So now that Ken Ham, president of answersingenesis has acknowledged me, the most extreme whackos on the web are suddenly aware of me too. For example, Conspiracy News accuses me of being a puppet of the Illuminati, which in turn is allegedly controlled by Satan. I find this amusing since neither of those entities apparently exists.
That site describes me as a psychopathic mystic, using demonic doctrine to seduce ‘the simple’. I guess that’s how they think one gets on the international speakers circuit supporting reason and skeptical rationalism. So the irony meter is already pegged. Most of my live audiences also tend to include famous philosophers, particle physicists, cosmologists, geneticists, and so on. So it seems that having the word, ‘Professor’ in front of your name, and the letters ‘PhD’ after your name, somehow qualify one as ‘simple’. Worse still, according to Conspiracy News, conferences with so many highly educated participants amount to “the blind leading the blind”. Compare that to a religious conference, and the irony meter is destroyed.
It is especially amusing that they have to ignore everything I said in every video I’ve ever made when they say that I “cannot offer “one shred of evidence” for the “scientific fables” of big bang, old earth, evolution, or heliocentrism. Actually I have provided abundant evidence for all these things –except heliocentrism. I didn’t really see the need to present a lot of scientific data showing that the earth goes around the sun rather than the other way around. I guess I just don’t expect people to be that stupid. I should rethink that since I now know of a few well-known geocentrists, NephilimFree, VenomFangX, Frank Turek, Pastor Bob Enyrart, and so on.
This particular poster, RobinMFisher also thinks that my saying that I’m not particularly interested in philosophy means that I’m not even aware of when I still have to talk about that subject. Of course I am. Similarly, I have said many times that I prefer to deal in fact whenever possible, and I tend to preface mere opinions with some apology. For example, there have been a few times when I was asked my philosophical opinion, and I shared it thus:
“I sincerely do not understand hate, nor why other people fixate on negativity. It’s just not the way I think. There is a positive aspect to nearly all our experiences. If you can’t find something good, at least allow yourself to be impressed, because sharing the things you love is what will endear you to others. Seriously, nobody cares about what you hate, and you shouldn’t either.”.
So I find it ironic that AtheistWatch calls me a “completely opinionated, hate-group bully”
Their description of me is all wrong too. For example, I have never lived in Denton, and I don’t think I have ever said that “science is kryptonite to creationists”. Of course they think it “obvious” that I wrote my own wiki page too. I didn’t, but I did contact them once, asking them to correct their description of me. They said I was someone who might physically threaten those who disagree. That’s just not how I am –regardless how many religious nuts want to pretend that I’m such a ‘bully’. Honesty, accuracy, and accountability simply do not matter to religious zealots.
My favorite of the criticisms against me on AtheismWatch is this one:
“the standard that he uses to hold the bible to sees the Bible as cliaming on behalf of God:“I know everything I’ve always been there here’s what hapepned in the past.” That’s a log of hog wash. It’s not true God knows all that is knowable but the bible never makes such a claim for itself. It never presets itself as an accurate history book such that it says ‘here’s what happened in the past.” That kind of blanket statement is the all or nothing bunck that atheists thrive on.”
It wasn’t me who recited that ‘log of hogwash’; it was the Young Earth Creationist, Ken Ham who described the Bible exactly that way. I was merely quoting his ‘bunck’. But it is nice to see how venomous believers can be when one of their own people says something wrong, -but they think I’m the one who said it.
I wonder what the next paranoid tabloid sensationalist opposite-accusation of me will be.
About halfway through I was expecting something about six heads and breath of fire.
This is not meant to be insulting in the least, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that at least some of these bottom-feeding cretins aren’t mentally unsound.
Do not equate mental illness or being “mentally unsound” with believing or saying outrageously wrong things. Regardless of your intention, that is profoundly insulting.
Well, if he’s acknowledged you, and the attempts to discredit you with ad homs is begun, then let’s hope, this means, he’s preparing to debate.
I had not seen the “illuminati” attack. I did see a conspiracy theorist, at one of your Youtube videos, accuse you of being a Freemason. This is, of course, ridiculous, because that honor is not extended to us Atheists.
Freemasons are deists, by definition, aren’t they?
They can be anything, but one must believe in some kind of Deity, in order to join, as per their bylaws.
Oh. I thought they were a little more specific than that. Thanks for the info.
Sweedish Rite requires Christian Baptism.
Wow. So some Rites are actually specific, as to which Deity. Thank you, Sili.
I just made an attempt at reading the Atheistwatch article…
I know, the spelling and grammar of an argument, has no bearing on the argument. However, if I have to work to figure out, just what is being said, then it does spread doubt on, whether or not, the poster should be taken seriously. Anyone too lazy to make a coherent argument, is probably going to be too lazy to research said argument.
But anyway, I kept on through it.
I do like the comparison of Aronra’s style to that of preachers, and quite frankly, I think this attempted insult, should be taken as complimentary. Fighting fire and brimstone with fire and brimstone! Hallelujah, brother, and amen! In other words, Aronra, keep it up.
But being a subscriber to Aronra’s channel, and now, to this blog, I cannot say, I agree with the other things, the poster wrote.
On the other hand, I still cannot make out, half the things, the poster wrote….
He’s very dyslexic, which would explain a lot … except EVERYTHING has a spellchecker built into it, nowadays. I give a lot of room for issues like that, but it just seems lazy to post things to a blog with errors that a simple web-browser interface would catch. I don’t know what to think of the guy.
Sorry for triple posting…
I just noticed the top of the Atheistwatch website and noticed, the poster is dyslexic….
That explains the spelling and grammar, and I want to “fess up,” when I’m wrong. It still doesn’t account for the lack of coherence, but I want to come clean about that, at least.
Except for what I said up at 3.1. I’ll cut him slack for wrong homophones and things like that, but when you see the little red line under a word, you right-click it, and the correct spelling should be obvious, in most cases. You’ve got to put in that tiny bit of extra effort to show respect to your readers.
I’m a lot more forgiving about blog post comments, but in the main blog post, you’ve got to give enough of a damn to read through your text and fix the little red lines, before submitting it.
I know, what you mean.
And I am so thankful, for the little red line. It has saved my career, so often, in the past. The difference between me and AtheistWatch is, I would give credit for it, where it belongs: the programmers.
Reading such things about you, Aron Ra, has led in the past to my having a marathon session of re-watching your videos. Will it now cause the same reac…..
Yep. I’m popping some popcorn now. 🙂
I’m with you, athyco! Let the tape roll!
AtheistWatch says he was an atheist before there was an internet and reason led him to god. LMAO.
Yeah, we’ve got C.S. Lewis to thank for that one, I think. Evangelists have always loved the fall-back of “I used to be just like you, before Jesus entered into my life and changed me.” A lot of people are gullible and will take statements like that at face value. Atheists, for the most part, aren’t so stupid.
It kind of backfires on them. There may actually be a few apologists and preachers who were atheists … or at least apatheists … before they had some massive emotional experience that short-circuited their rational mind and made them turn Christian. But there are so many evangelists who are obviously, blatantly lying about having been an atheist, because it’s turned into such a widespread technique for trying to relate to the atheists, that we won’t believe one of the ex-atheists, on the off chance that we ever run into one.
You know, I have always been a fan of Tolkein… But if there was one mistake, he made, it was converting C.S. Lewis.
And notice, Lewis’s argument for his atheism, were actually slightly valid. After he became a Christian, he never made another good theological argument. I enjoy The Screwtape Letters, and even Mere Christianity, on a literary level, but in my own opinion, it is an horrible argument. Of course, I have often declared, the Christians might have gained ground with the Second Great Awakening, but the price they paid, was the death of reasoned apologetics.
Sorry for the typos, there. I made some changes, and I missed a few article changes and subject-verb changes, which those edits would have required.
Without meaning to come across as rude, you might want to edit your commas down somewhat. They make your comments annoying to read, despite your valuable contributions in the discussion.
Heh. He had a few inappropriate ones in there, yes.
I often find myself having to strip out commas, even when they’re technically correct. By the time I hit my third layered dependent-clause, it’s time to start cleaning up and grouping them by flow, only putting in a comma where there would be a natural pause when the sentence is spoken … like with this sentence, I could have had one after them and pause, but I clipped those commas.
I guess I could have had one between comma and where, as well, but that one just feels completely unnatural.
Yeah, sorry about all those. I’ve had too many editors lecture me about places, I’ve not placed them (hehe).
You’re badly overusing them, actually. I saw multiple places in the initial comment where you stuck a comma between the subject and verb, for no reason I could figure out. Let me demonstrate:
—–
You know, I have always been a fan of Tolkein… But if there was one mistake, (strike comma) he made, it was converting C.S. Lewis.
And notice, Lewis’s argument for his atheism, (strike comma) were actually slightly valid. After he became a Christian, he never made another good theological argument. I enjoy The Screwtape Letters, (strike comma) and even Mere Christianity, on a literary level, but in my own opinion, it is an horrible argument. Of course, (strike comma for flow) I have often declared, (strike comma; insert that) the Christians might have gained ground with the Second Great Awakening, but the price they paid, (strike comma) was the death of reasoned apologetics.
—–
The deletion in paragraph #1 is … I can’t even come up with a good explanation. I can’t come up with an explanation for why you would have thought there should be a comma there, in the first place, so I can’t come up with a good explanation for why it shouldn’t be there, beyond “Umm, why would you do that?” 😀
In paragraph #2, the first and last strikes are what I was talking about when I said that you were sticking a comma between the subject and verb, for no reason I could understand. I think the preposition in the first instance might have confused you a little, but that usage of a prepositional phrase does not get commas.
The second strike in paragraph #2 is a compounding error. If you’re combining two items together into a list, they just get a conjunction, no comma. You only use commas in a list of three or more items.
Or, you could have been thinking of it as a separate clause, in some way, because of your usage of the word even. Even if that was enough to make it a separate clause (which it’s not), you only use a comma before the conjunction if you’re joining two independent clauses together into a compound sentence.
The third and fourth strikes are just stylistic.
Your actual verbiage was a bit all over the place, too, but you said that you’re already aware of that.
Was any of that any use?
Do we know what fraction of evangelical US Christians claim to once have been atheists?
_
A little bit of demography says that less than 5% of American Christians can possibly have been atheists at some point in the past, and we might expect the fraction to be lower still in fundamentalist Christian groups. If we had the number that claim to once have been atheists, we could figure out how many are likely telling the truth.
I don’t know numbers, but I’ve personally run into several who claimed to have been atheists, before being born again or whatever. A couple admitted to making it up (although not in those specific, honest words) after a great deal of discussion … and the rest revealed themselves to not have been thoughtful, rational atheists, at the very least, based upon their descriptions of their atheism and their pathetic, irrational reasons for becoming Christians.
They might have all been lying, for all I know. I really don’t have solid reasons for doubting them all, just suspicion, based upon hearing some evangelists advise their flock to lie about things like that, when trying to convert someone.
If 5% of the population is under 2 years of age, it would be wrong to infer that only 5% of the population was ever under the age of 2. Every Christian could have been an atheist for 60 seconds or 60 days and not admit it at the time. How many who claim to be Christian now are functionally atheist but afraid to admit it
The common misunderstandings of atheism show they are informed more about atheism by theists than from having been an informed atheist. They may have been atheists but for poor reasons, which is, ironically, why they are theists.
That is a fair point – it’s hard to get reliable information on what people believe. What I said above should have been written: “less than 5% of American Christians can possibly have publicly self-identified as atheists at some point in the past” (I derived the number from Pew Forum data, which 75% of the US population being Christian, 6% being atheists, and no more than half of people who identifying as atheists at one survey time identifying as something else a decade or two decades later).
I’ve encountered a couple of people who said “I used to be an atheist” but actually meant “I used to be a less-devoutly-observant Christian”. Also a few who said “I used to be an agnostic” but again were confusing lack of time commitment to religious practice for lack of religious belief.
I wouldn’t even give them that much credit. I think they just picked up the technique from Lee Strobel, who also lies about having been an atheist.
AtheistWatch is strange. He’s wrong about the Bible in the opposite way fundamentalists are. Also, based on his Blogger user profile, he seems like a supremely boring person.
I stumbled through links onto this gem, which IMO demonstrates how so many of our counter-arguments just sail over the heads of these types.
That gem is indeed special, though I would note that in the same way our counter-arguments sail over the heads of these types, so too do the obvious proofs (scientific!) of the existence of God.
Apparently. At least, that’s what one of the comments says.
I’ll forgo the inevitable troll of commenting on that site, but … yeah. The invisible pink unicorn and the flying spaghetti monster being flippant/satirical/an in-joke/and so forth.
A rhetorical tactic is often used to convey a point. This individual has clearly missed said point, and no caterwauling that rhetoric (RHETORIC!) was used can obscure that.
Forgive me, if I am wrong, but historically, aren’t rhetorical forms, the accepted format for discourse? It’s like he’s saying, “The Christian can then point out that the skeptic who is defending the IPU is doing so, by defending the IPU.”
Ol’ Metacrock is a prolific poster on CARM.
He pulls the same crap on there as he does on his personal AtheistWatch wank site.
From a paragraph, at your gem link.
“…and scientifically extremely unlikely for any living creature to be truly invisible”
Is it just me, or did somebody actually get the point (without seeing it, of course), we’ve been trying to convey?
They’re sooo fond of improbable stories, aren’t they? Liars for Jesus do carry on something shocking.
If they are accusing you of being an Atheist Preacher…what would they say about Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist?!
You know, I still like the Atheist Preacher jab. I know, he’s trying to insult AronRa, but really… If he was a Theist, I think, he’d make a GREAT preacher. So, what’s wrong with having a symbolic Atheist preacher? For some reason, he’s always looked the part, for me. He could OWN that!
Wow. I just watched some of RobinMFisher’s videos. I was unaware, there were actually, real life geocentrists, today. I thought, they’d died out, Centuries ago, And I’m sure, they’ll want this taught in schools, beside Biblical Creationism, too….
I hereby renounce my Humanist card. My faith in humanity is shrinking.
By the way, on an unrelated note, I noticed, they’ve also uploaded some shockofgod videos. Are they linked with his “ministry,” or just fans? Anyone know?
By the way, I watched the shockofgod video on how to always win a debate with atheists. Pathetic. A first year Theology student could wipe the floor with him, if those were the best out of his secret stash of traps and arguments.
Yeah, nihilism looks really good, sometimes, when you look at the world around us.
Wow.
Just, wow.
It is amazing how far some people will go, just so they can keep the illusion that we are the center of the universe…
Truly pathetic.
auko ng timeline
Metacrock’s a really odd bird. Before I got perma-banned at CARM (my moniker was leyman then) I had a number of conversations with the guy in the forums there. His theology is really much closer to Universalism than anything else (he rejects a number of the major Christian tenets), but he has attached the label of Christian to himself as a result of both some “miraculous” life-changing experiences when he invoked the name of Jesus and also expediency to ingratiate himself to the Christians and CARM admins (although I never saw one once call him out; they always remain silent on that for whatever reason and consider him one of their own, which he clearly is only in the sense of his being an anti-atheist.). He really is rather well read on a wide range of philosophers, though, and almost completed his PhD (he went ABD for reasons never fully explained) and has devoted a significant amount of time and resources to his passion, nearing obsession, with finding incontrovertible evidence for the existence of a God. He also is quite the political leftie and hates getting grouped in with standard Christian fundamentalism, which he abhors and regularly criticizes. I actually sometimes found myself kinda liking the guy when he was on his meds and being reasonable – – I appreciate and can identify with people who have a fire in their belly about something which would really be amazing if they were successful in their quest (as long as they are being nice to other people along the way, which is where Metacrock routinely fails.).
All the above being poorly said, he often finds himself getting all apoplectic about atheism and regularly puts himself in situations where he is forced to apologize for his hyperbolic and fabricated generalizations of the atheist community. I think that stems from an inner frustration that deep down he realizes his 72 studies et.al. don’t really mean squat, has too much invested to back out now, and so just mindlessly lashes out at atheists in his denial of that failure. It also leads him to step over the line sometimes, which is what led to a situation involving a young female member of our own little community at WeareSMRT and CARM legal liability and resulted in my perma-banning, but that’s another story and I’m starting to ramble and need to get back to work.
Bottom line: don’t take Metacrock and his little blog all that seriously, Aron. He’s an amusing bit player amongst all the crazies over at CARM and really nothing more than that.
I’ve always kind of liked Metacrock; he can be an interesting guy when he’s calm; I actually admire his ability to have overcome his rather severe dyslexia and pursue a higher education and he’s got great taste in classic movies.
On the other hand, he did call me a “butt fucking Nazi” for disagreeing with him…so there’s that…
I agree and feel similarly, Hermit. The guy is to be admired for overcoming his handicap to get his PhD-ABD and basically has a good heart and a pretty open mind about a lot of things and is one of the few supposedly Christian posters there that has the ability to not take himself so seriously sometimes. When his Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde and his font goes all colored 8-point, though, he can really lose it until he finally calms down or is forced to take a time-out by the admins. He really could benefit a great deal by working on his ridiculous persecution complex that hobbles so much of what he writes. And ditch the whole atheist hate-group conspiracy schpiel. It’s really unbecoming of what he’s capable of.
Your rationalwiki entry includes the subheading “Science: It’s kryptonite to creationists”, so possibly they think you wrote rationalwiki (or at least your own entry, which would fit with their other delusions)?
Is it just me, or does that article in AtheistWatch say at the end that atheism doomed to fail because our numbers are increasing?
Err, not seeing where you mean. Can you give us the link and the section that comes across that way?
http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-atheist-preacher-man.html
The last paragraph…
”
Ultimately of course we have to blame the fundamentalists for creating an absurd model of the Bible in reaction to Darwin, a model that froze the Bible out of the modern world. We Chrsitains have to go about making for our own mistakes first, because we can expect to stop cranking out atheists. The appearance on the scene of the atheist preacher man can’t be a negative sing for the fortunes on the Bible. It means that the atheist mentality has gone main stream. What was once an intellectual elite in the ivory tower of university life is not now part of the mob, the masses. That has to represent the degradation of atheist ranks. It means that atheist is subject to mass culture and what is the fad now will be laughed at tomorrow. In a couple of decades atheism will be in the same category with bell bottom blue jeans and rockabilly.
”
The atheist mentality has gone main stream!
Unfortunately, that apparently means we will soon self-destruct…
Wishful thinking, I say…
You may have noticed that Metacrock suffers from a severe lack of self-awareness. I think this is just projection of the flaws of Christianity onto those who don’t share those flaws.
He seems to be treating atheism as some sort of trendy thing that everyone is jumping on-board with, because it’s cool. Once it stops being so rebellious and cool to be an atheist, apparently the kids will go back to Jesus and church. He doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of what atheism really is … which is fairly obvious from some of his other posts.
What he’s missing is that it’s sort of like the gay rights movement. Yes, there’s a popularity/trendy component, but there’s also a real, long-term cultural-shift there. People aren’t going to start hating gays again, now that their trendiness is wearing off.
There’s another component that will make atheism even more long-standing than the gay-rights movement. Homosexuals are not trying to convince people that they should be gay, too. Atheists are doing that with atheism. It’s easier to recruit people into the position itself, whereas with homosexuality, it’s only ever about having acceptance for the small percentage who are a part of that group.
To draw another parallel, just as the gay rights movement can grow, with closeted individuals coming out as it becomes more socially acceptable, we should have a lot of identifying-Christians who will drop their vague god-belief as we spread the message that religion doesn’t make you moral … and actually relies on an authoritarian system that makes you less moral and more dogmatic.
In other words, I think this guy is very wrong, and we’ve got a still-greater acceleration ahead, as the public becomes more accepting.
I’m confused. I thought you were Satan!
Simply want to say your article is as surprising. The clarity in your post is just nice and I could assume you’re an expert on this subject. Fine with your permission allow me to grab your RSS feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please keep up the enjoyable work.
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is wonderful blog. An excellent read. I’ll certainly be back.
hey there and thank you for your information – I have certainly picked up something new from right here. I did however expertise several technical issues using this site, since I experienced to reload the web site many times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I am complaining, but sluggish loading instances times will very frequently affect your placement in google and could damage your high-quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Anyway I am adding this RSS to my e-mail and could look out for a lot more of your respective interesting content. Make sure you update this again very soon..
I like the valuable information you provide in your articles. I will bookmark your weblog and check again here frequently. I’m quite sure I’ll learn a lot of new stuff right here! Good luck for the next!