An atheist visitor named Jnani titles his Tuesday, December 27, 2011 post, “When Choosing Hats Attack.” It may be found here – http://fortheloveofreason.blogspot.com/2011/12/when-choosing-hats-attack.html.
“Choosing hats has decided to create a post personally attacking me.”
Actually, I was lured into creating a post to address Jnani’s endorsement here – https://twitter.com/#!/freethought4you/status/149248483218554881/photo/1 of Rosa Rubicondior’s absurd conspiracy theory that Choosing Hats dishonestly deletes comments from atheists, a claim that was thoroughly debunked here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/12/a-brief-response-to-atheist-rosa-rubicondiors-conspiracy-theory and here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/12/rosa-rubicondior-unsuccessfully-tries-to-save-face. Jnani has not responded to a single line of argument or evidence from these two posts but continues to accuse us of wrongdoing. Jnani made it personal. Now he is sore because he was called out as a conspiracy nut. The part about an “attack” is not just an attempt at a clever title. Jnani complains that Choosing Hats, “has decided to create a post personally attacking me,” that we decided to, “personally attack” him, and speaks of reading the, “attack post choosing hats created.” I would submit that Jnani’s complaints here have more to do with a postmodern emotionalism that panders to the atheistic victim mentality than they do with reality, but readers may review my post here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/12/its-a-conspiracy-freethinking-jnani-joins-truther-rosa-rubicondior and decide for themselves.
“You can view the post at choosinghats.com.”
Which I encourage you to do. I provided the direct link above.
“This originated with a complaint about their comment practices…”
Jnani should have written that “this” originated with his accusation of wrongdoing on our part with regard to our alleged comment practices. We do not actually delete atheist comments. See the posts linked to above.
“…started by another blogger named Rosa Rubicondior who tweeted that they were deleting comments.”
Indeed Rosa tweeted that we were deleting comments, and she did so multiple times, for months on end, in spite of proof that had already been provided that she was making false accusations. She whined about one of her comments supposedly not having been posted to the site when in fact it had been there for some time.
“I replied with a follow up tweet claiming they selectively filter comments by posting a screen shot of a comment that has still never made it out of moderation.”
And again, one can find my response to this nonsense here – https://choosinghats.org/2011/12/its-a-conspiracy-freethinking-jnani-joins-truther-rosa-rubicondior.
“In my tweet, I used the term ‘more proof’. Apparently they did not like my use of the term ‘more proof’ and decided it better to personally attack me instead of just approving the comment.”
Whether I “liked” Jnani’s use of the phrase “more proof” is completely irrelevant to the discussion. My point about Jnani’s use of the phrase is not difficult to grasp. I wrote, “He claims that he has ‘more proof,’ meaning that he accepts Rosa’s blatant lies despite their having been thoroughly rebutted.” That is, Jnani’s claim that he has “more proof” to support Rosa’s bogus conspiracy theory assumes that Rosa had proof, but she does not. That Rosa’s theory is nothing more than another one of her lies is abundantly clear from the posts linked to above. Jnani has not responded to a single line of argument or evidence from these two posts but continues to accuse us of wrongdoing.
“After reading the attack post choosing hats created I felt obligated to comment on it to clear up some misunderstanding on their part or at least to defend my self.”
Or, we called him out on propagating falsehoods about our character, and he wanted to try and save face.
“The comment I made was submitted on December 22 2011 at 11:28 and as the time of this post has still not been approved.”
It sure wasn’t. I left town for vacation on the 23rd and just got back on the 2nd, not that it is anyone’s business. (And, because I know it will come up, I “scheduled” one post for Christmas Day through the blog software, and made another very brief post sometime after that, but I did not go into the comments section when I did so.)
“Of course other comments have been approved after I submitted mine so its not as though they haven’t seed it yet.”
There are six active contributors to the site to let various comments through depending upon their locations, relevance, etc. It is generally the case that a lengthy comment pertaining to an involved disagreement between a contributor and a visitor is not going to be let through by anyone other than the individual the comment is addressed to. Again, I don’t need to tell anyone any of this, as it is covered in the Site Rules in more vague language, but sometimes people have to have things explained to them repeatedly before they catch on.
“Since they are obviously not going to approve it I felt this would be as good as anyplace to post it.”
I just approved it, so “obviously” Jnani was mistaken again.
“My comment to choosing hats submitted on December 22 2011 at 11:28. (Still awaiting moderation)”
See above.
“I find it very interesting that you have the time to create a whole post about the petty issue of your comment practices and how atheists have such a problem with it…”
“Interesting” is perhaps the most vague word in the English language, so there is not much I can say about it here, but how I spend my time is not really any business of an atheist stranger with an apparent axe to grind concerning such petty issues as our comment practices.
“…yet you do not have the time to click the approve button on the comment its self.”
For people who demand proof for something as obvious as the existence of God, atheists can be exceedingly presumptuous regarding items of which they are completely ignorant. Jnani acts like the comment in question was on one of my posts, but it wasn’t. Why would I click on the approve button? Do atheists think that in order for us to be fair we have to let them tell us when and how we will approve comments? I mean, this is starting to get as silly as Rosa’s conspiracy theory. Perhaps Jnani is still referring to the December 22nd comment, rather than the earlier one that started this spat, but I addressed that comment above, and in any event, it was made long after my post about comment practices (or more accurately, Rosa and Jnani’s conspiracy theory regarding our comment practices!).
“As for the difference between deleting comments and selectively filtering them, I see very little difference when comment moderation is on.”
So comment moderation is equivalent to deleting comments? Just what is Jnani trying to say? We are not deleting atheist comments. We are moderating comments. I addressed this in my post concerning this topic.
“Why would a moderator need to delete a comment they can just not approve in the first place?”
A moderator would need to do so to prevent the pending comments section from getting so full that new comments are lost. But again, what exactly is Jnani trying to say? At first he said he had more proof that Rosa is correct about us deleting comments. Now he is implying that we do not actually delete comments, we just let them sit in moderation and never approve them. So not only does he disagree with Rosa while saying that he agrees with her, but he falsely implies that we do not approve atheist comments. But that’s nonsense, as the two posts mentioned before show. And Jnani has not responded to anything in them.
“As you pointed out, I more accurately described the situation by using the phrase ‘selectively filter’ so as to clarify that I was not making an accusation that was untrue.”
See above.
“I admit that my use of the phrase ‘more proof’ may have been ill advised but still not entirely inaccurate when compared to the screen shot that was actually shown of Rosas comment *awaiting moderation*.”
Saying that the phrase was, “ill advised but still not entirely inaccurate” reminds me of the troubled young lady who tells her parents that she may be “sort of pregnant.” This wishy-washy language is not helping Jnani’s case at all. The phrase is entirely inaccurate, because Rosa had absolutely no proof of wrongdoing on our part. However, we offered plenty of proof of our innocence, and that is not to mention her guilt. Amazingly, Jnani continues to try and defend Rosa’s conspiracy theory. But he has not addressed any of the content of the two posts which illustrate that Rosa is wrong, and that is what actually matters.
“The comment of mine in question did not violate any of your comment policy and was a response to another comment made on the post (not the post itself as you indicate).”
To my knowledge, no one claimed that the comment in question was in violation of the comment policy.
“The excuse given by a CH moderator is that time was not available to approve the comment.”
Note again the atheist sense of entitlement. Do we need an “excuse” for not approving comments on our site in a manner that is acceptable to atheists?
“This is obviously false since time seems to be quite available as indicated by this post alone and my original comment is still awaiting moderation.”
I addressed this above.
“Anyway, I feel this is all quite petty as I have already indicated even before you wrote this post.”
Ah. So the repeated tweets from Rosa for months on end concerning The Great Atheist Comment Conspiracy were not petty, and the tweet from Jnani supporting Rosa in her crazy claims that we are “routinely deleting” and/or “selectively filtering” atheist comments was not petty, but when those nasty Christians dare to respond with two posts proving that Rosa and Jnani are dangerously close to being out of their minds in what they are suggesting then and only then does Jnani suddenly, “feel this is all quite petty.” He snipes at our character from Twitter and then pretends to take the moral highroad when we respond. Allow me to make a politically incorrect generalization: typical atheist behavior.
“Of course you did not point this fact out and instead tried to make it look like I believe there is some conspiracy.”
Jnani does believe there is a conspiracy. He has not denied it. He has not addressed any of the substance of the two posts dealing with Rosa’s conspiracy theory. Instead, he has offered his support for what she had to say, and then become upset when we lumped him in together with her.
“Not all comments need ask a question or outline an argument, as evidence by the comment I was replying to.”
My observations about the content of the comment were not intended to imply that comments must ask a question or outline an argument. Rather, I meant to imply that the comment was rather crummy without coming right out and saying it that way.
“My comment was making a correction to what I believe was a gross overgeneralization made by another commenter.”
That’s fine.
“You may disagree with me…”
And I do. I disagree with many people. That has never stopped me from carrying on a reasoned dialogue with them, letting their comments through, debating them, etc. But people like Rosa Rubicondior do not want a reasoned dialogue. They want an incoherent monologue. She cannot deal with argumentation and so she constantly resorts to accusing Christians of wrongdoing. I’ve been watching her do it for months to us on her Twitter account. I got tired of it, and I decided to write a post exposing her falsehoods. Comments are not rejected upon the basis of disagreement. That’s utter nonsense, as even a few minutes on the site will reveal.
“…but to create a whole post about some petty issue of comment moderation and then just ‘gainsay’ the comment in question seems a bit odd.”
Mayonnaise strikes me as odd, but I still occasionally use it. I’m not sure of the point Jnani is trying to make here, but note that he calls this whole issue “petty” again. I’m inclined to agree with him, but I’m not the one who brought it up, and I felt it was about time for it to be addressed.
“If you disagree with my comment the appropriate place would have been to just respond to it where it was.”
So there you have it. Jnani wants to run our blog. Thanks, but no thanks. His suggestion that the reason we treated his comment the way we did is because we disagree with it is, again, incorrect.
“As pointed out to Paul, I do say some things so matter-of-factly. It’s called taking a position. If it is a problem to take a position on something then I guess we all have problems.”
Some positions are not worth taking, much less defending. But I think the underlying point here is that when controversial tenets of philosophical systems are dogmatically affirmed, or introductory level understandings of particular philosophical concepts or problems are utilized without regard to counter claims and evidence and as though there is nothing more to be said, one might take this to indicate an ignorance of or sophomoric attitude with respect to the subject matter at hand (whether one is right or wrong in doing so, and whether or not the individual in question actually is ignorant concerning the subject of discussion).
“We all know you have issues with how my WV deals with things like induction…”
Namely that his worldview does not deal with things like induction.
“…but your sneaking in: ‘Jnani falsely thinks that determinism solves the problem of induction’ is quite funny, as my comment in question does not address POI.”
However, Jnani falsely thinks that determinism solves the problem of induction, so I fail to see his point.
“In fact if I remember correctly, we had quite a long conversation about the very topic of POI a while back.”
Which we did, via email.
“I also remember we were supposed to have a public skype discussion/debate on the matter…”
Which we are, though I am unclear on the debate topic.
“…and you backed out.”
Actually I postponed. I don’t back out of debates, though I can provide a list of people who do, and they’re atheists.
“When you decide to get over the petty issues and deal with something of substance, the offer is still open.”
I would love to. Let’s drop The Great Atheist Comment Conspiracy nonsense and set some parameters for a meaningful debate.
Thanks,
Jnani
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