Sunday, April 16, 2006

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.

5 comments:

  1. These supposedly ex-Christian posters seem similar to many I've encountered on various irc channels. They seem to gain some bizarre pleasure from their charade, and seem particularly pleased when they get themselves banned for poor behavior. I suppose it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows them to rationalize their rather empty existence. "See, Christians are hypocrites because they ban me when I make a pest of myself, they don't really like they tell others to." Their posts are usually identified by a total lack of knowledge of philosophy, science, or theology. Technology has merely enabled them to feed their personality disorder and the personal information they supply is also almost always fraudulent. My best advice is don’t feed the trolls. Btw, I suppose I should register, but I'm simply too lazy at the moment. Hope all had a blessed Resurrection day!

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  2. Holy cow! You just used reason to determine that some written words did not in fact support the existence of the entities that said words claimed exist!

    Now if you can just apply this consistently in your life...

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  3. I have to admit this was pretty funny. If people take themselves so seriously they can't laugh at themselves, they may be close to a nervous breakdown when they interface with reality.

    I, Bro. Danny, don't have much "book larnin'" insofar as you pedants' specialty [Reformed study of God], but I bet I could whip your arses in matters mathematical and chemical ;)

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  5. Can I buy everyone in this thread a glass of hubris? Oh wait, I see everyone's glasses are already full, including mine. Damn. Flippant dismissals of flippant dimissals, ad infinitum.

    But what WILL these "true Christians" do to pass all of that time in heaven without non-believers at which to hurl Christianity's handy, ready-made vocabulary of contempt: "Heretic!" “Blasphemer!” “Idolater!” “Infidel!” “Anti-Christ!” “Apostate!” “Schizmatic!” “Demon Deluded Servant of Satan!” “As Fit to Be Fried as Lucifer’s Lamb Chops!” For some, Christianity remains popular partly because it allows them to project their fears, insecurities and frustrations on everyone who doesn't belong to their particular sect, denomination or religion, including the joy of threatening them with eternal damnation. I guess heaven just isn't any fun unless you can find plenty of other folks to deny it to.

    You would think of course that a near absolute faith in the truth of one's own beliefs, and near absolutely certainty concerning the damnability of the beliefs and souls of others who harbor them, would inspire a bit more confidence in those holding such a view. The firm knowledge of their own eternal security based on their faith might also be reason enough for them to feel a bit more verbal compassion or pity on those who have more questions than firm answers, on those whom Christians suspect to soon to be swimming in God's eternal lighter fluid.

    But no, some Christians NEVER get enough of that "hell daming" stuff, even blaming other Christians in their own churches at times, or causing schisms ad infinitum among churches, denominations and sects branding each other as heretics or questionable in countless ways, and spliting Christianity into Christianities galore, branching forth like an evolutionary tree. One woman sued her own pastor in 1993 for writing a letter to the congregation that connected her with “Satan.” Anne Hutchinson was another such woman to whom something similar happened during the Puritan era.

    Not to deny that some Christians DO strive for cordiality far moreso than others. Has anyone here read The Wittenburg Door? Witty and coridal. Or visited their website and read some articles? They also produce a free monthly e-newsletter.

    And recently another cordial Christian group bought an atheist's "soul" on ebay (paying him to attend churches in his area, and record his observations on a blog, and discuss them with others on their blog). Visit the blog, An Atheist Goes to Church.

    During the later phases of my own Christian spiritual journey I grew fond of some witty and wonderful Catholic and Anglican Chrisian writers. There was G. K. Chesterton for instance, and he had close atheist and deist friends, Wells and Shaw, and even wrote a novel based on his close relationships with them both, titled, The Ball and the Cross, in which the atheist and Christian begin by dueling to the death but evolve a strong respect and friendship for one another in the end.

    Also, the works of Father Robert Farrar Capon: The Parables of Judgment; Hunting the Divine Fox; and, Genesis: The Movie.

    Not to mention the Anglican priest and mystical Christian, translator of The Cloud of Unknowing, Alan Watts. Before Watts turned far more toward eastern religions he wrote some witty and insightful Christian books comparing mystical insights: Behold The Spirit.

    Not to mention Dr. Conrad Hyers, a former Bob Jones student, who later became chair of religion at the Calvinist College, Gustavus Adolphus, and who has composed marvelous books on the links between spirituality and comedy; and even one on The Meaning of Creation.

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