No, Gaz, I'm afraid (for you) that I will not be shutting up. Terribly sorry, old chap! I note, en passant, that *you* haven't provided any positive examples in *your* favor either.... It seems we are even in this regard.... Does that I mean I ought to tell you to "shut up," too?
It really matters little whether Scratch shuts up or whether his intellectually slovenly and and mendacious criticisms of a religion and people of which he knows so little in any sugstantive way rambles on to its inevitable conslusion: human irrelevancey.
This man's pretense to have an understanding of logical reasoning, the cut-and-paste mind that alows him to throw claims of logical fallacies committed and obscure urban legends about what certain church leaders are said to have done or said at his opponents without really understanding, in either an analytic or synthetic way, just what it is he's really trying to say (and being humorously unaware of the logical or conceptual implications of much of what he says) has long ago run its course with anyone who is capable of serious, critical thought and desires both a civil
and substantive dialog with critics of the church.
Scratch is a boiling cauldren of self justifications, self serving poliitical agendas, and philosophical juvenile excuses for the kind of world the philosophy of life he holds dear has created, especially in the West.
His unflinching hatred and bigotry toward faithful members of the Church he so despises is an interesting commentary on the sensitivity and tolerance he self righteously demands of others for his favorite political vicitm archtypes.
Rollo certainly runs a close second to Scratch in both the paranoia and guile department (either of these gentlemen could easily be employed overtime in the leftist blogosphere generating conspiracy theories about George Bush, the imperialist Jews who control his administration, and what
really happened on 9/11), but Scratch takes the cake as a a purveyor of pure cognitive pollution.
The really sad thing about all this is that I could write an entire book about what Scratch doesn't know. Its one thing to be ignorant but quite another to be ignorant and be blissfully unaware of it. Indeed, Scratch is our own resident Jimmy Carter: uneducated and uninformed on the vast majority of the things upon which he believes himself to be expert.
Obsessive, rabble rousing demagogues like Scratch can be found in any numbe of cultural venues: in any local Union hall, any town meeting, any political party, any courtroom, or upon any number of soap boxes in in any number of social arenas.
The form changes, but not the substance. This person is who and what he is, and serious diaglog with him is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. My recommendation? Give it a cookie and see if it goes away.
Loran