It looks like space-time graphs of religious space fleet maneuvers.
Sorry, there was supposed to be an “in any event” there. Meaning, the one actual name we do have attached to this is a low-level functionary.
We are the Dyslexics from Ceti Alpha Four, and we burning your God.
If I have previously been on somebody else’s foot, I’d like to know :p. I’m nobody’s sock puppet.
In the posts which **ITR **linked near the beginning of this thread, you claimed in a very matter of fact manner things about Christianity which were not true; you were holding up a caricatured version of Christian beliefs and belittling them. Now, you very well may have believed them to be true, but that does not make it so. You stated that those caricatured beliefs were part of your reason for being atheist. That’s like saying you don’t like chocolate because it tastes exactly like concrete. You are entitled to your opinions regarding Christianity, as well as chocolate, but it’d be great fun for all involved if you based those opinions on the Straight Dope on the subject…not on your misunderstandings. Unless of course you just prefer stirring the pot and seeing what wafts out?
I wonder if perhaps you are responding to me regarding something else entirely?
Wow. Just wow. A guy who is supposedly championing honesty tells one lie or half-truth after another.
First, so everybody can see what we actually wrote, here is what you wrote at the time:
So looky there. I actually told TWO “lies;” one about the politicians saying God would protect the environment, and one about the Ugandan legislation. But the first one has magically disappeared from your account. You didn’t apologize for saying I made it up; you didn’t even acknowledge that it was true. You just had the good sense to shut up about it when I gave you cites for it. And now you are trying to pretend it never happened.
So which of us is the liar? The one who said “IIRC, X happened,” and it actually happened, or the one who flatly stated, “there’s no congressman who said what you claimed he said,” and now pretends the whole thing never happened when he was proven wrong?
You sure did, but I still don’t see how you can fail to realize that you make yourself look foolish by doing so. Apparently good sense is a fleeting thing with you, because the Wikipedia article absolutely confirms what I said:
“The proposed legislation in Uganda, however, has been noted by several news agencies to be inspired by American evangelical Christians.”
Oh, good heavens. After you claimed that the links in the Wikipedia article were dead, I posted a few of them to prove that they were live. Your sneer that they are “tabloids” misleadingly hides the fact that the main cite from Wiki was the NYT, so that’s more sliminess from you. You also totally misrepresented both the wiki article and the links by trying to make someone, god knows who, believe that those American evangelists just happened to be in Uganda for the scenery or something, rather than being an integral part of the conference that resulted in the legislation. The “best” thing you can say for the three evangelists is that once the shit hit the fan and normal people were horrified at what they had done, they all pleaded innocent, and said they had no idea that their demonization of homosexuals would have any repercussions.
And I don’t know what your problem is with links, because the one in my post works fine, as anyone can verify, and the links in the Wiki article also work fine. Don’t blame your own incompetence on others.
I literally don’t understand how anyone could maintain that the wiki article and its cites don’t support me, but as I said, you are entitled to your stupid opinion. The wiki article is certainly better attested than any of your so-called evidence for various Biblical events. What is not in dispute, however, is that I did not make the story up, as you continue to allege by saying I post “any lie about Christians that pops into your head, up to and including false accusations of murder”
I’ve wasted enough time on you. I now truly believe you are disturbed, so there’s no point in continuing this. Everyone is welcome to read my comments in context and decide for himself who is arguing in good faith.
I withdraw my “empty threat” of reporting you. When I posted that, I didn’t realize that this thread had been moved to the Pit, as I just followed the link in my list of subscribed threads. In any case, I think you need help, and I don’t want to add to your troubles.
I have reread the three posts, and the only possible quibble I can see with what I said in them about Christian doctrine is that not all Christians believe everything I said, which is sort of like saying the sun rises in the east. Not all Christians acknowledge the authority of the Pope, but you wouldn’t say that Catholics are not Christians, would you?
The first post really had no assertions in it, let alone “matter of fact” claims, just a hypothetical question and the acknowledgement that one of us is crazy.
The second post is an accurate statement of a New Testament passage, and an accurate statement of its proven failure. There is a case in the news today of parents in Oregon, devout Christians, who treated their (now deceased) baby with prayer rather than calling a doctor.
The third, I admit, does cut some corners in condensing 2000 years of Christian theology into a couple of sentences. But everything in it was believed by most Christians for nearly 2000 years.
So if YOU don’t believe in taking Genesis literally, or that people who knowingly reject Jesus are doomed, that’s swell, but it is not a caricature to say that both are part of Christian doctrine.
If you have some other beef about what I wrote, I’ll be glad to take it up in GD. The only reason I’m in the Pit now is because my post got moved here, and since IIRC you as much as said that civil debate is not a requirement here, I’d rather do it there. Start a thread and put its subject line here, so I’ll find it.
اللعنة. نحن بحاجة الى مزيد من الطائرات
أرى ما فعلت هناك.
The cite that you gave for the claims about a Congressman’s statements about the environment was this.
What you originally said was “Can you not make a case that people who say (as IIRC some congressman recently did) that there is no need to address environmental concerns, because God will take care of it, are not properly functioning in society?” Nowhere in your cite is any Congressman quoted as saying what you claimed they said. In fact, the bulk of the article is quotes from various Christians saying that we should protect the environment. Your cite says pretty much the exact opposite of what you want it to say. I guess you were hoping that I and others wouldn’t bother to read it.
That would be you, I think.
That quote wasn’t in the section of the article that you tried linking to and, for all I know, may not have been in the article at all when this occurred. (That’s the great thing about Wikipedia, it can change from one minute to the next.)
You’re lying. I did not claim that “the links” in the Wikipedia article were dead; I claimed that one link in the Wikipedia article was dead, and I was telling the truth. It was #15 at the the time, though, given the wonders of Wikipedia who knows what it is now or whether it’s still there at all.
You’re lying again. I did not say that Wikipedia linked to tabloids. I said that you linked to two articles in a tabloid in this post. And you did.
It’s really not too difficult to understand. Here’s the New York Times article that you’re relying on. If you actually read it, you’ll see that it establishes, at great length, the opposite of what you claimed. Rather than providing evidence that the three American evangelists did at one time support the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda, it instead establishes at length that they did not. The sentence in the Wikipedia article which uses that articles as evidence flatly misrepresents what it says. (That’s the other great thing about Wikipedia: most of what’s on there is just plain wrong.)
I’ve pointed out many statements that you’ve made on this board and challenged you to defend them. It looks like you’re not going to even pretend that most of them have any relationship to reality. Which displays at least a little bit of intelligence on your part, because since everything you say is an obvious lie, you’d only make yourself look worse if you tried to defend it.
Oh, please. In all three posts you said that religious people are crazy. In the first you phrased it as a question, but clearly you intended it as rhetorical with the answer being yes; pretending otherwise would be absurd even by your standards. It is true, of course, that later in the thread, when people asked you to justify what you said, you had to do a quick turn-around and insisted that you only believed some religious people to be crazy, but then in later threads you changed your mind yet again went back to implying that all religious people are crazy. I asked you to provide scientific evidence to back up your claims, as did several other people. You failed to answer. I provided links to papers by real researchers documenting a positive relationship between religion and mental health, and asked you how that fit with your claims. You failed to answer. Then, after filling that and many other threads with your lies, insults, and hasty retreats whenever anyone asks you to justify your claims, you post this: “Does anyone think that this trashing of the religion of over a billion people is appropriate, for any reason?” Yes, someone thinks that trashing the religion of over a billion people is appropriate: it’s you. When people called you out for your hypocrisy, you tried to insist that some blather about government money made it reasonable for you to trash another person for doing the exact same thing that you did. It’s as if Barry Bonds started a thread ranting about Mark McGuire’s steroid use. It’s like Dominic Strauss-Kahn expressing his outrage at Anthony Weiner’s behavior.
You’ve never written a single civil post in your life, at least not in the threads that I’ve participated in. Consequently the Pit is the only forum where anyone can debate you.
Murder (etc) has the same effect either way. Bullshitting on here has a different effect to a lecturer bullshitting to student FBI agents.
I think you agree with that really, because you’re not stupid, but are pissed off with the OP so want to have a go at him regardless.
Can we cease with all the ITR vs. brocks bullshit and get back to the damn point of the thread?
Whoever signed off on actual agents being taught that idiocy, even once? I want his head on a pike.
Spencer Ackerman is a broken man whose divisive commentary has poisoned the debate.
-Scylla
Maybe you guys are being too harsh on the FBI.
Maybe it’s some sort of test or screening procedure.
Show the recruits some wacked out nutjubbery, and then ask them some questions.
The guys who say:
“Yeah, I don’t even know what on earth the person putting that utter nonsense in front of us was thinking”
Get a pat on the back and a shiny new FBI badge.
The guys who are too stupid to recognize the crazy, get kicked out.
At least that’s what I’m going to think, 'cause the other possibility just scares the bejesus out of me. The BEJESUS people!
The people in charge of the academy aren’t in Quantico?
Obvious, therefore possibly stupid question: are there no Muslims in the FBI?
There’s one mentioned in the OP’s link, but he’s retired.
Jesus Christ, you did it again! I gave two cites, as you well know.
One was a Youtube video showing US Congressman John Shimkus, DURING AN ENERGY SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING, abusing his office by reading a passage from Genesis where God promises that he will preserve “seedtime and harvest” for as long as the earth endures. The Congressman asserts that that is the INFALLIBLE WORD OF GOD. He then reads another passage from Matthew about God gathering the elect before the earth is destroyed, so hey, there’s no need to worry (unless you’re not a Christian).
That’s crazy talk, and everybody but you knows it. No, you know it too, because now you’re trying to pretend that link doesn’t exist. You hope people will believe you when you say I gave only one link, namely the weaker of the two, because it focused more on a state representative who has the same crazy ideas. But even it proves you wrong.
It is just stunning that you are hanging your reputation and credibility on the fact that something I said “IIRC” about was totally confirmed, but was not quoted word for word.
Let’s recap. I said that IIRC, a congressman said God would protect the environment. You called me a liar and flatly stated that no congressman said that. When a video proves that not only am I right, but it’s even worse than I implied, because the congressman in question happens to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE ENVIRONMENT, you try to weasel out of it by saying he didn’t say exactly word for word what I noted was an “IIRC.” And besides, some other Christians, who by the way are NOT Congressmen chairing the Subcommittee on the Environment and therefore might as well be your Aunt Edna, disagreed with him.
So if your next-door neighbor, who is a biker with a house full of guns, threatens to kill you, but his mom says she likes you, that makes anyone who says he threatened you a liar?
And now you try to hide the fact that the link even exists, by saying another link was my full response.
Just unbelievable.
The only thing you have on your side is that not all Christians agree with the Christian loons. But the loons seem to be in charge, so that doesn’t matter. The loons are chairing Congressional committees, and running for President, and heading influential ministries and lobbying groups, and the decent, sensible people are just going with the flow. Condemned to repeat history.
Nor does the fact that those evangelists who incited the Ugandans took about five seconds to abandon their bedrock principles, once the blowback threatened their wallets, change anything about what they did or said while in Uganda.
Your lame assertions of magic elves changing Wikipedia to make you look like a fool are not worthy of response. You need no help in looking like a fool. But I would still like to know why you keep saying the wiki link in my (unedited) post didn’t work. Are magic elves making it work for everyone but you?
I think this is a very important topic, and it should be in GQ or GD, but evidently I was not objective about it, and the mod moved it to the Pit. Based on the antics of ITR, that was a wise decision.
I hope that you or someone else will reintroduce the topic in GQ or GD, because it deserves better than to be in the Pit. I promise not to rise to ITR’s baiting if he shows up there.
Can somebody libel me? I need a new car.
Thanks.