Fight The Darkness

More auto-biography, but we’re getting to the end of the religious bit…

Back in the dark days, before the Internet was widely available, I used to run a BBS. (The Crunchy Frog BBS, if you’ve ever heard of it, was me.) It really wasn’t about anything in particular, although a certain bent towards Pythonesque humor was certainly in the air.

It was really about conversations, and one of the more popular message boards was “The University of Woolloomooloo Philosophy Department” which really turned into a fairly-civil ongoing debate about the existence of god. (God lost, two falls out of two.)

I thought it was a fair debate, that is, even though I was largely outnumbered. On both sides there were people who took the position. “It’s xxxx, if you don’t believe my opinion, you’re stupid.” There was also a fair amount of reasoned discussion (even if, obviously, one side, I need not mention which, was completely wrong.)

I tried to avoid the former and stick with the later. I knew that there were intelligent people who had been either brainwashed as a child or were being lied to by mendacious creatures like Jack Chick. I was pleased that I had a forum where people came together and, in a spirit of genuine intellectual debate, discussed these weightier issues. I knew that, like my father, when people are exposed to more facts, then can break free of their delusion. I thought, “I am doing good in the world.”

And then, one night, I couldn’t sleep.

It was late at night (about 3:00AM) and I was at my computer. The BBS was running and I was, as the sysop, watching what was going on. One of my three main, regular posters (and civil and intelligent debaters) on the pro-religion logged in. We’ll call her “Sue.”

She poked around for a while, then hopped into the philosophy area. She read messages. She replied to a couple. Then she saw one relatively long-winded one from me. She read it. She pondered it for quite some time and then she wrote a reply. A thoughtful (but wrong, of course) reply. She brought up a number of counter-points.

I was just about to drop into chat mode and say, “hello” and discuss it with her, but before I could, she rapidly logged out. She didn’t even finish reading the messages.

Ten seconds later, one of the other three pro-religion debaters logged in. (Wow! They’re both up late tonight, aren’t they?) This “man” (We’ll call him “Mark”) went immediately to the philosophy board, directly to that exact message, by number, and immediately replied, without reading it.

Mark made some more counter-points. Then he jumped directly to Sue’s reply (again, by message number) and replied to her, bolstering her points with a few embellishments.

The he immediately logged out.

Next came Sue again, seconds later. She started replying to his replied, “Good points,” she’d say, “I hadn’t thought of that. But now that you mention it, I’ve also got this to say…” and then Sue logged off again.

Moments later, the third pro-religion debater logged on. Let’s call him Leroy. Leroy with almost incredible psychic powers, like Mark and Sue before him, knew exactly which message to jump to to further bolster Sue and Mark’s comments.

Now, I hadn’t really been paying attention to when these people had been logging on, but when I went back through the logs, I noticed that, although not usually as blatant as this 3:00AM performance was, their logons and logoffs occurred in a organized assault.

If I hadn’t been watching, I would never have known that these so-called people weren’t even bothering to read the messages they were replying to and I probably wouldn’t have discovered that they were one and the same person.

I was starkly reminded of the deceitful nature of some people when they haven’t a leg to stand on.