Eusebius an answer to the above post, if you are able to (I know you are busy) would be fantastic.

+1

Thanks guys for visiting and chatting and providing stimulating discussion! Really awesome!

Hi Eusebius,

You continued engagement on this blog really is commendable. I never expected you to reply. And your responses have been well thought out and well presented as is fitting of a man of your position.

With regards to your comments to me in paragraph one and two, no problem, I really don’t care. I’m not going to be there bud and I have not expectation that you change anything about yourself just for me, or anyone else for that matter. The only way to live is by your convictions. I just cope that if your convictions are ever proven to be wrong to your own conscience, that you’ll be big enough to change.

You’re a public figure and a journalist (yes used intentionally. If you’re produce content the way you do you’re a journalist as well as a talk show host.) and as you’ve pointed out, in this space you’ve got to be prepared to allow your content to be pulled apart by your boss/piers and your readers. I learnt that very quickly in my first job at Sapa.

So yes I comment on your position but it doesn’t bother me that you don’t agree with my responses or care for my attendance on Thursday.

We’re all good here. We know exactly where we stand with each other and in our fantastic democracy that’s completely ok.

Ryan’s post was good wan’t it? And he’s much better at this than I am. We’re of a similar mind, but you’ll get a better quality of philosophical interaction over the issue than you will from me. So I hope you guys get time to chat.

On a different day, in a different season of my life, I would have loved to be there on Thursday and would find the debate stimulating and interesting, but I just don’t have the space for it now.

With regards to your Twitter post, there is no criticism on my part of it. I was demonstrating to Peter as shared point over your tone and method, which we have already established I don’t care much for. But its a free country, say what you like.

Oh and I wouldn’t call my post vicious, good sir. We’re all three writers here and if I wanted to be vitriolic I most certainly could have been.

But to what end? The point I’ve made is I don’t like your tone and don’t care much for your literal methods. I’ve made my point and have no need to pursue it any further.

As mentioned, in another season, I’d be happy, even keen to meet you and to discuss such matters. You have a keen, intelligent mind and an impressive resume. This is after all online and I think we’re all far enough away from being keyboard heroes to have constructive human interaction in person.

With regards to your last paragraph, I don’t really have much inclination right now to describe my relationship with God in a epistemological (spelling?) or metaphysical way.

Within 15 minutes I went from being fine to near dead on my driveway and but for Jesus I would be dead. So you can throw as many big words at me that I have to look up in the dictionary as you want, but without God I would be dead right now, spiritually and physically.

And lastly, with the all the proving that we have to do, I don’t interact with my wife in a philosophical way, I am relational with her.

Its a gazillion times more important to take the relational route with God as opposed to trying to figure him out philosophically.

He is the God who created the galaxies and the earth, breaks laws of nature at will to reveal himself to people and aid those who are for him and did the most counter-intuitive thing of coming to earth as a servant despite being the most powerful and knowledgeable lifeform (can’t think of a better word here) in existence.

Ryan and I know God and he blows our minds all the time and you want to figure him out philosophically? Good luck with that. Better yet listen to John because I am sure he can articulate God far more eloquently that I ever will be able to.

Lastly I really wish you no harm or ill in anyway. I simply exercise my right to not like your methods and you have done with mine.

Good luck with your debate, I hope it is meaningful for everyone who attends and/or listens to it.

No Mr Whitford I’m not interested in surprising you by not being recalcitrant or by not merely posing questions to John or by not not listening to John.

I don’t care for disrupting your presumptions about my skill as a public speaker and debater.

Since you and Ryan both work and/or worked in the spaces I do you know it is an egotistical impossibility to set out to be liked by every reader, viewer or listener.

Indeed if anyone achieves that feat they must be uttering utterly innocuous truisms like 1 plus 1 is 2.

If I was liked by everyone I’d quit! The intrinsic nature of writing about, and broadcasting on, issues that people are deeply emotionally wedded to is that you won’t please everyone. Neither your tone nor your methods let alone the content of your views.

So I’m unfazed by your not coming on Thursday.

What I advise new journos is what I imperfectly try to apply to myself: never respond to EITHER an individual remark about you or your work sucking NOR pat yourself on the back after one individual hyperbolic bit of love someone shows you for one bit of your work.

Instead assess your tone and quality and impact of your work by gauging PATTERNS OF RESPONSES *OVER TIME*

And I’m sorry to disappoint but on the whole I’m humbled by undeserved positive patterns so far over time.

To Ryan: We have found each other tonally. That’s more important for now than substantive debate on the issues. Thank you. You too showed generosity in your lengthy last entry or second last one. I appreciate that. Cheers.

On my tweets: I choose them with full awareness they can be screengrabbed. I make no apologies Mr Whitford for being annoyed. I own both my ignorances – science for example – and my achievements: I didn’t win a national universities title and then a world masters title in debate by asking ‘annoying questions’ to opponents about motions.

I did it by doing research, doing university courses in argumentation theory and formal logic and putting in the proverbial 10 000 hours of practise.

Why on earth must I not be irritated by a person ascribing vicious intellectual traits to me based on thin evidence, conjecture and assuming their limited experience of me suffices to say so publicly with confidence?

So I don’t retract that.

But I’d be perfectly happy – keen even – to both forget about that episode and engage you too, respectfully, on the substantive philosophucal issues if we ever meet in person.

For example I think you have a LOT of justification to do philosophically to be compelling on the idea that acquaintance with God isn’t epistemologically or metaphysically queer.

Cheers

Eusebius

Hey Peter – thanks for the kind words :). A relative standard is, as you say, highly questionable. I can’t imagine trying to be my own anchor, to be honest! I’m perfectly happy with admitting such weakness, too.