As I mentioned before, Anderson recently accused me of slander for referring to his church as a religious cult and for calling his reasoning and arguments (not him) sloppy, lazy, or messy. He even suggested that my usage of the term "Gangadeanian" was an insult and as we saw here, he suggesting that I was dishonest, and insinuated that my personal conduct (with him and others at his church) was in some way morally problematic. He even went so far as to falsely accuse me to ASU police of stalking/harassing him and never bothered to apologize even though there was obviously no real evidence of any stalking/harassing on my part.
Further, as we saw in this tweet, Kelly Fitzsimmons Burton, instead of engaging with any of my arguments, dismisses me as a troll. (I don't know who this Jacob A. Alee fellow is, but he seems to agree with his friend as if he knows anything about me). There's more. I have recently learned that Burton has gone so far as to author a document that has been passed around entitled, "A History of Trolling." In it, she attempts to expose my identity and then again refers to me as a troll in addition to making several false accusations aimed at attacking my character. So, despite all their efforts to play the victim in all of this, it would seem that the Gangadeanians are the ones that are doing the slandering and insulting. Here's the relevant excerpt from Burton's "A History of Trolling" document, (I have redacted the names--of course, "J" refers to me).
- S connects with J who takes the “Debunking” website from E from here to here and here and continues to troll to this day. J loves to troll Owen and slander those who go to WF church. J wants to remain anonymous, but in the name of truth and in pursuing justice in my case, I cannot continue to remain silent. His bogus website has harmed my reputation and those of many others, such as Owen, who are concerned to think critically...Philosophy ought to be done by argument and counter argument, but both J and S have undermined the very possibility of argument so that resort to personal attack is all that is left to them. There is a lack of integrity in J and S's unwillingness to live with the consequences of their positions. They engage in sophistry not philosophy.
Many of Burton's statements are inaccurate, but this certainly feeds into their narrative as perpetual victims. What's interesting is that at the time that this document was authored, I hadn't even mentioned Burton in my blog. She wasn't even on my radar (though in recent days I've added her name to my intro post). So when she speaks of my "damaging her reputation" at best she can claim that my philosophical critiques of the arguments from Anderson and Gangadean have affected her insofar as she presents the very same arguments in her own work and talks.
And there's a philosophically substantive inaccuracy to flag. I'm not undermining "the very possibility of argument." I just disagree with Burton's unsupported principle that we must have "clarity/certainty of basic things" in order for us to engage in meaningful philosophical discussions.
Now to the factual inaccuracies.
First, I didn't take over the "debunking Gangadean Website". In fact, I distanced myself from it in this post. The only part that she has got right is that I took over the facebook page from the original author and changed the nature of it so that it's merely a place where I update my blog posts.
Furthermore, I don't "love to troll Owen" or "slander members of their church." To say that I "resort to personal attacks" as opposed to doing philosophy via "argument and counterargument" is simply ridiculous. This blog is largely about where I think the Gangadeanian arguments go wrong, with the occasional commentary about what I think are harmful outworkings of their worldview in practice. I've got well over a 100 articles where I present philosophical challenges. It's the Gangadeanians that refuse to provide counterarguments. Clearly, they are the ones resorting to personal attacks as this document makes evident. How they can seriously think of themselves as renewers of philosophy, retrievers of knowledge, and as Christ followers working towards "unity of the faith," despite such conduct is beyond me.
Finally, the word "troll" is too easily thrown around by Burton and company. When you play too fast and loose with a term, when you stretch it too far, it loses it's meaning. The word is supposed to be inherently pejorative. But there's nothing inherently bad about a person that continues to challenge what they view to be very bad arguments and a harmful worldview. Yes, I won't go away. Yes, I'm probably very annoying to the Gangadeanians because I'm actively working to stop the further spread of their bad ideas. That doesn't make me a troll in any meaningful sense of the word. I keep writing and speaking out in an effort to shed light, out of a concern for truth and public well-being (particularly that of the unsuspecting young students who might get exposed to Gangadeanism).
This morning I was listening to a podcast featuring a philosopher named Regina Rini who works on stuff related to social media and public discourse. She gives us what I think is a good characterization of a troll and talks about how people are often too quick to dismiss their interlocutors as such. She says,
We all know internet trolls are out there. We know that there are people out in social media solely to cause grief. They don't actually believe the things they're saying. They don't actually care about the arguments they are having. They are just picking things that they know will make people upset and deliberately antagonizing people and it's just fun for them...It makes perfect sense to dismiss people that fit this bill from serious discussions. It's a waste of time to talk to such persons because they pursue talk in bad faith as opposed to substantive discourse. But I don't see how anyone could honestly put me in that category. Look at my posts. It's all about trying to get to the bottom of things---things that I take very seriously and that I think are worth discussing. Interestingly, it's the Gangadeanians that are refusing to present counterarguments and resorting to ad hominems.
Regina Rini goes on to add,
I think a lot of times when there's an argument on twitter, facebook or what not, and someone says "Go away troll! Don't feed the trolls" the person they are calling a troll might not be a troll. We don't know, often. But it's easier to just dismiss someone you disagree with as a troll rather than engage with their arguments. And once you make that move-- conceptualizing the person as a troll, as somebody whose motivations are just to make you mad--they don't really mean what they are saying-- then obviously you can't take seriously what they are saying as equal participant in moral debate
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