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December, 2005 |
The Eyes of the Lord Strike Again |
Anonymity vs. Intelligent Design |
Posted by Brian Beers at 12/24/2005 8:37:00 AM (2 comments left) |
The eyes of the LORD preserve knowledge, But He overthrows the words of the treacherous man. Proverbs 22:12. I had several proof-texts to choose from once I settled on a title for this post, but this was by far the most apt. A month ago, over Thanksgiving, we had a visit from a pseudonymous Dr. Valtor. She swept in fresh from her studies in theater arts at UC Santa Cruz and criticized Dr. Vreeland for his review of Amy Coombâs review of âThe Privileged Planet.â Dr. V became curious about why a piece that he posted 6 months ago was getting any kind of attention. To answer that question, I reviewed the logs of visitors to Theoblogian to find out more about Dr. Valtor. I was amazed at the amount of information that I could piece together. |
First, I googled âValtor.â I found Valtor the Great vs. the Universe, a fitting description of our Valtorâs point of view. I also found that Valtor III was site of an intelligence base in the Klingon/Romulan disputed area, but no Dr. Valtor. I then turned to our visitor logs. I found that Dr. Valtor hailed from an ISP located in Freedom, CA. She (as I figured out) had received an email message with a link to Dr. Vreelandâs critique. She was referred from her email account accessed through webmail.ucsc.edu. So I went and visited ucsc.edu. I found no one with either a first or last name âValtor.â Then I was delighted to discover that I could search by user name. That is when I discovered Dr. Valtorâs true name, email address, phone number, and her personal web page from 2003 when she was a sophomore in the Theater Arts program. She was born and raised in Armed with her true name I went to dexonline.com and performed a residential search near Freedom, CA. I got one entry back with an address and phone number. I went to Google maps, entered her address, and then Google allowed me to get directions from there to Freedom, CA. I did that and lo and behold âIt was a mere 2.1 miles from her house to Freedom! I knew I had the right person. Upon a broader review of our visitor logs I found that on November 24th Dr. Vreelandâs critique had received a visit from someone who had googled âAmy Coombs.â One hour later âDr. Valtorâ spewed her ignorance and bile at Theoblogian.org. I have on occasion googled my own name, and I am surprised at the number of hits we have gotten from someone (that wasnât me) searching on my name. So we had Ms. Coombs Google her own name, find Dr. Vreelandâs critique, fire off an email to a friend of hers, that friend came over and gave Vreeland what-for... I had hoped for something a bit less junior-high. Shouldnât I expect more from someone who took the class âOverview of the Universe?â Amy also emailed the link to several other people around the country for over the next few days we had numerous visitors from around the country jump directly into the June archive where Amyâs name is mentioned. Really, we donât mind getting a defense of Ms. Coombs review. What is sad, however, is that the defense was made by someone who doesnât seem to have a grasp of the arguments. We welcome vigorous discussion. We would be delighted to have someone come in and critique the arguments of the book, to disagree with Dr. Vreelandâs assessment. The discussion could educate all of us, but I donât have any hope for this. The anti-intelligence crowd does not understand that that it is the responsibility of philosophers and theologians to have these discussions, to discuss the import of science. Therefore they only claim that we have no place in this discussion. This demonstrates why we theologians need to discuss it. The other lesson from all of this is how wide a path we leave as we browse the internet. I am not paranoid over invasion of privacy, but I am stunned at how much I was able to discover in only 20 minutes of sleuthing. You canât (for instance) go to someoneâs website, pretend to be a doctor, rag on them, and slink anonymously away. The eyes of the Lord are watching. |