Larry Darby Proclaims He is a Christian Now (updated)
The Huntsville Time reports on his conversion as part of his “crusade” against “Judeo-Marxism”:
Darby ... released a long written statement Friday saying that others in the atheist community had turned their backs on him. “Contrary to expectation, many atheist member organizations or many groups that allegedly represent free thinkers were quick to jump on the Judeo-Marxist bandwagon and dis(a)ssociate themselves from me,” Darby wrote. [...]
Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the law center in Montgomery, said the atheist community dropped Darby “like a hot rock” after they heard his views on race. “I think he’s a complete and utter joke,” Potok said. “We don’t take these attacks seriously.”
It’s interesting that Darby really thought that other atheists would agree with his Holocaust Denial, would agree with his anti-Semitism, and would support his campaign of White Supremacy. This just goes to show how detached from reality Larry Darby has been — and that being an atheist does not mean that a person is rational or sensible. Of course, it also shows that most atheists probably are fairly sensible and rational. If they weren’t, more of them probably would have followed the Atheist Law Center in defending Darby.
And just what will happen to the Atheist Law Center now? Larry Darby said that he resigned, but Wikipedia claims that Darby has “closed the Atheist Law Center.” Granted, Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable resource out there, but I haven’t read Darby’s official press release and I suppose that the author of the statement in question maybe has. If Darby did have the authority to close the Atheist Law Center, then he never really left it in the sense that he claimed — he continued to hold significant power over it. [see update below]
Maybe that’s why members of the Atheist Law Center like Carol Moore continued to support and defend him — they didn’t feel like they had a choice if they wanted to keep their positions. I don’t know what is worse: defending Darby because you agree with him or because you are just sucking up to the boss. I wonder what people like Carol Moore will do now, even if the Atheist Law Center remains open in some way.
In his announcement Darby also called the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, which often takes on racist or anti-Semitic groups, “agents of Judeo-Marxism.”
“I agree with moral precepts put forth by Jesus of Nazareth and I am Christian in a sense that Jesus of Nazareth would approve,” Darby wrote.
It’s worth noting that an important aspect of the Nazi Party platform was to promote “true” Christian socialist against the godless socialism of the Marxists and communists. Larry Darby is already arguing against Jewish Marxism and has adopted Christianity; how long will it be before he starts condemning communism as godless?
I have been told that Edwin Kagin predicted months ago that Darby would “find Jesus” to enhance his political career; I predict that he’ll start attacking godless communists and liberals before long. That’s the best thing he can do in order to strengthen his position among White Nationalists.
I have also been told that Larry Darby purged his email list at the beginning of July, supposedly because of how some of it has been leaked to outsiders. I wonder, though, if he took that action in anticipation of his announcement of his all-too-convenient conversion to Christianity.
Update: Two readers were kind enough to help me find Larry Darby's press release — one via email and one in the comments below. Thanks!
To start off with, it’s definite that Darby has closed the Atheist Law Center. When I wrote the original post above their site was still online; today, it’s gone:
The Atheist Law Center, Inc., ceased operations on July 6, 2006. My final act as general counsel for the Alabama non-profit and non-member corporation was to file articles of dissolution on July 6. The Atheist Law Center was created on Sept. 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the faith-based terrorist attacks in Pennsylvania, on Manhattan Island and at the Pentagon. Whether the attacks were planned or caused by Muslims or, as some evidence and logic suggest, by Israelis and disloyal Americans in high positions of government, the motivation for the attacks surely had a religious nexus; and that demonstrated the danger of merging religion ideology with the affairs of government, especially as to foreign policy.
Darby resigned as president of the Atheist Law Center back in 2005; how is it, then, that he retained the authority to shut them down now? That’s one question which the press release doesn’t answer. It would be interesting to know just what sort of authority he retained and whether his “resignation” was ever as meaningful as he tried to portray.
Don’t you love how, even in a relatively mundane statement about the end of the organization, Darby is still able to sneak in a nonsensical conspiracy theory about how Jews might have been behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001? The man just can’t resist even the most off-the-wall opportunity to attack Jews. Anti-Semitism like that is definitely uncommon. Fortunately.
Alongside his obsession with Jews, Larry Darby also appears to have an obsession with dates. The Atheist Law Center was founded on the first anniversary of those terrorist attacks — surely not a coincidence. Darby then filed the papers to dissolve the Atheist Law center on the first anniversary of what he must consider the group’s crowning achievement, but which in fact was the first anniversary of their most shameful act: having David Irving speak at one of their meetings.
The Atheist Law Center hosted Mr. Irving at the Prattville Holiday Inn on July 6, 2005. Attendees heard first-hand from the foremost authority on the Third Reich and author of “Hitler’s War.” Mr. Irving is a genuine historian in that his works are based on original research of documents and interviews with persons who actually knew and worked for Adolf Hitler or the German government or otherwise had first-hand knowledge of the subject matter, as opposed to the recycling of oft-unverifiable assertions put forth as history and recycled by conformist historians that serve the preeminence of Jewry in the United States and elsewhere.
Agents of Judeo-Marxism or enforcers of the politically correct version of the Holocaust and other Jew-related taboos, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-defamation League of B’nai Brith, Simon Wiesenthal Center, religious studies teachers such as Deborah E. Lipstadt, cowardly and ignoble conformist historians, journalists or media pundits, and others acting in concert with the traditional enemies of free speech or free thought, never let truth or facts get in the way of their efforts to thoroughly denigrate Mr. Irving or other free thinkers or truth seekers, including myself.
What Larry Darby fails to mention is that David Irving’s lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt was a failure — and that Irving himself is a complete failure in the eyes of all genuine scholars. Irving tried to sue Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust Denier and a “Hitler partisan.” Because the lawsuit was filed in England, the burden of proof was on Lipstadt to prove that what she said was not libelous; not only did she accomplish that, but she and her witnesses made it unmistakably clear that David Irving is a fraud rather than a historian. Larry Darby’s gushing description of Irving is motivated solely by the fact that he shares Irving’s anti-Semitism and White Supremacism — it’s certainly not an evaluation based upon sober, objective readings of Irving’s work.
The trial Irving launched was a gross mistake on his part because before he could pretend to be a historian with credentials and authority; afterwards, however, his pseudo-scholarship and deceit were not only revealed to the world, but made a part of the public record. Larry Darby is certainly aware of what the trial record reveals about Irving, but you won’t find any attempts by him to refute or address that record. By ignoring it and pretending that it doesn’t exist, Darby is effectively engaging in the same sort of deception that Irving was found to have perpetrated for so many years. They’re two peas in a pod and certainly deserve each other.
Another example of Larry Darby’s complete disregard for historical accuracy and reality is his quoting of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as if they were a genuine document:
Most stories in all foreign-owned newspapers operating in Alabama that dealt with my campaign willfully dodged my platform altogether and instead engaged in yellow journalism and malicious attacks, such as those put forth by the Decatur Daily, whose editor called me a fruitcake. Those are just a few examples of how the media or press really works, as described in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Marsden translation from the Russian of Nilus, 1934): “[The press] serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose or else it serves ends of parties. It is often vapid, unjust, mendacious, and the majority of the public have not the slightest idea what ends the press really serves.”
Well, anyone who believes that the Protocols is a genuine document rather than an anti-Semitic forgery probably is fruitcake. I can think of much more descriptive terms that would be equally appropriate — after all, in a press release that is supposed to be about the closing of the Atheist Law Center, Darby rambles on at great length about the Evil Joooos and all the things they are doing to destroy America. If he had simply retained the first two paragraphs and the last four, that purpose would have been accomplished; in between them he stuck 13 paragraphs of nuttiness, conspiracy theories, and anti-Semitic drivel. Just the sort of thing a fruitcake would write.
So moving on to the end, Larry Darby writes:
In summary, the original purpose of the Atheist Law Center was to advance the constitutional principle of separation between religion and government. As described above, the Atheist Law Center’s actual breadth and scope of activity evolved and exceeded that originally contemplated, though a religious connection to issues of free speech and the press exists. ... On July 4, 2006 I put forth the resolution to the board of directors that the Atheist Law Center should be laid to rest. Having discussed the matter, all agreed that the life of the Atheist Law Center had run its course and that the corporation should be dissolved, effective on July 6, 2006, the first anniversary of British historian David Irving sharing his findings and wisdom with genuinely free thinkers at the Prattville Holiday Inn.
This is basically the only real substance to his entire press release of nearly 2,000 words: the Atheist Law Center was founded to promote the separation of religion and government; over time it took on other goals as well; today it’s run it’s course and is dissolved. I wonder, though, what “run its course” is supposed to mean. In most circumstances that phrase is meant to say that something is no longer needed because either its goals have accomplished or it no longer has the ability to work towards its goals. Which is the case here with the Atheist Law Center: do they believe that their goals have been accomplished or do they believe that they are no longer capable of working towards those goals within the context of that group?
The former obviously isn’t true; the latter is arguably true, given how their original work fighting for the separation of religion and government has been completely overtaken by Larry Darby’s petty obsessions with Jews and Jewish conspiracies. Maybe they will re-organize now as the Aryan Nation Law Center or something equally absurd.
The other “big news” from his press release is his announced renunciation of atheism, which I’ll quote here in full:
Statement Disavowing Atheism
I no longer categorically deny the existence of God. My views have changed based on experiences or understanding of the world around me. I appreciate the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson who, in the Declaration of Independence, spoke of the laws of nature and of nature’s God. I agree with moral precepts put forth by Jesus of Nazareth and I am Christian in a sense that Jesus of Nazareth would approve.
Many people think that his “conversion” is just a sham in order to attract more support for his political activities. Well, he wouldn’t be the first person to fake a conversion to some religion or political belief for the sake of social or political gain and there are good reasons to think that someone in his position would be motivated to do this. Given just how cut off he has become from the rest of the atheist community, though, it’s difficult to say whether this announcement is genuine or not. His Holocaust Denial and White Supremacism has led to the burning of most of his bridges to everyone he worked with over the past years. It’s doubtful that any of them have been in close enough contact with him in recent months to say whether he has experienced a genuine change.
Maybe this is real and maybe it’s not; in the absence of any serious evidence to the contrary, though, I think it would be wise to take it at face value. I don’t mean to say that we should ignore or dismiss the possibility that it’s fake, just that there aren’t strong enough reasons to adopt that belief — the fact that we can imagine why he’d be motivated to lie just isn’t good enough, in my opinion.
Note: It’s been pointed out to me that Darby only renounces “strong atheism.” He doesn’t quite say that he believes in the existence of a God, he merely “appreciate[s]” the wisdom of Jefferson’s words about “nature’s God.” He doesn’t say anything about being “saved” by Jesus, just that he agrees with the “moral precepts” attributed to Jesus and is a Christian “in the sense” that Jesus would approve of. Is this careful, lawyerly wording designed to shade the truth and misdirect people into thinking the wrong things? Perhaps. It’s definitely worth taking into account.
There is, however, something much more important to consider in light of this announcement: Larry Darby has long been a prominent activist on behalf of freethought, atheism, and church/state separation. For all his incoherent nuttiness in the past year or two, his activism before that cannot be ignored or forgotten. Given this, don’t you think that Christian evangelists should be making a huge deal about his conversion? After all, here’s a big-time atheist activist who has “seen the Light” — he’s not just a vague sort theist, but a Christian now (and a follower of a 1st century Jew — I wonder how he’s worked that out in his mind?).
That should be big news for Christian apologists, shouldn’t it? Granted, the news is still new, but thus far I haven’t heard a peep from any of them — and I have a sneaking suspicion that we won’t hear much in the future, either. Why do you suppose that is? If it were anyone else, wouldn’t the Christian blog posts be flying fast and furious? I personally don’t have nearly the name recognition and reputation of Larry Darby, but I’d like to think that if I announced that I had renounced my atheism and became a Christian, leaving this site behind, surely there would be a couple of self-satisfied responses from Christians. Wouldn’t there? Just a couple?
So far, though, there is nothing about Larry Darby’s announced conversion. You don’t suppose they might be a bit embarrassed that this anti-Semitic, Holocaust-Denying White Supremacist is one of their own now? I can’t imagine why, given how most such people seem to be theists and/or Christians already. Larry Darby was “news” before because he was a rare atheist fruitcake doing all of those things; now he’s just another Christian fruitcake doing all of those things. He’s become so common. Maybe Christian apologists aren’t ignoring him — maybe they just haven’t noticed him because he’s no longer worth noticing.
Sounds like an appropriate epitaph to his career.
Understanding Atheism & Atheists:
- Atheism 101
- What is Atheism?
- Defining Atheism
- Is Atheism a Religion?
- Who Are Atheists?
- Why Don't Atheists Believe in God?
- Questions About Atheism
- Atheism Myths
- Polls on Atheism
Resources for Atheists:
Comments
I found a copy of Darby’s statement at that popped up on my Google news alert:
History of the Atheist Law Center and Statement Disavowing Atheism
I thought it was a goof since it reads so crazy even for Darby but I tried to go the Atheist Law website and it is no longer online so it all seems to be true.
Here is the url I mentioned earlier it didn’t seem to come up:
http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=539389
Cline you are the best weapon the fighters for Liberty have - you rant and rave like a madman all the while claiming to be an atheist. Anybody obsessed to such a degree with a free thinkers such as Darby must be a jew. Your paranoia stinks of the mental illness that comes with being a jew and raised a member of the Master Race from birth .
Austin Cline is flipping out like Potok of the jew hate group SPLC did. Both of them try and brush off Mr. Darby as if they just can’t face the reality that Darby now will wield far more influence than he ever could as an atheist. If Cline had bothered to do some research (assuming he knows how), much of the pure crap he first posted could have been avoided. Now even the more sensible goy who reads Cline will know that Darby has been right all along! White America is finally awakening from decades of mind control by Communists –> Neo-Conservatives.
“Clyde” and “Rogena” are the same person trying to pretend to be two different people. This is also the same person who keeps posting as Frank, Jerry, Jane Green, and the ever delightful “Phil Thejoo.” I guess when a person’s ideology is as ethically and intellectually bankrupt as the White Supremacists’, just about the only means for attaining some meager semblance of self-respect is to pretend that there are multiple people who share the same vacuous ideas.
It’s pathetic, frankly, but also a comforting sign of just how worthless their ideology ultimately is. People with something worth saying wouldn’t pretend to be multiple people saying it — there would be multiple people and/or they would be comfortable allowing their words to stand on their own. Posting under multiple identities like this is an admission of failure. So thanks, whoever you are. Posts like yours do more to discredit your self-important feelings about being a “Master Race” than anything I could write.
*more nonsense from the same White Supremacist deleted*
*another post from the same White Supremacist deleted*
*this is another comment from the same White Supremacist, pretending to be Jewish*
Hey Austin! Keep up the good work and sooner or later we’ll own all the USA in the name of Israel!
*another comment from the same White Supremacist as above, obviously still too full of his own false sense of self-importance*
If it weren’t for the multiple posts by the same person as you claim, then you wouldn’t have much interest in your column as you do. Be thankful somebody is looking at you. And remember, it’s not really paranoia if they’re really out to get you!
HAHAHA! Who are all those people who are pretending to be me Austin? Or is this just your manifestation of being raised to hate White men, especially those who are not submissive to your Master Race?
The prodigal son has returned to the Christian fold. Time to kill the fatted calf!
What about all those becoming atheists, but incompletely, since they retain in their minds the residue of that religion without being aware of it?
They emancipate themselves from belief in overtly supernatural beings and reject tales about such impossible events as virgin births, walking on water, resurrection of the dead, but they never ponder the equally absurd social superstitions that were authorized by, and depend on, the god whose existence the tales about impossible events were devised to prove!
Those would-be atheists retain so much of a residue of Christianity in their minds that they are apt to flop over into leftist liberalism. It dispenses with gods but retains all of the religion they think they are rejecting.
In place of traditional Christianity, they adopt an ersatz Christianity and, forgetting their atheism, have an emotional and unreasoning faith in their new religion with its millenarian belief in a future of happiness and justice where all give according to their ability and receive according to their needs [Acts 4:35],
Their revolt against Western civilization differs in only a few unessential trimmings from the subversion practised as “social gospel” in the great majority of Christian churches today.
They retain in their minds the Christian residue that makes them susceptible to drivel about “all mankind,” “One World,” and the “humanitarian” sentimentality of do-gooders.
So many of the Liberal’s political ideas are religious at root - a secular, political extension of traditional religious frameworks. The search for equality in the secular sense is a replacement of the Judaeo-Christian idea that God loves every individual equally.
Universalist religionists and Marxists and most Humanists have a religious conviction that poetic metaphors such as “the brotherhood of Man” in which “there is neither Greek nor Roman, Jew nor Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, we are all one in Christ Jesus”, are to be taken and used literally. They are unwitting functionaries in the creation of a New World Order of mixed-up peoples and centralized power.
The future development of quality of life of the peoples of Western countries are threatened qualitatively and quantitatively by non-Western immigration, that universalist dogma welcomes and the globalist establishment and its media bars warning against.
Our confidence in secular “truths” should be suspect because they arose in connection with the concept of God! For Hegel, the French Revolution - with its ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ triad - was the political realization of an ideal that first took form in religious imagination. Political developments in this way are the concrete expression of religious ideals. The Enlightenment was not a break with religion; its secular movement was the realization of a vision that in the past had been located in a transcendent realm and postponed for an afterlife.
Being an atheist only means not believing in any gods, not rejecting religion. On the contrary, some religions are atheistic. Such atheists as you describe are not “incomplete,” they merely fail to meet with your personal approval.
This is untrue as many liberal atheists have never been Christians to begin with. Instead, they are merely atheists you disapprove of so much that the only insult you can think of to attack them with is to accuse them of still being Christians in some way.
Twice now we find that you are not using terminology in a fair and objective manner; instead, you twist the meanings of words to serve your ideological ends.
And now we can see that at least one of those ideological ends is ethnic bigotry. Curious how you attack atheists whose politics you dislike as being “incomplete” and still retaining a “residue of Christianity” when your ideology here is shared with no other groups so much as conservative Christians.
*another post from the same White Supremacist as every other White Supremacist post, still imagining that I’m Jewish simply because I have the temerity to tell everyone how stupid White Supremacism is…*
Austin is right on one thing, not all atheists come from Christianity - many are jews and never give up their tribal loyalties while pretending to be atheists! Austin never, ever criticizes the religion of his mother and always is quick to criticize Christianity.
Math statement:
Neo-Conservatives = Zionists + Christian Zionists.
“Curious how you attack atheists whose politics you dislike as being “incomplete” and still retaining a “residue of Christianity” when your ideology here is shared with no other groups so much as conservative Christians.”
***
1/I beg you pardon? At the forefront of the campaign for virtually unrestricted immigration are - among athers - the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Church World Service of the National Council of Churches, the Ford Foundation.
2/The ethic of multiculturalism is actively supported by the U.S. government’s immigration policy of “corporate pluralism” which militates against America’s earlier ideal of assimilation. According to Gunnar Myrdal, “corporate pluralism” refers to a society where racial and ethnic entities are accorded formal recognition and standing by the state as groups in the national polity, and where political power and economic reward are based on a distributive formula that postulates group rights and defines group membership as an important factor in the outcome for individuals.
By replacing individual meritocracy with group rewards, corporate pluralism “strongly discourages assimilation in the conventional sense because if a significant portion of one’s rational interests are likely to be satisfied by emphasis on one’s ethnicity, then one might as well stay within ethnic boundaries and at the same time enjoy the social comforts of being among people of one’s own kind.” [Brent Nelson -America Balkanized]
A basic argument of Suzan Olzak’s “The Dynamics of Competition and Conflict”, is that competition - for the same limited resources - is the driving mechanism behind most ethnic conflict.
Western survival, I dare say, now depends upon refocus on the neglected view of the state as a membership organization, as an association of citizens with a commonality of ethnicity, culture, interest, a rational concept of utility that recommends itself. [Roger Brubaker - Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany].
A state of unrelated individuals or mixed races or unacculturated ethnics must be authoritarian or chaotic.[ R Ritchie - Enoch Powell 1992]!
Only the Catholic group can be described as being “conservative Christian,” and they aren’t “conservative” on a large number of issues. When we look at groups like the Souther Baptists, though, we find unambiguous agreement with the things you wrote.
So you say, but you don’t actually support your claims with anything from U.S. law — and the definitions used by “Gunnar Myrdal” are wholly irrelevant to U.S. policy. Who really cares what he thinks?
You may dare say that, but being an American has nothing whatsoever to do with ethnicity or race.
*racist post about Jews deleted*
“BIGOTRY”
Accusations of racism always stick, at least a little, and no matter how reckless or even cynical never hurt the accuser. In current practice, anti-racism is aimed at whites. In their case, racism includes not only hatred and abuse, but any distrust of others, any special concern or preference for whites, any recognition of whites as a people. Anti-racism also imposes on whites an obligation to sacrifice their interests to those of nonwhites. If a white for example fails sufficiently to favor “affirmative action,” he is racist or at best insensitive. In contrast, public statements by blacks can be revoltingly bigoted without consequence.
Permitting to some what is forbidden others seems to relativize racism and thus deny that it is ultimate pathological evil. It also suggests that anti-racism draws support from anti-white bigotry.
Your statement that racism is an “ultimate pathological evil” rings quite hollow when you make statements like that a state of “mixed races” must be “authoritarian or chaotic” and describe Jews in exclusively racial terms.
*extended diatribe on behalf of racial separation and Anglo-Saxon Dominion deleted*
“Your statement that racism is an “ultimate pathological evil”
??? Stop misquoting me.
I wrote: Permitting to some what is forbidden others seems to relativize racism and thus deny that it is ultimate pathological evil. It also suggests that anti-racism draws support from anti-white bigotry.
You are a mediocre soul who has the audacity to assert the right of mediocracy and impose it everywhere!
I apologize for misquoting you. So, you don’t regard racism as an ultimate pathological evil? That eliminates the apparent contradictions with your earlier, racist statements.
You can be assured that your insistence that I am a “mediocre soul” will pass without impact. It is, after all, hardly a substantive response to your racism and White Supremacism. Let’s be honest, after all: no one who holds such morally repugnant positions really matters, do they?
It does not take a genius to realize that in America today, “racism” is much more than a word; it is an instrument of thought control—even of terror.
The only “terror” is that created by racists and White Nationalists in the service of their twisted ideology. You don’t appear to like being called a racist; you not only say nothing to indicate that the label doesn’t apply but in fact everything you say reinforces its appropriateness. Stop whining about “thought control” and start taking responsibility for the fact that you’re a racist White Nationalist. There’s nothing more pathetic than someone expressing embarrassment at the fact that they are trying to promote White Pride.
“We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet….” — Dr. Kamau Kambon - genocidal racist
The stupidity of Kambon has no bearing on the stupidity of White Nationalism. The fact that all you can do is present a quote form is, in effect, that you have no argument to make. So you won’t mind if in the future I simply delete all of your posts unread.
*Another deleted post from the same White Supremacist who, as usual, imagines that insults and antisemitism qualify as an argument*
You can hear Darby’s deranged blather here:
http://www.aptv.org/VideoRoom/viewprogram.asp?FileID=436
His bizarre interview starts at approx the 6 minute mark.
I’m glad he’s rejected atheism. We Atheists can’t afford to have whackos like him representing us and dragging us further down in the minds of non-Atheists. Let him “help” the white supremacists.
*This is the same White Nationalist who keeps posting, the only White Nationalist who has posted, and a White Nationalist who has always defended Larry Darby. Now they appear to be claiming that, like Darby, they are converting to Christianity. Coincidence?*
I’ve changed my mind after looking honestly at the jewish problem that plagues the United States.