I first learned about Frank Walton’s “Atheism Sucks” website from J. P. Holding’s “Tekton” website that mentioned it as something worth a peek.
I peeked and saw that Frank had created an expanded homage to Holding’s “Trophy Room” (where Holding lists people he is certain he has “defeated” in debate, trouble is, those folks just don’t know it). So Frank’s website featured added vilifications of Holding’s debate opponents.
Frank also added photographs showing the prison in which Holding used to work as a state-hired librarian and images of some of the inmates with whom Holding may have rubbed elbows.
Frank suggested that anyone who sought knowledge of who the pseudonymous Mr. “J. P.
Holding” was, and who broadcast such knowledge on the internet, was endangering Mr. Holding. Now, I agree that publishing such knowledge on the internet might indeed put Holding in danger, especially if he employed the same manner of expressing himself verbally toward dangerous inmates as he has used toward people whom he debates online.
(On the other hand, when was the last time you read in a newspaper, “Violent prisoner escapes! Swears vengeance on the friend who ratted him out, on the cops who arrested him, the judge and jury who sentenced him, and everyone who glanced at him the wrong way in prison! Plans to assassinate them all, beginning with the prison librarian!
”)
Of course if Holding thought it was vital above all to maintain his anonymity, why get involved in the most controversial of subjects, religion? Why spend countless hours, eventually quitting his job to go full time, so he could challenge, provoke and engage in a multitude of online debates 24-7 (many of them including some form of verbal heat)? Why broadcast himself (and his eternal endless “winning streaks” as he sees them)?
Did he not consider that people might be curious and wish to peek under the mask of a superhero, especially a self-proclaimed one filled with his own braggadocio, in his case, “Inerrant Bible-man?” (Seen at his own website preaching in a Klingon mask behind a pulpit, or preaching behind the avatar of a scowling and sometimes screaming female bunny whose personality traits seems less rabbit-like and more porcupine-like)?
All that being said (and I probably shouldn’t have, because who knows how they will react to what I’ve written), i.
e., having peeked at Frank’s website, I was curious about his testimony, since I have read many first hand accounts over the past three decades from people who enjoyed talking about their journeys of mind and soul, and I continue to find something particularly intriguing about learning how and why people undergo changes and in what ways. I also work at a college and had read I think at Holding or Frank’s site that the latter was attending college, so I asked him which college.
One can read the first email I sent Frank along with his reply and further exchanges that date from April 4th to May 5th 2005, , at Frank’s website.
For the Record as Frank shows at his own website, I sent him
1 email on Apr. 4th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on Apr. 5th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on Apr.
6th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on Apr. 8th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on Apr.11th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on May 4th, waited for his reply, and he replied.
1 email on May 5th, waited for his reply, though I don’t have a record of him replying directly to me via email to that one, he later did leave at least one message on the guestbook of my website, sometime before or on May 23rd to announce that he'd completed his web page about me.
Notice that I originally sent him 7 emails in the space of 30 days (something he apparently refers to in his memory as countless, and he replied to all six of them, and his message sent to my guestbook and creation of his webpage about me constituted his seventh reply.
Frank also claimed that I was "uploading my anger" at him, but I simply asked him a few questions, and challenged his view that "atheism sucks" via examples.
My "anger" was neither visible nor relevant. Neither did he tell me at that time to cease emailing him, but rather told me to "keep hacking."
It was weeks after May 5th that I contacted Frank and sent him a few brief emails, and without anger.
(Brief ones with some information I found interesting and that he designates as "unrelated topics and links"). Those emails were also sent to friends other than Frank, none of whom complained of having received them but Frank. And he is quite a complainer.
He told me at that time to cease sending him emails, which I promptly did, and his own website says it's been over 500 days since he's received any sort of unsolicited email from me. Ergo, Frank lies about me being the ultimate spammer, it's quite the reverse, and in fact it would be nearer the truth to say Frank is the ultimate slanderer and spammer. See below for more details.
NOTE: I will not try to say I am always and in every way totally in the right, because people have different perceptions and interests even when it comes to information one person is curious about, and that the other couldn't care less about, or is insulted to even read about. So I apologized to Frank a while back for sending him those brief unsolicited emails, and as I said, I ceased sending them when he told me to cease. At a later time I even apologized at length to Frank, and to Glenn Morton (whom I never "stalked" but who had been put on an email list by someone else, and I was also on the same list).
Both Glenn and even Frank accepted my apologies. (Though Frank himself continues to act quite unapologetically toward me and many others at his blog. See below.
)
I do regret and apologize for having pursued my curiosity (about such things as Frank's journey of mind and soul) further than Frank’s patience would allow. But Frank apparently remains oblivious to the fact he replied to each and every one of my original emails, and he claimed wrongfully that I was "angry" and invited me to "hack some more," and then he went into “high insult” gear designing a as his next "reply" to insult me, and sent me unsolicited emails letting me know where it may be found. The featured our initial 7 emails and my photo with arrows pointing to my mouth and employed insulting names.
At around the same time Frank also sent me approximately fifteen unsolcitied emails, some of enormous length, and all in one twenty-four hour period on May 25th 2005, to which I only sent one email in reply on that same afternoon, saying, “Frank buddy, I don't mind receiving emails from you, but could we switch to my home email? I used my work email when I wrote you originally because that's where my webmaster contacted me about your guest book message and so I emailed you from work. I have to remember myself to use my home email in future,” after which Frank started sending his plethora of unsolicited emails to BOTH my work and home email boxes.
Frank also posted both my home and work email addresses with this note: “[W]henever we get junk email we do Babinski the pleasure of forwarding it to him. As a matter of fact, readers, if you ever feel like using Babinski’s email for whatever reason (use it for spam; or send him Bible verses - one verse at a time, one day at a time; or send him an article about whatever topic; or send him an email with nothing in it, etc.); you can go ahead and use it.
..”
Of the 15 emails Frank sent me during a single 24-hour period May 25th 2005, I deleted the ones that simply consisted of more chapters of Genesis and Philippians.
But I saved the ones with personalized subject lines that Frank wrote. Here they are (to conserve space I’m only including the headings with the subject lines and time sent, and only presenting 9 of the original that approximately totaled 15):
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:45:48 AM
From: Frank Walton
Subject: Phillipians chapter 3
To: ed babinski
Attachments: Attach0.html 6K
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:46:23 AM
From: Frank Walton
Subject: Phillipians chapter 4
To: ed babinski
Attachments: Attach0.
html 6K
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 2:29:02 AM
From: Frank Walton
Subject: Have you also seen this movie?
To: ed babinski
Attachments: Attach0.html 1K
HERE’S WHERE I SENT FRANK MY REQUEST TO NO LONGER USE MY WORK EMAIL ADDRESS, BUT INSTEAD USE MY HOME EMAIL ADDRESS:
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 10:39:16 AM
From: ed babinski
Subject: Frank buddy, could we switch to my home address?
To: Frank Walton
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:30:24 PM
From: Frank Walton
Subject: Stanky mouth, here's Genesis chapter 1
To: ed babinski [Frank’s nickname for my home address]
leonardo3@msn.com
Attachments: Attach0.html 27K
----- Original Message -----
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 1:39:50 PM
From: Frank Walton (my tweb name is ), and then click on “Find All Posts By Babaloo,” and scroll down by the date where they begin, till you get to May 25th 2005 and click on it.
In that thread I posted in response to Frank’s note of absolute confidence that he "didn’t see anything in Scripture" regarding how non-confrontational a Christian ought to ideally be.
And instead of dealing with , Frank cited my photo, my breath, and what he perceived to be my grotesquely evil behavior, anything rather than explain why he denied that those had anything to do, in his opinion, with how confrontational a Christian ought ideally to be. Those verses certainly appeared to have some connection with the question of “Confrontational Apologetics,” which was the topic of the thread that both Holding and Frank were studiously ignoring.
In that same thread Holding told me, “You are so danged stupid it hurts.” While Walton wrote “At least he [Holding] has fans!" [unlike me, supposedly--E.
T.B.] So I mocked back, saying, “They cloak themselves in darkness and spend each day creating cartoon voodoo doll images of ‘unbelievers’ to poke verbal pins in, and congratulate themselves for winning imaginary ‘Trophies’ in debate [something J.
P. Holding does].” I also pointed them toward some of my mail.
To be sure, I am far from being the only person to have ever been insulted by Frank. Take this post Frank wrote about Reginald Finley: "Proof that Reginald Finley is a complete loser" (http://atheismsucks.blogspot.
com/2005/09/proof-that-reginald-finley-is-complete.html)
[edited to break link, copy paste if you want to see it]
I emailed Reginald to see whether he’d seen Frank’s post and received this reply, “Yes. Frank used to come to my site and attack me directly.
However he has backed off my site since one of my members posted his home address and we caught him in too many lies to count on my forum.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To this day, October 2006, Frank Walton continues to send me unsolicited emails directing me to his blogsite.
In August 2006 Frank sent me an unsolicited email directing me to one of his entries titled, "Is Ed Babinski a Homophobe?
" He said my use of the words " " to describe a blogger called "The Discomfiter" was akin to homophobia. But "The Discomfiter" was intentionally trying to imitate the persona of a "gay atheist." "The Discomfiter's" own blog profile read like this: "Industry: Fashion; Occupation: Interior Decorating; Interests: Refuting Christians.
..and remodeling Tuscan style villas.
" So based on "The Discomfiter's" own blogger profile I wrote that I was addressing the "gay atheist" blog owner of "Discomfiting Christianity" (And I put the words, "gay atheist," in quotation marks because I did not believe that "the Discomfiter" was gay nor an atheist, but that he was a Christian (as it turned out he was) who was attempting to satirize both gays and atheists. So if anyone was "homophobic" it was The Discomfiter, not I. Frank apparently didn't read "The Discomfiter's" blogger profile or see from the rest of "The Discomfiter's blog" how the Christian disguised as a gay atheist was attempting to slander both.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In October, 2006 Frank added to his for Monday, October 23, 2006, something titled, "Ed Babinski Exposed - see, we told you so!" which consists of an email from a new employee at the university where I work who said they met me once and "suspected" me of being a "child molester."
I recall the event and circumstances.
The email is from a new employee who works in a non-library office inside the library (it's a newly rebuilt library including offices of a few non-library departments), so she does not come to library breaks and was not at my 50th surprise birthday party that the library staff attended, and I have had little contact with her aside from that morning when I asked her her name at a special event when the library employees were greeting new employees whose offices were in other non-library related areas. I had just completed the morning's mail sort with my students, and hadn't had my coffee, and was expected to show up at this special break and thought it wise to grab a pen and a yellow post-it pad which was handy, in order to write down the names of the new employees and spell them correctly on their mailboxes. (My job involves training students and making sure all the library mail gets sorted, journals check-ed in and shelved, invoices paid, bindery shipments done, etc.
All the latest journals, newspapers, catalogs, flow through my department).
Aside from her "suspicion" that she thought I might be a "child molester," her story states that I misheard her name, and misrepeated it, for which she slights me. I do not have as acute hearing as I used to have.
And I wished to spell her name correctly on her post office box. I hadn't even had my morning java! Neither did I know she was married to another non-library department employee whom I know, and with whom I've had a few friendly discussions with in the break room about a shared love of science fiction and fantasy books and films.
I was surprised to find out that employee's spouse was also working in an office close to his.
Thirdly, as for my relationship with fellow employees, they have requested I deliver humorous speeches on special occasions, including retirement speeches. The longest serving employee at Furman asked me personally to deliver her retirement speech, and I worked with my comedy duo friend Ryan and we came up with a great presenation that the audience loved.
A dean of the colege who atteneded told me it was the funniest retirement speech he'd ever heard. And the retiree and her daughters thanked me profusely. On my 50th birthday the staff threw me a birthday party that was simply overwhelming.
I rec'd remails from former bosses and people I've worked with, that were read aloud. One former co-worker (whom I had roasted when she left) phoned me during the party to wish me well. Another sent me an email that said she still keeps a copy of the funny speech I wrote and delivered when she left Furman for a job in Florida.
One person wrote and delivered a funny poem, another rewrote the lyrics to a Paul Simon song, making it read, "50 Ways to Work in Serials" and made it into a sing along that everyone joined in on, others purchased gift items that had turned 50-years-old like Play Doh and Yatzee, and presented me with them. They made banners with the things that happened the year I was born, the top ten songs and movies of that year and other top ten lists. I even rec'd an email from the library's former director, and my friend Ryan (who is my comedy buddy at work) made a video featuring interviews with professors and others on campus whom I knew who couldn't make that morning's party, and their comments were sweet and hilarious.
It was also a surprise party, and my boss took me to the room where everyone was waiting and they jumped out and shouted Happy Birthday. I was taken aback tremendously. I also have received birthday cards from a former boss every year on my birthday.
I feel very fortunate to work where I do with such wonderful people.
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