I updated the Are you sure you want to bring Jesus into this? post based on an encounter with a philosophy professor who doesn’t handle losing very well (Richard Brown, a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Science and Philosophy program at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an Instructor (tenure-track) at LaGuardia College, CUNY).  I did exactly what I recommended in the post and it worked well.  Too well, in fact. 

I didn’t use any religious arguments, but he kept bringing them up.  So I asked him to support them.  He refused to acknowledge his ignorance of the Bible and wouldn’t back up any of his “religious bigotry” comments.  He gave the predictable challenge that I should just live out what the Bible says and everything would be better, and I asked them to please explain what that was and why.  I also offered my summary of the Bible (you know, the sinners in need of a Savior thing) and I think that is what really set him off.

So he deleted a comment.  No big deal, but then he started saying false things about me and then completely changed one of my comments to say something I never said (something rather crude, in fact).  I’ve never seen anyone do that before.  Then he “responded” to the fake comment.

But when I pointed out that I had made a copy of the comment thread he panicked.  He deleted everything he could find on his page: All of my comments, all of his comments answering mine and a whole new post dedicated to saying false things about me.   Then he hid the original post from his main page, though you can still access it directly from the link above (at least until he figures out how to delete it).

Wow, talk about taking the fun out of blogging!  I was going to give the guy a pass and gave him multiple chances to avoid all this.  But then he came up with another post with an “anonymous” comment of mine and wouldn’t provide a link to all the comments.  He can criticize me all he likes, but to hide any links to the discussion in question is cowardly.  He is trying to pretend that a comment part way through the thread was just so darn offensive and religiously based that he has to do all this. Sure. The comment wasn’t even religious in nature.  And if it is so bad, why I am glad to have it displayed in the link above?  Why can’t he link to the whole thread?  Why change my comments? 

So I decided to respond. 

This is a glimpse of what many college professors are like: Hostile to Christianity but woefully ignorant of it and with no desire to learn about it.  Sadly, the students have to listen to the authority figures and don’t know how to respond to them. 

Read the whole comment thread at the bottom of the post if you have time.  It covers quite a bit of ground on the civil union topic, as well as how to address many logical fallacies.

And pray for this guy.  I forgive him, but felt that I needed to flag this as a public service.