Hastur, I’m in Eastern Washington. If you’re interested in dispelling some ignorance about your practice of Wicca and would like me to provide Czar, et alia, with an unbiased report, please feel free to let me know. I’m happy to run over there for a day or two.
As has been said in many threads about this, in and out of the pit, I am not wiccan. I am, however, very pagan. There is a difference. Wiccans often worship a singular male and female deity set. They treat the male aspect as if he is every male solar deity ever existing and the female as if she is every lunar deity. I’m a polytheistic panentheistic pantheist.
You’ve been here since November, 1999. That’s a long time to be carrying a grudge. You must be getting tired. Maybe that’s why you seem so cranky lately?
If Jesus is God, He should be able to defend Himself more than adequately.
Well, I hate to harp on this since czarzasm has already apologized in the thread in question, but I feel the need to point out that the OP of that thread specifically stated: This thread is for answering questions about Neo-Paganism and all the faiths that come under that heading (Wicca, Asatru, Celtic Reconstructionism, etc). I don’t want this to turn into a thread where I defend my faith. I hold my beliefs as sincerely and deeply as you hold you.
Attacks upon pagan beliefs in such a thread are as out of place as diatribes against sodomy in an Ask teh Gay guy thread.
applause
That’s the wisest thing I have seen written in this thread thus far. Bravo.
Bullshit. The forum is called Great Debates for a reason. There’s no way one should even think about posting there if one are not willing to debate the beliefs and positions one espouses. Czarcasm may have hijacked the thread, but that’s hardly a mortal sin. If you want a soapbox from which you may justifiably claim immunity from intellectual challenge, move your ass over to IMHO.
[Change made as requested, but it still looks kind of strange 
-Czarcasm the Literate]
[Edited by Czarcasm on 04-25-2001 at 10:02 PM]
So much for sounding all third person and stuff. Kindly redact the “you” in the second sentence and substitute another “one.”
And I should add that, having availed himself of the opportunity, Hastur is now defending his beliefs quite reasonably over in GD. I eagerly await the results of the proposed experiment, although I would add that any experiment must be capable of repetition for the data to be reasonably validated.
Personally, I’ve got an ugly credit card bill from my recent trip to New Orleans, and it’s coming due in 12 days. If you want to give that prosperity spell a second shot when you’re done with Czarcasm, I’ll be happy to report on its efficacy.
Jeez, Czarcasm, couldn’t you be bothered to fix the resulting subject-verb agreement problem while you were up there? Or was that retribution for how I gave you that accidental pronoun change over in the other Pit thread? 
I wouldn’t sabotage a post of yours just because you indulged in a bit of wishful thinking. 
BTW, you spelled my name wrong in your biography.
Well, let us just say that I place more emphasis on respecting the clearly expressed intent of my conversational partners than you. The OP in question was designed to encourage a particular mode of discourse, one which has been seen many times before in Great Debates. It was not designed to open a debate about the validity of a particular religious belief.
If one felt a great desire to initiate such a discussion, one might have opened a new thread and posted a link inviting participation therein. That is one alternative to hijacking a thread with an attack tangential to the OP. I enjoy a spirited debate. I relish a critical examination of ideas. But I also value civil exchange, which requires (among other things) a certain respect for what the other person wants from the conversation.
I’m a fundamentalistically-challenged pre-Hinduistic neo-pagan with atheistic tendancies coupled with a belief in cultist scientology.
HA! Beat that!
I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
I’m a Ronald Reagan Carl Sagan San Diagan Pagan.
[obscure pop culture reference]Well my old man’s a cotton pickin finger lickin chicken plucker. Whattya think about THAT?[/obscure pop culture reference]
Re the Jesus Thread:
Dang, Lib, I am filled with sadness. 
I’ve been avoiding the “Have you found Jesus?” thread because I assumed that it was yet another “post here if you’re Christian/oh, yeah, all you Christians are so stupid” thread.
So, two things that pop out at me.
- I would guess that a large part of the hijack is due to people’s resentment at the “teaser” thread title, and the confusing OP. They open it, expecting to either “honk if you love Jesus” or to tell somebody with a Jesus bumper sticker how stupid it is, and instead it’s about Survivor. No, wait, it’s not about Survivor, it’s about some gonzo Internet rumor. And it’s not about “your opinion of the guy who’s leaking it”, it’s about “your opinion of whether or not you’d want to know who was going to win”. I mean, huh?
Also.
- It’s not really the mod’s job to keep a thread on topic. Threads get hijacked all the time, and the only time I can think of that a mod comes in and says “hey” is when something in GQ gets out of hand and Manny growls, “Don’t make me come over there”. Especially threads in the “lighter” forums, like MPSIMS and IMHO, tend to sometimes end up drifting sideways, and the thing is, nobody really cares, you know?
If you really wanted to poll people on whether they’d want to know how Survivor comes out, you should’ve posted a thread title like that, so they’d know what they were in for.
Well, I just waded through that shitstorm of a thread and I guess I should clarify. Lib, I respect your posts and your take on political issues. I think that I am more in the jab1/obfusciatrist/Yue Han camp over in that discussion. I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint in the “Magic” pit thread.
Really, I don’t even know that this post is necessary, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression about what I am agreeing / disagreeing with.
Why wouldn’t you want to make somebody like Czarcasm eat crow?
You’ve also conveniently ignored andors’ offer, even as you quoted it. I live in Seattle, and am also willing to drop down to Oregon and witness a magic show. If you don’t want and Doubting Thomases in your house, we could meet elsewhere. Perhaps under an old oak tree.
Well, as long as we’re bitching about hijacking threads, Libertarian, I resent your hijacking the “majick” thread with your harping about arrogant scientists. For someone who is advocating open-mindedness, you came across as a bigoted anti-intellectual who was totally immune to the forces of reason.
You want to be treated right on the Straight Dope, try to learn the difference between ranting and rational debate.