On Faith

Debating God Slobberers

Long before they go cosmological or ontological on you, there’s this bit of pablum you have to wade through with almost all of your run-of-the-mill God slobberers.   Here’s the short list of the debating tactics of those on the religious short bus and how to deal with them:

The Gob Slobberer Starter Toolkit

1. You are mad at/hate God.
2. You wish to masturbate (more enthusiastically?) without oversight. (Masturbation just manages to squeeze out “practice homosexuality” as the ‘go-to sin” above the Mason-Dixon line).
3. You are lashing out at “the church” because (e.g.) a priest masturbated you a little too enthusiastically or you had some other negative experience at church.
4. You haven’t looked for God in the right places.

The Skeptics Responses

1.  I wish there was a God to be mad at but since that’s s a fantasy of yours I don’t share I’m going to have to hold you personally responsible for all the chowder-headed nonsense you’re spewing and the damage that occurs as a result.

2.  I do the best I can not to embarrass the ghost of Oscar Wilde.

3.  The soft hand of a Catholic priest would have been a Godsend in lieu of the total subjugation of my mind which was attempted in order to help me find comfort in the patently ridiculous notions being promulgated by mindless goobers like you.

4.  I looked everywhere for God as a child, but it was all to no avail. Were the father, son and holy ghost all too busy for for my toast?   Upon puberty it finally hit me.  Vaginas seemed the likeliest hideout for God that I hadn’t already searched in my youth.  Checked a bunch….nada God there..

I’ll keep looking to broaden the sample size but I’m skeptical I’ll find anything other than an echo in even the largest of vaginas.

Maybe God is too ashamed to show his face after looking around and seeing what a horrible job he did in the first place.  That’s a distinct possibility and the one I’d run up the flagpole if I was a master goober in religious apologetics.

Enjoy.

Pseudo Differentialism in Religious Debate

Heaven help the confused gay Catholic guy over at The Daily Beast!  Poor Andrew Sullivan.  He will probably never overcome the cult of Catholicism that infected his mind.  Took him way too long to set a proper moral compass on the Bush war (he was head gay cheerleader for war back then) to be taken seriously on matters of any deep philosophy.  He was at his best when he was dogging Sarah Palin for Trig’s birth certificate.  Now he is trying to figure out what the differences are between a religious cult (Mormonism) and a “regular”  normal religion (his Catholicism).  Probably ought to be filed under category of Unintentionally Hilarious.

Where’s The Line Between A Religion And A Cult? Ctd – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

The lede;

D.T. Bell and Ryan Bell, authors of MormonAmerican.com, were offended by my exploration of Mormonism’s cultish qualities. They argue that “calling a religion a cult is a cowardly act, because the vagueness of the word provides plausible deniability to any who use it”:

Andrew Sullivan explains that while his Catholic religion does have some aspects that resemble his definition of religious cultism, it is a kinder gentler form of religious cultism than Mormonism.  Outraged Mormons claim;

Sullivan’s argument is illustrative, as it follows the approach of so many others who have pushed the “cult” line of attack. These attacks inevitably abandon any definitional rigor and load the dice to reach the desired result.

What would you expect the Mormons to say?  They can’t respond with, “Well, yeah we do all this really crazy crap you accuse us of and it obviously makes us look like a cult”.   The Mormon critics (like Scientology cultists) attack Andrew head-on, all without even mentioning the most contemporary horrors of modern Catholicism;

Here is another reasonable-sounding list of cultish characteristics: belief in the infallibility of a supreme leader, a system prohibiting clergy from normal family life, and a network of the especially devout who vow to totally remove themselves from society.

Sullivan’s Mormon critics,  then make the following tack;

No one believes Sullivan’s own Catholic Church—a global faith that has inspired some of the world’s greatest art, thought, and philanthropy — is a cult. But using Sullivan’s tactics, it isn’t hard to cast it in a dark, suspicious light.

Hello!  I am someone.  I BELIEVE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS A CULT!   Much as I am dogging on Andrew today, I also agree that some cults are more dangerous than others, and right now the Mormon cult is a more clear and present danger to the US than the Catholics.  But that is mere quibbling.  All religions are cults.  CULTS – Self selected groups of people who believe in things which can only be rationalized by reference materials of dubious origin and are most often started by men claiming divine inspiration.  As a general rule, a cult is just a religion that hasn’t yet achieved tax free status.

Enjoy.