Comic Genesis Forums

Aw, gee... r u saying im stoopid? I'm crushed.

It's true, though... Ask anyone here. Me and my poor little IQ. They only put up with me because I'm cute. And because, you know, being so stupid, I need someone to help me wipe after I pee. They're kinda pervs, ya know.

Jetsetlemming wrote:(you're making painfully simple minded points)

If they're so painfully simple-minded, why is it you're having such a difficult time responding to them in a manner that makes it seem like you read and understand them?

The capitalization thing really isn't that complicated. If you concentrate, just a little, you'll get it.

I didn't say it's inappropriate according to modern convention to capitalize christain (or the names of any other faith)... I merely said it's inappropriate to capitalize them by accepted rules of grammar.

Get it? Rules of style say capitalize them. Why? Because we always do and everyone else does. Rules of grammar say a proper noun is "a name for an individual person, place, or organization" which christian, islamic, bhuddist, jewish, or whatever are not, however Mormon, Catholic, Presbyterian, Hasidic, Shiite, and Daoist are. (bhuddists don't belong in this conversation, by the way... bhuddism is not a religion nor a faith.)

It's still "correct" to capitalize all of them, though, as I've been saying all along. The telling point in what I've been saying is made in considering why we capitalize them.

And what about your "average" christian...? I'm sorry if this seems condescending, but you leave me with little choice but to ask. You do know what "average" means, right?

If there are ten christians, and three go to church every week, and three go once a month, and three go once a year, and one just doesn't go... Why then, the average christian goes to church 19.5 times a year, or about once every 3 weeks.

Well, depending on the data you believe, somewhere around 85% of Americans are self-proclaimed christians, and about 20% of Americans attend church at least once per week. See where this is going? The average christian in America only goes to church once a month, and America is the single most religious nation, at least by self-proclaimation, in the industrialized world. Isreal, by comparison, is 77% Jewish. According to a University of Michigan study (UM is kind of the Harvard of public opinion research, as I understand it frompeople with degrees in the field...) 53% of Americans consider religion to be very important in their lives. This compares with 16% in Britain, 14% in France and 13% in Germany.

Are you getting the math...? Your assessment of the "average" christian is demonstrably wrong.

As to the rest... The little dying bobby bit... Well, as I've said, again and again and again. That's a matter of personal choice. If "knowing" some silly crap that someone else told you will happen when you die is all the truth and knowledge and logic you demand from the world, then yes... I guess "knowing" you'll go to the happy place is fine.

The point is, though... The point I made in my very first response to you on the subject... Is that it's a crutch. A drug. An opiate, to borrow from Marx. A self-serving delusion designed to make you feel better about a scary reality.

Also, the fact that it falls to personal chioce, thought, doesn't make it equally valid. Just because you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the most logically likely outcome is true doesn't mean that the least logically likely outcome is therefore equally likely. I can't prove there aren't a cabal of highly intelligent basset hounds beaming secret instructions into the brains of world leaders at all times, but that doesn't mean it's probable.

oh also from reading this I have so much in common with the main character that it's scary.

the main difference is the fact that I never revoked my faith, basically I belive that one day god will set the record straight and I'll know what I should have known.


we can't give up just because things no longer make scence or because things don't work our way, it takes true strength to continue moving even if you have nothing else.

and that is why they call it faith.

JohnnyTwoEyes wrote:

Jetsetlemming wrote:I really don't want to bother responding to you. Not because I can't respond (you're making painfully simple minded points), but because quoting you and cutting up your post with quote marks and responding by section is a huge pain in the ass.

Not to change the subject, but saying something like that is rather low. It seems to me that you are tossing in a few extra jabs instead of focusing on the point you're trying to make. It's really a pretty pathetic way to have a discussion.

Yes, it was rather low of me. It's late at night, I have to be up early, and I wasn't pleased at the prospect of a long, drawn out "quote-each-part-of-my-post-then-you-quote-each-part-of-me-post-forever-and-ever-until-the-end-of-time" arguments. :/
Honor: Ok, so I'm capitalizing Christian because it's what everybody else does now. It's what's in vogue. This goes against the original reason you pointed that out, to try and make a point that I did it subconsiously from a bias towards Christianity. Damn, guess that's out the window now.
As for the rest of what you said.......


Huh?
Could you, I dunno, sumarize what you're talking about now, for the sake of the rest of the class? Besides "Christianity = crack"? Cause if that's all there is, I think I'll pack up my chips and call it a night. I think I've demonstrated quick clearly, beyond the nitpicking details about the statistics of how religous the average christian is, or just how many people are addicts that smoke crack, that crack is, in all cases, bad for you. Christianity isn't, unless you believe you know it to be wrong and misguided and holding you back from some vague emo understanding of nothing.

I'm somehow getting the feeling that Jetsetlemming is the only one who doesn't understand exactly what Honor is talking about.

Jet, I really don't see your argument very well in the last post. Honor presented her replies to your statement and instead of replying in kind you just said that she was nitpicking and ignored the bulk of it. As much as you hate the "long drawn out" part of the arguments, it is how reasonable debate is done. You have to approach each stage of someone's argument in order a. better understand it and b. better reply to it.

I suppose your hesitation to work in kind is what has led to the impression that you're being mangled on the topic.

*snuggles down in between Honor and Swordsman*

Goddamn I'm glad you're back Honor


By the by, I agree with you JohnnyTwoEyes.

But at least we've all agreed that we can play nice together - and that
it's an exchange of ideas, not a fight to the fecking death

Linkara wrote:..... In fact, if God was to be so petty as to not permit people into heaven just because they didn't believe in him but still lived a good life, I'd be over to the dark side so fast you wouldn't have time to blink.

Who's to say that THAT isn't the dark side?

I want to do this but I don't want to do this, only because my abortion comment cause a fucking firestorm.

I know when to shut my mouth.

I see her point... I think... I just don't see the point to her point. I don't see the how or why of arguing that Christianity and crack are on the same level. :/ This is making it really hard for me to, you know, seriously mount a full-blown argument. ("mounting" and "full-blown" specifically used because I know the audience reading this post ) I've seen the worst overzealous christianity can do to someone's behavior and mind, and I grew up around drug users. Christianity can be good or bad, but is mostly in the "fairly good, not really all that great" category, while crack is the "life destroying bad" category. How could you not see that?

Name a good effect of Christianity.

Spiral Zer0 wrote:I know when to shut my mouth.

Damn you, Bowie! I can't think of any variation of "shut your mouth" without humming "China Girl".

Jetsetlemming wrote:I don't see the how or why of arguing that Christianity and crack are on the same level.

AAAAGGGGHHH!!!

*jumps off a cliff*

Wait for me !

*tightens belt and dives after*

swordsman3003 wrote:Name a good effect of Christianity.

Christmas presents

Honor's argument is predicated on two premises (I think - do correct me if I'm wrong) : first, that it is injurious to hold false beliefs, and second, that Christianity is false. From a Kantian, deontological perspective, it doesn't matter how good the consequences are of believing a falsehood; it's harmful to your rational nature and therefore wrong, in the same way that no matter how good smoking crack makes you feel, it's still bad for you.

putaro wrote:

swordsman3003 wrote:Name a good effect of Christianity.

Christmas presents

That already existed before Christianity.

swordsman3003 wrote:

putaro wrote:

swordsman3003 wrote:Name a good effect of Christianity.

Christmas presents

That already existed before Christianity.

true, but christianity helped to spread the idea and increased its general appeal.

Yay for commercialism!

swordsman3003 wrote:

putaro wrote:

swordsman3003 wrote:Name a good effect of Christianity.

Christmas presents

That already existed before Christianity.

Fine then, how about Peeps? Mmmmm....marshmallowy goodness and we wouldn't have them if it wasn't for Easter!

Linkara wrote:...
Ah, except he wants us to come to him of our own free will. He doesn't want to just dictate to us and have us follow the rules because we're afraid of him or simply "to know." It's a matter of belief and choice.

There's the rub - eh?

How do you define "come to him"?


Follow the ten commandments? Follow all of the Law as written in the Torah? Or just Jesus' big-three; "Love the Lord, Love thy neighbor and (sic) accept forgiveness (ie. believe that Jesus died for your sins)"? Or is none of that good enough, and you also have to go to THE RIGHT CHURCH, or do you have to tithe? Evangelize? Be a Missionary? Scourge? Fast? Give up all worldly posessions? Kill for God? Die for God? Crash a passenger jet into a building full of stock-traders for God? Does God require acknowledgement? Simple friendship? sacrifice? obedience? worship? grovelling? self-debasement? self-destruction? pick-a-side; good or evil?

Is it a matter of individual preference, or calling, to determine this? Or should we all be practicing on MS Flight Simulator?

I'm sure that any of us - when confronted with the (for sake of argument) Truth of a Creator God, who is all good, all powerful, and all knowing, (and able to explain to the recently deceased, exactly WHY evil exists in the face of those three Godly features - in a way that does not just re-define "evil") - and if this God simply asked "hang out in Heaven and party with me - I accept you as you are? Or go to Hell?" I would think that most folks would choose Heaven.

When "strings" are attached, like "Be denomination X." or "Follow lawset Y" or any of the above supplications, or "you're not invited because you are the way I made you" - or "your son|daughter|father|brother is not invited because he|she is the way I made him|her." - that kind of thing will challenge anybody's sense of right and wrong, and what's fair and unfair. I know that I've got a long list of questions I would ask my Creator if I ever had the opportunity. First among them is "why did you make us so fucking stupid?" I mean - who can even imagine what we could have done to fairly deserve THIS over some Ideal Garden of Eden existence? It HAS to be some kind of cosmic joke, or mistake, hasn't it?

Anyway - for the industrious, there's a nice Wikipedia article, search on "Axis Mundi" - it's one of those "should be controversial, but hasn't yet been slammed" anthropological articles, and it is about the commonalities of the Jesus archetype in various myths from many different cultures. Was there only one Jesus? Was that story spread around and changed in various other cultures? Are any of these other stories as valid? This article did change my point of view; I had heard of this kind of thing before, also about the Creation Myth, and the Great Flood Myth - so it wasn't shocking, but it was neat to see it concisely laid out as I had not ever seen before. And I have long suspected Scripture as a source of problems; the weakness of human language designed for describing physical experience for description of metaphysical experience, and the FACT that whatever words God spoke, they went THROUGH the brain of a human to get to paper, and to get back into my brain, it goes through my lying eyes, the 2000 year-younger language, and my culture, which includes many books, tv shows, classes, and discussions on what various passages mean, etc. God's word may be perfect, but it is not in Scripture. Maybe it's in the sky, as thunderclouds roll across. Maybe it's in the eyes of a newborn, seeing the world for the first time. Maybe it's in the sound of a summer breeze blowing through leaves in the forest. Perhaps it's even found in the perfection of numbers. Of one thing I am certain: It is not found in the twisted, tortured language of lawyers, priests, and politicians.

swordsman3003 wrote:Name a good effect of Christianity.

um - Gothic Architecture?

Naughty Nuns role-playing?

Faith-based charities that help the impoverished, the ill, and the dying are a good effect of Christianity. And I'm a good effect of Christianity, aren't I? ^_~

@fnyunj: Just making a metaphor statement. ^_~ I'd definitely consider that the dark side if that was how things were. While I may not ally with ol' mangoat, I'd probably not shack up with that kind of entity that was so petty.