The sad story of the Poe’s Law girl and the gullible atheists

Atheists like to feel proud about our reliance on facts and reality instead of faith and feelings. While this is mostly true, considering that atheists and liberals have higher IQ and know more about religion that believers, to be an atheist is not an exemption of gullibility and fanaticism. Not that I’m happy to say so.

It was one day after the Japan Earthquake. During that day the internet’s attention caught a video of a girl thanking God for striking Japan after she prayed and fasted for one day. Youtube user Tamtampamela had many videos in which she praised God and badmouthed atheists.

Congratulations dear: You just made a fool of a group
of people who take pride in the skepticism, but were quick to fall
for their own prejudices. For that, I salute you, Queen of Trolls.

The video is this one:



This video was shared among my atheist Facebook contacts (and I’m sure many more) accompanied by rants about how disgusting Christians are, that religion is a drug that makes you crazy and stuff like that.

But there was something weird in the video. Something it was hard to pinpoint. After checking her channel I saw that her description mostly matched that of a Christian zealot. But there was something missing. Most Christian youtubers have lots of bible citations in her information boxes. She didn’t. Instead, she had mostly quotations from famous people that badmouthed atheists.

Next I checked her subscriptions. Among them there were two well-known satirists, Edward Current and 1god1jesus. Those two facts made me almost sure that the girl was a satirist and many atheists were falling in what is known as the Poe’s Law:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

So much for skepticism and rationalism. Many of my contacts lost their patience and ranted about her, with many of her friends commenting and ranting as well. Few of us would point that she was a Poe. But they wouldn’t listen.

I think that in cases like this, atheists won’t stop to check for the evidence and just follow their instinct, or should I say, belief, that Christians are just that hateful. I don’t think that is the rule, but certainly there are many that agree with what that girl said and can sustain it as any other Christian would say can sustain the idea that God actually love us.

Something similar tends to happen with Ratzinger and the belief that he was a Nazi. Most atheists (and actually, most rational people) tend to dislike Ratzinger. And because of that and the fact that her served in the Hitler Youth, they are very quick to say that he was a nazi. They won’t check for the evidence that points to the contrary, preferring to believe what they want.

Tamtampamela saw that her video got her a pretty unwanted attention when she started to receive pizzas at her home (which means that the internet had her home address and other information) so she made a video stating that she was just a troll.




Moments after this video was published, her account was closed.

This changed the criticism from being directed to a hateful Christian, to being directed to a girl that trivialized a tragedy. While she used this sad event lightly, she also made a point: that a christian, or any believer, can use God to justify the most hateful of remarks (which already happened). If there is any anger to be drawn from this, it should be directed to those who really believe what they are saying as being God’s message.

Finally, my fellow atheists and other non-believers, don’t be so quick to get angry. Stop your horses, check out the evidence, check out again, and when giving your opinion, do so in a measured way. That just better PR.