On Nailing Jelly to Walls

Anatheist.net provides an account of our recent exchanges at http://www.anatheist.net/2009/09/the-theological-debate-continues/ and then concludes: "I swear debating with this theologian is like trying to nail jelly to a wall." The charge piqued my interest because I have heard it a number of times before (directed at me no less!).

This leads me to ask, what does it mean when one describes intellectual exchanges with another in this manner, as being akin to nailing jelly to a wall? Obviously the place to begin is by asking what the idiom "like nailing jelly to a wall" itself means. In fact, there are at least two different meanings which need to be distinguished.

According to the Cambridge Idiom Dictionary, this idiom refers to the futility of "trying to give exact details for something that it is not possible to know about exactly." In this sense, advanced calculus or relativity theory might be like nailing jelly to a wall. Clearly it is no fault of the subject matter; rather, the fault (if it can be described as fault) lies with the person who is simply unable to understand the topic.

But the context shifts when it is not a subject matter which is being described as the jelly, but rather a person. According to http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O214-nail.html (the outer limit of my arm chair research), the idiom was first coined by Theodore Roosevelt to refer to persons, and it consequently had a very different connotation. Apparently Roosevelt made the following complaint in 1903 in response to the Panama Revolution: "You can no more make an agreement with those leaders of Colombia than you can nail currant jelly to the wall. And the failure...is not due to the nail. It's due to the currant jelly."

As Roosevelt's quote illustrates, when the idiom is directed at persons rather than a given subject matter, the meaning shifts radically: now the fault lies not with the complainant who cannot understand the subject matter, but rather with a debating partner who is somehow not acting (or debating) in good faith.

When Anatheist.net describes our exchanges as akin to "nailing jelly to a wall", it is presumably this latter meaning (rather than an indictment on his own limited grasp of the subject matter) that is intended. And this is where I get disturbed because with that comment we move into a charge impugning the motivations, intentions, and debating style of another.

Roosevelt was presumably angered at the Colombians because he saw them to be slippery, untrustworthy, disingenuous. The nature of the charge may change slightly when we move from the ground of geopolitics to philosophy and theology, but the connotation is obviously still negative. Perhaps the complainant is that I am being sophistic, wily, and otherwise not acting in good faith. Whatever the exact meaning is, the drift of the charges is disturbing.

What makes it difficult and frustrating is that none of this is spelled out. Rather, charges are left unstated, hidden somewhere in the robes of a vague idiom, and really serving no more function than to marginalize a person (and their views) because you have, as yet, failed to falsify or otherwise disprove them.

If it is believed that a person is in fact acting in bad faith, then spell out how and why. But charges which are indirectly stated and unsubstantiated are the bane of complex, sustained intellectual debate.