Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 2

Are we to believe, like most people do, in the rumours about some physically and technically impossible gas chambers in which millions of Jews were killed - even though no one to this day has been able properly to locate such places of horror on the map? Even though not even one victim can be mentioned by name? Even though there be no Hitler order?

I wanted to put this atop again, not only so search engines will get it...again...but also to make the sound of Christian Lindtner flip-flopping come out as loud as it can.

In Part 2 of 7, Lindtner specifically denies the last statement in the above, acknowledging that there was an "order" by Hitler to destroy the Jews -- and he says, not so much as in a direct order to his goons, but inasmuch as his speeches called for Jewish destruction, and his goons took that to heart.

Flip. Flop. Flip. Flop.

We have 5 more parts to go, so it remains to be seen what else he has to say. It remains, though, that this sudden backpedal has the scent of someone realizing his butt is in a rather enormous sling.

Shaming Christian Lindtner, Part 1

Our next seven entries will be devoted to observations on Christian Lindtner’s latest crap on the Holocaust. Back in January, we laid down the law on Ken Humprheys for using this idiot as a source for his Christ-myth crap. It’s apparently stung Lindtner in the butt pretty badly, and there’s a couple of glaring evidences to show this.

The first is the following quote from Lindtner’s “jesusisbuddha” website:

A final problem: If Christianity is a gigantic hoax - how has it been possible to deceive so many for so long? How did the priests, the bishops, the popes manage to pull it off? All the professional liars?

Are there any modern parallels that prove helpful? Are we to believe absurdities such as those of some unidentfied towelheads in the backwaters of far-away Afghanistan, or their impotent likes elsewhere, who are to be held responsible for the 9/11 events? Are we to believe, like most people do, in the rumours about some physically and technically impossible gas chambers in which millions of Jews were killed - even though no one to this day has been able properly to locate such places of horror on the map? Even though not even one victim can be mentioned by name? Even though there be no Hitler order?

Well actually – you won’t find it there any more. He’s removed it. Unfortunately for him, it’s preserved in a number of locations, including a TheologyWeb thread and a thread on Brian Flemming’s Danielle forum. There’s also a forum at a place called “Faith Freedom” that documents the place it originally appeared, which was http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/links.html That page now has some mostly harmless drivel, though it does link to the material we discuss below.

Lindtner evidently hoped that quote would slowly die off after he removed it. It won’t. I’m keeping it alive.

The second evidence: Lindtner has posted a 7 part series on YouTube (!) in which he explains himself. We’ll discuss each of the 7 parts over the next 7 entries – I can only stand to watch so much of him. In Part 1, he’s evidently quite nervous, mostly refusing to look at the interviewer and never looking at the camera that I can recall. Thankfully, not even YT’s wacko community seems to think much of him; Part 1 as of this writing had 500 views, but Part 2 had only 233, Part 3 only 155, and down from there. There are also no comments. And no, I won’t be providing a link to his trash. I’m sure even Farrell Till would approve of that.

So what of Part 1? Not much to it despite a 14 ½ minute run time. Lindtner tries to explain that there’s a difference between the term “Holocaust” and the phrase “Final Solution” as used by Hitler, which ranks pretty well in the Who Gives a Crap Award category, and doesn’t enlighten anyone a great deal. He also says that the Holocaust has become a sort of “secular religion” and even terms it...snort...a new form of Judaism.

Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle. Has Ken got this message yet? (Of course not. He’s still using Lindtner as a source.)

As a reminder, Lindtner isn’t exactly worthy as a source even in his commentary on Jesus. A reader noted his comment that, “Only Buddhism and Christianity have made extensive use of parables - and the Buddhists came first!" Their reply hits the nail:

How can this be substantiated!? Hinduism/Judaism/Shintoism/Daoism/Islam/Paganism havnt made "substantial use of parables"?! Did parables originate with Buddhism?! How much Christian and Buddhist literature needs to be compared before one can say they have made "substantial use" of parables?!

We’ll see what else “Dr.” Christian Lintball has to say, with Part 2 tomorrow. Meanwhile here’s a bunch of links that preserve that quote, and our earlier Forge entry for reference. Click on them lots and keep them atop Google.

Forge entry

TWeb thread

Faith Freedom forum -- see post by Norseman at the bottom of the page

Cached quote from atheist forum

Quote on a blog that seems to be French

Beastly Bomber Blowups

I've written this post as an accompaniment to a TektonTV vid launched today that's branded as part of a series titled Beastly Bomber Blowups. It requires some background explanation.

The subject of the series is a fundy atheist who is one of that select breed (like Farrell Till once was) who loves to see their name in lights, so to counter that, I grant them some sort of substitute identity. (It's appropos, too, because this fundy atheist used to be one of Till's groupies.) So I had designed a character to represent this fundy atheist that i call the "Pett Bomber" (pictured here) -- a tiny, tempramental, arrogant fuzzball with a puny voice and a chihuahua bark. His signature move, as it were, is that at the end of an episode, the little fuse attached to his head lights, and he explodes like a bomb -- representing his failure as an anti-apologist.

I've had an off and on history with this non-entity, who over the years has figured that he might win some attention by going after me. It's failed him miserably, even though he tried a couple of different venues for getting famous enough to earn a living off of anti-apologetics, including the Secular Web. He had a website at one time, but in the past few months, it disappeared, and it's not hard to see why: According to statistics sources, it was getting as many visits a month as my article on Mithra alone gets every 15-30 days. No wonder these guys always whined for me to link to them, as I always say. (He's also playable like a violin: Since I made this post, he's restored the site, and has done other things that are clearly reactionary to this and other things I have done. Dance, boy, dance. )

In YouTube, he did find some of the attention he craved, though that doesn't mean much either, in a context where a conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones can have as many as 127,000 subscribers, and a low-talent, low-scholarship hack like NonStampCollector can have as many as he does. Summed up, it's not hard to grab an audience at YT when so many lowbrow elements reside and subscribe there, and as I once noted, fundy atheists in particular would be expected to flock to a venue where everything is in pictures.

Back to the Bomber, though: he decided to take on my vid on 2 Kings 2:23-5, and I just recently finished a series in reply, which he says he intends to reply to after a month-long vacation in July. Um hm. Well, I've started this new series in part to make sure he returns to find a lot more to do.

The Blowups series will pick through his vids addressing claims that are both brief and within my area of study. Today's release was on the subject of Tacitus -- one of my specialty areas of study. And yes, he put his foot in it big time there. The purpose of the series will be to demonstrate the depth of both his ignorance and his critical thinking skills -- even with regards to quite simple matters -- as well as make life harder on him. Which frankly, needs to be done for more than one reason: As a producer, he's not only an academic fraud, but also a creative failure. His own vids are almost entirely composed of film clips, music, and graphics lifted -- often beyond what could be reckoned as fair use -- from other sources, including commercial films by major studios that would likely have his wallet in their pockets for the next 30 years if YouTube ever appeared more prominently on their radar.

The point on his thievery raises another explanation. In this new series, my "fursona" interacts with what is a mechanized version of the original "fuzzball" I created. This substitute is not there just to represent that the "real" fundy atheist is on vacation, though that happened to fit it with what I was doing. It also highlights another instance of his thievery. The mechanized version reflects a stolen version of the original "fuzzball" that he instituted. Back in mid-May, he produced a short "news" vid for his subscribers announcing his vacation plans, and the announcer was a parody version of my "fuzzball".

It wasn't his sole thievery in the vid. He has also used a background graphic from a news graphics site that he should have paid for, and with which he obscured his thievery by covering up a watermark on the graphic with other props. I made light of this in one of my own reply vids in the Elisha series, a day after he released the bowdlerized "news" vid. Interestingly, his "news" vid then disappeared a day or so later -- without any explanation. Nothing says "guilty conscience" quite so eloquently.

At any rate, since the Bomber is MY creation, I took the liberty of taking it back for the new series. His own version was itself a sort of animated freak, that had apparently been created not with any real effort, but by applying to a service (or software) like goanimate.com. He had hinted to tease his subscribers that he planned to use the bowdlerized Bomber in his responses to me. (Note that this is in spite of the fact that just a few weeks before, this fundy atheist had accused me of using a "juvenile" cartoon format to "soften" the Elisha story. Apparently once you become a hypocrite, it's no longer a "juvenile" or "softening" format.)
His version of my "fuzzball," though, had a computerized, unnatural voice, and didn't move at all other than the mouth -- and one of the two mouth positions looked absolutely idiotic, as though it had grown a trumpet. So my own re-parody has it depicted as a mechanized rendition, with the same mouth movements -- quite suitable to the lack of care shown by his own composition.

Sure, it was intended as a parody of my character. But that's not the point. The point rather -- as I state at the end of the vid linked below -- is that this combined with his other thivery of material shows that it's not because of parody that he made the bowdlerized version -- it's because he's too mentally ossified to come up with his own ideas.

Adding to his public disgrace, several of his subscribers praised him for inventing the character -- which is demonstrative on two counts: 1) he never corrected them (that had to be done by other users, one Christian, one a less hostile Skeptic); 2) his own subscribers, who praised him so heartily for allegedly defeating my original Elisha vid, obviously were unaware of my own replies using the character. That certainly says a great deal for the backwards and oblivious mentality of his subscriber base.

I'll still have plenty of other TektonTV projects over the next month, and all of my treatments of this shameless craven will be brief and relatively simple compositions. They will, however, have plenty of bang for the buck, and will leave him squirming for many months to come -- and longer, as he'll find out I've designed my vids to be easily added to, so that if he ever does reply, I'll have my own responses up within 48 hours...or less.

Hey, it's how I drove Farrell Till into relative silence -- why not do it to one of his groupies, too?


Hub link

The Wolf With a Laugh Track

Thommy Stark has made the rather laughable claim that follows in regards to my response to his latest whiny diatribe against Paul Copan:

…his first criticism, that I don’t understand what an agonistic culture is, is a good example of bluster. I addressed this reality very clearly and straightforwardly in both my review of Copan and in HFG (on more than one occasion in each), and I showed why this move is a red herring. One can’t replace moral evaluation with historical description and expect that to solve the moral problem.

Snort.

First of all, yes – Stark had no idea what an agonistic culture is; and he had no idea, not until I told him. He makes no reference to it anywhere in his work, nor does he ever refer to any scholar who has done work in that area. He shows no awareness of such concepts as honor and shame (he refers to honor only when quoting of it in the Biblical text), limited good, the role of envy, or the collectivist vs. individualist mindset. If he did know any of this, he would have used it in his work. He also would have recognized Susan Niditch’s profound error in attributing the origins of the “ban” (cherem) to the need to assuage guilt over killing people.

Second, yes, one CAN use historical description – as well as social and anthropological description – to solve the moral problem, or rather, show that it does not exist in the first place. The moral “problem” seen is rooted in the bigoted evaluation of critics like Stark who presume that their own modern, Western values are superior and that they are warranted in looking down their snot-encrusted noses at those bone in the nose heathens who would DARE violate their modern moral standards.

As it is, Stark has not done a whit better than any critic so far in presenting more than “argument by outrage” (link below). He never offers any serious, complex evaluation of the social settings of the OT world; such references are sparse, incomplete, and without reference to the most critical concepts of all (honor/shame, etc per above). It’s not hard to see why he doesn’t, either:

In HFG I cite Jeffrey Stout at length on just this issue. That I am called “bigoted” for making moral judgments about an agonistic culture is humorous. In the review itself I make a clear distinction between judging actions as moral or immoral and judging those who engage in them as moral or immoral. With human sacrifice, for example, I explained how its logic made great sense to the ancients, and I said that while we should judge the act of child sacrifice as immoral, that doesn’t necessarily mean that parents who practiced it were immoral people. We should give them the benefit of the doubt that they were doing the best they could with what they believed.

How nice. How irrelevant. I am not questioning whether Stark judges ancient people, although he clearly does so, yet in such a way as to maintain plausible deniability. The technique is one that allows the critic to maintain their air of condescending moral superiority while also not seeming to judge people as people. They’ve learned, in other words, the way to maintain the surface impression of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” an attitude that Stark certainly learned when he was a fundamentalist. But the moment Stark airs out his own hypocrisy (as when he lashes out at those who criticize him), the pretense is exposed. He may apologize later -- but by then it's too late. The one benefit here is that he doesn't have to apologize to dead people from the Bible when he insults them.

Even so, the question I raise IS about judging the acts as moral or immoral; and Stark’s judgments on these matters are informed by nothing more than his presumption that his own values and morals are superior and that he is competent to make judgments (and Stout offers nothing of any more substance). As it is, again, he provides little to no serious ethical analysis; his critique of Copan is rife with “arguments” that amount to, “oh, how horrible!” or “how would you feel if someone did this to you?” That’s probably as deep and as complex as his mental capacity allows him to go, but it won’t do the job for those who require more than an emotional high to be convinced.

In a comment elsewhere, Stark whines:

I’ve read Holding’s responses so far. I’ve attempted to have fruitful engagements with him in the past and it hasn’t worked, so I won’t be engaging him. If you do have any questions about particular criticisms, feel free voice them here and I’ll be more than happy to respond, but I’m not going to use my time trying to persuade Holding; that’s a bottomless pit.

Oh yes, that’s a microcosm all right, concerning Stark’s own moral turpitude. You see, if he’s telling the truth, there’s no way he could have read my responses to him so far, unless he’s stealing them. The response is part of an E-Block series, and he’s supposed to hit a “donate” button to get access to that. As it is, it is clear that he is not in the least disturbed about stealing others’ intellectual property, even when it is clear that he is supposed to be providing compensation. By the same token, whoever is giving him that copy is participating in the theft as well. So he’s stealing...or maybe lying about stealing. Either way, he and his twin Loftus seem to have this thing about trying to violate the Ten Commandments.

The stark reality is that Stark knows he is in over his head – he’s made multiple mistakes that he refuses to admit, even on the most trivial matters. (Link below.) Like Loftus – whose moral and intellectual twin he is – he won’t face me on an open forum like TheologyWeb, because the reality is that he knows he’s not prepared for it, and never will be. Do be prepared for this much, though: As a skilled rationalizer, he is very likely even now “cramming” on social science literature, so that he can say later on that he was familiar with it all along and throw around words like “agonistic” with the air of one who is doing more than just slurring them like a parrot who overheard it.

Yep. Thommy Stark is Anthony Weiner of liberal “Christianity” – except that it’s his mind that’s wearing no clothes.

Argument by outrage

Typical Stark blunder he won't admit

Debating the Textually Critical

Richard Carrier has finally posted some of his own thoughts on our debate. Here’s my commentary on his look at it, which I am reporting in full. (It was placed as a comment on his original entry on the debate back in April.)

Holding called it a win-win, which I suppose depends on what you thought was the important conclusion.

Well, no, not from here. I specified why I called it a win-win in my post here before:

Yep, that's what we'll call it. Richard Carrier and I each presented our views, didn't intersect that much in doing so -- and actually got along fairly well in person. I'm content, and think we both did a good job presenting our cases.

So in other words, I count us both winners for having successfully communicated our ideas. But I don’t think we met head to head enough for a real “debate” to have occurred.

As to the actual debate topic, he conceded that debate in his opening and moved the goal posts by defending a different position (something like "Yes, the NT text is unreliable, but it's reliable enough for supporting the core things of the gospel" without ever specifying what those core things are).

Hmm, well --- not too many would disagree what the core doctrines of the Christian faith are, and this is also a statement drawn more or less from Bruce Metzger, and also reused by Bart Ehrman. I also would hardly say I moved the goalposts. The topic was: Is what we have what they had? I answered yes, in substance, completely; in exact words, not so much, but still quite a bit, and what we don’t have is not that important. If the topic had been, “Is what we have in terms of exact words what they had?” then this would be a valid objection.

I didn't bother rebutting that argument because he never stated what things were reliably supported by the extant text, so there was nothing to rebut.

Perhaps not. 15 and 10 minutes doesn’t really allow for that many specifics. I could spend an hour, I imagine, on texts about the Trinity alone. But I am certain there are enough things that Carrier could recognize as core values of Christianity that he could have picked one or two to discuss, and also discuss how they are (if they are) affected by textual questions.

So he can claim to have "won" that argument if we are unbothered by it being one big fallacy of special pleading.

I can’t really say how that’s arrived at. Perhaps if the debate were all the information anyone had, we could say that. But that general statement is backed by Metzger, Wallace, and even Ehrman with an ample amount of data. But no, the argument wasn’t “won” or lost…because again I don’t think we really addressed each other’s views head on that much.

As to the actual topic of the debate, it was a clear and informative win for me.

Of course I agree. And add that it was a clear and informative win for me as well.

"We do not have what they had," and many changes made to the text are undetectable to us now. Holding didn't even argue against that.

I didn’t, in specific terms, because I don’t find that the substance is affected by even hypothetical changes that could be reasonably suggested. There surely are undetectable changes, but based on the record we have, if we are extrapolating backwards from known data, the undetectable changes also would have to have been inconsequential.

There was one overall exception to his "goal post" move being special pleading. I think he made a point to the effect that broad claims in the NT, like that Jesus was crucified or Mark described the discovery of an empty tomb, were not "textually" dubious, and I agree.

Well, if I did make such points, I don’t recall it. There’s no mention of the crucifixion or empty tomb in my notes for either round. But of course I would agree in any event.

But as I pointed out, the NT isn't just used for broad stroke claims like that, it is used to make countless specific points from specific passages (even specific word choices in those passages), and on that point he certainly lost. What isn't clear is whether he even cared about losing that argument. But it will certainly complicate his attempt to make those kind of arguments in future.

This reaches to the fundamental problem of substance vs exact words. What Carrier seems to refer to – a sort of vacuous prooftexting of the sort you hear from pulpits frequently – isn’t the sort of thing I engage in. It’s a practice of naïve fundamentalists and those who would fail to recognize what I say about substance vs exact words as valid. In fact, some such persons would condemn me as a heretic.

I remarked to Carrier more than once that he doesn’t seem to know much about me. This would be another example – it’s very seldom that I engage in this kind of prooftexting, if at all; and if I do, it is only a small part of what I present as a case.

There are certainly persons for whom Carrier’s argument would be a serious problem. For example, consider this statement made by a hyperpreterist I engaged. I had indicated the need to use informing contexts like intertestamental literature to inform our understanding of the NT, and he replied:

Maybe this is a good time to inform you that we are having a “Bible” discussion here, not a discussion of “opinions” held during the inter-testamental period. While they may offer some educational value, they are not the final authority. The word of God must prevail in all cases. God always reserves the right to choose and define his own terms. So, without equivocation, I will readily ignore reams of contexts which are outside of the Bible when they contradict what is “inside” the Bible.

So yes – I’d say I don’t care if I lose that argument, because it isn’t one I’d make in the first place. For someone like this hyperpreterist, Carrier’s points are an unmitigated exegetical disaster. For someone like me – or a Dan Wallace, or a Ben Witherington – the points have little if any impact.

Let’s consider some examples Carrier presented on his slides. One is a case where copies of Matthew had added to them bits from John about Jesus being pierced by a spear. But exactly are we supposed to be concerned with here? John’s testimony is more than sufficient; apart from questionable ideas that we need a second or third or fourth source for such claims, that we find the claim in John alone is of no moment. Further, of what relevance is the spear thrust in the first place? I doubt if John was anticipating modern “Passover plot” scenarios. He also didn’t need it for prophecy fulfillment, despite what some exegetes may claim: That idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of the OT (not as a repository of prophecy future, but rather, of validation past), and at any rate, he could have suggested it was fulfilled when Jesus’ wrists and ankles were “pierced” by nails.

Another example offered was Luke 23:53, where it was added that the stone closing Jesus’ tomb was so large it took 20 men to move it. Are we solely dependent on Luke for this information? Isn’t archaeological data about Jewish tombs worth far more than this interpolated statement?

Another: Luke 2:14 could read “peace on earth, good will towards men” or “peace on earth, good will for men with whom he is pleased.” (I take that reading from the NET Bible; Carrier has it as, “for whom God pleases” on his slide, which I take to be a mistake.) Carrier describes the latter reading as less lofty and more ominous. But this evaluation would not be possible unless we had the later reading, so what would we be missing if the second reading had never existed? Beyond that, it is patently obvious that God, as a patron, would express His good will only towards those that please Him. Indeed, in my own view, the former reading causes my theology far more difficulty than the latter one.

Is the number of the beast 616 or 666? I commented on this earlier:

Now I don’t expect that Carrier is aware that I hold to an entirely different eschatological view than the majority of Christians. He likely expected that most of his Christian audience at the debate were standard dispensationalists who were scanning the horizon for a figure that used “666” conspicuously and was ready to tattoo it on their foreheads.

Well, I’m not one of those people. I think “the beast” was most likely Nero, and that nearly all of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century. As a result, for me “666” is probably either a numeric rendering of a Greek rendering of “Nero Caesar” transliterated into Hebrew (using an admittedly defective spelling), or perhaps a numeric rendering of the Hebrew word for “beast” (with the note that this word was sometimes used to describe Nero). The 616 variant would just come from a transliteration of the Latin form of Nero’s name into Hebrew – if it isn’t simply a “typo.” But whatever the case, this is just one aspect of my case for Nero as holding the position which so many modern dispensationalist identify with a future anti-Christ figure, and the “616” variant doesn’t really cause me any problem.

Finally, as a sample, Carrier offered the example of 1 Cor. 15:49: “And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear the image of the man of heaven.” Carrier invoked the variation, “we will also bear…” The NET Bible’s comments on this tell the story:

A few significant witnesses have the future indicative (foresomen, “we will bear”; B I 6 630 1881 al sa) instead of the aorist subjunctive (foreswmen, “let us bear”; Ì⁴⁶ א A C D F G Ψ 075 0243 33 1739 Ï latt bo). If the original reading is the future tense, then “we will bear” would be a guarantee that believers would be like Jesus (and unlike Adam) in the resurrection. If the aorist subjunctive is original, then “let us bear” would be a command to show forth the image of Jesus, i.e., to live as citizens of the kingdom that believers will one day inherit. The future indicative is not widespread geographically. At the same time, it fits the context well: Not only are there indicatives in this section (especially vv. 42-49), but the conjunction (kai) introducing the comparative (kaqws) seems best to connect to the preceding by furthering the same argument (what is, not what ought to be). For this reason, though, the future indicative could be a reading thus motivated by an early scribe. In light of the extremely weighty evidence for the aorist subjunctive, it is probably best to regard the aorist subjunctive as original. This connects well with v. 50, for there Paul makes a pronouncement that seems to presuppose some sort of exhortation. G. D. Fee (First Corinthians [NICNT], 795) argues for the originality of the subjunctive, stating that “it is nearly impossible to account for anyone’s having changed a clearly understandable future to the hortatory subjunctive so early and so often that it made its way into every textual history as the predominant reading.” The subjunctive makes a great deal of sense in view of the occasion of 1 Corinthians. Paul wrote to combat an over-realized eschatology in which some of the Corinthians evidently believed they were experiencing all the benefits of the resurrection body in the present, and thus that their behavior did not matter. If the subjunctive is the correct reading, it seems Paul makes two points: (1) that the resurrection is a bodily one, as distinct from an out-of-body experience, and (2) that one’s behavior in the interim does make a difference (see 15:32-34, 58).

All that offered, my own answer would also include an understanding of the use and meaning of the word “image” to refer to the carrying of authority (see The Mormon Defenders Ch 1 on this). This meaning would hands-down stand only for the aorist subjunctive described above. Indeed, the future indicative makes no sense at all, and is completely incoherent with language of the “body of Christ” indicating our shared identity with him. I wouldn't even need the NT to decide which view is correct.

In closing – if there was a fulcrum for my viewpoint, it was found in this statement from Round 1:

And classical scholar Rosalind Thomas adds, “…to apply the concept of original and copy to ancient documents is anachronistic…we must abandon the modern concept of authenticity and the modern requirement of exact verbatim correspondence down to the very punctuation.”

Carrier’s views cause severe problems for those who do adhere to the modern requirement of exact verbatim correspondence – but they have very little bearing on someone like me who does not. In that light, maybe we can arrange for Carrier to debate that hyperpreterist. He does do live debates...and it would probably be more raucous than the debate we had.

YT Thief BUSTED!

This was a bust that’s not quite as spectacular as discovering John Loftus’ fake blog, but it was still fun.

The perpetrator this time is someone I don’t name here, because he’s a nuisance who likes seeing his name on the little screen – just like Farrell Till. Which fits, because years back he was one of Till’s groupies, and I alluded to him in an earlier entry here on the Forge as a benighted soul who thought Till’s ghost town forum was worth bringing attention to. (It is, if you want an example of unhealed fundamentalism in a collective setting.)

These days, he gets his adoration fix from his own set of groupies on YouTube, which total in number about the same as the number who read my article on Mithra every two months. They’re clearly quality people for the most part – such as one I alluded to the other day whose username was half deity names, half sexual slang words. Their fearless leader specializes in being not-creative and making high-level bungles in logic and understanding. Of the latter, perhaps my favorite was a time when I referred to a specific scholarly book, which he dismissed because he couldn’t find it in HIS local library. At other times one of his favorite excuses for ignoring arguments is, “That scholar is conservative/an evangelical.”

These days one of his dalliances is trying to answer my YT vids on 2 Kings 2:23-5. Previously he had had an answer up to another user there who had used me as a source, and was forced to issue an apology to that user when he falsely accused him of plagiarizing my material (he had in fact credited me). Answering me directly after I showed at YT gave him an excuse to obscure that embarrassing apology (as well as some other mistakes – for example, accusing me of just making up the idea that baldness was rare in the ancient world; I still recall his use of a picture of empty bookshelves to indicate that I had no source for that claim).

His newer reply to me directly is in terms of quality about 30% expressing amazement that Christians believe this crazy stuff (ha ha), 20% actual argument, and 50% emotional rhetoric. To give you an idea the sort of backwards mentality we’re dealing with, his only “answer” to my point that the youths hassling Eiisha fought back against bears because bears could be used (like buffalo) as resources for food and other staples was to laugh and show pictures of – uh – products people made from bears. Yep, that’s the way to refute it.

Even better was the one where he refuted a point I made about honor being received in battles by cribbing a screenshot from Star Trek showing Klingons singing about receiving honor in battle. That’s a good answer, huh? “Hurr hurr. Honor. Funny. Let’s move on…”

Ah yes. Cribbing screenshots. That brings us to the main issue today. Our dilettante has another serious problem when it comes to his vids: if he ever had an original idea for doing one, it hitchhiked to Peoria. If he isn’t cribbing screenshots from someone’s website, or from a film, or from some old painting, he’s making an effort to find one he can crib. There’s not an ounce of originality in anything he produces (whether arguments or production values), and given that, it’s not surprising that I caught him at something which deserves notice as an example of just how much respect these guys have for the intellectual property rights of others.

His latest vid (now removed – see below) made a personal announcement in which he parodies one of my own characters used in reply to him. That’s legal, even if reflective of inability to come up with ideas of his own. But it’s not the character that’s the issue – it was the background graphic, which was a sort of global map designed to look like a news show background.

One of his group was impressed with it, so they asked where he got it from. To this he replied that he did not remember, but that he got it from a Google search of “news background”.

Oh really. He didn’t remember, eh?

As it happens, you can find that graphic with the very search he points to – it comes up second or third, and interestingly enough, it’s a graphic you’re supposed to PAY for – about $125 for a license to use it and an associated animation program. Not only that, the version on the site has a “watermark” to discourage theft. He didn’t mind though – he just used an object in the foreground of his vid, and some lettering, to cover up the watermark and hide his thieving handiwork.

There are a couple of stunning things about this. The first is the audacity of lifting a graphic with an obvious watermark – one you clearly saw and covered up – and using it for free. (Which he did, since he admits he just lifted it via a find from Google.) The second is the audacity of lying about it when asked directly where he got it from. The last is the arrogance of the theft in the first place – supposing that you have every right to steal someone’s intellectual property. It goes beyond fair use, I might add: the graphic was used in the background of all but a few seconds of the minute and a half vid, and that’s way over the line.

I’m not saying I never make mistakes on this. Sometimes you can’t do it right, maybe because some third party has used/edited a graphic, sound effect, or what have you, and left the impression that it is not from a paid source. But I do all I can to be sure I don’t violate someone else’s intellectual property rights. I don’t use graphics with a watermark or with a price. I stick with fair use. I try to use items found on educational or government sites, or places where no one is trying to make a profit. People work hard to create these things, and it isn’t our place to take them and use them wholesale.

And more than that – you sure won’t find me trying to cover my tracks, either. One day after I brought notice to this issue in a vid of my own, the Till groupie pulled his vid down, and told his thralls:

I'm back from the business trip early. Emergency with one of my clients forced me to cut it short.

Yep. Being caught red-handed is definitely an emergency.

The Barbarians of Pathological Democracy

Nick Peters and his wife called us last night to talk to us about something that happened on a forum she participates in, which I think illustrates a lot about the problems apologists face with the current generation that has been stupefied by a form of pathological democracy.

It’s Autism Awareness Month. Since both Nick and his wife are citizens with a related syndrome (Asperger’s – which my little brother also has), she started a thread on a general interest forum on the subject. There were a few people who said nice things there, but then there were a few – what shall we say? Trolls? Here’s some of their commentary:

all those poor kids playing minecraft

inb4 flood of "lol a** burgers" Seriously though, you might wanna take this somewhere else.

Q. why is this forum so obsessed with autism/aspergers? A. Because it's the cool thing to pretend you have.

Hers was not the only thread on this, as it turned out. Someone else started one and some of the same type of comments popped up:

I'd rather support world hunger or something...

Autism is unnatural and all Autistic people should be executed.

Everybody has autism/a**burgers these days. I swear it's become a fad. I was at an autism speaks benefit at my school a couple years ago and suddenly this autistic guy start making these insanely weird loud shouting noises right behind me and it scared the s**t out of me. Autism speaks, and it's ******** terrifying.

Autism is a myth.

The oddest of all was a comment by a member with autism who objected to people who, of their own free will, posted the first names of people they knew with autism:

Do you want your name posted on the internet to complete strangers because of something you were born with? Do you realize how extreme an invation [sic] of privacy this is?

Um, yeah. After all, it’s pretty clear that readers can tell right away who that “John” is that you’re talking about. They see him every day.

I bring this all to attention because it’s pretty much a parallel to what I’ve encountered on YouTube these days – pathological democracy and a generation of kids being told how special they are even when they screw up has led to the production of a class of idiots like these, who not only spew nonsense for which they can accept no correction, but has also given them the free and public venue to spread it – which in turn encourages them to think that their nonsense is worthy of attention. A perpetual cycle of endless idiocy. How nice.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see this isn’t limited to discussions of religious issues. On the other hand, it’s sad to see that it isn’t, too. But really, it’s the not-unexpected result of a perfect storm of social and technological factors that have led us here, and we shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s not hard to see how we can get from “autism is a myth” to “the Zeitgeist movie says….”