Comments on: Sorry, Vox, I’m not buying it.

By: merkur

merkur — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:54:16 +0000

I think it’s fair to say that Vox Day is by nature a contrarian in both his political and religious views. It is questionable whether he is in fact a Christian or libertarian at all – he apparently holds those positions in order to make himself feel superior to the “mainstream”, but even within those groups he insists on taking positions that do not fit with an orthodox reading.

He’s basically trying to have his cake and eat it – needless to say, his readers are not intelligent enough to notice this.

By: Galloway

Galloway — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:08:15 +0000

Mercur says ” He doesn’t seem to have realised that, if sincerely held, this belief means that he isn’t actually Christian. ”

In chapter 15 of his book, VD seems to say that the god that he worships is NOT omniscient, which, if true, puts him in direct conflict with mainstream Christianity. Is he starting his own Christian sect?

By: Deacon Duncan

Deacon Duncan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:40:36 +0000

Sounds like he has resolved the paradox of the Trinity then.

By: merkur

merkur — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:38:07 +0000

If he truly thinks the evidence for polytheism is stronger than the evidence for Christianity

It’s better than that – he believes that Christianity is a polytheistic religion (you’ll have to find it on his blog for details, I lack the stamina). He doesn’t seem to have realised that, if sincerely held, this belief means that he isn’t actually Christian. None of his camp followers seem to have noticed this, however.

By: valdemar

valdemar — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:53:03 +0000

You’ve done an excellent job revealing that VD’s grasp of science, history and rational discourse is mediocre at best. That he’s now pretending to have a stinging argument for the existence of god suggests that he’s a pathetic attention-seeker of a rather obvious sort. Maybe he also knows where the Holy Grail is, along with Atlantis and Ben Stein’s career?

VD claims:

1. Religious faith is a jolly good thing and without it our civilisation is doomed.
2. Atheism is a jolly bad thing and should it prevail, the whole doom thing will indeed happen.
3. The New Atheists are getting a lot of attention and the culture wars may well be going their way.
4. A decisive, new and irrefutable argument for the existence of god might settle their hash.
5. VD has devised such an argument – one that nobody has ever thought of before. Wow!
6. But he’s not going to tell anybody what it is. Because he just won’t. So there.

Brilliant. With friends like VD, does god need Richard Dawkins to test the faithful?

By: jim

jim — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:38:32 +0000

I had a little dialogue with Vox a few months back, and can’t imagine trying to debate him in a standard debater’s venue, simply because it would take an hour to untangle ONE of his convoluted premises…and he fires them off like a Gatling gun! He seems to consider himself an historian of sorts, and yet he can straightfacedly ask a rhetorical question like “how do you know Thomas Jefferson existed?”, equating the historical evidence with that for the existence and life of Jesus Christ. A remarkable lack of understanding concerning real historical investigation, not to mention his failure to grasp the hierarchical approach to different kinds of evidence. He’s great at burying somebody under mountains of debatable minutia, but seems almost autistic in his ability to reasonably synthesize information.
So I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing much in the way of ‘proofs’ for God from him; he doesn’t seem to have that sort of aptitude.

On the plus side, it seems his sense of self-esteem is thoroughly and unshakeably intact.

By: VorJack

VorJack — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:19:30 +0000

What is this drive for verbal debates that we see on the apologist side? Anybody with a moments experience in formal debate know that the winner is determined by style and sophistry rather than substance. Or did I just answer my own question?

Throughout history, the written form has been the way to develop and convey important ideas. A book or an article give you the chance to refine your idea before publication, to examine the implications and anticipate arguments. It give you the time and space to explore your idea. And the internet gives you the ability to do all of this, publish it almost free, then go back and make modifications or engage in discussion with your audience. The great thinkers of the past centuries would have killed for a blog. Can you image what history would be like if, for example, Galileo could have written and published without having to suck up to the Medici family for patronage? And yet, so many apologists and anti-evolutionists clamber for formal debates in which to present their ideas. It boggles the mind.