“Vlad and I discussed this in private mail. I will not here disgorge the entire content of that exchange (though if pressed by some unexpected necessity I would be glad to).”
It doesn’t matter to me if you do. Feel free.
“But I will relate that vlad nowhere in that exchange offers anything remotely like a statistical validation of his claim.”
The truth I stated needs no such validation, and it doesn’t matter if you believe it does.
“He has this one data point with the sourcing integrity,”
Sourcing integrity? No, it is about something else. Can you guess what that is? And that is NOT all I have. I already told you that: “
“which he hangs on his home page surface like some morbid trophy, and he has a number of other events which rise at best to hearsay and/or opinion, but not proof.”
I know what did and did not happen. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree.
“The coup de grace is his claim he had a Protestant preacher tell him explicitly that it was OK to lie about Catholics.”
Youth pastor. He was a Protestant youth pastor. And this is exactly what I sent to you in reply to your message to me: “But you see no extremes in lying. See, a bigot lies. Protestant anti-Catholic bigots lie. They do it often and some of them even believe it is morally okay to do it because it is against Catholicism - just as a Protestant youth pastor told me in the late 1990s when I caught him spreading anti-Catholic lies through [name not to be mentioned at FR] comic books.”
“Now I have no doubt that would be an upsetting experience. But if I were a scholar of any accomplishment, I would know, absolutely KNOW, I could not use such anecdotal evidence to support making defamatory claims about an entire class of individuals.”
I made no defamatory claims. Everything I said was absolutely true. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree.
“Therefore, to be perfectly honest, vlad, I suspect your credentials.”
It doesn’t matter if you do.
“If you are who you say you are, you should know better.”
I know exactly what I have discovered here at FR and in many other places. I know exactly what was said to me. I know what was posted to me. I know what was posted at FR. I am exactly who I say I am and nothing I posted in this regard is anything but absolutely true.
“I’d have lost my situation on Law Review for attempting to foist such trash on readers as if it were good argument.”
It doesn’t matter what YOU would have lost. Your opinion doesn’t matter. What you think, or feel, or consider, or find fault with, simply doesn’t change the truth.
“BTW, vlad, question. Are you naming yourself after Vladimir the Great, who I think I’ve read somewhere introduced Christianity to Russia in 998? Interesting character he was.”
He is one of two Vladimirs I named myself after. It was 988, not 998.
You are right about at least one thing. What I think about the truth doesn’t change the truth. But what you or I think about the truth can change us. Perhaps you don’t find that relevant. I do.
At this point I would ask the reader to take note: Vlad did not defend his false generalization (“Protestant apologists lie”) in any statistically meaningful way. He does not because he cannot. He has one data point based on facts in which we generally agree, the sourcing integrity incident. The rest are claims he has made that the rest of us cannot verify. However, even if we could verify each and every specific instance he claims, it would be far short of the sample size necessary to prove his point.
Now I have tried and failed to elicit a defense from him that can be inspected for its truthfulness. But at every turn he has offered only his private stash of anecdotal evidence and from these meager holdings he apparently expects me to accept his grand conclusion as self-evidently true.
I ask him therefore to accept as self-evidently true the following syllogisms, which follow his form exactly:
Syllogism 1:
Minor Premise: Springfield Reformer (SR) has Catholic family members who both advocate and practice abortion (sadly true, BTW).
Major Premise: SR’s Catholic family members accurately represent all other Catholics.
Conclusion: Therefore all Catholics advocate and practice abortion.
Syllogism 2 (same idea with a much larger sample set):
Minor Premise: A number of Catholic priests have been convicted of sex crimes.
Major Premise: Each of these priests is an accurate representative of priestly behavior.
Conclusion: Therefore all catholic priests are sex criminals.
For syllogism 2, there are, I believe, many more data points than anything vlad has adduced for his perniciously false generalization, which takes the exact form as those given above:
Vlad’s Syllogism:
Minor Premise: Some FReepers and a Protestant youth pastor have lied in the course of defending Protestantism and/or criticizing Catholicism
Major Premise: Those FReepers and that youth pastor are an accurate representation of everyone who either defends Protestantism or criticizes Catholicism.
Conclusion: Protestant apologists lie.
I hope everyone can see the pattern here. In every case, the defect is NOT in the facts of the minor premise, but in the unwarranted leap beyond those limited facts into the utter fantasy (and blatant falsehood) of the major premise. No conclusion based on such a weak foundation should be trusted, let alone regarded as self-evident, and wilfully promoting such a faulty conclusion constitutes at minimum a reckless disregard for the truth and therefore qualifies as defamatory.
For example, assuming there were even as many as 3000 legitimate cases of priests being caught in sex crimes, that still represents less than 1% of the total population of priests in the world (a little over 412,000 by some accounts). No serious scholar would attempt to use a sample of 1% to prove anything about a given group. It is laughable, Vlad.
Oh wait, I know, it’s irrelevant, right? Right.
Just like the Catholic family members of mine who like and practice abortion. Wouldn’t you argue my sample size is too small to draw my conclusion that all Catholics are advocates and practitioners of abortion?
No need to reply. I already know you consider these analogies irrelevant, immaterial and to be thrown out and disregarded because, well, just because. You never give me the “because” part, Vlad, probably because I am a Protestant and therefore unworthy. So I hope you will forgive me for my poor ability to fill in the gap. You’ve given me precious little to work with, other than your version of the Piers Morgan “How dare You!” defense.
And I have to admit. A content-free defensive tactic like that does save you a lot of work. You never have to actually address the vicious defects in your assertions if you simply declare any challenges irrelevant. Nice work if you can get it. I’m from more of a low rent district. I actually feel an obligation to try and make my case based on a fair handling of the facts and the logic. I know you don’t believe that. But you’re wrong. No I’m not. Yes you are. No I’m not. Oh Pulease.