Bronze-level articleTheodore Beale

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Mr Day's 2007 promotional photo.

Theodore Beale, known by his pseudonym Vox Day,[1] is a game designer[2], "musician,"[3] libertarian, Christian apologist, and all-around idiot. He is a regular pundit for WorldNetDaily (which says a lot about the demographic he's pitching to). Vox Day also has his own website, voxday.net, and a blog, Vox Popoli, on which he attempts to "disprove" atheism, environmentalism, and liberalism through extensive use of poorly-thought out attacks. He also wrote the book The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, which pioneered some of the most popular methods of "debating" atheists (mostly just calling them names).

He is a member of Mensa and, according to himself, has an IQ "[o]ver the so-called 'genius' threshhold [sic]."[4] This demonstrates at least one of two things: Showcasing how allegedly smart people can make a living saying very stupid things, or that the IQ test is severely overrated as a measure of actual intellectual capacity.

Contents

[edit] Beliefs and claims

Vox Day is generally a libertarian and disagrees with the GOP over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has shown signs of moving towards the Right in terms of social issues such as homosexuality. He is also a major Austrian school crank and gold bug (note all the Ludwig von Mises Institute and gold links on his blog). He generally prefers to stick to battling atheists because it is far less likely to divide his small audience.

The man also claims, in The Irrational Atheist, to refute the Euthyphro problem, which asks whether something is good because God says it, or God says it because it is good. His solution seems to be that it is both. He also uses the ad hominem/non sequitur argument "Richard Dawkins is socially autistic, therefore Goddidit" very prominently in a stroke of genius that has garnered the attention of "respected institutions" such as Conservapedia. The screed is downloadable from his web site in all popular formats.

He is a creationist and "anti-materialist" (read: "anti-science"), which has caused him to enter numerous spats with, among others, PZ Myers and Phil Plait.[5] PZ Myers has stated that Beale is “in need of psychiatric help” [6] and also that Beale is “an appallingly freakish idiot, and always a reliable source for the most amazingly inane claims”.[7]

According to him, "female equalitarianism" is a greater threat to science than religion.[8][9] In response to a blog posting by PZ Myers questioning how, exactly, many of the unsavoury aspects of religion benefited women, Beale suggested that honor killings, throwing acid in women's faces and even genital mutilation benefited women because they prevent female independence and promiscuity, which he repeatedly referred to as social ills.[10]

He's also convinced that the July, 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado was the work of a Federal government conspiracy to grab guns, which makes the appeal to "science and reason" in confirming similar nutjob conspiracy theories in that same essay quite amusing to read.[11]

In addition, VD[12] is also responsible for the insight that Barack Obama is - and these are his exact words, now - a "bad black man". There's no word as to when he'll write a column accusing Obama of strangling newborn puppies and selling crack to preschoolers, though.[13]

[edit] Insights

Some of his most brilliant insights are to be found on Vox Popoli or in The Irrational Atheist. On homosexuality, he says:

Homosexuality is a birth defect from every relevant secular, material, and sociological perspective...[we must] help them achieve sexual normality.[14]

On Muslims and Brits:

You silly English twit. Limit your historically ignorant, politically correct, socialist sensitivity concerns to Londonistan and the rest of your island.[15]

His refutation of atheism:

[I]mpaired social cognition... is the hallmark of the militant New Atheists. [T]he anti-religious socially autistic crusaders... simply cannot understand that your religious beliefs, whatever they might be, are no legitimate concern of theirs.[16] High Church atheism may be little more than a mental disorder taking the form of literal autism.[17]

On race and intelligence:

It is absurd to imagine that there is absolutely no link between race and intelligence.[18]

On how to bring peace to the Middle East:

The Israeli government must announce to the world a unilateral ceasefire, balanced by the deadly promise that for every Israeli soldier killed, 25 Palestinian police will die. For every civilian, 100 non-combatant Palestinian adults will be slain, and for every child, 1000 adults.[19]

And perhaps most horrifically, on women:

Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine... It is written that women ruin everything.[8]

And

First, there is no such thing as marital rape. Once consent is formally given in public ceremony, it cannot be revoked.
. . . If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her![20]

[edit] Personal life

He has it together better than his father, tax protester and gibbering crank Robert Beale.

He once had a non-wingnutty moment when he reviewed Day of the Tentacle for the Toledo Blade newspaper, praising it highly.

He also once created an 18-button mouse called the WarMouse; it was originally called the OpenOffice.org mouse until OpenOffice.org took issue with unauthorized use of their trademark. Why it never occurred to him that cramming so many buttons plus a joystick into a space occupied normally by no more than four buttons was anything but a UI abomination, no one really knows.

[edit] Other strangeness

He's seen fit to take his act to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, since running for that organization's presidency with an obnoxiously anti-feminist platform (as well as previously insulting outgoing SFWA president John Scalzi by calling him "McRapey" for the usual predictable VD reasons) is such a classy way to earn him votes in a literary organization with a strong female membership.[21] To his credit, Scalzi didn't call him out by name for his continuing obsession with him; he didn't have to.[22]

Despite the public support of an anonymously written blog called the Write Agenda that is suspected by many authors of being a front for a particularly scammy vanity-press-playing-real-publisher, Beale lost his bid.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. A pun on vox dei, meaning god's voice, which is absolutely not arrogant in any way.
  2. "The War in Heaven" if you're curious.
  3. In the techno band Psyokosonik between 1992-1994.
  4. Answering questions, Vox Popoli (page dated March 27, 2010). From the context it seems that he may be referring to the Mensa entry threshold.
  5. Ignorance is Blitz, Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog
  6. Vox Day is one sick puppy
  7. Why do we even stoop to mentioning Vox Day?
  8. 8.0 8.1 The real assault on science, WorldNetDaily (a sexist rant, particularly at the end)
  9. Vox Day on Women in Science, Good Math, Bad Math
  10. Vox Populi - A scientist beats up PZ
  11. http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/07/25/and-now-a-word-from-the-conspiracy-nuts/
  12. Sorry. Just couldn't resist...
  13. Vox Day: Obama is a Bad Black Man, "Dispatches from the Culture Wars"
  14. http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/08/ending-gay-defect.html
  15. http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/08/illustrating-mpai_19.html
  16. http://voxday.blogspot.com/2010/05/scientific-american-and-social-autism.html
  17. Day, Vox. The Irrational Atheist. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2008
  18. http://www.voxday.net/
  19. WND: 1000 eyes for an eye
  20. There is no "marital rape"
  21. SFWA Presidential Election Thoughts, Jim C. Hines
  22. Solving My Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit Problem, Whatever
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