Christians + Smear Campaigns = Stupidity in Spades

Ah, those lovely smear campaigns that some people just love to spread about you. No, this post - amazingly enough - is not about David Marshall and his ilk, but another lie about me and (as far as I can tell) John Loftus.

I had read a post at Mr. Loftus' blog explaining how christians can't seem to refute the claims in his new book, The Christian Delusion so they are resorting to lies about him and alledgedy planning a campaign to get his new book down-voted with many phony negative reviews. I read this and immediately could sympathize with him because of the nearly year and a half discrediting campaign that was started against me at Amazon.com.

I commented to Loftus' post with the following:

Arizona Atheist said...

I feel for you Mr. Loftus. I've been a target of countless smears and character assassination attempts and it's not the least bit fun. My detractors' smears took place nearly uninterrupted for about a year and a half! It's exhausting and frustrating having to constantly defend yourself instead of having actual discussions with people. You're so right. If someone resorts to these unethical ploys they are the ones who have no argument. What's even more amazing is that these supposedly ethically superior christians are the ones doing this! Hypocrites all around!

My advice (though time consuming) is to post on your blog all of your detractors and their other identities and post it for all to see. Expose their lies and if you run across any of them in the future link to the well-research posted you created exposing them. That way you don't have to keep repeating the same things over and over again when defending yourself. Just link to that post and say, "These charges are all false. It's all right here at this link. Go take a look." That seemed to work for me. I haven't had too much trouble since I confronted one of my detractors with all the evidence. Amazingly enough (or perhaps not) even when confronted with the damning evidence that he lied about me, he still denied it, but he seems to be ignoring me since that last discussion. One still keeps at it, but the other two seemed to have gotten the message.

Good luck!

April 25, 2010 2:29 PM

A few weeks ago I commented on James S. Spiegel's blog (author of The Making of an Atheist) hoping to start a discussion about his book. You can find that post I commented on here. Well, a few days ago some christian commented on the same post with the following:

Goldstein Says:
April 25th, 2010 at 1:21 pm

Arizona Atheist is busy with his pal John Loftus smearing the oppositon with phony accusations.

Talking about setting up posts to target them etc. just today on the Loftus blog.

He does not want discussion. He wants publicity and to set you up.

I responded with the following:

Arizona Atheist Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 10:26 am

Goldstein,

What in the world are you talking about? You sound a bit disturbed there. Feeling a bit paranoid, are we? You also don’t have your facts right. I am not plotting anything, nor setting anyone up. You need to go back and reread what I said. Here I’ll even copy the comment:

I feel for you Mr. Loftus. I’ve been a target of countless smears and character assassination attempts and it’s not the least bit fun. My detractors’ smears took place nearly uninterrupted for about a year and a half! It’s exhausting and frustrating having to constantly defend yourself instead of having actual discussions with people. You’re so right. If someone resorts to these unethical ploys they are the ones who have no argument. What’s even more amazing is that these supposedly ethically superior christians are the ones doing this! Hypocrites all around!

My advice (though time consuming) is to post on your blog all of your detractors and their other identities and post it for all to see. Expose their lies and if you run across any of them in the future link to the well-research posted you created exposing them. That way you don’t have to keep repeating the same things over and over again when defending yourself. Just link to that post and say, “These charges are all false. It’s all right here at this link. Go take a look.” That seemed to work for me. I haven’t had too much trouble since I confronted one of my detractors with all the evidence. Amazingly enough (or perhaps not) even when confronted with the damning evidence that he lied about me, he still denied it, but he seems to be ignoring me since that last discussion. One still keeps at it, but the other two seemed to have gotten the message.

Good luck!

All I said is that if he can find the evidence against these accusations to post them in order to expose these liars. This is all assuming this is true and I have no reason to doubt it since I’ve had people lie about me in the past and I wrote him to tell him how I sympathize with him and gave him some advice on how to handle it because what I did worked for me. How you can so distort what I said makes me wonder if you’re trying to sabotage a nice discussion I’m seeking with Mr. Spiegel. What reason would I have in doing such a thing as attacking him in some way? He seems like a nice guy. I do not agree with him, but I am very curious to hear his opinion on things and to discuss his book if he’d like.

But if you can find proof that either myself or Loftus is ‘plotting’ anything by all means please post it and let me know about it. If not, everyone will see this for what it is. Just another dishonest and hypocritical attempt at a smear campaign.

Thanks.

I don't know what it is about christians who feel they have to lie all the time. There is clearly something wrong with that guy when I obviously didn't say anything of the kind. All I wanted was a good dialogue with a christian apologist and to discuss his book, just as I wanted to do with David Marshall and just as I did with another christian. Did I try to discredit the man? Was I rude? Hell no! I'm never rude to someone as long as they treat me fairly. I had a nice discussion and would like one with Mr. Spiegel, unfortunately it's beginning to look as if he's not going to respond to me.