Dear Hugh,
I do believe I qualify as a reasonable person, and I’m rationally justified on the basis of my criteria. How foolish, how ignorant you are to make mocking despicable little comments against me, your epistemic superior, who’s an actual philosopher and has studied the philosophy of miracles, and researched it for decades. You’ve got to pay attention to your epistemic superiors, Hugh, because now you just look like an ignorant fool in daring to question me, your intellectual and epistemic superior, who’s thought way harder than you have about these criteria. I should be congratulated for my brilliance in thinking about these things hard. I deserve respect for that; not to be mocked by some skeptic who’s never given it a second thought in his life.
In civil law courts, the standard of what a ‘reasonable person’ might be supposed to think is based on what a hypothetical person ought to know, not what they actually know. The fact that the majority of people are dumb or ignorant is irrelevant. That means they’re unreasonable. They should know this stuff. Who cares if a large proportion of the people interested in the Shroud find it fake on biblical grounds? I don’t care what a bunch of ordinary people do. None of these people are reasonable. They’re ignorant fools when it comes to these specific arguments, because I’ve absolutely proven, from biblical scholars, that only a fool would think that biblical arguments disprove the Shroud. Only a fool…
Skeptics like you guys are such big hypocrites. You don’t engage in critical thinking; you’re not smart; you don’t think about things…
… and you’re a supposed Roman Catholic! Are you making fun of Catholics and the Popes for being so dumb as to believe in miracles? Do you deny the Gospels? Do you think Jesus was a fool? You sound like a fake Christian if you’re mocking people who believe in miracles..
Who agrees with me? You yourself! So you’re a liar, a scheming, lying snake, that’s you! You’re a corrupt, crooked, deceitful, disgusting, lying sack of garbage. What a lying fool you are! How stupid are you! You strawman piece of garbage. Why don’t you turn on your listening ears, turn your brain on and listen to what I actually say? Don’t dare strawman me and call me bizarre. It’s disgusting. It’s satanically Satan induced supernaturally skeptical stupidity syndrome. I think it’s despicable. You lie and twist the truth, and manipulatively destroy the faith of Christians, and that’s what you devote your life to.
The journal Nature is a fraud. It is a crappy peer-reviewed journal. It’s not a good journal. … They’ll publish anything if it supports what they want to hear. … Biased as heck… Applied Optics… Biased as heck…
Yours sincerely,
A Reasonable Person.
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Dear Reasonable Person,
In a comment on James Fodor’s posting of the debate I discussed in my last post, I wrote that “I think the authenticist position is really dead in the water now the miraculists have taken over the helm, and Dale’s exposition shows why.” I was referring to Dale Glover’s exposition of the topic rather than his language, which during the debate was not intemperate, but scarcely was the ink dry on the page, or whatever metaphor applies to a podcast, when Glover took to the microphone to redefine his definition of a reasonable person, to explain that he was misunderstood because he hadn’t had time to express himself clearly, to misquote and misapply things I and others have said during interviews, and above all to resort to the abusive language above. If this man speaks for the authenticist cause; and if others who endorse or proselytise it don’t distance themselves from his presentations, then any hope they have of generating any support from any ‘scholarly community,’ should be abandoned. Regardless of the quality of the arguments, this language is that of the playground thug, and anybody who trails along with it is guilty by association. Don’t make excuses for it. Don’t justify. Don’t blame it on a temper tantrum, demonic possession or righteous anger. If you don’t condemn it, you endorse it. Endorse it, and you kill any hope of being taken seriously, and the authenticist cause, perilously close already, is lost forever amongst the pseudoscience of the flat earth, the faked moon landings, alien abduction and young-earth creation.
So what is a reasonable person? A hypothetical legal fiction, we’re told, which has a legal definition, which isn’t strictly true. He is fictional not because he doesn’t exist at all, but because he is a kind of composite of what all individual people might agree on, having a reasonable understanding of the case. [The first time it was used was to determine whether a farmer was negligent (it is almost always restricted to cases of negligence) in building a highly inflammable haystack near to some highly inflammable cottages. The defence was that he wasn’t very bright, but the prosecution held that the standard to hold him to was not that of his personal intelligence, but that of “a man of ordinary prudence,” who would have known that haystacks often catch fire spontaneously. As it happened, several men of ordinary prudence had told the farmer of the danger, and he had dug an airshaft into his haystack to mitigate the risk, but had also been heard to say that he would “chance it,” suggesting that he guessed it might not be sufficient.]
An English Law website gives some ‘Characteristics of a Reasonable Person’: “The reasonable person possesses certain key attributes:
– Ordinary intelligence and prudence, not exceptional skill or foresight,
– Awareness of common risks and hazards that would be apparent to any reasonable observer,
– Ability to weigh competing interests and make proportionate decisions,
– Conduct consistent with accepted community standards and practices,
– No special physical or mental characteristics unless relevant to the specific context.”
By these criteria Glover is way over-qualified to class as an ordinary reasonable person. In going on and on about his years of research and epistemic superiority, he loses track of ordinary reasonable people, with only an “ordinary degree of reason, prudence, care, foresight, or intelligence,” who read the Gospel of John and conclude that it doesn’t match the Shroud, who have studied the radiocarbon dates and find a medieval provenance convincing, or who think that the anatomy of the image shows that it could not have ‘transferred’ from a body. According to Glover, they’re not just wrong, they’re “ignorant fools,” because he has studied the question for years and “absolutely proven, from biblical scholars, that only a fool would think that biblical arguments disprove the Shroud;” because “six peer-reviewed journals” have proved the the radiocarbon dating was “utterly fraudulent”; and because whether the Shroud image is anatomically credible is “irrelevant.”
As it happens, I don’t think the bible can be used either to authenticate the Shroud or refute it, and have said so. I think the specific words used by the evangelists can be interpreted in different ways and I think the reasons the evangelists used those words is not understood. I have said words to that effect in my blog and in podcasts. What I have never said is: “No, these are not good arguments. These are dumb, irrational, unreasonable objections.” Misquoting me like that is not merely précis; it adds a layer of contempt for my fellow man that I have never felt nor ever said.
But then it turns out, possibly because Glover realises that his ‘reasonable person’ argument doesn’t hold water, that he didn’t mean that sort of ‘reasonable person’ after all. His reasonable person is a “reasonable real seeker”; someone who must be sincerely open minded, actively seeking the religious truth of the artefact, and prepared to submit to that religious truth once he’s discovered it. However, it soon becomes apparent that the only religious truth acceptable to Glover is Christianity, and that anyone coming to a different view cannot be said to be a ‘reasonable person.’ By definition no non-Christian view can be considered reasonable, so any views that any Atheists, Moslems or Jews might have are considered irrelevant. Considering that some of these people have both studied the Shroud in some depth, and acknowledge that the Shroud is authentic, if not miraculous, I think it is a pity to dismiss them all as unreasonable, or worse, as ‘ignorant fools.’
On Saturday, Real Seekers hosts a discussion on this debate with its moderator, Tavo San Abri, and Teddi Pappas, another determined authenticist. What does she think of the language of her host? Will she support it or condemn it, or ignore it altogether, which is much the same thing. Qui tacet consentire videtur, as every lawyer knows.
Yours sincerely,
a corrupt, crooked, deceitful, disgusting, lying sack of garbage.
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Does this man speak for you?
Does this man speak for the Shroud?
Does this man speak for Christ?
Hugh, thank you for handling this with more grace than most of us could have managed. Reading his letter, what struck me wasn’t the anger itself but its shape — it’s the kind of fury that usually comes from a lack of confidence. People rarely explode like that over a position they hold with quiet confidence. That kind of vehemence tends to show up when a belief someone has built a large part of their identity around starts to feel less solid than they can afford to admit, even to themselves.I don’t say that to diagnose the man, only to note the pattern. A genuinely settled conviction doesn’t usually need to call its critics “epistemic inferiors” or “satanically induced.” That’s the language of someone defending a position he’s afraid to look at too closely. Take care, — Dan
Hi Hugh,
To answer your question, no, he does not.
Take care
Patrick
It may have been cathartic for this extremely unreasonable person to write that ad hominem attack down, but to send it is proof that he needs treatment. Saying that, the alliteration was quite good in parts.