Let the games begin!

[pasithea]

Logically, I know this is a huge waste of time. What I've done is the equivalent of going to the produce aisle, picked up a rotten cantaloupe, drawn a face on it, and talked to it as if it were a real human being. None the less, it felt good. It makes me sad when people use the impossibility of proving a negative as an excuse to be hateful self-righteous little pricks. There's one theme that's common in nearly all religions and even among us horrible atheists: Be excellent to each other. Fail that and you have a far higher chance of failing whatever God might truly want you to do than because you didn't get down on your knees and perform spiritual blow-jobs on Sunday.

Anyhow... In response to this:

http://rhjunior.livejournal.com/389908.html

I posted this (Let me know if there's some flaw in it. My understanding of the world is an ongoing process):

Let's see. Will you fearfully delete this because you can't argue it or will you try to argue the semantics of one small point and ignore the 99% that you can't argue because you can't handle it. Let's find out:

God is irrelevant.

I know you're mindbogglingly stupid but try to follow along. I'll use small words.

There have been thousands of different religions in the history of mankind.
Until recently it was nearly impossible for someone in one place to know the religion in another place.

That leaves you with a few possibilities:

1. God doesn't exist
   • No one is punished for their behavior because there is no god.
2. God does exist
   • Most religions have some common stuff "don't steal/kill/hate" but otherwise have a LOT of variation in ritual and requirements. That gives you three possibilities:
     1. God's a pretty nice entity.
        • There's a lot of variation in religions so as long as you try to be a decent person it doesn't matter what you believe. God is going to treat you according to how you've treated others and the world around you and even atheists go to heaven.
        • If this is God, religion is purely comfort-food. You like steak, I like spaghetti. No need to argue over that.
     2. There's a somewhat parental God
        • God wants you to follow some path but isn't going to beat the crap out of you for screwing up. You're only human after all. You'll die, you'll get your scolding from the horse's mouth and you'll feel foolish and atone.
        • Here again, so long as you try to do what's right, it doesn't matter what path you take.
     3. God is an asshole
        • There's only ONE true religion and everyone else is going to SUFFER!
        • How do you know your religion is the RIGHT religion?
        • God is unknowable, so how can you know you're on the right path?
        • Even if this God does exist, why would you want to worship him? He's petty and cruel. What's the point of eternally torturing everyone who doesn't get down on their knees and call him master like some sick BDSM scene?
     4. There are multiple gods with strict rules
        • That implies their power is limited so why stick with a demanding an cruel god when you could go find the lord of the fluffy bunnies?
        • There's no reason to worship a hateful and judgemental god unless you yourself are hateful and judgemental.

So either just being a good person is as good as any religion or God's a mean bastard and 99% chance you'll pick the wrong religion and get the snot kicked out of you for all eternity. In the later case, why worship him at all? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I'll take my odds with following my conscience and if that god exists, I'll fight him, and even if I lose and spend eternity suffering in Hell, I'll at least know that I stood my ground against a petty tyrant.

Consider that bit. If tortured, sure, I might verbally recant and cry out for mercy. Who wouldn't. But there is NO amount of torture that can ever make me feel the torturer is doing me a service so on this point, your God can never defeat me. Destroy me perhaps, make me beg for mercy yes, but we will always know it was He who sinned. He who was selfish, petty, and unworthy. I did the best I could with the knowledge and tools I had.

So.... Let's see. Will you argue some irrelevant point, or simply delete this comment or lock the post, foam at the mouth with some idiotically circular 'logic' and prove yourself an idiot yet again, or (most probably) run screaming to a bunch of your friends and have them all jump on the band wagon with character assassinations and mindless gibbering because if you can't kill the message, at least you can kill the messenger. (And there's plenty of dirt you can find on me and use to call me names)

Of course, you could surprise me and actually think, but I strongly doubt that will happen. Remember of course, that even if you claim it, if God exists, he'll know if you are lying. If he's particularly craven, he may even pat you on the head for it. Good dog.

Comments

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I just followed your lead because some times I can't help wanting to feel like a smart ass. I'm sure this will turn out to be a depressing discussion if he responds. Here's what I wrote:

Actually, the second coming already happened, but for some reason a lot of you theists were as remarkably unmoved by it as we atheists were. I wonder why the both of us can't get together and embrace this irrefutable evidence?

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Actually your lead was fairly rational, and mine was sort of mild trolling, so perhaps I shouldn't be to eager to equate my effort with yours in his eyes.

[voidheart.livejournal.com]

Or, you know, you could resist the urge to roll in the pile of dog shit that will be any response and 'discussion' that will be had between the two of you.

I learned a long time ago that unless both people bring facts and an attitude of tolerance of each other to the table that any 'discussion' will never be such a thing. An argument is not a discussion.

Or to put it another way: just hit him, he hits you, and have an honest fight. That's all it is going to be anyway *shrug*

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you just need to spin the weeble and watch it bounce. It's a good stress-reducing activity. *shrug*

[plucky.livejournal.com]

Yes, but as Void pointed out, it really doesn't solve the problem and they may just tighten their worldview and disallow anything that you might say. Spinning the weeble is what high school jocks do to nerds because they really don't care about what goes on in other peoples heads and don't consider that their actions may have ramifications. See any high school shooting incident. On the other hand, regardless of how civil you have been, if the person rants like a two-year-old on a sugar high you don't encourage him, you isolate them and walk away.

I admit that I have posted, only in my live journal and never on anyone elses, somewhat viralent posts against religion but they are generally linked to my own twisted upbringing and the other times I post it is simply because I don't understand religion and why people believe in it.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I should note that Ralphie over there is not a stranger. He's someone who has attacked many of my friends and other people in the past and who has spewed his same stupid rhetoric on various newsgroups for the past decade. In fact, I commented on his journal because he was making vitrolic comments about someone I know and respect. You can look him up in Encyclopedia Dramatica if you like. He's a bit of a wanker.

Besides, the post in question was a smug and hateful little screed about how stupid atheists were, so I just took his argument and expanded on it. Anyhow, I expressed contempt for him; Of religion I said only that it was comfort food and if he likes one thing and I another, that's fine. It's the so-called logic I have contempt for. So half-baked and informed only by the opinions of others. Ralph's never had an original thought in his life. You should try reading his, "Waaaah! White men are so oppressed by women, gays and other races!"-themed comic strip. He's a half inch above Jack Chick (when he's not plagiarizing from Chick. It's sad.


I don't generally go looking for anthills to knock over these days but this ant keeps trying to get into friend's picnics.

[frith]

You read Junior's LJ? What ever for?

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Not normally. I was following links at lunchtime because there wasn't a lot of read in my f-list and I ended up there by way of Encyclopedia Dramatica. He's filed under 'batshit insane right-wingers' and 'lol furries'

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

Yup, looks like your post was baww-leted. I can't find it there anywhere.

Figures.



I would attend the Church of the Fuzzy Bunnies. :)

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yep. Just like when he used to post all his ignorant screeds to AFF.

Actually it's kind of sad really. His trolling tactics haven't changed in over a decade.

His likes to talk down to people, assuming a parental role, and once that's established he keeps to that. This is why I started off calling him stupid and saying I'd use small words for him. Reversed his standard power play.

The bits at the end about how easy it'd be to dig up dirt on me were to re-enforce that I'm quite secure in my identity. I invited him to dig and 'expose' me and that suggests I have nothing to expose. At the same time, it negates the opportunity to shift the game to disparaging my ancestry. Same for the bit about 'rallying the troops'.

So... Delete was the best option for him. Now. Here's would probably have happened next:

He's as slow-witted as Jack Chick and as desperate for that air of authority. So, since he can't debate me, in a couple of weeks to a month, he'll take a highly distorted version of what I said and put it into a character who faintly resembles me but is a very slow-witted child who needs to have THE TRUTH patiently explained to them.

See. Then it's not about _me_, I'm just being paranoid and thin-skinned if I see a resemblance, and the power is back in his court and he can feel smug and secure again.


Of course, it's based on the assumption that he's the center of the universe and I'll be watching for it. Truth be told though, I haven't even glanced at his comic in five years, save for yesterday and I found the writing just as slow-witted and the art just as unaesthetic (to me) as the last time I looked at it. Not to mention I'm so scatter-brained I'll have entirely forgotten this by Monday, so he'd have to work quick. :)


Of course, causality is a bitch. The odds of my predicted response were already low and depended on a number of variables like, "How bruised is his ego matter? How much free time does he have? And a lot of other stuff like that." So when I say 'probable' I meant "Given past behavior, in a perfect storm, odds are favorable this would have been the pattern he's repeated for at least a decade."

However, he and I have overlapping circles of association and that means a non-zero probability that he'd see this comment and that alters all of the variables in ways that are too complex for me to predict.

Since no such response presently exists, I think all probabilities now round to zero (making my whole prediction an exercise in mental masturbation unless I'd made it privately like I generally do) however, predicting zero throws even more variables into it.

This is why the people in Asimov's Foundation couldn't know any details about the Second Foundation. :)

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Truth be told, he's kind of got us on the whole T-shirt and bumper sticker slogans bit. Mind you, I still want to have a massive love scene between the jesus fish and the darwin fish, overseen by the FSM.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that thing.

Eh, it's arrogant ego-masturbation. It's like the people who troll furries because 'they're sickos' and then go wank to something involving tentacles and schoolgirls.. It's not because the people who disagree with him are wrong. The important part is that he's right.

To be fair, I don't disagree with him on any point besides the fact that he's wrong. Not about politics, not about God, none of that stuff. But I think he totally missed the part about love and understanding and fairness for your fellow man.

I think it's a damn shame he's taken a good book with a lot of really good ideas and done the idealogical equivalent of tying it to a stick and hitting people with it.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

The important part is that he's right.

Yeah, but that's no easy thing to overcome. Everyone is guilty of it to some degree. I've ended up with egg on my face more than once because I held to a position shrilly until it was abundantly clear that I was completely wrong. Very embarrassing.

Also, at least as far as the US goes, it seems like there's been increasing polarization in the past decade. It's very frustrating. I find it difficult to believe that anything is purely black and white. Even the colors black and white are more than that. Black paint absorbs more heat and emits more IR and most whites contain a lot of UV elements.

Nothing is so clear-cut. Murder: Horrible, yes, but what about the bomber who tried to murder Hitler? Rape with force pregnancy and child abduction: Unspeakably evil and yet zoos do it to animals in captive breeding programs all the time. Then again, is THAT good or evil? Is it better for a species to live or to die with dignity? Even trying to determine the 'greater good' or 'greater evil' is pretty difficult.

I really don't know what to do about people like Ralph. I'd like to think I'm tolerant of the ideas of others but how does one tolerate intolerance? When it's one lonely twit like Ralph, you can just turn your back and ignore him. That isn't tolerance, it's exclusion, and it's not scalable. The men who destroyed the WTC were similar to Ralph in many ways. Their God is the RIGHT God and they're were going to teach all the unbelievers a lesson. Yet if I utterly condemn them, am I any better?