“…The world can only hope that people like David Wood, Ken Ammi, and all the other conservative Christians, catch Zika or Malaria and disappear from the face of the Earth…
‘You People’ are the most despicable, violent, sub-humans on the planet
…”
—Neo from the (pseudo) Skeptic Arena
For some odd reason, I recently received a mass email form Neo of the Skeptic Arena (about whom you can read here).
It was titled, “The inhuman monster among us” and was a message to the Christian apologist David Wood. Neo noted that any of us “on the CC list are encouraged to forward this to David Wood if you like – since the coward blocked my emails.” Well, the CC list consisted of 69 recipients.
You will note straight away that Neo is condemning cowardice not to mention (okay, mentioning) that he presumed that he (effect) was blocked due to David’s (cause) cowardice. From my experience people get sick and tired of Neo all of the time as this is not the first mass email in which he has included me and there are always people replying to the effect of why on Earth and I being emailed, take me off of this list. Neo seems to just troll the internet for e-addressed and includes anyone and everyone from newspapers to universities and everyone in between.
In any regard this was an odd exchange although I could have predicted the outcome as Neo is an Atheist and seems to have receive the Atheist memo: how to condemn without justification. You see, his point was to condemn David Wood and then to expand to condemn Christians, the Bible, God, etc., etc., etc. My instant reply was to ask upon what premise he condemns well, anything and the result is that he never once even made an attempt.
This is why I have noted that Atheists are the worst sorts of fire and brimstone preachers: they launch directly into condemnation without a premise:
Neo referenced an interview with Wood wherein:
5 minutes into your interview with Gad Saad you confessed to something so inhuman that it impelled me to try to find out … what makes a monster like you tick? As a young adult, you tried to murder your own father by smashing him in the head with a hammer. You said that you left him there to die. You didn’t even try to help your dying dad after smashing his head in – you just drove away, leaving him there to bleed out like an animal. (ellipses in original)
Now, you will lose count quickly but keep in mind that the first thing to ask is not how could Wood do such a thing but upon what premise does Neo condemn this. This is because based on Neo’s Atheistic premise he told us that one accidentally and temporarily existing bio-organism caused another accidentally and temporarily existing bio-organism to function a little less well than it did before (of course, even “a little less well” is me assuming an optimal level of function).
One thing I appreciate about Neo is that even though he is utterly illogical, utterly childish and utterly incapable of engaging in reasoned discourse he is, at least to some extent, honest. For example, he once challenged me by claiming that Jesus had failed to fulfill his own prophecy about Himself. I carefully explained in detail that the real problem is that Neo was misunderstanding the issue. When he again challenged me by claiming that Jesus had failed to fulfill his own prophecy about Himself I reminded him that I had replied to his claim and he admitted that he had not even bothered reading it.
Get the picture? Challenge, get a reply, ignore the reply, challenge again, declare yourself victorious because you ignored the reply.
Now, Neo watched a little beyond the five minute mark and “When Saad asked you why, you went into a long, evasive response that never did explain why you did it. At that point, feeling on the verge of vomiting, I turned off the interview.”
Well, apparently he had hear enough and thus wrote to David, “now you’re going to get a beating you will never forget.”
The results are tantamount to Pee-Wee Herman telling Mike Tyson in his prime that Herman was going to give Tyson beating Tyson will never forget.” Of course, I am not aware if Wood ever got the email but Neo was as ineffective as Herman would have been due to his lack of ethical foundation upon which to base his condemnation.
The issue with Neo is that after living a terribly hard life which resulted in his attacking his own dad David became a Christian and Neo asks, “Why? Where else can you find forgiveness for the most vile, disgusting crimes, that humans are capable of committing? And God forgave you, didn’t He? Of course He did; He always does; He never fails.” Great points and yet, Neo is being sarcastic.
Get your condemnation without justification counters ready again as Neo wrote, “Now you think you’ve given yourself a fresh start … or have you? Did you become a loving, forgiving Christian? No. You did not.”
In a display of hate and intolerance Neo bashes Wood by writing, “You became a Conservative Christian full of hate and intolerance, which is on full display in your ‘Crusades’ against Muslims. It is also obvious in your gay-bashing…” So, condemnation without justification with hypocrisy added in.
As Neo cannot help himself, he also writes, “By the way David, nice tats. Google: Leviticus 19:28.” Well, does Neo know whether Wood got the tattoo before or after becoming a Christian? Would he know how to argue as to why Christians should live as per Old Testament laws?
In any case yes, that was another condemnation as Neo is accusing Wood of breaking the law of a God in which Neo does not believe. Now, he also writes, “that cesspool of hate you call your ‘soul’ has apparently directed its attention to new targets. Your uncontrollable hatred of Muslims, gays, atheists, and other living things, proves that you chose the wrong word.”
So, Neo refer to David engaging in reasoned discourse as “uncontrollable hatred” even whilst Neo engages in unreasonable discourse. He had noted that David Wood claimed to be a sociopath but that he is, as per Neo’s perspective, a psychopath.
Neo then asserts, “The only thing your conversion to Christianity has done, is to provide you with false justification for the psycopathic hate that boils over inside you.”
This, according to Neo’s assertions, is because:
It is not surprising that a psychopath like you would turn to Christianity where you can worship a God who exhibits every evil tendency you possess; a God who brags about murdering countless innocent Egyptian children, and then has the audacity to create a holiday (Passover) to celebrate the slaughter. You and the God of the Old Testament are a match made in Hell.
Neo does not seem to realize that Passover is a Jewish holiday but the event is within the Bible: a text upon which Neo does not believe which records event which Neo claims never took place and a God who does not exist.
Neo then notes, “You will never be a Christian. Christians live their lives based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Obviously, you prefer His old man.” He seems to fail to notice that Jesus celebrated the Passover and that as a member of the Triune Godhead Jesus’s relationship to “His old man” is in perfect agreement. And no, Neo did not condemn the Egyptians for almost half a millennia of enslaving the Hebrews.
Well, have you been able to keep count of the condemnations without justifications? There are many, many, many more to come.
Now, when Neo first contacted me, long before the David Wood issue, I wrote a reply and noted upfront that since, as an Atheist, he had not offered any premise upon which to suppose there was any standard of truth as per his worldview philosophy he had given me nothing to which I needed to reply. Of course, I did reply but for the sake of showing others how to deal with such objections.
The point is that as I have been stating all along, he offered no justifications for his various condemnations and so my reply was simple enough:
It seems that Neo is accusing David of being as intolerant as he. Now, Neo: before you launch into condemnation you first need to provide a premise upon which to do so.
So, upon what premise do you condemn anything that David did or does?
As this series continues, you will note that this pattern repeats time and again as Neo launches into condemnation, I ask for a premise, he merely piles on more condemnations, I ask for a premise and on it goes—on and on and on and on.
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