I first became aware of Kirk Hastings when he taunted the hosts of the Irreligiosophy podcast with a copy of his self-published Christian apologetic "What Is Truth?: A Handbook for Separating Fact from Fiction in a Propaganda-Filled World" The hosts replied with a multi-episode review of the book, picking apart it�s scientific errors, logical fallacies and overall poor construction.
Kirk�s response was embarrassing. He ranted and raved about atheist conspiracies and replied to his critics not with a rational debate, but with insults. Eventually he devolved into posting the same reply to multiple reviewers. A few months later, he went back and posted a Biblically themed word soup of divine revenge fantasy to all his critics in the Amazon reviews.
During all of this Kirk, or people acting upon his behalf, created a series of Facebook pages attacking his critics and defending Kirk.
There was a predictable pattern to the religion themed pages. At first the pages would get a flood of posts from people looking to engage Kirk, or the parties pretending to be him. After a few questions, they would get banned and their posts deleted. Their posts would then be described by the page moderator as having been profane, rude, offensive or some other adjective that would theoretically justify banning the person. The problem was, these insults were directed at just about anyone who posted critical content, regardless what they actually wrote. Eventually the page would consist largely of Kirk�s own comments, replies to posts that had been deleted. To anyone unfamiliar with what was going on, the pages came to resemble a madman talking to himself, posting replies to imaginary people. Given how divorced from reality his depictions of his critics tend to be, such a suspicion would not be far off.
That�s where this book comes in. Kirk�s endless stream of Facebook pages occasionally diverts from insults and hubris into asking or stating something deserving of a response. Since all the people interested in responding to him appear to have been banned from his pages, responding to him requires the conversation be taken elsewhere, someplace where he can�t delete the posts, and where he can�t claim someone was using profanity when they weren�t.
