John N. Clayton

Haruko · Post by **Haruko** » 2006-05-06 12:32am

John N. Clayton seems like an idiot, but considering that a fundie would want to plagarize his testimony of supposedly going from atheism to Christianity and pass it off as his own. . .

I had the plagarizer backpedaling furiously in this thread:
Click Here

Though it doesn't really matter (nor has it ever (it was just a boring, slow day after work)), I'd like to mess with him some more for fun, but it's harder to find a biography on John N. Clayton. I want to know what college(s) Clayton went to.

Whatever the case, this is nothing serious and not a debate, so it doesn't matter at all to me if I find the answer or not.

Anyways, has anyone heard of John N. Clayton or come across any of his works? I only found out about him after seeing: http://www.doesgodexist.org/AboutClayton/PastLife.html
I didn't read through it. I don't think there's reason to bother. I already went through one of these testimonies about going from atheism to Christianity; it didn't make sense to me.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2006-05-06 02:05am

...am I the only one that thought you were talking about Tarzan? John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. Gah, I feel antiquitated for knowing that...

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-05-06 04:33am

Who the hell is John Clayton? This is the first I've heard of him.

The big "atheist to Christian" out there is Lee Strobel. I've never read his book about his deconversion, but I bet it's a real hoot. I got my hands on a "student edition" of his Case for Faith in which it supposedly answered tough questions about Christianity- starting with evolution. If you made a drinking game revolving around logical fallacies, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning before reaching page 25.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-05-06 12:34pm

OMG, I just decimated Clayton's arguments in a paper for my Critical Thinking class.

He's a high school physics teacher who doesn't understand thermodynamics or the big bang theory. I pity his students...

I also read the student version of Case for Faith, and sweet Jesus is it a pile of crap.

Majin Gojira · Post by **Majin Gojira** » 2006-05-06 01:01pm

Elheru Aran wrote:...am I the only one that thought you were talking about Tarzan? John Clayton, Lord Greystoke. Gah, I feel antiquitated for knowing that...

Nope, that was my first thought, too.

Darth Lucifer · Post by **Darth Lucifer** » 2006-05-06 01:05pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:...I got my hands on a "student edition" of his Case for Faith in which it supposedly answered tough questions about Christianity- starting with evolution. If you made a drinking game revolving around logical fallacies, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning before reaching page 25.

May I sig this? That was hella funny!

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2006-05-06 01:15pm

I actually e-mailed him a few times questioning some of his claims. He still seems to believe that atheists believe the universe has always been here. He also seems to believe that evolution necessarily leads to a selfish morality (citing the book title "The Selfish Gene" which he obviously never read), despite the fact that social apes actually get along better if we work together much of the time.

It still puzzles me that someone claims to have come to his position through rational consideration of the facts, but if you actually read his story on how he came to be a christian, it was mostly because he was a fuckup his entire life, and he needed emotional support. He also converted because of a woman. He'll claim that he converted because of a consideration for the evidence, but it's clearly because his life lacked fulfillment, and he needed an omnipresent parental figure to make his life feel complete.

Maybe I'll e-mail him again.. that e-mailing shit was nearly a year ago, and I know I'm a bit smarter now than I was then.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-05-07 01:02am

Mario1470 wrote:
DPDarkPrimus wrote:...I got my hands on a "student edition" of his Case for Faith in which it supposedly answered tough questions about Christianity- starting with evolution. If you made a drinking game revolving around logical fallacies, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning before reaching page 25.
May I sig this? That was hella funny!

Go right ahead. If I can ever figure out where my copy went, I'm going to go through it and do a page by page rebuttal and put it up on the web.