The Shameless Mercenary: The Point

In case you're wondering....

Why have I been making note of Carrier's paycheck from Johnny (which amounts to no less than $6500)? Two reasons.

The first is that this can, and should be, a silencer to any and all criticisms from Skeptics about the Tekton ministry working off of contributed funds.

The second is that the entire mercenary process reflects the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the hirer in this case, one "Johnny Skeptic". Carrier himself is not to be much blamed in this regard; other than that we find that he did pad his response in order to increase his take, and that he has reneged on his contention that I am not worth responding to -- perhaps he would say because of the quality of my response of late, but more likely, because of the spectre of the Almighty Dollar. The real culprit here, however, is Johnny himself; for this is just the latest example of his mercenary behavior which is used as a substitute for the quality response he himself is not able to provide. (More is said on this in the TWeb discussion on Part 18.)

Now a few words of conclusion. By now it should be apparent that the only way around TIF is to speculate endlessly against the evidence. Some few respondents to TIF, like Kyle Gerkin, have offered these speculations in a reasonable fashion; others in the majority, like Carrier and "skepticbud" and "Daffy Duck", speculate wildly and presume themselves more informed than scholars who outweigh them. I believe this in itself serves as a positive apologetic for TIF.