“Atheist Survivor”

A Few Words of Introduction

Believe it or not, I have never watched the “Survivor” television show. But I have picked up enough to get the jist of it and use it for this series.

The inspiration here is comments of a sort I often make to Skeptics who criticize the Bible: These who presume to judge the ancient world from their easy chair in an air-conditioned room, but who, if they were dropped into that world, wouldn’t survive five minutes. I already had “Time Turkey” as a character – and behind him, an idea I never developed to make Time Turkey a character with a more serious mission of righting historical wrongs.

TT is definitely a “darker” personality in this series – he has lost much of his whimsy (though not all) and acquired a good deal of sarcasm for worthy targets. I have also elected to integrate his character with a concept I picked up from C. S. Lewis (specifically, his novel That Hideous Strength) in which the ancient pagan gods were “real” but were actually angels of YHWH that served him, and which were misunderstood as independent gods in their own right by their worshippers. Just so no one thinks I’ve become a polytheist. (grin) That will pick up some significance as the series progresses. But in the meantime, we do still have our usual humor here – just not from TT any more.

TT’s eternal helpmeet maintains what I put forth as a mysterious silence. She is meant to be enigmatic – and this too is rather a change from the way I viewed her in the past; the original plan had her as talkative and whimsical as TT was. TT’s warning in the intro to the series is a warning to readers as well: Don’t underestimate her. She’s smart and dangerous, more so than TT is.

The series will be a monthly thing while it lasts. I may do it again with six other Skeptics at some point, but for now, the six offered good chances for storylines. Also, at reader suggestion we've decided to introduce all six of our contestants here briefly...

• Brooks Trubee runs an AOL website titled "Christianity: Bogu$ Beyond Belief" (note the dollar sign) in which he employs the standard canards and arguments from outrage about how mean the God of the Bible is, and also seems to think that finding places where the Bible uses words like "dung" is some sort of argument. He operates also as "jimbo" on TheologyWeb and maintains a "hate" website about me called the-anointed-one.com. Apparently he thinks I have a Messianic complex simply because I say (as the Bible says of all Christians) that I am called to do apologetics work....
• Dan Barker is an ex-minister who does public debates and has authored a book titled Losing Faith in Faith. His techniques are little different than Trubee's -- he's just a little wilder and more proactive with things like lawsuits concerning church-state relations.
• Ed Babinski is the editor of a book of "anti-testimonies" titled Leaving the Fold. He has a serious bee in his bonnet over the use of "personal testimonies" in evangelism; but in terms of serious debate, has the idea that his random scanning of books on the Bible amounts to expertise in the subject. He's also famous for writing people long, rambling, pointless e-mails....
• LakeGeorgeMan is an everyday joe and a TWeb Skeptic who I suspect is more around for the fun of exchange than for serious debate. He and I have signed something of a peace accord as of this typing...
• Ted Bell is also an everyday joe, who I have also signed a peace accord with these days....he and I are both artists after our style, though his main thing is web graphics.
• Richard Carrier is the go-to guy for scholarship on infidels.org, but has a serious problem with misreporting and misrepresenting his sources....he also seems to have an innate hatred for Christianity and religious tradition...