ACT Brumbies prop Dan Palmer has achieved every frontrow philosopher's dream by sparking debate even deeper than the merits of "crouch, touch, pause, engage" vs "crouch, touch, set".
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Palmer's latest canberratimes.com.au column pondered the banality of celebrity Twitter accounts, including among his professional sporting cohort.
While he noted outspoken teammate David Pocock as one of the exeptions who use social media to promote worthy causes and comment on social justice issues, Palmer said most others "use it as a vehicle to further inflate their own tyres and continue to perpetuate what is already an extremely self-indulgent profession".
But it was Palmer's complaint that "chubby nullity" reality TV personality Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi had many more times social media reach than "genuine contributors to society like Lawrence Krauss, or even Christopher Hitchens in his day" that took Palmer's column into existential territory.
Krauss, a Canadian-American theoretical physicist, described as an advocate of scientific skepticism, and the late Hitchens was an author and journalist best known for his strong criticisms of religion.
Palmer's citing of the pair as "great thinkers" sparked a strong, entertaining response in the reader comments section.
"Finding society a bit bizarre, are we?," reader Pete wrote.
"Well, blame your bloviating buddies Krauss and Hitchens for continuing the calamity that is the systematic replacement of Judeo-Christianity with vulgar, introspective secularism; there's barely an area left untouched, unsullied by this harrowing event -- it seems that art, music, science, morals and manners have all suffered... (to say nothing of the performance of the Wallabies since the Christians Farr-Jones and Eales retired)."
Describing Palmer as "nothing but an organic robot whose 'thoughts' are just epiphenomena resulting from predetermined brain chemistry?" Pete asked why Palmer would "care" about anything anyway.
"Under your paradigm, you've no objective foundation whatsoever.
"You're rather standing on an absurd, nihilistic, relativistic nothingness. That's right, the blind, pitiless cosmos makes no distinction whatsoever between the supreme inanity of Snooki and your artful, thoughtful scrummaging.
"Ahh, the conceited, yet forever feisty and "caring" atheist is a very bemusing entity indeed."
He signed off wishing Palmer well when he departs Australian rugby at the end of this season for a stint in France.
"They're, of course, about 20 years advanced from us in their slide towards secular oblivion. Adieu."