Christian Fundamentalists - Classic Or Dud?

Dangerous? In the right spots, some sure can be. But sometimes this results in hilarious backfiring. Here in Orange County, for instance, various attempts were made to hijack school boards via elections. The end results were shortened terms resulting from idiotic, ham-handed decisions or flat-out laughable failure. Then there's the notorious Kansas example about the teaching of evolution (or lack thereof) recently, which resulted in a crushing defeat of the proponents in follow-up elections and sensible overturning of such idiocy. It's a constant struggle with those who mistake personal beliefs with public policy, of course, and John Ashcroft's current position as Attorney General doesn't exactly fill me with love, say. Oh well, the struggle continues, etc.

If you want some LARFS, the classic place to go is the site of the legendary Jack Chick, purveyor of those damn comic tracts about 2 by 4 inches that you often stumble across rotting in gutters. Happily he's made nearly all of them available on line:

http://www.chick.com

I should note that in a subtly scary moment a babysitter back in 1980 or so essentially freaked the living fuck out of my younger sister and I (I was nine) by bringing over some of said tracts with her. I don't recall her foisting them on me, but I read them idly and their extremely vicious and horrifying portraits of what life was supposed to be like -- try The Beast or The Last Generation, both of which I specifically remember -- made a horrible impression on me and Kara, and while I really can't remember the full details of what I told my parents, I gather they had some, shall we say, strong words for her and her parents in turn. Thank goodness I *did* have the mom and dad I still have!

Viewed these days by me, the tracts are both horribly laughable in their crudity, artistically and theologically, and utterly depressing. Chick aims at every possible audience and likely enough honestly believes in what he is doing, but the combination of vicious anti- Catholicism and lip-smacking delight over the fate of 'sinners,' not to mention his overall hamhandness, simply comes across as sad and pathetic. Chick keeps updating old tracts to make them 'relevant,' but like that other great boondoggler Hal Lindsey, it's essentially one rehash after another covering up for the fact that Armageddon has resolutely refused to arrive and still hasn't.

There's also a slew of sports-related tracts as well, plenty amusing, let me tell you...

It happened to me twice last week, "hello, I'd like to invite you to a church meeting this Sunday"...er no. I managed to shut one up once, he said "how do you think we got here?"..."hmmm, probably aliens put us here as some big cosmic experiment"...he didn't respond, how rude!

I don't like fundamentalists mostly because I like a lively debate, and well, there isn't really any way to debate with them, as their arguments are ass-looped and end with the familiar, "but, but.. the BIBLE!"

Dust have I eaten all the days of my life.

Strong atheism = 'I believe there are no gods'
Weak atheism = 'I don't believe in gods'

These are not the same.

xoxo

for final total utter unanswerable refutation of big floaty x argt cf Kant Critique of Pure Reason (tho he came rd to Belief in God as a Necessary Error among mere small tiny humans to ground MORALITY = idea which appalled and disgusted Nietzsche, who said Kant was guy who found key to cage, opened door for all run free, then decided to STAY AND SIT DOWN INSIDE CAGE!!)

http://www .chick.com/reading/tracts/0034/0034_01.asp

Clearly a man of vision.

http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/9051/bigheat.jpg

actually, i think that believing in gods and not giving a fuck about them = deism. which was the religious creed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, etc.

In this case, classic:

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1127/Angus-T.-Jones-describes-Two-and-a-Half-Men-as-filth

believing in gods and not giving a fuck about them = deism

Epicurus taught that the gods existed and they made the earth, populated it and set it going, but since that time they had retreated to the Upper Empyrean realm, where they paid scant attention to humans and chose not to interfere with the ongoing arrangements. Mostly they just hung out together, feasted and fooled around.

if god or gods exist, it always seemed most probable to me that they don't care at all about earth

remember that text file you made back in 1994? you are the god of those bytes.

*solid logical reasoning*

remember that earth you made whatever many billions of years ago? yeah, me neither, hey how is your new universe going?

I love that gnostic view that we're just one of the sub-deities early mistakes, sadly abandoned and forgotten

it makes way more sense than any notion of a perfect god.

nyt ran something on this recently):

There are two famous problems with this view of God. The first is that it appears to be impossible to make it coherent. For example, it seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice. Similarly, it’s hard to see how God can wield his infinite power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came from.

The second problem is that while this “theist” view of God is supposed to be a description of the God of the Bible, it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) thought of God in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man). He is not all-knowing, since he’s repeatedly surprised by things (like the Israelites abandoning him for a statue of a cow). He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants. And so on.

Does God have the power to will himself to be less than omniscient? Can God know his own limits?

There are two famous problems with this view of God. The first is that it appears to be impossible to make it coherent

IMO any concept of God that is coherent is not a concept of God, it's a folk story.

I don't see how a God that cannot be surprised by anything, make regrets, or change his mind would be any better.

that sounds a lot like my god Jerry Rockface, this spot on a cliff underneath the penis graffiti. he's always there to listen with a stoic expression, too wise to offer any advice back.

Maybe it'd be cool to have a God that can't be surprised by anything. I know it would mean my cat can do something that God can't.

Does God have the power to will himself to be less than omniscient?

See the Big Bang.

it seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice

fairly easily disposed of by "long view" arguments

Also "terrible injustice" both being subjective terms.

Also if God isn't responsible for these "terrible injustices" then who is cos THAT guy clearly is in charge.

^^ the most basic argument used by Satanists to justify their choice of who to worship, iirc.

if god was all that whatever he needed from us would have happened by now

i'm kind of with the fundies here on destroying 2.5 men. also agree chuck lorre is the antichrist.

chuck lorre is just another toiler in the goldmine of non-stop sexual innuendo.