sir_russ, I have just reread your OP, and again. I like it a lot, erudite, insightful. I had written this observation elsewhere but it equally fits yours. Your OP is a candid critique into what I coin the anachronistic class of 'philosopher-kings' in contemporary society, those self-described and self-identified doyens of philosophical discourse. They are indeed legends in their own minds.
Parsons, sadly, seems to have lost sight that the battle of ideas is not so much about the finer construct of the argument but the substance of the argument, whether the claims are verifiable or not. In his misplaced loyalty Parsons aids and abets the Fesers and Plantingas of the world who want you to believe, as someone I read elsewhere had written, that their [Feser's classical Catholic and Plantinga's Protestant Theistic Personalist] God impregnated his own mother to give birth to his own son who is himself, as if it were historical fact, meriting intellectual consideration as a truth.
The problem is, today's operant philosophy tracks a more rigorous and evidentiary-based line of reasoning with its supervening metaphysics ever more deeply grounded, both epistemologically and intellectually, into its underpinning physics. Pontification has been replaced with verification. And the 'philosopher kings' don't like it one bit, even prepared [as Parson's has done to Dawkins, Loftus et al] to eat their own kind [atheists] who might be perceived, wrongly or otherwise, to have crossed into their 'intellectual' territory.
Philosophy of Religion is an exercise in rhetoric to its core; insubstantial, imaginative, with an unhinged metaphysics grounded in the supernatural, a wholly untestable and inconsequential line of reasoning that bears little resemblance to reality of the natural world. Parson's knows that. In his defence of Feser, Plantiga etc., why is he defending the indefensible?
Parsons would do well to take stock.
Parsons is on record as saying these kinds of posts are personal attacks and he won't respond to them. If he thinks these are attacks then what does he think of Edward Feser's personal attacks against people whom he disagrees?