DL20081014

Hello, Dr. White, I presume. Yes, sir. I have a bone to pick with you, sir.

Just a very brief one. I'm a busy man, I know you are too, so I'll be as brief as I can. I feel like I could probably just talk about that clip that you just played.

You know, the fellow talking about dipping your finger in the water and all this. This is all just silliness, you know, and this is quite frankly why

I think religion religion is such tomfoolery, and I'll have none of it, none of it at all, and I don't know why you would have anything to do with it either, and quite frankly,

I wish you would not say all the things you're saying, because I prefer to have all my religious people be not so erudite, you know, so all the theological acumen and so on, all the textual bits of all that, and philosophical categories and everything,

I just wish you would not talk like that, because I like my religious people to stay doofus, I've always preferred it that way.

Yes, yes, you know, that almost, that was almost a perfect Christopher Hitchens, it was very close, not quite, but pretty close.

Well, I guess my British accent is quite a bit better than yours, but no offense at all, you understand.

Oh yes, yes, I certainly understand, there are some people in England that wish they had as good an accent as I do, but anyway, no, quite seriously,

I'm sort of wondering what your real purpose in calling is,

Chris. Well, I know there's only a bloody every Richard Dawkins zealous followers, I guess I'm one of those,

I don't know, but I don't know why you'd be so, I mean, why not just get rid of all religious mumbo -jumbo, just own up to the truth of the matter, which is that we're in the universe all alone, there's nothing else to it, and the sun's going to go cold and we're all going to die, and so on, and so...

Sounds like you've listened to a lot of Christopher Hitchens. Oh yes, yes, indeed, I'm quite a fan, a friend, in fact.

A friend, a friend indeed. Yes, a friend as thick as the clothes of a brother, for my quote -on -text, if indeed that's in the original text,

I don't know, it's your business, not mine, but... Even though I do remember Christopher Hitchens, when he was on a certain radio program debating a

Christian, was very quick to quote Bart Ehrman as his source for, in essence, dismissing the modern

New Testament as having any relevance whatsoever, I'm not sure if you heard that debate on the...

Well, I love Mr. Ehrman, I wish that Mr. Ehrman could teach at all the seminars, if I could clone him, I would just clone him off and send him to all the theological seminars so he could teach all the young minds just how silly all this business is about the

New Testament. So clearly it's nothing more than mythological, nothing more than that, mythological. So when he himself admits that as far as reconstructing the original, we have in essence accomplished that task, and everything else after that is mere tinkering, you'd agree with him that the

New Testament manuscript tradition is in fact that robust that we have in fact reconstructed the original text of the

New Testament. I mean, you are aware of the fact that he says that. Well, let's be quite honest with you,

I don't trifle with all of his academic writings. I know in his academic writings he comes off much more conservative. I like his populist writings,

I like a good populist writer that knows how to make good money by excoriating religion.

Yeah, so you admit that he says one thing to his fellow scholars who can check him out and something different to people who have no clue as to what the actual facts are.

Well, I suppose he's too weak -kneeded and intimidated by fellows like himself to really come out and say what he really believes, and so it's good to toe the line, as it were, and make out as though the

New Testament really has some sort of solid foundation, and take it real seriously. But then his populist writings, which

I love so much, you know, he really lets—well, it all comes down to the problem of evil. I mean,

I had a hangnail this morning, and I just thought to myself, how could there be a God with a hangnail? It's really painful. Very painful.

Well, why don't you, since you do such an excellent Christopher Hitchens impersonation, why don't you present to us his primary argument, which

I've heard him repeat many, many times, and therefore if you know him so well and are closer to him than a brother,

I'm sure you could repeat his favorite argument against especially the

Christian faith. You're talking about Dawkins now, right? No, no. I'm talking about Christopher Hitchens.

Oh, well, either way. Of course, I'm extremely drunk right now, so I may get this very wrong.

I don't know. I'm probably not going to make a decision at all. But I suppose I was just a stiletto in saying that religion is silly and stupid, and it's caused all manner of atrocities throughout time.

Finally, we've—I don't know. I suppose you'll correct me, because you're such a big smarty -pants, you know. Sorry, Chris. You didn't—you've got to study him a little bit.

Even I know what his favorite argument is. He used it with Dinesh D'Souza, and he does it in his—in almost all of his talks.

Wait a minute. No. Give me another chance. Was it an insult? Is it in the form of an insult? Does it involve any—is it—is there a bomb anywhere in it?

No. Oh. Oh. Well, hey, you know, Chris, I really do appreciate your coming on to defend

Bart Ehrman, but I'm not sure that Bart's overly happy that you're doing that. I'm his number one fan.

Just remember, I'm his number one fan. I want him on there. All right. Okay. Thank you, Chris, for calling today. You get to feel him better sometime.

Cheers. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye -bye. I have absolutely, positively no earthly idea who in the world that was, but whoever he is, he's probably going to get sued by Christopher Hitchens.