I must say, Thomas, despite the fact that you’re a rather impudent and unimpressive little fellow, I can’t help but feel for you. Regarding your complaint about “This man that 20/20 conned me into thinking was a respectable and intelligent man…” (me), I hate to have so bitterly disappointed as wide-eyed and idealistic a naif as you remember yourself to be.

Of course, to be honest, I can’t say that I’m terribly sorry about it. But if I were, it would be for your present situation. Why? Because, as long as you sit around on your lawyerly, atheistic little duff wearing a long puss, polemicizing and witticizing against all the pathetic dummies who believe in God, and smugly professing your lack of surprise at the well-deserved obscurity of my work, you’re not going anywhere. There are simply too many smug, smirking atheists just like you out there, hogging the bandwidth and the lcd turf, competing for attention, and ensuring that the responses to your punditry are as rare as nonempty liquor bottles in the immediate vicinity of Christopher Hitchens.

Let me tell you a little secret. If my work remains obscure, it has nothing to do with its correctness or lack thereof. Rather, it’s because I haven’t really done much to promote it, nobody else is doing it for me, and it’s not exactly light reading. I’m not an academic, I tend to stay busy, and I don’t particularly want to curry favor or even converse with the kind of people who dominate the academic journals, the publishing houses, and the mass media. Too many of them think a bit too much like you do these days (or the other way around). Aside from putting up a website a few years back, I’ve never sought gain or publicity for myself; the media always came to me, never vice versa, and I turned them down more often than not. Even the producers of the game show I visited had to ask me three or four times to participate, and if my wife hadn’t twisted my arm, it wouldn’t have happened.

Why am I telling you this? Because you obviously think you’re quite bright, and here’s an opportunity for you to make a name for yourself as a big-time intellectual. You see, nobody has ever really shown me up for the fool you seem to think I am. Sure, there are the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen atheists and “Brights” who swarm across cyberspace bearing their torches, aflame with righteous indignation and full of certainty that they see through the tissue of vapid lies that I call my “work”. I used to respond to them out of courtesy. But then I learned from tiresome experience that the vast majority of them are so utterly clueless, and invariably nasty, that reasoning with them is like pouring water down a rat hole. The best result I could hope for was mud on my shoes.

However, after taking a look at you, I think you may merit an exception. At least you’re not just another anonymous slime-trailing cyber-slug using other peoples’ blogs for character assassination and hit-and-run sniping; you’re writing under your own name, on your very own blog. Now, there’s some old-fashioned forthrightness for you! Accordingly, I’ve decided to temporarily reopen the coveted position of “CTMU debunker” just for you.

So why not be adventuresome, and use that fine brain of yours to actually show everyone why my writings are wrong or vacuous rather than merely pretending that some other blogger has done it for you (which is nonsense) or that “scientists easily dismiss it” (also nonsense)? I assume you’re honest enough not to pretend that there’s no mileage to be gotten from outsmarting “the smartest man in America” at his own game. Obviously, you could do yourself and this doornail-dead blog considerable good by coming out of the closet as the philosophical, scientific, or mathematical genius you evidently think you are.

Then again, perhaps you’re too busy or self-important, or just a little afraid of being crushed like a bug. No problem. All you have do is get a real, high-powered, household-word celebrity atheist to pick up the sword in your stead…a Dawkins, a Dennett, or someone else of that exalted ilk. Since my work is so vapid (according to you), it should be very easy to convince one of these paladins to take just enough time from his busy, proselytizing, book-peddling, making-a-killing-on-the-lecture-circuit existence to dispose of what should be a very tractable problem. Right?

I hope that sounds fair to you. Because if your answer is no, and you’re not willing to put your money where your mouth is, then would you mind keeping graciously silent about things of which you appear to know very little, including me and my ideas? After all, the world is in terrible shape these days, and people have far more important things to do than let you distract them with judgments and beliefs you’re unable or unwilling to properly defend.

In other words, put up or shut up. Either way, you can look at it as a public service. This offer stands only for you, and/or a bona fide celebrity atheist (by my own exacting standards). Stick to content; I have no time for the kind of ad hominem drivel we see in this blog entry.

Incidentally, for anyone who wants some real information on me and what I’ve been doing lately, here’s a written interview I recently gave:

http://www.superscholar.org/interviews/christopher-michael-langan/

And there you go.

You must recognize that I knew you would respond to this within days of posting, due to having searched somewhat thoroughly information about you. Why? Because you are little known, generally insignificant and deeply egocentric. Enough so to search for even the smallest of blogs with little gadflies like myself. Ad hominem certainly lends no validity to my claims, but it is at least satisfying to waive a needle in front of a giant hot air balloon.

Do not think that I had already considered the idea of reading through your “work.” I already have read through many pages and I encourage EVERYONE who encounters the paper to simply read through it and not to take my word for it nor the word of the blogs I listed.

I cannot guarantee any time period whatsoever in which I will “debunk” your paper as it is lengthy and full of much nonsense, but nonetheless I will, even with my busy legal studies, at some date refute you in detail.

Franklin said that genius without education is like silver in the mine. It is unfortunate that you didn’t even have the opportunity to tarnish.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Tom, but it’s very bad form to delete the response of your subject when his tone has been carefully adjusted to match your own. Unless my comment is awaiting moderation, this is exactly what you’ve done here. Please understand that there may be unpredictable consequences for such behavior.

Sometimes it’s easier to face the music when it begins to play than to stop up your ears and hide from your journalistic responsibility. You wrote a hit piece, and now it’s time to pay the band. If you’ve blocked my response, I urge you to reconsider.

Thanks for your attention.

I am not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean the post that begins:
“I must say, Thomas, despite the fact that you’re a rather impudent and unimpressive little fellow…” That post is currently visible. If you mean a post other than that I can only attribute it to an error in posting on your end after you clicked the post button. No posts are currently awaiting moderation and if any of your posts besides these two have not gone through, I encourage you to post again as there was some error and I have taken no affirmative methods to block your postings — on the contrary, I am taking affirmative steps to ensure your posts are clear and visible.

I checked the spam filters and found nothing. I can assure you this website does not censor unnecessarily. Please re-submit any missing comment.

I see what the problems are here.

First, these comments are not displaying on the front page of your blog (as they should), but require clicking through a “comments” link. You obviously need to do something about this, as it gives your hit piece an unfair advantage over its target (me).

Secondly, your “legal studies” are not my problem. If you have enough time to play the hyper-rational Internet pundit on your very own blog, then you have enough time to back up the nonsense you post there.

I know that it takes a lot of courage to stand by your convictions. But if you want to play in the big league - and I assume that’s what you’re trying to do with your faith-driven (anti)religious advocacy and your “legal studies” - you need to grow up and take a little responsibility for what emerges from your mouth and your keyboard.

Just a word to the wise.

So you want me to properly respond to your paper that I imagine you spent a good deal of time on, and which required hours upon hours of requisite knowledge to write. Certainly, you must be of the opinion that you are more sophisticated in this area than I am, and likely think yourself to be smarter than I am and at the same time it is 56 pages of information. You not only request that I am respond to the entire paper within a timely fashion, but don’t extend it to a ‘reasonably’ timely fashion?

The universe does not conform to your desires, nor do other people. The layout of the site encourages discussion but does not showcase the comments — your inability to understand how the layout works might partly be our responsibility, but in no way should we somehow put your comments on the front of the page — what websites do this? What websites put the comments that someone made in the comment box on the front of the entire website? When I refute your paper — which I shall do within a reasonable time — I will put your responses in clear, obvious, locations on the website in a readily readable fashion.

I want to point out again that your request I set aside my primary field of study because if I do speak out against charlatans I should dedicate all of my waking moments to it? You also request that we should put your comments to this article on the front page? Your comments show nothing other than that the you think the universe should conform to your wants.

I have already begun reading your “work” and within the short time I have spent reading already found numerous key points of contention in which I can demonstrate that you have no clue as to what you are talking about, masquerade a theological paper as a science paper, and use sesquipedalian words for no reason other than to sound like you know what you are talking about.

“Certainly, you must be of the opinion that you are more sophisticated in this area than I am, and likely think yourself to be smarter than I am …”

Yes; and very probably.

“… and at the same time it is 56 pages of information. You not only request that I am respond to the entire paper within a timely fashion, but don’t extend it to a ‘reasonably’ timely fashion?”

You first saw me on television over a decade ago, and that paper you refer to has been online since 2002. You issued an authoritative judgment on the content of that paper, thus implying that you are already thoroughly familiar with it.

“The layout of the site encourages discussion but does not showcase the comments …”

Obviously not. It does, however, “showcase” your hit piece. How symmetrical.

“… if I do speak out against charlatans …”

That is, against people whom you accuse of being “charlatans” in order to bolster your (probably damaged) self-esteem. I suggest that as a future barrister, you learn to distinguish such things as rumor, defamation, and disputation from established facts.

“I have already begun reading your “work” and within the short time I have spent reading already found numerous key points of contention in which I can demonstrate that you have no clue as to what you are talking about, …”

You’d better be careful. This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be backed up with concrete examples. Immediately. And remember - once you shoot your mouth off like this, the tab starts running on your intellectual reputation (such as it may be).

Run a hit piece on someone else’s intellect, and you automatically put your own under the microscope. If I were you, I sure wouldn’t have put someone like me in a position to do that.

Life can be tough, kid. Change your evil ways before they cause you more trouble than they’re worth.

Somehow I doubt that this is the real Mr. Langan’s writing.

I can only assert that the IP address posting under his name is from the area in which Chris Langan actually lives. Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, you are likely from the Ottawa, Canada area. A cursory glance at other comments Langan has been known to make should leave you with little doubt that this is him.

I myself do not see any legitimate flaws in Mr. Langan’s theory, so I am curious as to the details of your claimed rebuttal. If you provide us all with those, Mr. Langan will likely be able to refute them. Having said that, I am disappointed in the degree to which both of you are insulting the other, and *not* discussing Mr. Langan’s theory on any level logically. That is to say, Mr. Langan has yet to discuss Mark C. Chu Carroll’s critique, and you, Mr. Beasley, have yet to present any original supposed refutation of Mr. Langan’s theory.

I do not wish to take sides here. I do not see the CTMU as flawed, and I see that the proposed ways in which it *is* flawed are usually incorrect themselves, but I am surprised that Mr. Langan seems simply to be asserting his own intellectual superiority, and has apparently *given up entirely* on discussing these matters with others logically. It might be lonely at the top, Mr. Langan, but please do try to retain some political correctness (*gasp*) as it will perhaps make your theory more widely publicized, more quickly. Also, how’s the book coming along?

As my comments have clearly indicated I am working on a response to his theory. I am not attempting to make a quick or response without substance, so those interested must wait. I already have much of my detailed response ready.