Fundies Say The Darndest Things!
Oh this is gonna waste my morning.
<bob> “In Luke 10:18, Jesus said he watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. This may have been the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs.”
<Freyja> hehehe
<Freyja> man, I really envy the crazies
<Freyja> science is so much easier when there’s only one textbook
<bob> gah, here’s one for you, mark
<bob> [If God gave us the KJV as an inspired translation, why would God not repeat the process again in modern language in each language?]
<bob> The question assumes that the A.V. was written in common or Elizabethan English. It was not. The English of the A.V. was specifically designed to receive the words of God in a language that could be understood by English readers. It is a pure language, untainted by secular meanings.
* zompist boggles
<zompist> not that it matters, but i wonder how they decide this stuff
<raven> I think it’s a bit much to suggest there’s actual decision-making.
<zompist> i mean, they just pull it out of their ass, but doesn’t anyone say “er, but why is that?”
<bob> heh rave
<bob> yeah, you kinda have to figure whatever voice tells them this stuff, they don’t ask back about the details
January 16th, 2008 17:03
Interesting that this subject came up, as I just happened upon this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxKgIxw7Ozs
The headline sort of caught my attention: “Battle Cry Bible Rally”
The journalist narrating this takes them to task for not having much going on upstairs.
January 16th, 2008 17:56
Did you guys jump to a different server or what? You’re like, never on irc.spinnwebe.com.
January 18th, 2008 13:57
[…] the Spinnwebe IRC channel, Freyja on fundamentalists: science is so much easier when there’s only one textbook. […]
January 22nd, 2008 10:11
See, we’ve got a Bible verse for all of you. 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For to those who are perishing the message of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is God’s power.” That’s why we don’t sweat it too much when folks like you get to mocking and poking fun.
I mean, yes, there are plenty of Christians who say silly things. Know what? There are plenty of über-clever, cynical, self-deluding dilettantes flitting around the internet who say silly things by the fistful, but that doesn’t condemn all of you.
I drop in and read what I find here pretty regularly, and often you’re sharp, fun to read, and even seem likable. But when the laughter over a silly comment, or even a series of silly comments, bleeds outward into swipes at everyone who believes what the Bible teaches, then you’re calling something foolishness that we know is God’s power. And you’re falling back on the weaker underside of your reasoning skills to do so.
January 22nd, 2008 13:35
If we were talking about “Everyone Who Believes What The Bible Teaches Says The Darndest Things!” you might have a point. But I laugh at idiots fairly regularly; you should not infer that my disdain extends to whatever subclass of which those idiots might be a part. Ignorance is ignorance, regardless of beliefs.
January 22nd, 2008 13:39
Ah, Zowie, I think you are missing the point. The mocking is not for those that are religious in general. Personally, I find that mind-boggling to an extreme, but that isn’t what we are talking about here. It’s the people who take their beliefs to such an extreme, to the point where logic and reason are set aside for a blind drone-like devotion to an idea to the exclusion of all else.
God gave us free will, according to Scripture, yet somehow those most apparently devoted to Him seem to prefer shutting that off, as well as much of the rest of the brain. It is those people that are so difficult to comprehend we openly deride them because otherwise it would make us openly weep instead.
January 22nd, 2008 14:09
Er, yeah, actually, on second read…doesn’t your own second paragraph invalidate your criticism?
January 22nd, 2008 21:53
A joke is always funnier when you don’t feel you’re the butt of it. Fortunately, I’m often the butt of jokes, so I have practice at laughing at myself.
There’s faith, and then there’s… whatever is going on in the minds of these people.
If there is a god, and if that god is as the Christian god describes, I would expect that god would really want us to use the noodles he put in our braincase, and believe in him in such a way that makes some reasonable sense.
I mean, if you were god, and the only people who gave a damn about you were these sycophants who can’t seriously pay attention to your efforts long enough to appreciate the intelligence you gave to them, at least enough to actually *use* it, wouldn’t you get a little concerned that maybe, possibly, you didn’t quite get the whole Human Being formula down? “Maybe I should have given the world to the monkeys,” to quote Elvis Costello (God’s Comic, from his Spike album, so you can decide for yourself if my quote is in the correct context).
According to Christians, god made the reality we perceive. If this is true, don’t you think it’s a dishonor to god’s creative abilities to ignore facets of it just because it doesn’t fit in with your own preconceived (and potentially misguided) notions of his will?
Do you not see the amazing arrogance of some of these people, to so thoroughly presume the mind of god that they don’t even pay attention to his works enough to see that their conception of him is so far off base as to be completely laughable?
If the Christian god is a loving god, why do so many of these people invest in hatred in the name of a Christian god? Have you read what some of these people wrote about homosexuals? Do these people really speak for Christianity?
I suspect they do not. I suspect your true Christian doesn’t agree with what these people say, and find them embarrassing. And as such, I would think a true Christian would probably join us in mocking them.
Because it’s a far better thing to laugh at them than to say nasty, hateful things at them, if the Christian god is a loving god. It also robs them of the power to propagate their sad state of mind beyond others similarly misguided.
January 23rd, 2008 06:23
It occurred to me that the referenced website also quoted Muslims, although not as many. That kind of emphasizes the point that they’re making fun of fanatics, rather than any particular belief system.
January 23rd, 2008 13:25
I gotta point out, though, that saying “I have to assume God would want you to use your brain” is also presuming to know the will of God. Sure, it seems reasonable to us, but then a lot of those weirdo things seem reasonable to fundies.
For me, it’s when they try to pull logic into it. If a guy says he believes the Bible in his own way, but says he doesn’t need to prove it, I can relate. I don’t agree, but I can relate. But then they suddenly have these “factual beliefs”—beliefs in “fact” that they found using logic applied to their beliefs. And that just freakin drives me nuts. I’m always fascinated with watching them try to explain the “facts” around Noah’s Bogus Trip, explaining that there was no rain before the Flood, and that there was a water vapor canopy around the earth:
Why? Why bother with “which somehow became unstable”? Why not “And then God made it become unstable”? Or really, the whole reason they struggle with this point is because the rainbow is meant to be a sign from God that he wouldn’t flood the earth again, so they have to explain why there weren’t rainbows before the Flood. But why try to explain it? Just say God prevented light from refracting in the atmosphere before then. Then say God created the flood waters from nothingness. Just skip all the messiness about water canopies and no rainfall before the Flood and say “God did it” and we’re done. But these people who make up “fact” based on belief, and then tell you you’re wrong about whatever facts you might have, oy they drive me nuts.
Then put their smug superiority over their clearly mistaken logic, and fuck yeah I’m gonna laugh at them. While, as Leth says, trying not to weep.
January 25th, 2008 00:30
So what’s the difference between Elizabethan and Jacobian English? Are the “thee”s and “thou”s inflected differently? Because, I’m just sayin’, King James was no Shakespeare.
January 28th, 2008 09:49
Well, my assumption has some logic to it.
If God is a benevolent deity, and God gave us free will as well as intelligence, what sort of sicko deity would then expect unthinking, blind-as-a-bat, fly-in-the-face-of-all-reason loyalty from His (or Her, or Its) subjects? I could see that from a deranged, foaming-at-the-mouth sort of deity (say, an Elder God from some Lovecraftianesque mythos), but not the loving sort of deity that Christians suggest in their god.
I mean, Christian theology points to a god that says, “I want you to be able to say *why* you think I’m all that and a bottle of made-from-water wine.” Not a god that that acts like an abusive spouse.
Of course, one could potentially argue that God didn’t give us intelligence… that we stole it when Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Well… that’s hard to argue against. Once you go down that road, logic and reason have no meaning, and you may as well assume that all reason and intellect get in the way of living your life enjoyably.
Which has some merit, honestly, because I really do think ignorance is bliss to an awful lot of people.
I mean, think about the full irony of such a statement. You would be using intelligence to reason about the will of God, while acknowledging that intelligence isn’t something God intended for us to have. It feels a bit like dividing by zero to do something like that.
Godel might have some words on the subject, at least.
I suppose it’s a position to maintain, but I wouldn’t be proud to maintain it. But if someone really feels that way, I should think there are solutions available; work towards a proper communion with your God, and get a frontal lobotomy.
January 28th, 2008 10:54
And then your first paragraph invalidates your argument. It makes sense to you based on your reasoning, which is true for fundies as well. Lacking God making His holy Presence manifest to all His children and saying “do this, this, and this in My Name”, then for all you know, sycophantic, mindless praise really is what God wants. What these fundies gotta learn is that saying “but God did tell us, in the Bible” doesn’t cut it for us logically-minded types, because the Bible contains too many contradictions for us to believe it’s the word of God. And then trying to come over to our way of thinking, using logic to actually justify it, only makes it less believable.
Myself, I think the only thing we can know about God, if He exists, is that he is unknowable. It’s impossible for us to understand the motivations or desires of a being with an existence so far advanced from our own. The obvious question is “why would such a supreme being even want anything from us,” but that just goes back to my core point, really.
January 29th, 2008 15:00
Hmmm… maybe I should submit this as another entry for amusing.org:
Frontal lobotomies in His name.
When I get mine, the scar tissue will look like a little cross. I’ll insist on it.
Of course, I’ll be wondering whether or not the surgeon actually will make my scar tissue in the form of a cross, right on up to the point where I just won’t care anymore after the operation.