John wanted to start off the Thanksgiving month by demanding that his readers start giving him thanks for his "services" by asking for donations to help fund his trip to a convention held by the Society of Biblical Literature (details below):
As previously announced I've been invited to participate as a respondent on a panel for the prestigious Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in New Orleans, which meets November 21-24. As you'd guess I'm very honored. They will show the movie Religulous by Bill Maher Sunday evening and then the panel will discuss it the next day at 1 PM. The participants include professors Hector Avalos, Dennis MacDonald, Carol Exum, Randall Reed and yours truly. I am to respond to the other four papers. Here is the link. While we're there several of us including Hector Avalos, Jim Linville, and Ken Pulliam will be having a meeting to discuss a non-religious group within the Society of Biblical Literature, which should be interesting and exciting.
Most institutions of learning pay for these scholars to attend the SBL by covering their expenses. Since no institution will pay my way I'm conducting a fund drive to help my wife and I travel there so I can participate. I calculate that we'll need $1,000 to cover the costs of gas, food, and six nights stay in hotels (four while there and one both coming and going). It might be more, but $1,000 should be good enough. To answer your question in advance, yes, we will go regardless of whether or not we raise the needed money. But it is needed nonetheless, lest we go deeper in the hole than we already are financially.
More donations, John? There seems to be a donation for everything these days over at Debunking Christianity. There's a 'Donate' button located on the newly designed homepage, and that usually goes towards funding John's housing expenses, because, according to John, he only makes 75 cents for every one of his books sold.
If John is the honorary guest to this banquet I would suspect that those who had sent him the invitation would have been voluntarily payed his way, albeit to exclude his wife's additional expenses. Furthermore, John clearly displays a Rook Hawkins ignorance when he classifies the SBL in his own words as "prestigious." It has been said before (not on this blog) that the SBL is not a high-end membership club. Just about anyone can get in if they're willing to pay or give some contribution back to the organization. Here is the page that SBL uses to outline their membership criteria: http://www.sbl-site.org/membership/joinnow.aspx
Membership rates are:
Full Membership: $65.00
Student Membership: $25.00
Associate Membership: $45.00
What are the benefits? Vendor and online retailer discounts.
How does one join? By providing their first and last name/e-mail address and creating a password for their SBL account.
Therefore membership with AAA (I do indeed fit into this category) would make one a certified auto mechanic. It's sixty or seventy bucks annually, you know. But you get benefits on basically everything. It's got to be for something merit-based.
OR John thinks that spending a few bucks to join a club is what gives his life meaning. He "belongs" to a community, and he has to, as it would be impossible for him to do otherwise and not get the recognition he believes he so deserves.
Maybe in John's world, money really can buy everything.
Could it be?
Membership rates are:
Full Membership: $65.00
Student Membership: $25.00
Associate Membership: $45.00
What are the benefits? Vendor and online retailer discounts.
How does one join? By providing their first and last name/e-mail address and creating a password for their SBL account.
Therefore membership with AAA (I do indeed fit into this category) would make one a certified auto mechanic. It's sixty or seventy bucks annually, you know. But you get benefits on basically everything. It's got to be for something merit-based.
OR John thinks that spending a few bucks to join a club is what gives his life meaning. He "belongs" to a community, and he has to, as it would be impossible for him to do otherwise and not get the recognition he believes he so deserves.
Maybe in John's world, money really can buy everything.
Could it be?
Posts
Maybe in John's world, money really can buy everything.
ReplyDeleteBut he stated unequivocally beforehand that he will attend the SBL banquet any way whether the dimwit cultists donate or not.
My question is what the hell John is going to do there with his juvenile Biblical Scholarship? John isn't a Biblical Scholar by any standard. You must have studied enough of the ancient manuscripts, Greek or Hebrew, pertaining to biblical matters, to be eligible as a Biblical Scholar, and recognized as so. To study the whole canonized Bible, even gazillion times, does not make one to be named a Biblical Scholar. John is simply going there to scam the banquet with his usual mumbo-jumbo of, you see, I am an ex-minister, I am former student of Bill Craig, I am an author of WIBA and all those mish mash stuff typical of utterly narcissist diseased elderly!
No doubt the headlines on tomorrow's blogs will have the words, "Loftus Admits He's Insane."- John Loftus
ReplyDeleteApparently, intended to be a pre-emptive strike on blog that scares John the most, presumably, the DL blog.
O-ho, he must have been schizophrenic nowadays of his ultra anticipation on what is going to be the today's thread title of the blog he fears the most, DL.
DL is just a blog as much as DC is, but you know what, John is terribly sick of the existance of the blog that stands on the way of his glory, of his paradise, of his bliss, and that blog is DL.
And oh, he is scared of TBT, JPH and other collegues of DL as much as a rat is scared of a cat, and wakes early every morning to peep on DL if the monster is online or not. DAMN to John, DL is still online!