Gerald Moreno: straw man fallacy re Conny Larsson, Sanjay Dadlani etc.

The logical fallacies that Moreno does not employ cannot be listed, as there seem to be none. He is the great proponent of argumentum ad hominem and equally the straw man argument. This fallacy is one of his most basic crutches. The Straw Man fallacy occurs when one ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position through a false association to other persons or standpoints. For example, it works thus:

Robert Priddy states x Conny Larsson states x, but also y Therefore Priddy supports y!

Sanjay Dadlani stands for x and y Priddy endorses Dadlani’s stand on xT herefore Priddy endorses y!

Kevin R.D. Shepherd is against x Priddy is also against x Therefore Kevin R.D. Shepherd is for what Priddy is for!

One can substitute for x and y all manner of specific terms, as Moreno does ad lib. All such ‘arguments’ are completely fallacious conclusions – there is no common middle term in any argument.

However, Gerald Moreno is either incapable of learning from this elementary lesson and/or he wilfully wants to continue his irrational and intentional smears. That is just what Gerald Moreno does, hoping that mass exposure of accusations will stick despite their stupidity.

Moreno also tries to make out I support all manner of viewpoints which I condemn as ‘lunatic fringe’, and especially standpoints I once held but from which I moved on long ago. He is ever demanding an explanation from me, Priddy, as to how I can condone that others hold opinions I do not. By that measure, he would be in a very bad way himself, as he does not agree with Sathya Sai Baba on key claims he made, yet he defends this accused pedophile, murder accomplice, deceiver and fraudulent manipulator through thick and thin!   But just as I did not respond for several years except in the briefest form to Moreno’s libels, distortions and  demagogic tricks like ‘straw man’ arguments. I have delayed a reply to these accusations associating me with standpoints I have never expressed and do not have. He even wants to associate me with standpoints others do not have, but which he insists they do!

Conny Larsson has recently rebutted the very statements that were attributed falsely to him by a journalist and feasted upon by pernicious Gerald Moreno in his great paucity of perspicacity. Moreno’s extremism in near-pathological denial of the many true and infamous facts about the person he admires and supports above all, Sathya Sai Baba is extraordinary while he – with incredible inconsistency – also has rejects his main claims stated he is omniscient, omnipotent and an avatar’ and more besides). Gerald Moreno necessarily finds that he admires a major deceiver, even by his own standards!

Here is what Conny Larsson posted on his website rebutting some of Moreno’s worst mud-slinging:-

Since the Internet defamer and stalker – Gerald ‘Joe’ Moreno – is making great effort to cast slurs on me and all of my associates – I want to point out how he systematically and willfully misinterpreted the meaning of some statements made on the website of Judith Borque (items since removed as inaccurate).
Judith Borque (http://www.therealpatchadams.com/ ) wrote:-

“I wish to make completely clear that I, Conny Larsson, have not expressed that he is a channel for Vyaasa in any ‘psychical’, mediumistic or paranormal sense. He has a deep understanding of Vyaasa and an intuition as to what is relevant in any connection that arises with participants in his excellent classes… only in this sense is he a communicative channel for the long-deceased Indian master.”

Original text in upper box above, revised text in lower box

For the sake of clarity I post a view of the text content Judith Borque posted, and the altered text after she corrected the mistaken information she had been fed:-

There were one or two sensational articles made in the north of Sweden when I was touring there in Gallivare and Gavle lecturing on meditation and explaining about auras, dowsing and other matters. That I was called a medium was entirely from the journalist’s point of view. Since I am well known as a lecturer on the topics of mumbo jumbo, new age and other matters relating to the so called spiritual life that I was so involved in before, these articles turned out to be pro-spiritualist biased, even though I clearly stated during the lectures of mine that there was nothing unnatural in this and that any person could evolve his own intuition to a higher state. in fact I even stated that it is only a higher form of empathy.

 

False accusation by Moreno of undue money-making Even though the organizers of the lecture charged money for the entrance I didn’t receive a penny more then that they paid for my expenses, food and board etc.

By the way, I did psychotherapy with people that had long been my patients y returned every year, and for that work of mine I charged the regular fee of Kr. 500 per hour. What was incorrectly written in one article it looks as though I earned a fortune. I had 14 patients on my tour so there were no riches from that. This is what Joe Moreno based his usual overblown and malicious slander on.

The only time I charge for is the hours in which I work as a counsellor, since that has been my profession for 30 years, as accredited by the Swedish government. My meditation courses are always free. So were the pendulum talks I was giving, which I stopped after one course as it seemed inappropriate. Regarding my healing, I work with some chiropractor techniques and acupressure, as can easily be seen on the pictures Joe has broadcast on the internet, taking them totally out of context in his typical malicious way to try to discredit me – by pretending that I was making some sexual advances during acupressure on the feet of one of the teachers that participated in the second Master Class held in 2007.

I do believe that people can move into one another’s personal ’space ‘and evoke emotions and feelings. This could easily be felt by anyone when their ‘space’ is penetrated, This is in fact what I mean by ‘the aura’. This space usually extends about as wide as one can stretch ones arms This is also how far you should let people come close to you, other than your loved ones. İndians fold theır hands together instead of hugging and grabbing each other as we have been brought up to do, and the reason is ‘the aura’. When I teach I do not mystify what I call the aura. I simply see how they can keep the personal integrity of their ‘space’ or ‘aura’ by keeping people out of their inner space in this way. But also how they can receive vital nourishment to heal themselves from within, and by de-stressing and easing any mental-emotional traumas with help of the easy relaxing technique of meditation. If people develop that to something mystical or unreal it is up to them, but for me this is my daily experience – meditation twice a day for about 45 years. Enough to say that my meditation has functioned for me and people I have taught for as many years, so long as they practise. I do not hold myself to be anything special or above anyone, my teaching has always been to tell everyone to trust the inner prompting more then follow any teacher whosoever, ıncluding myself.

We can all be sure that Gerald Moreno’s writings will never be regarded as other than fanatical cultist attacks by all serious observer, and especially academic researchers. Recently we see how this included the ethnic Indian academic Tulasi Srinivas of Columbia University (Assistant Professor of Anthropology from 2007) (B.A. Bangalore University, M.A. University of Southern California, Ph.D. Boston University) who shows in her latest work that she is even somewhat biased towards a more serious acceptance of this major deceiver sex abusing pedophile Sathya Sai Baba than many glaring and documented facts prove.

Moreno’s hate for Conny Larsson, as is expressed in his massive and hurtful persecution of him, is totally irrational, More than that, it is totally heartlss and shows an immorality of an unusual order in that he knows, as all who read about Conny’s early life and subsequent career know, that this much-loved and widely respected person – famous in Scandinavia and beyond – was abused most terribly and sexually since he was a powerless child, and not least later in life by Sathya Sai Baba, as he most honestly and fearlessly relates! The traumatic childhood caused Conny to become dumb – literally. Despite this he retained and honesty and openness that made him so popular, both in the theatre, but not least in the Sathya Sai Baba movement! This I know from personal contact with many persons who know Conny better than I do, both since I first met him in 1983 in the Sathya Sai organization and later in Stockholm where I partook on a panel of ‘experts’ at his book launch.

If bloggers can be said to scream infamy into the ether through multiple blogs, that is what Gerald Moreno does constantly. He has been doing it since 2004 against a large number of persons who left Sai Baba (and other gurus like Maharishi Yogi, Muktananda, Ammachi and he condemns the authorities who convicted ‘Swami’ Premananda). He repeatedly demands of professionals – psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists and anyone at all, to be taken seriously as ‘a researcher’, though he is so far from being anything like it that no one in their right mind would mistake him for that. Nor do any regard his as above contempt, unless perhaps some poor deluded souls who are blind believers in Sathya Sai Baba, his ‘miracles’ and and his impossible super-inflated claims about himself and almost everything else. As a result, serious writers never refer to his opinions or claimed ‘proofs’, which are almost always distorted and half-truths at best.

In his bitter envy of his moral betters, Moreno tries to assassinate the character of persons of stature who dwarf him totally, such as Conny Larsson, Basava Premanand, the Rahm family and any number of others. Conny Larsson is praised throughout the Scandinavian press and TV stations for his painfully honest autobiographical books, and he is loved for his courage and personality by very many people and has been so since he first became a national figure in Sweden. How about Moreno, who skulks in the sidelines as much as he can and who evidently has virtually no friends who support him publicly except the foul-mouthed Sai devotee Lisa de Witt, who exceeds even him in vituperative and fanatical attacks. Moreno’s attacks on Basava Premand are so demeaning for him – he shows his extremely narrow-minded mentality and slippery evasiveness in long diatribes where he cannot face any of the challenges put to him about what he has written (see here)

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