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An Unavoidable Change in My Formatting for this Debate: The Formats in Lundahl (2022i) and His Other Essays are an Unacceptable Mess and How I Must Unfortunately Respond
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
In an email on March 15, 2022 at 5:51 AM, US Eastern Time, Mr. Lundahl sent me the list of his first essays in this debate (Lundahl 2022a-g), which responded to Henke (2022a). I had expected that he would have responded to Henke (2022a) with only one professional, well-organized and spell-checked essay that included a useful bibliography. But, he did not and I was sadly disappointed. I immediately warned him in my email response (March 15, 2022, 9:51 AM Eastern US time) about the undesirable consequences of using multiple essays in each round of our debate:
“I would have preferred your response to have been in one well-organized, concise and unified essay, like in a peer-reviewed journal critique or a letter to the editor. If you respond to each of my 7 responses with 7 that's 49. Then responding to my 49 with 7 each will lead to 343. In the next year or so, few people will want to wade through hundreds if not thousands of responses to responses to responses...”
That is, if I had chosen to respond on May 15 with seven essays of my own, he might have responded to my seven with seven each to give 49, etc. So, you can see where this would be going...
In his email response (March 15, 2022, 11:06 AM Eastern time), Mr. Lundahl fully understood my concerns about multiplying essays and he tried to explain why he did it:
“I can see what you mean.
The seven responses were there because of the classification I made of the diverse arguments McDaniel* and you presented.
I was actually hoping for you to write an essay like the one you did and make the seven topics sections or so ...
You see, my blog posts do not always correspond to a full academic essay, I would say the seven (with a possible 8th upcoming on William Tell and Catholic saints) are to be regarded as sections of one such.”
Initially, I tolerated his seven-essay response and I proceeded to combine the content of these seven essays into one response for May 15, 2022 (Henke 2022b). However, as I went through Lundahl (2022a-g) in late March through mid-May, I became more and more frustrated with what he had done. His essays were very disorganized and often vague. As explained in Henke (2022c), the seven essays did not flow well from one to another. Discussions on various topics, such as Alexander the Great, were often spread out in more than two essays. The spelling was unnecessarily terrible and the lack of a minimally suitable bibliography was frustrating. It took me a lot of time to go through them and organize the contents of Lundahl (2022a-g) for Henke (2022b). I decided that I would not do that again.
In my May 15, 2022 12:13 am (Eastern US time) email to Mr. Lundahl, I stated that I would no longer accept submissions from him for each round unless they are in “one complete, clearly written, well-referenced, and spell-checked essay.” I didn’t want to again combine the contents of his disorganized and often rambling essays into one response from me per discussion round. In an email on May 16, 2022 (2:21 AM Eastern US time), Mr. Lundahl throws out some invalid excuses for why he can’t/won’t combine his thoughts into one well-written essay:
“But even apart from that, I do not own a computer, I cannot save different pieces on a screen and then string them together in the right order, blog posts are less well uploadable if long, I have had trouble using google sites, and so, your conditions are a good reason to simply call the whole thing off.”
Although I’m no expert on computers either, I’ve had no problems posting large essays on my Google website. Henke (2022b) was 71 pages long when it’s placed into a Microsoft Word® file and Lundahl (2022m) is quite lengthy at 19 printed pages. If Mr. Lundahl does not know how to save his work on Google, perhaps he could use a cheap thumb drive. DropBox and similar user-friendly services also have a lot of free storage where people can privately store their documents and work on them periodically before posting them to a website. Anyone that wants to post ideas on the Internet has to learn to write well and upload long essays, if necessary. So, Mr. Lundahl has no excuse for not combining his work into a professional response. Besides, it’s not a good idea to produce any essay and post it in one sitting. It’s always a good idea to work slowly and proof-read a document a couple of days later with a fresh perspective before posting it.
When I received Mr. Lundahl’s replies to Henke 2022b, he again blatantly refused to comply with my reasonable request. This time, he produced nine separate essays (Lundahl 2022h through Lundahl 2022p). Lundahl (2022h-p) are so full of inaccuracies and faulty reasoning that they demanded a response from me despite me previously stating that I would not accept them. Rather than taking some time and thoughtfully constructing a well-organized, appropriately referenced, clearly written and spell-checked reply to Henke (2022b), Mr. Lundahl again created a series of sloppy, disorganized, and often flippant and thoughtless responses in Lundahl (2022h) through Lundahl (2022p). That is, in most of his essays, Mr. Lundahl again simply took sections from my essay, broke them up into fragments and then, in most cases, just briefly responded to each fragment. His mess is especially noticeable in Lundahl (2022i). Besides creating an unnecessary mess when Mr. Lundahl breaks up my essays into fragments, he often fails to see the “big picture” context about what I’m saying. This results in him constructing strawman and other fallacies, as I explain with examples in Henke (2022ac), Henke (2022ae), Henke (2022ex) and Henke (2022fe).
Just to be spiteful and annoy me, Mr. Lundahl even admits in Lundahl (2022i) that I don’t like his format. But, he did it anyway. His format is shown here:
Kevin R. Henke
Lundahl (2022a) further …
Hans Georg Lundahl
Indeed, I actually found…
Kevin R. Henke
The pool (billiards) analogy…
Hans Georg Lundahl
So far my argument went.
Kevin R. Henke
Although the conditions…
Hans Georg Lundahl
The parallel is actually…
etc.
Here’s the problem with what he’s done. If I add another layer of comments to his replies, the format would look like this:
Kevin R. Henke
Lundahl (2022a) further …
Hans Georg Lundahl
Indeed, I actually found…
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
Kevin R. Henke
The pool (billiards) analogy…
Hans Georg Lundahl
So far my argument went.
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
Kevin R. Henke
Although the conditions…
Hans Georg Lundahl
The parallel is actually…
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
etc.
In the next round, Mr. Lundahl may then respond to my responses, which lengthens the mess that he started:
Kevin R. Henke
Lundahl (2022a) further …
Hans Georg Lundahl
Indeed, I actually found…
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
Hans Georg Lundahl
Reply #2
Kevin R. Henke
The pool (billiards) analogy…
Hans Georg Lundahl
So far my argument went.
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
Hans Georg Lundahl
Reply #2
Kevin R. Henke
Although the conditions…
Hans Georg Lundahl
The parallel is actually…
Kevin R. Henke
Reply #2
Hans Georg Lundahl
Reply #2
etc.
This mess would get even more out of control and become totally unreadable if we continue to add layer after layer of comments in the upcoming months or year. Our readers would have to wade through this mess just to find the sections that interest them. Even then, the conversations would be so fragmented that few would want to read what we’ve written.
So, how can I respond to his irresponsible mess, minimize it to the best of my ability, and still thoroughly reply to Mr. Lundahl’s outrageous claims and misbehavior? I refuse to again combine and summarize Lundahl (2022h-p) like I did with Lundahl (2022a-g) in Henke (2022b). I have no choice but to respond to each one of his comments in a separate essay and in appropriate detail. This is what is done in Henke (2022e) through Henke (2022 fm) in this round of the debate. Mr. Lundahl has chosen to ignore my warnings and put his desires ahead of our readers. Even if I had continued to respond with only one essay per round, our websites would inevitably get cluttered anyway thanks to his unwillingness to use a thumb drive and write just one professional and appropriately organized essay. I hate doing this and having our readers deal with Mr. Lundahl’s mess, but I have no choice. I recognize that this creates a lot of essays, including a large number of ones that our readers would find trivial. Again, the alternative started by Mr. Lundahl would have been for our readers to search through the resulting longer “I said, he said, I said…” mess looking for discussions that interest them. As can be seen from just looking at Lundahl (2022a-p), this would not be easy for our readers because Mr. Lundahl often skips from topic to topic and does not always use clear section titles or responses. In some cases, I found that I could group or merge the September 15, 2022 essays with similar topics together. However, for the most part, the ordering of these rebuttals follow the order in Lundahl (2022h-p), which leads to some unavoidable repetition because of Mr. Lundahl’s format. Readers will have to search on the titles of my essays for related topics (e.g., consciousness or C.S. Lewis).
Now, some may find my objections to Mr. Lundahl’s writing and misbehavior to be interesting and a few others might want to learn some important lessons from Mr. Lundahl’s and my mistakes, and how not to conduct to debate. Yet, I fully realize that most individuals are not going to be interested in how I criticize Mr. Lundahl’s misbehavior and his horrible writing style. So, that’s why I’ve broken up Mr. Lundahl’s individual replies in Lundahl (2022a-p) into separate and more manageable essays. I have prominently listed a detailed title for each of my essays with its link so that our readers can easily skip over the ones that they would find trivial or uninteresting. For each essay, I have included enough background information so that our readers can see the full context of our responses. The essays also provide necessary links. Overall, each essay should be largely independent, so our readers should be able to see the train of the arguments without going to other essays to get necessary background information.
Mr. Lundahl must deal with the consequences of his irresponsible actions. All of this mess is the result of Mr. Lundahl refusing to follow some simple and reasonable rules, his use of unnecessary tit-for-tat and often flippant responses, and his unwillingness to take the time to fully understand and utilize the tools on his Google website or use a thumb drive.
Also, even if Mr. Lundahl only replies in the next round with one long essay, I don’t want him to just cut up my essays and intersperse them with his terse comments. If he does that, I will break up his responses into numerous essays, respond in detail to each response and rely on appropriate references that Mr. Lundahl and our readers could use to get more information. Thus, if Mr. Lundahl continues to respond in his usual manner, he may complete his next 777 essays far sooner than he realizes. In each round, I want a coherent and professional essay from him and not responses that involve breaking up my essays and replying with brief and confusing replies. Now, I expect Mr. Lundahl to continue to contact me and provide a link for every essay that he posts. However, just in case he decides not to be transparent, in the future, I will periodically monitor his website, so I can rapidly reply to any of his responses even before he formally notifies me.
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