Ridiculous E-mail of the Month (or so)

January 2007

Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST)
From: John Martin [satguys01 email addr at yahoo]
Subject: Get a life
To: [my web-listed email address]

You are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you. Just like a
scummy attorney that profits from filing frivolous lawsuits. You raise
the cost of doing business for companies, raise taxes by overburdening
the courts, and therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the
marketplace.

  What do you care? You made a dollar.       

  Telemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The wheels
would stop turning if there were no phones or business conducted on
them.

  The Federal and State do no call list is just another angle for the
Fed and State to make a buck.

  Just ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact and
harass millions of citizens with automated messages and call people on
the so called do not call list? So its OK for them to fund raise and
get re elected (profit) using unscrupulous methods. But a legitimate
business offering legit goods or services is restricted.

  Are there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like any
other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit goods and
services.

  Does your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch commercials on
TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue them? Junk Mail does more
damage to the environment than anything else. But the US post
service make money on it so that will never stop.

  Screen you calls, that's what caller id is for, hangup on automated
messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame lawsuits.  Do you
really suffer any damages by listening to a message or having a dialer
hang up on you? Or are you just an other greedy opportunist like you
EVIL telemarketing counterparts just out for a quick buck?

From: "James J. Lippard" [my email addr]
To: John Martin [satguys01 email addr at yahoo]
Subject: Re: Get a life
In-Reply-To: <400549.50780.qm@web62015.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

The difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating the law,
and I'm not.  None of my lawsuits have been frivolous, which is why I
have a 100% record of success.  I'm only raising the cost of business
for companies that are blatantly breaking the law; my impact on the
courts is negligible--I always offer to settle out of court for the
minimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I always file
in small claims which minimizes the paperwork.  The money I collect is
specified as damages in the statutes, and serves not only to
compensate me for the violations but to act as a deterrent to further
violations.  It has worked pretty well--I don't get many such calls
any more.

If you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed.  But if you
violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose.

What's your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email to   
someone you don't know?  From your email address, I would guess that 
you're in the satellite dish resale business, which is well known for
its sleazy violations of telemarketing law.

Are you a regular violator of the TCPA, John?

BTW, I have a nice life.  What kind of life do you have that you seek
enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?

January 2006

Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:22:55 -0700
From: David Etter [sent via Domains by Proxy davidetter email addr at shaw.ca]
Subject: FWD: [SPAM] An Open Letter to Jim Lippard [domainsbyproxyaddress]

http://www.discord.org/~lippard/Missler.html

Yours?

I just thought I'd say that, If your not a Christian, why should Chuck
Missler respond to you, and most importantly,

Why are you trying to improve the accuracy of something you don't even
believe in the first place.  You are absolutley ludicrous!

If you don't believe ok, but also with that statement comes something
you'll have to realize and accept. If you can't have faith, then you
can't understand it. So don't try to rationalize something you never
understood in the first place.

Dave

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 12:54:05 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: David Etter [davidetter email addr at shaw.ca]
Subject: Re: FWD: [SPAM] An Open Letter to Jim Lippard [domainsbyproxy email addr]

On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 07:22:55PM -0700, emailservice@domainsbyproxy.com wrote:
> http://www.discord.org/~lippard/Missler.html
>
> Yours?
>
> I just thought I'd say that, If your not a Christian, why should Chuck Missler respond to you, and most importantly,

Why *shouldn't* he respond to me?  I'm not a Christian, so if you
think it's a reasonable policy to ignore/fail to interact with people
who don't share your particular religious beliefs, why are you sending
me email?

Do you have any specific criticisms of the arguments or evidence in
that letter?

> Why are you trying to improve the accuracy of something you don't even believe in the first place.

I believe everyone should aspire to be the best they can be, whether I
agree with them or not.  I believe that the quality of dialogue between
adherents of different beliefs is enhanced if all parties give their best
arguments.

> You are absolutley ludicrous!                                                                                                     
You don't supply any reason for this judgment.

> If you don't believe ok, but also with that statement comes something you'll have to realize and accept. If you can't have faith, then you can't understand it. So don't try to rationalize something you never understood in the first place.                       

I used to be a born-again Christian, so I understand that mindset and
the subjective perceptions of such a worldview--I've been there.

It appears to me that your email to me is designed to find a way to dismiss
the content of what I wrote without thinking too hard about the actual arguments
or evidence in it--your failure to engage with any of those arguments is evidence
of that.

It is sad that most believers maintain their belief by refusal to
examine evidence.  I hope that by reaching out to me, some part of you
has an interest in dealing with reality rather than living in a fantasyland
that avoids contact with anything inconsistent with your views.

> Dave

--
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

March 2005

From: "Frank Marsh" [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
To: [lippard email addr]
Subject: The origin of sexual reproduction
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 10:20:35 +0000

Hi,

In Volume 18(1) of TJ (2004), 'The in-depth Journal of Creation' there are 
three papers about the supposed evolutionary origin of sexual reproduction. 
Not surprisingly, the authors state that there is no evolutionary 
explanation as to how sexual reproduction originated. No one who believes 
this absurd nonsense can be taken seriously. Is it any wonder that 
evolutionists need to hide behind loaded definitions of science? The theory 
of evolution is nothing but an insult to a person's intelligence.

So will the real skeptics please stand up?

Regards,

Frank Marsh

Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 09:38:50 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <[lippard email addr]>
To: Frank Marsh [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
Subject: Re: The origin of sexual reproduction
Message-ID: <20050327163848.GA28314@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <BAY19-F2846FCF5B87ADB176E0264AE430@phx.gbl>

Are you surprised that a journal published by creationists makes such an
argument?

Creationists aren't skeptics or scientists, they are deniers.  If
creationists were scientists, they would be capable of dealing with
the evidence here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Please don't send me further email.  If you'd like to actually discuss
or argue the evidence, there are public forums where you can do so.

From: "Frank Marsh" [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
To: [lippard email addr]
Subject: Re: The origin of sexual reproduction
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 21:36:06 +0000

As I mentioned in my first email, evolutionists evade discussing the origin 
of such sexual reproduction because their case is non-existant. So it is 
pointless referring me to such a website because no one there will discuss 
it. To say that creationists are 'deniers' is nothing but a circular 
argumentation, because this assumes that evolution is true to start with. I 
would never say that evolutionists are 'deniers' because they don't believe 
in creation...as I have shown, the case for intelligent design (irreducible 
complexity) is very powerful and we don't need to resort to such weak 
arguments.

Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 16:27:28 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <[lippard email addr]
To: Frank Marsh [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
Subject: Re: The origin of sexual reproduction
Message-ID: <20050327232725.GA14271@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <BAY19-F166915BE59EF578957ABA8AE430@phx.gbl>

I look forward to seeing publication of some content for "intelligent
design theory."  So far, it's all been hand-waving and the usual bogus
arguments against evolution.  If ID has real scientific content, then
it should prove fruitful as a theory--but so far, nobody has published
anything of substance.  Only Stephen Meyer has published anything in a
peer-reviewed scientific journal, but his publication was a rehash of
previous work, full of errors, that bypassed peer review and was
published in an inappropriate journal (one on taxonomy) by a
creationist editor.

You say "as I have shown"--but I haven't seen the demonstration of
which you speak.

Feel free to let me know when something with real content gets
published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal describing positive
research results of intelligent design theory.  Until then, I'd
appreciate it if you'd not send me further email.  Thanks.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 05:33:29 +0000
From: "Frank Marsh" [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
To: [lippard email addr]
Subject: Re: The origin of sexual reproduction
Message-ID: <BAY19-F14735FA690A7E98CAE296FAE440@phx.gbl>

It is quite amusing to see you evade me on the issue of the origin of sexual 
reproduction. But who would be foolish enough to try and defend a 
naturalistic origin of sexual reproduction?! It is such laughable, pathetic 
nonsense that no one with an IQ above 10 would believe in it. Frogs turning 
into princes, a naturalistic origin of sexual reproduction...anything for a 
laugh. You just hope that there is someone out there that can provide an 
answer. But there is no one to help you. And you *do* believe in a 
naturalistic origin for sexual reproduction, don't you? As an evolutionist, 
you must. There is simply no choice. This is the sad state of the lame-duck 
theory of evolution. I have lost count of the number of evolutionists a have 
shredded to pieces. They are easy-beats. So if you bother to respond to this 
email, make sure you show some backbone, and confront me on the origin of 
sexual reproduction, if you can.

Frank Marsh

Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 08:17:27 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: Frank Marsh [franktmarsh email addr at hotmail]
Subject: Re: The origin of sexual reproduction
Message-ID: <20050328151727.GA31016@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <BAY19-F14735FA690A7E98CAE296FAE440@phx.gbl>

I'm no expert on the origin of sexual reproduction.  I do know enough
about evolution and creationism to know that there is a wealth of
evidence for the former, and overwhelming evidence against the latter.

I pointed you to a wealth of information supporting common
descent--you refused to even go to the website.  I spent over a decade
reading creationist material, some of which I have published responses
to (e.g., in _Creation/Evolution_ and _Perspectives in Science and
Christian Faith_).

Your response below includes cartoon caricatures of evolution of the
sort used by the most incompetent of creationist sources, like Ken Ham
and M. Scott Huse.  It doesn't provide much support for the idea that
you are someone to take seriously, and I don't.

I don't know what your motivation is for sending unsolicited snide emails
to people you don't know, but I'm now asking you for the third time to
stop sending email to me.  Please respect my request like a decent human
being.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

December 2003

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 10:31:03 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
Subject: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
To: [skeptic list addr]
Cc: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
Message-id: <20031224173103.GA30003@discord.org>

>From: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto [ufoupdates list email addr]
>Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 06:29:05 -0600
>Subject: SK) Re: Starbaby & A New CSICOP Coverup?
>
>Yeah... but see, I submit that you're missing something from the
>big picture that's likely key to absolving some of our
>ignorance... forgetting that it won't really matter who makes

Absolving?  I don't think ignorance is a sin.

>the most money doing *whatever*... remember the story Jerry
>Clark told us about "Fate" being supported by the largess of a
>Recreational Vehicle publishing effort? 'Fate' was operated at a
>loss same as the CSICOPian effort may or may not prove to be...
>What really matters is the motivation behind the desire to
>operate at a loss. In the case of "Fate," the motivation is
>obvious... the wish to peak behind the *curtain*, think out of
>the *box*, expand the *consciousness*... is worth the time and
>effort. It's fun if nothing else.... What motivates a CSICOPian
>to operate at a loss, love of what?

I disagree that the motivation is the important thing, but
let's address the issue.

I think the primary motivation of CSICOP, or at least CSICOP
supporters, is to promote critical thinking and skepticism, and to
prevent people from being taken in by fraud and falling into error
(specifically Type I error--believing falsehoods on the basis of weak
evidence).  These should be laudable goals in anyone's book.

The opponents of CSICOP are largely more concerned with Type II
error--failure to believe truths where the evidence supports it.
This is also a type of error that anybody should want to avoid.

>Some would argue that they see a loss of human rationality and a
>quick slide to a new 'dark ages' upon a serious investigation
>into the paranormal, when any really rational person only
>perceives that investigation as forewarning for a future that
>approaches regardless. What's CSICOP got to hide? If _their_

You tell me.  What is it that you think CSICOP is hiding
(as opposed to not promoting, or attempting to dissuade people
from believing on the basis of weak evidence)?

>science bears out the work of the paranormalist scientist (of
>conjecture) shouldn't that be a *good* thing?

Sure--and I think any supporter of CSICOP would agree.

>>My comparison of Amazon.com book sales was a start at such a
>>comparison, as I listed only parapsychology books and skeptical
>>books that (mostly) focused on parapsychology.
>
>This discussion is focused, but it's not on the point really --
> and the point is... Is CSICOP a fraud? That's the issue. It may

I disagree, that's not the issue, and I think you should be
more accurate with terms like "fraud."

>be -true- that they paid their idiosyncratic taxes, but what did
>they manufacture? Only dismissal! Never confirmation (even when
>the evidense of confirmation is there?)! Their research provides
>fodder for derision of something that every one of them admits
>is there (somewhere in space and time or in some capacity).
>"UFOs are real... (somewhere)," these think..."just please,
>please, please... not here"!

It doesn't sound like you're a subscriber to Skeptical Inquirer.

I think we differ not only on what we think is true, but on how
we get there.  It looks to me like you are making the common
mistake of demonizing those who disagree with you, rather than
trying to understand why they disagree with you.

[...]

>What you may be doing here is comparing unlike scales. Which
>gets late-night (and so discounted) attention and which graces
>mainstream prime time, Gerald Posner or Jim Marrs? And Posner
>is "[Dirty]", sir (Parenti's "History as Mystery"). Marrs is,
>too quickly, dismissed as a sensationalist by the official
>mainstream, and seems to support himself, with regard to
>research, better than his detractors...

Posner is a better researcher than Marrs.  Posner's work contains
mistakes, but people had to really struggle to come up with a list of
100 errors in his book, and most of those errors are extremely minor
(and many of them aren't even errors).  See
http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Conspiracies/Assassination/ for
references.

I don't know what you mean by "Posner is '[Dirty]'", but it looks
like an ad hominem argument.

In my opinion, it is quite reasonable for Posner to get prime-time
coverage and Marrs to be on late-night talk radio (as well as be a
major source for Stone's "JFK").

If you did a random telephone survey of Americans, though, would they
be more familiar with Posner's work, or JFK assassination conspiracy
claims?  Which has reached a larger audience?  *That's* my point.

[...]

>So, more and more people, unimpressed with the veracity of
>CSICOP and leery of its biased prosecutions and duplicitous
>anti-paranormal prosecutions (for reasons hard to determine,
>remember...) , more and more become interested in UFOs...

Most people have never heard of CSICOP, I'm afraid.  I think your
language here betrays a bias on your part that is stronger than that
of CSICOP--you should remember that the Skeptical Inquirer publishes
articles from a large field of contributors, and the specific issues
that CSICOP has been rightly criticized for involved only a very few.
Further, the worst example--its handling of the Mars Effect--resulted
in admission of error in 1983 (Kurtz, Zelen, and Abell's "Reappraisal"
article) and the publication of two pro-Mars Effect papers from
Suitbert Ertel in 1992 (vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 150-160) and 1998
(vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 59-60).

I don't think more and more people are becoming interested in UFOs
these days.

>Hey, burned and shy, I know the CSICOPian position on holistic
>medicine and nutritional supplementation and the fellow that
>cured himself of the incurable (so to speak) doing just what
>they'd say wouldn't work (Crohn's paper at our website
>AlienView.net). If they can have their heads up an locked, that
>hard, with regard to nutrition (another venue where they'd
>pronounce authoritatively), how wrong can they be about UFOs?
> Add Truzzi and Rawlins, and Steve Allen twirls in his burial
>urn.

I am not aware that CSICOP has a position on nutrition--they certainly
haven't "pronounced authoritatively" in anything I've read (and I own
every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer).  If you're wrong about that,
how wrong can you be about UFOs?

I don't understand what your last sentence is supposed to convey.
Can you explain?

--
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 16:03:18 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: [skeptic list addr]
Subject: Re: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
Message-ID: <20031224230318.GB1689@discord.org>

Mr. Lemberg has given his permission.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 15:01:42 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
Cc: [lippard email addr]
Subject: Re: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
Message-ID: <20031224220142.GC13237@discord.org>
References: <20031224173103.GA30003@discord.org> <00a101c3ca51$dd64ac30$c9de2fd8@ownerdzp8hx39g>
In-Reply-To: <00a101c3ca51$dd64ac30$c9de2fd8@ownerdzp8hx39g>

Alfred:

My reply was sent to the same mailing list where I've sent all of my
postings in this exchange, so it was carried out in public.  If you
send this posting to the list where you saw my posting, I would
certainly have no objection.  It was not my intent to turn this into a
private discussion, but rather to cc you so that you would see what I
wrote and be able to respond even if my response was not forwarded to
the list you're on.

If you don't mind, I would like to send this response, including your
email that I am responding to, to the SKEPTIC list where my
participation has occurred.  Your approval seems implicit in your
text, but I would like to see your approval before I go sending your
email out to a public forum.

I knew Marcello Truzzi--we corresponded extensively and spoke over the
telephone on a number of occasions--and I was a subscriber to his
publication, _Zetetic Scholar_.  I am well aware of the circumstances
of his defection from CSICOP and his reasons for doing so.  It wasn't
that he saw CSICOP as a "fraud" or as "hiding the truth," nor was it
that he thought CSICOP was advocating false views.  Rather, it was
that CSICOP was advocating a position at all.  He thought it should be
neutral, and provide a neutral scholarly forum.

I also am acquainted with Dennis Rawlins via correspondence and
telephone conversation.

Despite my knowledge of Truzzi and Rawlins, I still don't understand
your Steve Allen comment--Steve Allen was a supporter of CSICOP until
he died, which was long after the departures of Truzzi and Rawlins.

I looked through several pages of the output of a search on "holistic
nutrition" from the link you gave (82 matches), but found no
references to the Skeptical Inquirer except one (#31, an article on
"Why Bogus Therapies Seem To Work").  If you are assuming that every
link found by www.skepticplanet.com is endorsed by CSICOP or the
Skeptical Inquirer, you are mistaken.  www.skepticplanet.com is the
site of Wally Hartshorn of Springfield, IL, not CSICOP.  You've assumed
that all sites linked to from a site that is linked to from CSICOP's
site are official CSICOP doctrine.

SI certainly has a position on alternative medicine and possibly on
"holistic nutrition" (whatever that is--it seems to me that putting
"holistic" in front of a word means something different from what the
word means without it, or it wouldn't be there).  But SI has no
interest in nor does it discuss the field of nutrition.

On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 01:12:23PM -0600, Alfred Lehmberg wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "James J Lippard" [lippard email addr]
> To: <[skeptic list addr]>
> Cc: "Alfred Lehmberg" [Lehmberg email addr]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 11:31 AM
> Subject: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
> 
> 
> > >From: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
> > >To: UFO UpDates - Toronto [ufoupdates list email addr]
> > >Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 06:29:05 -0600
> > >Subject: SK) Re: Starbaby & A New CSICOP Coverup?
> > >
> > >Yeah... but see, I submit that you're missing something from the
> > >big picture that's likely key to absolving some of our
> > >ignorance... forgetting that it won't really matter who makes
> >
> > Absolving?  I don't think ignorance is a sin.
> >
> 
> Really!
> 
> > >the most money doing *whatever*... remember the story Jerry
> > >Clark told us about "Fate" being supported by the largess of a
> > >Recreational Vehicle publishing effort? 'Fate' was operated at a
> > >loss same as the CSICOPian effort may or may not prove to be...
> > >What really matters is the motivation behind the desire to
> > >operate at a loss. In the case of "Fate," the motivation is
> > >obvious... the wish to peak behind the *curtain*, think out of
> > >the *box*, expand the *consciousness*... is worth the time and
> > >effort. It's fun if nothing else.... What motivates a CSICOPian
> > >to operate at a loss, love of what?
> >
> > I disagree that the motivation is the important thing, but
> > let's address the issue.
> >
> > I think the primary motivation of CSICOP, or at least CSICOP
> > supporters, is to promote critical thinking and skepticism, and to
> > prevent people from being taken in by fraud and falling into error
> > (specifically Type I error--believing falsehoods on the basis of weak
> > evidence).  These should be laudable goals in anyone's book.
> >
> 
> I suppose it -would- be... if that's what they're doing... but the defection
> of Truzzi and the "Starbaby" paper, forgetting the learned and experienced
> criticisms of a host of quality ufologists [and skeptics]... compellingly
> challenge that assumption, sir.  It -may- be that their primary function is
> something... 'else' ...entirely.
> 
> > The opponents of CSICOP are largely more concerned with Type II
> > error--failure to believe truths where the evidence supports it.
> > This is also a type of error that anybody should want to avoid.
> >
> 
> No argument here, sir.
> 
> > >Some would argue that they see a loss of human rationality and a
> > >quick slide to a new 'dark ages' upon a serious investigation
> > >into the paranormal, when any really rational person only
> > >perceives that investigation as forewarning for a future that
> > >approaches regardless. What's CSICOP got to hide? If _their_
> >
> > You tell me.  What is it that you think CSICOP is hiding
> > (as opposed to not promoting, or attempting to dissuade people
> > from believing on the basis of weak evidence)?
> >
> 
> I think they hide the motivations behind the laughing stock positions
> they've taken, by way of example anything that comes out of Mr. Klass'
> mouth.
> 
> > >science bears out the work of the paranormalist scientist (of
> > >conjecture) shouldn't that be a *good* thing?
> >
> > Sure--and I think any supporter of CSICOP would agree.
> >
> 
> But it didn't seem to shake down that way in the "Starbaby" affair, did it.
> 
> > >>My comparison of Amazon.com book sales was a start at such a
> > >>comparison, as I listed only parapsychology books and skeptical
> > >>books that (mostly) focused on parapsychology.
> > >
> > >This discussion is focused, but it's not on the point really --
> > > and the point is... Is CSICOP a fraud? That's the issue. It may
> >
> > I disagree, that's not the issue, and I think you should be
> > more accurate with terms like "fraud."
> >
> 
> C'mon Mr. Lippard.  They claim science as their major thrust when it's
> anti-paranormal (at all costs) public relations that drives their train.
> I'm not the only one saying so... That's a perpetration of a fraud something
> less than benign... IMO.
> 
> > >be -true- that they paid their idiosyncratic taxes, but what did
> > >they manufacture? Only dismissal! Never confirmation (even when
> > >the evidence of confirmation is there?)! Their research provides
> > >fodder for derision of something that every one of them admits
> > >is there (somewhere in space and time or in some capacity).
> > >"UFOs are real... (somewhere)," these think..."just please,
> > >please, please... not here"!
> >
> > It doesn't sound like you're a subscriber to Skeptical Inquirer.
> >
> 
> Well, no.  I don't subscribe to most efforts that disrespect me, shine me
> on, insult my intelligence, or piss on my leg and tell me it's raining,
> either.
> 
> > I think we differ not only on what we think is true, but on how
> > we get there.
> 
> Well -- I was a highly decorated and successful professional soldier, master
> military aviator, and senior trainer who graduated from college MCL.  I
> think in terms of objectives to be made, campaigns to be won, and victory
> snatched from the jaws of defeat... Additionally, I'm an artist and a poet
> and I can make a little music.  It's entirely likely we're not even on the
> same planet! LOL!  And, I submit, sir, you [and I] don't have a clue what's
> "true."
> 
> > It looks to me like you are making the common
> > mistake of demonizing those who disagree with you, rather than
> > trying to understand why they disagree with you.
> >
> 
> I call 'em as I sees 'em, sir, not unlike yourself, I would imagine.  I
> believe in demonizing what has earned demonization and I'm just a tad
> resentful that you'd suggest that it would be that which provides the hurdle
> of simple disagreement. Unlike -most- of my CSICOPian opposition, I'm not an
> ideologue...
> 
> > [...]
> >
> > >What you may be doing here is comparing unlike scales. Which
> > >gets late-night (and so discounted) attention and which graces
> > >mainstream prime time, Gerald Posner or Jim Marrs? And Posner
> > >is "[Dirty]", sir (Parenti's "History as Mystery"). Marrs is,
> > >too quickly, dismissed as a sensationalist by the official
> > >mainstream, and seems to support himself, with regard to
> > >research, better than his detractors...
> >
> > Posner is a better researcher than Marrs.
> 
> Steaming Mookey-paffle!
> 
> > Posner's work contains
> > mistakes, but people had to really struggle to come up with a list of
> > 100 errors in his book, and most of those errors are extremely minor
> > (and many of them aren't even errors).  See
> > http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Conspiracies/Assassination/ for
> > references.
> >
> > I don't know what you mean by "Posner is '[Dirty]'", but it looks
> > like an ad hominem argument.
> >
> 
> Not at all, sir, I gave a learned citation.
> 
> > In my opinion, it is quite reasonable for Posner to get prime-time
> > coverage and Marrs to be on late-night talk radio (as well as be a
> > major source for Stone's "JFK").
> >
> 
> I find that a little less than surprising, sir, that you would think so...
> 
> > If you did a random telephone survey of Americans, though, would they
> > be more familiar with Posner's work, or JFK assassination conspiracy
> > claims?  Which has reached a larger audience?  *That's* my point.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> 
> The unwashed?  The system's duplicity in this and *other* matters makes
> conspiracy as a potentiality... more than acceptable.
> 
> > >So, more and more people, unimpressed with the veracity of
> > >CSICOP and leery of its biased prosecutions and duplicitous
> > >anti-paranormal prosecutions (for reasons hard to determine,
> > >remember...) , more and more become interested in UFOs...
> >
> > Most people have never heard of CSICOP, I'm afraid.
> 
> Perhaps not, they're more than familiar with the effect that that
> organization has on the hijacked mainstream, it's a player in setting the
> tone of that "bogus" mainstream... It doesn't have to be well known.  Its
> work gets done, and that's obvious everytime a reporter laughs up his sleeve
> at the ufological.
> 
> > I think your
> > language here betrays a bias on your part that is stronger than that
> > of CSICOP--
> 
> My bias was created by the greater bias of the opposition, sir.  The same
> way unrestricted capitalists create a communist, racial bigots create Black
> Panthers, Chauvinists create feminazis, and homophobes create militant gays.
> Someone stood on someone's neck at the start and there was a consequence.
> CSICOP has created -me-!
> 
> > you should remember that the Skeptical Inquirer publishes
> > articles from a large field of contributors, and the specific issues
> > that CSICOP has been rightly criticized for involved only a very few.
> > Further, the worst example--its handling of the Mars Effect--resulted
> > in admission of error in 1983 (Kurtz, Zelen, and Abell's "Reappraisal"
> > article) and the publication of two pro-Mars Effect papers from
> > Suitbert Ertel in 1992 (vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 150-160) and 1998
> > (vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 59-60).
> >
> 
> Loss-leaders perhaps?  Their overall tone seems clear.
> 
> > I don't think more and more people are becoming interested in UFOs
> > these days.
> >
> 
> Well -- you'll pardon my passionate efforts to reverse that, eh? [g].
> 
> > >Hey, burned and shy, I know the CSICOPian position on holistic
> > >medicine and nutritional supplementation and the fellow that
> > >cured himself of the incurable (so to speak) doing just what
> > >they'd say wouldn't work (Crohn's paper at our website
> > >AlienView.net). If they can have their heads up an locked, that
> > >hard, with regard to nutrition (another venue where they'd
> > >pronounce authoritatively), how wrong can they be about UFOs?
> > > Add Truzzi and Rawlins, and Steve Allen twirls in his burial
> > >urn.
> >
> > I am not aware that CSICOP has a position on nutrition--they certainly
> > haven't "pronounced authoritatively" in anything I've read (and I own
> > every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer).
> 
> Here's a link to over 80 articles off of the CSICOP site regarding nutrition
> and holistic medicine, sir.  I think it's abundantly clear which side of the
> bull horn that they come down on.
> http://www.skepticplanet.com/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/search/?db=db&query=holistic+nutrition&submit=Submit
> 
> 
> > If you're wrong about that,
> > how wrong can you be about UFOs?
> >
> 
> ...A little less wrong than you, perhaps?
> 
> > I don't understand what your last sentence is supposed to convey.
> > Can you explain?
> 
> Allen was an early proponent of what CSICOP said they stood for, sir.  The
> defections of Truzzi and Rawlins, added to a noted CSICOPian performance
> over the years... has Steve Allen spinning in his grave...
> 
> Now -- there is nothing here that we couldn't discuss in public, sir, and I
> suspect that you just wanted to see how reasonable I'd be one on one...
> well, how reasonable am I? [g].  Be that as it may, my time is as valuable
> as yours, Mr. Lippard, so I won't be answering any more of your mail on this
> subject, though, feel free to engage me on UpDates.
> 
> [Lehmberg email addr]
> 
> Photo Album: http://www.alienview.net/AVAlbum.htm
> (send picture as attachment to [Lehmberg email addr])
> Splash page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlienViewGroup/
> AlienViewGroup Splash Page:  http://www.alienview.net/alienviews.htm
> Radio Show Archives: Having... ah... *Technical* difficulties...

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE


Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 16:23:01 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: [skeptic list addr]
Cc: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
Subject: Re: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
Message-ID: <20031224232301.GC1689@discord.org>

On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 04:39:03PM -0600, Alfred Lehmberg wrote:
[Re Marcello Truzzi]
 
> A defection by any other name would smell as sweet.  He couldn't support
> something he knew to be -knowingly- scientifically flawed (couldn't support
> a fraud?), and the act of taking a "position" is to undersell the solid
> points of the opposition... "hiding the truth" by another name.  Truzzi, who
> I never knew, wanted a "neutral scholarly forum" for good reason, it seems.
> CSICOP is anything but that.

I think both are good things to have--neutral forums as well as advocates.
But one shouldn't pretend to be the other.
 
[...]

> > Despite my knowledge of Truzzi and Rawlins, I still don't understand
> > your Steve Allen comment--Steve Allen was a supporter of CSICOP until
> > he died, which was long after the departures of Truzzi and Rawlins.
> >
> 
> My point, sir, is that Mr. Allen, a personal hero of mine, could not have
> been an active supporter (read CSICOPian idealouge), whatever the status of
> his membership, of the Church of Latter Day CSICOPia... I'd be very
> disappointed if he had.

Could not have been?  The Steve Allen Theatre is at the Center for
Inquiry West in Los Angeles.  A number of Steve Allen's books were
published by Prometheus Books.  Steve Allen's name was often on
fundraising letters.  Steve Allen was co-chair of CSICOP's Council for
Media Integrity.

He was a very active supporter of CSICOP.

> > I looked through several pages of the output of a search on "holistic
> > nutrition" from the link you gave (82 matches), but found no
> > references to the Skeptical Inquirer except one (#31, an article on
> > "Why Bogus Therapies Seem To Work").  If you are assuming that every
> > link found by www.skepticplanet.com is endorsed by CSICOP or the
> > Skeptical Inquirer, you are mistaken.  www.skepticplanet.com is the
> > site of Wally Hartshorn of Springfield, IL, not CSICOP.  You've assumed
> > that all sites linked to from a site that is linked to from CSICOP's
> > site are official CSICOP doctrine.
> >
> 
> Hey -- lay down with dogs and get up with fleas, Mr. Lippard.  A search was
> conducted on CSICOPS site and a clear position is determined.

Where did you go on CSICOP's site to get your data?  The link you gave
is NOT a CSICOP site.  If you go to http://www.discord.org/skeptical/
you will find lots of links, but if you attempt to infer my position
from the sites that are linked to, there are many sites where you will
be wrong.  If you choose the ones that actually have my name on them,
then your inferences will be on more solid ground.  (Hint:  Check
http://www.discord.org/skeptical/Critiques/)

If *I* go to http://www.csicop.org and put your chosen search terms
("holistic nutrition") into the search box at the top of the page, it
yields three matches, none of which states a CSICOP position on
nutrition or health.  (One is a Robert Sheaffer column about bras and
breast cancer, one is the Barry Beyerstein article I mentioned
previously on why alternative treatments can seem to work when they
don't, and the third is a Jack Raso article that describes a number of
alternative healthcare methods without examining or commenting on
their efficacy.

> > SI certainly has a position on alternative medicine and possibly on
> > "holistic nutrition" (whatever that is--it seems to me that putting
> > "holistic" in front of a word means something different from what the
> > word means without it, or it wouldn't be there).  But SI has no
> > interest in nor does it discuss the field of nutrition.
> 
> It could be a little misplaced hero worhship on you part?

I don't understand what you are construing as hero worship here.

You seem to have a habit of jumping to odd and erroneous conclusions.

I admit when I make mistakes.  Do you?  Or would that be to admit defeat
in a battle you are trying to win?

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 08:07:08 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: [skeptic list addr]
Cc: Alfred Lehmberg [Lehmberg email addr]
Subject: Re: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
Message-ID: <20031225150708.GB32486@discord.org>
Content-Length: 7354

Mr. Lehmberg:

I don't appear to be the one having a problem with this argument.

I've asked you how you came up with your www.skepticplanet.com URL and
why you think its search results represent the official opinions of
CSICOP, and you've simply refused to answer.  I've explained what I
did to attempt to duplicate your search.

You've insisted that Steve Allen, a personal hero of yours, could not
have been a supporter of CSICOP, I've given the evidence that he was
until his death, and rather than admit your error you've asserted that
I'm the one engaging in some kind of hero worship.  When I've asked
you why you think that (and who is the hero I'm worshiping?), you've
simply refused to answer.

In your refusal to answer simple questions or to admit error, you've
answered my last question below--you are not the sort of person who is
willing to admit error, or, apparently, to learn from mistakes.

It's not the fact that you believe differently from me that makes this
argument futile--it's the fact that you are unwilling to answer questions,
unwilling to give arguments to support your conclusions, and too willing
to attribute beliefs and positions to your interlocutor on the basis of
nothing whatsoever.  For you have no knowledge of my beliefs or what
philosophies I endorse, but you've already lumped me in with "your lot,"
whoever that might be, despite the fact that I've pointed you directly
to my own writings critical of "failings of organized skepticism."

So I will agree that you're not worth my time.  Nor anyone else's, if
this is your standard methodology.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE


On Wed, Dec 24, 2003 at 05:46:53PM -0600, Alfred Lehmberg wrote:
> Hey, Mr. Lippard, you like disagreement as little as that you'd assign to
> me, it seems.  And you're beginning to take the usual tone your lot seems to
> take when you encounter someone looking askance of your homocentric
> assertions, not respecting the distracting wallow in overcomplicating detail
> your lot employs, or buying into the discredited philosophy your lot
> worships.  Moreover, if you don't like the cut of argument you're in, I
> suggest you wobble off somewhere else and find another one.  Write me off as
> a credulous believer, immune to your best efforts, and move on, sir, it
> matters -little- to me.  Our argument -is- futile, regardless.
> 
> [Lehmberg email addr]
> 
> Photo Album: http://www.alienview.net/AVAlbum.htm
> (send picture as attachment to [Lehmberg email addr])
> Splash page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlienViewGroup/
> AlienViewGroup Splash Page:  http://www.alienview.net/alienviews.htm
> Radio Show Archives: Having... ah... *Technical* difficulties...
> .

Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 10:53:00 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
To: [skeptic list addr]
Cc: "James J. Lippard" [lippard email addr]
Subject: Re: Reply to Alfred Lehmberg (was Re: Starbaby etc.)
Message-ID: <20031225175300.GB14418@discord.org>

Mr. Lehmberg seems to have been reduced to abusive ad hominem, like something
out of a Monty Python sketch.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

On Thu, Dec 25, 2003 at 09:41:01AM -0600, Alfred Lehmberg wrote:
> Oh?
> 
> Then try this on for size, Mr. Lippard.  -Your- tired methodology insures a
> societal dead-end if not outright suicide.  Your argumentative arrogance is
> exceeded only by your whiney, judgmental, and intellectualized two-color
> impertinence.  You're oblivious to anything not in your cloistered little
> box of Aristotelian thinking and you are clueless to the fact that I am not
> here to clear your hurdles...sir, you are here to clear mine.  Shove off,
> Mr. Lippard, sincerely.  I'll call you when I want to watch you hop over
> something.  And thanks.
> 
> ...Oh, and your "Committee for the Seriously Insentient Commitment of
> Obdurate Persons", sucks sour pond water.  I will continue to point that out
> with every available opportunity... like I did last week on the radio to
> several hundred thousand people, deep into the heartland of America, points
> north, and down the eastern seaboard.  Your heart-felt notes inspire me to
> more impassioned effort in that regard.  Merry Christmas, sir.
> 
> [Lehmberg email addr]
> 
> Photo Album: http://www.alienview.net/AVAlbum.htm
> (send picture as attachment to [Lehmberg email addr])
> Splash page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlienViewGroup/
> AlienViewGroup Splash Page:  http://www.alienview.net/alienviews.htm
> Radio Show Archives: Having... ah... *Technical* difficulties...

April 2003

I don't know if this Mike Boston is the same as this Mike Boston who made pathetically bad arguments against atheism on the Positive Atheism web site, but it wouldn't surprise me. After reading that complete exchange, I would be willing to bet that it is the same guy... (And here's another exchange with Mike Boston, about good and evil on the Positive Atheism web site.)

From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: my cousin's mailing list
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 10:09:31 -0800

On Sat, Mar 22, 2003 at 09:24:12AM -0800, Mike wrote:
> Saddam should have control in the north of his country.
> If he doesn't then that is all the
> more reason to install government that is representative of all 
> peoples of IRAQ

Eh?  I think you should do a little more research.

The three northeast provinces of Iraq--Dahouk, Arbil, and
Sulaymaniyah--have been under the control of the Kurds, with the
assistance of U.S. and British enforcement of an Iraqi "no fly" zone,
since 1991.

Sulaymaniyah is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
and Arbil and Dahouk are controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party
(KDP).  Although those two groups initially battled with each other,
they reached an accord and control their own autonomous regions.

This area is popularly known as Kurdistan, though isn't officially
recognized by the rest of the world as an independent country.  The
Kurds are a long-suffering people who had hoped to gain independence
at the end of the Gulf War, but were abandoned to their own (except
for the air support) at its conclusion, which led to numerous deaths.
They battled with Hussein's forces for a while, and ended up with
autonomy in those three provinces.  Hussein never quite regained the
power he had prior to the Gulf War, and had to make some consolations
to the Shiite Muslim majority in order to retain power.  The economic
status of Iraq has been far worse post-Gulf War than it was before;
the southern oil fields were out of commission for several years, the
infant mortality rate today is many times worse than it was prior
to the Gulf War, etc.  Saddam Hussein was much less of a threat a week
ago than he was prior to the Gulf War, and is obviously much less
of a threat still today.

Turkey, like Iraq, has also long persecuted the Kurds.  (The Turks
also committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915; the Armenians
and Kurds have the same opinion of the Turks.)

This is why the threatened Turkish invasion of troops into the Kurdish
areas of northern Iraq threatens further destabilization of the area,
and why the Germans are threatening to withdraw their defensive
support of the Turks if they sent troops in.  The Turks would like to
claim the Kurdish parts of Iraq for themselves.

(The Turks have already claimed to have sent 1,000 troops into
northern Iraq, though they then retracted the claim.)

> Pakistan
> government is not a loose canon like saddam.

Oh really?  Tell that to India, which has been repeatedly attacked by
terrorist operating out of Pakistan with the support of the Pakistan
government.  Pakistan also actively supported the Taliban until
reversing course after September 11.

http://www.terrorismanswers.com/coalition/pakistan.html

And I take it from your lack of comment on North Korea that you agree
that it *is* a loose cannon.

> Saddam only adds to the instability of
> the region and I would hold that since we started bombing IRAQ
> that the
> region hasn't been this stable since Ishmael was 13 years old.

Actually, the reason the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980s was
because it was the U.S. view that Hussein supported the stability of
the region (as opposed to the Islamic fundamentalists controlling Iran).

Here's a nice photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein
in 1983:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/30/sproject.irq.regime.change/

It would also be a shame to gain some short-term stability in Iraq at
the expense of long-term stability for the entire rest of the world,
since the U.S. has made it clear that it doesn't give a damn about
international law and its participation in the UN process was a sham.
(See John Negroponte's statement on UN resolution 1441 at
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/document/2002/1108usstat.htm:
"As we have said on numerous occasions to Council members, this
Resolution contains no 'automaticity' with respect to the use of
force.  If there is a further Iraqi breach, reported to the Council by
UNMOVIC, the IAEA, or a member state, the matter will return to the
Council for discussion as required by paragraph 12."  The U.S. reneged
on this understanding of how to proceed.)

> Saddam is wrong and we are right and we are making it right
> in IRAQ
> and for the people of IRAQ

It remains to be seen what new regime ends up in place, whether the
U.S. will end up occupying Iraq for a long time to try to enforce
democracy, whether the power vacuum will be filled by Iraqis who know
how to say the right things to support the U.S., yet continue to
oppress the Iraqi people, or what.  The U.S. has made it clear that
the Kurd-controlled provinces need to be included as part of
Iraq--despite what the Kurds living there may want.  (I hope this
doesn't prove similar to the UN's misguided attempts to reinstitute
democracy in Somalia, where the people simply didn't want it, and
resisted to the point that they were finally left alone, and now have
a peaceful region that has greatly improved its economic power in
spite of having no national government at all--they have reverted to
the traditional tribal governing structure that they had for hundreds
of years prior to the dictatorship of Siad Barre, and seem quite happy
with it.)

The U.S. has a terrible past reputation of supporting regimes that are
friendly to us, yet oppress their own people--Iran (the Shah),
Nicaragua (Somoza), Iraq (Hussein), Chile (Pinochet), Philippines
(Marcos), numerous countries in Central America, South America,
Africa, etc.

--
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

From: "Mike" 
To: <lippard email address>
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 19:22:12 -0500
Message-ID: <000f01c2fd64$e9b84600$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>

Dude what news are you watching - this isn't even mentally challenging
(never was) was the Iraqi communications minister your mentor or
something/

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 18:31:22 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: Mike 
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Message-ID: <20030408013122.GA13309@discord.org>
References: <000f01c2fd64$e9b84600$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>

I've cited my sources to support everything I've said, while you've
not even specified what you are arguing!  What's your point?  What are
you claiming?  What are you disagreeing with that I've said?

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 07:22:12PM -0500, Mike wrote:
> Dude what news are you watching - this isn't even mentally challenging
> (never was) was the Iraqi communications minister your mentor or
> something/

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

From: "Mike" 
To: "'James J. Lippard'" <lippard email address>
Cc: cousin and his list
Subject: RE: George W. Bush and international law
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:14:58 -0500
Message-ID: <001501c30465$a3323350$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>
In-reply-to: <20030408013122.GA13309@discord.org>

I am claiming you are wrong and my sources...well..... all your emails.


Keep up the great work.

PS - a great place to start looking for a job is right here
http://www.careerbuilder.com


Feel free to use me as reference.

The conservative right - Why because we are...right

Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:39:12 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: Mike 
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Message-ID: <20030416223912.GA14046@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <001501c30465$a3323350$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>

On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 05:14:58PM -0500, Mike wrote:
> I am claiming you are wrong and my sources...well..... all your emails.

I can understand what you are saying up to the word "wrong," but from that
point on it doesn't seem to be parseable English.

Telling me "you are wrong" is not informative.  Either you have no interest
in communicating your position or you have nothing to support it.  Since you
initiated this off-list exchange, the latter seems more likely.

> Keep up the great work.

Thanks, I will.
 
> PS - a great place to start looking for a job is right here
> http://www.careerbuilder.com

What makes you think I need a job?  The one I have is quite enjoyable,
thanks.
 
> Feel free to use me as reference.

I have a feeling that would impair my attempt to obtain any employment other
than manual labor.
 
> The conservative right - Why because we are...right

Right.  Someday you should learn to think in terms other than slogans and
catch-phrases.

I think you have earned a place on my ridiculous e-mail page.

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:56:21 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: Mike 
Cc: cousin's mailing list
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Message-ID: <20030416225621.GA24103@discord.org>

I just noticed that this message was not just sent to me.  Rather than
repeat myself, I will simply point out that I will be putting the
conclusion of this exchange on my "ridiculous email" web page, and
that I won't be continuing to engage in the "Lippard Fallacy" here.
The term "Lippard Fallacy" was coined by Cary Kittrell of UofA's
Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on April 11 on the az.general Usenet
group.  Cary wrote to another individual who, like myself, was
attempting to use facts and reason to argue with "Uncle Samuel," an
individual whose postings greatly resemble Mike's in their absence of
those features:

> I fear I must inform you that you have just committed the classic
> "Lippard Fallacy" -- the erroneous belief that having the facts on
> your side makes any difference to ol' Unc.  You're attempting to use
> reason on someone who basically is a limbic system with feet. You're
> simply wrong -- not because you're wrong, but because he doesn't like
> the cut of your jib. 
> 
> 
> -- cary

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

From: "Mike" <mboston@indy.rr.com>
To: "'James J. Lippard'"
Cc: my cousin, my cousin's mailing list
Subject: RE: George W. Bush and international law
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 17:03:45 -0500
Message-ID: <002c01c30f64$60fe4a50$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>

The liberal democrats are gone and we rule.  Get over it.  Everything
our governemnet is doing in IRAQ turns to freakin Gold man.  The Iraqi
people like what we did and what we are doing so get over it -your just
wrong jimmy

[quoted my message of April 16]

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:47:47 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard"
To: Mike 
Cc: my cousin,
	my cousin's email address
Subject: Re: George W. Bush and international law
Message-ID: <20030430224747.GA12422@discord.org>
References: <20030416225621.GA24103@discord.org> <002c01c30f64$60fe4a50$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>
In-Reply-To: <002c01c30f64$60fe4a50$81b01a41@XPMSBOSTON>

Mike:

You don't rule.  You don't understand how to make an argument.

You don't have the slightest comprehension of inference, evidence, or
even how to write coherently.

You regularly get your butt handed to you by those you debate with on
the Internet, and have no compunction about using lies and deception
to further your cause (e.g.,
http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9844.htm, where you used the
fictional story about Cassie Bernal at Columbine to make a point,
then, when shown that you were using a bogus story, evaded repeatedly
to avoid admitting error).  While initially you were the deceived, by
sticking to error, you became the deceiver.  (Why is it that the
religious right is so fond of hoaxes, deception, and dishonesty to
support their positions?  Why do so-called Christians allow their
fellows to get away with it, again and again?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html)

You are willfully and gleefully ignorant, and have repeatedly
displayed no interest in learning, or even carrying on a halfway
rational conversation.  I would appreciate it if you would please
not send any more email to my address.

BTW, here's some "freakin' gold" for you:

WMD:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0426peace-scientists26.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7310-2003Apr21.html
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0422war-main22.html
http://msnbc.com/news/903374.asp

Iraqi feeling about U.S. occupation:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20030418/ts_nm/iraq_dc_1601

Iraqi museums looted; U.S. fails to protect museums despite advance
warning:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/Iraq_030417Looting_raddatz.html

The number of Iraqi civilians killed is up to somewhere between
2,149 and 2,615 (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/).

This account of the war is a joke, yet some people, sadly, seem to
think it's the truth:
   http://images.villagevoice.com/issues/0317/sutton.gif

[quoted message being replied to]

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

September 2002

Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 18:05:56 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: spamop@yahoo.com
Subject: your attempted spamming has been duly noted
Message-ID: <20020918010556.GA2550@discord.org>

and reported to your upstream providers.

-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Message-ID: <20020918024039.59601.qmail@web14410.mail.yahoo.com>
Received: from [66.169.14.4] by web14410.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:40:39 PDT
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:40:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: john couch 
Subject: Re: your attempted spamming has been duly noted
To: "James J. Lippard" <[lippard email addr]>
In-Reply-To: <20020918010556.GA2550@discord.org>

Who's my provider? Do you even know what you're talking about?
 "James J. Lippard" 
wrote:and reported to your upstream providers.

Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:46:34 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: john couch 
Subject: Re: your attempted spamming has been duly noted
Message-ID: <20020918024634.GA51@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <20020918024039.59601.qmail@web14410.mail.yahoo.com>

You're doing scans for open FormMail.pl CGIs, from 208.227.232.5
(downstream of wt.net, which is itself a customer of UUNet), using
spamop@yahoo.com as the recipient address and rockstar@mail.com as the
from address.

Are you doing this as part of a spam filtering service offered by
wt.net?
-- 
Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Message-ID: <20020918025537.26578.qmail@web14403.mail.yahoo.com>
Received: from [66.169.14.4] by web14403.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:55:37 PDT
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:55:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: john couch 
Subject: Re: your attempted spamming has been duly noted
To: "James J. Lippard" <[lippard email addr]>
In-Reply-To: <20020918024634.GA51@discord.org>

Please stop harassing me. If you harass me yet again, I will report
you. You really don't know who you're messing with. I am a lawyer and
I will fight back. Oh, yeah, that's a virus on my computer doing that,
but don't be threatening me, son.

 "James J. LipparOd" 
wrote:You're doing scans for open FormMail.pl CGIs, from 208.227.232.5
(downstream of wt.net, which is itself a customer of UUNet), using
spamop@yahoo.com as the recipient address and rockstar@mail.com as the
from address.

Are you doing this as part of a spam filtering service offered by
wt.net?

August 2002

Message-ID: <01f601c247af$ee8a5fd0$03fea8c0@JIMONE>
From: "Jim Fincher" 
To: <lippard email address>
Subject: God is so big he even loves pitiful you
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 14:40:46 -0400
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Yes Mr. Lippard..... God is and does.... and that includes you.... 
despite the fact that you misuse the wonderful mind he gave you to 
attempt to prove he doesn't exist.... how pathetic that someone like 
yourself can allow your mind to keep your being, from fellowship with 
the very "I Am" himself.

Rest in the fact that He will pursue you for all your days.

God Bless You,

Jim Fincher

July 2002

Message-ID: <000a01c231b9$67517e60$55247444@mdfrd.or.charter.com>
From: "Rhubarbpudding" 
To: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
References: <008e01c231a1$984a5860$55247444@mdfrd.or.charter.com> <20020722191751.GB8415@discord.org>
Subject: Lippard
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 12:53:07 -0700
Organization: Creation Research

Lippard,
I won't bother with you again. Your Email was forwarded along with a =
batch of others from one of your evolutionist collegues, Ed Babinski. =
When I answered him you were automatically on the list.
Your (Futuyma's) definition of evolution could have come out of an =
abstract Mahayana Buddhist treatise and is typically evasive and vague, =
"straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel,
Don't bother to write,
James Foard

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: James J. Lippard 
  To: James Foard 
  Cc: 
  Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 12:17 PM
  Subject: Re: Peppered moths and "evolution in action".

  I enjoyed reading this, I think Miller responded quite ably.  I know
  he knows what he's talking about, it is not apparent that you do
  (especially since you seem, by your own admission, to be unclear on
  the difference between evolution and speciation--see
  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html for a
  primer on the former, http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/speciation.html
  for the latter).

  I would, however, like to NOT be included on future mailings.  Thanks.

  -- 
  Jim Lippard        [lippard email addr]       http://www.discord.org/
  GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

  On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 10:02:38AM -0700, James Foard wrote:
  > In addition, for those of you who have missed the interesting exchange between myself and Mr. Miller, here is the recent flow of ideas that we had concerning the fabulous peppered-moth-evolution-in-action FAQ on Mr. Millers site. [After this exchange Mr. Miller, evidently disturbed by what he called my "strident and insulting" manner, has refused to correspond with me any more. What a Pity]:
  > 
  > The following has been sorted in chronological order so that you may read the "mini-debate" in it's entirety from the beginning:
  > 
  > FIRST EMAIL----- Original Message ----- 
  > 
  > At 7:00 AM -0700 7/16/02, James Foard wrote:
  >   Ed,
  >   Regarding Miller's dissertation on Kettlewell http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html :
  >   Long before it became well known that Kettlewell had pasted the moths onto the tree trunks, this so-called evidence for evolution was challenged: Creationists pointed out correctly that there was no new genetic information, simply a shifting in population averages.
  >   And nobody disputes the change in the population statistics of peppered moths, this was never an issue, despite Kettlewells pasting of the moths on tree trunks:
  >   The real question is, what does it represent? Is natural selection "evolution in action"?
  >   The peppered moths still remained peppered moths.
  >   Natural selection was borrowed by Darwin from Blyth, a creationist, who correctly saw in it a limiting element meant to preserve the integrity of a species.
  >   The evidence still shows that there was nothing at all like evolution taking place, and indeed, Miller seems to get sort of muddled in his thesis and apparently contradicts himself, for he wrote "What he (Marjerus- Miller mispells his name farther down on his FAQ) reported, first of all, was that Kettlewell's experiments, indicating that moth survival depends upon color-related camoflage, were generally correct:" 
  >   Yet almost immediately after this Miller wrote "since his work it has become clear that birds see ultraviolet much better than we do, and therefore what seems well-camoflaged to the human eye may not be to a bird."
  >   He further wrote: For example, in testing how likely light and dark moths were to be eaten, he placed moths on the sides of tree trunks, a place where they rarely perch in nature."
  >   This would invalidate the industrial melanism hypothesis in the first place, and it gets worse: Miller also confesses that "In addition, neither Kettlewell nor those who checked his work were able to compensate for the degree to which migration of moths from surrounding areas might have affected the actual numbers of light and dark moths he counted in various regions of the countryside."
  >   Thus he is invalidating Kettlewell's own thesis while supposedly defending it. If indeed "what seems well-camoflaged to the human eye may not be to a bird," then the entire scenario of industrial melanism is worthless, and if some of the darker moths might just have flown in from migration, that explains nothing as to where the darker moths came from in the first place, except other dark moths: there was no new genetic information produced, the peppered moths came from peppered moths and remained peppered moths.
  >   To extrapolate this variation within an existing population into a thesis that fish changed into amphibians and that yeast and horseshoe crabs and anacondas all evolved from some common ancestor is scientific fraudulence of the highest order.
  >   This type of weak, paultry excuse for evidence of evolution, being trumpeted as "Melanism - Evolution in Action" reveals the desparate tactics that evolutionists are resorting to for so-called "proof" of their theory.
  >   And Miller, after demolishing the idea of industrial melanism by his own words, has the hubris to state "Until these studies are done [testing the migration ratio and vision of birds], the peppered moth story will be incomplete [understatement of the decade].Not wrong, but incomplete."
  >   Uh huh, not wrong, just incomplete. Sounds like a lot of backtracking here while trumpeting, "I'm right, just you wait and see, I'm right, I was right all along, uh, I have to go now, I think I hear my mother calling me."
  >   Thats pretty much what Millers argument amounts to, nothing more than an embellishment of a schoolboys fib, the myth of evolution, one of their best "proofs" of "evolution in action".
  > James Foard
  > 
  > MILLER'S RESPONSE TO MY FIRST EMAIL
  > 
  > ----- Original Message ----- 
  > From: Kenneth Miller 
  > To: James Foard ; leonardo3 ; Fred Williams 
  > Cc: jkimball@mcb.harvard.edu 
  > Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 7:22 AM
  > Subject: Re: Of moths and men
  > 
  > 
  > Dear Mr. Foard (and others),
  > 
  > 
  >     Thank you for sending me a copy of your letter (below).
  > 
  > 
  >     As is typical with every creationist critique of the peppered moth
  > story, you misrepresent the implications of the story and of
  > Kettlewell's work.
  > 
  > 
  >      The peppered moth story is NOT an example of speciation.  That's why your
  > comment that "The peppered moths still remained peppered moths" is correct
  > but pointless.  No one has EVER maintained that the moths became anything
  > other than moths.
  > 
  > 
  >    Rather, the case of industrial melanism has been used as an example of
  > natural selection, which is the ability of forces in nature to alter the
  > phenotypes of living organisms over time.
  > 
  > 
  >   And the case of the peppered moth is still a perfect example of this.
  >   Want to know why?  All one has to do is to look at the elements of the
  > story as described by Kettlewell and see which elements have stood
  > up under modern scientific scrutiny:
  > 
  > 
  > * moths: prior to 1848 mostly (if not exclusively) light-colored
  > * the very first dark moth found in 1848
  > * just 47 years later, 98% dark moths in industrial areas of Britain
  > * decline in dark moths began with use of cleaner fuels
  > * today - dark moths are very rare (less than 1% and declining)
  > * parallel rise and fall occurred in industrial US.
  > * predators (birds) in aviary went first to moths that contrast with backgrounds.
  > * fewer light moths survive release in sooty woods
  > * fewer dark moths survive release in clean woods
  > * birds in wild go first to moths that contrast with backgrounds.
  > 
  > 
  >   Which of these supporting elements of the story have turned out to
  > be wrong?  The answer, as you should know, is none of them.
  > 
  > 
  >   Therefore, the rise and fall of the carbonaria variety of the moth represents
  > a perfect example of natural selection - a change in environmental conditions
  > that first favored one phenotype (carbonaria) and then favored another
  > (typica).
  > 
  > 
  >   Sir, if you do not think it is an example of natural selection, please
  > provide an alternative explanation.  Do you think it was a case of "intelligent
  > design," where a supernatural outside force adjusted the phenotypes of the
  > moths in order to ensure their survival?  If you do, please make that clear,
  > and then we can discuss how the designer might have done this.  If you
  > have another scientific alternative to natural selection, please let us know
  > what it is.  But if you do not propose an alternative (which your letter
  > certainly did not) then I will conclude that you admit that this is, indeed,
  > an example of natural selection in action.
  > 
  > 
  >   A number of scientists who have restudied the work of Kettlewell and done
  > new experiments now regard his work as flawed.  However, it's important
  > that one be clear and honest about what these flaws amount to. 
  > 
  > 
  >   Kettlewell took a classic example of natural selection in action, and
  > attempted to pinpoint which factor (of many) played the predominant
  > role in the rise and fall of the carbonaria form.  Because of these flaws,
  > it's clear that his conclusion, that predation of the moths by birds was
  > the principal factor driving natural selection, was not well-supported by
  > the experiments.   A proper analysis of the data today leads to the conclusion
  > that predation by birds was likely one factor among many driving natural
  > selection in this case.
  > 
  > 
  >   This is desperation?  This is dishonesty?  (Remember, it was the
  > scientific community  that found the flaws and continues
  > to study the organism!).    On the contrary, this is an excellent example
  > of science continuing to test the key elements of evolutionary theory.
  > 
  > 
  >      Sincerely,
  > 
  > 
  >           Ken Miller
  > 
  > MY RESPONSE TO MILLER'S EMAIL
  > 
  > ----- Original Message ----- 
  > From: James Foard 
  > To: Kenneth Miller ; Fred Williams ; leonardo3 
  > Cc: mail@answersingenesis.org ; ICR Creation and Evolution Frequently Asked Questions and Resources ; David Crowe ; CDigest@aol.com ; jkimball@mcb.harvard.edu 
  > Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 9:39 AM
  > Subject: Re: Of moths and men
  > 
  > 
  > Mr. Miller, 
  > Thank you, I am very glad to hear you admit that there was no evidence of speciation, and that is precisely the point.
  > You have also slightly mistated the case: if you read what I wrote to you, I never said that it was not a case of natural selection, however your claim is that it is "evolution in action" is an extrapolation that is a far cry from the truth.
  > In one breath you claim in your letter that the peppered moth is not evidence of speciation, which would make your entire FAQ worthless and your claim that it is "evolution in action" meaningless dribble, and yet this is still supposed to represent evidence for evolution.
  > Please explain the difference between evolution and speciation. 
  > You stated "No one has EVER maintained that the moths became anything other than moths."
  > True, but you state that it is evidence of evolution; you imply that speciation does occur from this with your claim on your site of  "evolution in action", which is a misnomer at best, and a fraudulent overstatement at worst.
  > You make the traditional evolutionist mistake of extapolation of the evidence to imply that somehow variation within a species through natural selection is evidence for evolution: "Rather, the case of industrial melanism has been used as an example of 
  > natural selection, which is the ability of forces in nature to alter the phenotypes of living organisms over time."
  > The trick in the deck are the words "over time". This in your scenario is meant to mean that this variation can go on and on until there is some new type of creature, something other than the peppered moth, which we have no evidence for at all. 
  > This is not science, this is fantasy. So you see, far from being pointless, I have merely pointed out the inadequacy of your claims that the peppered moth is evolution in action. 
  > Thank you for your kind response,
  > James Michael Foard
  > 
  > Postscript:
  > Creationists acknowledge natural selection, as I pointed out, it was a creationist concept long before evolutionists and Darwin fooled with it, but this does not introduce newe species, it only reduces the gene pool, and the natural selection did not create new species, by your own admission the dark colored ones could have migrated from somewhere else.
  > 
  > Mr. Miller and I had one other correspondece during this time about Haeckels "embryonic recapitulation" theory, and after that he wrote this to me:
  > 
  > Dear Mr. Foard,
  > 
  >      Given the strident and insulting tone of your letter, this is the
  > last reply you will receive from me.
  > 
  >      As in your previous letter, you have misstated and misrepresented
  > the facts of the matter.  First, the textbooks that Joe Levine and
  > I have written have never used the Haeckel drawings.  The drawings
  > that were used prior to 1998 were based on images from other texts,
  > not Haeckel's.  However, they did indeed have some of the same problems
  > that Richardson (in August of 1997) pointed out in SCIENCE magazine.
  > As a result, I immediately corresponded with Richardson, and
  > obtained accurate photomicrographs of the various embryos.
  > 
  >   As you grudgingly admit, I immediately fixed the problem, posting a
  > correction on the web site for our book and obtaining new
  > drawings based on photos of embryos.  From my point of
  > view, the right thing to do when you make a mistake is to
  > admit it and to fix it.  Joe Levine and I did both in less than 5
  > months after the mistake was discovered.
  > 
  > Should we have known about Haeckel's mistake before 1997?
  > Maybe so.  But your hero, Jonathan Wells wasn't aware either.
  > Apparently, he was not aware of Haeckel's "fraud" until well after we 
  > had made our
  > corrections.  His book (Icons of Evolution) came out 1-1/2 years
  > AFTER we had made our corrections.  He ignored those corrections,
  > incorrectly claimed that I had written a LIFE magazine article
  > on human development (I did no such thing), and pretended that the
  > incorrect drawings were current.  Such is the standard of his
  > scholarship.
  > 
  > I should also note, Mr. Foard, that your claim of a  trial in Jena is 
  > apparently
  > another example of creationist fraud.  See the letter from Sander and Bender in
  > SCIENCE, Volume 281, Number 5375, Issue of 17 Jul 1998, pp. 347-351.
  > There is no evidence that Haeckel was ever put on trial for "fraud."
  > 
  >    It has been a pleasure parrying your accusations and insults.
  > 
  >     Alas, I have to get back to work.
  > 
  >     Have a nice day,
  > 
  >         Ken Miller

June 2002

Return-Path: 
Delivered-To: lippard email address
From: "TrueOrigin Feedback" 
To: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
Subject: RE: Jorge Fernandez' critique of www.talkorigins.org
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:12:07 -0400
Message-ID: 
In-Reply-To: <20020613215051.GA23350@discord.org>

Dear Mr. Lippard,

Thank you for providing yet another fine example of evolutionary logic for
TrueOrigin readers.  You wrote:

> Jorge Fernandez' critique of the www.talkorigins.org
> web site seems not to realize that this website is the
> FAQ website for a Usenet newsgroup...

...and (even if it were true) Jim Lippard apparently thinks this would
somehow absolve the TO writers from responsibility for their use of
conspicuously deceptive omissions and oversimplifications to explain their
beliefs?  The misleading and deceptive tactics invoked by the website's
writers are not justified either by the website's purpose or its
relationship to the newsgroup.

> Talk.origins most certainly is an open forum to which
> anyone can contribute.  I suggest that Mr. Fernandez
> use the newsgroup and post his criticism there.

It's an "open" forum, alright, loaded with evolutionist flamers of every
stripe, who think it's "open season" for burying creationists in endless,
time-consuming threads full of fact-free evolutionary rhetoric and
pop-science sound bites.

The handful of reasonable evolutionary voices at talk.origins are more than
offset by the cacophony of bigots whose sole aim is to deliver an
inexhaustible stream of rapid-fire inflammatory epithets, false accusations,
and science-free, subject-changing, boilerplate jargon at creationist
posters.  Instead of being an environment for "open" and reasonable
dialogue, talk.origins excels as a feeding frenzy for evolutionary zealots.

I suggest Mr. Fernandez has done his homework, and -- not prone to waste his
time elsewhere -- has prudently posted his criticism in an appropriate
location.  Rest assured that any reasonable feedback from evolutionists will
eventually find its way to the TrueOrigin feedback section -- but so will
yours, giving TrueOrigin readers a realistic picture of typical evolutionary
"logic" and "critical thinking skills."

> Items which appear on the website are items which have
> been originally posted to the newsgroup and undergone
> often fierce peer review.

...and by exactly what "peers"?  I suggest these "peers" are the writers'
fellow evolutionist buddies, which hardly renders the website's contents the
objective "exploration" it pretends to be -- yet another fact conveniently
omitted from the website's deceptive façade.

Again, thanks so much for writing!

Regards,

The TrueOrigin Archive
http://www.trueorigin.org

Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 16:27:17 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: TrueOrigin Feedback 
Subject: Re: Jorge Fernandez' critique of www.talkorigins.org
Message-ID: <20020614232717.GA24267@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: 

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 11:12:07PM -0400, TrueOrigin Feedback wrote:
> Dear Mr. Lippard,
> 
> Thank you for providing yet another fine example of evolutionary logic for
> TrueOrigin readers.  You wrote:

Could you please define your term, "evolutionary logic," and explain how
I've given an example?
 
> > Jorge Fernandez' critique of the www.talkorigins.org
> > web site seems not to realize that this website is the
> > FAQ website for a Usenet newsgroup...
> 
> ...and (even if it were true) Jim Lippard apparently thinks this would
> somehow absolve the TO writers from responsibility for their use of
> conspicuously deceptive omissions and oversimplifications to explain their
> beliefs?  The misleading and deceptive tactics invoked by the website's
> writers are not justified either by the website's purpose or its
> relationship to the newsgroup.

You're putting words into my mouth.  Frankly, I don't think Mr. Fernandez
has made his case--and in fact, he himself has engaged in deceptive omission
when he writes of Francis Crick that "it is clear (to Crick) that no earthly
cause for DNA is scientifically reasonable."  This is in fact a distortion
of Crick's published views in _Life Itself_:

   "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could
   only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment
   to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had
   to have been satisfied to get it going.  But this should not be taken to
   imply that there are good reasons to believe it could NOT have started
   on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary
   chemical reactions.  The plain fact is that the time available was too
   long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the
   various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and
   imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it
   might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we
   have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against.
   Perhaps in the future we may know enough to make a considered guess, but
   at the present time we can only say that we cannot decide whether the
   origin of life on earth was an extremely unlikely event or almost a
   certainty - or any possibility in between these two extremes."
 
> > Talk.origins most certainly is an open forum to which
> > anyone can contribute.  I suggest that Mr. Fernandez
> > use the newsgroup and post his criticism there.
> 
> It's an "open" forum, alright, loaded with evolutionist flamers of every
> stripe, who think it's "open season" for burying creationists in endless,
> time-consuming threads full of fact-free evolutionary rhetoric and
> pop-science sound bites.

Why do you put "open" in quotes--it is literally an open forum--anyone
can contribute, and there are creationists of every stripe also
posting there on a regular basis.  You are "buried" only if you choose
to be buried--or can't adequately handle the criticism and respond to
it.

The contrast between talk.origins (and www.talkorigins.com) and
www.trueorigins.org is striking--the newsgroup allows contributions
from anyone, and the web site links to critics (including
www.trueorigins.com), though your site does not seem to grant the same
courtesy.  My impression is that that shows a lack of confidence in
one's arguments.
 
> The handful of reasonable evolutionary voices at talk.origins are more than
> offset by the cacophony of bigots whose sole aim is to deliver an
> inexhaustible stream of rapid-fire inflammatory epithets, false accusations,
> and science-free, subject-changing, boilerplate jargon at creationist
> posters.  Instead of being an environment for "open" and reasonable
> dialogue, talk.origins excels as a feeding frenzy for evolutionary zealots.

Why not ignore the zealots, then, and only dialogue with the reasonable ones.
Modern newsreader technology (killfiles/filters) makes this fairly simple to
do.

I myself don't have time to read talk.origins on a regular basis, so my
participation is quite selective.
 
> I suggest Mr. Fernandez has done his homework, and -- not prone to waste his
> time elsewhere -- has prudently posted his criticism in an appropriate
> location.  Rest assured that any reasonable feedback from evolutionists will
> eventually find its way to the TrueOrigin feedback section -- but so will
> yours, giving TrueOrigin readers a realistic picture of typical evolutionary
> "logic" and "critical thinking skills."

I would be quite interested in seeing any documentation of error on my part.
I note that you've not provided any in this email.  Feel free to post this
email with the preceding.  Alternatively, you can link to my website, where
I will put up this exchange, with a link back to you.
 
> > Items which appear on the website are items which have
> > been originally posted to the newsgroup and undergone
> > often fierce peer review.
> 
> ...and by exactly what "peers"?  I suggest these "peers" are the writers'
> fellow evolutionist buddies, which hardly renders the website's contents the
> objective "exploration" it pretends to be -- yet another fact conveniently
> omitted from the website's deceptive façade.
> 
> Again, thanks so much for writing!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> The TrueOrigin Archive
> http://www.trueorigin.org

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

And it continues:

Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 08:33:43 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: TrueOrigin Feedback 
Cc: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
Subject: Re: Jorge Fernandez' critique of www.talkorigins.org
Message-ID: <20020615153343.GA26703@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: 

On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 11:16:36AM -0400, TrueOrigin Feedback wrote:
> > Could you please define your term, "evolutionary logic,"
> > and explain how I've given an example?
> 
> Here are two examples implicit in your original feedback message:
> 
> Premise:     "Fernandez' critique seems not to realize"
>              that talkorigins.org is a FAQ website.
> Conclusion:  The primary focus of Fernandez' article
>              (i.e., his documentation of the deceptive
>              tactics used at TO) may therefore be freely
>              ignored in a feedback response to it.

I never said anything of the sort.  On the contrary, I think further
response to Fernandez is merited (and is going on right now on
the talk.origins newsgroup).  I was simply pointing out one particular
apparent mistake (his lack of recognition of the difference between
the website and the newsgroup).

You are once again putting words in my mouth.  Why not respond
to what I say, and not what you think I'm trying to imply?
 
> Premise:     Evolutionists agree with the arguments of
>              other evolutionists favoring evolution.
> Conclusion:  This practice may be arbitrarily qualified
>              as "fierce peer review" in order to lend
>              an aura of superiority to such arguments
>              above other (i.e., opposing) arguments.

This argument is also not present in what I said, and is certainly
no argument I agree with.

You do not seem to be interacting with me, but rather with your
projected image of what I must be saying.  This is either dishonest
or delusional on your part.

> This kind of "logic" is popular among evolutionists (so you're not alone),
> but it does more harm than good to their credibility.  The TrueOrigin
> feedback section is replete with additional examples, and has a hefty (and
> growing) backlog of more.
> 
> > > ...Jim Lippard apparently thinks this would somehow
> > > absolve the TO writers from responsibility for their
> > > use of conspicuously deceptive omissions and
> > > oversimplifications to explain their beliefs?  The
> > > misleading and deceptive tactics invoked by the
> > > website's writers are not justified either by the
> > > website's purpose or its relationship to the
> > > newsgroup.
> >
> > You're putting words into my mouth.
> 
> Am I?  The above conclusion is not unreasonable in light of the fact that
> your feedback response to Fernandez' article largely ignores the contents of
> that article, and begins by changing the subject:  Rather than offer a

I wasn't writing a rebuttal of Fernandez' article--I was offering a
small comment on a specific piece of the article.  Yes, you certainly
are putting words in my mouth, and you continue to do so.

> rebuttal of Fernandez' arguments or some form of justification for the
> questionable conduct Fernandez has documented, you went to the trouble of
> submitting a feedback response only to raise the (irrelevant) question of
> whether Fernandez understands the relationship between a website and
> newsgroup that share the same name.

It is not an irrelevant point.
 
> > Frankly, I don't think Mr. Fernandez has made his
> > case...
> 
> While your frankness is appreciated, without corroborating argumentation,
> such a statement amounts to nothing more than an arbitrary opinion.

Fine, disregard it.
 
> > ...in fact, he himself has engaged in deceptive
> > omission when he writes of Francis Crick that "it
> > is clear (to Crick) that no earthly cause for DNA
> > is scientifically reasonable."  This is in fact a
> > distortion of Crick's published views...
> 
> In spite of Crick's obvious mid-paragraph waffling with a gratuitous value
> judgment ("...should..."), he begins and ends with clear statements
> appraising the empirical facts as leaving overwhelmingly poor odds for the
> emergence of DNA via natural processes.
> 
> Nevertheless, wishing to avoid even the appearance of deceptive omission,
> Mr. Fernandez has agreed to an adjustment to his wording and the inclusion
> of a corroborating reference.  Thank you for contributing to the article's
> improvement with your criticism.

Glad to be of help.
 
> > > It's an "open" forum, alright, loaded with
> > > evolutionist flamers of every stripe, who think
> > > it's "open season" for burying creationists in
> > > endless, time-consuming threads full of fact-
> > > free evolutionary rhetoric and pop-science
> > > sound bites.
> >
> > Why do you put "open" in quotes...[?]
> 
> Because having a status of being "open" is of little value when the
> end-product of that "openness" is an essentially unmoderated free-for-all --

Why is that of little value?  I think it's quite valuable.

> an evolutionary feeding frenzy. Calling attention to the newsgroup's "open"
> status doesn't legitimize the largely spurious, unproductive, and
> inflammatory content posted by the evolutionist majority, and scarcely
> renders it a platform for reasoned debate.  Urban riots are typically "open"
> too, but they are not everyone's platform of choice for public expression.

That's not an apt comparison.  Usenet offers a particular kind of
forum--it's not for all tastes or for all purposes, but it is in fact
an excellent way to get access to a wide variety of viewpoints and to
get feedback on one's own views.  One can choose to engage or ignore
any of the respondents.
 
> > The contrast between talk.origins (and
> > www.talkorigins.com) and www.trueorigins.org is
> > striking--the newsgroup allows contributions from
> > anyone, and the web site links to critics...
> 
> It is an error (at least) and/or willfully deceptive (at most) to treat the
> talk.origins newsgroup and the talk.origins website as if they were in the
> same class.  They each operate under entirely different policies.  The

This seems to sharply contradict your claim that my point about confusing
the two is "irrelevant."

They are different in policy and different in purpose.  But *both* are
more open and objective than your site.

> website does NOT publish contributions that do not favor evolution, and the
> gratuitous inclusion of creationary links does NOT render the balance of its
> content the objective "exploration" it pretends to be.  Indeed, trading on
> the newsgroup's "open" status, the website strives to appear open and
> objective, but even a cursory inspection reveals its content and agenda to
> be unquestionably closed-minded and one-sided.
> 
> On the other hand, instead of pretending to "explore" the debate, the
> TrueOrigin website openly identifies its purpose in no uncertain terms on
> page one, faithfully executes it elsewhere, and includes links to
> evolutionary web content and references to evolutionary printed matter
> wherever they are relevant to the topic at hand.
> 
> Yes, the contrast is indeed striking!
> 
> > ...Why not ignore the zealots, then, and only
> > dialogue with the reasonable ones?
> 
> What compelling reason is there for considering the talk.origins newsgroup a
> superior venue for such dialogues than any others?

Because it truly is an open forum, and there are representatives of a
wide variety of viewpoints, including all stripes of creationists and
evolutionists.
 
> > I would be quite interested in seeing any
> > documentation of error on my part.
> 
> Please see above.
> 
> > > ...and by exactly what "peers"?  I suggest these
> > > "peers" are the writers' fellow evolutionist
> > > buddies, which hardly renders the website's
> > > contents the objective "exploration" it pretends
> > > to be -- yet another fact conveniently omitted
> > > from the website's deceptive façade.
> 
> By answering the above with silence, you have said plenty.

It doesn't appear to make much difference what I say--you are engaging
not what I say, but what you think evolutionists say.

And no, the "peer review" in talk.origins includes feedback from
creationists as well as evolutionists.  Certainly the evolutionists
are the majority, but that's true of science, academia, Ph.D.s, and
the pool of people with education beyond college in general.

> Regards,
> 
> The TrueOrigin Archive
> http://www.trueorigin.org

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 20:48:50 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: Tim Wallace 
Cc: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
Subject: Re: Jorge Fernandez' critique of www.talkorigins.org
Message-ID: <20020617034850.GC21596@discord.org>
References: <20020615153343.GA26703@discord.org> 
In-Reply-To: 

On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 10:34:31PM -0400, Tim Wallace wrote:
> 
> > > Here are two examples implicit in your original feedback
> > > message:
> > >
> > > Premise:     "Fernandez' critique seems not to realize"
> > >              that talkorigins.org is a FAQ website.
> > > Conclusion:  The primary focus of Fernandez' article
> > >              (i.e., his documentation of the deceptive
> > >              tactics used at TO) may therefore be freely
> > >              ignored in a feedback response to it.
> >
> > I never said anything of the sort...
> 
> It appears as if you have trouble understanding what the words "implicit in
> your message"  mean.  One's perspective is often revealed more by what is

I know what it means, but you are mistaken.  It was never my intent to
convey the message that the Fernandez piece should be ignored, and
your seeing such a message in what I wrote is either a misperception
on your part or a miscommunication on my part.  I don't see how your
continued attribution of this to me in the face of my disputing it
can be the result of miscommunication on my part.

Tim, I really don't understand why you've--from the very start--taken
a posture in this exchange where you are being insulting and assuming
the least charitable interpretation of everything I say.

> *done* and what is *not* said than merely what one says -- in this case the
> juxtaposition of your conspicuous silence on the article's subject with your
> eagerness to advance arbitrary and unsubstantiated speculation about the
> author's knowledge.

As I said, I was not writing a rebuttal, I was offering feedback on a
specific point.  The apparent confusion between the website and the
newsgroup is exhibited in Mr. Fernandez' article in a number of
respects, including that he doesn't ever mention the existence of the
newsgroup, and he claims that the website purports to be an open and
presumable unbiased forum (when in fact the website states that the
newsgroup is an open forum).
 
> > Why not respond to what I say...?
> 
> Why the double standard?  Why not respond to what Mr. Fernandez said in the
> first place, instead of projecting arbitrary and baseless speculation about
> his knowledge of Talk.Origins?

I don't think I'm operating under a double standard.  See above for why I
thought the critique did not display an understanding of the distinction
between the website and the newsgroup.

> > And no, the "peer review" in Talk.Origins includes
> > feedback from creationists as well as evolutionists.

> Now that sounds *very* interesting.  At this point, the only thing I'm
> interested in receiving from you is documentation of the Talk.Origins
> website's official version of what you call an "often fierce peer-review
> process" -- including the names of several of the "creationists" who
> participate in it.

I don't believe there is such documentation--and you seem to be continuing
with the same newsgroup/website confusion that I originally complained about.

The newsgroup is called talk.origins.  The website is called
www.talkorigins.org.  talk.origins is a newsgroup name, not a website
name.

The "peer review" process of the material that appears on the website
is that it all gets posted on the newsgroup and discussed at length,
in sometimes quite heated debates, which include creationists as well as
evolutionists.

See the Biographica file at
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/jargon/jargon.html#bioinfo for a
list of some of the major contributors.

> Otherwise I've had enough of this protracted and petty "exchange" of yours
> (there are far more productive uses for my time).

Likewise, so fair enough.

> Should you fail to produce said documentation and names, it will be duly
> noted when your fine example of evolutionary conduct, priorities, and
> "logic" eventually appears in the feedback section of the TrueOrigin
> website.

> Regards,

> The TrueOrigin Archive
> http://www.trueorigin.org


-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

June 2001

Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 09:26:52 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: John Field <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium
Message-ID: <20010614092652.A16313@discord.org>
References: <DAV40A2DreBBsQwY6YH00003fbf@hotmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <DAV40A2DreBBsQwY6YH00003fbf@hotmail.com>; from johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com on Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 09:08:06AM -0700

John:

Your point about evangelical vs. fundamentalist is well-taken, however,
there is a very strong correlation between evangelical and set of beliefs
held.

Your point about "all the points have been well made before" doesn't
seem to be much of a criticism.

You state that my arguments are "sophomoric and unfair", but I note that
you don't take specific issue with a single premise or inference in any
of the arguments supplied.

Your perception that I am Jewish is incorrect.  On what did you base
such a conclusion?  I think Orthodox Judaism is as erroneous as
fundamentalist Christianity; my past writings address the Old
Testament as well as the New.

If I might offer a suggestion for your own efforts, as represented
by this missive from you:  stick to the facts, avoid unsubstantiated
name-calling.

Congrats, you've earned a place on my ridiculous email web page.


On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 09:08:06AM -0700, John  Field wrote:
Greetings Mr. Lippard:   I chanced upon your piece  "Three Reductio ad Ab=
surdum Arguments Against Evangelical Christianity" and thought I might offe=
r some constructive criticisms. I realize your mission as a skeptic is to e=
xpose irrationality in religious belief systems. But it seems to me that th=
is particular attack on "Venial Christianity"  is rather sophomoric and unf=
air.. Let me explain. All of the points you raised have been well made befo=
re by some of the finest minds in the history of intellectual skepticism. F=
rom the giants of the Age of Enlightenment to Marx to Mark Twain to Bertran=
d Russell and many more, your points have been exculpated with great skill =
and effect. Yet you offered no credit to that great body of skepticism, but=
 present your thoughts as original.                                        =
                                                                           =
                    Another deficiency was that you too broadly included "E=
vangelical" Christianity with fundamentalism. "Evangelism" is a form or mod=
e of ministry more than a specific set of beliefs. Not all evangelists are =
fundamentalists.  You might do better to recognize that Christianity is a v=
ast spectrum,  from the most inflexible literalists to agnostics. At least =
a nod to this complexity would have been nice, if only for reasons of polit=
eness. And finally, I perceive that you may be a gentleman of Jewish herita=
ge. Let me ask you, therefore if you have ever attacked Orthodox Judaism in=
 the same vein as you attack Christianity?  As a Jew, you would be insured =
against the inevitable ad hominem  anti-Semite charge as well as better cre=
dentialed from personal experience.  Also, to broaden your field of targets=
 might offset the thread of narrowness and disrespect you demonstrate for t=
he larger and more rational good of Christian spirituality. This is unfortu=
nate because it can alienate some of those whom might otherwise be persuade=
d, and it reveals your own callowness. You might even benefit from some the=
 Christian principles in evolving your own world view.  That's it for now. =
I welcome your thoughtful reply,  -John Field

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From: "John Field" <johnfielducsf@hotmail.com>
To: lippard email address
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 10:08:49 -0700
Message-ID: <F1653WYIgoFT3kMUVfN00001982@hotmail.com>
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Jun 2001 17:08:50.0070 (UTC) FILETIME=[AE59EB60:01C0F4F4]

>From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
>To: John Field <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium
>Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001 09:26:52 -0700
>
>John:
>
>Your point about evangelical vs. fundamentalist is well-taken, however,
>there is a very strong correlation between evangelical and set of beliefs
>held.
>JF's REPLY: There is, but enough of a difference to avoid making the 
>mistake again, in the interest of accuracy. Your point about "all the 
>points have been well made before" doesn't
>seem to be much of a criticism.
>JF's REPLY: It doesn't? If I wasn't so polite I would have said it was 
>totally without originality to the point of plagerism; in view of the fact 
>that you offered no credit or sources whatsoever for ideas which have been 
>around for a long time. If it was a summary and not a rip-off of better 
>thinkers than yourself, you would have done better to say so.  You state 
>that my arguments are "sophomoric and unfair", but I note that
>you don't take specific issue with a single premise or inference in any
>of the arguments supplied.
>JF'S REPLY: That's right. I prefer to engage good ideas closer to their 
>source, when possible. Your perception that I am Jewish is incorrect.  On 
>what did you base
>such a conclusion?                                                          
>    >JF'S REPLY: It was not a "conclusion" at all but only a tentative 
>impression. Please reread what I said. That  impression was based in part 
>on some associations I found you have had with refuting holocost 
>revisionism, and, alas, with your name -- Lippard is often a Jewish 
>surname. My error.                                                      >I 
>think Orthodox Judaism is as erroneous as
>fundamentalist Christianity; my past writings address the Old
>Testament as well as the New.
>JF'S REPLY: I think you're being a bit disingenous here. Attacks on the Old 
>Testement are not very strong attacks on Orthodox Judaism, especially when 
>the stated target is Fundamentalist Christianity. Have you ever subjected 
>the Talmud to any such "attack"? I doubt it very much.
>If I might offer a suggestion for your own efforts, as represented
>by this missive from you:  stick to the facts, avoid unsubstantiated
>name-calling.
>JF's REPLY: Excuse me, but no names were called. Not one. Please reread 
>what I wrote. And to the extent I stuck to only the "facts", you accepted 
>my correction!  As far suggestions for improvements in style, form and 
>responsibility, I do not think you are above reproach in the piece I 
>selected to criticize. Congrats, you've earned a place on my ridiculous 
>email web page.
>JF'S REPLY: WOW! This must really be the Big Time!!!

Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 12:23:02 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: John Field <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
Cc: lippard email address
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium
Message-ID: <20010616122302.A1545@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <DAV68bh29cM3oryKFRJ00007361@hotmail.com>; from johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com on Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 11:51:04AM -0700

Your previous reply was indeed sent.  I did not reply.

It is my impression that you set the tone with your initial
message in your choice of adjectives and accusations; in your
previous reply you accused me of a lack of originality tantamount
to plagiarism, as well as producing arguments that are "sophomoric and
unfair."  How is that not name-calling and abuse?  Where have I done
anything comparable in my responses to you?

As for originality--the basics of the problem of evil (of which the
first argument is a specific example) are well-known, and there is no
locus classicus to cite.  I don't know of anyone who has made, in
print, the specific version I make, with the point about heaven.  The
second argument (abortion and missionaries) is one that I've seen
people come upon in verbal argumentation, but not in print.  Again, my
specific version is not derived from anyone else's work.  The third
argument, I've not seen made anywhere by anyone else.  If you have
really read any specific arguments that you think are so similar to
mine as to make mine tantamount to plagiarism, I'd like references,
please.

Criticisms of Orthodox Judaism are less common (and less interesting)
because there are far fewer Orthodox Jews, and they tend not to
proselytize.

I've not ever met a Jewish Lippard.  Where have you come across one?
The most famous Lippards were the writer George Lippard of
Philadelphia, who wrote a number of plays that scandalized the local
populace prior to the U.S. civil war, and Lucy Lippard, a New York art
critic/historian.  I don't know the religious views of either of them.

On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 11:51:04AM -0700, John  Field wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James J. Lippard <lippard email address>
> To: John Field 
> Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 9:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium******************
> ************Hello again Mr. Lippard:  I composed a reply to these points
> once already and I thought I sent them off by e-mail but I could not find
> the copy in my "sent e-mail" folder. So here they are again.
> John:
> 
> Your point about evangelical vs. fundamentalist is well-taken, however,
> there is a very strong correlation between evangelical and set of beliefs
> held.
> >JF's REPLY: "Very strong" is an inaccurate because  within the evangelical
> movement are important mainline protestant denominations which are
> significantly less literalist than fundamentalists. What you say is true
> only of fundamentalists like Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's
> Witnesses, etc.
> Numerous important mainline protestant sects, like  the United Methodist
> Church for example, recognizes evangelism as an acceptable type of ministry
> for its doctrine, but is more liberal in its beliefs than fundamentalists.
> The acceptability of the theory of evolution, the metaphorical rather than
> literal concept of Hell, and other major points are illustrative.  There are
> other protestant denominations as well which respect the evangelical mode
> yet are definitely not fundamentalist, e.g., The Church of Latter Day
> Saints, ("Mormons"),  Lutherans, and others.
> ****************************************************************
> Your point about "all the points have been well made before" doesn't
> seem to be much of a criticism.
>  >JF's REPLY: It doesn't? My point wasn't just that they were made before,
> but that they were not original to you as you seemed to imply by withholding
> any reference to sources.
> ***********************************************************
> You state that my arguments are "sophomoric and unfair", but I note that
> you don't take specific issue with a single premise or inference in any
> of the arguments supplied.
> 
> JF's REPLY: But you already acknowledged one correction. Your sophistry is
> demonstrated more as a matter of  your lock-horn, antagonistic attitude. You
> tend to get abusive as well. These are hallmarks of a callowness and serve
> to repel rather than convince.
> ******************************************************************
> Your perception that I am Jewish is incorrect.  On what did you base
> such a conclusion?
> >JF's REPLY: I drew no such conclusion. Please re-read what I said: "I
> perceive that you MAY [emphasis mine] be a gentleman of Jewish heritage."
> I based my impression (as opposed to "conclusion") on your past association
> with the debunking of holocaust revisionism, your avoidence of attacking
> Orthodox Judaism the way you do Christianity and, alas, on your last name,
> which is not an uncommon Jewish surname. My error.
> ***************************************************************
> I think Orthodox Judaism is as erroneous as
> fundamentalist Christianity; my past writings address the Old
> Testament as well as the New.
> 
> JF's REPLY: Your  "past writings" on The Old Testament were attacks on
> Christianity. Thus it is disingenuous to offer that as an attack on Orthodox
> Judaism.
> ***************************************************
> If I might offer a suggestion for your own efforts, as represented
> by this missive from you:  stick to the facts, avoid unsubstantiated
> name-calling.
> JF's REPLY: No names were called. Not one. Abuse and ridicule are your
> tactics, not mine.***************************************************
> 
> Congrats, you've earned a place on my ridiculous email web page.
> 
> JF's REPLY: See what I mean?*********************************************

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
PGP Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 15:25:04 -0700
From: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
To: John Field <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium -- and the plagerism question answered in detail.
Message-ID: <20010616152504.A20115@discord.org>
In-Reply-To: <DAV57JSFsxf4yp8ARf30000f030@hotmail.com>; from johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com on Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 02:37:50PM -0700

I'd say my putting those specific sets of propositions together into
an argument form to spell out explicit contradictions is unique and
original, even though the first two arguments are, in general form,
common.  The "many" in the sentence you quote is reference to the
very beliefs stated, the "but" is not an exclusion for the whole set.

OK, I'm a bully because of my ridiculous email reference, fine.
My point about your tone from the very beginning still stands.

Where did you check out the "ethnically Jewish" status of George and
Lucy Lippard, and what do you mean by "ethnically Jewish"?  That their
mothers were Jewish?  You certainly came up with that information quickly,
I am curious to know your sources.

Did you come across my web page as a result of Holocaust
denial/revisionism?  Would you consider yourself to be a Holocaust
revisionist?


On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 02:37:50PM -0700, John  Field wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: James J. Lippard <lippard email address>
> To: John Field 
> Cc: <lippard email address>
> Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2001 12:23 PM
> Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium
> * * * *    > Your previous reply was indeed sent.  I did not reply.
> *********************
> 
> >> >Hmmm... At any rate my second reply contained some refinements which you
> likewise did not reply to. *************************
> > It is my impression that you set the tone with your initial
> > message in your choice of adjectives and accusations; in your
> > previous reply you accused me of a lack of originality tantamount
> > to plagiarism, as well as producing arguments that are "sophomoric and
> > unfair."  How is that not name-calling and abuse?  Where have I done
> > anything comparable in my responses to you?
> **************************  The was set in your web page. Please read my
> previous reply (attached below). I did not say your presentation was
> plagiarism or tantamount to it, but approached it; to the *point* of
> plagiarism , not past it . (You also mistook my tentative perception that
> you might be Jewish  with a "conclusion" that you were.)  The first
> suggestion of plagiarism is based in part, on the  implication that your
> ideas were original when in fact they are not. Please read what you said: "I
> have discovered a number of inconsistent sets of belief held by evangelical
> Christians. Many  involve philosophical difficulties with theism commonly
> discussed by philosophers of religion and many involve contradictions which
> arise from a literal interpretation of the Bible. BUT THOSE WHICH I WOULD
> LIKE TO PRESENT HERE are philosophical difficulties peculiar to evangelical
> Christianity ". Your use of the qualifier "But..." in context, conveys the
> idea that your ideas were not also "...commonly discussed by philosophers of
> religion..." . Note that in both sentences you refer to "evangelical
> Christians" and only to them,  which your issues are "peculiar to".  Thus
> the qualifier "but" can  be understood to mean that the second set of issues
> differs from the first in that they are NOT  "difficulties" commonly
> discussed by philosophers of religion, since all issues raise are common to
> the same set of "evangelical Christians" in the first sentence as the
> second.
> The second, lesser suggestion of plagiarism is in the points themselves,
> which appear totally without reference, (and again, are presented as being
> APART from the ideas of "... philosophers of religion...") and  many of
> which  are longstanding and predate you by many decades.  To tell you the
> truth, I can't imagine you  seriously claiming your points were original
> when pressed to account for what you said. Carelessness is, I admit,  not as
> serious as dishonesty, but a parsing of your writing does suggest the
> problem. As to answer your question   "Where have I done
> anything comparable in my responses to you?",  like to ridicule, as when you
> post replies for that very purpose under a "ridiculous e-mail" heading. Your
> thus come off as something of a bully.
>        *************************************************
> > As for originality--the basics of the problem of evil (of which the
> > first argument is a specific example) are well-known, and there is no
> > locus classicus to cite.  I don't know of anyone who has made, in
> > print, the specific version I make, with the point about heaven.  The
> > second argument (abortion and missionaries) is one that I've seen
> > people come upon in verbal argumentation, but not in print.  Again, my
> > specific version is not derived from anyone else's work.
> ****************************************************************************
> **
> > The problem is an old one and has been discussed in print. I refer you to
> accounts of Spanish missionaries accompanying the conquistadors who
> sanctioned the massacre of Indians, sometimes regardless of their status of
> conversion. Those who refused to convert were killed and dispatched to hell.
> Others were allowed to convert first, then summarily killed with missionary
> acquiescence on the grounds that as Christians they were assured a place in
> Heaven. (Of course, the real motive had more to do with military and
> financial considerations, as well as ordinary human cruelty).  The idea
> apparently was that the greater general good of the Christian conquest of
> the New World  might mean that occasionally you "can't make an omelet
> without breaking some eggs", and to let God sort things out.   .> ...If you
> have
> > really read any specific arguments that you think are so similar to
> > mine as to make mine tantamount to plagiarism, I'd like references,
> > please.******************************
> > See above.*************************
> > Criticisms of Orthodox Judaism are less common (and less interesting)
> > because there are far fewer Orthodox Jews, and they tend not to
> > proselytize.**************************
> > True, but they are still a high profile target because one of the
> destructive consequences of their beliefs is that Jews are a special and
> superior race of people.    The Mideast troubles is the obvious case in
> point.******************
> > I've not ever met a Jewish Lippard.  Where have you come across one?
> **********************                    >I've never met one either, but
> entering "Lippard" and weighted variations like "Rachael Lippard"  and
> "David" or "Max" etc. in my search engine produced a statistically high
> number of Jewish examples. Also "Lippard" is related to "Lipsit" "Lipps"
> "Lipinsky", "Lippman" etc. which are more common Jewish names.
> ****************************> The most famous Lippards were the writer
> George Lippard of
> > Philadelphia, who wrote a number of plays that scandalized the local
> > populace prior to the U.S. civil war, and Lucy Lippard, a New York art
> > critic/historian.  I don't know the religious views of either of
> them.****************************
> >Both are ethnically Jewish. I checked it
> out.*******************************

-- 
Jim Lippard        lippard email address       http://www.discord.org/
PGP Key ID: 0xF8D42CFE

X-Originating-IP: [63.206.115.218]
From: "John  Field" <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
To: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium -- and the plagerism question answered in detail , plus a bonus e-mail reprint.
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 21:12:48 -0700
Message-ID: <DAV9ZBv9ninarBU393I0000f3c8@hotmail.com>

----- Original Message -----
From: James J. Lippard <lippard email address>
To: John Field <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
Cc: James J. Lippard <lippard email address>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2001 3:25 PM
Subject: Re: Reductio ad Nausium -- and the plagerism question answered in
detail.
> I'd say my putting those specific sets of propositions together into
> an argument form to spell out explicit contradictions is unique and
> original, even though the first two arguments are, in general form,
> common. ************************************
> It sounded like old hat to me -- like the stuff we use to get from Madelyn
Murray O' Hare, et al.         ,***********************************
>"...but" is not an exclusion for the whole set.
> Let's go over it one more time; here's what you said:  "I
have discovered a number of inconsistent sets of belief held by evangelical
Christians. Many  involve philosophical difficulties with theism commonly
discussed by philosophers of religion and many involve contradictions which
arise from a literal interpretation of the Bible. BUT THOSE WHICH I WOULD
LIKE TO PRESENT HERE are philosophical difficulties peculiar to evangelical
Christianity ".  The confusion arises partly from the fact that,
"philosophical difficulties with theism" in Fundamentalist Christianity are
the *result* of " contradictions which
arise from a literal interpretation of the Bible."  There is nothing NOT
"peculiar to fundamental Christianity" anywhere in the two sentences.
Everything mentioned is "difficulties peculiar to evangelical
Christianity."   Everything being discussed or referred to is about the "
inconsistent sets of belief " (in the first sentence) and/or similar
"difficulties" (in the second sentence) with Christianity (the only religion
under discussion). Therefore the qualifier "But" has no meaning. This
suggests you meant that the only qualification is between "philosophers of
religion" (other than yourself, presumably) in the first sentence, and
yourself, in the second. You say "peculiar to..."   as if you are focusing
down from some larger set, but no such larger set is mentioned. Again, the
qualifier "But" is left searching for meaning.  ***************************
> OK, I'm a bully because of my ridiculous email reference, fine.
> My point about your tone from the very beginning still
stands.*********************
> The beginning began with the tone of your site because your site precedes
me.***************> Where did you check out the "ethnically Jewish" status
of George and
> Lucy Lippard, and what do you mean by "ethnically Jewish"?  That their
> mothers were Jewish?  You certainly came up with that information quickly,
> I am curious to know your sources.****************
> I simply ran the names through my Google Search with the word <"Jewish">,
and the hits cascaded down in profusion.  I'm quite sure they were Jewish
because many of the hits  linked them to self-named Jewish organizations.
One link was to "Distinguished Colonial Jewish families" Try it. As far as
what I mean by "ethnically Jewish" I would have to read you the definition
of "ethnically" and "Jewish". I was not referring to the definition by
maternity as codified in Jewish (religious and Israeli) law.  Do you have a
problem understanding what "Jews" are? Some people do. Just curious.
*************************
> Did you come across my web page as a result of Holocaust
> denial/revisionism?    ****************I actually didn't see the page but
a reference to some connection you had with holocaust denial/revisionism (I
prefer the lower case "h"). I did a quick search and couldn't find anything
solid.  *************************************************
>Would you consider yourself to be a Holocaust
> revisionist?**************************************************
> Who, me? Probably not. It depends on where you draw the line. The best
scholarship I've seen allows for a downward margin of error which counts
about four million Jews murdered between 1933 and VE Day, 1945. Six million
is clearly an exaggeration. A great many Jews who were missing in 1945 were
displaced refugees who turned up later in places like Palestine and New York
City. Many more were absorbed into the Soviet Union and were never
repatriated or properly accounted for, as reliability for honest statistics
in the USSR was nil. That certain evidence was fabricated is now beyond
challenge, like the "reconstructed" gas chambers which were first
represented as original. Lamp shades of human skin and "soap factories" have
also been  debunked. BTW, I sent you a separate email regarding holocaust
revisionism a few days ago. Did you receive it? If not I have attached a
copy below.
>
> >*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Dear Mr. Lippard:
I was a bit intrigued to see how the principles and methods of conscientious
skepticism have been applied, after a fashion, to the issue of holocaust
(please note the small "h") revisionism. May I respectfully suggest that you
apply the same energy of skeptical criticism to the machinations of
worldwide Zionism. Specifically I direct your attention to the Jews' in
Israel (and elsewhere), longstanding racist oppression of the indigenous and
exiled Palestinian people. Please consider the problem of how Jews in
America are generally and strongly aligned with liberal principles of
"diversity", cultural /racial inclusion and tolerance, but who nevertheless
actively support the racist oppression of indigenous people in the  Jews'
sacred father/motherland, the JEWISH State of Israel. Please also note how
Jews in America generally decry any link to church and state, but who
simultaneously give strong moral, financial and political support to their
beloved Israel, which employs the Biblical Star of David on its national
flag and uses the Holy Menorah as its official National Seal. Please note
also how the Jewish faith, especially in its most backward and superstitious
form -- Orthodox Judaism-- is privileged above all other forms of worship in
the JEWISH State of Israel, and how Jews in America and elsewhere are nearly
lockstep in their moral, financial and political support for the Jewish
State. And finally, please note how deceit and manipulation of the media is
employed in widespread fashion in America to perpetuate this evil hypocrisy.
Thank you for your attention to my suggestions.  -- John Field

X-Originating-IP: [63.206.115.218]
From: "John  Field" <johnfieldUCSF@hotmail.com>
To: "James J. Lippard" <lippard email address>
Subject:  The Jewish Question
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 23:13:15 -0700
Message-ID: <DAV13c99ir3wSimD3Jk0000f368@hotmail.com>

  Here is another recent email to you. I have remailed it because you =
expressed some interest in my views regarding Jews. It's admittedly a =
bit acerbic. When I composed this, I was under the impression that you =
may be Jewish.                                                           =
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