periodic post of charley challenges with additions new in this version challenge plus an addendum summarizing charley s responses to date this is a posting made periodically in an attempt to encourage charley wingate to address direct challenges to his evidently specious claims i ll continue to re post periodically until he answers them publicly indicates that he won t answer them stops posting to alt atheism the alt atheism community tells me to stop or i get totally bored i apologize for the somewhat juvenile nature of this approach but i m at a loss to figure out another way to crack his intransigence and seeming intellectual dishonesty this is re post charley i can t help but notice that you have still failed to provide answers to substantive questions that have been raised in response to your previous posts i submit that you don t answer them because you cannot answer them without running afoul of your own logic and i once again challenge you to prove me wrong to make the task as easy for you as possible i ll present concise re statements of some of the questions that you have failed to answer in the hope that you may address them one at a time for all to see should you fail to answer again within a reasonable time period i will re post this article with suitable additions and deletions at such time that i notice a post by you on another topic i will repeat this procedure until you either address the outstanding challenges or you cease to post to this newsgroup i would like to apologize in advance if you have answered any of these questions previously and your answer missed my notice if you can be kind enough to re post or e mail such articles i will be only too pleased to publicly rescind the challenge in question and remove it from this list now to the questions after claiming that all atheists fit into neat psychological patterns that you proposed then semi retracting that claim by stating that you weren t referring to all atheists i asked you to name some atheists who you feel don t fit your patterns to show that you indeed were not referring to all atheists that you are aware of you failed to do so please do so now question can you name any a a posters who do not fit into your stereotype here is the context for the question this is not true for everyone on this board and you are out of line in assuming that it is you however deleted the text further along where i said that i didn t mean to imply that everybody s experience was along the same lines whether or not you mean to make such implications you do so repeatedly allow me to approach the issue from another viewpoint can you name those atheists that you ve come across who do not fit into the patterns that you theorize you have taken umbrage to statements to the effect that senses and reason are all we have to go by and when pressed you have implied that we have an alternative called revelation i have repeatedly asked you to explain what revelation is and how one can both experience and interpret revelation without doing so via our senses and reason you failed to do so please do so now question can you explain what is revelation and how one can experience and interpret it without using senses and inherent reasoning here is the context for the question revelation is not reason and if we do have revelation then reasoning is not all we have first show me that revelation exists second if revelation is not perceived through the senses how exactly is it perceived according to my webster s revelation is an act of revealing or communicating divine truth now tell me how such a thing can be revealed communicated other than via the senses tell me how you can interpret this revelation other than with reason that is using your brain to interpret what you are sensing when i say there is no way for a human being to interface with the universe other than via the senses as interpreted by reason your brain it is because this is the simple truth if you have another mechanism of interface by all means share it with us then later you cannot escape the fact that our entire interface with the universe is our senses and our reason period again this is indefensible no it is simple truth i challenge you to show me otherwise then later few mystics will agree to this assertion and the common defense of redefining senses to absorb for instance mystical experiences is begs the question of whether some senses are better than others i allow you the broadest definition of senses to make things easier for you now show me that mystical experiences exist remember you aren t allowed to go by testimony of others e g mystics since you have dismissed my testimony as unreliable you know tainted by my own bias further once these mystical thingies are absorbed show me evidence that a human can recognize and respond to them short of interpretation via that person s reasoning capabilities i challenge you to show me these things if you cannot do so you might as well give up the fight then later let me reiterate you have not explained your interpretation of your experiences so it is not possible for me to have attacked them in point of fact i specifically challenged you to explain this revelation stuff that you were talking about and i note for the record that you appear to have declined my challenge what is it how is it sensed how is it interpreted and how does this sensing and interpretation occur without the conduit of our senses and reasoning abilities you have answered none of these questions that go straight to the heart of your claims if you can t answer them your claims are entirely specious you have stated that all claims to dispassionate analysis made by a a posters are unverifiable and fantastical i asked you to identify one such claim that i have made you have failed to do so please do so now question have i made any claims at all that are unverifiable and fantastical if so please repeat them here is the context for the question i must thank david wood a most sensitive and intelligent if wrong posting then later likewise the reference to unverifiable fantastical claims represents fairly accurately my reaction to all of the claims to dispassionate analysis that are repeated in this group give me your address and i ll be pleased to send you a dictionary failing that can you name one claim that i have made that is in any sense unverifiable or fantastical i demand that you retract this statement if you cannot offer up evidence if you follow your usual pattern of ignoring the challenge then you are simply an asshole first you dismissed claims by atheists that they became atheists as a result of reason then later you stated that if one accepted the axioms of reason that one couldn t help but become atheist i asked you to explain the contradiction your only response was a statement that the question was incoherent an opinion not shared by others that i have asked be they atheist or theist you have failed to answer the question please do so now question do you retract your claim that a a posters have not become atheists as a result of reason despite their testimony to that effect if you don t retract that claim do you retract the subsequent claim that acceptance of the axioms of reason inevitably result in atheism here is the context for the question first quote we have here a bunch of people who claim that their position is based on reason it is up to atheists to prove it to me then second quote but i do not see how one can accept these axioms and not end up with an atheistic point of view first you claimed that you would probably not answer these challenges because they contained too much in the way of included text from previous posts later you implied that you wouldn t respond because i was putting words in your mouth please clarify this seeming contradiction question do you prefer to respond to challenges that include context from your own posts or that i paraphrase your positions in order to avoid included text here is the context for the question first you said my ordinary rules are that i don t read articles over over lines or articles in which there is nothing but included text on the first screen these are not rules of morality but practicality then later if someone is not going to argue with my version of my position then they cannot be argued with as usual your responses are awaited with anticipation dave wood p s for the record below is a compilation of charley s responses to these challenges to date this makes no sense to me at all it gives the appearance either of utter incoherence or of answering some question of mr wood s imagination mr wood i do not subscribe to the opinion that a gauntlet thrown down on the net requires any response whatsoever at some point i might read and respond to your article and then again i might not my ordinary rules are that i don t read articles over over lines or articles in which there is nothing but included text on the first screen these are not rules of morality but practicality i left out something else i don t respond to utmost on my list of things to avoid are arguments about the arguments meta arguments as some call them when i have to start saying that s not what i said and the response is did so there s no reason to continue if someone is not going to argue with my version of my position then they cannot be argued with
