I would love to see an LSAT-off between the two of them. Not only would I give ten to one odds on Dorothy, but I’ll cover a forty point spread between the two of them, as well. Any takers?

Some of us were born with brains, and some of us were not. Intelligence, and rhetoric, in particular, is not my gift. I try to make up for it with love, but sometimes I also fall short in that category too. I’m sorry you experienced my comments as patronizing. That certainly wasn’t my intention, and I’ll be more careful to avoid coming across like that in the future.

Beautiful! A non-sequitur AND a red herring in the same breath. I countered your claim that rhetoric was a luxury. You respond that I must think rhetoric is more important than love. Now I am supposed to go off on a tangent defending my feelings towards love or start back-pedaling from my original point that rhetoric is a necessity in modern life. Tricksy.

Yes, I know you would like to cast me in the fiery furnace of ignorance

by tossing me into that same Ring of Fire that you’ve conveniently tossed all the other fundamentalist Christians.

“All”? Where did you get “all”? I gave a specific example of a specific instance or “several local churches.” That means “some number of churches in North Texas that is greater than 3, but I cannot remember the precise number and do not have the means to research that at this time.”

And again, I didn’t toss anyone anywhere. These ministers and their flock chose to toss themselves into that fiery furnace of ignorance when they chose to harrass teachers in two school districts. They demanded that every teacher justify every question on every test, and if any question was deemed by these people to “foster critical thinking,” they demanded that the teacher rewrite the test or exempt their children from taking it. Some of them demanded to sit in on class discussions so they could object to questions in the classroom, on the fly. I should point out that “critical thinking skills” are part of the state-mandated junior high and high school graduation tests.

These parents embraced ignorance all on their own, and they chose to force their chillden to remain in ignorance also. In some cases, they forced their children to remain diploma-less and destined for a life of low-paying, unskilled labor jobs.

This was my specific example that you generalized into “all”: Are you saying that all fundamentalist Christians do this?

But did you know that if you signed up for one of my psychology courses that you would not stand a hope in hell of passing unless you exhibited clear, unequivocal evidence of critical thinking skills?

And yet, when I do exactly that here, you respond with patronizing, irrelevant comments about how much you do or do not like me and how much I do or do not remind you of your mother. You seem to think that rhetorical skills and logical thinking are “luxuries.”

Since the first day you’ve been trolling this board, I have not seen you maintain even a coherent argument, much less one free from logical fallacies and unsourced supporting details. Do you realize that, with the argumentative skills you’ve shown in your conversations here, you wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of passing my English Composition 101 class?

I find myself faced with two possible conclusions:

1)You are honestly ignorant of the basic rules of logic and rhetoric, although you may not actually be aware of this. Now personally, I do not consider ignorance to be a “bad” thing: it just means someone was not taught properly, and 7 or 8 times out of 10, it wasn’t the student’s fault. I’m ignorant about a lot of things, and like Socrates, “I know that I know nothing.” (Lack of curiosity, lack of desire to learn: now that is not good. Combine that with ignorance, and you have a disaster waiting to happen.)

2) You are schooled and skilled in rhetoric and argument, but you choose to break every rule in the book so you can score quick emotional points, accuse your adversaries of “groupthink,” stupidity, and prejudice, and derail every train of thought so that every conversation winds up being all about you. That would make you an egotistical asshole who needs something better to do with his time.

I won’t pretend to know you well enough to claim that either conclusion is the correct one. For the sake of your students and your patients, though, I really hope it’s the first one.

And no, elendil, since it already “Hurts So Good,” I doubt if there will be any rewards in heaven for persecution of myself that I may have helped to generate, or for persecution that I may have enjoyed a little too much. And BTW, thanks for giving me your blessings in my quest to fulfill God’s mission for me here at “Sadly, no!”

This isn’t an easy mission field, my friend. Like Jonah, I initially furiously fled from God’s calling for me here. The soil is mighty tough, rocky, and thorny, but a tiny voice inside my head said, “You aren’t going to win anyone over by preaching to the choir over at Power Line.” Yes, I’ve faced many a foe, and I’ve faced a brutal, ineffable mountain of persecution. But Jesus said all I need is a mustard seed of faith to move mountains. Some day I’m counting on a bumper crop of “Sadly, no!” souls seeking salvation. It starts by saying “Yes” to faith, and just saying “No!” to sarcasm, and its evil stepsister, the cyanide of cynicism.

So, you are going the Matt 5:10 route aye? Does it still count if you actively stir up your own persecution (complex), rather than going out and defending those innocents who are truly persecuted? Well, who am I to judge. If God’s called you to be a troll on Sadly No, then I guess that’s just the way it is.

Yes, I know you would like to cast me in the fiery furnace of ignorance by tossing me into that same Ring of Fire that you’ve conveniently tossed all the other fundamentalist Christians. But did you know that if you signed up for one of my psychology courses that you would not stand a hope in hell of passing unless you exhibited clear, unequivocal evidence of critical thinking skills? Why do you think I’ve so eagerly questioned folks here who cling to liberal groupthink? The only other type of thinking I value more is creative thinking.

But please, Dorothy, don’t think for a moment, that I don’t like you. There are only two reasons why I do not. 1. Last night I attended a remarkable performance by the Blackwood Gospel Quartet where I was reminded of how much Christ loves me, and how much He wants me to love my blog neighbor as my freakin’ self. And 2. You have the same first name as my mom. Sometimes your voice even takes on that same punative tone that reminds me of the tone my mother used to use when I was a child just before she proceeded to spank me.

Uh…right. This has nothing to do with logic and rhetoric. “Tongues” in this case refers to “languages”. This quote was targeted at the “look, ma, I can speak in tounges!” crowd of Christians who believed that parlor tricks were more important than good works for getting into heaven. Let me see if I can think of a modern example of this type of Christian….

Besides, rhetoric is a luxury for me. I don’t have time to sound intelligent.

Rhetoric isn’t about sounding intelligent. It’s about building a sound argument. It’s about recognizing bullshit supporting details, distracting red herrings, hateful ad hominem attacks, fascist appeals to false authority, and ridiculous analogies that compare saying “happy holidays” to throwing someone in a concentration camp.

That is not a luxury. It is a necessity for any self-aware, conscientious adult who wants to maintain any semblance of sanity in a world of message spin, marketing weasel-speak, and even outright propaganda. It’s vital for anyone who knows or cares about the difference between reality and Faux-reality.

These days, they usually call it “critical thinking skills,” and it’s very telling to me that several local fundamental churches tried to get it banned from the Texas public schools. You see, these churches felt that learning to think was against their religion. See, it never occured to these “Christians” that someone in the future might try to sell their kids a line of bull (here, have some drugs! If you love me, you’ll sleep with me!), and they have made sure their kids are defenseless against it.

That explains why they feel the need to stamp out any and all messages they don’t agree with. It’s like purposely ripping out your child’s immune system and then demanding that the government destroy anyone or anything that might carry germs, never realizing that it is a completely impossible task.

To me, that is the perfect definition of “clueless fucktard dumb”.

bulbul: to jesteth is besteth, and, believe me, if you saw the folks I see for therapy, you’d be calling them patients, not clients!

bad jim: Are you the real bad Santa?

elindil: Let me start by saying I appreciate the apparent sincerity of your quest for answers. It is written: “Seek and ye shall find, knock, and the door shall be opened until thee. ” Now, to answer your questions:
1. “Why are you here?”
Sadly, I’ve become addicted to being tortured by left-wingers. There’s something oddly appealing about becoming RightwingRoadKill for Jesus.

2. “Why do you comment at Sadly, No!?”
a. Because I can.
b. Because I’m on a mission from God.

finally, mr. x:
“That sounds like you doc. It doesn’t make sense either.”
Yeah, like juxtaposing those two sentences together makes sense! And by the way, try telling that to the Apostle Paul. You’re lucky he found light and love on that Damascus road, and that his name is no longer Saul!

These “core, conservative Christian values” he’s going on about are inherently and by their very nature inimical to “American values”.

Glad to see we finally agree on something.