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<\/div>\nJohn Loftus runs the influential Debunking Christianity<\/em><\/a> blog and has written several books that seem to have made quite a splash. His words will be in blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Former pastor John Loftus wants to be taken\u00a0so\u00a0seriously by Christians. And some\u00a0do\u00a0take him seriously (even Norman Geisler seems to). I was inclined to do so myself, until I ventured onto\u00a0his blog\u00a0<\/a>last year and saw how he actually interacted with Christians (contrary to the\u00a0noble, lofty sentiments of his blog\u2019s stated approach to discussion<\/a>).<\/p>\n Yet another forum that purported to abide by high standards of ethics in discussion, but in fact fails abominably in holding to them, or else enforces the rules (if at all) with a blatant double standard . . . I\u2019ve seen it a hundred times, and (sad to say) Christian forums (Catholic and Protestant alike) do little better, if at all.<\/p>\n Blogs seemed to be on a higher level for a while, but now they seem to be rapidly going the way of the old discussion boards. Human nature, I reckon. It\u2019s always been difficult to achieve a true, constructive dialogue, and it always\u00a0will\u00a0be, because people too often take such disagreement personally and don\u2019t know how to\u00a0do\u00a0a dialogue (having never learned).<\/p>\n The apex of my experience at\u00a0Debunking Christianity<\/em>\u00a0was when Loftus went ballistic because I (imagine this!!!) criticized his story of \u201cdeconversion\u201d<\/a> from Christianity. You would have thought it was the end of western civilization. He threw another hissy fit when I\u00a0critiqued another argument of his, about God<\/a>. This guy obviously can\u2019t take any criticism. He\u2019s clearly not interested in dialogue with Christians. But he loves to preach to us, because that is the one-way monologue that he prefers (more on that below). He has carried his love of preaching from the pulpit to atheist polemics.<\/p>\n Recently, after a similar ridiculous experience on the\u00a0ExChristian.Net\u00a0site (when I outrageously dared to\u00a0critique the deconversion of the Grand Poobah there: Dave Van Allen<\/a>), Loftus showed up on my blog and basically agreed with Van Allen that I \u201ctrolled\u201d atheist sites (rather than attempting to engage in serious back-and-forth, socratic discussion, which is always my goal in conversing with anyone of different beliefs).<\/p>\n I documented how the charge of trolling was ludicrous, showing how I had stayed at\u00a0Debunking Christianity\u00a0<\/em>for three and a half months, and had engaged in 19 major dialogues with several people. Many atheists (like many Christians and many human beings, period) don\u2019t like it when you disagree with them and can give solid reasons why.<\/p>\n Loftus keeps harping on me to read his book,\u00a0Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Atheist Explains<\/a><\/em>. He has made the ludicrous claim that virtually any Christian brave enough to read it would almost certainly lose his faith (can you believe the\u00a0hubris<\/em>\u00a0of that<\/em>??!!). I have said that if he sent me a review copy, I\u2019d be happy to do an extensive critique of the book.<\/p>\n He refuses, implying that I am simply looking for a freebie. For my part, I offered him a free e-book version of my book about atheism:\u00a0Christian Worldview vs. Postmodernism<\/em><\/a>, saying that this dispute was not about money, but about truth.<\/p>\n Anyway, when Loftus\u00a0showed up on my blog, I was willing to give him another shot. After all, we all blow it sometimes and hopefully we learn from our mistakes and try to do better. He seemed serious and sincere, and wrote:<\/p>\n Many of our beliefs contain an irreducible personal element to them, and we subsequently have a strong tendency to rationally support what we have come to believe on less than rational grounds. Some feel the need to defend what they believe more than others, like you, and me . . . I have written some things on these issues.\u00a0Take a good look at them. If you choose to respond let me know when you do.\u00a0<\/span>(9-29-07\u00a0on my blog)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I did make it clear, though, that if I were to do this, he would have to do a better job of interacting, and not erupt again in a spasm of irrational insult, as in our previous encounters:<\/p>\n Hope you are doing well these days. . . . What reason would I have to believe you could maintain your composure in a dialogue? You haven\u2019t yet with me . . . I seek dialogue with people who don\u2019t have to make everything personal and take everything personally. Perhaps you have undergone a major change of approach since our previous encounters?\u00a0(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n John Loftus replied:<\/p>\n I\u2019m doing well, kind burned out right now, but thank you. You too. . . . Our testimonies merely share a personal story. You can liken them to people at AA meetings who share what alcohol did to them and why they are leaving it behind them. They contain arguments, of course, but they are also very personal. It\u2019s hard not to react strongly when someone basically says we shouldn\u2019t feel the way we do, because feelings are also expressed. Doing what you do gets a rise out of us because of this. The webmaster at ex-christian.net responded beautifully to your critique, I thought. I just think you would do better to deal with our arguments, the kind that I linked to earlier, that\u2019s all . . . the reason you provoked my ire is that you came to DC and evaluated personal testimonies, not our arguments, and as I said these stories are personal. Just like Christian testimonies they express to the \u201cchoir\u201d their initial reasons and they express their personal feelings about why they left the Christian faith.\u00a0Cheers.<\/span>\u00a0Tell you what, deal with<\/span>\u00a0what I said here<\/a>. (9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, does that strike you as a sincere and fairly friendly challenge? If you agree, then you got the same impression that I received myself. So I resolved to make a response to the papers he asked me to look over, but not without trepidation (as it turned out, more than justified). I wrote:<\/p>\n The strong insults from John, as I recall now, actually began during this series on evil, before I ever critiqued his deconversion. So he was reacting emotionally to arguments other than simply his (as he says) simplified, less-serious-of-an-argument deconversion story. I\u2019m willing to give his papers another shot, but the proof is in the pudding, as to whether an actual dialogue will occur, minus the extraneous, unhelpful elements of emotionalism and personal sensitivity.\u00a0(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And so, last Sunday (the entire afternoon), I issued a careful, point-by-point reply (Reply to Former Christian John Loftus\u2019 \u201cOutsider Test of Faith\u201d Series<\/a>). I thought this would be a good start-up of a new discussion (anyone can read it and judge for themselves), if indeed Loftus were truly willing to do that. He asked me to reply to his stuff, and I did (despite our troubled past interactions, due to his hypersensitivity to any criticism). What more can one do?<\/p>\n The warning flags went up even before I had issued the new paper. Loftus (bless his ex-Christian heart) had to act like an idiot before he even saw what I wrote. He regurgitated on my blog:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t care if you give us another shot. You were personally rude. You have all the answers. The rest of us are just dumb. Or you can help Scot out who earlier asked you to answer me.\u00a0[indeed, I\u00a0did\u00a0that]\u00a0You could just wait to see my book, Why I Became an Atheist<\/em>\u00a0due out from Prometheus Books at the end of February. No freebies, like you had asked for earlier. While my focus is on evangelical Christianity, your view won\u2019t escape criticism either.\u00a0\u00a0Cheers.<\/span>\u00a0(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One can only shake one\u2019s head at such foolish stupidity. Like I said, Loftus wants so badly to be taken seriously, yet he seems paradoxically determined to destroy his own credibility with behavior like this. But this was only the\u00a0beginning, pitifully enough, as we shall see. Now he has proved that he wasn\u2019t even asking\u00a0sincerely\u00a0for me to critique his thoughts, and was merely playing games. I protested:<\/p>\n What a shame. And I thought it could have been a good discussion too. So many times with (usually angry, irrationally emotional) atheists, it is over before it even begins. He asked for a reply, I gave it, and before he even waited to see if I would reply or what I would say, he has insulted me as a pompous know-it-all.\u00a0(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rather than make the slightest counter-reply to my lengthy, substance-filled paper, here is how Loftus reacted:<\/p>\n I have answered your objections clearly and decisively in my book, which is being recommended by<\/span>\u00a0some interesting and important people<\/a>. You seem to only be aware of my older book which is no longer available.\u00a0[I merely used a photo of the older version because it had his picture on it]\u00a0Get my present book. Or better yet, pre-order the Prometheus Books edition.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m not interested in giving out a free book to you, because I do not believe you will give it a fair hearing, and I certainly don\u2019t think it will change your mind even if what I wrote is the truth, which I think it is. It\u2019s a non-sequitur to argue that I won\u2019t give you a freebie because I am interested in your money. I am not interested in your money, but I won\u2019t buy my book (which is what I\u2019d have to do), and give it to you. Maybe you can contact Prometheus Books and maybe you can have them send you a free copy for review. That\u2019d be fine with me.<\/span>\u00a0(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And (as if I hadn\u2019t written anything at all):<\/p>\n This post of mine<\/a>\u00a0is a good summation of what I\u2019m arguing for. How exactly is it that what you just wrote refutes it?\u00a0<\/span>(9-30-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This seems to be a new pattern of atheist-Christian interaction, too (along with the angry atheist tendency and the ubiquituous charges that we are unalterably opposed to science and reason itself, are \u201cinsane\u201d and \u201chateful\u201d and need infantile \u201ccrutches\u201d and so forth):\u00a0Loftus himself asked me to respond\u00a0to his reasoning in some particular papers, and I took my time to carefully do so, and then he acted like\u00a0this. Loftus continued to relentlessly hound me to read his book (as if such pleas and provocations are what motivate me to write\u00a0anything):<\/p>\n Dave, have you seen<\/span>\u00a0this<\/a>? You really ought to take a good look at my book. People are being led astray from reading it, ya know. And you could set them straight. The longer you wait\u2026..well, you know.<\/span>\u00a0(10-3-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I made the obvious response:<\/p>\n I made a lengthy critique of exactly what you wanted me to critique, and it wasn\u2019t your deconversion. Ball\u2019s in your court. Why should I move on to something else when that wasn\u2019t yet responded to?\u00a0(10-3-07)<\/p>\n That\u2019s fine. I respond to your objections in my book, and it would take too lengthy of the comment space here to deal with what you wrote. If you don\u2019t understand that, then fine. Cheers.\u00a0(10-3-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I had had more than enough of this run-around-the-rosie silliness and folly by then, and blasted Loftus (with complete justification, as far as I am concerned):<\/p>\n Great. Next time you challenge me to respond to something you write, I\u2019ll understand that you have no intention of counter-responding, and will take that into account as I decide what is worthwhile to spend my time on.<\/p>\n You act as if you\u2019ve written nothing except your blasted book. You write tons on your blog, yet you act as if none of that ought to be critiqued or examined. We\u2019re all supposed to accept it as Gospel Truth, and if we don\u2019t, we get sent to your book because you are unwilling to give any answer to us mere mortals and can only preach to the choir on your blog.<\/p>\n That is intellectually unimpressive in the extreme . .. .<\/p>\n I gave it my best shot with a serious extended reply to exactly what you asked me to reply to. But you had ridiculously insulted me before I even completed my reply. And now this is how you respond.<\/p>\n One either wants to engage in true dialogue with competing ideas or they don\u2019t. You clearly do not, and only want to preach (which makes sense, being a former pastor; you just changed congregations).\u00a0(10-3-07)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, lo and behold, now new self-revelations from Loftus come out. He was\u00a0never serious in the first place\u00a0about wanting a reply, and was just playing games. In a word, he is a liar. He wrote on\u00a0a thread at ExChristian.Net<\/a>: the same one I participated in, in my visit there:<\/p>\n Dave Armstrong is not worth people\u2019s time. He comes blasting in, we blast back, he demands an apology, we apologize, he accepts without doing the same, he moves on. So what I do is to challenge him to respond to an argument of mine. That keeps him busy for an hour or two or three. I figure the time it takes for him to respond keeps him out of my hair. But it does no good to dialogue with him, I\u2019ve found. So when he\u2019s done I thank him and refer him to my book. It\u2019s fun really. Like I said, if he was worth my time I would dialogue with him. But he\u2019s not for several reasons.<\/span>\u00a0(10-6-07<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There you have it, folks: the perfect, most appropriate, tragi-comic ending to the whole fiasco: Loftus wasn\u2019t the slightest bit interested in dialogue from the outset. He was lying and attempting to manipulate my use of time, by pretending to want a dialogue when he really had not the slightest intention of doing so from the beginning. The behavior doesn\u2019t exactly line up with the rhetoric . . .<\/p>\n Or else (since John Loftus is manifestly a liar, anything is possible now), he actually\u00a0did\u00a0want to dialogue, but saw my response and concluded that he had no decent reply, and so (as an evasion tactic) had to revise the history of what happened, to make out that he never did want to dialogue. Rather, he ventured bravely onto fellow atheist territory to announce further insults.<\/p>\n Either way, the man has amply proven how pathetic his personal ethics are, and what an intellectual coward he is. All he had to do was shut his big mouth for a few hours, read my lengthy, serious reply that he asked for, and make an intelligent, non-insulting counter-reply. That could have put us on an entirely different plane of discussion. It would have been a positive, hopeful thing. Something good may have actually resulted from it. But he just couldn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n And\u00a0why\u00a0is that? Because I am an\u00a0\u201cidiot\u201d\u00a0(as he has called me in the past) and\u00a0\u201cnot worth people\u2019s time\u201d? Or is it because he cannot answer a serious Christian objection to his skeptical atheist nonsense? You decide. I have laid out the history of what happened, so you can use your critical faculties and decide what has gone on here. For my part, I think the truth is plain to see.<\/p>\n My blog is all about friendly, open, honest, mutually respectful dialogue and hearing both sides. I debate all kinds of belief-systems, and have engaged in somewhere between 450 and 500 dialogues (I no longer keep track, but I know it is at least 450). But Loftus and Van Allen and their blogs are not about that. They are about preaching to the choir, mocking and trashing Christians and Christianity and emotional backslapping and warm fuzzies: one atheist to another.<\/p>\n One can still find fair-minded, rational atheists (like Jim Arvo and Huey Heard) even on blogs like these. But for every one of them there are at least nine (vocal) insulting, irrationally angry or mocking atheists \/ agnostics \/ skeptics. And it is almost impossible to talk intelligently with an Arvo or a Heard without a bunch of patronizing nitwits trying to butt in and immediately bring the discussion down to the mudslinging pit.<\/p>\n But as soon as Heard came over to my blog, such a normal conversation was entirely possible and we actually came to a refreshing friendly agreement and a measure of understanding.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n (originally 10-4-07)<\/p>\n