LP675

Ok guys, sorry about the delay, here I go!
Flattery will get you everywhere!

I will not bother in this post responding to what I think are silly ideas such as the insinuation that Christian fundamentalism is “lower-order thinking... stuck in literal thought… (which disregards) Metaphor and contextual analysis�, or ten to the eleventh’s unorthodox pontifications on the beliefs and motivations of the author of this story.

I will attempt to summarize your major arguments (mainly ten to the eleventh and SkepticalIdealist), please correctly me if I have missed something essential. I feel there is a lot of repetition in the posts directed at me, and I will refer to past posts where I feel I have dealt with the same points.

For starters the ‘default’ position is that God is not guilty of any moral wrong. The onus is on you to prove he is morally culpable for this girl’s death, if you believe it to be the case. God is innocent until proven guilty. To prove someone is guilty of something I think you have to prove they have some duty or obligation, and via their acts or omissions they have breached that duty.

I think the charge you are attempting to make out is that “God was implicated� in the sense of being responsible for the death of the daughter, therefore God is morally culpable for the actions of Jephthah. You state “God was just as, if not more, responsible for the death of J.'s daughter as J.�

It seems to me you fellows are trying to make a case for a breach of duty arising from three main sources (which I will attempt to deal with);

1) Some sort of contractual obligation (God made a deal etc) because you (ten to the eleventh) allege “we must conclude that God at least tacitly accepted the contract�. Your first argument in post 83: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...5&postcount=83, stands or falls on this point.

Your analogy intended to offer support for your argument actually involves no contractual obligation in the relevant sense whatsoever, and in fact the most that can be said regarding the culpability of the landlord is in your words is merely that: “people I know would have thought that I was crazy for not saying anything, but proceeded to mow the grass with full knowledge of the consequences�.

You make no explicit statement as to your moral culpability for the tenant’s action, and you certainly are not explicit as to what duty you have breached via your apparent act or omission. But I will deal with your analogy further at the end of my post.

The suggestion that God should have intentionally thrown the fight (i.e. not helped the Israelite achieve victory), is absurd in the highest degree, and all those who have previously made the suggestion have dropped it (see my refutation in this post: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...4&postcount=18 ). I hope that is not what you were suggesting when you imply you should not have proceeded to mow the grass.

Is there any contractual obligation that God is subject to? Absolutely none as far as I can see. I dealt with this in this post: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...0&postcount=74 ,



2) God should have intervened because he had the ability to intervene, and the mere fact he had the ability to stop a terrible thing from happening and didn’t, makes him culpable somehow. This sentiment was expressed here:
This is a straight ‘problem of pain’ question which I discussed here: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...4&postcount=51 . On the straight ‘problem of pain’ approach there is no meaningful way to distinguish this case from any other. I discuss one reason why God might not intervene supernaturally in every case to prevent suffering (where I point out the fact this would make the earth an incredibly bizarre place to be) here: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...9&postcount=29,

Furthermore in respect of this ‘problem of pain’ question any analogies of a human’s ability to intervene to prevent evil will have major hurdles to overcome because the human is not omnipresent or omnipotent, and has differing responsibilities I would imagine (“with great power comes great responsibility�).

3) That J was induced to make the vow while under the influence of the Spirit of The LORD.

It isn’t very helpful to merely assert “Biblical scholars do consider the story to indicate that J. did indeed make the vow while possessed of the spirit�, because ‘Biblical scholars’ also consider the story to indicate the exact opposite. If you were attempting to insinuate all or most ‘biblical scholars’ believed this I would say you are definitely wrong.

I thought the Techtonics article (to which the link has apparently died) made a reasonable case to the contrary. The verse in question says: (11:29) “Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites�.

I am not very familiar with the geography of the area, but this alone could have taken days or at least hours. The action the Spirit seems to motivate is moving against the enemy. It is only after this (at least a day, I would have thought, later) that he makes the vow.

A pneumatology that asserts that everything a person does (hours or more likely days after the Spirit fills a person) is inspired by the Spirit, is nowhere near sophisticated enough to be of any use.

(If there are any other lines of argment you think are worth pursuing please draw them to my attention. I saw a few more, but I will only respond to them if you are still arguing them.)

Your Analogy


The first problem with your analogy is you (I.e. the landlord) are not actually guilty of any moral wrong. You might be accused of stupidity, but that’s about all. Dogs in many nations (Asian ones) are considered by some persons good food.

The landlord would be stupid if he had the power to effect his will (i.e. not kill the Dog) and there were no competing interests or reasons as to why he did not effect his will (to save the Dog). It simply a matter of preference of options, are the consequences of intervening better than not intervening.

I would suggest that although God certainly didn’t want to see this girl killed, there may have been other competing interests as to why he didn’t effect his will. God doesn’t like to see suffering on the earth, and yet he chooses not to supernaturally intervene, despite having the power to intervene. This is the ‘problem of pain question’ that keeps rearing it's ugly head. I have argued a reason why God does not intervene supernaturally to prevent suffering in every case where it is about to happen because it would be an extremely bizarre world if he did, the laws of nature would be meaningless. See for example this post: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...09#post1762709

God has chosen how he will interact with the world. That includes the way He supernaturally communicates with people. If God were to communicate with someone by intervening supernaturally every time someone was about to do something they believed to be pleasing to God, it would be a very strange world indeed (Humans relating and communicating with each other have no such dilemma because they are not omnipresent, and therefore any analogies comparing a humans ability to communicate with God’s will for this reason suffer).

And regardless of this, even if we can bear living in such a strange world, there is no duty or moral obligation for God to intervene every time some person is about to do a wicked thing they believe will please God. If you think there is, prove it. If there is no such duty, then because this case is just like every other such case, God has no duty to intervene, and is not guilty of moral wrong.

Ok that’s all for now. I have no doubt I will hear more of your thoughts on the subject shortly .

LP675

Sorry I couldn't let this pass by!!
Lol, this is Gold! :notworthy . I love the depiction of the disinterested and rational freethinking atheist observer, at liberty to bravely pursue the truth wherever it may lead him, who sympathetically regards the plight of the pitiful intellectual ‘noble savage’, enslaved by primitive presuppositions, who despite being in confusion and anguish refuses to relinquish the shackles that so cruelly cut him.

It was well done, I enjoyed it :thumbs:

(I suppose the most immediately obvious problem with your post (which I pointed out in my post above) would be that your analogy which is apparently so difficult to deal with actually establishes the moral culpability of nobody. The furthest it goes is that perhaps the landlord might be regarded as "crazy").

ten to the eleventh

Before I respond further, I'd like you to answer, in regards to the analogy, what if the tenant had promised to kill his daughter (instead of his dog, whose death you have found easy to disregard), and I (the landlord) proceeded to mow the grass without saying anything before, or after, I had done the job, and that I had plenty of time to speak. I'm not asking if I would be found guilty of a specific crime in a court, but if we would regard what I did, and did not do, as immoral. Would I have behaved immorally? Just answer that, please.

I'll get to your other points, and the rather important stuff you seem to have glossed over, afterwards.

By the way, I didn't refer to intelligent fundamentalists as "noble savages," but as people who are hamstrung, and attempting a task I see as clearly impossible. I do not envy them.

JEST2ASK

Questions :

1 - Who is the Author of this story .. ?
2 - What evidence is there that it was not from an oral tradition where the cultural context was different then that of Christainity ?
3 - Why should the (a) "orthodox" meaning modern christian "spin" be
accepted over any other .. (b)why is not metaphor an option
4 - Since Christians decided to include the O.T (out of necessity) in it's canon does that mean that no one else has the authority to investigate the O.T.
5 - What is the consensus of Jewish thought regarding the story both it's historicity (sp?) and meaning?
6 - Why is ten to the eleventh not a disinterested and rational freethinking atheist observer, at liberty to bravely pursue the truth wherever it may lead him, who has sympathy for " your seemingly self -imposed limitations"


7* - If the landlord might be regarded as crazy .... what could be said aboyt the sanity of the central figure in the story from Judges .. :devil3:

ten to the eleventh

Well, no reply yet, so I'm going to go ahead. I've brought my caulk gun with me. First let's dispense with a little unnecessary baggage:

1) I'll say that God did not inspire J to make the vow. End of that discussion.

2) I'll say that God was not morally obligated to "throw" the battle. End of that discussion.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal principle, not an ethical principle. No one is factually "innocent until proven guilty." That is just the way that they must be treated by some legal systems. In a sense, though, you are right: innocence is the default position, but there is no greater burden to prove ethical guilt than there is to prove innocence. If there is an appearance of ethical guilt, the arguments for and against guilt are weighed equally. We're not talking about a court of law with a hangman outside the door.

So how do we establish ethical guilt? Well, from an ethical principal. SkepticalIdealist casually proposed:

Let me refine that principle:

The degree of ethical responsibililty of an individual to minimize or prevent suffering in a given situation is inversely proportional to the difficulty to that individual of minimizing or preventing said suffering, and directly proportional to the degree of suffering under consideration.

I'm going to draw a line here, to aid in the structure of any rebuttal, and ask you to either affirm or deny this principle.

And from that principle, we can draw this rule:

If an individual is able to prevent the tragic death of an individual, and the subsequent anguish of others, through an absolutely minimal effort, and when the execution of said effort will in no way cause further harm, and fails to execute said effort, knowing full well that the failure to act will result in said tragic death, that individual has acted unethically.

Let me draw another line and ask you to affirm or deny that rule, at least insofar as it applies to mortal people.

You have attempted to exempt God from this rule by suggesting two things:

1) That God is not a normal person and is therefore not subject to the same judgements:

But you seem to make the rule apply to God that much stronger when you admit that God does indeed have "great responsibilty" due to exactly what establishes that He is not a normal person, his "great power." If you wish to suggest that God is somehow otherwise exempt from human judgment, then please make your case. To suggest that their are major hurdles to overcome and then not to say what they are does not advance your argument.

Another line drawn. Either show how God's omnipresence and omniscience, or some other attributes of God exempt him from the rule drawn from the principle, or drop this particular argument for exemption.

2) That God cannot be expected to intervene to prevent suffering, because to do so would cause chaos in the world, or some other undesirable outcome. Essentially, you invoke proposed solutions to the "problem of pain" objection to the E.O.G.

There are significant differences in this case that distinguish it from the countless others wherein the problem of pain could apply. With that in mind, let me first surrender any contention that God acts unethically because He does not prevent every instance of suffering. I don't need the "problem of pain" to talk about this case.

To illustrate the meaningful difference between this case and others, let me rewrite the story of J a lot:

J was a leader of nation X. J won a battle and came home and celebrated by drinking lots of wine. His daughter spilled his wine, and in a drunken rage, J killed his daughter.

Here, the problem of pain can be invoked. Why didn't God prevent the killing? Apologist response: Well, because God doesn't typically intervene in human affairs, and to do so would have a greater negative impact (or, as you put it, "this would make the earth an incredibly bizarre place to be.")

Fine, I accept that response.

Let's rewrite the story again:
J was walking along, anticipating a battle. Anxious, he prayed, "God, if I win this battle, I will sacrifice my daughter to you." J wins, kills his daughter.

I accept the apologist response with the slightest reservation (in light of the prayer).

Again:
J was walking along, anticipating a battle. Anxious, he prayed, "God, if I win this battle tomorrow, I will sacrifice the first creature that walks through my door. J wins, daughter walks out first, J kills daughter.

I still accept the apogist response, but with a slightly greater reservation, considering the prayer (notice to God) and that God could have caused a different creature to walk out of the door with no perceptible change in the world.

Again:
J, a judge of Israel, the nation of the people of God, to whom God had communicated directly before, was walking along, anticipating a battle with enemies of Israel. Anxious, he prayed, "God, if I win this battle tomorrow, I will sacrifice the first creature that walks through my door. J wins, daughter walks out first, J kills daughter.

I still accept the apologist response, (that is, the response to the problem of pain) but with even more reservation, because in addition to the two previous problems, we have J as an important figure among God's chosen people, to whom He has communicated directly several times in the not-too-distant past. I'm starting to feel a little generous, though.

Now, let's lay out the story as it was written, with necessarily coincident details added. These are the details that are meaningful when differentiating this story from the "problem of pain" and judging God's behavior in a particular case:

The Ammonites were committing great wrongs against God's people, Israel. God had communicated frequently with significant figures of Israel in the past, and now communicated with Jephthah. Jephthah made this vow to the Lord: "If you will deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then the first creature that comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return from them safely shall be the Lord's; I shall offer them as a whole offering." God heard J make this vow. God had at least just been communicating with J.

So J crossed over to attack the Ammonites and the Lord delivered them into his hands. The Lord intervened in human affairs in a substantial way, in a way that granted the wish of J, in a way that He knew would lead to J's feeling of obligation to kill his daughter.

When J got home, his daughter was the first out, and J tore his clothes and said, "Oh daughter, you have broken my heart! Such calamity you have brought on me! I have made a vow to the Lord and cannot go back on it!" J was very, very upset at the prospect of having to kill his only child.

She replied, "Father, since you have made a vow to the Lord, do to me as your vow demands, now that the Lord has avenged you on the Ammonites, your enemies." J's daughter agrees with J that the vow is binding.

She went on to ask for two months in the hills with her companions to mourn. For two months, J, the most prominent member of Israel, a man in privileged contact with the priesthood, the priesthood of the nation of God's select people, who had the greatest understanding of the law, God's law, had the ability to enquire with the ultimate human authorities as to the binding nature of his vow. He was in great emotional distress. He would have wished to alleviate his great distress. An easy way to alleviate his distress would be to find out that his vow was not binding. He could find out by consulting the priests, to whom he had access. He could also pray to God, and God could answer his prayer.

His dire plight, the plight of the most important man in Israel, had two months to be found out by the priests. They would have had the knowledge, ability, motivation, and plenty of time to counsel J while his daughter was in the hills mourning. God frequently talked through the priests. Nothing would have been extraordinary about God delivering a message to J through them. God, or the priests have two months to communicate to J that his vow is not binding, and that, furthermore, He does not want J to kill his daughter. He was just recently in communication with J, and very recently intervened in a massive way by slaughtering the Ammonites. His intervention now would require only one minute of simple communication, an act FAR, FAR less disruptive that He has just committed, and an act no more disruptive than his previous act of communication with J. Furthermore, to communicate His holy desires through the priests would have been a fulfillment of the purpose of the priests. They were God's intermediaries.

J's daughter returns, and in fulfillment of his vow, he kills her.

The circumstances surrounding the tragedy of J's daughter clearly differentiate it from other circumstance in which an intervention by God would be unusual and, or disruptive. Your claim that this case is not meaningfully different from other "problem of pain" cases, such as those I laid out earlier, is ridiculous. To make that claim is to ignore what could not be more obvious. How would the insignificant intervention of a one-way, one-minute message have been inordinately disruptive?


Final line drawn. If you want to use the "problem of pain" apologetic, you MUST demonstrate that God's communication would have been more disruptive than what He had JUST DONE!

Let's recap. Here are the issues you must address to maintain God's ethical innocence:
1)Show that my principle and the rule drawn from it are not fair ethical standards.
Barring that:
2)Show that God is exempt from the rule by virtue of His attributes.
Barring that:
3)Show how the circumstances and "facts" of this particular case do NOT materially differentiate it from other "problem of pain" cases.
Barring that:
4)You are left to claim that it is beyond our capacity or position to judge the actions of your God, and that any attempt to do so amounts to blasphemy. That's another thread.

ten to the eleventh

Finally, the apologetic to the problem of pain, insofar as it is based on the disruptive nature of divine intervention, can be defeated by showing that an omniscient and omnipotent God could intervene in such a fashion as to cause no meaningful disruption. In the case of J, he could have induced a hen to walk out the door before the girl.

If that can be shown to be disruptive, I'll lay an egg.

The "too disruptive" claim is absurd considering what God had just done. But when one is hamstrung by the conflicting rules of God's ethical perfection and the literal perfection of the bible, I guess one must attempt something.

Aaaaahh, to be a freethinker. 'Tis grand.

LP675

ANY divine intervention is disruptive. I won’t pretend to be ‘up’ on the subtleties of chaos theory but I think the example of the ‘Butterfly effect’ is enough to lay to rest your assertion that this wouldn’t have been a ‘disruption’ (and therefore you must lay your egg ).

ANY supernatural interference by God is a disruption which inevitably has potentially massive effects, which are impossible for us to predict.
You say:
But the ‘problem of pain’ question does not hinge on ‘how disruptive’ supernatural intervention might be. That was merely one idea I suggested might be a reason for his not interfering. What I actually said was that God would be entirely justified in leaving the Earth alone and leaving humanity to their own devices, never having anything to do with humanity again. Anything he decides to do for ‘good’ is above and beyond ‘the call of duty’. (This of course is not to say he cannot supernaturally intervene, or that when he does he need not behave morally). But in your words “That’s another thread�.

Regardless of whether or not they are ‘factually’ guilty (an observer's deliberations probably have no bearing on the objective reality of the acts or omissions of the allegedly guilty party and the act or omission's satisfaction of certain criteria needed in order to establish guilt), if one is asserting the person is (factually) guilty of something the default position is innocence.
“Innocence is the default position�, so in that sense the onus is on you to make out your case (Because the onus is on you I think you must bear the ‘burden of proof’ or an ‘onus’ is meaningless).The concept of the ‘burden on proof’ is not just relevant to legal debate, but all forms of debate (and scientific reasoning).
This ‘principle’ seems entirely arbitrary. How did you come up with it? And it presupposes a moral duty “to minimize or prevent suffering�. What are you asserting is the source of this duty? (The answer to this question will determine whether I can affirm or deny the principle).

This ‘rule’ seems arbitrary too. What is the source of this moral duty to prevent “tragic death�? As far as I can see (and if I am mistaken I am sure you will show me the error of my ways ) it is unrelated to the first principle, in the sense we don’t ‘draw’ the rule from the principle. The principle seemed to be concerned with levels of responsibility and guilt where some duty already exists, whereas the rule seems to be an assertion of a duty (the contravention of which establishes moral guilt). How did you ‘cook up’ these ethical obligations?

God’s omniscience and omnipotence mean he is in a different situation to human beings. You implicitly admit this when you accept the response of ‘the apologist’ in your examples 1 through four, because God was present (being omnipresent), and due to his omnipotence it was in his power to intervene (therefore according to your rule God breached an ethical duty as he was in all these case able to prevent “tragic death� with “minimal effort�), and yet your ‘acceptance’ means God is an exception to the rule.

You say in effect: “ok I accept the problem of pain question, and will not rely on it�. Then you outline circumstances that YOU SAY cannot be differentiated from the general ‘Prob of Pain’ question. Then you claim you will give details which will differentiate the actual story from the general question, but in my opinion you have been entirely unsuccessful. You just state nothing could be “more obvious� without clearly making any differentiations.

You should have been much more explicit, for example your discussion of the ease in which God could have delivered a message to J, you might have said (allow me to summarise your argument here): “this case can be differentiated from the ‘problem of pain’ because God could have supernaturally intervened via divine revelation very easily and it would have stopped this from happening�. Of course such reasoning in your argument fails because your prior examples no.2, 3 and 4 would probably all be just as easily averted in the same manner (So this isn’t a distinction from your other examples or any other ‘problem of pain’ scenario).

Now I think you are missing the main thrust of my 'problem of pain' solution, which I have already pointed out. The ease and alleged ‘harmlessness’ of supernatural intervention is irrelevant to my solution, the relevant factor is that God need not do anything at all. So your assertion I will quote (immediately below) is manifestly false, as levels of ‘disruptiveness’ are irrelevant, and God is certainly not precluded in ‘the solution’ from all forms of supernatural intervention:
To be a fundamentalist is certainly not to be 'hamstrung'. In fact, to steal the words of someone I know, I would say: "Aaaaahh, to be a fundy. 'Tis grand."

(In the interests of maintaining polite dialogue (not that you have caused problems in this respect so far, but I foresee the possibility of ‘rocky times’ ahead ) I suggest we institute a mandatory quota of one happy smiley () per response :angel: .)

ten to the eleventh

I'm out.

SkepticalIdealist

I have received CPR and basic First Aid training. This legally and morally obligates me to help a person who is in need of these skills. If I pass by a person who lays dying in the street, I am considered responsible for their death and I can spend time in prison.

If you tell me that biblegod is "Almighty" I assume this includes basic first aid skills.
If you tell me that biblegod is "omnipresent" I assume this includes seeing J.'s daughter's body being set on fire.
There is only one logical conclusion here, and apparently only one person who refuses to accept it. So let me spell it out for that person: biblegod is as guilty as guilty can be and as responsible as responsible can be for the death of J's daughter.

Yes, it would be a "bizarre world" if God intervened. But wasn't it "bizarre" when God sent down fire to consume people? Wasn't it bizarre when he hurled boulders from the sky at people? Wasn't it bizarre when he sent bears to rip children apart? Wasn't it bizarre when he killed all the firstborn? Or is it only bizarre to imagine God helping, and preventing suffering and injustice? If he kills people, that's what we expect of a "God of love," I guess.

The whole idea of God is bizarre: don't just pick on his intervening to help people as bizarre. What kind of an argument is that? The whole debate over the existence of evil in the world is resolved by saying, "Well, it would be bizarre if God helped"???

I agree: greater responsibility: not less! This is just like the argument used for hell-fire: we are told that God's justice is higher than ours! This is supposed to justify such an aberration of justice as torturing someone eternally!

If God has greater responsibility than he is more likely to intervene not less.


Yes it's useless and unsophisticated: as opposed to a pneumatology which holds that being filled with the Spirit is somehow related to merely traveling to the front, but leaves as soon as one arrives and begins fighting the war (despite the additional claim that the Lord then delivered the enemy into one's hands.) That's very sophisticated! In fact it's too sophisticated (in terms of sheer sophistry) for me to believe any rational person other than a fundamentalist would stick to it.


Okay, so if you prefer: God is stupid instead of guilty of any moral wrong.

In the analogy there were no competing interests or reasons, so it was not a matter of "preference of options." It was a "sin of omission."


In other words, your acceptance of this story as inerrant and compatible with a "God of love" hinges on not knowing the full story. There was some unknown and unidentified reason why God didn't intervene, and you'll trust this non-existent part of the Bible to justify the existing part of the Bible. What great faith you have! Funny, though, that the Bible calls itself self-sufficient (2Tim 3:16-17).

If God didn't want to see the girl killed, then the "competing interests" must've been greater than God's will. Maybe we should worship them instead?

Well, I could help the man who lays dying in the street. I don't like to see people suffer, and I have the ability and time to help. But I choose not to. Does this make sense to anyone?

But tell me: how do you know what God does and doesn't like? How do you know what God chooses to do? Have you had some sort of a vision, or does God talk to you directly? You've come back to my pet peeve: people who tell us what God likes, what he chooses, and how he behaves, when they can't possibly know anything about it (according to their own definition of their immaterial God!)

Fine, but that's not biblegod: "whose will it is that all men might be saved," and who "cares about every sparrow who falls," etc... The excuses you need to make in order to accept J's story contradict how your God is defined in other parts of the very book you're seeking to defend!

"Thou Shalt not kill," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Love your neighbor as yourself," "the greatest of these is love," The parable of the good Samaritan... Did you forget these few gems of the Bible?

I remember when I was a kid, and my brother decided one day to take the view that the earth was flat. Then he asked my sister and I to prove him wrong. Well, we didn't have really good scientific arguments back then, but we tried. But no matter what we said, he just stubbornly held onto his idea and kept telling us that the onus was on us to prove it, and we hadn't proven it to his satisfaction. We told him we'd seen the round earth from the pictures the astronauts took out in space. He asked how we knew that they were real: they could've staged the whole thing. We told him people had circumnavigated the globe: he asked how we knew since we hadn't done it ourselves... etc. This discussion reminds me of that. At some point, I think you've got to question why you are starting with the idea that the Bible is literally true and inerrant, and then forcing and twisting every other fact to somehow fit into that preconceived idea (when it is obvious to everyone else that it doesn't).

I've said all I want to say on this subject, and I think your objections have been satisfactorily answered. Go ahead and have the last word if you wish... but it's been beaten to death.

LP675

Ok guys, it’s been fun, but it looks like that’s a wrap!
Yeah, looks like we are all ‘spent’.

Far be it from me to have the last word! And regarding the thread having been ‘beaten to death’ I have been trying to escape for the last 2 pages!!

Needless to say I don’t think you have raised anything new I haven’t answered already. I certainly don’t regard myself as being like a stubborn child (very few stubborn children do I suppose ), and I think you might have misunderstood the subtlety of my objections on a number of levels (that’s not a ‘last word’ is it?).

I think there is definite potential in the ‘happy smiley policy’ for when things are getting a little tense.

Go in peace guys

LP

(P.s. JEST2ASK, I think this thread is dead, so I will assume you don’t want me to reply any more. If I’m wrong tell me.)