Better a nice Christian than a mean-spirited Atheist.
Rhymers don’t hug once we’re past age 9. Never have. That’s probably why most of us are so fucked in the head. 
Does that start at age ten?
d&r!!!
Der Trihs, I might suggest that the attitude is why some posters find you, at times, irksome. You are so caught up in your ideology that you ignore easily available evidence, no less than, say, Michael Behe and Kirk Cameron ignore evidence about evolution.
I can name plenty of wonderful Christians, both lay and cleric. Christians who work hard at making the word a better place–feeding the homeless, fighting for gay rights, working for religious tolerance–not just for themselves but for Muslims, Jews, and even atheists. I am not the only person on this board who can do that; I am not the only atheist/agnostic who can do so. Why do you insist that your ideology trumps the actual experience of everyone else?
I injured myself reading this remark, for it prompted me to roll my eyes so much that the the left eyeball not only detached itself from the optic nerve but also popped entirely out of the socket. Took me a good twenty minutes and an entire tube of Superglue to get it back in. I’d sue you for causing that, but Aslan would disapprove.
Look, Der Trihs. Not all Christians are the same. There are a fair number of stupid, obscurantist, homophobic, misogynistic, violent assholes who use the faith as cover for their own hateful impulses. There are also many who work to make the world better, who feel impelled by their faith to help strangers, to be kind, to work for peace and justice and all that crap. Now, the variety of responses to the faith does militate against it being of supernatural or divine origin. But it does not follow that the ones who seem benevolent are only pretending to be so.
And now, on a wholly different note:
Nah. It starts at age 4, when the general assassin training begins. We’re only allowed to hug one person at that point, as that’s the person we have to kill (on our ninth birthdays, natch) as that is the person we’re required to murder in order to move on to speciality training.
Poor Mrs. Henderson.
God bless you please, Mrs. Henderson
Rhymers hugged you more than you will know
Whoa-oh-oh
My apologies.
The folks who just want to cheer on Skald the Rhymer can just get on with it without disagreement, I guess.
I wasn’t saying it proudly.
What I was saying was that this thread seems bizarre to me. Imagine if he created a thread that said “Hey, everyone, I just wanted to say I’m a white guy and I don’t don’t think all black people are lazy and stupid” and everyone piled in and said “yeah, me too!”… it’s a response to a problem that doesn’t exist on this board. The prevailing atheist sentiment on this board has not been “Christians are all evil and stupid!” and there’s only one guy on the board that expressed that sentiment that I’ve noticed. It actually does a disservice to the board’s atheists, since we for the most part aren’t militant or angry or mean, but this post implies that we are and he’s not one of us.
So I thought it was a weird thread, sort of a solution looking for a problem. I thought hey - maybe that’s just the way MPSIMS works, and I didn’t know.
U Apologizin: AWFUL
Seriously–be gracious or don’t bother, because any other option does **not **reflect well on you.
That’s because I’m apologizing because I apparently irritated a mod. Not because I feel I was wrong. And pretending I felt I was wrong would have been a lie on my part.
That WAS me being gracious.
True. People round here just don’t realize what a PITA it is being made to apologise when you are right!
On the other hand, my opinion is that of a stupid person, so treat it as you see fit.
But if you’re not truly remorseful in your apology, then you can’t be absolved and find salvation! Don’t you want to go to heaven?
tlh, ducking, closely followed by running
Cite? 
I can get behind this message, but it’s a pretty easy going message to get behind.
Pretty much “broad strokes paint different folks.”
The thread was inspired by a certain other thread begun by a certain other poster. I didn’t want to call anyone out because I try to be on Wednesdays, the better to be an unmitigated asshole on Friday.
You’re welcome, and that’ll be a dollar. 
No charge for you on account of you being a mod and stuff. No, wait, that makes it look like I’m currying favor. For you it’ll be TWO dollars or perhaps a slice of cheesecake.
You’re supposed to loathe me a tiny bit more than everybody else. It’s in the FAQ.
I don’t need everybody to agree with or admire me, dude. Actually, my deep self-loathing and wounds-of-guilt-that-can-never-be-healed leave me a mite more comfortable when people don’t like me. But permit me to suggest a way you might have disagreed without inspiring a mod smackdown.
*Skald, I’m sure you want everybody to think your OP is a good thing, something that will help foster a climate of tolerance and love (or at least reduced rancor) on the board. Forgive me if I don’t agree, forgive me if I’m a little suspicious of your motives. I’ll explain:
In the first place, pretty much all stripes of Christianity, IMHO anyway, are anti-rationalistic. Whether you’re the most strident Southern Baptist or the most liberal Congregationalist, believing in salvation through the agency of Christ Jesus requires believing in things that cannot be demonstrated to exist, and, moreover, abandoning your own facilities of reason and logic to magical forces. This cannot be a good or responsible thing, because it’s a surrender of the most precious gift primate evolution has given us: our capacity to analyze the world and improve both ourselves and it. The fundamentalist does this out of a ignorance and fear; the liberal out of a desire for the world to be other than it is.
Secondly, it may be true that there are Christians who seem less malign than others, who don’t espouse the hateful, anti-body, anti-woman, anti-knowledge message that runs through both Testaments. But beware them, for they are insidious. By their seeming reasonableness, they give the veneer of legitimacy to their fundamentalist brethren; they make it easier for those churches to exist. Their doing makes it less probable that we (as individuals and as a society) can move past the illogical thinking that is at the core of Christianity and all religious faith. They are, if you will excuse the crude metaphor, not unlike the spouse of an abusive parent who sits idly by while his (or her) partner beats the kids. Though the spouse is not guilty of directly abusing the beaten child, she or he nevertheless fosters the environment in which the abuse occurs, and is no less liable for it.
One more thing: why did you feel the need to write the OP, anyway? I can’t believe you thought it was truly going to change anyone’s mind. The more strident atheists surely discounted it. It seems to me that you’re courting the approbation of the Christians of the board. Why is that? Is it so important to you that you be liked?
Maybe you should confine yourself to posting about Lord of the Rings. At least when you do that you’re being honest.*
Of course, I write the above mostly because it’s Friday.
LIES. Vile and odious lies. If you can name plenty of them I’ll retract the odious part. Still vile though. Still vile.
And to think you were a reasonable sort…
:):mad:
I see no reason to assume that would get a different reaction. It might get a stronger one, due to being longer.
Mine wasn’t full of insults.
And run you must lest wrath of some ridiculous sort fallen upon your ridiculous head!
More of this ridiculousness and we’re takin’ this outside.
*“They are, if you will excuse the crude metaphor, not unlike the spouse of an abusive parent who sits idly by while his (or her) partner beats the kids.” *strikes me as pretty insulting ( not that I disagree with the sentiment ).
In isolation, yes. But not in full context. The only thing I’d find insulting is the fact that the penultimate paragraph maligns the OP’s motive. One should assume ignorance before malice–that, despite the fact that you think it won’t work, assume the OP does.
I also want to point out that insulting people, whether directly or by reference to a group, also never convinces anybody. It only makes the opposition get defensive, and not only more likely not to listen. but actually their resolve that they are right.