STOP USING BIG WORDS!!!111!!!
:mad: :mad: :mad:
I switched to mac and so can you!
Oh, wait…
Well, shit. Since my apology was rejected, I might as well address this incredibly ironic thread. Best as I recall, your honor, I was browsing the Pit forum on or about March 1, 2004, when I saw a thread about people who believe in ghosts. I opened it. Some guy was whining about, well, people who believe in ghosts. Here’s the gist of it.
They (the people, not the ghosts) make him roll his eyes. They (the ghosts, not the people) are all in their (the people, not the ghosts) heads. But they’re not just any heads. They’re special heads. They are, in fact, stupid heads. And the people (but not the ghosts) are “stupid fucks”. You see, they (the stupid fucks, not the ghosts) have not presented evidence (to him) that is satisfactory (to him). They therefore are stupid (compared to him).
What? Well, no, your honor, that really wasn’t what set me off. I had, until this point, given him every benefit of the doubt. That he had exhaustively researched the topic. That he had reviewed all the evidence. That he had given the evidence a fair hearing, analyzed it against the claims made, and was prepared upon demand to produce said evidence and his rebuttal. After all, I had no vested interest in ghosts. I hadn’t seen any myself, and the topic was of only intellectual interest to me.
Mind you, I found nothing intellectual there. What I found was basically, Hey! These stupid fucks believe in ghosts! But me, I am logical! I do not believe in ghosts! Here is my tongue sticking out at all the stupid fucks who believe in ghosts. It was a celebration of his superiority. And who would begrudge a man who wished to show off his bulging brain?
Unfortunately, he ventured further. He ventured into territory that indeed was familiar to me. It wasn’t enough for him that he was superior to the stupid fucks who believe in ghosts. He felt it necessary to declare his superiority to all and sundry who might believe in anything supernatural whatsoever.
After declaring his findings, he remarked that surely they do not even apply here at this vaulted forum because, he reasoned, most of the people here are not “stupid idiots” who believe in the supernatural. Ordinarily, one might think that upon realizing that his findings were irrelevant and did not even apply, he might have done like Mr. Scott in the plastics factory and just punched up clear. But like a man compelled to masturbate in front of a window, our hero apparently wanted to share with the world just how big he really is. Nothing really to see here folks except that they are stupid and he is not.
He concluded by saying that he just wished he could get his friends (God help them) to shut the fuck up.
Now, your honor, in my five or so years here at SDMB, I have learned many things. One of them is that any two people can hold opposing views and both be intelligent, honorable, and trustworthy. I’ve learned that atheists and theists both can have valid points and can make valid arguments. Some atheists, in fact, I respect so much that I consider our differences to be utterly trivial. Sentient Meat, as far as I am concerned, is my soulmate. If I thought that he were being assailed unfairly by a theist, I would jump not to the theist’s side, but to his. Same for Diogenes. Gobear. Homebrew. And many others here.
What I find that I did in this case was to piss on the parade of one Never Have I Because I. I admit it, and plead guilty to the fact that, in response to his OP, I gave him a thoroughly disrespectful backhanded slap, thus:
“One thing that stupid idiots don’t understand,” I wrote, “is that a cow is a bovine, but a bovine is not necessarily a cow. Maybe it is you who should shut the fuck up.”
Sir? What did that mean? Well, he had concluded that because ghosts, a subset of the supernatural, are stupid, therefore all that is supernatural must also be stupid. It’s like a person who concludes that all bovines are cows simply because he has observed that one bovine is a cow.
After clicking submit, I thought oh, okay, it’s tit for tat now. He slapped me and everyone who thinks like me, and I slapped him on behalf of us all. Why the hell I have to be more like Peter and less like Jesus, I have no idea. But there you go. Now, as you can see from this thread, Never Have I Because I is in desparate need of having the last word. He was no different on that fateful day. “I’ll shut up,” he wrote, “when you prove the existence of anything supernatural.”
[…cue Wagnerian symphony…]
Your honor, I swear upon the book compiled by Nicean politicians that I tried everything that I could to resist. I sat on my hands. I walked away. I made a sandwich with Merita low-carb bread and ate it. I watched a West Wing episode. (You go, CJ!) I closed all the windows on my PC and rebooted. But in the end, his challenge was still there.
Now I know that sometimes, people do actually mean it when they say that if you will show them something reasonable, they will recant that they had called you stupid. It has happened. Once or twice. Yes, it is more often than not hope against hope. But honestly, that one time in a thousand when a man says okay, you’ve given me something to think about and I can see how you could think the way you do — that one single time wipes out all the hurt feelings and failures that preceded it.
You never know. Maybe this was one of those times.
So, I changed my tune. Rather than engage him in an exchange of insults, I asked him what he would accept as proof. I told him that if he would but allow for the possibility of God’s existence — surely, God qualifies as something supernatural — then the conclusion of His existence is inescapable. There are many people already who know that this is the case, but he (obviously) was not one of them. And, your honor, this is the thing: he asked me.
Now, he eventually responded. His response was that the evidence he wanted was scientific. “Massive”. “Conclusive”. “Extensive”. Those were words he used. But in the event that I might offer any evidence at all, including “rational” evidence (his word), he was prepared to call pre-emptory “bullshit”.
Well.
Had that been the only response, it would have been finished. If you must provided scientific evidence of the supernatural — a contradiction in terms — and if even rational argument is to be discarded a priori, then, hell, you just move on to the next thing and forget about it. When a man extends his hand to offer a handshake but jerks it back at the last second and giggles, you have to be really gullible to to continue thinking he cares to shake your hand.
But something else happened.
In the interim, a poster named PriceGuy had written this: “This is interesting. I accept the possibility, yet cannot see any proof. Pointer?” The “this” to which he referred was the above mentioned assurance that, given the possibility that He exists, God must exist.
So, I responded — not to Never Have I Because I — but to PriceGuy. Sir? Oh, yes sir! That was very clear. It even had the little “Originally posted by PriceGuy” thingy at the top of it. I responded with one of the many versions of a rather popular deductive proof of God’s existence called the Modal Ontological Proof. The famous MOP. We had discussed it in Great Debates (and even in the Pit) on numerous occasions, so it wasn’t anything really new. But when he requested it, I gave him (PriceGuy) annotations in plain English and a bunch of links.
Anyway, the rest is history. A dramatic swell ensued. This being the Pit, tempers ran high. The debate was frank and vigorous. I attempted to keep up with the seven to one ratio, but eventually had to cherry pick the sincere inquiries and respond to them. The lovely Lamia intervened in an attempt to rescue philosophy from my filthy hands and assuage the drive-by posters who were angry at me. Finally, Sentient posted a link to a rather exhaustive explanation of the proof that examined it fairly from both points of view. I declared that, as far as I was concerned, whatever questions there might be were answered by him.
Then I forgot about it.
Well, this morning my wife told me, “Lib, you’ve been pitted again.” We read the thread together and had a good laugh. Sir? What was funny? Well, what was funny to us was that the fellow who had called his friends “stupid fucks” resented being shown up as a stupid fuck. The guy who thought himself superior was annoyed that someone else might have thought himself superior. The nimrod who refused to hear any argument whatsoever after acting like he already knew everything got pissed because other people had decided that there was something there worth discussing. And the moron who pitted me for hijacking his stupid thread apparently thought I should have left PriceGuy hanging.
It’s just kharma, your honor. And sometimes kharma’s just funny.
What? Time for lunch already? I can go? Okay, thanks! 
“Mind you, I found nothing intellectual there. What I found was basically, Hey! These stupid fucks believe in ghosts! But me, I am logical! I do not believe in ghosts! Here is my tongue sticking out at all the stupid fucks who believe in ghosts. It was a celebration of his superiority. And who would begrudge a man who wished to show off his bulging brain?”
They offered me no concrete evidence of ghosts. I listened to them and evualated everything objectively, until I got tired of hearing about all that supernatural crap, as all it turned out to be was crap.
READ AND COMPREHEND, MOTHERFUCKER
You don’t spell karma with a ‘h’, Lhib.
Okay, Tanks! 
libertarian this is no time to be joking, ok?
Wow lib, are you admitting that you rile people up so that you can get pitted and have a laugh with your wife about it privately? And how is that different from a troll?
Lib, what a mean, horrible man you are. You bully, you.
You’re using big words again. And complete sentences. And proper punctuation. And you’re being articulate.
How dare you! Stop it right now!!!11!!!
:rolleyes: We can’t hear you with your face so far up Lib’s ass.
You need to make more evident that you are not being serious. And you’ll want to REALLY make sure you’re OBVIOUSLY joking if you accuse someone of trolling.
And you smell of wee.
A word of advice, and I’m not taking sides, because I haven’t read the original thread, but NHIBI, step away from the computer, take a deep breath, go back to the mouse and keyboard and close this forum. Return tomorrow. You’re increasingly digging a hole that gets deeper by the post and if you keep this up, I foresee that this trainwreck will end in a Very Bad Way™.
i understand.
NHIBI, apart from having a thoroughly idiotic user name, you’re a twat.
For the record, my face is never remotely likely to be up Lib’s ass, as he will likely confirm for you if he can be bothered, so I can tell you as a disinterested onlooker that your rant is lamer than a congenital clubfoot with a twice-broken leg and a foot full of tacks. Grow up, for pity’s sake. :rolleyes:
Btw, posting three times at the start of a thread just because you can’t organise your thoughts enough to get all your miserable rant into one post is the sign of a weak mind. Twat^3.
Isn’t a troll someone who pretends to take a certain stance, a stance they don’t really believe in (or an attitude they don’t really feel) for the sole reason of getting a rise out of someone else? I didn’t get that impression in this case.
I was pitted once, and it was freakin’ hilarious. I didn’t ask for it (and it doesn’t sound like Lib asked for it or was expecting it either), but damn—the rant my “pitter” composed was very funny. Deluded and (unintentionally) funny. So I had to laugh.
:rolleyes:
Malacandra, by the orders of the King, that’s me, you’re a twat of monstrous degrees, infinity one to trillion times so than I could ever be. I do not like your username at all. I shall disregard all of your opinions from here on, because I do not like your name. Anyone who has a name like yours should be ashamed of themselves, and must sterilise themself to prevent breeding.
(sarcasm, in case you’re too retarded to understand)
Ah, making fun of my name. Truly the sign of a intelligent poster.
Ah, so I can’t correct errors? Why do I suspect that if I were to not correct myself, you’d jump all over it just because you like to sling shit?
Would it be condescending to say that it’s hard to take seriously one who, due to lack of capitalization, sounds like the submissive part of a Master/Slave relationship?
Also, I see no need for Lib to cater to the lowest common denominator. The fact that you can’t understand his argument is your problem, not his.
Fenris
This is an online, largely text-based community. Ability to communicate is one of few rubrics by which we measure people.
You have, to be quite blunt, not measured up well. At all. You largely avoid capitalization, you have shown yourself to be a whiny little child who is unable to ask even the most base of questions to help yourself (and us, Og bless). You pit someone else based on your own shortcomings, and pointing out these facts would be shit-slinging?
You are not ready for this place. If you find any difficulty in reading this thread, you will find yourself six feet deep in the ground before you enter many other threads, and that’s if those involved are being nice.
Lurk. Don’t post, lurk. Learn. Read books. Work on how to express yourself well - or, failing that, a touch better than you have here.
When come back, bring intelligence.
I shall from now on type with capitals in their proper place! And become a dominatrix! Thanks, Fenris!
iampunha, I don’t think you know me well enough to make such judgements.