Mini rants, politely

The BBQ Pit
1

This is probably much more just to let me blow off steam than to accomplish much. So, instead of taking up multiple threads:

  1. Paul Harvey, what the HECK is up with you? I know you’re getting pretty old, but where do you get off with that speech I just heard on your show about how EVERYTHING is better in America? I’m not putting words in your mouth. You specifically mentioned the mountains, rivers, deserts, and pretty much everything.

Then you said not that Americans should travel to Saudi Arabia or China to appreciate their freedoms, but simply travel out of the country so that they could appreciate that everything is better here.

My grandfather is in the last stages of Alzheimers, so I’m very aware that degeneration with age is not a character fault, but is this just you getting old and mentally feeble, or have you always been this crotchety?

  1. To my division manager:

Please stop acting like people should “just stop thinking so much”. Apparently you did very well as a lowly sales rep just by using your natural personality, but if someone isn’t doing well, don’t you think that he is going to want to examine the situation to try to fix it? Saying stuff that amounts to “Just get it done” doesn’t help at all. Obviously something needs to change, so continuing mindlessly on will do NOTHING.

There is nothing that couldn’t use some real insight. I realize that sometimes thinking ends up taking the place of action, but this is not one of those cases. Just doing something for the sake of doing it also is not helpful. One needs to do something that will actually help, and that usually takes some thought to determine.

  1. The anti-relgious bias among some Dopers is so strong that there’s almost a smell coming from my monitor. There are statements made and glossed over that would NEVER be made about other groups. Go find the one about how the Promise Keepers member killed his family, and note the comments about how obviously these two things are linked.

If you think PK is heavy-handed, then at least that’s arguable. To imply that “literalist” Christians are liable to be murderers, or some of the other incredibly offensive and whacko statements around here just shows a lack of thought and courtesy.

My company at work is very heavily Mormon. There is one guy who chews and reportedly engages in discussions of things that are not so clean. However, I don’t take him as an indictment of the Mormon church in general, because I know that every group will have some fringe members who are not really subscribing to the principles of the group.

  1. Hey (many) Christians:

Stop talking about stuff you obviously know nothing about. I don’t know who exactly has told you that all the astrophysicists and paleontologists are evil, but until you have half an appreciation for these fields, please refrain from making the rest of the church look like asses because you’re spouting off with ridiculous “refutations” of accepted scientific theories or principles.

I don’t care if you do have a doctorate in theology, or if you run a Christian university (like my alma mater), I don’t respect your opinion on things like evolution. I probably have way more actual knowledge of the theory than you do, and I still think my opinion is worth nothing. I’m a non-entity in the argument, when it comes down to it.

OTOH, I also don’t care to hear the physicists and such start acting as if because they are an expert on the origins of the universe, they are experts in theology. They’re perfectly able to have their own beliefs and such, but their expertise in the science department makes them experts in theology only to the extent that they can refute the ignorant assumptions and assertions of ingnorant rabble of the church. Unfortunately, often they think this constitutes the whole stance of the church or of Christianity as a whole.

  1. Dad, get over yourself. You are not the center of the universe. Give Mom a break, and stop acting like she represents something you resent. I don’t know what’s got you upset at such a root level, but she’s not the source. Do some thinking and find the actual problem and deal with it. Just decide that you’re going to be as nice and helpful as you can on the next day, and see what habits you can develop as a result.
2

I’ve known other people who have the “Paul Harvey” syndrome. In the faculty lounge one day I expressed how nice it was that I didn’t see real poverty in Denmark. One of the teachers actually cornered me later to tell me that the US is the greatest country on Earth and that he felt duty bound to set me straight.

3

Am I the only one whose Irony Meter just exploded? :rolleyes:

4

I keep my Irony Meter in a pressure-controlled chamber these days, with a rigorous preventative maintenance program on the safety valves.

5

I don’t have this problem. Mine goes to 11.

6

Where did I talk about things I don’t know about? My saying that there are some people who are biased means by defintion that I’m talking out of my butt?

7

Whew, I’m outta here.

(scampers away quickly)

8

Ok, family, the new niece was over at Grandma’s forSHUT l three days and we know she is a month old, and we also mentioned several times how i stayed up with her Friday night. Yeah, she takes after aunt Anya, ha ha ha. SO STOP with the cracks about her sleeping all day–babies do that! Shut your piehole and listen to us when we say, she does indeed have her days and night mixed up.

Madison, will you please tell me why you want me to hold you when all i am doing is playing with the computer and playing songs on winamp? Why you can sleep when you are being held but not in youor crib or bouncy seat??

9

methinks “out of my butt” was the most accurate statement in the entire rant, eh? Res ipsa loquitur :smiley:

10

Cardinal:

OP Statement #1: “Wow, there sure are a lot of loud anti-religious statements posted here at the SDMB! You people should be ashamed of yourselves!”

OP Statement #2: “Watch while I post a loud anti-religious statement!”

Annnnnd…it was at that point that my Irony Meter exploded. BTW, I was beta-testing it for the Ruelians, so I’ll be sure to tell them exactly whose fault it was that there are now hi-res Denebian crystal irony components scattered all over Central Illinois. They’ll be interested to know that evidently you slipped through their screening procedures, and no doubt will be paying you a visit, in order that you may assist them in recalibrating their equipment for Planet Earth.

…Ever had an anal probe?

11

An anal probe what?

12

Go up your ASS?

13

Luckily, I was just letting some of the steam out of my Irony Meter (it works like an old furnace) or else she woulda blown!

14

Put Madison in bouncy seat, insert your bare/socked foot under baby’s butt and rock the child vigorously ( put not as if the head is boinging around.) This will give you loads of time to surf the web and blow off housework. Worked for my kids. They seem normal. But considering who their parents are, it’s iffy anyways.

15

I admit that your point escaped my clutches at first. However, I did think of it before reading this just now. Or actually, I thought it more likely that you meant that it was justified to be biased against Christians since even I admitted that too many of them shot off their mouths in certain areas.

HOWEVER…

This isn’t what I’m talking about. I did not make an anti-religious rant. I made an anti-talking-out-of-your-area-of-expertise rant.

The kinds of things I’m talking about are exactly the kinds that I mentioned: implying that Christians are going to be murderers, or full hypocrites, complete wasters of donations, pedophiles, or just total idiots, etc, all of which I’ve seen here.

16

Well I thought Cardinal had an excellent rant there with very valid points. 9/10.

But use more sweary words next time if you don’t want the other rants in the Pit to bully you and call you names.

17

Although it was not what caused the Irony Meter to explode, I was also fascinated by the OP’s assumption that physicists and other specialists in the “hard” sciences are not entitled to have well-defined and authoritatively expressed opinions on theology. You patronizingly allow physicists to have their own beliefs–as long as they keep their beliefs to themselves, or only use them to convince the ignorant rabble of the futility of their ridiculous and ill-formed beliefs.

But you seem to think that “theology” is a well-defined area of “expertise”, like dentistry, and that the same way that a physicist has no right to expound authoritatively to other learned persons upon endodontics, he has no right to expound authoritatively upon the nature of God.

Which is complete bullshit, pulled out of your ass.

What did you think of the anal probe, BTW? The Ruelians said they’d never heard that particular noise from a homo sapiens before.

18

Thanks Shirley, I’ll have to try that, she is aslleep now.

19

Instead of trying to defend how I said it before, which will only let the argument flow, let me say it better.

Physicists and such are very capable of speculating on the nature of God. I think I should be more accurate than I was above. That’s fine.

What I mean is that there are some cases of scientists acting like because they are experts in their particular field, they are necessarily experts in other fields. There are some who give that impression. I think it comes about because they hear the popular interpretations of the Bible, and since those are not well supported in many cases by the current evidence, they take this to mean that the spiritual conclusions these other people have come to are wrong.

I think that what has happened is that many people have gone out of their ability-sphere, and made the Bible say things it doesn’t necessarily say in relation to the sciences. This doesn’t mean that their spiritual beliefs HAVE to be wrong. They could be of course. That’s another argument for somewhere else.

So, I’m just saying that everyone, on both sides, needs to remember that they are endowed with all-powerful insight on all subjects and to maintain a bit of leeway and consideration for the other side, especially when the other side has been doing a lot more thinking about the subject in some or many cases. Of course, they could still be wrong, but that’s life.

20

Utterly incorrect. Read some of the things that have been written on these boards about the GOP, or the Democratic Party, or capitalists, or communists, or whathaveyou.
Rabid assaults on ideologic belief systems are made all the time on these Boards. Is it your position that such assaults are equally bad as assaults on theologic belief systems? Or is it your position that theologic belief systems are entitled to greater deference? If the latter, why so?

Sua