Flippant dismissals

Exbeliever accuses some of us of dissing the Debunkers.

But if we’re flip, we have our reasons. As any halfway observant individual can discern for himself, Debunking Christianity is a hoax.

The Blogdom of God is abuzz with gossip and rumormongering over the true identity of the comic genius that did it.

At last count, the smart money was on Frank Walton.

(You see, we’ve learned from Bro. Blaise the value of laying odds.)

BTW, Adrian Warnock informs me that all bets should be placed by midnight tonight (London time).

(For those of you who don’t know, Bro. Adrian is the bookie for the Blogdom of God pool.)

The trick in hoaxing a weblog is to give it just enough initial consistency to hook the unsuspecting while planting enough discreet, but well-placed, clues to alert the attentive.

The first stage of his hoax was to create The Secular Outpost. The Secular Outpost is like a shell corporation or front organization. Its purpose is to lend an air of intellectual respectability to the otherwise disreputable Debunking Christianity.

With that in mind, Walton peopled The Secular Outpost with titular grown-ups like Lippard, Lowder, and Edis.

Now I have it on good authority that Lowder is actually a real person. There have been a number of confirmed Lowderian sightings over the years.

In fact, I’d be prepared to come forward as an eyewitness, but Richard Carrier would no doubt dismiss my testimony as polemical and propagandistic.

However, historical novels use real people too. That’s what lends the fiction its verisimilitude.

As to Lippard, this is clearly a cut-and-paste concoction. Walton simply cooked up a fictitious profile, and stuffed the Lippard blog with Moveon.org hand-me-downs.

Another tip is Tanner Edis—a thinly-disguised pseudonym for Thomas Edison (he of the “religion is bunk” philosophy).

There is also a token female by the name of Andrea Weisberger. She never does any posting, and if you click on the link to her blog, there’s nothing posted over there either.

So she is obviously another fictitious character, the function of which is to show how enlightened unbelievers are, with a ratio of three men to every one woman.

This is all an elaborate advertising gimmick and lead-in for Debunking Christianity.

The come-on is a back-patting character by the name of John Loftus, who supposedly studied under William Craig Lane.

In a heavy-handed clue, the fact that Loftus doesn’t know the historical origin of the Kalam cosmological argument, even though this is a specialty of Craig’s, is evidence enough that Loftus is a fictitious individual.

But since some folks are slow on the uptake, Walton has favored us with another broad hint when Loftus highlighted the deconversion of “Dennis.”

If you click on the link, it takes you to a one-time member of notorious cult who’s currently working as a massage “therapist.”

Needless to say, no self-respecting atheist would cite such an all-around loser as a character witness for atheism.

“Dagood” is clearly on loan from Li’l Abner (“Blondie & Dagwood”).

In the same neck of the Smokey blue hills (“Dogpatch,” to be exact) is “Brother” Danny, reprises the stereotypical backwoods preacher-boy, a la Elmer Gantry. A one-time evangelist without much book larning.

Holman is another cut-and-paste job. All Wanton need to do was glean a few hortatory quotes from Ingersoll and string them together.

Barker, Babinski, and Farrell Till are purely decorative—as high profile apostates whose chief claim to fame is being famous for being infamous.

Exbeliever and Former Fundy are anonymous because Mr. Walton, as a busy college student, doesn’t have the time to invent a pseudonymous profile for every team member. Pseudonymity takes more time than anonymity since pseudonymous biographies are traceable in a way that anonymous biographies are not.

Yet another dead giveaway is the spelling challenged post “We are not Insidious Villians!”

Methinks they protest too much.

One of Walton’s finest creations is Acharya S., a new-age quackster worthy to stand beside Miss Haversham.

Equally Dickensian in his mastery of eccentric characterization is “Stardust Musings.”

She's no more real than Tinkerbell. Come to think of it--she is Tinkerbell.

Her literary pedigree goes back to Carl Sagan, when Mr. Walton bought a 50¢ copy of Cosmos (“Billions and billions”) down at the used bookstore, snugly sandwiched in-between Synchrodestiny and Out on a Limb.

Two mad aunts for the price of one! At this rate we can cancel our subscription to The National Inquirer.

Also in the blogroll is God is for Suckers—a lobotomized version of the South Park series: all the words, none of the wit.

If he’s able to maintain this level of comedic inspiration, Walton shall walk away with all the Turkoman’s wooden nickel awards.