Stupidest Argument Someone Around You Has Made

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

I had a born again roommate. He wasn’t that bad.

On the other hand, his way out there born again fundie sister was a never ending font of bizarre and nonsensical arguments. She’d done way too many drugs in the 70’s & 80’s, fried her brain, and came out the other side with some really, um, interesting ideas on how the world worked.

Some of the classics were:

Aliens are real, but UFOs are fake.
CEOs make all their business decisions based on advice from witches.
Computers contain little demons. The etching in sillicon are little incantations
to summon them.
We didn’t go to the moon (ugh)
Gays are trying to take over the world
The King James version of the bible is the closest translation to the bible that Jesus carried (!).

Really, I never actually argued with most of these (except for the moon one) because it was so much fun to just find out how whacked out she really was.

I still think the best “don’t do drugs” thing that they could ever do would be to have her and her equally messed up friends go out and talk to schoolkids. I didn’t do any drugs after meeting her.

102

This is a terrific thread, though at times it makes me want to give up on society and go be a hermit.

Remember Baby Fay? The baby who had a baboon’s heart transplanted into her chest back in the mid-80s? My mother was standing in line at the grocery store and two ladies were discussing Baby Fay in front of her. One lady said, “I guess she’ll have the emotions of a baboon.”

I also had a student during the messy 2000 U.S. Presidential election who tried to argue in class that the electoral college system makes MORE sense than a straight popular vote. As a conscientious teacher seeking to foster constructive debate among my students, I asked him to elaborate. He got pretty fuzzy at that point, though.

103

One name; two words - George Hammond
To pick just one is soooooooooooo difficult!

> [Hammond]
> Granted… but by the same token Religion preceeds Philosophy.
> God was known 1,000 years before Socrates.

I’m sure beyond all reasonable doubt that this quote does no justice to the gems that are surely to be found in his ramblings…

I picked it for being ‘cute’ =)

-Justhink

104

Actually, it’s not hard to understand how she might pick up on that – programmers are used to invoking dæmons, and getting sprites to do their bidding.

And I’d have to agree-- aliens are real, (otherwise the universe is unthinkably unpopulated,) but I remain unconvinced by UFO stories. :wink:

105

I agree with that. Well, I don’t have any specific evidence for aliens, but with the size of the universe, I feel that the chance is pretty small that NO other life exists on any other planet in any other star system and in any other galaxy (let alone the possibility of other universes, which can’t be proven, but is interesting theorectically) is incredibly small.

However, I do not think aliens have made contact with humanity. (Yeah, I came across the galaxy to freak out some poor farmer by burning wierd shapes into his field, when I could just as easily remain hidden or blow up every city on earth).

106

For the un-innitiated (sorry for introducing you to this world =)
Hammond is infamous on USENET for his “SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF GOD!” (have to set the ambiance). I’m sure a search on a web ferret will turn up his home site quite rapidly. I believe this quote was extracted from a philosophy group arguing that his post was OT, and should go to science groups only =) The context of this little gem was the need for Socrates to be the definition of when philosophy started, to create a logo-centrism around religion as the fundamental root of all life and logic. His proof consequently involves drawing an “x” in a circle so that the “x” centered. This magically becomes a “+”, which then magically becomes a cross.
The connection? Well… our vision is coordinated from opposite sides of the brain, which means that the mark of God (remember the ‘cross’?) is wired right into our bodies; sitting there as proof of Gods existence. The taller we grow (physically), the more fulfilled our destiny and union with holyness becomes. Short people are stupid. I like to call it his “brain deficit theory”; which is pretty close to what he calls it =) Some of the funniest (saddest to be sure) stuff you will ever read in your life revolves around the energy, time and passion devoted to this twilight zone of life. I’d recommend checking out his site to anyone.

He’s all I could think of… quotes from his USENET posts alone could fill this thread three times over.

-Justhink

107

This would actually have been a better choice for a few recent nominees for “Greedy Idiot of the Year”…

This also makes more sense than anything else. :smiley:

Hmmmm… tries to think… Man, all my friends seem to be much brigher than yours! Runs away with various objects being thrown at him

108

Overheard between two other people: “Ben” was explaining the premise of Jurassic Park to “Adam”. Adam interrupted to say, “Wait a minute…you can’t just ‘fill in’ DNA!”

Ben: “That’s right; you can’t.”

Adam: “Well, why would someone write a book about it?”

Not dumb, just lacking in creativity, I think.

My high school BF, Steve the Idiot was Catholic, but I’m not sure that excuses this:

StI: “How can [Jewish classmate] eat spaghetti?”

Me: “Not sure what you mean.”

StI: “Well, people who keep kosher can only eat meat or dairy; they can’t eat pasta.”

Me: :smack:

Other girl: “What movies do you like?”

Me: “Uh, this one, that one, Sid and Nancy…”

OG: “What’s that about?”

Me: “It’s about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. He was in the Sex Pistols, and they were heroin addicts.”

OG: “Oh, my boyfriend was in the Sex Pistols!” (She was 18 in 1988.)

Me: “You mean he was in a cover band.”

OG: “No, the band was called the Sex Pistols.”

Me: “Is he over thirty? Is he British?”

OG: “He was in the Sex Pistols!”

One where I think the other person was just messing with me:

Me: “I love the song 'Walk Away Renee”.

Another other girl: “Oh, that song! Fred did it!”

Me: “Huh?”

AOG: “Fred did ‘Walk Away Renee’!”

Me: “Who the hell is Fred?”

AOG: “He did ‘Walk Away Renee’!”

Me: “‘Walk Away Renee’ is a song by a group called Left Banke. The Tempations or the Four Tops or one of those Motown groups did a cover version. There is no Fred.”

AOG: “Fred did it!”

She HAD to have been messing with me, right?

Steve the Idiot again: “CDs aren’t going to last…See, they wear out after a few years, because there’s this thing called laser rot.”

(Actually, I’m wondering if there might actually have been a bug like that that was worked out early on. But Mr. Rilch has CDs that he bought during the first year CDs were available, and AFAIK there’s nothing wrong with them.)

Friend across town loves to tell about a moron former cow-orker of his. He remembers all the anecdotes, but I only remember the incident where this woman wanted to get a group together to drive to France.

That also reminds me of a high school friend whose family was thinking of moving to California when we lived in Illinois. She was an Anglophile, and cheerily announced, “That would be great, because we would be closer to England!”

109

My SIL yanks my proverbial chain so much that I think in a past life I must have been really really bad to be punished with knowing her in this life.

Our various arguments have been over her believing ( but not limited too) women are raped because they are asking for it, gay people chose to be gay and can change back, reading the bible every day to a child will make it smarter ( reading every day to your child will help, it is not any one book, except possibly the Straight Dope :slight_smile: ) and a couple other arguments that I have blanked out of my mental hard drive to save my sanity.

110

Picture this:

Dave is visiting a friend and his wife in England. Dave is from New Zealand. They are all sitting down to a nice meal when the phone rings. Wife goes and picks up:

Wife: Hello?.. Dave it’s for you!!

Dave: Hello? yes… mm… hmm hmm … ok, yeah, ok, I’ll call you back tomorrow.

Dave hangs up.

Wife: Was that Andy?

Dave: Yeah he was on his cell phone and his battery ran flat.

Wife: Calling on his cell phone?! all the way from New Zealand?!! No wonder the battery went flat!!!

???

111

I had a former student (not the same student in my other post) who insisted that this had to be the case. His argument was that people can’t possibly be born gay, because God makes everybody perfect, and gay people by definition aren’t perfect.

The same guy believed that eating disorders were caused by lack of religious faith – because if people just believed hard enough, they would know God made them perfect, and therefore wouldn’t have any body image problems.

Sigh. Welcome to the real world, kid…

112

Is your friend Bill O’Really? I had the misfortune to hear him use that exact arguement about a month ago. Don’t worry folks, my therapist says I’ll be over it soon.

113

I can sort of see where this could come from. With meat and dairy there’s a conflict (dairy can’t be eaten with meat, or several hours afterwards). So it would be talked about a lot more than parve foods like pasta, for which there really is no conflict with meat or dairy. People could mention that they keep separate meat or dairy utensils, but not mention parve utensils b/c they may not have them at all (when I lived in a kosher apartment, we just used the dairy ones for pasta).

That aside . . . here’s my contribution to this thread:

After a long day, years ago, I came home and took off my shoes. My brother’s immediate reaction was: “Wow! Your feet smell worse than I do!”

114

It was either 2 or 7… it was a while ago, I can’t remember.

115

Here’s one that happened a couple years ago that almost made me go cross-eyed:

I was home with a broken leg & had a healthcare aide staying with me…One day, she was in my room helping me with something while my TV was on.

Some “news” snippet about O.J. Simpson came on, & I commented that I think that he indeed committed the murders. She responded that no, he didn’t do that at all. I looked at her incredulously. The following is verbatim - zero embellishment. Unfortunately.

Me: “You really figure he didn’t do it? What about the blood evidence & the prior domestic abuse incidents?”

Aide: “No, I’m telling you, the man did not do it - black people don’t kill people with knives! Maybe if they’d have been shot, but ain’t no black people going around killing people with knives”.

Like I said, my eyes almost crossed I was so astounded. FYI, she was/is an African-American woman in, I’m guessing, her late 50’s.

116

That reminds me of something I heard, probably on here relating to atheletes always thanking god for their accomplishments.

“We would have won the game if Jesus hadn’t made me drop the ball.”

117

No, he’s certainly no friend of mine. The scary thing is that I believe O’Reilly is just a media commentator; the arsehole I know is manoeuvering to get into Parliament where he can do real damage.

118

Sorry I didn’t get back to this earlier. According to my knowledge, they align their cloacas (a catch-all opening for the urinary, digestive, and reproductive tracts) and the male’s sperm fertilizes the female’s egg cells (not eggs as in what you make omelettes out of). Then the shells form around the fertilized eggs, and the female lays them.

119

My favorite in the last few weeks is the one where my gf told me the function of the long black rubber lines that cross the road were to make a noise that would keep drivers awake. I had to explain to her they were for counting traffic flows.SIGH

120

A co-worker of mine once claimed that American southern accents developed because white slave-owners’ children were brought up by house slaves, and blacks have naturally lazy speech patterns which were picked up by their owners’ children.

It wasn’t so much the idea that slaves’ speech patterns might be picked up by white kids, I just couldn’t figure out where she came up with “blacks have naturally lazy speech patterns.” She said it like it was a well-known fact.