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Topic: Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables (Read 1000 times) |
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Hermit
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Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« on: 2006-12-29 06:04:44 » |
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Is This A Suitable Dungeon?
This is proposed in a spirit of fun inspired by [Perplextus] What can we do to infect them? But wait. I'd like to start a new thread on this topic. Or has it been done? If it has, let me know and I'll search it out. If it has not, where should I post it?. Please take this response in that sense and as a possible goad for missionaries , tract pushers, young or flat earthers, idiotic design and assorted associated inanities. For serious suggestions, add on below unless Perplextus finds a better Topic or location. (Seriously, Perplextus, don't agonize too much (although the motivation is appreciated), just post and if you get something terribly wrong, somebody will almost certainly make some sensible suggestions, on - or off list on how to clean-up.
Always bear in mind that Christianity "won" the war of the 16 resurrected Saviours of the Mediterranean largely because it offered not just "life after death" but also an eternal hell to follow the hell that UTic (Us and Them - ic) delusions, particularly religious UTic delusions, have made of this planet. Wedge this away, the edifice crumbles. Unfortunately, like any other believers (in anything - torture, aether, democracy, fascism, Hinduism, apple pie), Christians (and their codelusionists the Jews and Islamics) are perfectly capable of becoming cognitively dissonant to the full extent required to "explain away" most kinds of "babble contradiction." This phenomena can be identified by opening most any page of their most holy works (wholly full of babble) and reading it carefully to find internal or external contradictions. The common technique for the believer faced with a blatant logical contradiction, is to switch from literalism, no matter how literally they take the babble at other times, to mysticism and argument for a "symbolic" or "contextual" interpretation. When faced with this kind of shiftiness (basically anytime you deal with an interpretive reader, and whenever you raise a contradiction with a fundamentalist), if you challenge them to identify for you which bits should be taken literally and which not, and how they tell the difference, they typically evaporate (although some have been known to become aggressive).
So the following probably are not going to do the job, but they will almost certainly lead the religious to hie for the hills in an attempt to get away from you. The last is particularly effective at closing the door behind them. Which is the best that I think can be done, and some are great fun deploying (when you are fortunate enough to still have churches in your town that don't warn their members to skip your door; sigh, time to move or find a partner who doesn't chase them away for my protection!). Nonetheless, I will gladly participate in a discussion seeking more generous handling methods as I have a number of acquaintances who are at least nominally religious, but who I think would be much better off if they discovered the joys of atheism.
Invert Pascal (You have been worshipping the wrong gods): Why do you believe as you do? <<<The Babble>>> Why do you accept it? <<<Whatever>>> Not only are there thousands of books people think of as holy referring to other gods and other ways of worshipping them, so that you don't know why your babble should be believed and all the others not, but your babble tells us that the God you have is a lying god! The only so called "evidence" you have for the God you think you believe in is found in a book which tells you that the Gods in it tell lies to humans*. Oops. How do you know that the babble is true? Why, you are probably is going to burn in hell-fire for doing what the babble tells you to do. Clearly, believing in the babble is only for fools
This won't make a believer rational, but it might frighten one into paying attention...
Borrow Morton's Fork (aka Religious robbery): Have you done what god said to do? Are you poor enough to enter heaven yet**? If the believer is well off, rub his nose in it, and suggest he has clearly too much money for heaven and should give it all to you. If the believer is not well off, note that he clearly hasn't been spending much on himself, so his savings must be substantial - and again suggest he give it all to you - if he wants to go to heaven that is. He can't give it to other Christians, because that would enrich them, making it more difficult to get into heaven, and does he really want to curse them that way?
This won't make a believer rational, but it might annoy him one into paying attention. Dying with money... according to the Christian's babble he probably won't get into heaven... So any Christian telling him differently is clearly lying to him. You on the other hand can be trusted.
Practical Torment (aka Jesus the terrorist): Many, many redefinitions and interpretations of Christianity abound. Far from being a friend of government and a man of piece, we weyken that Jesus was a violent revolutionary zealot seeking to overthrow the Idumaean Kings and Tetrarchs of Iudeae. Consider, "And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's"***; the coin was a denarius (the so called "tribute penny"). The zealous Jews of the day would not use them, because they carried an inscription from Augustus onward, reflecting the divinity of the Emperor. Clearly, despite the fact that the popular modern interpretation is different, what he was saying was saying don't pay your taxes, but doing it very cleverly. Which took the priests breath away. This is the only explanation which makes sense for this last. Given the way you understand something completely different from it, why do you think that any of the rest is any more related to anything that may have happened in the Levant at one time or another?
This won't make a believer rational, but it might puzzle one into paying attention...
Righteous Incest (aka as fucked if you do, fucked if you don't): It is only the righteous that make it into heaven we are told, despite the fact that the babble repeatedly insists that none are righteous, and 2 Peter says that Lot was righteous****. But if we go back and investigate, Lot offered his virgin daughters to the crowd to distract them from wanting amuse themselves buggering his VIP guests, and later he slept with them himself - and indeed had children with them. While most of the stories about the incest taboo have little or no basis in reality, most modern Christians don't know this and become all hysterical at the suggestion that to be righteous and get into heaven they obviously need to screw their daughters (even if they have to get drunk first). Going to the Old Testament only doesn't help the Jew or Muslim either. After all, Noah is also referred to as righteous.
In my experience this won't make a Christian - or a Jew - rational, indeed, if my experience is anything to go by, it will definitely annoy the butt of your humor. Sometimes into attempting to become violent. Especially if you follow it up with, "Do you have any daughters? Have you fucked them yet? I guess you won't admit it if you have. Tell you what, if you haven't screwed them yet, why don't you send them over to me and I'll screw them for you. If you don't, I'll know what kind of a righteous Christian you are...
Finally, reversing the trend to extremism, consider PI.
The Egyptians knew a great deal about PI - to a remarkable degree of precision, by betwen 4000 BCE and 3600 BCE. The Egyptians wrote this value in many "holy" books, rightfully proud of their prowess. Their invisible, supposed, neighbors (Egypt and other nations that kept good records fought - repeatedly over the Levant, with first one and then the other repeatedly winning - and losing - what was the Palestine - without ever mentioning the supposedly powerful kings asserted to have been living there by the completely impartial JudeoChristian community.), claim that PI is equivalent to 3 in their holy book written some 3000 years later. This is simply untrue, and cannot be fudged away. So, in comparison to their neighbors, was it their god who was innumerate, or themselves? Either way, why accept anything else from this literary farrago, given that it is so clearly inadequate about something so impossible to contextualize or mysticize and given that much of it is clearly just so much nonsense.
Kind Regards
Hermit
* See e.g. 1 Kings 22:19-23, 2 Chronicles 18:20-22 In addition, the "fall story" has God lying, Genesis 2:17 "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."; Satan telling the truth, Genesis 3:4 "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die" as shown by: Genesis 1:5 "Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died."
** Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25
*** Luke 10:4-7 "if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one... the reason being ... "It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'" Then in Matthew 22:17-22 (and Mark 12:17 as well as Luke 20:25) the episode itself. See also Psalms 69:9 "zeal for your house consumes me" using zelos from which Zealots - repeatedly reflected in the works of the Community of the Poor, Zealots for the Law.
****
Ecclesiastes 7:20 For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.
Psalms 14:3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
2 Peter 2:7-8 And [Hermit: God] delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds.
Genesis 7:1 And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
Genesis 19:2-3 "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square." But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house.
Genesis 19:4-8 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them." Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
Genesis 19:36-38 So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Perplextus
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Re:Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« Reply #1 on: 2006-12-30 14:06:01 » |
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Hermit: I've seen all these techniques applied, and never seen a single one succeed. But that is not where I wish to take issue with them. Even if they succeeded, while they might turn a Christian into a non-Christian, they almost certainly wouldn't turn said Christian into a non-Theist. So the Bible is wrong, full of internal contradictions, unethical behavior by divine entities, etc. etc. Fine and good, and it would improve the lot of the world by a good bit to eliminate belief in it...but I'd like to aim higher. Eliminate spirituality and ALL FORMS of Theism. I know lots of Christians who disregard the Bible entirely, but still believe that Christ was the son of God, and that God is the creator of the universe and the anchor for human ethics. The most prominent that come to mind are the big-name Christian philosopher: Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Kierkegaard...and their various cronies. Getting Christians to reject the Bible is a petty victory, as it generally fails to remove their spiritualistic/Theistic proclivities.
I would like to propose that we might have a better shot simply by making this Church (or something like it, even Atheism in general) more memetically virulent. Actively seek converts. Form physical localized congregations with perhaps even permanently-established physical churches, with weekly discussions (not sermons) about things like current events and everyday application of CoV principles. Organize and develop these into social communities, with outreach programs. Put up fliers, perhaps even distribute pamphlets. In short, fully mimic the most virulent aspects of religions. Publicly demonstrate to the community at large that Atheists are positive people, and show off the ways in which Atheism (or Virianism, if you prefer) is more effective, useful, pleasant, ethical, etc. etc. than religion. All too often I see Atheists base their arguments on "truth": "the truth of the matter is there is no God, God is impossible" or what have you. Seldom do I see people championing Atheism for its social and ethical benefits; the most salient point to this effect that I see made with any regularity is that Atheism would end religious wars. We need to do more than that! Atheism has so many more benefits! It offers so many improvements over the religious life!
Sorry, I got a little carried away there, this is starting to sound like a sermon. At any rate, what does this community think of these proposals?
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David Lucifer
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Re:Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« Reply #2 on: 2007-01-06 11:56:20 » |
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Quote from: Perplextus on 2006-12-30 14:06:01
Sorry, I got a little carried away there, this is starting to sound like a sermon. At any rate, what does this community think of these proposals? |
I'd like to see that too, but I don't think it is feasible to rally around atheism (any more than starting a club for people who don't fancy cats). In other words we need something postive to focus on, not the absence of a negative. So what is this reified positive we can all rally around? I've have an idea but I'd like to hear from others first.
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Perplextus
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Re:Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« Reply #3 on: 2007-01-06 13:30:12 » |
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I don't know, lots of organizations exist purely to stand AGAINST things. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the "Truth" campaign against smoking, even your friendly local Neighborhood Watch! Why not an Atheistic organization dedicated to counteracting the harmful effects of Theistic faith?
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David Lucifer
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Re:Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« Reply #4 on: 2007-01-07 21:27:00 » |
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Quote from: Perplextus on 2007-01-06 13:30:12
I don't know, lots of organizations exist purely to stand AGAINST things. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the "Truth" campaign against smoking, even your friendly local Neighborhood Watch! Why not an Atheistic organization dedicated to counteracting the harmful effects of Theistic faith? |
Like these ones?
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Perplextus
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Re:Frightening Fervid Fanatics into Fearfully Foregoing Fantastic Fables
« Reply #5 on: 2007-01-08 12:33:29 » |
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Well, yes and no. Those orgs are heartening, and a step in the right direction, but I think they (well, most of them; obviously it would take a while to look into all of them) lack a certain memetic virulence. They all seem to focus too much on why religion is bad, as opposed to why Atheism is good. Maybe that's what you meant by the necessity of a "reified positive"? If so, then I whole-heartedly agree and would like to hear your ideas.
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