Daniel’s Next Bad Take: The Misrepresentation of Joe & Question Begging
This was demonstrably false, and even though I persistently corrected him in the thread he continued to play the victim, showing messages out of context and not linking to the original thread.
As Daniel wouldn’t accept any correction I gave him and failed to address the comments I could only conclude he was a dishonest actor.
Even if it was a genuine misunderstanding at the start, and his misrepresenting of me was unintentional, the persistence of his narrative made me feel the thread stank of dishonesty.
Now, he may not actually be dishonest, this could be the filter I mentioned before. If this is the case, then I am wrong that he was dishonest. Hopefully, you can understand why it SEEMS dishonest.
A thread was then started by Bearded Heretic questioning if he should do a video on Mr. Ray and his behaviours. (He has since completed this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCFy2IOMEZs)
We both responded and Ray was on the defensive, as you’d expect in this instance.
He then turned it round to me with one of his Zoom calls wanting a one on one dialogue. His demands were that I had to have a zoom call with him or drop the matter.
I said unless he admits to misrepresenting me I’m not interested.
I also explained that my wife had just had a C-section and I wasn’t streaming, I hadn’t even touched my computer since we brought her and my daughter home. Even this article was typed up on my phone and edited on my work laptop between feeds, cleaning, playing etc.
He claimed that if I had time for twitter I had time for a zoom call.
This is demonstrably false. A text-based chat that you can reply to at your leisure, in this instance whilst I was cleaning the kitchen or going to the toilet, is very different from sitting down for a video call.
Not to mention, I am sure, timezones would be an issue, and my current (temp) office is next to my daughter’s room, and I don’t want to keep them up. My new office is nearly complete though but does not have power.
I also struggle with a bit of anxiety when it comes to things like answering the phone. It can take a lot of energy to do things like the streams, and these are video chats with people I have a good rapport with. The idea of having a conversation with someone that had persistently misrepresented me was not attractive. This felt like a power play on his part. He wanted to put things in his control and if I refused be able to play the victim to say “I was reasonable and invited him to a conversation but he refused.”
Well, I didn’t refuse. I did say if he publicly admitted to misrepresenting me then when my office was complete in a week or two, he kept refusing, it was his way or the high way.
We did chat in DM for a bit, and I think that shone some light on why he misrepresented me. Out of respect for the messages being private, I won’t share them, but I will discuss some of the content which lead to his misrepresentation of me.
Because I had said “so, in summary, your entire justification is question begging” he took that to mean that defining God using the Bible is question-begging.
He made comments that defining things was part of justification.
It seems like he misunderstands justification, at least in part. The definition comes before the justification and should not include it e.g. First define God and then the justification for why that thing exists is what could be fallacious or not. He denies the hiddenness argument because God exists, and his justification God existing is the Bible, and the reason we should accept the Bible is that God exists. <– This is the question-begging.
There is nothing wrong with using any book to assist in defining a character, or anything else. I can define many gods based on my understanding of them from various texts, but as I am not a theist I use the definition of the person I am talking to in a discussion.
So, defining something is not the same as justifying its existence.
First, he defines god using the Bible. Then he says god exists, because of the Bible, and that god is his own justification by definition because in the Bible he says “I AM”
He repeated a previous comment about if I was evidence of my own existence.
I had previously responded that I was to me but it’s a bit different because if I want to justify I exist to anyone else. I can jump on the net and demonstrate that I do. We don’t see God actually speaking to us. The only reason to think He does is the Bible, and the only reason to accept the Bible is if you’ve already concluded God exists.
In fact, it seems through the various threads I’ve read, he says God exists BY DEFINITION. There isn’t any tighter circle you can get there… God exists because God exists by definition, because I define God as a deity that exists, and therefore God exists. It’s an error to include existence as part of a definition anyway, and I don’t know how you can justify this without begging the question.
P1. God is defined as a being that exists
P2. If God is defined as a being that exists, God Exists
C1. God exists
P3. The Bible defines God as a being that Exists
P4. As God Exists (C1) we should accept that God exists by definition (P1)
C2. God exists
This is a double layer of question-begging.
One of many examples you can see which seems to indicate this type of reasoning from Daniel is here:
I gave up responding. It would seem that he didn’t see the line between definition and justification. From the conversations we had, I felt he didn’t seem to understand fallacies or even basic logic. He misrepresented me along with his apparent need for a power-play without any compromise. In that moment, I felt frustrated and that there was no point in having a dialogue with him.
In fact, it seems like I am not the only one who feels this way about him:
A little understanding
Although, I will say I can understand a little bit more why he misrepresented me. If he includes defining something as justification and includes something existing as part of a definition then I can see how he took my comment about his entire justification being question-begging, even though I had specifically stated that question-begging was not related to defining God.
The problem here is that Daniel didn’t take the time to actually understand what I was saying. He went with what he thought I was saying based on a misunderstanding of justification and question-begging rather than enquiring further. You can see he didn’t clarify this statement before making his tweet: https://twitter.com/answersinreason/status/1444398116158021640?s=21
I’m Joe. I write under the name Davidian, not only because it is a Machine Head song I enjoy but because it was a game character I used to role-play that was always looking to better himself.
This is one of many things I hope to do with Answers In Reason.
I run our Twitter and IG accounts, as well as share responsibility for our FB group and page, and maintain the site, whilst writing articles, DJing, Podcasting (and producing), keeping fit and more.
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