Thoughts in a Haystack

Ed Brayton has one of those awful spam emails from fundigelicals where an Xnian student demolishes a smarty-pants professor and it ... ahem ... miraculously turns out that the Xnian student happens to be EINSTEIN (capitals in the original).

This is, of course, the ground originally plowed by that deep thinker, Jack Chick, in his (in)famous "Big Daddy."

There is a pretty good (some commenters at Ed's place had some quibbles) reconstruction of the whole thing as it might have gone if a philosophy professor confronted this "argument" and was more interested in using the Xnian student as a teaching moment than simply banging his/her head on the desk.

But this is the reason I'm bringing it up. A commenter called "savoy47" said this:

These emails are geared towards people that are predisposed to non-evidentiary thinking. These christens are not in a debate with us or even talking to us. Their one and only mission is to repair the cracks in the bubble they live in. It's duct tape for faith. It is only a temporary fix, but the cracks are spreading faster than they can properly repair them. When you are reduced to using duct tape to hold back a deluge, you know the end times are near.

"Duct tape for faith" ... I am so stealing that!