Wednesday, May 31, 2006
I was about to comment on Faith = Illness when I realized I had a blog of my own, and ought to seriously consider posting to it once in awhile. Then I considered calling this post "Equals Sign In Title = Severe Fag-Tardation", but that swept me into a recursive vortex of not wanting to call myself a fag-tard. I guess it also didn't seem very classy either.
The above linked essay is a perfect illustrative text as to why so many normals find so many atheists to be so profoundly unlikable. For all of his ostentatiously verbose finger-wagging at the simplisime of the judgemental Christers, he's been remarkably obtuse about a number of subtleties, and quick to swallow some very poorly thought out yet hoary prejudices about Scripture, and those who take it at face value.
Had I any regard for Ruskoff as a fellow human being, it would greatly pain me to point out to him the idiocy of his failure, after trying SO hard to articulate the authoritative last word on spirituality, to grasp the single most glaringly obvious fact about Bibical belief: People who say they believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, do not mean that literally. It's a bit of figurative hyperbole. Find me a gay-bashin' fundie who'll say that the Lamb of God actually bears wool, eats grass, and says baa. People tell survey takers that they believe the Bible is literally true because the other choices are "I am superior to those literalist redneck strawmen" and "Can't answer now, too busy peeing on this crucifix".
How could someone write a "book" about such matters without putting enough thought into them to at least consider the possibility that something symbolic can also be objecively real? To blithely assume that seeing the symbolic significance of a thing proves that it is not also literaly real (or vice-versa) is not the type of thought normally associated with IQs above 65. If I accept that Alexander the Great was an actual historic figure, does this prevent me from recognizing his archetypal Greatness? Really? Dumbass.
What did more to make me give up on maintaining a respectful tone in this piece than anything else is his repetition of the staggeringly dim-witted cliche that Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis constitute contradictory accounts of Creation. How can people who can fail to comprehend the written word at such a basic level NOT be on the Supreme Court? It takes an enourmous reservoir of bad faith not to recognize that the second part is a reiteration of the first part, with a more anthropomorphic emphasis. This is pretty freaking obvoius, not to mention commonplace. Find me a book that dosen't reiterate something in different words with a different emphasis. If your brain routinely interprets this as a contradiction, the fault is in said brain. Rushkoff seems particularly impressed by his observation that Chapter Two says that Eve was created "at the same time" as Adam, rather than slightly later. That would impress me too, if there was anything in the text to indicate actual simultaneity as opposed to "during the same day/ evening-morning period/ geological era". Good thing we have modern European goyim to point these glaring contradictions out to us after so many millenia of just reading it without the special insights to be gotten from the requisite chip every atheist gets on his shoulder back in Catholic school. (What the hell are the nuns DOING to those kids?)
The above linked essay is a perfect illustrative text as to why so many normals find so many atheists to be so profoundly unlikable. For all of his ostentatiously verbose finger-wagging at the simplisime of the judgemental Christers, he's been remarkably obtuse about a number of subtleties, and quick to swallow some very poorly thought out yet hoary prejudices about Scripture, and those who take it at face value.
Had I any regard for Ruskoff as a fellow human being, it would greatly pain me to point out to him the idiocy of his failure, after trying SO hard to articulate the authoritative last word on spirituality, to grasp the single most glaringly obvious fact about Bibical belief: People who say they believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, do not mean that literally. It's a bit of figurative hyperbole. Find me a gay-bashin' fundie who'll say that the Lamb of God actually bears wool, eats grass, and says baa. People tell survey takers that they believe the Bible is literally true because the other choices are "I am superior to those literalist redneck strawmen" and "Can't answer now, too busy peeing on this crucifix".
How could someone write a "book" about such matters without putting enough thought into them to at least consider the possibility that something symbolic can also be objecively real? To blithely assume that seeing the symbolic significance of a thing proves that it is not also literaly real (or vice-versa) is not the type of thought normally associated with IQs above 65. If I accept that Alexander the Great was an actual historic figure, does this prevent me from recognizing his archetypal Greatness? Really? Dumbass.
What did more to make me give up on maintaining a respectful tone in this piece than anything else is his repetition of the staggeringly dim-witted cliche that Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis constitute contradictory accounts of Creation. How can people who can fail to comprehend the written word at such a basic level NOT be on the Supreme Court? It takes an enourmous reservoir of bad faith not to recognize that the second part is a reiteration of the first part, with a more anthropomorphic emphasis. This is pretty freaking obvoius, not to mention commonplace. Find me a book that dosen't reiterate something in different words with a different emphasis. If your brain routinely interprets this as a contradiction, the fault is in said brain. Rushkoff seems particularly impressed by his observation that Chapter Two says that Eve was created "at the same time" as Adam, rather than slightly later. That would impress me too, if there was anything in the text to indicate actual simultaneity as opposed to "during the same day/ evening-morning period/ geological era". Good thing we have modern European goyim to point these glaring contradictions out to us after so many millenia of just reading it without the special insights to be gotten from the requisite chip every atheist gets on his shoulder back in Catholic school. (What the hell are the nuns DOING to those kids?)
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
I'm putting this link to Muslihoon at the top, where my mom will see it. I think she'd find that site interesting, but I keep forgetting to tell her about it.
Somehow, I seem to have made myself the unofficial homosexuality expert of the moment over at Ace of Spades. I think he's been kind of a fan of mine since my impassioned defese of Ewoks in the sequel thread. I was kind of hoping that the latter is what I'd get a reputation for in the gay community.
I was going to repost the Ronald Reagan fisky disky doo from the bottom of this page, because I think it's pretty good, and the bottom of it keeps getting cut off on the archive page, but it gets cut off when I repost it too. Maybe it's just too long?
Somehow, I seem to have made myself the unofficial homosexuality expert of the moment over at Ace of Spades. I think he's been kind of a fan of mine since my impassioned defese of Ewoks in the sequel thread. I was kind of hoping that the latter is what I'd get a reputation for in the gay community.
I was going to repost the Ronald Reagan fisky disky doo from the bottom of this page, because I think it's pretty good, and the bottom of it keeps getting cut off on the archive page, but it gets cut off when I repost it too. Maybe it's just too long?
