The VenomFangX "thing"

If you don't know who venomfangx is - lucky you. VFX is, or rather was a YouTube user, Christian and Young Earth Creationist. A YEC in an individual who believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible including the 7 day creation story in Genesis and that the Earth is not more than 10,000 years old (and typically somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 years at that). VFX was a particularly militant breed of YEC and his entire YouTube channel was dedicated to the rejection of any ideologies and scientific concepts that YEC's typically view as a threat or contradiction to their own views. His channel became insanely popular on YouTube attracting flocks of Christians desperate to affirm their views and multitudes of chagrined atheists pissed at his unethical misrepresentation of facts and the censored way he conducted his channel. That VFX ever amassed any popularity at all is on first inspection mind boggling, his entire output consisted of copying - often verbatim - long debunked YEC pseudo scientific propaganda from sources like Kent Hovind. What's important to note here is that the material presented by Kent Hovind has been looooooooong debunked. Hovind claims to have a phd and have taught highschool science for years, thus placing himself in a position of authority to attack scientific principals, however he bought his phd from a diploma mill and his blatant poor understanding of any scientific principals calls his claims of teaching science into some doubt - surely a science teacher would know what the letters A,T, G and C signify in relation to DNA? Kent Hovind does not. Much of Hovinds evidence and examples that contradict concepts like Evolution are extremely obscure and taken at face value might make one have second thoughts about the status of Evolution as the primary explanation for the diversity of life, however a group of dedicated individuals at www.talkorigins.org have amassed a database of common Creationist claims and thoroughly run them through, complete with full referencing. Hovind brandishes the weapon of ignorance and preys on the faith of his victims. VFX picked up the weapon where Hovind dropped it and continued the onslaught. One may wonder how VFX amassed any followers at all if his arguments were known to carry no weight before he even made them, and the answer to that question is the afore mentioned censorship of his YouTube channel. VFX personally approves or denies every single comment made on every single one of his videos allowing only those comments which agree with him or praise him to be displayed - he also disables ratings on his videos (after he has given himself a couple of 5 star ratings of course) and refuses any video responses to his videos that contradict his stance. The cumulative effect of all this censorship is that all VFX videos appear highly rated and apparently no one disagrees with him or criticises his output. VFX more or less ignores all videos made in response to his own, but has on occasion dabbled in the odd video war with another user or two. These are usually tiresome affairs where VFX attempts to deflect the discussion from science (an arena he has no genuine knowledge or understanding in) in favour of ideology and philosophy where he engages in endless circular and faulty lines of reasoning often taking parts of his opponents videos in isolation and out of context and thereby losing the meaning. And now he's gone. Apparently the parents of Mr X received some sort of threatening letter (which VFX claims is of Muslim origin) and he has been forced to delete his channel to protect his dear family. Not sure if I believe this, in fact I flat out don't believe this because he pulled the exact same shitty ass tactic last year and returned something like 3 days later having deleted most of his Hovind rip-offs and embarking on a line of reasoning based on the faulty assertions of the "Intelligent Design" movement. This time I'm not doubting if he'll be back - I don't think he will be, but I am doubting the reason. The real reason for his departure I suspect has to do with his recent donation scandal. VFX asked his subscribers if they could donate $500 per month to support his proposed "street ministry" (an endeavour which seemed to basically consist of VFX engaging in bouts of circular logic with hapless students). VFX asked for $500 dollars (this on the back of asking his subscribers to provide him with a new video camera some months before) - but requested each donation be $1 each which he deemed to be an appropriate amount - Therefore VFX would track how many donations he received each week and all the money he received over 500 donations would go to charity. However this system left somewhat of a loophole in the "rules" - people weren't limited to $1 donations and the comments of his videos indicated he was receiving donations far in excess of the $1, so VFX could conceivably obtain far in excess of $500 of donations while remaining well short of 500 actual donations and according to his "rules" be allowed to keep all the money whether it be $10 or $10,000. There was a lot of noise on YouTube from VFX critics criticising the donation scheme and VFX made some very weak videos defending his position claiming that $500 wasn't enough to "support his ministry" after all and that the intervention of atheists would prevent him from reporting how much money he was donating to charity, which smelled a bit shitty in my humble opinion. So I'm thinking that this has more to do with bugging out with the money before his supporters start to get overly suspicious about where their money is going and start sending some genuine letters to his parents rather than anything to do with Muslim threats. Still, part of me wouldn't be surprised if he came back tomorrow with a brand new line of faulty logic to dribble into the brains of those not willing to think or research for themselves. freedoms_stain, out.