Talk about scoring in the wrong goal ... then gunning down your team

It's now a sad but demonstrable fact that not only creationists can write utterly horrid books to express their viewpoints in the most insipid, confusing and senseless manner possible. If atheists are supposed to be the 'enlightened ones' as I like to refer to us, Professor John Harrigan is a black hole that sucks all enlightenment away from our tough little camp and casts it out into the endless black depths of the sky.

Oh, okay, enough with the fancy talk. His book, The Professor and the Dominatrix (sounds promising already ...), is bad on a whole variety of levels. It first starts off boring and confusing. Then it becomes incoherent babble. Then it becomes so bad you can't help but laugh, perhaps half-deluding yourself into believing it's got to be a parody of sorts – surely no College professor can write that badly? But by the end, all hilarity is long-gone as you sincerely wish you hadn't forced yourself through the torture that is reading the whole stupid pile of crap.

In case I haven't convinced you already, check out an exceedingly apropos review at Blag Hag.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to allow you a little taste, a small sampling, beforehand (oh, and all quotes are [sic]):

"Homosexuals would be demons working for Satin.”

"She was a connoisseur. A gobbler of whangs par excellence."

Alfie thought back to what Evan had said when he faced off with Charles who had become Charlene. "That Evan had some good lines: 'Female hormone injections and having your penis mutilated does not make you a woman, just a medical mess. God made you a man, a surgeon can't change that."

"Remember when he called him-her an it then said, 'Homosexuality is an abomination.'"

"Ya know," Grant said, "this whole homosexual and sex change stuff is weird. Put it this way, if women are no more than makeup, so to speak, that falls right onto the lap of the gender feminists. The only difference they recognize is that anyone with a giblet is bad, rotten, evil, oppressive - you name it. Men are bad just because they're men; women are good just because they're women. So, the name is the difference? Some of those gender feminists want to keep as few men around as possible, ten percent I've heard, for breeding only. Jesus! What will they do? Drown nine out of ten baby boys? Well - not long ago gays and lesbians were called unnaturals, now they're considered okay, a preferred minority, and anyone who doesn't think homosexuality is okay is a fucking homophone, has a mental called homophobia. The gays calling in were saying Evan is a big homophobe. Boy, when it comes to name calling, the shoe is on the other foot now."

Dear God. Blindingly obvious typos, insane non-sequitors, the sheer incoherence of it all ... And it just goes on!

This book is, randomly: boring, incoherent, illogical, trollish, rude and abrasive, homophobic, racist, sexist, bigoted in nearly every possible way, and overall a terrible pain to try and read and a definite milestone in the Worst Books Ever list that has got to exist somewhere in some periodical. This piece of shit does to atheism what Ray Comfort's ridiculously atrocious You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but you Can't Make Him Think does to common sense: it tarnishes the whole damn concept of it with every stupid word. (Although, perhaps comparing even this wonder of horrors to Comfort's epic failure is a bit harsh. If only just a bit.)

The worst part of it all is that, of course, this is EXACTLY the sort of shit we as atheists do NOT want people to read. Not because it 'exposes' our mentality or morality or whatever; no, we don't want people to read this, for the same reason a Christian wouldn't want anyone else reading a Christian author's book about an angry, hateful and incoherent God. (... Ok, so we've got the Bible for that already – moving on ...) This is just the wrong message that we want to send out to religious or noncommittal folks: that atheists are hedonistic scumbags and mindless trolls who just want to rant and rage at religion and religious folk for their own sheer fun. This book is a monstrosity on so many levels it would send Frankenstein back to his many gravesites.

(Via Blag Hag and Pharyngula)