I had occasion to notice that today is John Platko's birthday and those who've been paying attention over the last few years would know that John died just a bit passed.

John was an eastern catholic, in particular a Ukrainian Greek Catholic. I'm an atheist raised in the Latin church but as a result of my heritage I'm a canonical Syro-Malankara catholic.

I agreed with John about almost nothing but I found him to be a particularly civil interlocutor; a rarity in this place. I miss him and his participation here. We are diminished by his absence.

Go well mate.

The Serpent wrote:
I agreed with John about almost nothing

Does anyone agree with you about anything? In a cosmos consisting of disagreement, civility is a sacrament. My opinion of Platko differs from yours. Let's just leave it at that.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/188 ... jay-platko

The Serpent wrote:I had occasion to notice that today is John Platko's birthday and those who've been paying attention over the last few years would know that John died just a bit passed.

John was an eastern catholic, in particular a Ukrainian Greek Catholic. I'm an atheist raised in the Latin church but as a result of my heritage I'm a canonical Syro-Malankara catholic.

I agreed with John about almost nothing but I found him to be a particularly civil interlocutor; a rarity in this place. I miss him and his participation here. We are diminished by his absence.

Go well mate.

I actually didn't know that he had passed away but recently came upon his thread of guitar making and was thoroughly fascinated by it.

Thanks for the info.

Destroyer wrote:

The Serpent wrote:I had occasion to notice that today is John Platko's birthday and those who've been paying attention over the last few years would know that John died just a bit passed.

John was an eastern catholic, in particular a Ukrainian Greek Catholic. I'm an atheist raised in the Latin church but as a result of my heritage I'm a canonical Syro-Malankara catholic.

I agreed with John about almost nothing but I found him to be a particularly civil interlocutor; a rarity in this place. I miss him and his participation here. We are diminished by his absence.

Go well mate.

I actually didn't know that he had passed away but recently came upon his thread of guitar making and was thoroughly fascinated by it.

Thanks for the info.

No problems. He was quite the talent.

Whilst his contributions to this forum I do not miss one jot, I note that 60years old is a pretty short journey. Still, judging by his contributions here, its not as if John was about to learn anything had he been around longer.

John's arguments were extremely poor and disingenuous, and I don't think he deserves points for trying to hide it behind a smiling face (or condescending head-shake, as he often did). Still, I'm sad to hear about his passing, and I'll miss his contributions to the guitar thread.

John could not be otherwise. And that is OK.

Sendraks wrote:Whilst his contributions to this forum I do not miss one jot, I note that 60years old is a pretty short journey. Still, judging by his contributions here, its not as if John was about to learn anything had he been around longer.

One of the reasons I revisited his posts is that he seemed to be expressing doubts in his beliefs.
Here specifically: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... l#p2620420
He only annoyed me in the Free Will thread really. Otherwise I enjoyed his contributions.

There goes another one. One day there will be just one of us, staring out from the dank cave at the dying sun.
Condolences to his family and friends.

To John Platko.

Damn. That's sad.

I had a lot to say to John and, contrary to what some might think, not all of it was bad. Some of it was, in fact, to concede some stuff to him. I'm going to say it anyway. If I'm going to find myself again, I feel it important to focus on what I did well, and I hope that holding my hands up when I got shit wrong was among the things I did well. We argued about a lot of stuff, and he was most often as wrong as a wrong thing on wrong juice. I've learned a lot about guitars in the time since we last interacted, having done some deep study of luthiery (I currently have three guitars mid build) and there are a good few points I need to concede. I allowed my experience of trouncing him easily with superior knowledge in every area of discourse to elevate my not insubstantial knowledge in his field of expertise to dismiss him more easily than I should. An act of intellectual cowardice, had I done it with intent, and one I must always be willing to apologise for if I'm ever to hold onto the things that make me worth anything.

I'm going to re-read the thread in question, not least because I want to mine it for information. I'll post my thoughts about it there.

Really sorry I missed you, John. You were a huge amount of fun. You were incredibly bouncy, and wonderfully good-natured about it all. You're alongside James, and wossisname the ghosthunter. Wonderful people with what I can't assess as anything other than whacky standards of evidence. It's not even the beliefs I find ridiculous, it's that your standards of evidence were so low in such a critical area. I'd have loved to deliver my apology in person.

An atheist dies and goes to hell...

The devil welcomes him and says:"Let me show you around a little bit." They walk through a nice park with green trees and the devil shows him a huge palace. "This is your house now, here are your keys." The man is happy and thanks the devil. The devil says:"No need to say thank you, everyone gets a nice place to live in when they come down here!"

They continue walking through the nice park, flowers everywhere, and the devil shows the atheist a garage full of beautiful cars. "These are your cars now!" and hands the man all the car keys. Again, the atheist tries to thank the devil, but he only says "Everyone down here gets some cool cars! How would you drive around without having cars?".

They walk on and the area gets even nicer. There are birds chirping, squirrels running around, kittens everywhere. They arrive at a fountain, where the most beautiful woman the atheist has ever seen sits on a bench. She looks at him and they instantly fall in love with each other. The man couldn´t be any happier. The devil says "Everyone gets to have their soulmate down here, we don´t want anyone to be lonely!"

As they walk on, the atheist notices a high fence. He peeks to the other side and is totally shocked. There are people in pools of lava, screaming in pain, while little devils run around and stab them with their tridents. Other devils are skinning people alive, heads are spiked, and many more terrible things are happening. A stench of sulfur is in the air.

Terrified, the man stumbles backwards, and asks the devil "What is going on there?" The devil just shrugs and says: "Those are the christians, I don´t know why, but they prefer it that way"

It's a pity he didn't bring the same skills exhibited in his guitar thread, to discussion of scientific topics.

On the latter, he had some excruciating low moments.

But in his favour, that performance was not, unlike some of the ideological stormtroopers for creationism, the product of wilful mendacity.