I've had the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit" on my iTunes for some time now. A few days ago... Thursday, I think... I was wondering what was up with the lyrics, so I did a Google search. I stumbled upon a comments thread where the book Go Ask Alice, which takes its name from a line in the song, came up. Someone asserted it was a forgery.
Wondering if there was anything to the assertion, or if it was just an online crank spouting off (something that can be found in no short supply), I went to that great source of wisdom, Wikipedia. In the "authorship" section Wikipedia article on Go Ask Alice, a number of points were listed in favor of the work's being a fiction. Rather than recite or cut & paste them all here, I'll just tell readers to read the wiki article, as well as the Snoes.com page, which doesn't hesitate to label the book bogus. I will say that I had to slap my forehead when I found this, as I read Go Ask Alice back in high school, and looking back on it, it seems altogether too ridiculous: the girl didn't decide to start taking drugs but rather was slipped LSD in a soda (a cheap ploy to maintain the character's innocence), she becomes a priestess of Satan at one point, and then when she cleans up the otherwise non-religious "author" rambles off some stuff abouthow she's going to be dedicated to Jesus now, even though there wasn't any sort of dramatic conversion story involved, much less a plausible one. Then the author... okay, let's be honest, main character, gets killed off in an unexplained and too perfectly tragic to be true death, vaguely related to drugs.
The thing is though, and the time I read it, I believed all of it. Even though at the time publishers were already listing the book as fiction, indeed had been since the mid-eighties. I seem to vaguely remember seeing the word "fiction" somewhere in small print inside the book and casually ignoring it; though it may be my memory is playing a trick on me here. The revelation was thus a minor shock.
It immediately got me thinking about how willing many Christians are to assume everything about the Bible's origins is kosher and the authors of the books of the Bible are who church tradition says they are. This is a hideously naive view in light of what we know about how easy it is for people to be taken in by cons. If it can happen to someone in modern America, where a national media to instantly report exposes of lies all over the nation, indeed, involving a fraud that had already been so exposed, then it could certainly happen in a barely-literate society 2000 years ago, prior to any reliable systems of mass communication.
In a sense, I knew this already. It must be at least a year since I found Snopes' Amityville Horror page and laughed at the people who still didn't know it was a hoax, decades after the hoax was confessed. But things like this really don't hit home until they've happened to you.
13 comments:
You might enjoy this. First video, and the others are good, too.
I found some great fiction book reviews. You can also see those reviews in Non fiction book
I like you had to laugh so hard that I had to run to the toilet when I read yout erroneous statement about the Amityville Horror being confessed to being a hoax.Steve Kaplan was a money grubbing paranormalist who claimed the hoax after Lutz told him to hit the road.I would pay a thousand dollars just to see one of you bozo's drop a pant full in a real haunted house.
Http://www.atheist-stooges.com
For your information, I've been inside a "real" (or at least Fate magazine certified, Ed and Lorraine Warren certified) haunted theater on many occasions, and I think I stopped being scared, or even thinking much about its alleged hauntedness, when I was 8. And I was a well-potty trained 8 year old.
On a personal note, when did you complete your potty training, Anony?
P.S. Even though I never dropped a pant full, I do have pictures of myself in the theater and would be happy to sell them to you for $1,000.
hallq,
You're a liar.
The only haunted house that you've been in was on Halloween when they dressed your local small town bowling alley up.
Ed and Lorraine were the real thing.You on the other hand are a fake.
Hallq,
Where are the counter apologetics that you have promised your visitors?Outside of the fact that you are taking alot of your readers to hell with you I don't see any rational argument for your faith.You see, the problem is, you're comparing a high school education of the world with a 6 year old understanding of the Bible.You do a marvelous job at evasion. Other than that, you're quite useless.
Anony (are you the same anony as the first one)?
Want to turn that into a thousand-dollar bet? Say yes and by the 20th, I'll send you the pics of me in the theater along with a Xerox of the news story describing how the Warrens came to town and confirmed that the theater was indeed haunted. (I say by the 20th because that's the weekend when I'm briefly going hope after finals).
Mike,
Want to try that again? I can't even make sense of your third sentence.
Hallq,
Again you're a bullshitter.
And by the looks of you you couldn't afford ten dollars let alone One thousand.
"Want to try that again? I can't even make sense of your third sentence."
Are you dsylexic or just stoopid?
GOOD MORNING CLASS: At this moment, I would like to have you to visit alt.atheism. As you know, each time I have had you visit this news group, it was for the purpose of conducting an experiment to prove a point about atheism. In every case, the truth and point I wanted to make were proved overwhelmingly by the responses everyone of the atheists gave.One experiment was designed to prove that atheism is not about proof but is about rejecting certain fundamental truths. I asked the atheists who believe in abortion to *prove* that human embryos and fetuses aren’t human. Over the course of a weeks time, you observed some of the most ridiculous and insane responses. Not even the most so-called “educated” respondents provided the least proof. Another experiment was designed to prove that the most educated atheists aren’t really intelligent. In order to prove that truth, I asked only the most educated atheists to respond to my post. All I simply asked the atheists to do was to prove that there is nothing that is eternal. However, the responses you observed were the most unintellectual you have ever read. They ranged from cursing, name calling, cynicism, mockery, the posting of pictures to ridicule and etc. There was not one intelligent response from any of the respondents.
Now if you will, look at alt. atheism at this moment. Note the many unintelligent subjects in the headers of each post. Try also reading the content of the various posts. All of them manifest the deepest of unintelligence. Most are pure senselessness and vanity. All basically manifest a hatred for God and true Christianity and etc. If God’s existence is no more than the tooth fairy’s or santa clause’s, why do atheists put so much time, effort and money into trying to disprove God’s existence? None of them are doing the same for the tooth fairy.
The web sites that atheists have placed on the internet also manifest the unintelligence of atheism. Note all the unintelligent names of the sites. Note also the unintelligent content of those sites.
When anyone note the content of atheistic news groups, atheistic web sites and all other atheistic material on the web and in the world, no person in his/her right mind can conclude that atheists are truly intelligent people. The only way anyone can conclude that atheists are intelligent people is to use the twisted and unintelligent logic of atheism.
Bet or no bet, I'll have the photos and Xerox posted on the 20th.
"Bet or no bet, I'll have the photos and Xerox posted on the 20th."
Xerox of what your bowling alley?
And even if you have photo's of anything 10 minutes in a haunted house isn't going to prove anything as the spirits don't perform on your queue or command.Places can go months without activity until one day all hell breaks loose.Millions of witnesses can attest to that.The vatican scientists (all Phd's I might add have verified that.And if a demon is involved I guarantee my first born that it's not going to reveal itself to an atheist.They have you right where they need you,in the dark and spritually retarded. You wouldn't know nonsense from truth if it hit you upside your head with a venn diagram- You have two faces, and you don't even try to hide them. You say one thing in one comment and in the next completely contradict your last statement. Try not to let these people watching think you're some great debater. You're borderline schizophrenic and that's not name-calling. You really say one thing then the opposite next to get your way.
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