From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Sun Nov 10 1996 - 10:22:20 MST
At 10:07 AM 11/10/96 -0600, Ira Brodsky wrote:
> IRA to IAN: I don't "claim" to enjoy battling clueless paranoids
> -- I can prove that I enjoy battling them. <g>
IAN: Of course, as facts prove, you require ad hominem to
bolster your case, I'll try to stick with facts and logic. I
realize there's a degree of "joshing" here, but only a degree.
> Funny that you claim the mantle of "skeptical inquiry."
IAN: So you suggest that questioning the govt and the media, which
mindlessly relays the govt's news feed, is not skeptical inquiry? Perhaps
proper skepticism is to be directed only at those who question authority.
> I remain skeptical about the Navy missile theory.
IAN: So do I, but I think evidence weighs strongly in that direction,
mostly toward a missile. My chief concern here is why the Navy is so
quickly exonerated. I'd like to encourage people to question authority,
which means don't simply believe everything authoritarian figures say.
Rather than encouraging that, you smear such primary skepticism as
mental illness, that's a vicious aggression against skeptical inquiry.
I've never said "the Navy did it." I believe 90% a missile did it.
> I don't think the issue is whether one of us is skeptical and the
> other is not, I think the issue is what each of us thinks is a proper
> target of skepticism.
IAN: Agreed. I question authority, it seems you mostly question
those who question authority, which is fine, so long as we don't
resort to the nonlogical method of ad hominem.
>While Navy Admiral Edward Kristensen left the door open a crack -- properly
>so, as he making statements based on what his staff tells him -- it is now
>clear that Salinger is the intellectually dishonest scoundrel that (ahem) I
>suspected.
IAN: He's a scoundrel because he has documents the GovtMedia does not
like?? Forget the fact that these documents, if they are nothing more
than the internet document, have not, to my knwoledge, been disproven
in any fashion other than that they were anonymous and that the USN
says, "we weren't there." If the authorities say X is true, then X
is true and anyone who says otherwise is an "intellectually dis-
honest scoundrel." I reject that thinking as servile.
Where's your proof that the internet document is false? I just, in the
last post, presented evidence that the key feature of disproving it,
that area W-105 is not a missile testing area, is compromised by the
USN dude saying the area is "not typically used for missile training."
That does not prove the Navy did it, but it leaves the door open on
the validity of the document. So where's your assumed disproof?
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IAN GODDARD <igoddard@erols.com> Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
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