The Results Are In

Is John an egoist? You decide:

My Point About JP Holding is That He Can Safely Be Ignored.

By John W. Loftus at 10/16/2009

I'm probably not going to leave this post up for long since I don't want to give him any more attention than I must do in order to make my point. My point can be found in the percentages in the poll I conducted in the sidebar for two weeks, not the actual number of votes themselves (most visitors to DC by far didn't even vote). For if I left the poll up for another two weeks or months the percentages of votes among people who are interested in the God-hypothesis on the web would probably be the same, except that he would run out of ignorant Christian friends who voted as they did (he cultivates them). Look at the poll and the percentages with me:

What Do You Think of JP Holding?

1) One of the best apologists around (I’m an ignorant Christian) 47 (10%)

2) An average dime-a-dozen wannabe apologist 59 (13%)

3) An obnoxious hack who is an embarrassment to Christianity 137 (30%)

4) I don’t know of him 207 (46%)

Sure I slanted the poll by how I phrased the questions, but I did give people the option to vote positively if they wanted to. Of the people who know him 81% don't think he's important enough to engage (from 1-3), while 56% of this same grouping think he's a total embarrassment to the faith he seeks to defend. Still an additional 46% of the people who voted don't even know he exists (from 4). Add them together and that means nearly 90% of the people interested in the God-hypothesis don't know him or care to hear about him (from 1-4). That's why I usually ignore him, because if we subtract the 25-30 votes from his ignorant Christian friends who cannot think for themselves who voted for him (from 1, and come on, that is the only reasonable explanation for many of these votes since only ignorant Christian friends who do not know of Swinburne, Plantinga, Craig, Copan, Moreland, and others, would vote that way), then he can be safely ignored. He is no threat to skepticism. My goal is to marginalize him, and I will.

That is, until he becomes better educated and also comes up to the adult world of respectful discourse.

Consider this: John admits to slanting the questions in order to produce presupposed answers, and based on this fact now argues that the voting participants deliberately and purposefully voted against JP. We ask you rational people, is this an honest inquiry or is it meant to personally attack and demean?

"It's Not Personal, Really!"

I don't know what it is about a man that just can't keep to his own word. What's even more of a shocker is that people actually listen to such a person and actually take his claims and assertions seriously. This alone is enough to compel someone to lose faith in all of humanity, a boat that has long sailed as far as I'm concerned.

Readers: Is there anything peculiar about this(???):

What do you think of JP Holding?

	One of the best apologists around (I’m an ignorant Christian)
	An average dime-a-dozen wannabe apologist
	An obnoxious hack who is an embarrasment to Christianity
	I don’t know of him

This poll literally came out of nowhere. The last post prior to the poll was this.

In fact, it was only a couple of days ago this week where John added a little intro tidbit into one of his latest here. That particular tidbit reads:

I have usually ignored JP Holding for the most part this past year or so and I was just wondering what people thought of him. Check out the following redated post and the poll to the right in the sidebar. Until he comes out of the sewer and up to the adult civilized world of discourse my plan is to ignore him. I call on both Christians and skeptics to do likewise.

Hmm...that's....odd, to say the least. What did Holding do this time to upset John?

Is it this post right here? http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=132208

Funny that post is a result of John's own stupidity. JP is only guilty of posting the thread documenting his idiocy. It's not JP's fault that John is a total asshat.

In response to the poll, Holding posted a parody comeback on TWeb here: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=132677

And so it is in these regards John thinks it's appropriate to bring up Holding's name, for the millionth time.

John's followers seem to be too stupid to figure it out for themselves: Why would Loftus make a spontaneous poll about JPH and then argue that if Holding somehow doesn't change his ways, he's going to be put on "ignore" (something Loftus has said countless times)? Furthermore, why would we CARE??? John isn't and has never been that important. Anyone who thinks that Holding does it just to get Loftus' "attention" is just about as deranged and deluded as Loftus is himself.

What's clear is that John suffers from delusions of grandeur, or delusions of an exceedingly high and undeserved status of significance and worth. But his followers keep lapping it up. They are oblivious to the patterns of behavior. There is simply no good reason that Loftus should have posted the poll in the first place other than Loftus' inability to deal with his own shortcomings when they are made explicit by someone else.

What's the difference between what us TWebbers say and do to what John says and does? The answer: We don't claim to ignore anything John has said or continually says. This blog wouldn't be here if our main objective was to ignore him. It's here to point out what should be obvious to the general public, but the gene pool has determined otherwise. The only claim ever made by this site which even remotely reflects what John has said is in offering civil discussion and debunking the claims coming from the other side. But everything else is a matter of words and actions, and how well the two line up with each other.

John complains about the superstitiousness of modern-day people, and yet his followers don't know or even want to willingly consider the lies and half-truths that John has thrown out to the world under the guise of free speech and civility. He really is just as bad as the Pat Robertson types, and about as intelligent. I would suspect that these claims would eventually end their cycles of repetitiveness and redundancy, but it's best to realize that John is a broken record. We should expect more of these instances to come in the future and we should also expect that John will blame his own faults on what Holding has to say or what he has done in the past. This is just standard Loftus-protocol.

Recently Mike Huckabee (trust me when I say that I would not normally quote this man) said the following on his show:

"You know it's foolish for us to act as though our point of view makes us always right and the other guy always wrong. Having different views is a good thing. But having different standards is not. If something is right, it's right. And if it's wrong, it's just wrong. Diversity is a good thing, but duplicity is not."

The primary error in John's thinking is that this blog is going to disappear and vanish long before Debunking Christianity actually "closes shop" for real. But the truth is is that even after Debunking Christianity goes bye bye for good, we will still be here.

So John, it's time for you to accept the fact that you're not that special. Deal with it.

John Loftus on "Enlightenment"

John posted a new video today featuring his second interview with Andy Diekroger on The Enlightenment Show. To count, there have been many "problems" John has brought up that somehow need immediate reconciliation with Christian orthodoxy and belief in a benevolent God, ranging from the "problem" of evil, why every living thing on the planet should have been created a vegetarian (because vegetarianism doesn't consume living life forms), how the God of the Bible condones animal abuse (???) and encourages that those made in "His image" should take advantage of the environment. And now, John strikes at another angle using the same premise: "The Problem of Pain":

The Enlightenment Show: John Loftus and the Problem of Pain from FreeThought Fort Wayne on Vimeo.

As always, John makes extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence:

1:28 "Even bad people don't need to suffer as much as they do." Why? And what specifically here are we defining as "suffering"? If good people suffer too much, why should bad people suffer less???

One such example of a "bad person" that comes to mind would be in the case of serial killer and well-known cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. During his killing spree, Dahmer is known to have lured young homosexual men into his apartment complex, drug them, mutiliate them, and then dump their limbs into a tub of acid or refrigerate them for later consumption. In the year of 1994, while Dahmer was in prison, he was murdered by one of his fellow inmates as he took a swing at Dahmer's temple with a large freeweight. The man who killed Dahmer claimed it was God who had been giving him direct and specific orders. But that's beside the point. What really matters here is how you go about comparing the fact that Dahmer cannibalized his unsuspecting victims to his own murder at the hand of a dumbbell. Did Dahmer suffer too much, Mr. Loftus?

5:59 John Loftus on The Passion of The Christ: "The film itself was...uh...brutal...uh...I could not reconcile how any person would deserve that kind of punishment for ANYTHING that they did. Even my worst enemy (and I had one at the time). I would NEVER wish that upon her [presumably Linda the stripper]. I would never wish that upon anybody which was so gruesome. I thought to myself 'That's ignorance.'" Ignorance? Maybe I'm ignorant for failing to understand why this is the case. Or is John ignorant for failing to understand the purpose and function of Roman crucifixion? Indeed by modern standards, crucifixion and flagellation are primitive standards of punishment and carrying out justice, based on primitive standards of criminal criteria. But this is also a somewhat ethnocentric projection of Western society and values. The standards held by other distant and foreign nations of the past are what was simply acknowledged and understood by the general populace at the time. Usually a "normal" individual doesn't go out and commit third-degree murder for the same reasons that a citizen in a predominantly Muslim nation does not go out and steal bread or publicly criticize Islam in a derogatory manner. Ignorance applies only in the sense that Loftus doesn't understand or fathom the what and why for the topic he is discussing, therefore no one else does or can, either...

7:17 John on his book, Why I Became an Atheist: "If Barbara Walters can write a 'tell-all' book where she tells about having sex with so and so, and doing this with so and so, why can't I? This is a book of 'tell-all'. This is a 'tell-all' era. So, I tell all, you know [laughs].?" The first chapter "My Christian Conversion and Deconversion" is something I have commented on in my chapter contribution to The Cowboy Who Wasn't There. See if you think that John wrote the book for tell-all purposes.

9:36 Returning to The Passion of the Christ: "I had already decided that such a view was ignorant. But when I saw how well the movie did, when I saw the numbers, when I saw people flocking too it, when I saw churches literally buying blocks of seats just so everyone could go see it...that was just too much for me. What I did was decide to come out." Oh?...



11:36 On Criminal Punishment: "What is the relationship between punishment and forgiveness? We all know of people who have been punished for their crimes where the victim still doesn't forgive him. And likewise, we know of people who have never been punished for their crimes, where a victim has forgiven him, even though he has never been punished. There is no logical relationship between forgiveness and punishment. There is no reason that you have to be punished that I can forgive you. I should be able to forgive you even if you have never been punished." A valid point to be made for modern society. However, as stated before, this is being argued for modern society and not taking antiquity into account. It is also disingenuous to state that the Bible argues that forgiveness and compassion are achieved only through bloodshed. Biblical narratives and analogies today would be considered simplistic as Western modernism would seek out more practical resolutions and not resort to barbaric depictions or violent alternatives. But again, this was the spirit and passion of the age by which people made their cases clear. This was their means of communication and language, and therefore, this is what society operated on as it was best in tune with cultural traditions and responses to the environment. Language evolves like everything else. Therefore it might be said that the violence and barbarism in the Old Testament exists because it was reflective of the environmental conditions of the age, not because people were deranged in their mentalities. Two examples from the Old Testament include:

1 Kings 3:16-28

Genesis 22:1-12

22:44 John's Reiteration of his Outsider's Test for Faith: "The number one place we get our biases from are our parents and our culture. We grow up adopting them. That's why when you are grown up in a Muslim culture, you will see things from a Muslim perspective. Just like a pair of glasses. And the same thing with a Christian culture or a Hindu culture or any other culture. In fact, if you grew up in some places in America you'd grow up in a snake-handling culture." In fact, religion isn't exclusive in this sense and there is no good reason for John to treat it like it somehow is. This might not be his goal in mind exactly, but consider that cultural academics are more likely to view things holistically (as in wholly) rather than by a culture's individual components. So someone growing up in a Muslim culture not only has a "bias" in showing favoritism to Islam, they probably are also in favor of the economic and political systems of that particular culture as well. Everything from how you eat, dress, speak, walk, and bathe are all a part of one's relative cultural background.The Outsider's Test for Faith tries to break up culture into different segments where they simply cannot be neatly segregated into sections. They are intertwined to some degree or another, but never entirely independent.

44:03 Historical Validity of the Old Testament: "Even evangelicals like Peter Ins, Kenton Sparks, and John Walton, three bona fide evangelical Christians, are now saying that the Old Testament mythology is borrowed from Mesopotamia...They're admitting that these stories were borrowed myths from their day and age. So Adam and Eve never existed." Gasp! John implies this is some sort of problem. It isn't. The evidence of this issue clearly points to the Jews refining the story of Gilgamesh to make their own unique point clear. John apparently also isn't aware that there is evidence of a flood which occured prior to Gilgamesh being transcribed. Of course, he probably isn't arguing against this as a "possibility." But the point being made is that the story was taken from Mesopotamia to build on the original authorship of Gilgamesh with some intentional reformations in mind. The original myths themselves are considered by historians to be based on somewhat factually historical information but exaggerated for the simple purpose of creating a captivating narrative for the masses. It is to depict them in a positively symbolic painting. The Jews took this and used it to convey their own philosophical beliefs. The only problem with this argument of John's is if you do in fact choose to believe it as a literal historical account.

The rest of the video consists of philosophical and theological arguments against God, which I try to distance myself from as it does not pertain to my subject area of study.

A Tale Told by an Idiot

John Loftus must have at least 20 feet, because it seems like he has a whole lot to put in his mouth. In a post titled "History, Faith and the Real William Shakespeare" poor John used Wikipedia as a reliable source -- which is dumb enough as is -- to support the even dumber argument that "there is a great amount of doubt about who he [Shakespeare] actually was..."

What this is, rather, is yet more evidence that John Loftus doesn't do serious checking on anything whatsoever before he opens his big fat yammer.

As James Hannam wrote for me in Shattering the Christ Myth, there is NO doubt about who Shakespeare was -- except among fringe loony tunes, the sort of people who would edit Wikipedia. I'll quote liberally from Hannam (you can find this at http://jameshannam.com/christmyth.htm)

**

Deep inside the vaguely fascist edifice of the University of London’s Senate House is a room that the university authorities view with some embarrassment. It forms part of the library and is mainly used for seminars and evening studies. I spent many happy hours there myself learning how to read Anglo Saxon manuscripts. Before class began, I once took the opportunity to scan the spines of the books that line the room’s walls. They formed an incoherent collection relating to late Tudor literature, textual criticism, cryptology and William Shakespeare. I learnt from the professor who took our class that the books all belonged to a certain Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence (d. 1914) who donated them to the library, with a substantial sum of money, on condition that they remained together in their original cabinets. The library was not too keen on the books but it wanted the cash so the deal was struck.

You almost certainly haven’t heard of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence and neither had I until I found myself sitting in his room. So, why is the University of London embarrassed about him? Well, imagine if the library at Yale had a Graham Hancock Room full of books devoted to proving the existence of Atlantis. Or that Princeton accepted the Dan Brown Collection, containing the source material for the Da Vinci Code. That is how most academics feel about the life’s work of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence – for he set out to prove that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare.

In fact, you could fill a fair-sized library with all the volumes from the subgenre devoted to showing that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. It is not just Sir Francis Bacon who is fingered. Christopher Marlowe is the current culprit of choice, even though he died before most of Shakespeare’s plays were written. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was a blameless Tudor aristocrat who was no more capable of penning King Lear than I am, but several ‘researchers’ have produced books claiming that he did just that. There is even a special name attached to those who deny the blindingly obvious fact that Shakespeare wrote his plays. They are called anti-Stratfordians.

Capacious though the output of the anti-Stratfordians may be, it has evinced little or no reaction from mainstream Shakespearean scholarship. Most critics do not want to give the harebrained idea any more exposure than it receives already. However, Professor Sir Brian Vickers, in the guise of a book review of the latest anti-Stratfordian tome, gave the whole lot of them a good blasting with both barrels in the Times Literary Supplement in 2005. And Professor Jonathan Bate (1958 –) devoted a chapter in his excellent book The Genius of Shakespeare (1997) to trying to understand the reluctance of so many people to give the Bard his due. It is worth mentioning that Vickers and Bate, eminent scholars that they both may be, agree on almost nothing apart from the absurdity of the anti-Stratfordians. Indeed, I would be reluctant to have them both of them around for tea at the same time in case their disagreement on the virtues of the First Folio descended into physical violence.

Bate suggests there are three reasons why people are prepared to believe that Shakespeare didn’t write his plays. The first is the lack of any original manuscripts. We tend to make a fetish of a certain kind of physical evidence and when it is not present, become unreasonably sceptical about everything else. As it happens, several documents signed by Shakespeare do exist but these not include any of his plays.

The second reason is that most people do not have a sufficient background in the subject to properly evaluate the evidence. Anti-Stratfordians tend to be amateurs who have not read enough on Elizabethan theatre to see just how wildly implausible their ideas are. Let me give you an analogy. I can recognise the difference between a Yorkshire and Lancashire accent without very much trouble because I am English. I would never mistake an Irishman for a Scotsman. On the other hand, when I was living in New Jersey, I was frequently assumed to be Irish and had no idea that Californians sound different to Texans. Distinguishing accents isn’t something you tend to be taught. Rather you learn it by experience and by being immersed in a particular culture. It’s the same with history. If you have been studying a period for long enough, ideas like the anti-Stratfordians’ are as obviously incongruous as a baseball bat on a cricket pitch.
The third reason that Shakespeare is frequently denied the credit for his plays is that after he died, he was deified. His reputation today is so stratospheric that it seems implausible that a grammar school boy from a small town in the Midlands could have achieved what he did. Much is made of the fact he never went to university or that he had bourgeois origins. Surely the man who reached such heights of greatness must have been born of the nobility or at least attended Oxford or Cambridge. The normality of Shakespeare’s life trips us up. He was a successful business man and professional actor as well as playwright whose career we can trace quite accurately. Furthermore, he was recognised as extremely gifted during his lifetime. It made him rich.

... The nature of the evidence brought forward by conspiracy theories is much the same whatever the subject. There is a false belief that we have relatively little contemporary evidence for the life of Shakespeare or Jesus. In fact, we know far more about both of them than almost any other personage of their times, barring military heroes and royalty. Likewise, the theorists tend to present contrived readings of the relevant texts, claiming they provide clues that simply do not stack up to careful analysis. Furthermore, the perfectly good testimony we do have for the orthodox view is rejected by the conspiracy theorist for bogus reasons. For Shakespeare we are told that all his fellow actors were in on the deception. While with Jesus, we are told we cannot trust any Christian text. In other words, the people most interested in both Jesus and Shakespeare, their followers and colleagues respectively, should be debarred from giving evidence.

**

John makes the idiot statement, "The answer to the question of who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare depends on which scholar you read and accept. Different scholars on this question will place different probabilities to their own suppositions." NO, JOHN. No "scholar" believes any of this anti-Stratfordian crap -- not any scholar who knows anything abotu Shakespeare. This is yet another example of John's uncritical stupidity (as if relying on Wikipedia was not enough evidence). He has no sense of sifting through authorities critically. That's why he keeps getting gigged for using con artists like Spong as sources. There is NO doubt, here, John, except among, ignorant people. Meaning YOU.

John closes his post with the whiny-whine, "....it is barbaric of God to send people to hell if they get a historical question wrong!" Well, John, keeping in mind that I believe hell to be a state of shame and disgrace, not fire and pitchforks, I don't find it barbaric at all for God to send someone there who is as irresponsible with the facts as you are -- not to mention someone like you who lies constantly, insults and mocks people with disabilities, and can't admit error until you've had all your limbs torn off.

Do you get my point, John?

John W. Loftus, Friend of the Disabled

I'll start with an admission of bias: I'm someone who has been around people with disabilities for a long time. My stepfather and grandfather were totally blind. My mother was a teacher of students with disabilities for many years. I married a wonderful woman who is legally blind and has other minor health issues.

That's why John Loftus is about to get his can kicked again by me here, for his birthday post titled, "At 55 Today I'm Wondering If I Can Book This Guy in Advance to Sing at My Funeral! LOL"

In case he takes it down....John links to a YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ZU3YpLM18 in which a man in church with some sort of speech impediment works his way through Amazing Grace. The video title (and whoever posted it this way deserves as much scorn as John does) implies that the man is a former crackhead, though it's far from clear that he is. He may have some type of disability; a speech impediment like this one could have any number of causes. But regardless of the cause, to post such a thing in mockery is a disgrace, and for John to make fun of it this way is triply disgraceful.

Let's be reminded that John has a record for mocking people with disabilities. As Truth be Told, our host here, noted in his chapter for The Cowboy Who Wasn't There:

***

Perhaps one of the most shameful moments for Loftus came after a time after he debated TWeb member "ApologiaPhoenix" (Nick Peters) on the problem of evil. The consensus of TWeb members was that Nick handily defeated Loftus in debate. To set this up, it should be noted that Nick has a disability (Asperger's Syndrome, with some autism). After realizing that he was not the recognized winner of the debate, Loftus wrote:

No one but the ignorant would claim that I am ignorant.

To me Nick is just like a very bad Karaoke singer but doesn't know he is one, so he continues to badly sing out his song of arguments

Because he's handicapped, Christians here won't tell him otherwise. He's going to study to be an apologist, but he will fall flat on his face. There are a great many people in ministry who will fall flat on their faces because no one told them the truth that they should not pursue such goals. Nick is one of them. But since Christians believe God can make clay into gold they encourage him in faith, even though deep down inside they really don't believe it.

Tell him the truth! Save him from pursuing what will be a dead end career for him.

Nick, when you realize you don't have the brain power for being an apologist and your hopes and dreams are dashed, and possibly even you faith, remember who told you the truth. It was me.

Do something else with your life, and I'm serious.

For the record, it should be noted that even at this early stage in his career, several notable names have recognized Nick's talent in this area, notably Norman Geisler.

***

Although John's arm was twisted to the point that he issued a half-hearted apology for this commentary, it is obvious from this last post of his that he hasn't learned his lesson. I often say that fundy atheists like John retain a certain amount of bigotry from the fundy past, and this is a classic example.

And of course, typical of John, he can't even own up and makes excuses when called down. "Rob R" gave John a good lashing for this that deserves to be noted:

Do we know that this guy actually damaged his mind on drugs? He could've been born with mental retardation.Careful John. You know what scripture says about those who mock the poor (and it would seem the same logic of that consideration applies to the poor of mind).So just what human dignity and worth can we say that he has in a materialistic picture?

Loftus' reply speaks for itself in terms of his arrogance and ignorant bigotry:

You're a killjoy Rob. It's my birffday and I can have fun if I want to. So there.

You're absolutely right, John. It's your birthday. Go out and have some fun. Why don't you celebrate some more by pulling crutches away from people with polio, giving blind people the wrong bill back for change, and kicking Stepen Hawking's wheelchair down a steep incline? How about you start a show titled America's Funniest Disabilities? You'd be the perfect host since you obviously have a very serious one. Unfortunately, there's no cure or medication for the one you have, which is outright bigotry combined with magnified stupidity.


Happy Birthday, John, you jackass.

Changing Shifts

Today's important news to note: The Cowboy Who Wasn't There has finally been published for the internet to see. My own chapter and a few of JP's can be viewed for free as sample chapters. Although it was against my intentions of having the book available only to Tektonics subscribers (what I'd consider sort of preaching to the choir), JP compiled the project himself, I merely contributed. Go out and get subscribed if you aren't already if you'd like to read the whole thing yourself, although I'm sure with time it may go onto Amazon.com or even into print (JP has no current intentions of it going into print at this time).

On other things, akakiwibear has returned from his blogger dormancy and has requested to be removed from the list of blog staff here at Debunking Loftus. I have respected his wishes and he has now been removed as a contributor to this blog. It is also worth noting that because akakiwibear made this public on his own blog, John determined that once akakiwibear was removed, he could once again comment on Debunking Christianity. I can only make that out as John trying to remove as much vocal opposition as possible, because as much opposed as this blog is to John, I still permit him to comment here.

Harry McCall has also returned in new form: That is, he has severed ties completely with Debunking Christianity because of John's overbearing narcissism. I have been considering the possibility of bringing him onboard to replace our old friend kiwi because McCall is a former DC member and can shed some light on things most of us here wouldn't even know about. Not to mention John's attempts at silencing opposition would be further thwarted. ;) McCall can accept or decline the informal invitation if he so chooses. In the event that McCall does join us, I am hoping that we might be able to bury the hatchet in areas where it has been most prominent, and we can all start on a new foot.

On other non-blogging related updates, Patrick Swayze, the star of "Ghost", "Roadhouse" and "Dirty Dancing" died yesterday after having fought a two year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. Swayze knew he was dying and that his death was inevitably in the near-future, but nonetheless is it a tragic loss for the light of the world. R.I.P., Patrick (1952 - 2009).

Our Gift to John

As was expected, John had been venturing around TWeb anonymously scanning traces of his name to and fro to find something good he can pick at and inflate his ego to newer and more lengthier heights.

Earlier today John added a music app titled "Godless songs" fashioned after the music app I put up on your right, which contains the featured song "Sad, Sad Doubting John" written by JPH and sung by TWebber "Andius" a new favorite of mine. What made this suspect was that the app John had uploaded was from the same exact site mine is: http://www.mixpod.com There would be no reason to be alarmed over this if it weren't for the fact that only after a couple of days of embedding it here, John proceeded sometime either this late morning or mid-afternoon to follow suit. That's just one of many reasons, at least, to suspect that watching eyes are upon our community, even if John claims otherwise.

Now to be truthful here, I did personally send John an e-mail notifying him of the YouTube video version of the song to your right. And was it done in the manner of "sticking it to him"? Almost so. I just happen to know that the outcomes and reactions coming from Team Loftus are almost always of predictability, and I want Loftus to know that he can't just waltz through arenas without first being challenged by a gladiator or two.

Contrary to the first impression you might have from this newest post, John has known for at least a week now of our upcoming plans for him. This isn't necessarily news. And another thing, if John really had so much disdain for TheologyWeb, why does he go through its threads? (Case in point):

JP Holding promises to write a rebuttal to my work. He (or someone with his approval) wrote:

"John W. Loftus continues to be one of the most well-known internet celebrities of atheism ever since the publication of his collective biography entitled Why I Became an Atheist. In it, he argues that he was once a champion of Christian moral values but was later ostracized by his local faith community for committing adultery and was subsequently overwhelmed by intellectual arguments in which he advocates that by these arguments alone Christianity hangs by a very thin rope. For these past years since the publication of his book, Loftus' writings have remained unchallenged, or at least, have been challenged inadequately."

Thanks JP. Is there anyone saying the same kind of things about you and your arguments?

;-)

Loftus doesn't even provide a link of where he got that. But the answer is right here: http://thecowboywhowasntthere.yolasite.com That's the companion website, (similar to what Richard Carrier had created for John's new book, The Christian Delusion) to our little "project", by the way. Funny that it had only been created yesterday, while the e-mail I sent out to John is nearly a week old. Loooooks like somebody hasn't been true to their word lately. ;)

Two other points:

A) John expresses his paranoia by supposing that the site was created by Holding, as always. NEWS FLASH FOR THE DAFT: Most of the new Loftus sites that have or are coming out these days (including this one) have been or are created by ME. And another thing, I don't need or require Holding's "approval", Johnboy. Usually what happens in these circumstances is that a website is created first, and I consult JP second. Projecting yourself onto others does the world no good, Johnny...

B) The fact that the paragraph being quoted is only a fragment of what is on the site just makes John out to be a snake in the grass. If that was all that was written, it certaintly would compliment him in such a way as to warrant a boosted ego and sense of self. But here's what John left out for his own convenience:

But like most things with humanity, there is always another side of the story. The upcoming e-book "The Cowboy Who Wasn't There" is a substantial rebuttal (and in some respects, a refutation) to the writings of John W. Loftus and his philosophical arguments against "religion." The Cowboy Who Wasn't There will not only analyze the primary arguments set forth by Loftus, but in doing so will demonstrate how the "New Atheist" movement and their arguments are based on stereotypes and oversimplifications. With a jab of humor mixed in with direct confrontation, the book sets out to convince the reader that emotional stakes can and do run high on both sides of the God debate. This book is not arguing mainly against atheism in favor of Christianity, it also advocates for a middle ground in which both atheists and Christians can have intellectual dialogue safely and respectively. It advocates for the integrity of scholars and the ultimate search for truth despite what may be considered popular and appealing to a specific demographic.

If John had included the rest of that paragraph, there is no way he would have been able to make it look like it was being complimentary, as it was never even intended to be interpreted in such a way. Just because one might describe a person as "well known" doesn't really say that they are of admirable character. Barack Obama won the presidency because he was a popular icon of appeal, not because he was actually a straightforward candidate or the best man for the job. John teaches what again?

At least we now have proof that John just can't let things go. He is always watching for opportunities.