Literary Discussions

Laura - sorry I overlooked your excellent question : "If the rhetoric you eschew is not going to work, what will?"

First, I would like to point out that my worthy interlocutor David states that he finds little value in MY style of rhetoric and along with Voltaire I defend to my death his right to disagree with me. But I in turn exercise my right to state that I see the rhetorical style of David as of little value (and perhaps even destructive) in the sense that David is skilled in the art of "making the weaker argument defeat the stronger" (one of the accusations at Socrates trial) but in fact David says nothing of substance, makes no stand, and reveals nothing about his own personal convictions.  David does in one post excuse himself for "dancing about the issue" and I commend his candor for dancing is all that I see David doing. David HINTS at the possibility of "substantive discourse" yet when I mention that he hastens to deny that he himself possess any of that substantive discourse.

I don't believe in dancing in discourse but rather in standing still and making a stand even if it should prove to be in error.  I agree with Lura in her position that changing times call for changing values and standards. 

Laura asks me what style of rhetoric or argument WILL work and I assume that by WORK she means uniting/unifying all Christians into one believing body and I say that NO RHETORIC or position or apologetic will ever achieve that.  Jesus himself asks the poignant question "when I return shall I even find faith." Jesus prays for unity in the garden of Gethsemane saying "Father, all those whom you have given me MAY THEY BE ONE even as you and I are one." And yet we see over the course of the first 1000 years of Christian history that 7 ecumenical councils were convened to address the host of doctrinal disagreements from Arians, Monophysites, Monothelites, Gnostics, et al, culminating in 1054 in the mutual anesthetization of each other by Rome and Constantinople.  So we see East and West go their different ways and 600 years later or so we see the Reformation followed by the counter-Reformation followed by the splintering of Protestants into something like 2000 different sectarian division evidenced by our bus ride down DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn.

My personal position (and I am willing to openly take a stand) is that I have been straight all of my life but Questioning (as the Q in LGBTQ indicates.) I believe that sexual orientation is not something that we choose but something that we discover sometimes at the tender age of 4 or 5.  I believe that all religions change and evolve and undergo sectarian divisions.  I grew up in a decade of the 1950s when homosexuality was so condemned that one was terrified to even contemplate the question of whether one could be attracted to the same sex.

I invite David to make a stand and tell us something substantive about his orientation, views and values. E.g. what is your sexual orientation; do you believe that sexual orientation is a choice; what is your religion/denomination; do you believe that there is only one true denomination/creed and that all others are in error and doomed; ... and I suppose I can think of a host of other questions to ask David. Now whether he chooses to take a stand and answer any of these questions remains to be seen and should he choose to remain silent and anonymous in his closet then I shall certainly respect that choice.