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Thursday, 11 April 2013

What To Do With A Spent Loon?

Regular readers here and followers of the #atheism hashtag on Twitter will have heard of 'Sacerdotus' which is one of the many pseudonyms of an unemployed narcissistic, probably psychotic loon who spends most of every day boasting about his academic qualifications, claiming to hold various university degrees, tweeting and blogging about how he's about to 'destroy Atheism' and fantasising about being a Catholic seminarian about to qualify for the priesthood, whilst simultaneously displaying his crass ignorance about almost everything. In fact, he was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, New York shortly after 2003 because of gross misconduct, thus ending his clerical career and simultaneously rendering himself unemployable.

Readers may also be aware that he has developed something of a psychotic obsession with me, inventing lurid tales of child abuse and terrorist activities and posting them on his blog. He also, rather pathetically, desperately tries to convince people that I have declined to debate him despite the fact that the record of his public display of cowardice in running away from my challenge to him to engage me in open debate can still be read in Debate: Is There Scientific Evidence Only For The Christian God?. I had challenged him to establish his claim to have scientific evidence proving the existence of the Christian god. The topic of the debate, which, had it been won would have established his claim, together with simple terms for ensuring transparency and unbiased moderation, and reducing his opportunity for his usual obfuscation, avoidance and quibbling over the meaning of words as a diversion, was laid out for discussion. As expected, his boasting proved to be empty and he refused to even discuss the terms, let alone producing anything resembling the scientific evidence he claimed to have or engage in anything resembling meaningful debate. It seems that the idea of open debate in a neutral forum is terrifying to him.

Following that public humiliation, 'Sacerdotus' went on a spree of abusive posts on Twitter, setting up impersonations of my account to post sexually explicit obscenities, campaigning to have me banned from Twitter, accusing me of being behind a conspiracy to have all Christians banned from the Internet, and issuing threats of violence resulting in Twitter intervening to take down all his accounts and any new ones, pending an undertaking to observe the rules he signed up to on joining. He was placed on special monitoring to ensure compliance. At the same time there were several crude and inept attempts to hack my Twitter account by changing the password.

In the traditional style of a deranged psychotic, he frequently claims to have provided reports to the FBI, NYPD and something called 'The UK Authorities' on my 'terrorist' activities allegedly provided by his many 'contacts' who he says are watching me, presumably imagining 'The UK Authorities' would need his assistance and that of his team of 'contacts' if any of this were true. No doubt in pre-word processor times these 'reports' would have been written in green ink and signed "A Consernd Cityzen".

So, having initially spotted 'Sacerdotus' as an inept, infantile fraud ripe for plucking, so to speak, and recruited him to help me discredit religion in general and Catholicism in particular, by putting him on a public stage for all to witness his dishonesty and ineptitude in the name of Jesus and Catholicism, what to do about him now?

He has just spectacularly failed yet another simple challenge in which he only needed to answer an easy question exploring a fundamental tenet of Christianity (see here). It's now become something of a sport on Twitter to challenge 'Sacerdotus' to a debate to see what excuses he will come up with next, or even if he will acknowledge having seen the challenge.

I have many more such questions which would also show his cowardly disingenuousness, but is there any point to this? Does it help further the cause of Atheism and to discredit Catholicism more (is that even possible after all the recent scandals?) to continue to expose this sad fraud who probably has a personality disorder or Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, and is possibly mentally ill, and who has probably outlived his use-by date as an example of the harm religion does to people?

Or should I just ignore him from now on, consigning him to the obscurity he probably fears most, bearing in mind that the reactions he gets on Twitter are probably his only means of self-affirmation and the only way he has to measure his perceived importance to the world, no matter how distorted that perception is?

I have prepared this little questionnaire. I will leave it up for a week. Please let me know your thoughts.

Now 'Sacerdotus' has spectacularly failed another simple challenge from me what should I do?


pollcode.com free polls

[Update 19 April 2013]

Voting is now closed.

With the vote being 55:45 in favour of ignoring the infantile fool, serial Internet abuser and sociopath, Manuel de Dios Agosto, aka @Sacerdotus, in future he will now be ignored by me no matter what username he uses. I suggest others do likewise as that would seem to be the only way to help him control his psychotic behaviour.

It just remains for me to thank him for the sterling work he did for me, albeit unwittingly, in helping to discredit religion in general and Catholicism in particular. Would Manuel be the obnoxious little excrescence he is today if it hadn't been for the Catholic Church? Nice one Manuel.

PS. Just one last thing, for anyone who is tempted to believe Manuel's denial that he is the Manuel de Dios Agosto who was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, and his claim that Manuel de Dios Agosto is a young child: here is the account by Claudia McDonnell of the announcement by Bishop Garmendia of New York in New York Catholic that Manuel de Dios Agosto was to be admitted to a Franciscan seminary. The Franciscan seminary in New York is St. Joseph's. The New York Catholic site was archived on 2 February 2003 so clearly this announcement was made more than ten years ago. Manuel left the now closed (for low academic standards) Grace H Dodge school in 2000 when he would have been 16. There is no formal lower age limit for admission to seminary but this is not normally before age 18, which would mean Manuel entered seminary in 2002 - consistent with the site being archived in 2003. Assuming Manuel was indeed 18 years-old at the time, this would make him 31 years old now. Although very clearly mentally still a minor, Manuel is chronologically not the minor he likes to pretend.

In fact, by trying to involve an unfortunate child who has the misfortune to share Manuel's name and who Manuel found on the Internet, by using him to divert attention from his psychotic fantasies and abject failure to ever substantiate a single one of his claims, is tantamount to the very child abuse he accuses others of.





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18 comments:

  1. I think that so long as you engage with folk like Sacerdotus, the more you will reinforce the impression that militant atheists prefer to quite unrepresentative Christian types.

    The range of Christian beliefs is represented far better, not by those who are kicked out of the theological colleges, but who stay in, graduate and enter ministry. Among these you find a wide spectrum from the fundamentalist evangelicals to the way-out liberals who are barely identifiable as still any sort of Christian believer.

    Better to engage with folk all along this spectrum than with likes of Sacerdotus.

    Regards (from a way-out, off the end of the spectrum liberal.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're probably right. The problem is though that such Christians (or Muslims for that matter) are as common as hen's teeth on the popular social media and one rarely if ever sees them remonstrating with the extremists / fundamentalists of their respective faiths.

      In fact, I would go so far as to say that their silence, together with their dependence on 'faith' as a means to determine truth, lends credence and respectability to extremism and so facilitates and enables extremism. I make just that point in Permitting Extremists.

      Delete
    2. That's a fair criticism. In fact, the point is central to my current writing project. So I guess I've just decided what topic to blog about over the weekend!

      Delete
    3. Happy to be of assistance. :-)

      Delete
  2. A 700+ word essay on some petty Twitter comments, where's the 'lighten up' option on the poll?
    I honestly don't think he cares if you "expose" him, you just want to feed your ego.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Darth Nihilus; Neo the One13 April 2013 at 18:41

    Couldn't have been more obvious above. Hes scared of you, Rosa, I've known that since our first meeting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rosa, I have commented here before. Can you provide us evidence regarding this individual's years at St. Joseph's seminary? Furthermore, can you provide evidence that Sacerdotus is this child you claim he is? Until you do so, it would be foolish to take your post seriously and you are defaming those involved.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have you voted yet Manuel? This is the last day.

      Delete
  5. Your crush on me is a bit flattering. However, I would prefer that you delete all abuse and mentions of this minor and continue our debate in good faith. Perhaps you should answer the individual requesting proof of my supposed "expulsion" from a seminary I never attended. My conscience is clean, is yours? I have nothing to hide and find it laughable the stupidity you come up with and how your friends believe it. This shows how stupid atheism really is. You have no idea the laughing stock you have become from your own doing; not only on twitter and the blogosphere, but also Facebook and other social media outlets.

    As soon as we finish our debate on my blog, then we can have a debate on your blog granted your rules are logical, do not change after we begin, and are fair. I am not afraid to debate you. As you and your friends have noticed, I constantly tweet asking you to come back to my blog to debate. If that is not enough, I even made a petition so that others would hopefully encourage you to find the courage to debate me. It is obvious you do not have the academic background to last long. Nevertheless, I will be gentle with your limited capacity and will allow you time to google your responses.

    It is hard to believe that this popular atheist caricature is afraid to face me... can't be... What would Hitchens do?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The vote was 56:44 in favour of ignoring you Manuel - which is what will happen from now on. I realise how devastating this is for you because, without the attention you get from Twitter your little life would have no meaning to you.

      You seem incapable of modifying your behaviour which has led to you becoming one of the most detested people on the Internet so you only have yourself to blame.

      BTW, my GMail client identified you as the same person who post anonymously yesterday at 22:28. The ip address was the give-away. You can't even lie successfully when you pretend not to be yourself can you.

      Any more comments from you on my blog, in line with the democratic wishes of my readers, will now also be removed as attention-seeking spam - which is what we both know they are.

      I never did reveal everything I know about the reason for you and your friend being expelled from St Joseph's and how you narrowly avoided prosecution, unlike your friend, did I. You would be amazed at who was giving me this information but that's the price you pay for being such an obnoxious, hate-filled and hatefull little man. Unless they tell you, you will never find out who it was, least of all from me.

      So, that's it from me. I hope eventually you find some meaning for your little life and grow up to be a useful person.

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In line with the overwhelming vote to ignore you Manuel, your latest post which, with your characteristic cowardice you posted anonymously, has been removed.

      Do try to get your head round the concept of ip addresses before you make an even bigger fool of yourself than you have already.

      The account I gave of your admission to and expulsion from St Joseph's Seminary has already given the lie to your claim that it relates to some unfortunate minor you found on the Internet who just happens to have the misfortune to share your name, and whom you have been abusing by trying to deflect attention from your personality disorder and abject cowardice onto him.

      I hope you have the decency to stop abusing this particular child now the truth is out. I'd have thought, with your record, that is that last thing you would want to be accused of.

      Good luck as you sink further into obscurity as more and more people follow this lead and ignore your infantile stupidity. Maybe you should risk it and go out of your room more often.

      Delete
  7. To the webmaster:

    It has come to our attention that you are mentioning our institution and claiming that said individual on your blog post was expelled. There has never been any student in our program with this name. The information on this post is completely fabricated. I ask you to please remove all references to our seminary and find other ways to deal with your situation with whoever you are having issue with. Call our rector for any questions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Go away Manuel. No one believes you any more.

      Delete
    2. If anyone is wondering how Manuel de Dios Agosto posts comments looking like they come from someone else, it's very simple.

      You open a comment form and select Name/URL as the preferred option. Then you put the Twitter ID of the person you are impersonating in the Name box and Twitter.com/ followed by the same name in the URL box.

      So, if you want your comment to look like it came from, to take a random example, Manuel de Dios Agosto, the expelled seminarian, habitual liar and internet abuser, you put Sacerdotus in the Name box and Twitter.com/Sacerdotus in the URL box. It will look for all the world to the uninformed like Manuel has posted the comment.

      You can even do it to pretend to be a friend of Manuel's giving him some advice.

      The give away is that there is no mechanism for logging on to Blogger using a Twitter account so a Twitter address can ONLY be entered this way.

      It is dishonest and underhand of course - the sort of thing a psychopath would do to harass and try to alarm people he is currently stalking, so I wouldn't want decent people to do it.

      Delete
  8. It's not fun to have him stalking you and writing nefarious blogs about you, Rosa, but as you notice in your own blog here above, this man is helping you discredit religion in general and Catholicism in particular,

    ReplyDelete

Obscene, threatening or obnoxious messages, preaching, abuse and spam will be removed, as will anything by known Internet trolls and stalkers, by known sock-puppet accounts and anything not connected with the post,

A claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Remember: your opinion is not an established fact unless corroborated.