Greg Clarke is an idiot.

Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.
Greg Clarke is an idiot.

The question that we have before us today is, Is Greg Clarke really an idiot?

In order to answer this we must set aside, for the moment, our limiting pre-postmodernal preconceptions that would entail taking these words at face value and concluding that the author is literally claiming that Greg Clarke is actually an idiot. What we must do is to examine the evidence, not on a literal level, but a literalistic one. Hence, let us deconstruct the message by taking the priority of form over content. In other words, to garner support from Marshall McLuhan’s famous maxim we can claim that the medium is truly the message.

First, note the repetition. The writer, by claiming seven times that Greg is an idiot, is underscoring a claim of perfection, not Greg’s perfection, of course, but perfection of the message.

Further, each instantiation of ‘Greg Clarke is an idiot’ contains seven syllables, making 7 x 7 or 49 interconnected modules. We can recall from the Old Testament that 49 was traditionally the number used when one wanted to signify divine completion over an extended period of time. Thus, the author of this message is clearly emphasising divine sanction of Greg Clarke being an idiot.

One could go on and on about this pithy declaration, its internal structure and whether or not Greg Clarke is a literal or literalistic idiot. Possibly some background detail may assist our endeavour.

This month in the Christian newspaper Eternity Greg Clarke claimed that young earth creationists, apropos science and the Bible, are not realists but are “head-in-the-sand, plug-the-ears-idiots”. Now, try as I might, I found it impossible to uncover any literary devices in his statement so I was forced to take it straightforwardly and conclude that Greg Clarke really meant that I and others were genuine, unadulterated 100% idiots because we hold that God created everything in 6 days. That is, I, my friends, men like Calvin, Luther, Aquinas, Theophilus, Lactantius, Paul, Jesus, the Disciples, the majority of the Church and extremely clever boffins, like the triple-earned biochemistry PhD A.E. Wilder-Smith, are literal idiots for believing that God was speaking without literary devices when he declared to Moses that,

“Then the LORD said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the LORD, who makes you holy.
" 'Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people. For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death. The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.' "
When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.’ (Exodus 31)

Unlike Greg Clarke, whose doctorate is in English literature, I have real faith that God is the first and only Person to be trusted with regard to ultimate things, such as origins, not the speculations of sinful men. Greg Clarke prefers to believe that the mutable philosophies of post-structuralism and the like, wedded to the contemporary creation myth of evolution, are a surer interpretive tool than God’s plain revelation.

Is Greg Clarke an idiot? Good question and one deserving an answer!