As long as the video remains up, Tour’s “apology” is meaningless. As quoted, it is not really an apology as he does not retract the false claims he makes against Szostak. Tour just says that maybe it was too much to call Szostak a liar. You think?
I wonder if Tour is going to apologize to me, for accusing me of extortion to my employer?
I have no clue what Faizal Ali is talking about here. Where did Tour mention Faizal Ali, Faizal Ali’s employer, or extortion? This statement appears to come out of the blue.
There’s some context from the previous threads about Tour you are missing. Faizal is the psychyatrist Tour mentions in his notpology pdf.
Is this the document you are referring to?
I have just looked up every use of “psychiatrist” in the article, and see no accusation of “extortion” or any reference to Faizal Ali’s “employer.” So I’m still missing something. Was there a private exchange between Faizal Ali and Tour that we don’t have access to? If so, we need access in order to determine if Tour made any such charge.
Was posted in previous threads.
You’re not being helpful. At least three threads now concern Tour’s lecture and apology. The information I want appears to be scattered randomly through them. Can you give me the link, or better still, simply copy and paste Faizal’s charge here?
It took me all of 10 seconds to find this. The search tool is your friend. I literally just searched for the word “extortion”.
Thank you for giving me the link. (The chiding editorial comment on your part wasn’t necessary; had you asked me the same question, I would have provided the link without comment.)
Now, I’ve reviewed that thread. Joshua quite rightly asked Faizal Ali to provide documentation of the charge, and YOU quite rightly asked what Faizal Ali wrote to Tour. I do not see answers to either of these requests anywhere in the thread. Why did Faizal Ali not answer these reasonable requests?
Is Faizal Ali willing to reproduce for us the full text of his e-mail to Tour? He has the right to do so, since it’s his letter and he has copyright over what he wrote.
If we saw what Faizal Ali wrote to Tour, we would be one step closer to understanding why Tour might have written to his university.
If we could get a copy of the e-mails that Tour allegedly wrote, that would be even better, because then we would have the full picture. Whether Faizal Ali can get copies of those e-mails, or reproduce them legally, I don’t know; but without them, it is impossible for us to tell whether his characterization of Tour’s words is accurate.
At any rate, he can clear the air about what he wrote to Tour, by reproducing it for us here. Will he do so?
I wasn’t really “chiding” you, I was reminding you about the search tool so that you don’t always have to ask for links in times like this going forward, you can employ your initiative instead.
Thanks for the reminder.
I would call that “chiding” in tone, but it’s a small matter, so I’ll let it go.
More important, why has Faizal Ali not answered Joshua’s point, or your question? He has charged Tour with something dastardly, and has failed to provide evidence of it. I don’t think that is fair. And since it might (if proved false) be ruled as libelous to say that Tour charged him with extortion, it borders on the illegal. Faizal owes it to all readers of this blog to either provide the evidence for his charge, or withdraw the charge.
Calm down, you can say the same for any accusation. Instead of wildly speculating about the consequences if the claim was to be proved false, why don’t you give Faizal time to respond appropriately?
He was given time to respond appropriately to you and Joshua. In fact, he has since found time to answer Joshua. He sullenly asked Joshua if Joshua was accusing him of lying. Why didn’t he provide the evidence instead?
Joshua accused Faizal of nothing. He merely pointed out that for the moment we can treat his charge only as hearsay. And that’s correct. If Faizal wants us to accept the charge as true, he must provide evidence. Otherwise we are under no obligation to believe it.
I don’t know what Tour wrote to Faizal’s university, but presumably it was sparked by what Faizal wrote to him. Faizal can begin to clear the air by providing us with the full text of his e-mail to Tour. I’m not demanding it instantly, but he checks in here often, and there is no reason why he can’t do it sooner rather than later, especially since he has made a personal accusation against Tour which needs to be substantiated or withdrawn as soon as possible.
No. I would want Tour’s permission to reprint our correspondence, but at least for the moment I am not engaging in any direct communication with him, for reasons that should be obvious.
You don’t need Tour’s position to reprint your part of the correspondence; legally, the words are yours and you have copyright. He doesn’t have to give you permission for you to tell us what you wrote to him.
You would need permission to quote from him anything he wrote to you, or to your university. But at the moment, I’d be happy just to see what you wrote to him.
You of course aren’t obliged to tell us what you wrote. But if you don’t do so, I for one will not accept your claim that Tour wrote what you said he did to your university authorities. There is no reason why he should have written anything like that to them, unless something you wrote to him provoked that reaction. So I would need to see what you wrote to him.
Again, you are under no obligation. But as Joshua says, no one here is obligated to treat your charge as anything but hearsay. We have only your word for it that Tour wrote to your university, and only your word for the essence of what he said in those communications. We don’t even know if you saw what he wrote to your university, or only heard a paraphrase of it from the recipients. Nor, even if we had what he wrote, could we say whether or not it was justified, without seeing what you wrote to him that might have generated his remarks.
So your charge lies in intellectual limbo, with no means of verification. I do not believe it, as it stands. Tour may have said something vaguely resembling what you present, but without more context, I don’t trust your interpretation. I’m not saying you are lying; I’m merely saying you may have misread his words. And that is what I will continue to think, until you provide evidence for your charge.
Help me out here: How would quoting something that I wrote substantiate anything that Tour wrote? I’m struggling to follow your reasoning.
Our private email correspondence is currently subject to an investigation by my university, and I am not going to provide copies of it here on a public forum. You’re just going to have to live with that.
Tour quoted our entire email exchange to my university and demanded that they investigate. That much I am willing to say. There is no question of “interpretation” about that. Whether what I wrote could reasonably be construed as “extortion” is a matter of interpretation. And while that is being investigated, I’m not going to go quoting the exchange all over the internet.
If you don’t understand why that is the case, I can’t help you any further.
Why are you incapable of performing basic searches?
Our private email correspondence is currently subject to an investigation by my university, and I am not going to provide copies of it here on a public forum. You’re just going to have to live with that.
I can live with that. Just don’t expect me or anyone here to accept your charge against Tour until we see the relevant documents.
I think it was improper of you to make the charge against Tour here if you knew that you weren’t going to be able to substantiate it. You would have done better to keep the matter to yourself until it was resolved; you could have reported on the outcome then. As it is, you have charged Tour with a serious charge, and the charge hangs in the air, unrefuted and therefore casting a shadow on the man. That is not fair to Tour. If I were Joshua, I would strike the posts making the charge and referring to the charge from the site, and not allow further discussion of it until you are ready to provide the documentary evidence.
That’s all I have to say at the moment, until more information is available.
A Christian scientist’s name has been impugned, and the person making the charges cannot or will not provide the evidence for the charges, and that’s all you care about, a petty technical thing like that?
Seems to me the “Christian scientist” is the one who has done most of the impugning.
You are talking about an entirely different charge. Tour called some people “liars.” He retracted that charge, as a Christian should. Now someone is accusing Tour of charging him with “extortion”; this is a new charge, and it’s against Tour. We shall see, if the charge turns out to be false or exaggerated, whether a non-Christian also is capable of issuing an apology. But right now there is no point in speculating. We have no facts, only hearsay. So let’s leave it there, until those who have the evidence choose to present it. In the meantime, I maintain that it was wrong to make the charge here in this public space.