Stranger Fruit

This is almost too funny to be true. From the mind of Michael Westfall:

Today the use of personal computers is one of the fastest growing areas of mass communication. This technology can be used for the good of humanity or in some cases small-minded warped individuals endeavor to use it to debase and alter Judeo-Christian values. There are now multiple radical “Left Be-Hinder” web sites that make a sport of attacking those who take a stand for decency. These sites question traditional Bible based morality as they labor to twist our society towards their own confused
values. They use their web sites as attack dogs that they aim at the people whom they personally identify as the “Right Wing-Nuts.” These web sites are growing in number, their influence is increasing and they are a part of a bigger process that is working to morally collapse our culture…

Those people who choose to run these sites are convoluted flamethrowers who puke out their bankrupt values to their like-minded peanut gallery of predictable fellow puppet bloggers who in turn blindly chime in with their agreement, support and mockery of Christian principles. Those people in their peanut galleries, who lack faith, don’t know what to believe. They are led around by their noses and comply because they are lost sheep. Those leading these sites ask leading initial questions designed to encourage
these bumpkin bloggers to slander, take out of context, ridicule, call names and verbally abuse God’s people, church leaders and those who are fighting to preserve America’s traditional God based family values.

Wow. And can I say “wow” again? Wow.

And which site is the exemplar for this corruption? Pharyngula? No. Why, it’s Ed Brayton’s Dispatches, which is run “from the dark edges of the Internet. In the pool of importance Brayton’s tiny little site is but the smallest of minnows.”

Now, I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that as part of the “dark edges of the Internet,” Scienceblogs.com and Ed get more hits than Westfall’s little enclave of lunacy. As does The Panda’s Thumb, which Westfall describes as “another pitiful little site also dedicated in large part to evolution.”

Clearly, Seed Magazine’s strategy of collecting blogs together is also part of this evil, evil plot to corrupt the believers:

To distance God from our children, they clump themselves together and fight to replace the teaching of intelligent design or God’s creation in schools with the teaching of evolution.

Hang on a minute! Fight to replace ID with evolution? That assumes ID is being taught in schools.

And I though the plan was to distance the children from God. not vice versa. I need to consult with my fellow cabalists.

Who is Westfall? Why he’s “THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE” who, if you look at his site, hasn’t yet learned which key is Caps Lock. Oh, and Ed has dealt with him before.

Comments

#1 John McKay
January 1, 2007

Wow. There is so much material there to riff off of. I’ll leave the intelligent analysis to others and go straight for the cheap shot.

A “Left Be-Hinder” is a member of a sect of former ass men who feel that only the left behind is worthy of their attention. They are, naturally, opposed by the Right Behinders. Both are opposed by the even more obscure sect of Crack Heads who are, as it were, in the middle. Orthodox ass men will have nothing to do any of these schimatics and hold out for the synergistic beauty of the dual-bun, gestalt experience.
#2 Mark C
January 1, 2007

Yes, yes!! Flush with our success in the War on Christmas, we expand our agenda to bringing down all of Judeo-Christian civilization. Our ultimate goal is a Baghdad of the west, complete with anarchy, murder, mayhem, and a complete lack of electricity. Why do we do this? Simple. We do it so we can spend our days sitting on the sofas in our bombed-out houses playing our video games and downloading porn.

BTW, John McKay, brilliant job. I’m still giggling.
#3 Simon G.
January 1, 2007

Great find! He links to all the good anti-right-wing-nut posts out there ( I always thought it was “right-wing nut” and not “right wing-nut”?). I now have some reading to catch up on. Thanks.

Besides, the bible-quote-to-ranting-ratio is around 1:1 – he’s coming up with about half that drival himself. Isn’t human creativity wonderful?
#4 meatbrain
January 1, 2007

I saw that post too (for some reason, it came up in the RSS feed of a Google news search for ‘intelligent design’), and, like so many of that ilk, Westfall is unable or unwilling to discuss any specific points made by Ed Brayton. All he can do is point an accusing finger and screech ‘Unclean’!
#5 waldteufel
January 1, 2007

Westfall’s website is worth a good laugh, but so are most fundy websites whose authors generally don’t know their asses from first base.
#6 PZ Myers
January 1, 2007

Did you really have to link me in there? I have enough trouble with the lunatics without alerting them to my existence. This, for instance…

PZ has endorsed the idea of concentration camps and forced sterilization for religious believers.

…just came out of the blue. I’d laugh if it weren’t clear that there are actually insane people out there who believe that.
#7 John McKay
January 2, 2007

PZ has endorsed the idea of concentration camps and forced sterilization for religious believers.

Wouldn’t a lobotomy and a chastity belt accomplish the same thing at less cost to the taxpayer? We must be practical here.
#8 SmellyTerror
January 2, 2007

You people should be ashamed! Laughing at the mentally ill like that…
#9 Umilik
January 2, 2007

” Those people… who lack faith, don’t know what to believe. They are led around by their noses and comply because they are lost sheep.”
As opposed to those flocks of sheep who head to church every sunday, ha ha ha. This is just too easy. Mr Westfall, I don’t know who you are, but you’re seriosuly delusional and are – hopefully – in therapy.
#10 Southern Fried Skeptic
January 2, 2007

It seems I recall a time called high school when many of the smartest kids were considered outcasts and despite differences in interests and opinions, often engaged socially with one another simply because their perspectives, ways of thinking and communicative tendencies often led to confusion and miscommunication when engaged with more typical patterns of thinking found in the general population. Whether due to inadequate vocabulary or an inability to conceptually grasp the discussions of the gifted, some of those lacking in such abiliities would fear and despise the intellectual subset of high school students and through exclusion or occasionally use threat of violence to help supplement a hidden ego-weakness characterized by the idea that if “I don’t know what they are talking about then a) they may be better than me in some way and b) they may be talking about me.”

Then came the internet and those smart people could gather together, discuss their issues, and they could not be threatened into keeping their discussions in carefully guarded privacy. It was the realization of the worst fear of many who either through choice or limitations do not participate in nor acknowledge the benefits of the academic or intellectual lifestyle. And you know, sometimes the smart kids were talking about them. So they try to counter with the one true weapon in the age of cyberspace- with words of their own. Unfortunately, they still don’t know what those bright kids were talking about, so their arguments fall flat. Meanwhile, those kids- so often excluded, so often misunderstand, and so often demonized for their talents, have been honing and sharpening their talents at debate and honing their linguistic talents to razor sharp precision.

You can almost hear them type: it’s our time now.
#11 S. Duford
January 2, 2007

I just read the whole thing and could harldy contain myself from rolling on the floor laughing. Every “argument” he makes actually just proves how blind, close-minded, and stupid he is.