# BadChad, a moment of your time, if you can spare it **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 18, 2006, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158 "2006-09-18T12:14:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 39
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/761 "2006-09-22T17:16:12Z")
Oh, and I’m about to leave for lunch and a doctor’s appointment, so I won’t be back around for a couple of hours. That ought to give you enough time to come up with another lame-ass retort. Do your best now. The defeat of all of Christendom is riding on how thoroughly you squash other spiritually liberal Dopers. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/762 "2006-09-22T18:32:33Z")
[QUOTE=CarnalK] yojimbo was throwing the cunt word around a lot in the post badchad was responding to so people are being a little ingenuous at when they seem to suggest the comment came out of the blue. [/QUOTE] Maybe that was a bad example I chose, then. Hopefully my overall point is still clear, that confrontational/insulting posts have a lesser chance of convicning people that less confrontational/less insulting posts. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/763 "2006-09-22T18:42:26Z")
> [@pseudotriton ruber ruber](#): > > I expect (or did at some point in the past) Christians to forbear a little longer, to show more patience and tolerance in calling others names, sneering at their adversaries, acting as self-righteous hypocrites in interpreting texts, etc. yet I see them behaving not much better than atheists in this regard, and rising to small provocations with great fury. I’m so sorry, **'triton** , I’ve rather let you down in this thread. Would it help if I did a bit more name-calling and sneering? Btw, I do like how no-one’s to disagree with you concerning Melville (don’t worry, I’m in no danger of doing so), and yet you’re free to dismiss any Christian’s reading and interpretation of the words of Jesus. Melville is complex and open to a variety of readings, but your selected Gospel quote admits of only one reading, thus: > [@psuedotriton ruber ruber](#): > > I’m pointing out one of several places in your holy book where Jesus is asked a plain question and he gives a plain answer. You, like many people professing to believe in Christ and to follow his words, manage to misconstrue his plain meaning and create a contradictory, tangled hash of it. > > –Master, what shall I do? > > Follow the commandments, love one another, and sell your possessions– > > somehow comes out as “Follow convenient commandments, invent others, love those who agree with you, and get as rich as possible as fast as possible,” and I’m intellectually dishonest? Please. Clean up your own shit before catching a whiff of mine. If I need to clean up any shit, may I borrow a few handfuls of straw? ---
**Author:** ![the\_PC\_apeman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac8455/32.png) [@the\_PC\_apeman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_PC_apeman)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/764 "2006-09-22T19:14:10Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] **ThePCapeman** , I am available to respond to questions, but at least one of us is lost here, maybe both. … [/QUOTE] Yes. After reviewing posts 680, 681, 690, 691, 692, 720, 722, 725, 747, and this one (751) I have indeed realized that I am lost in trying to understand your point of view in regards to free will versus determinism. > [@](#): > > … > In [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7799671&postcount=725) I replied to your reply to my long post on free will vs determinism, but I had trouble making sense of your questions (that should be obvious from the post I just linked to), and it leaves me with the impression that you didn’t understand my long post. > > Or maybe you were replying to a yet-earlier post of mine, I 'm not sure. > > Either way, you seem to be asking questions about free will as it inheres (or doesn’t inhere) in animals, trees, and inanimate objects, and that’s where I’m lost, as I didn’t think I had said anything about every object possessing free will… only a hypothetical indivividual in a context, yes? And you also lost me w/regards to the outcomes being identical. Which implies that I must have lost you. Shall we try again? Because I am lost, my questions were intended to elicit a more definitive picture of what you believe. I also asked for resources where I might read a clearer description of your arguments. Your website has a great deal of information on radical feminism. But a quick scan of it does not yield any nuggets pertaining to free will or determinism. Let me be more direct. Are your views on free will and determinism similar to any established philosophical line or are they wholly created by and unique to you? I apologize for not conveying to you how lost I am in our exchanges. If you would like to start over again, I’d ask that you do so with a succinct expression of your views on free will and determinism. Here’s mine: There is no such thing as [free will](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will) - it is an illusion. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/765 "2006-09-22T19:24:27Z")
There is no such thing as determinism — it is an illusion. Succinct? 😉 I assume you want me to elaborate; the question is where would you like me to start? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/766 "2006-09-22T19:28:54Z")
This quote from the wiki link entails statements by both Schopenhauer and Glen Strawson (who’d I’d never heard of until just now) which encompass my own position to a tee, Strawson, in particular, expresses exactly what I’ve been trying to get across about infinite regression. > [@](#): > > n his On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer stated, “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.” [30] > > The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem.[4] He argues that the notion of free will leads to an infinite regress and is therefore senseless. According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This is because in order to be responsible for the way one is in some situation “S”, one must have been responsible for the way one was at “S-1”. In order to be responsible for the way one was at “S-1”, one must have been responsible for the way one was at “S-2”, and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ex nihilo. This argument entails that free will itself is absurd, ---
**Author:** ![the\_PC\_apeman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac8455/32.png) [@the\_PC\_apeman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_PC_apeman)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/767 "2006-09-22T19:33:18Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] There is no such thing as determinism — it is an illusion. Succinct? 😉 I assume you want me to elaborate; the question is where would you like me to start? [/QUOTE] Fair enough. I suggest that determinism is the best useful way to describe reality. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Determinism) is a good description of determinism. As stated in the link, the principal consequence of determinism is that free will becomes an illusion. Do you believe free will exists? How would you define it? What is it? Where does it come from? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/768 "2006-09-22T19:38:23Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] There is no such thing as determinism — it is an illusion. Succinct? 😉 I assume you want me to elaborate; the question is where would you like me to start? [/QUOTE] This is an ambitious (if doomed) declaration of a hypothesis, but surely you know that Free Will is just as incompatible with indeterminism as it is with determinism. A random will is no more free or autonomous than a determined one. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/769 "2006-09-22T19:54:20Z")
[QUOTE=faithfool] Why religion, silly. I figured it must be … [/QUOTE] Here’s where you go off the rails. I never had any religion that I can remember, though I had extensive exposure to the Bible as a child (I have a couple of medals for Sunday school attendance) and then in grad school I needed to understand the religious issues behind the Reformation and then Puritanism and other issues related to American studies, as I said, so my antipathy (not that you really care) is completely unrelated to any personal traumas. It’s just the outgrowth of my early disbelief that the human race was still (in the 1500s and the 1600s and today) still so primitive as to give such ludicrous and counter-logical beliefs serious credence. And where, **Malacandra** , did you get the idea that no one’s to disagree with my Melville readings? Students do it all the time, and some of them earn A’s in my course nevertheless, but they do it by arguing contrary readings that withstand scrutiny. **Jodi** , wants to make Melville out to be some kind of Christian sympathizer which he is only in the same sense that I am. He detested organized religion, specifically Christianity, and more specifically the Dutch Reformed church that he was dragged to as a young boy by his religious zealot mother. He hated the stuff, thought it was a dreadful waste of energy and scholarship and a breeding ground for hypocrites. “Bartleby” (and its narrator in particular) quotes the Bible extensively only to pass a harsh judgment on its shortcomings, at least as far as humanity is concerned. If you’d like to argue otherwise, fine, let’s set up a thread, and go over the story there. But I do find it interesting that you’re so quick to conclude that I propose some sort of litmus test for atheism/Chrstianity in my classroom, or that I think there’s value in indoctrinating students, of which you have zero personal knowledge, and less insight. Often my students come to the conclusion that I must be a particularly passionate Christian, because I try to convey various Christian authors’ beliefs accurately. (I once had two Christian college girls thank me after class for “teaching Blake as only a true Christian would,” which praise I had to decline. I can’t tell you how disappointed they seemed.) You’re making all sorts of erroneous assumptions here, I suppose because you can’t see how I might have come to this position through no animosity or zealotry of my own, but simply through reason and observation. It’s fairly astonishing to me (it probably shouldn’t be) how much slack the Straight Dope in general seems to extend to religious thought. I would think that the existence of God would be one of the most extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, but seemingly the Straight Dope is willing to exempt religious thinkers from that position which most of you will demand, out of the box, for any other extraordinary claim. In this, I see myself and my fellow atheists upholding the SDMB’s standard of honest inquiry. We don’t need to mock you (sometimes it’s fun when dealing with a particularly ludicrous religious belief) but you should be able to withstand a little mockery since you’ve got an untenable thesis that you’d like others to give you a pass on. if you don’t want to discussyour position, then you’ll have to withstand a little mockery now and again. But to start a whole long Pit thread in which your position is “We don’t want you to make fun of our unsupported beliefs”? is pretty weak. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/770 "2006-09-22T20:13:02Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] > [@](#): > > **Jodi** , wants to make Melville out to be some kind of Christian sympathizer… I think it would be very interesting if you would cite the post where **Jodi** said anything like this. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/771 "2006-09-22T20:29:53Z")
Are we first going to discuss whether there is or is not such a thing as determinism (aside from the illusion thereof), or whether there is or is not such a thing as free will (aside from the illusion thereof), or are we going to attempt to do both simultaneously? And, if the latter, do we need to build in some protocols or rules for the implications for determinism if an argument in favor of free will founders, and vice versa? That is, do we assume from the outset that we agree that it’s _not_ an either/or proposition, or do we need to go into that first? ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/772 "2006-09-22T20:30:06Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] [QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] I think it would be very interesting if you would cite the post where **Jodi** said anything like this. [/QUOTE] I’d say post #745, which reduces Bartleby as MAYBE touching on Christian hypocrisy as a possible reading for some Melvillians is a great example. It is impossible to read this story, with its numerous Biblical references, as having little to do with Christian hypocrisy, and you’d have to be a fool or zealot to think that this story (which contains several themes) is unconcerned with putting Christian hypocrisy on display. What, you’d like Melville to entitle the story “Christ is a Cunt” so his theme is unmistakable to you and\*\* Jodi\*\*? Even then, I’m not sure you’d accept the title’s meaning. But then you seem to have a hard time understanding simple Aramaic. The guy tells you to love your neighbor, and **Lord Ashtar** says, “Okay, Lord, but I can still call him an asshole while loving him, right? Thanks.” If \*\*Lord Ashtar \*\* can practice true Christianity while calling me an asshole (you haven’t rebuked him for that yet, have you?), then I wouldn’t think you’d have much problem with **badchad** calling christ a cunt. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/773 "2006-09-22T20:44:17Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] If \*\*Lord Ashtar \*\* can practice true Christianity while calling me an asshole (you haven’t rebuked him for that yet, have you?), then I wouldn’t think you’d have much problem with **badchad** calling christ a cunt. [/QUOTE] Let’s see now. **Lord Ashtar** is to \*\*pseudotriton \*\*as \*\*badchad \*\*is to **Christ**. It’s all clear now. You have a Christ complex, and it’s tearing you up inside. You’re a self-hating Christian! Is there a twelve step for that? ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/774 "2006-09-22T20:48:11Z")
Regarding what I said earlier: **pseudotriton ruber ruber** , you’re being an asshole in this thread. You’re taking people’s quotes out of context, belittling people for fun, and just generally being a jerk. I think the most loving act I can perform for you right now is to point your behavior out to you so you can change it and become the better person that I know you can be. I’m sure you don’t mean to come across so angry and hate-filled. These negative emotions hurt you a lot more than they hurt anyone else. It would be to your benefit to do some self-reflection and attempt to improve this aspect of your personality. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/775 "2006-09-22T21:01:47Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] Are we first going to discuss whether there is or is not such a thing as determinism (aside from the illusion thereof), or whether there is or is not such a thing as free will (aside from the illusion thereof), or are we going to attempt to do both simultaneously? And, if the latter, do we need to build in some protocols or rules for the implications for determinism if an argument in favor of free will founders, and vice versa? That is, do we assume from the outset that we agree that it’s _not_ an either/or proposition, or do we need to go into that first? [/QUOTE] I’ll stipulate that determism can exist without free will but I still hold that free will cannot coexist with determinism (or with indeterminsm). Is this going to involve quantum physics? ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/776 "2006-09-22T21:03:01Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] I’d say post #745, which reduces Bartleby as MAYBE touching on Christian hypocrisy as a possible reading for some Melvillians is a great example. It is impossible to read this story, with its numerous Biblical references, as having little to do with Christian hypocrisy, and you’d have to be a fool or zealot to think that this story (which contains several themes) is unconcerned with putting Christian hypocrisy on display. [/QUOTE] Oooookay. That’s a LITTLE different from calling him a “Christian sympathizer,” isn’t it? Please explain how reading more than one meaning into Melville means that she thinks he is a “Christian sympathizer.” For someone who teaches literature, I am a little surprised at your level of reading comprehension. You claim that you teach about these other possible themes in your course. Does that mean that YOU think that Melville is a Christian sympathizer? After all, Jodi never said that the theme you mention of Christian hypocracy cannot be validly read into this work, does she? In fact, she confirms that it is often read this way. She simply says that there are other possible themes, as well (which, incidentally, you never mentioned in your first post on the subject, which is what led her to remind you of these alternate possibilities in the first place.) > [@](#): > > What, you’d like Melville to entitle the story “Christ is a Cunt” so his theme is unmistakable to you and\*\* Jodi\*\*? Even then, I’m not sure you’d accept the title’s meaning. But then you seem to have a hard time understanding simple Aramaic. The guy tells you to love your neighbor, and **Lord Ashtar** says, “Okay, Lord, but I can still call him an asshole while loving him, right? Thanks.” If \*\*Lord Ashtar \*\* can practice true Christianity while calling me an asshole (you haven’t rebuked him for that yet, have you?), then I wouldn’t think you’d have much problem with **badchad** calling christ a cunt. Whether or not you are an asshole really has nothing to do with **Lord Ashtar’s** practice of true Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![the\_PC\_apeman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac8455/32.png) [@the\_PC\_apeman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_PC_apeman)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/777 "2006-09-22T21:06:08Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] Are we first going to discuss whether there is or is not such a thing as determinism (aside from the illusion thereof), or whether there is or is not such a thing as free will (aside from the illusion thereof), or are we going to attempt to do both simultaneously? And, if the latter, do we need to build in some protocols or rules for the implications for determinism if an argument in favor of free will founders, and vice versa? That is, do we assume from the outset that we agree that it’s _not_ an either/or proposition, or do we need to go into that first? [/QUOTE] I suggest that free will and determinism are best discussed in relationship to each other. So I vote for simultaneously. There is an established line of thinking where the two explanations can coexist compatibly. I do not mind if you argue as such or not. If you do, my response will be to continue to argue against the existence of free will. If hold that neither free will nor determinism are valid, I would find that interesting too. Assuming this answers your concerns, I’d ask that you continue by stating your position on free will. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/778 "2006-09-22T21:15:59Z")
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena] She simply says that there are other possible themes, as well (which, incidentally, you never mentioned in your first post on the subject, which is what led her to remind you of these alternate possibilities in the first place.) [/QUOTE] I never mentioned a lot of things in my first post ( I omitted my recipe for Swiss Cheese, for example), which doesn’t allow **Jodi** (on this planet) to conclude that none of them exist. I think it’s pretty funny that she and you hold out “there are many many many ways to interpret literature” as some kind of huge shock to me–the one author we’re discussing hated Christian hypocrisy, tore it to shreds in “Bartleby” and you and **Jodi** can’t decide whether to denounce Melville as an asshole, too, or just to insist that there are as many ways of interpreting texts as there are assholes, that any text can yield any meaning, that you could be reading Melville and Jesus correctly and I could be reading them incorrectly, so yahhh! LMK what strategy you come up with when you decide on one. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/779 "2006-09-22T21:22:52Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] And where, **Malacandra** , did you get the idea that no one’s to disagree with my Melville readings? Students do it all the time, and some of them earn A’s in my course nevertheless, but they do it by arguing contrary readings that withstand scrutiny. **Jodi** , wants to make Melville out to be some kind of Christian sympathizer which he is only in the same sense that I am. He detested organized religion, specifically Christianity, and more specifically the Dutch Reformed church that he was dragged to as a young boy by his religious zealot mother. He hated the stuff, thought it was a dreadful waste of energy and scholarship and a breeding ground for hypocrites. “Bartleby” (and its narrator in particular) quotes the Bible extensively only to pass a harsh judgment on its shortcomings, at least as far as humanity is concerned. If you’d like to argue otherwise, fine, let’s set up a thread, and go over the story there. [/quote] What, Melville? No, I don’t know a durn thing about him and I’m not fit to debate the subject with the least of your students, let alone you. But I got the impression above that you were going off the deep end because **Jodi** dared to question your interpretation of Melville - which jibbed oddly with your insistence that your reading of a particular set of verses from Matthew was the only true one, and that any argument to the contrary was sophistry or, indeed, hypocrisy pure and simple. 'Cos, y’know, whatever scholarship you’ve devoted to Melville, well, the same and more has been devoted to the Bible - not unoften by people reading for doctorates. > [@pseudotriton ruber ruber](#): > > I would think that the existence of God would be one of the most extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, but seemingly the Straight Dope is willing to exempt religious thinkers from that position which most of you will demand, out of the box, for any other extraordinary claim. In this, I see myself and my fellow atheists upholding the SDMB’s standard of honest inquiry. We don’t need to mock you (sometimes it’s fun when dealing with a particularly ludicrous religious belief) but you should be able to withstand a little mockery since you’ve got an untenable thesis that you’d like others to give you a pass on. if you don’t want to discussyour position, then you’ll have to withstand a little mockery now and again. But to start a whole long Pit thread in which your position is “We don’t want you to make fun of our unsupported beliefs”? is pretty weak. Perhaps I can offer a few morsels for thought, then. Christians hold that there is _evidence_ for the existence of God, but it’s hardly news that there’s no _proof_ - so twitting believers with it, especially in offensive terms that imply you’re the only ones to have grasped this truth, is something less than mannerly. I personally don’t find it at all hard to envisage that God is something the existence of which by nature cannot be proved. And to be honest, “Christ is a cunt” is mockery the way “your mother is a whore” is - in other words, putting all ten toes over the line between mockery and something a good deal worse. I had a bellyful of the latter at school from people trying to provoke a reaction out of me - it certainly served no other purpose - and it’s for sure I don’t need it now; so under the circumstances you’ll perhaps give me a few props for keeping a civil tongue in my head. If you want to discuss theology then fine, let’s do it - which is the only worthwhile discussion of our position that’s going to be possible. But you know very well that you can’t get logically from “You can’t prove God exists” to “God doesn’t exist”, so suppose you stop labouring the former? ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2006, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158/780 "2006-09-22T21:26:35Z")
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] I never mentioned a lot of things in my first post ( I omitted my recipe for Swiss Cheese, for example), which doesn’t allow **Jodi** (on this planet) to conclude that none of them exist. I think it’s pretty funny that she and you hold out “there are many many many ways to interpret literature” as some kind of huge shock to me–the one author we’re discussing hated Christian hypocrisy, tore it to shreds in “Bartleby” and you and **Jodi** can’t decide whether to denounce Melville as an asshole, too, or just to insist that there are as many ways of interpreting texts as there are assholes, that any text can yield any meaning, that you could be reading Melville and Jesus correctly and I could be reading them incorrectly, so yahhh! LMK what strategy you come up with when you decide on one. [/QUOTE] Well, you know, I doubt swiss cheese is relevant to the themes found in Melville, now, is it? So I wouldn’t really expect you to mention it. As far as the other themes, I wouldn’t necessarily expect you to list them one by one, but you can understand that someone might be under the (obviously mistaken) impression that you weren’t aware of them, since you said… [QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber] they had a hard grasping **the point of the story** , in which Melville almost literally excoriates Christian society for its hypocrisy in accepting Jesus’s commandment “Go ye and love one another” only partly. . . . [/QUOTE] Personally, I couldn’t care less what the themes in _Bartleby_ are, or whether or not you know them well enough to write a book about them. My problem with you was your ascribing statements to **Jodi** that she simply did not make. A bad habit you really, really should try to break. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158.md?page=38) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/badchad-a-moment-of-your-time-if-you-can-spare-it/373158.md?page=40)