[jfarmer]

I don't find your tone too hostile. I think you're being insincere and aren't actually interested in having a conversation about any of this.

I wrote what I wrote in my original comment not as a preemptive "defense" — as if I was gearing up for a fight — but as a way to get whoever read those essay to hold back from replying reflexively and actually spend time trying to understand them as the author intended them to be understood.

Likewise, I'd ask you to do the same for my comments. Can you imagine a world in which what I am saying makes sense or would even be the "obvious" thing to believe? Can you imagine several? Are some of them more plausible than others? Why or why not?

I bow out when the conversation starts to feel like the Monty Python "Argument Clinic" sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y&t=1m18s