, or any peer-reviewed journal.
Dave's nutty claim that Portuguese is a mix of French and Spanish is a perfect example. No article/book I have ever seen so far agrees with him, but he claims victory based on latin cognates...and avoids presenting a list of loanwords derived from French. His view is that science works somehow by lying the loudest and longest. He's simply mental. |
Yeah, AFD's posts are such dismal examples of reasoning that I can't help but ponder what the psychological motivation is for him to be like this. WHY does he make so little sense? Why is he incapable of realizing he doesn't make sense? All I can figure is that it's an especially pernicious combination of two separate issues -- an unchecked egomania and slavish devotion to a severe, especially childlike strain of Fundamentalist Protestantism. A big part of his self-identity seems to be a terror of not buying every single part of the most exteme YEC biblical hyperliteralism, as though the last 400 years of biblical scholarship (or scholarship of ANY kind) had never happened. We're basically seeing a mind that never left the early 17th century, preserved like a bug in amber.
On the other hand, AFD is a raging egomaniac who seems to have become completely convinced of his superiority at everything, and his ability to win any argument by sheer force of will. Many of the touchstones of his life have no doubt reinforced this delusion -- being in the Air Force, being a pastor in his church, his whole Christian Patriarch shtick. Plus, his religion as he interprets it reinforces this, of course -- he's completely convinced since his 'opponents' are liberal atheists or whatever that Jesus WANTS him to win, so therefore, anything he does will result in his victory. The Christian knight triumphing over the heathens, transplanted to the 21st century. This is what is responsible for why he thinks he can actually win arguments in areas about which he very literally knows nothing. He argues biology and geology by doing cut-and-pastes from AIG, and in linguistics he claims that no one before him has ever analytically looked at Portuguese and the Romance languages before. I cannot IMAGINE venturing into a debate SO POORLY PREPARED as that, so I can't help but wonder WHY he's willing to do so. I think this is it -- he has far too high an opinion of himself, and he's convinced Jesus won't let him lose, and that the people he's debating can't be trusted on anything -- if they disagree with me and refute me, they're heathens, so I can disregard it.
By now, his ego is so thoroughly tied up with this, that he can't quit, even tho it's been a complete fiasco for him. If he admitted he's lost any argument here, he'd have to admit that the liberal atheists were right about something and he was wrong. And if they're right about THIS, what else might they be right about? The whole idea must terrify him. No, have to hold the line. Yield on nothing, no matter how ridiculous I end up looking.
As far as the whole lying thing is concerned, that's pretty obvious. As several people have pointed out, he no doubt thinks that if the lies are FOR Jesus and AGAINST the heathens, God will forgive it all. All for the larger good. It's not even really lying anymore that way.
Also, it doesn't help that when all else is said and done, Dave is really, really, dumb.
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"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
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