They’ve got three more days, but so far, Crazy Ivan’s response is still the best that the Dawkins cheerleading club has managed despite cranking out 1780 posts on the subject of The Irrational Atheist. Fortunately, one Dominic Saltarelli looks as if he might actually be capable of presenting an argument of at least some degree of competence:
“Vox Day” shouldn’t just be ignored. For the sake of intellectual honesty, he should be crushed. And that can only be done when you get to know him as a person, which means reading the book to see how it is he draws those wild conclusions he posts on that blog of his. Which is something I intend to at least take a stab at once I finish reading the book.
I completely agree. If you think you can crush me and the arguments I’ve presented in TIA, then take your best shot. If I’m the ignorant, idiotic, illiterate poopyhead that you keep claiming me to be, then crushing me should be no trouble at all for even the dimmest of the brights. Just remember what ol’ Vox Day does when the Net quakes, the poison insults fall from the sky, and the pillars of atheism shake with fury. Yeah, Vox Day just looks that big old hissy fit right in the eye and says, “Give me your best shot. I can take it.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Saltarelli appears to be the exception, as it looks like Dawkins is mostly followed by a pathetic collection of intellectually dishonest lapdogs, losers and little bitches with nothing but bark. Steve Zara demonstrates:
I have a lot of sympathy with this view. But, I am sorry to say, I don’t think it will work. Someone like Vox Day has almost certainly already worked out all the counter-arguments. In fact, I am sure he would not have written the book in the first place if he had not known the response. He even attempted to provoke the predicted responses on this site. My view is that the best response is to ignore the book at this stage. I see no evidence that it has gained significant publicity.
And that says all you need to know about the intellectual level of militant, evangelical atheism. As I wrote in TIA, the not-so-new atheists are afraid. They’re afraid of religion, they’re afraid of what science hath wrought, they’re afraid of the future, they’re afraid that God just might exist, and most of all, they’re afraid to have their irrationality, ignorance and intellectual mediocrity exposed for all the world to see. Whether the book ever receives a modicum of publicity or not is irrelevant; the truth it contains will eventually come out.
But Mr. Zara is partially correct. Being a lifelong strategy gamer I have naturally worked out many convincing counter-attacks to all of the obvious atheist defenses, which is why none of the atheist icons are likely to ever dare confronting me in debate in any form. (Heck, I’ve even named some of the inevitable atheist defenses, like the Fighting Withdrawal, Defiance on Hill 1917 and Zara’s own response, Silence That Gun.) The Unholy Trinity would much rather take on the likes of Michael Jackson’s rabbi and other soft-spoken, decrepit old men, who wouldn’t humiliate them by taking them apart even if they could. But this doesn’t mean that I believe I have an utterly air-tight case that is unrebuttable in even the smallest detail. Despite being an Internet Superintelligence, I still make the occasional mistake and there’s bound to be a number of them in any book of 100k words. That’s precisely why I maintain a public list of errata over in the TIA forums. (So far the dumbest error is when I dated the October Revolution to 1919, two years after it actually occurred. I have no idea how that happened as I know perfectly well when it took place.) But so far none have proven to be significant or even damaging to any of my arguments, and unlike the New Atheists, I recognize that the only way to continue to strengthen my case is to allow it to be tested by everyone, friend and foe. That is why, unlike them, I neither fear nor ignore criticism, but welcome it instead.
So bring it, bitches. Because if you don’t, you’re admitting to everyone of every creed or lack of creed that you’ve got nothing except complaints about my lack of etiquette. Yeah, that’s deeply relevant coming from a group that actually uses the cretinous word “fucktard”…. And you can’t convincingly feign disinterest either, not after vandalizing Wikipedia, trying to substitute reviews of a four year-old editorial for a newly published book, posting one-star Amazon reviews of a book you admittedly haven’t read, and clucking like cowardly chickens from the safety of Richard Dawkins’s Internet embrace.
As for Diacanu, I can only say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
