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TBT's response to the "Infidelis Maximus" blog 
Recently a blogger by the name of "Infidelis Maximus" was made aware of this website and posted a blog entry on one of my forum posts from the Theology Web.com website about Acharya S. Our friend Infidelis also recently had a featured interview dialogue with Acharya S and therefore became curious to know what the TBT was all about and why it is mostly based off of Acharya's website. His interview with Acharya can be found here and his journal response here. I will be responding to some of the comments he has made in his blog about this site to determine whether or not Infidelis here is a comprehensive intelligent person or if he is a overly defensive zealous atheist (so far it has not been specified on whether or not this person is in fact an atheist but with the alias of "Infidelis Maximus" you can only logically assume he is skeptic-affliated).
 
Here is some of the stupidity found on his blog:
 
Infidelis Maximus: "My interview with Acharya S resulted in a torrent of controversy on numerous sites that I wasn’t expecting. One such place was TheologyWeb, a site that appears to be a bastion of right-wing, conservative Christianity of the evangelical variety. I came across the thread where they were discussing my interview and roundly bashing Acharya. One poster, who goes by the moniker “TruthBeTold” (a parody of Acharya’s TruthBeKnown site) even has the temerity to use a photo of Acharya from her site as his avatar (without her permission). You gotta love those Christians. Such honesty and ethics. Such love for their enemies."
 
TBT: How typical and just as predicted. Imbecilis Maximus assumes that I'm a Christian, as I noted in a TheologyWeb.com post of mine:
 
"Boy I can't wait to take a look at that and see how many atheists go "that guy is obviously in coohoots with Holding and isn't to be trusted" or "what a low dirtbag, he gives Acharya bad rep!" or "what an idiot, he criticizes Acharya S for her work, which I'm willing to bet he's just a computer bum with nothing better to do but to criticize good people" or even "typical evangelical Christians!"
 
 
He begins quoting our dialogue on TheologyWeb:

Infidelis Maximus: "They, of course, being the “evangelicals” they are, ignored my request and began responding to my post on their site rather than doing what I asked. I stopped by there tonight and discovered this. I’ve therefore decided to take one of the lengthier responses there, one by TruthBeTold, and post it here, along with some responses of my own. I will post a note back on their site linking this post, and we’ll see what happens. I wrote: “Hi there, I'm the poster of the interview with Acharya S you've been referring to over on my Infidelis Maximus blog. I'd like to better understand why you dislike her so much. I'm seriously interested in understanding where all the vitriol comes from. I can't believe it's simply that she's an outspoken nonbeliever.”

TBT: See how smart and unpredictable Imbecilis Maximus is? He is so unpredictable he used the terms I suspected he would: primarily terming me an evangelical Christian. Now he goes on quoting my posted response to his request:

Posted TWeb response: Greetings Infidelis, I'm glad you asked.
It's not of my personal history of Acharya (which I have yet to engage in). Moreover, she is an unstable individual who just has a harshness against anyone who opposes her. You can have a good look at her website to see that almost every response article to her critics are filled with attacks on that person's morality, intelligence and credibility.

Infidelis Maximus: "Do you think this could have anything to do with the fact that most of her critics are doing exactly what you’re doing here and attacking her personally to begin with? Could it merely be tit for tat? You get exactly one sentence into your response above before you begin attacking her personally. How would you like her to respond to that?"

Look how Imbecilis defends her, "most of her critics attack her personally"? Oh, cry me a river! I am ever so guilty of offending her majesty's graces. Of course where does Mike Licona attack her personally? "Oh goodness! Mike Licona calls Acharya 'a skeptic with an interest in mythology', what a vicioucous person he is!" It will be up for the viewers of the site to determine whether Imbecilis' thesis is correct, in which I directly point them to the article Acharya's critics: her responses

Posted TWeb response: Also Infidelis, Acharya's information isn't neccessarily accurate, I'm not an historian so I can't criticize her work 100%, and in some areas she does seem to be spot on in her criticisms, but basic knowledge tossed in with falsifiied garbage still makes you wrong.

Infidelis Maximus: "I find this amusing coming from someone who probably believes the Bible to be inerrant. If by this last convoluted remark you mean that an author getting something wrong or using a bad source automatically makes them wrong about their other claims, surely you jest. One can make mistakes and still be a scholar, you know. One can be confused about something or completely off track in some area and still be quite knowledgeable in others. This will probably come as a shock to you, but even great books occasionally have errors in them (your Bible has plenty), and even the best scholars occasionally get something wrong."

TBT: I find it amusing that Imbecilis here is so flipping stupid and lazy that he automatically assumes that I'm a Christian because I think Acharya S is crazy and uncredible. Also, there are many Christian intellectuals who don't find a problem with believing that the Bible has errors and contradictions in it. So this may come as a shock to Imbecilis, but he doesn't seem to acknowledge that there are scholars who believe what they believe in for a reason and not just because the Bible says so. In addition, he enjoys to love all over Acharya by calling her a "great scholar", or at least, that is what he is implying. Bull, Acharya S is by no means a "great scholar" nor could she be dished in with anyone else otherwise. Imbecilis is so moronic and ignorant that the great gaping holes in Acharya's research are much bigger than he would like to realize. Above all, Acharya S has a Bachelor's Degree from some unknown place that she tries to pass off as IV League, not to mention she just loves to coat herself with titles and often fashions herself as an "expert" when the errors she makes are goliath. The point of the matter is that Acharya does not appreciate anyone unless they agree with what she says, regardless if they have higher credentials than she does. Acharya quotes people who agree with her presuppositions, and passes along the steorotypical nonsense that no doubt Imbecilis falls for. Try answering this Imbecilis: would you listen to Kent Hovind who claims to have a PhD from an uncreditted university and also claims to have been a high school science teacher for fifteen years on refuting the theory of evolution? No wait, I know exactly what you are about to say: "No, I wouldn't, because I don't subscribe to a book full of mythological nonsense and I don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster." I'm also willing to bet that now that I've caught him on this act before he can say anything, he will go on and whine about how "look! look! he put words in my mouth!" Watch and see people. Just watch and see.

Posted TWeb response: "I can however give you one specific bit of knowledge that Acharya probably does not know: if you have seen that little YouTube video of "Who would today worship a burning ball of gas? They call themselves.....'the Christians'", she attempts to make a connection with the crown of thorns that were placed on Jesus' head according to the gospel narrative with "rays of the sun", which is simply false."

Infidelis Maximus: "It’s not false. It’s a matter of dispute. You know the difference, right? We don’t know for sure either way, but this speculation is out there on the fringe."

TBT: "IT'S A MATTER OF DISPUTE"??? Imbecilis must have thought I made this up on the top of my head! You see here kiddies, he's so ignorant he does not even know that this fact is backed up by the evidence found in the Jewish Talmud! Even more stupid is that he would like to pretend to acknowledge this and then come up with a distinction: "You know the difference, right?" What difference? I am talking about Jesus as a historical person, Acharya wants to "disprove" his existence on the basis that Christians believe he was a supernatural person. Oh, indeed, there is a difference Imbecilis, but after being drawn in by Acharya's spiderweb he cannot even give hypothetical consideration that Jesus existed as a mere man and not as God. Imbecilis Maximus does not even see that there are other apostates out there who accept Jesus' existence but no longer believe him to be supernatural and divine. However, Acharya has duped him so much that he's now convinced that there is a difference between writing about other persons with thornbushes as an act of publically humiliating "mentally ill" individuals in the Jewish Talmud as opposed to the same thing being written about Jesus Christ because he claimed he was God! To rebut his comment on Acharya's newfound awareness on this very detail, I also believe that 1) scholars now concur that Caiaphas and Pilate had relations in working together and 2) the 'thornbush' could have been used for people who cause disruptions, I will have to recheck my sources on that one, but I'm sure it has nothing to do with the whacky notion of "sun rays." He will more than likely make the same desperate plea in defense of the poor materials of Jesus-mythery and will agree with Acharya when she says that Christ's crucifiction "represented the 'crossification' of the sun through the level of degrees in the zodiac" and seeing the reported crucifictions of peoples mentioned in the Jewish Talmud as "realistic and historical" not having anything to do with the zodiac, of course. And how will Acharya plan on explaining where the "astrotheology" lies in the gospels where it says that Jesus' body was removed from his cross? Or he may desperately point and say "look! the early Christians fabricated the Christ figure out of the Jewish Talmud!"

Posted TWeb response: "Also what she gets wrong in that video is making another farce connection between the Jesus figure and the date of December 25 (ask Acharya to explain how this date got there in the first place and why it isn't found in the Biblical doctrine) by creating the concept that the "sun dies on December 22 and is 'resurrected' on the 25", sorry, to do the math correctly, if the sun "dies" on December 22 and is "resurrected" on the 25, that would put Jesus at a total of four days during that period. Because the day Jesus dies is literally on "the first day" which then goes into the 23 (dead of course) then followed by the 24 (still dead) and finally the 25 (resurrection). That's a total of four days if you count them all, with the death day as the first day and the resurrection as the final. In the NT, Jesus says that the time of his death to the coming of the resurrection will be similar to the three days Jonah spent in a whale's stomach, well consider this: Jonah was consumned by a whale on the first day, was inside the whale on the second, and was spewed from without on the third, see how it works? December 25 isn't the traditional date that we know of considering Christ's death, it's Easter, so the whole "dying and resurrecting sun" point is just irrelevant nonsense with mathematical error. Again: ask Acharya why these dates are associated with Jesus yet we cannot find them directly in doctrine, if she wishes to validate her version of the Jesus-myth."

Infidelis Maximus: "I read the above and I wonder if you people are literally crazy. Seriously. Are you clinically insane? You sure sound like it. That the date of Christ’s “birthday” was set to coincide with the winter solstice is something few serious scholars today doubt. Even the Catholic Church admits as much. Why you would cavil her about the number of days is beyond me, especially given that your own Biblical account gets the exact number of days Jesus was dead wrong itself. You have no stones to be throwing. And when you bring up the story of Jonah—which even many of your evangelical scholars acknowledge could only be poetic or metaphorical—as evidence, I have to wonder about your sanity. Is this an ad hominem attack? No, it’s an honest response to an idiotic argument on your part."

TBT: "You people" he says. He is still wallowing in his own ignorance by wrongly dismissing me as a Christian. And as the date of Christ's birthday goes, he is also wrong. Let's quote the gospel of Luke shall we? Luke 1:26 "In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee." Now do you see the part highlighted in red? The gospel of Luke specifically states "the sixth month", going by the Jewish calendar, that very month is called "Elul" and is around August-September. Given that it logically takes a human fetus to develop into an infant a total of nine months, Jesus would have been born around May-June, that's not anywhere close to December 25. The time of December in the Jewish calendar is the ninth month "Kislev", which is not found anywhere in Matthew or Luke, the only two gospels that speak of both Jesus' geneology and birth. If he wants to do more special pleading and say "that's assuming the author of Luke was Jewish!" Then the only other calendar he could have used would have been either Greek or Roman, which are practically the same thing. The Greek/Roman calendar is the same calendar we use in modern times, so by Luke's specifications of the "sixth month" and going by an alternative calendar (as he may try to argue being a Jesus-myther undoubetly), Jesus' conception would have been around June. Going by a nine month development period for a typical human embryo we would arrive at Jesus' birth being somewhere near March. How does Imbecilis Maximus rebut my argument? By stating that the Catholic Church accepts this date as authentic. WELL, DUH! Does he know why it's called "Roman" Catholicism? Did he bother to think that the Romans were pagan before Christianity? Did he bother wondering about Constantine's conversion with the follow up conversion of the Romans to Christianity? I wonder why Catholicism has so many pagan elements in it, but I'm not going to go into details now just to answer his blabbering, I'll let him figure out the equation all by his own intelligent self. Next here he tries to point out that I am "clinically insane" for saying that the story of Jonah was "literal", as if that makes any relevant difference. It seems to me that Mr. Imbecilis Maximus is hurt and enraged by the fact that I talk bad about one of his non-atheist self-proclaimed scholars and would like to direct the argument on something completely unrelated. He also misses the fact that the connection between Christ and the story of Jonah is found in the NT. Why does a literal or metaphorical context even matter with the Jonah story? To me, it could be either way, I could care less. He also wants it to seem as though living human whale ingestion is logically impossible, of course there are tales of humans being temporarily devoured by large whales. Whether those are true or not, I do not care, whether or not Jonah was a literal story isn't even a part of the argument! Yet Imbecilis calls this an "idiotic argument" on my part.

Posted TWeb response: "And just to reiterate, when she talks of Price's "bizarre background" because he claims to have been a former Christian makes him a uncredible "mythicist" she shoots herself in the foot in the midst of her ad-hominen propaganda that she doesn't even realize most Jesus-mythers are former Christians. It shouldn't take you long to see that this person indeed has some serious problems and issues and calls herself an "expert", why would a serious scholar keep projecting the word expertise onto themselves? I say if you are an expert, let the work decide that for you, practice integrity, instead we just see that Acharya is desperate to grab onto whatever sources and whip them up into "The Christ Conspiracy" batter mix. If you want to see some good reasons for why Acharya is a quack, then I point you to the website link on my signature."

Infidelis Maximus: "Why you make so much of her responses to Price is beyond me. They’ve buried the hatchet, and if that’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me."

TBT: Because the dispute between them demonstrates that Acharya S lashes out at anyone who disagrees with what she says and lets her know it. Imbecilis doesn't even see his romodel's hypocrisy in publically revealing the names of other people on the internet while kicking and screaming about her own name being revealed! That may not indeed be the case today, but the point of the matter being that Acharya does not wish to own up or is unaware of her insanity. Why do I say she's insane? Because she admitted to having familar psychological problems over someone she termed "schizophrenic." So if she's going to go on and make a diagnosis of someone's psychological state by a familiar diagnosis on her own part, she is literally calling herself a schizoiphrenic! I have documented dialogue proof of all the things being said and true, I offered a link to another TBT article above, as I'm not going to go on repeating myself just to make this person happy that he was able to engage in an online debate.

Finally, to end this pointless and endless debate, Imbecilis wishes to target my TWeb profile settings and perpetuatly continues to ignorantly call me a Christian:

"Now, TruthBeTold, this time I mean it: I’m not returning to TheologyWeb to address any more of this nonsense. If you want to challenge me further about this, come here and do it one-on-one where the interview was originally posted. I doubt I’ll see you here, though, as that would then be a fair fight, and I know how you Christians hate those."

Just for the record Infidelis actually came onto TWeb and posted a response to one of my posts in a thread about John Loftus (registered as "Doubting John"). Now he wants to make sure that no debate takes place on TWeb? If I were truly afraid of debating him in what he calls a "fair fight", then why didn't he send me an e-mail? Instead he registers on the forum to address this issue he has with me on Acharya S after I posted the newsletter on the Acharya S interview with Imbecilis. Now he wishes that I come onto his own turf and debate on his atheistic blog (if he assumes that I'm a Christian then I have reasons to assme he's an atheist), tisk....tisk.....tisk....tisk.

Luckily we see that intelligent people do in fact comment on whacky atheist blogs, a person whom goes by the name "JimboJSR" wrote this in response to Imbecilils' blog:

JimboJSR said... Oh dear. I'm not even through reading the first paragraph and I've seen a corker of a mistake. Infidelis said that Theologyweb is:"a bastion of right-wing, conservative Christianity of the evangelical variety"... in a derogatory manner, and then preceded to make an example of the worst of these Christians, TruthBeTold.

Except, er... TruthBeTold is an agnostic, as can be seen by the label on his avatar in every post he makes. In the thread at http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97240 he even talks a bit about the major doubts he has regarding Christianity (post #5).

Yet Imbecilis in all of his intelligence responded:

"Let me guess: you're TBT. Who else would know about off-topic remarks he made in a thread that spans over 50 pages? You a TBT scholar are you?"

See why I call him "Imbecilis" Maximus?

"No matter. TBT's avatar label does not say what you claim it says. On the contrary, it says he's a "theistic evolutionist" and a "conservative." "Agnostic" and "theistic evolutionist" are fundamentally incompatible. He believes in God, so much so that he'd espouse nonsense like TE in a desperate bid to retain some belief in God against overwhelming evidence for a naturalistic origin of the universe."

And the ignoramus goes on speaking! Actually, what happened here folks is that I originally signed up with "agnostic" under the belief setting of my profile. Many Christians were there wondering "why do you call yourself an agnostic?" I gave them my reasons, Holding and some others suggested "personally I think that makes you a seeker rather than an agnostic." So what the hell, I figured, I just changed it to "seeker" to avoid the trouble of complication and confusion with my writings. Imbecilis has a problem with my profile saying I'm a "theistic evolutionist" and makes the world's weight of it. What would he like it to say, "agnostic evolutionist"? "Seeker evolutionist"? Does he even realize that agnostics can lean towards either way? It also says I'm a "conservative"; oh wow, that must prove I'm a Christian! Or does it prove that I hold to conservative values? By that logic, he could say that all Christians are republicans and support George W. Bush, but then again he would be wrong. I put "theistic evolutionist" because I am very open minded to the possibility of the existence of God. Do I pray and go to a church? No, I don't. Do I believe that the Bible is 100% literal and inerrant? Uh...no, I don't. Obviously the gospels have slightly different details, so that can't make the Bible inerrant, and if the Bible was truly 100% literal, we would have to take the metaphorical parables in the Bible literally as well, which would also include being dishonest with ourselves on the matters of historical evidence and their implications. I am open to the concept of a God and I am even open to Christianity, why am I not open to atheism? Because many of its proponents are rambling idiots just like Infidelis Maximus, and quite personally, I do not find atheism to be intellectually satisfying, at a point I used to think of the material universe as eternal and not needing a beginning. At one point, I once thought that JESUS NEVER EXISTED, like there hasn't been anyone who hasn't questioned that before.

JimboJRS was intelligent enough to tell Maxyboy words that would have come from my very own keyboard/mouth:

"He reads like a typical conservative Christian who’s out to defend the historicity of Jesus at all costs"
JimboJSR: Translation - He thinks the Christ Myth is a daft idea, therefore he must be a brainwashed Christian. Isn't it just possible that he's telling the truth and that he ISN'T a Christian, and that he instead rejects the Christ Myth because he doesn't think the evidence supports it? His own personal claims of disbelief in Christianity would make me think so ;) - again, see the link in my first comment. I suppose if you were that interested, you could always just ask the guy; but trying to make out that TBT is an inerrantist Christian smells of consipracy theory to me, seeing as how he expressly denies that he's a Christian, and that he's even written about some of his reasons for doubting. I'd say it's much more likely that you're looking for an excuse to dismiss him as a religious idiot who doesn't deserve to be taken seriously."

And that's exactly the case here ladies and gentlemen, bravo JimboJSR, and thanks.

Proofs of Infidelis Maximus' ignorance and stupidity:

#1) He falsely accuses me of being a Christian because I don't agree with Jesus-mythers like Acharya S and would argue with any radical atheist idiot anyday, like himself.

#2) He makes a big fuss over irrelevant issues concerning Biblical inerrancy/literalism (things I simply analogized and or did not mention in my posted response) and concedes to make more ignoramus comments due to his admiration over Acharya S.

#3) He accuses another individual of being me just for correcting him on his false premise that I am a Christian.

#4) He registers on TWeb.com "curious" to know why I do not approve of Acharya S and then makes a fuss that I did not respond to him in e-mail and wishes to call me out on his own personal blog.

#5) He considers himself an expert on Christianity because he is a former Christian yet does not comprehend that other Christians are aware of the criticisms he fell for in his deconversion to atheism (as I will assume). Yet he just might call himself a "former fundamentalist" while nitpicking at Christians who do not accept the same reasons he did for deconverting to an atheist.

#6) He blindly accepts word from the Roman Catholic Church and yet does not ponder upon the idea that most of Roman Catholicism is not supported (and in fact, prohibited) by Biblical doctrine nor does he ponder upon the term "Roman" Catholicism itself.

#7) He makes it out that I am a Christian because my TWeb profile says I am a "seeker" yet he runs an atheist blog journal and his TWeb profile says "other" under his beliefs.

#8) He wants to attack me for being a "theistic evolutionist" and still holds to the idea that I'm for Biblical inerrancy.

Here are some questions for Infidelis to answer that he probably won't be able too:

#1) How does the evidence show that Christ never existed when our chronology before Christ is literally BC "Before Christ" and BCE in fact means "Before Common Era" which are the years of Jesus' ministry?

#2) Why would you take to a position not strongly supported by historians and only a handful of scholars even take seriously? Why isn't the "fact" that Jesus was just a myth not being taught in school? No one has a problem preaching the theory of evolution to kids, so if the Jesus myth is truly that strong, why isn't it being preached for the sake of education?

#3) You would be quick to criticize creationism yet you are also quick to take to a position that counters the major consensus of academia and that is nearly 200 years old and is still being rejected to this very day?

Well in truth Infidelis can't answer these questions and he can only formulate more assumptions and irrelevant stupidity in his atheist apologetics. In conclusion, "Infidelis Maximus" rightly earns the title Imbecilis Maximus, and TBT reserves the right to no longer debate with such foolishness.

Update 06/22/07

"Hey TBT - JimboJSR here, who replied to Infidelis' blog. Thanks for the kind words :) One wee point I'd like to bring up - I'm not a Catholic, so I'm not up for defending them, but I think you may have got the wrong idea about their take on Jesus' birthday. The Catholic Church (like all Christian scholars) admits that the date of Dec. 25th was stolen from pagan festivals, but that doesn't mean they stole their DOCTRINE from the pagans. The catholics I've spoken to say that 12/25 is the date chosen to celebrate Christ's birthday, not that the church teaches Jesus was actually born on 12/25. No-one really knows EXACTLY when Jesus was born - and, if you wanted to choose a suitable date to celebrate Jesus' birth, it was common practice to hijack someone else's festival and use it for your own ends. Think of it as a kind of one-upmanship, like Pepsi and Coke a number of years ago - "Well, while YOU'RE off doing such and such for your gods, WE'RE gonna celebrate the birth of OUR Lord!" sortof thing. I think that's maybe a more accurate representation of!
the Catholic position, rather than saying that they invented their doctrine from paganism.

My 2 cents :)

All the best - JSR"

TBT: Well I may have misunderstood what Infidelis was referring too, maybe JimboJSR has a point Now that I think of it, however, my argument wasn't just about Christ's birthday being attributed to the pagan winter solstice as Imbecilis made his response out to be. It was Acharya's whacky thinking that tied the death and resurrection details of Jesus according to the NT with the date that we traditionally accept his birth. I could be wrong on exactly what date Jesus was born, oh well, at least we know that the date is not December 25th. The only point to be made was that Acharya was flip-flopping details to suit her theory, and Infidelis simply can't see that, and is another point that he simply runs his blog for the sake of prouncing around with his apostasy.

SEE: NEVER ENDING STUPIDITY FOR MORE THRASHING OF INFIDELIS MAXIMUS

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