ExChristian.Net Has Been X’d, part 1

“my passion” is “seeking to abolish legendary
thinking from the face of the earth”

—ExChristian.Net commentator

In my research of evilbible.com I ran across various atheism related website which treat its contents as gospel truth. I have found that the problem is that when I challenge the content of evilbible.com no one bothers dealing with the issue at hand: defending the very same website which they have just finished praising, relying upon, referencing or otherwise advertizing. Moreover, they do not muster the basic level of skepticism that would cause them to consider both sides of an issue.

Rather, they are simply convinced—evilbible.com said it so it must be true; yes, it must be because they quote the Bible and everyone knows that quoting the Bible guarantees accurately relating a fair representation of its contents—right?

Such was the case when I happened upon ExChristian.Net. Upon my showing the slightest sign of disturbing the well-within-the-box-group-think I was summarily provided with the makings of a Logical Fallacies 101 textbook. Yes, from the arbitrary to the abusive, from ad hominems to outrage, from ridicule to red herrings it was all there, and more, much more.

I quickly came to find that ExChristian.Net is an anti-Christian support group wherein its members, apparently generally lacking intellectual integrity, urge each other toward belligerence and the committing of all manner of fallacy. It is saddening that something potentially constructive, such as having them make assertions about evilbile.com and having me respond, and on it would go, their instinct is to launch into zealous rage against anyone who dares to disagree with them.

I should state that this parsed essay was not technically about ExChristian.Net itself but about its adherents. However, something has occurred that makes me think that ExChristian.Net’s administrators are now playing a part in the discussion which I am addressing. Now, for all I know some of the commentators I will deal with in this essay are administrators, I do not know. I have been engaged in discussions in two of their posts: It’s like Cancer and TOP TEN SIGNS YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN FUNDY. What I do know is that, for some odd reason, all of the comments in the TOP TEN posts have mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps it was some sort of computer related glitch that left the posts intact and only deleted all of the comments, I do not know. Fortunately, I had already copied and saved all of the comments that were made to me and present them hereinafter.

I will keep their names, or pseudonyms, out of this essay as my purpose is not to call anyone or embarrass anyone but to correct various fallacies, misconceptions, etc. Also, I am not presenting the comments in chronological order but have grouped them into topics. Let us get a taste of that with which I dealt.
Let us begin with ridicule in the form of name calling; here is a taste:

MoronicusApoligeticus…jerk…load of ****…fundies…trolling for carcasses…Prevaricatoricus…your pathetic and infantile dumb-****…delusional ********…idiot…dubious drivel…Forgetful Freddy…beat it…Whoop-de-frickin’-doo! You’re using your own interpretation of ******** to try to disprove someone else’s interpretation of said ********. You may as well go debate some Harry Potter – it’s all fiction anyway!…Hahahahahahahahaha, ha, ha, ha…TAKE A HIKE…utter ********…your Apologetic drivel…how deep in your *** you had to dig to…asinine logic…it’s time for you to paint your **** white and run with the antelope…your god delusion…(aka Mario-Brothers Aplogetics)…spill your trash…you seem strong in the whine department…Moronic Apologist…blah, blah, blah…Dumb-***…ye of little gray matter…Grow up…all sorts of stupid, that Christian philosophy is!….****….*******….disrespectful, disingenuous religious person….apologetic horse****….you are a ******* liar….Yoo-*******-hoo….**** off….your sky-daddy….mind-****….keep your distance [expletives removed]

And here are some of the encouragements:

Prevaricatoricus’ – Love it…

They should just change the name of the religion from “Christianity” to “Cognitive Dissonance” and get it over with…

The Church of Cognitive Dissonance. I love it

After taking quite a few shots across my bow I commented thusly,

Am I to assume that each of you who responded to me have considered the information that I have provided?Or in typical activist atheist form are you simply incapable of engaging upon reasoned discourse?Are you at all capable of actually practice true skepticism and considering my evidence?Or will you satisfy yourselves by concocting arguments for ridicule?

When I pointed out that they were replacing reasoned discourse with ridicule someone stated, “ridicule works just fine for Me, thanks.” Obviously, ridicule makes one feel clever, it can be funny and you get chance to pat yourself and your buddies on the back and elbow them in the ribs while laughing at your clever put downs. Fine, but it does not advance reasoned discourse one nanometer but actually retards it quite a bit. Moreover, ridicule, being a form of dehumanization, makes it easier for the pseudo-skeptic to dismiss the argument at hand.

My initial comment was very basic, it simply informed them that evilbible.com had been discredited and provided a URL to EvilBible.com is Dead.

Note that I was put on alert from the get go as the first response I got was that I was called “Moronicus” and was told,

Please don’t use this websight [sic] for shameless promotion. It is not here for you, now go away, take your silly link and don’t come back lest you raise the ire of the many highly intelligent atheists who frequent this sight [sic].

Well, note the instant reaction of ridicule and territorialism “It is not here for you” yet, when I registered I did not notice anything about affirming that I was an ExChristian, a current atheist, etc. I simply assumed that reasoned discourse would be engaging to “many highly intelligent atheists.” Obviously, I was very wrong and am still waiting for those “many highly intelligent atheists” to show up on the scene.

Towards the end of the discussion I stated that “Even though they are 99.9% red herrings I will treat you all with enough respect to respond…” which caused one commentator to write:

*******, if you had an ounce of “respect”, you’d honor the purpose disclaimer that is included in the site’s mission statement. Here it is(again) for your reading convenience:

“The ExChristian.Net blog exists for the express purpose of encouraging those who have decided to leave religion behind. It is not an open challenge for Christians to avenge what they perceive as an offense against their religious beliefs.“[bold added]

[“[bold added]” was in the comment]

They later repeated the quotation and stated, “I call for you to be banned because you blithely ignore the site’s purpose disclaimer…”
There are a few issues here two of which are 1) if the administrators meant for no one, particularly no Christian, to ever challenge ExChristian.Net’s posts or comments they surely would be vigilant about instantly deleting all such comments and 2) since I was not seeking to “avenge” but to elucidate, to inform, to speak truth to falsehood, I did not break their mission statement—this too was a red herring. Perhaps, ExChristian.Net should add a gemara to their mission statement.

I also ran into an odd and arbitrary standard in the form of,

This jerk seems to be dropping it’s [sic] load of **** on other old threads as well…on this three-year-old thread…Now it’s on a thread that’s more than five years old. What is it with fundies and these old forums?…

The thread you intruded upon is more than three years old. Did you think you could post on it and no one but your god would know so that you’d get brownie points but escape the notice of real people?…

You’ve posted your drivel on a 3 year-old article… [expletives removed]

I was not aware that there was some sort of atheist ethic against commenting on posts that were more than an undefined number of years old. I simply considered the content and responded. I actually did not even bother looking at the date on the post since I was not aware that I was about to violate an atheist ethic. Actually, I am not certain that “forum” is the correct word as this was a post with a comments section and not a “forum” as “forums” are commonly understood online. But in any regards, I learned a very important lesson. One of the woes of being a blogger is that since a blog rolls on and on and on it becomes a virtual tel of our past efforts and older posts are pushed into virtual obscurity—FYI: see the archive on the menu :o). But I have now learned that the way to liven up an old post is to make a comment which breaks up the back patting and rib elbowing monotony. This is because my daring to disagree and virtually begging them to exercise true and honest skepticism livened up those, apparently too old, posts like a lightning bolt.

Note: if it really is some sort of atheist ethic or a rule of that website to not comment on posts older than an undefined number of years they could simply shut off the comments option to old post.

An odd comment was,

You had the freedom to come on our website and spill your trash.Do you offer the same opportunity on your blog, for us to leave comments there, without censoring, hmmm

Hmmm, it is rather odd that someone could lack the most basic sense of skepticism, basic curiosity really, that they would not even visit Atheism is Dead and conduct an experiment: write a comment and then see if it is displayed. This would have answered the question. But, it would not allow for arguments to ridicule.

From this came a strange attempt at a correlation,

He’s trolling for carcasses. Why confront someone who is alive and well, especially if they don’t agree, better to kick their dead relatives.

Apparently, commenting to old posts is considered kicking the dead even though after I commented there was a resurrection.
But the odd correlation continued in an unexpected direction,

It’s just like those morons, oops, mormons [sic] who have ceremonies to “save” the souls of people who have been dead for centuries….How sick is that?…It is disrespect at it’s [sic] highest/ lowest level. Something christians [sic] are very good at.

Well, I left my worm-can-opener in my other blog so let me briefly say that I love my Mormon friends and have welcomed their missionaries into my home for weeks and months in a row in order to engage upon reasoned discourse. I will merely succinctly state that, indeed, they are referencing a strictly Mormon practice, of baptism by proxy for the dead, and referring to Mormons as Christians is likewise problematic as they deny virtually every Christian doctrine including monotheism (for info see my essays on Mormonism).

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ExChristian.Net Further Discredits Itself ›