Sometimes, the Internet is a rich source of amusement. Sometimes it is the breeding ground for the troll and sometimes, the two come together. A few days back, I stumbled across a site that claimed to prove the existence of God. It was a brief chortle, so I shared it with members of my forum – thinking they, too, would enjoy a brief smile at the collection of circular arguments and logical fallacies.
What quickly became apparent was that this was being used as a honeypot from whence the site owner would then follow the inbound links and descend upon the linking fora to defend his work. Baiting atheists is his game.
So far, so good. When he descended on mine, I did a little googling before responding. I was dubious about allowing a “proof that God exists” argument descending into farce. What I found was several such sites all with the local atheist community rising repeatedly to the bait. Using evasion and obfuscation, he repeatedly refers to the Bible as the source of his “logic” and authority. On one such site, this twaddle has gone on for several days and over fifty pages. One contributor asks the question; “why are people responding to this guy?” Why indeed? All the attributes of a troll have been paraded throughout the discussion and still people are busily pushing tidbits through the bars of the cage. Anyone who sincerely believes what “canuckfish” claims to believe is verging on the edge of sanity if not actually tipping over the edge. He certainly is in no need of encouragement.
My response to “canuckfish”, therefore, was to point out that I had seen his performance elsewhere and I wasn’t about to have it repeated on my board. To be fair, while I had enjoyed a certain amount of free entertainment reading through his garbled logical fallacies, I simply could not be bothered to have acres of arse dribble pouring over my site. Interestingly, during the period when I was making up my mind about a suitable response, several of my members dipped into the thread, but refrained from responding. Clearly they recognise a troll when they see one and deal with it appropriately (unlike their opposite numbers on other sites) – i.e. don’t respond, don’t acknowledge, don’t feed.
Having determined that he was indeed trolling, I locked the thread and deleted canuckfish’s account. End of problem. So, if you have come here from the Atheist Network Forum, you might want to remember; don’t feed the trolls. 
I’m sure you are wise to keep out of this.
However, I’m still awaiting your proof (Karl Popper-wise) of the non-existence of God.
Please don’t respond; it’s only a wind-up.
Best regards
Talking of trolls, I don’t know if you’ve seen this but somebody recently came along to my blog to make some pretty low comments about you.
http://doctorvee.co.uk/2006/03/05/look-at-me-im-tired-and-emotional/#comment-19889
http://doctorvee.co.uk/2006/02/27/shorter-bob-piper/#comment-19892
He’s since tried to claim that his tongue was in his cheek. Pah. :dry:
Indeed, Doctor Vee. He’s a pillock and happy to prove it to the world at large. He’s too dense to realise that he was comparing the proverbial oranges with apples. But, still, his stupidity is his problem, not mine. That’s the Internet for you, it’s a cross section of humanity, the good, the bad, the ugly and the really, really stupid.
Incidentally, why do you keep comments open that long? I lock mine after 20 days. That helps keep the spambots at bay.
Oh, but I just can’t resist… 😆
I don’t plan to. I’m waiting for those who claim that he does to prove their case. Not that I’m holding my breath or anything. :whistle:
LOL @ arse dribble.
I can’t claim originality for that one – Stephen Fry is the first person I know that used it.
I keep my comments open forever, although all comments on posts older than 7 days are automatically held in a moderation queue. I think a comments thread can be worth keeping open indefinitely. There are some long-running conversations on my blog and I’m happy to facilitate that. It does make wading through the moderation queue a bit of a pain though…
Longrider answers my question: “However, I’m still awaiting your proof (Karl Popper-wise) of the non-existence of God”:
Well, I’ll give you zero marks for that, on three grounds.
Firstly, you are (at least occasionally) a proselytising atheist. That’s fine by me: just so long as you don’t claim the moral (or scientific) high ground.
Secondly, according to the philosophy of Popper (and other similarly modern philosophy of science), theories of explanation (eg billiard balls move according to Newton’s Laws of Motion) are never proven, only disproven. The disproof shows that the certain thing is explained better by other theory. Thus the onus is at least partially on the one who would dispute the first theory, and certainly would never allow that the first theory would ever be proved, merely that it be usefully predictive and not disproved after adequate investigation.
The certain thing in question here is the creation of the known universe.
Thirdly, the question of the existence, or not, of ‘God’ is well known not to amenable to the normal philosophical analysis of science (see above), which we apply to the universe we observe. This is due, at least partially, to our inability to define an experiment which, if it achieved a specified outcome, would show ‘God’ does not exist. Such an experiment would be, for example, to create a universe without God’s help. There are, of course, at least 2 problems with such an experiment: (i) creating a universe at all; (ii) knowing how to keep God out of it, if he exists.
So, atheism is as much a matter of faith as is religion. The only contribution that philosophy (pace Popper) can make is that of agnosticism: and of knowing it.
[I’ll throw in another one, just for fun. This concerns that fundamentalist Christian concept of intelligent design. Consider that not only did God create the universe by intelligent design, but he also created it to do intelligent design of its own. Hence he was the first ‘programmer’ to write a good ‘program’ for artificial intelligence. Personally, I think Darwin’s theory is more useful for the detailed things, like all aspects of evolution/non-evolution required for understanding the existence of life-forms and of improving human existence on planet Earth.]
And, if God exists as ultimate creator, trolls were certainly created by him (or perhaps by his program).
Best regards
That’s all dandy, but it is the religious who claim that their deity exists. I claim nothing. It requires no faith to fail to believe in something that has never been manifest. I don’t believe that Ahmun exists; this is not faith any more than my lack of belief in Odin, Zeus or Yahweh. If people want me to believe in their deity, my response is a simple “prove it”. It’s not too much to ask. You may take it, that I do not go along with Popper. The onus remains firmly on those making extraordinary claims to back up those claims with extraordinary evidence. This, they have so far failed to do.
If an intelligent designer designed my troll, then he is a piss-poor designer. Perhaps he works for Microsoft?
So, zero marks or not – I await with interest, the “proof” that supernatural deities exist. Like I said, I ain’t holding my breath.
Hi, I’m Jake, founder of the Atheist Network. 🙂
Canuck was obviously a troll. I had that figured out the same way you did and the same way others did ( pointed out in the thread you mentioned in your article ). Most of the time, I’ll boot trolls out right away, but this was one of the few times I thought there would be some value in letting the public tear apart his arguments and watching him fail miserably. ( besides, most theists are too afraid to come to our forum and I wanted the members to have something to play with ). What bugged me I guess was how his arguments were cleverly masked as being rational and logical to the average person, but to anyone else who understood the argument, it was clear where he failed in making his point. In other words, the 50 pages wasn’t for his benefit, it was for the thousands of readers out there. To show them how pathetic his justifications actually were.
So I hope you won’t think of us as a forum that feeds the trolls regularly. In fact, it’s the exact opposite ( for the most part. lol )
Thanks for reading.
Jake, thanks for that. Rather you than me, though. 😉
I see you banned the bugger in the end. He’d driven me nuts by page ten, by page sixty five, I’d have been punching my screen out.