Thank you for reporting these. I must have unknowingly repeated and paraphrased text that I had previously read and remembered. It was not intentional. I am making explicitly marked corrections, with appropriate citation of sources, and links to the earliest available archived versions of my edited posts. I will not remove any posts, or try to hide anything.
Some of the sources provided by bitcoinchan were not correct. On researching my own posts, I found that: Source of text from
Post 3 is actually Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt&oldid=621176634FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information.
Source of text from
Post 4 is somebody named Darren Wilson (whose work I have not read). This is
quoted within the page linked by bitcoinchan:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150423094426/http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/behind-the-lens/48176-atheists-are-right-that-christianity-sounds-absurd-but-i-believe-in-itFrom an outside observer's standpoint, Christianity is kind of absurd.
Think about it. We believe in an invisible man who lived over 2,000 years ago in a series of backwater towns in the Middle East, was killed by some religious zealots, and then was magically raised from the dead three days later, after which he floated up into the sky and disappeared, thus becoming the invisible man we now believe in and pin all our hopes to. Oh, and on top of that, we believe in other invisible beings: angels and demons—who are all around us, helping and influencing us. Meanwhile, another invisible Spirit (the Holy Spirit) is constantly at work behind the scenes around the earth, keeping the whole thing straight and intervening whenever He can.
For
Post 5, bitcoinchan cited a post on another forum that apparently plagiarised this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060421081519/http://godisimaginary.com/i1.htmIf you would like, gather a million faithful believers together into a prayer circle. Have them all pray together that God cures every case of cancer on the planet tomorrow. Pray sincerely, knowing that when God answers this completely heartfelt, unselfish, non-materialistic prayer, it will glorify God and help millions of people in remarkable ways.
Will it happen? Of course not. Your prayer will go unanswered, in direct defiance to Jesus' promises in the Bible. That is because God is imaginary.
I have not yet been able to verify the original authorship of this quote. It is the earliest example I can find.
Text from
Post 6 was published in a book that I have not read: Greta Christina, Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (
Pitchstone Publishing, 2012). Bitcoinchan cited something that appears to be her earlier blog, but I cannot verify this. The same text seems to be copied and pasted all over the Internet, often without attribution. I don't know where I saw it (or some of the other items here).
In no case did I knowingly copy anything.
You may not be aware of this, but I was banned several times for the infractions made during my earlier time on the forum. It was only through extensive private conversations with BadBear during or around my ban, who taught me the right way to behave on the forum, did things started to change. BadBear was one of the strictest mods on the forum (with many
complaints from idiots to prove it). I appreciated BadBear's guidance that helped make me a good contributor to the community; and I have continually tried to improve since then.
These posts made in 2014-2015 were all long before theymos made me a moderator. The archives linked by bitcoinchan show me as "Staff", but Archive.org made those snapshots much later. I despise plagiarism, but appreciate your effort in helping me correct those posts.
Mind sharing why you deleted the first time you have posted this, and then replaced it with exactly the same post? The original post was
#54465528, this is
#54469714.
