[cyseymour]

I can't respond to every post of everyone who chooses to believe or disbelieve my theory, but let me just say that the idea it would be coincidence that the root words of a fake, created name used as a substitute for someone named "Deacon" - that those root words would randomly mean "Dear Son of Jesus" - is highly implausible. It almost must have been intentional.

Let me also add that Deacon White's extreme religiosity was far outside of the lock-step for what was the fashionable thinking at the time regarding Philosophy and Religion. Prior to the mid-19th century, philosophical thought stemmed mainly from the Greeks, with Socrates and Aristotle, who believed in a cool, dispassionate understanding of the world. They chose to believe in God, and used the Pythagorean Theorem as prove against skeptics that there was indeed an ultimate truth (God) that could remain constant, and that it portrayed itself in mathematics.

That all changed in the mid/late 19th century with the advent of the aetheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who sided with the pre-Socratic philosophers and dramatists that passion, fire and emotion were valuable Dionysian traits and should not be discarded for the Apollonian traits or cool, calm and reason. Regard the following quote:

"In his first notable work, The Birth and Tragedy and the Spirit of Music (1872), Nietzsche contrasted the Apollonian and the Dionysian, these two faces of the Greek world... the Dionysian element means to give the fullest expression of pent-up emotions, passions, dread and madness... the Apollonian framework is of story, plot and coherence. Nietzsche said it was the fault of Socrates and Greek academic philosophers to give too much to the Apollonian at the expense of the Dionysian."

-Paraphrased quote of Daniel N. Robinson, Oxford University

Nietzsche was not only an atheist, but a philosophical rock star of the late 19th Century. France was known as "a country of 50 million atheists." Nietzsche had proclaimed "God is Dead". There are stories of what a huge deal it would be if he showed up to a cocktail party. He was the ultimate dinner guest, and his work was well-read around the world.

Since that was the fashionable thinking of the time, imagine just how far out of lock-step someone like Deacon White was, who still believed the world was flat. That's why he was so subject to ridicule. But it also supports the theory of "Dear Son of God/Fallen from Grace" as taking a jab at Deacon for his religiosity. It is as if to say, "Deacon, you think you are above us like Apollo, but really you are just another Dionysian creature of sin like the everyone else".

No one knows for certain whether the producers of the card read Nietzsche, but considering his fame, it would not be far-fetched to think they had, especially since they possessed the intellectual sophistication to create a riddle of this magnitude. Nevertheless, it shows just how far out of step the ideas of Deacon White were with the prevailing attitudes and ideas of his era.