Better be careful! I'm dangerous!

[TZ]

I'm just as dangerous as Pat Robertson or Stalin! Did you know that? I'm going to go out and kill everyone who believes in God because I'm a fundamentalist atheist and therefore as bad as any fundie xtian. Richard Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are my gods whom I blindly worship!
Give me a fucking break. And if I see that fucking Stalin/Pol Pot meme one more time I'm going to take a cue from Evoman and dragon kick someone!! R/T is getting mighty aggravating again....

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. I believe it's going to get worse, turtlensue.

The economy is in the process of tanking like most people have never seen before. Things are beginning to get desperate out there, and unfortunately research shows that when things get bad people's faith in god actually INCREASES (think of the Jews who went through the Holocaust and came out more religious than ever, despite the overwhelming evidence that there was no god that loved or took care of them). Not only that, people are going to blame "big business" for the failure (and they'll be mostly right).

What does this mean? I think it means a total resurgence of religious and non-religious woo is coming our way.

I cannot recommend the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not Be Me) strongly enough. It explains a lot of this kind of thinking.

[cosmik debris]

2. You are dealing with one of the worst offenders

R/T has very few people who are as dogmatic about rudeness as the one with whom you have crossed paths.

Prediction: If you continue to disagree with him, he will play the persecution card and claim that other atheist fundamentalists won't let him in their club.

Good Luck!

[TZ]

3. Oh we have gone round and round

Several times already. Including once in the skeptics group..because he claimed that Lupus was curable....

[cosmik debris]

4. I remember now.

I don't even bother with him any more, he is not worth my time.

[More Than A Feeling]

20. That guy is back?

I'll bet he sleeps with a copy of Chris Hedges' latest effort under his pillow.

[onager]

5. Oh, that was funny...

I know we shouldn't, but I can't help needling that type every now and then.

As usual, I just dumped a futile load of my history-geek pedantry in the thread. Tried to restrain myself, but my fingers just automatically started typing. I think it was supernatural, and promise to ask for an opinion in the Seekers On Well-Trampled Paths group.

Oh, I also pointed out that the Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot meme is a direct steal from that famous progressive, Ann Coulter.

[Meshuga]

6. Be careful with me. Apparently I am a bit more dangerous than you

Since I have been grouped with Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao.

Obviously he is shamelessly full of shit. Don't let him bother you.

[cosmik debris]

8. You guys are staging a good show

I just need a better waitress to bring me drinks.

[TZ]

13. EEK! Scary Mr. Wiggles

Its amazing how many of the rational posters in that thread were attacked.
Yeah, I shouldn't let it bother me, but I'm getting awfully tired of stereotyping and broad brushing that goes on from this board lately (I've gotten even into fights in the science forum with crazies)

[Evoman]

16. Why should we listen to an Arab-hating Jew?

Your worse than Sam Harris, wanting to nuke the Arabs.

[TZ]

18. Why should I listen to you

YOUR grammar is incorrect. Obviously YOUR not intelligent....

[Meshuga]

19. Why should you listen to me?

Well, I might use my lobbying power to make the US government hunt you down. All I have to do is find my AIPAC membership card and make a few phone calls. If you ever heard of blood libel you would be listening pretty attentively since the blood of a little blond crying kid like yourself tastes really good with matzo. Passover is just around the corner.

[skepticscott]

27. That's nothing

I've been lumped in with Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao AND Hitler

Of course, this was the same guy who said that people who kept harping on the rapist priest scandal were no different than the people still harping on the Bill and Monica scandal, so maybe I'm not really that bad...

[moggie]

7. R/T is getting amusing again

It gets boring for a while, and then the clown car arrives and entertainment spills out. See also Zebby proving that demons exist (the bible says so, which is proof). Don't forget that Easter is coming, and that makes them restless.

[TZ]

9. Zebby's back?

Maybe its time for a discussion of the merits of xtian sex....gosh that was awesomely funny...

Hey Cosmik Debris..pull out the assorted foodstuffs.

[Evoman]

14. I take credit for encouraging that line of conversation.

Hehe. That was awesome. Having a discussion about who has better sex with a fundie.

[rexcat]

10. But a good exorcism will eliminate demons...

and there is an article that states a psychiatrist has witnessed a real exorcism! That is all the proof I need.

[NMMNG]

21. I love the "The Bible says so" argument

[moggie]

22. How about Zebby's latest?

When asked for scientific evidence:

"The most respectable journal in history is the Holy Bible"



I like to picture the saner Christians of R/T groaning privately when he comes out with this stuff. Though they won't challenge him on it, of course.

[TZ]

23. Yes. I was thinking about starting a thread about it here

acutally

[Evoman]

24. Hilarious.

Best line of the day.

[NMMNG]

11. Worse yet,

You're a shill for Big Pharma.




Now you just have to turn gay and you'll be the penultimate evil.

[Deep13]

26. Geez, she kept THAT a secret! nt

[and-justice-for-all]

12. Those poor, poor theist....

they will countinue to pull at already short straws in their fible attempt to make non delusion, non invisible friend people look bad. tisk tisk.

Atheist are not 'fundamentlist' (fuck off Hedges) and Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler were very superstitious. they may not have believed in gawd, because they thought of themselves as gawds and wanted to be gawds.

[Evoman]

15. That's so funny....he calls YOU dangerous, and he tells me I'm a whiner

and posts a picture of a little kid crying.

Hehe.

That's awesome.

Stupid and reckless, but awesome.

[Evoman]

17. Oh yeah...and if you'll excuse me, I've got to go outside and spend 10 minutes

staring straight at the sun. What more can you expect from a guy who doesn't know the difference between your and you're.

[Deep13]

25. The comparison is completely dishonest and depends on historical ignorance...

...of the audience to be credible. You may be familiar with that tactic as it is described in Preaching to Fundamentalist on page 1.

Stalin was probably an atheist, but that is besides the point. What really matters is why Soviet Russians accepted him so blindly. They had been spoon fed since antiquity on the notion that Russian leaders are annointed by God to deserveunquestioned loyalty. Ultimately Tsar = Russia. When the anticlerical backlash came, it did not eliminate the cultural assumptions religion and the monarchy had caused.

I don't know what Pol Pot's religion was, but if he was anything like other Asian communists, he believed or at least encouraged the idea that he was entitled to rule pursuant to the mandate of heaven. Again, he was able to prey on the ignorance of the peasants to exterminate anyone capable of being skeptical of his rule. North Korea is actually a thanocracy, if that is a word, preying on the ancestor worship of its subjects. The present dictator claims to be a surrogate for his dead father who gives him instructions from the afterlife.

"Atheism" is lack of belief. I doubt believing in ones own omnipotence really qualifies as atheism. At any rate it is not what we mean by the term. Generally, atheism is a lack of belief that comes from skepticism which depends on free inquiry. Stalin and the rest were not exactly advocates of free thought, unlike the skeptical founders of this country. And anyway, all the religious apologists can hope to demonstrate by their observation is that atheist rules are just as bad as religious ones. It does nothing to advance the idea of theocratic virtue. Of course all of the arguments are irrelevant to the question of whether god exists or not.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

28. Afterlife?

"The present dictator claims to be a surrogate for his dead father who gives him instructions from the afterlife."

Kim Jong Il declares belief in the AFTERLIFE? I didn't know that.

Heh. There goes the atheism.

[onager]

29. Pedant to the rescue!

Pol Pot's religion was Thedavara Buddhism, and he spent a short time as a Buddhist monk during his youth.

The religious teachings of Thedavara Buddhism had a profound--and absolutely horrifying--effect on Pol Pot's rule in Cambodia. Those teachings use an interesting allegory about human nature in relation to good and evil. Thedavara Buddhism teaches that rural folks, especially farmers, are naturally good and unspoiled. Something like Rousseau's "noble savage" claptrap, I guess. Cities, on the other hand, are viewed as sinkholes of depravity and sin, only good for ruining the original pristine nature of humanity. (Of course, many American Republicans in the Midwest have similar ideas.)

That's why, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, their first act was the complete emptying of the cities. In Phnom Penh, three million people woke up one morning in the city and, by the afternoon, were being herded down the highways to a spell of forced labor in the pure, unsullied air of the countryside.

This didn't make sense to many Western observers, since it wrecked the economy and plunged the whole nation into chaos. But it made perfect sense if you were raised with the precepts of Thedavara Buddhism.

I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it, but you can find a complete and fascinating explanation in Philip Short's massive biography, Pol Pot: The Anatomy of a Nightmare.

Hmm. Pol Pot was a Buddhist monk, Stalin went to a seminary, and Hitler was a Catholic choirboy. Maybe we should start chorusing the meme that the best way to become a totalitarian asshat is by undergoing early religious training. It makes just as much sense as the believers insisting that atheism caused the Cambodian killing fields, the purges in Soviet Russia and Auschwitz.

Funny thing about Russia, as I've ranted before. There are some fascinating old films available from the Czar's time, showing Russians parading thru the streets carrying religious icons and pictures of the Czar. Just a few years later, they were parading thru the streets under icons of Lenin and Stalin.

As people a lot smarter than me keep pointing out, this is not evidence of an exuberant and sudden national conversion to atheism. But it may be evidence that one set of national deities has simply been replaced by another set.

[TZ]

30. You should really post that in R/T

Seriously. I think a lot of people need to hear that. Sure you'll get flamed but maybe it will at least shut down the atheist,Stalin,Pol Pot, Hitler meme.
In you did explain that VERY well.

[yowzayowzayowza]

31. Locking.

Do not post messages with the purpose of "calling out" another member....