Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Never heard of Mary Eberstadt? I hadn't either until I came across a series of essays she's posting to National Review Online about atheists and atheism. Eberstadt is a fellow with the Hoover Institution and an associate member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. And if don't know her work and don't find her terminally irritating, I promise that you will soon.
The essays at NRO are a series of fake letters - she calls them the Loser Letters - addressed to the leading atheist authors, to whom she refers as her "BFF". They purport to be in the style of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, and they might be if C.S. Lewis had written like an absurdly self-righteous 13 year old girl. The series is supposed to be a satire of prominent atheists and atheism, but I think the joke ends up being on the author.
She seems particularly fond of the style in which one randomly capitalizes letters as one writes, as in this introduction to the series:
An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion's paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment:
And then she pretends to be a former Christian who converted to atheism to commence the alleged satire. The opening paragraph will give you a sense of the tone she's going for:
Speaking just for this Atheist convert, congratulations, Guys, You really did it! Thanks to all Your hard work, the rest of us know once and for all that the so-called "God" is everything You say he is: the biggest fraud of all time, cosmic Zero, ultimate no-show. And after all those centuries and promises, too. Like throwing the biggest rave ever, only to cancel at the last minute after everyone'd already bought tickets and drugs for it. What kind of Loser does that, anyway? If this were Facebook, no one would be friending him now.
If you're keeping score at home:
Middle aged pseudo-scholars emulating petulant adolescents 1
Actual humor 0
It gets worse. Much worse:
Dear Major Atheist Author BFFs,I just LOVE calling You that! Is it okay with You if I do? The Director said it was fine with him, because he knows that the "B" means "Best" and the "F's" mean "Friends Forever" (and not the You-know-what word, which as You know is verboten in here!). So before going into one more Letter that I hope will help this new atheism of ours get off the ground, let this convert to godlessness tell You just how much You're all my BFFs, and why it's so important that You are.
One, I hope Everybody gets that just because I use "BFF" in the plural doesn't mean I'm taking any one of you for my BFF in particular. This is important! I don't want, say, Mr. Christopher Hitchens to feel excluded because He thinks I'm talking about, say, Mr. Daniel Dennett as my particular BFF.
This is true even though Mr. Hitchens might otherwise have reason to worry about my confidence in Him, since anyone who has converted or de-converted as many times as He has on other big subjects -- Marxism! Abortion! Imperialism! Smoking! -- is obviously the most likely of any of Us atheists to jump ship for the Loser someday. I'd even bet my tokens for the convenience store in here on that. But that doesn't mean Mr. Hitchens can't be my BFF too in his own way, just like that less volatile atheist Mr. Daniel Dennett is. Because this Former Christian is loyal to all You big Brights like that.
Mr. Victor J. Stenger, same. He's my BFF too, even if his book didn't get as much attention as some of the other new atheist ones did. It's not His fault, You know. He's just not as good at ad hominem argument as some of You other leading Brights. Or maybe it's because He doesn't go whaling on the Jews and their god with the gusto that "certain other atheists" do? (You know who You are, Guys!) Whatever, even if he isn't a typical Bright for the aforementioned reasons, Mr. Stenger can be my BFF too!
Similarly, I don't want, say, Mr. Sam Harris think I prefer Mr. Michel Onfray on intellectual grounds -- even if Mr. Onfray does have that big-unintelligible-words French thing going on, and even if Mr. Harris's last book was so small that they could slip it right under the door in this place and not even have to use the pass-through thing (not that there's anything wrong with a short book!). And flipping it around, I wouldn't either want Mr. Onfray to think I prefer Mr. Harris, even though Mr. Harris at least writes in full sentences (if not always in full books!) And not. In cryptic. Esoteric to say the least. Fragments of knowing. Allusions translated from the French. That don't always. Make sense.
But again! That doesn't mean that Mr. Harris and Mr. Onfray and I can't all be BFFs too! Just like I am seriously down with that total Alpha Atheist, Richard Dawkins (grrrr!). "I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else": I'm telling You, just thinking about that quote from The God Delusion sets my Evolved inner wiring to "Vibrate" like nothing else! So needless to say, Mr. Dawkins is my BFF, maybe even what You might call my Uber-BFF, too.
After a while, it all begins to make your skin crawl. I don't recommend reading the rest of them.
Politics
Comments
Sure. But you're still not getting my Bud Light.
Posted by: Abby Normal | June 24, 2008 9:26 AM
Good to know that she thinks all atheists are drugged out, rave-going, partially literate valley girls, I guess.
Posted by: Julian | June 24, 2008 9:38 AM
Is it really pseudo-intellectual? Does she really think she's being intellectual with this stuff?
And how is it satirical? There is no actual content, just the constant whine of someone who is offended and wants to strike back at something, but who has no real idea what it is and no actual arguments to wield in order to do so. This the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing 'Meet the Flintstones' so loud you can't hear anyone else talk.
How does she have the patience to go on for so long without actually making a point? I mean, surely there's a purpose to these, isn't there? I suppose to answer that question I'd have to read more, and it was all I could do to get to the end of the first paragraph. Imagine being in a real live conversation with this woman - it would be like listening to the sound of an approaching dentist's drill, with no way to escape.
Posted by: Matthew | June 24, 2008 9:41 AM
I think she makes as cogent, rational, and convincing a case for the existence of God as any this reader has ever seen.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | June 24, 2008 9:41 AM
Yeah, I've seen these serialized on NRO for a while. They're terrible. I can't even imagine that the Xtian Right thinks they're good - and that's bad.
Posted by: Chris Bell | June 24, 2008 9:43 AM
GAH! The screwtape letters are well written prose with an overarching connected storyline from letter to letter with each individual letter dwelling in particular on one or two points of Christianity that bothered Lewis (note, that's a Christian writer pointing out flaws in a Christian institution).
This is in no way similar. If it was actually written by an aetheist to other aetheists and was being used to point out some of the many problems with various cliques and 'in groups' then it would be a parallel (see youtube videos yelling back and forth between "hard" and "soft" aetheism for an example of aetheist cliques)
(and can I say how off-putting it is that she keeps capitalizing the word "You". 'you' isn't a proper name and doesn't normally get a capital. It's as if the person is of such importance that any utterance directed at them needs to be wholly deferential... creeeeepy!)
Posted by: kodiak | June 24, 2008 10:01 AM
Wow, in letter 2 she argues that a lax attitude toward sex "runs the risk of turning off some of the very believers, especially the younger believers, who might otherwise be tempted to switch over to our Side".
I think it's been awhile since she last talked to a horny teenager.
Posted by: Cooper | June 24, 2008 10:14 AM
Oops, that's in letter 1.
Posted by: Cooper | June 24, 2008 10:16 AM
Oh, I can just imagine how C. S. Lewis would have Screwtape just loving Mary Eberstadt. "She's a perfect tool in our war against the Enemy".
Posted by: Jim Ramsey | June 24, 2008 10:24 AM
She's not actually capitalizing words at random. She capitalizes the following words: you, your, him, he, us. This is deliberate. One of the more common critiques you hear from people like Mary Eberstadt is that atheists in general and "new atheists" in particular are trying to make themselves into gods. Capitalizing all the pronouns much as one would capitalize "Him" and "He" in reference to God is Mary's clever little way of expressing that.
Posted by: D Johnston | June 24, 2008 10:26 AM
Kodiak, about "You":
The only time 'You' would be in caps (other than as the beginning of a sentence) is if it were used as an honorific, as in addressing royalty, or divinity.
Ergo, she is awarding atheists either monarch or godly status.
Ed, referring to her style as "absurdly self-righteous 13 year old girl" denigrates all absurdly self-righteous 13 year old girls. You should apologize, IMHO...
Posted by: Blaidd Drwg | June 24, 2008 10:26 AM
So like, oh my god! (So to speak.) Dudes, to put it uncharitably: there are people who want attention, and then there are people who get the attention (usually via humor, charm, and/or achievement) that the attention-beggers don't get.
There are people who just look gauche trying to emulate the mannerisms of "cool," and then there are people who are, ya'know, just cool.
Eberstadt is of the former group.
"The trouble with dull art" indeed. It's attempted by dull people.
Posted by: Kristine | June 24, 2008 10:29 AM
um, Blaidd Drwg, she also capitalized, in this letter:
Letter
Loser (meaning God, which is funny to me since so many aetheists make a point of lowercasing both God and Christian as signs that they do not hold either with respect, so you'd figure she'd seen that done had she really read any aetheist writings)
Former Christian (why does Former get caps?)
Alpha Atheist (could be her nod at a proper title... but weird)
Evolved
Vibrate (also way creepy the way she used it)
and that's just in Ed's excerpt of this essay. Odds are there's more and from her writing style here, consistency isn't really her thing (she only capitalized Atheist once, you'd assume that if she's replacing Christian with Atheist that she'd capitalize them all...)
Posted by: kodiak | June 24, 2008 10:37 AM
It's just another sad attempt to trivialize atheist authors, while trying to keep her readers from noticing that she's not dealing with the arguments or the logic of those authors at all. Doubtless because she can't.
Posted by: gary l. day | June 24, 2008 10:41 AM
I am reminded of the SNL skits: "Truly Bad _____ " (theater, movies...).
From one of them: "And some of his later work was even worse."
Posted by: khan | June 24, 2008 10:47 AM
can I say how off-putting it is that she keeps capitalizing the word "You"
Sure. Can I say how off-putting it is that you keep spelling "atheist" with an extra "e"?
Posted by: Mr. Spelling Person | June 24, 2008 11:36 AM
Is this the same woman who a while back wrote a letter (or series of letters) in the persona of a Christian martyr languishing in jail after the atheists (or maybe it was the liberals) had taken over the U.S.? If so, her prose style hasn't improved.
Posted by: nm | June 24, 2008 11:37 AM
sorry Mr. Spelling sir, however, I had a Greek professer in univeristy who was quite strict about translation to roman/Latin text of Greek terms, and he taught (quite vehemently) that the spelling should be "aetheist". It's a habit by this point that I have not bothered to break since in the grand scheme of things it's about as important as worrying about the camel's left knee. Apologies if I managed to offend your (apparently fragile) spelling-on-the-interwebs sensibilities.
Posted by: kodiak | June 24, 2008 11:50 AM
I love how her first letter drags out the dusty old trope that atheists want people to constantly be engaging in sterile, emotion-free sex outside of the context of any relationship....and we especially want teenagers to be as promiscuous as possible too. Because we all want Planned Parenthood to make gazillions of dollars abortin' babies, dontchaknow, while we rub our hands together and say, "Mwwwuuuuahhhhhhhahahhahahhahaha". In reality, Dawkins himself is married and has defended the practice of monogramy. What a god-tard this talentless writer is, indeed.
Posted by: Adrienne | June 24, 2008 11:51 AM
It's not about PP making gazillions. The aborted ones just taste better, like veal.
Posted by: Abby Normal | June 24, 2008 12:04 PM
Conservatism and conservatives are generally just not funny. At all.
Limbaugh's TV show tanked. FOX news' lame attempt at a comedy show lasted - what was it- 2 weeks?
When Dennis Miller became a conservative, he became less funny than he was before.
It kills your sense of humor.
Posted by: slpage | June 24, 2008 12:18 PM
Actually, I think it's brilliant satire. With all the vapid, substance free prose and constant 13 year old adoration of her new BFFs, the satire is definitely there, if very subtle. She's obviously making a subtle dig at Christians themselves. She's criticizing the similarly vapid and substance free discussions so often seen in religious circles. For instance, the BFF bit where she painstakingly assures all the authors that she likes all of them equally is surely mocking the silly, pointless doctrinal arguments that so bitterly separate the many different Christian sects. And the utter absurdity of a liberal attitude towards sex turning away young people is obviously meant to point out the equal absurdity of the Christian position on sex. And...
Ok, so probably just one more argument for Poe's Law, instead. But you almost have to respect someone that can stoop to that level of inanity and dishonesty and still manage to put her pants on the right way most mornings. Then again, good christian women are probably supposed to wear loose, unrevealing skirts. And those are a lot harder to put on backwards....
Posted by: Kevin S | June 24, 2008 12:25 PM
Kodiak,
Your Greek professor was a ninny or you have misconstrued what you were taught. There is no warrant in Greek spelling for the English spelling "aetheist". The English "ae" in Greek-derived words, as in as "aesthetic" and "paediatric", reflects an original Greek spelling with "ai". There is no such diphthong in Greek "atheos", which is built from "theos" plus the privative prefix "a-" (not "ai-").
Anyway, as someone who has expressed irritation at the mere capitalization of a pronoun (entirely missing, by the way, the reason why the author did so), you have some nerve accusing someone else of "fragile ... sensibilities".
Posted by: Mr. Spelling Person | June 24, 2008 12:27 PM
The plural of BFF is BFsF.
Posted by: chaos_engineer | June 24, 2008 12:38 PM
"Is this the same woman who a while back wrote a letter (or series of letters) in the persona of a Christian martyr languishing in jail after the atheists (or maybe it was the liberals) had taken over the U.S.? If so, her prose style hasn't improved."
No. That was Janet Folger. She's a Protestant who used to work with the late D. James Kennedy. Mary Eberstadt is a Catholic. While conservative Catholics and Reformed Protestants might make common cause they're about opposed to each other as they are to atheists.
Posted by: Bill in NC | June 24, 2008 1:26 PM
I believe Dennett has a doctorate, doesn't he?
Posted by: Dennis N | June 24, 2008 1:49 PM
wow, ten points for arrogance, -7 for reading comprehension. It's interesting that you interpret my thinking that it was creepy because of the deference that was being inferred (which I do believe was the author's point) with me totally misconstruing the point. And if you would like to take up my spelling errors with my professor I will look into digging his name out of a box in the basement and passing it on to you. Enjoy.
To get away from this tit-for-tat (while leaving you on the plus sid of the ledger since your Greek seems more indepth than mine) and further comment on the creepiness of the "You" use in this case, it reminds me a little too much of a friend who became unhealthily involved in D/s relationships and carried some of those mannerisms into their everyday life in disturbing ways (they later realized there was a problem and ended the relationship). At least in Christian theology it's acceptable to capitalize the "He" and "Him"'s since God refused to supply a proper name, so the capitalized words are placeholders for the name. When there is a name, capitalizing the "You" just ends up being both reverent and deferential which totally adds to the creep factor.
Posted by: kodiak | June 24, 2008 1:55 PM
Is not God's proper name Yahweh?
Posted by: Dennis N | June 24, 2008 2:01 PM
No. That was Janet Folger.
Ah, thank you. Just a meme going around, then, I guess.
Posted by: nm | June 24, 2008 2:06 PM
Is there an equivalent of Poe's Law that covers this? Or maybe this is infinitely recursive satire. It could have been written by an atheist satirizing the vapid view that believers have of atheists by pretending to be a believer satirizing atheism. Oh good lord that hurts my head.
Other than that recursion problem it's really just painfully juvenile. And this was written by a scholar?
Posted by: Barron | June 24, 2008 2:07 PM
I've been wanting to rant about these "Loser Letters" for a while now. I I'm not sure I would even consider them satire, since they aren't exaggerations of what atheists really believe as much as they are totally fictitious ramblings. I doubt a single atheist in the world would read these travasties and think "Hey, this person is one committed atheist!" It's such a transparently false parody that I can't even find it in myself to be insulted by it - it's just too stupid.
Posted by: Jason | June 24, 2008 2:32 PM
Dustin Hoffman returns to the big screen in the story of an atheist, pretending to be a believer, pretending to be an atheist. If only he could tell the woman he loves. Don't miss Tootsie 2! Coming soon to a theater near you.
Posted by: Abby Normal | June 24, 2008 2:45 PM
The Hoover Institution. Fellowship of Whatever Scholars.
Just let that roll around the cognitive faculties for a minute.
Posted by: Foggg | June 24, 2008 2:58 PM
Kodiak,
I don't agree with you that the author is expressing any kind of "creepy deference", and in that sense I do think you've misconstrued her implication. The overall tone of the letters is hardly deferential, not to mention the use of terms like "Guys" and "BFFs". More like "breezily familiar".
I think that D Johnston's interpretation is closer to the truth: the capitalized pronouns are the author's way of mocking what she sees as atheist arrogance in declaring that there is no higher power then themselves. If atheists are the highest power, then they are their own gods, and they deserve capitalized pronouns. There's nothing deferential about this, though, since the writer is also (claiming to be) an atheist and therefore also a god.
Posted by: Mr. Spelling Person | June 24, 2008 3:17 PM
alright, I'm willing to agree to disagree here since I don't think we're going to reach a consensus without consulting with the author of the piece.
(longer me: My view is that if she's putting herself into a god-like status as well then she'd be at the same level as the rest of those god-like beings and therefor not need to capitalize the pronoun, so I think the reason she's doing it to show respect and deference. Your view is that the pronoun is being capitalized because of the implied status and not because the writer is being deferential. I can see either point being argued, although clearly I believe my interpretation to be the stronger side.
If that's an unfair summary there might be more room for discussion, but if neither of us is going to move off of their position there's nothing more to be gained here.)
Posted by: kodiak | June 24, 2008 3:44 PM
the punchline is "it really sucks", but i'm scared to think of what the joke might be.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | June 24, 2008 5:00 PM
What the hell? Is she trying to be funny? Satirical? Witty?
EPIC FAIL.
Posted by: Strider | June 24, 2008 5:17 PM
...go whaling on the Jews...
This bit is a pretty trivial bit of stupid among all the real heavy-duty stupid, but what does hunting whales have to do with Jews, except perhaps for Jonah? Oh, she means "waling." She's a scholar? I don't think so.
Posted by: Margaret | June 24, 2008 6:57 PM
Speaking of Janet Folger, she is warning us of the end of civilization again.
Oh noes! And all because gay marriage by some undisclosed mechanism prevents straight people from marrying!
Posted by: windy | June 24, 2008 8:18 PM
I had a friend once who was medium-heavily into the BDSM scene. He told me that in master-slave style dom-sub relationships, the slave always wrote of themselves as "i did this" and "i understand that", and always wrote to the the Master using deific capitalization, as in "i humbly request You to..." well, never mind what.
Posted by: speedwell | June 24, 2008 9:16 PM
Someone actually wrote a series of letters as if they were a christian martyr in prison after us "heathens" take over? Really, Nm? Do you remember the title? Sounds pretty funny...
Posted by: Fascination | June 24, 2008 11:49 PM
We don't really use this expression on this side of the pond at all, so I have never had any idea of the spelling. Is 'waling' really correct? Where does the term actually come from?
Not that I wish to sidetrack us from the important business of mocking buffoons, of course.
Posted by: Matthew | June 25, 2008 5:34 AM
Wale (n). - Mark left on the skin as by a whip or rod, A pattern of parallel ridges as in cordaroy etc. ME, OE walu - a ridge, rib [cf welt, wheal]. c ON volr*; GOTH walus a rod, a wand. (v) derv. from (n) in late ME. - Hope that helps Matthew, DJ
* note the "o" should have a ogonek, but I couldn't find one.
Posted by: DingoJack | June 25, 2008 6:20 AM
Is it just my imagination or is her imagined atheist alter-ego in prison; the references to "tokens for the convenience store in here" and to Harris's book being "so small that they could slip it right under the door in this place and not even have to use the pass-through thing" seem to suggest this.
Posted by: Robin Levett | June 25, 2008 7:15 AM
Cheers DJ, I never knew.
At least the dear crazy lady has achieved something educational with all this drivel.
Posted by: Matthew | June 25, 2008 8:11 AM
We don't really use this expression on this side of the pond at all, so I have never had any idea of the spelling. Is 'waling' really correct?
It's not normally used over here either. 'Whaling' made no sense and neither did 'wailing' and I only vaguely remembered reading some old story somewhere that had somebody 'waling on' somebody else in a context that meant beating or whipping. I had to check the spelling in the dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com). Thanks to DingoJack, with a better dictionary, for the derivation.
This educational interlude has been brought to you by word-purists and nit-pickers everywhere. Now back to our regularly scheduled business of mocking buffoons.
Posted by: Margaret | June 25, 2008 1:15 PM
I wonder if Mary is aware that the Expelled II project is looking for writers....
As Long As Religious Apologists And Propagandists Keep Putting Out This Nonsense, Atheism Cannot Help But Win Out.
Posted by: Abbie Normal | June 25, 2008 3:10 PM
Please tell me that's a joke.
Nice nom de blog, BTW. ;-)
Posted by: Abby Normal | June 25, 2008 3:30 PM
Is it just my imagination or is her imagined atheist alter-ego in prison; ...
I missed that. It's probably about the silly "there are no morals without religion/god" nonsense. Since she no longer believes, she went on a murder/theft/etc. spree like so many of the religious say they would if there were no fear of god to restrain them.
Actually, though I think she means to imply a prison, an insane asylum would also fit the references and works better with the rest of her nonsense. She really is an idiot.
Posted by: Margaret | June 25, 2008 8:30 PM
How old is woman!?!?! A 12 year old uses this sort of delivery. Honestly, anyone even loosely tied to her should be ashamed.
Posted by: stevogvsu | June 26, 2008 1:18 PM
Link. It's at least more coherently written than Eberstadt's pale imitation of C.S. Lewis - which isn't saying much.
Posted by: Martian Buddy | June 26, 2008 2:46 PM