All in a Day's Work (More Groundless Insults From Steve Hays)
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Strictly for entertainment and educational purposes (bolding added throughout). . . .
Randy, like Hahn and Armstrong and other conservative converts to Rome, is trying to carve out a little niche within the church. Theirs is a church within the church. This is not Roman Catholicism, but an inner schism--a homegrown chapel within the Church of Rome.
Instead of coming into the Church of Rome through the main entrance--via her scholars and theologians, they come in through a hole in the fence--the lay apologist or popularizer. This gives them a skewed and inauthentic view of what the RCC really stands for.
. . . Once again, see how Randy and other "Evangelical" converts have created a church within a church. Their church is not the church authorized by the magisterium. They are merely camping out in the RCC.
He claims to submit to the magisterium ("Being Catholic is a surrender of your will to God"), but when push comes to shove he sits in judgment over the judgments of the magisterium. He and Hahn and Armstrong are spiritual amphibians with their head in sola Scriptura and their tail in the baptismal font of Catholicism.
(The church within the church, 20 April 2005)
Commenter "c.t." provides a fascinating insight into false anti-Catholic triumphalism and delusions of superiority:
Randy, you have jumped the shark in your latest reply here.
But let's face it: when you are confronted by someone like Steve there really is no where for a Roman Catholic to go (see Dave Armstrong on that). Except the 'retreat into unreality' move. Or the hands over ears, run out of the room move.
I would guess there are other RC apologists now reading Steve's posts, and they are maintaining a studied silence. They don't want to go anywhere near Steve Hays at this point. Even if they study his arguments here to try to develop counter-arguments that would normally work for them in their world and with their audience they can't do anything with them. RC apologists avoid competent protestant apologists like the plague. Or they just lose all shame and get postmodern slippery and disingenuous. Like the Democratic party, i.e. say things in public that they know a good percentage of the people will know are lies, but they also know a majority of their voters are too ignorant to know the difference...
# posted by c.t. : 7:44 PM
For his part, Randy is somewhere to the right of Ratzinger. Randy has crawled into the same airtight bubble as Hahn, Armstrong, and other such converts. They are the freelance Catholics. They view themselves as the real deal, but if you compare the amount of distance they put between themselves and whatever teaching trickles down that they disown, you can see that they are really freelancing their way through the RCC, picking and choosing what to believe or disbelieve. Theirs is a cult within a cult--with self-appointed cult-leaders like Armstrong. I don't doubt their sincerity, but one can be sincerely self-deluded.
(Freelance Catholicism, 20 April 2005)
Hays and his comrades have been yucking it up, making out that I am scared to death of Hays' supposed invulnerable prowess in anti-Catholic argumentation, and that I am trembling in my boots (along with every other Catholic apologist who has had the misfortune of running into the unvanquishable Hays).
Of course, I provided a lengthy explanation and logical challenge, for why I refuse to debate anti-Catholics any longer (having done it in scores of debates over 15 years' time). It has nothing whatsoever to do with either fear or inability. Here it is: A Socratic Examination of the (Automatic Anti-Catholic) Charge of Supposed Catholic Fear of Protestant Opponents. If Hays truly wanted to engage in calm, rational discussion with me on ground that I had no objection to, this was his golden opportunity.
But how did he respond?: with numerous rationalizations and potshots, obscurantism and sophistry (and we must allow for pure incomprehension of my arguments as well, which has been an ongoing shortcoming of his "replies" to me) -- as to why he wouldn't give my paper the dignity of a response (all the while heartily condemning me as a hypocrite and coward for my R.C. Sproul-like stand concerning not giving anti-Catholic drivel the dignity of a response; go figure). Here are some of his comments:
Armstrong's latest response to what I've written is an elaborate exercise in sophistry.
[dismissal by name-calling rather than by rational argument]
He has clearly picked up a lot of scar tissue over the years, and like a bad divorce, he brings all this old baggage with him into the next encounter . . . And, to be perfectly frank, no one should go into apologetics unless he has a pretty thick hide to begin with.
[the usual wrongheaded, self-serving psych-babble analyses which do nothing whatsoever to advance the discussion along, as they have nothing to do with the disussion; they are purely ad hominem]
Along the same lines, Armstrong tries to drag in what other “anti-Catholics” have posted on his blog in the comment box. Once again, he is free to address them directly, and they are free to address him directly-unless he kicks them off his blog. Indeed, he has issued certain veiled threats to that effect.
[I've never kicked a single person off of my blog for the more-than-a-year since it has been up, including even Alexander, who has called me "filth" and said that I was going to hell, and regularly offers on my blog the most asinine, uncharitable pseudo-"Christian" trash imaginable.]
Armstrong is the one who tries to personalize everything as a substitute for an honest debate over competing truth-claims and truth-conditions.
[more psycho-babble quack analysis]
Then there's the matter of his “resolution.” He uses this as his favorite escape hatch to evade a substantive discussion.
[begging precisely the question that I dealt with in the paper: the stupid charge that I am "scared" and "running" from his super-threatening, awesome arguments; so he prefers to merely repetitively assert charges, rather than to demonstrate them through force of logic]
But any reasonable person can see that this is a viciously circular appeal. He begins with a self-serving and self-imposed resolution. In addition, his resolution is predicated on a self-serving classification of his opponents. He has debarred himself from debating with “anti-Catholics.” And who is an “anti-Catholic”? Anyone he doesn't want to debate with, that's who!
[neither the argument above nor my decision to not debate anti-Catholics are in the least bit circular, as both are supported by much outside criteria and reasoning as to why I took the positions I did. And obviously, he is the umpteenth anti-Catholic who twists and distorts my endlessly-repeated definition of anti-Catholic for his own ends, in the effort to make me look ridiculous. That's quite easy to do if you refuse to accurately portray an opponents' views]
This is like a boxer who issues a bold challenge to all comers, except that he's made a vow to himself never to box with any contender who might actually beat him in the ring.
[LOL]
Who does he think he's kidding with this transparent ploy? But if you're desperate enough, I guess you'll resort to any last-ditch escape maneuver, however obvious.
[when you can't answer an opponent with reason and logic, then throw enough manure on the wall -- no matter how ridiculous and irrational and groundless -- until some sticks; a time-honored evasive technique. Accuse your opponent of what you yourself are actually doing and hope no one will notice . . .]
In a phony show of magnanimity,
[note the marvelous condemnation of my motivation, as if he knows this; that I am being deliberately dishonest. Yet he expects me to engage in a civil, gentlemanly discussion with him? Even if he were not an anti-Catholic, I would long since have decided that he was not woth anyone's time, based on his ethical conduct alone. I merely defend myself against an utterly groundless charge, and continue challenging him to substantiate and defend it by means of making a logical challenge to it]
he is prepared to discuss anything with me as long as it isn't something he doesn't want to discuss with me-which just so happens to be all of the substantive issues in the conflict with Rome.
[nice try at creating a straw man entirely out of thin air, with no basis whatsoever in anything I have done]
Then you have his set of trick questions.
[yes of course; a paraphrase for "rhetorical questions I either don't understand, or are too difficult or embarrassing for me to attempt to answer, because then the utterly fallacious nature of my 'argument' will be fully revealed, and my triumphant posturing will be shown up for what it is, and since I don't want that and have to avoid it like the plague, I better describe Dave's rational argument in the most caricatured fashion, so that folks will think I have answered when I have not at all, since I obviously have not. I've only talked about it, without ever dealing with it."]
Armstrong has tilted the playing field to a 179-degree gradient, with himself conveniently perched atop the high ground at the 10-yard line, where he challenges me to score a touchdown.
[very colorful evasive technique, isn't it? This might be an ingenious and "successful" use of ridicule by word-picture, if I hadn't troubled myself to expose it for what it is]
Does he really think I've going to step into his trap? I guess he's hoping his trap is sufficiently camouflaged that no one will see it for what it is. But he's not going to play me for the chump.
[that's right! Steve Hays is not dumb enough to get into a rational exchange, because that would amount to him being a chump, and everyone knows that Steve Hays is no chump! Dave Armstrong must be the sophist and chump because he opposes Steve Hays! Is that not reason enough to dismiss out of hand anything Armstrong says??!! Besides, this Armstrong guy is a self-appointed leader of a cult-within-a-cult and an inauthentic "Catholic"! How rational is that?!]
(Catholic sophistry, 14 April 2005)
Is this not an incredible (almost ingenious) exercise in skirting all around an argument, mocking, caricaturing, belittling, dismissing, redefining, misunderstanding a carefully-laid out, perfectly logical argument, without in the least addressing the actual thing? One marvels at this. Why go to such extraordinary lengths to avoid answering? If Hays is so brilliant of an anti-Catholic thinker, then he ought to just answer and thoroughly refute my paper, and "blow it out of the water" (to use a common metaphor in such debates), instead of jumping through all these rhetorical hoops, trying to impress folks with exactly no logical argument or reasoned response whatsoever to (I know it's a novel concept) my ACTUAL ARGUMENT.
To remind readers who followed this before (and those who are new to the dispute -- my heartfelt sympathies), my paper (as you can see in the title) was not trying to show why anti-Catholicism is a self-defeating, totally incoherent position (I've done that many times elsewhere), but rather, it dealt with whether my present refusal to debate those with this view automatically "proves" that I am unable to do so, and scared of these folks. Steve made the charge. I was challenging him to back it up by dealing with reason, not mind-reading and self-serving, chest-puffing innuendo as to manliness or supposed lack thereof in his "papist" opponents.
So the challenge remains on the table. Hays can continue to ignore my argument, linked above, or he can make a rational reply to it. If he ignores it, that's fine with me. If he tries to refute it, that's even better, because he cannot do so. The argument is airtight, and it doesn't depend in the slightest degree on me presupposing that anti-Catholicism is ludicrous, and assuming what I'm trying to prove. It has nothing to do with that. It's not circular logic at all, and as long as he thinks it is, he merely shows that he continues to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the argument. As he has done that frequently, in my brief interaction with him, it comes as no surprise, and I fully expect it to continue, along with the juvenile, silly excuses for not answering the one paper which I am fully willing to discuss with him, as it does not contradict my resolve to avoid discussing theology with anti-Catholics.
--------------------------------
ADDENDUM: Hays' "Reply" to the Above
As expected, Hays simply reiterated his insults, rather than issue a logical reply to a logical argument. Here are some highlights of his condescending nonsense:
For some odd reason, Dave Armstrong has seen fit to reissue his original charade. Odd, I say, for if he really felt that his “challenge” had been so utterly devastating the first time around, there would scarcely been any need to reissue the “challenge.” Evidently, then, he is suffering from self-doubts about his initial performance—which is why he has decided to try, try again—with a rehash of the original “challenge.”
. . . his so-called “Socratic Examination,” which consisted in a series of loaded and leading questions, designed to impale the unsuspecting on the horns a logical dilemma.
But his misrepresentations notwithstanding, any reader is free to compare the full text of his “Socratic Examination” with the full text of my “Catholic Sophistry,” and see for himself that I did, indeed, respond to his questionnaire.
Armstrong’s problem is not that I didn’t answer him, but that I didn’t answer him on his own tendentious terms. Rather, I demonstrated that his “Socratic” questions were question-begging questions.
Yes, it was a purely logical challenge. It only suffered from two minor deficiencies: (i) it was purely logical scam to divert attention away from all the concrete, substantive issues; (ii) it was a logical fallacy—“airtight” in the way that any viciously circular argument is “airtight.”
And that was the point all along: to construct an argument that was sealed off from direct contact with all the hard, corrosive evidence against Roman Catholicism.
But except for the obstinate fact that both horns of his dilemma were broken, it was a charming little ruse. Junk bonds pay no debts.
. . . For Armstrong to shuffle this off into a logical game, and a fallacious game at that, in order to underwrite a highly elastic and self-important “resolution,” is intellectually, morally, and spiritually frivolous in the extreme.
. . . But if, at any time, Armstrong would like to drop the harlequinade and engage the real issues, then that is one challenge and the only challenge I am more than happy to meet.
(If at first you don't succeed...., 1 May 2005)
And another ludicrous tidbit, now expressed on my own blog:
Dave Armstrong makes much of my tone as a pretext to sneak out the back door. Now, aside from the fact that his own admixture of angry invective and crybaby rhetoric does not make him the most inspiring role-model of the virtues he is quick to demand in others, I would only note that Ben Douglass and Steve Jackson raise the same sorts of objections that I do, and like I, back up their objections with direct documentation from well-placed Catholic sources. And both of them maintain an unfailingly respectful and courteous tone. So how does Armstrong respond to them? Short answer: he doesn’t. He gives them the silent treatment. So it matters not what tone one adopts with Armstrong. Be as polite as you please, he will continue to duck the tough questions.
(2 May 2005)
