My latest adventures on the JREF Forum - a dastardly tale!

[Meme Virus]

Well wha'd'ya'know! I've gone and got myself suspended from the JREF forum again! Funny it's almost exactly a year since the last time. And funny it's also for resorting to entertaining myself at the expense of the rabble again. My suspension's only for three days this time though.

The thing is that there are a few subforums there inhabited by a rather higher percentage of obnoxious chimpanzees than others, and I made the mistake of forraying into their dank gloomy halls and taking on some of the bitter and twisted miserable humourless oafs in there! I should have known better and stuck to the forums where the air is purer because a much higher proportion of responses are intelligent. Still, it's only getting involved with arguing with a little group of malevolent bog-dwellers that's got me the temporary boot. Most people are more reasonable.

Of course the cowardly snitches were likely to report me to the moderators when I responded to their obnoxious dim-witted provocations more colourfully than they were happy with, as well as shrieking and bellowing like angry animals. I admit that my responses to their screeching offensiveness were more colourful than tends to be tolerated on the JREF forum. I should have just got out of the forever-angry people's territory quickly instead of responding to them. I'll try to keep clear in future. After all, for almost a year, I didn't even get one post banished to the dungeon for disgraced posts, Abandon All Hope! I confined myself to less controversial subforums. I'd better do that again when I go back. I did make efforts to extricate myself from the mouldy threads when I thought things were getting a bit out of hand, to try to spare myself from being tempted to say something in frustration and incur mod wrath, but obviously my parting messages were more than the mods were prepared to tolerate.

Anyway, it would be a shame if my responses to the always-enraged poker-faced bellowers were just condemned to languish forever in the quarantine of the Abandon All Hope forum where they were banished, because I think they were works of art. So I'm going to re-post a few of them here.

Here's just one for a sample - I'll post more later. This is one I posted when I was tired of gruntmeisters using moronic arguments and screeching and roaring instead of at least trying to be intelligent and addressing what I'd said. However, it got me threatened with a suspension or ban. I'm not surprised really. I really just need to learn to accept the fact that some people think they're brilliant arguers when they're actually hopelessly incompetent, all the while kidding themselves that they're giving you a good thrashing because of the impeccable intelligence they seem to think they have, and because you shun them half the time because their stupidity is too annoying to tolerate, so they think they've got the last word in so they've won. Kind of like if you went to the zoo and found yourself being met with derisive laughter from a dancing hyena.

It's frustrating to take time to put forward thoughtful points and then to be met with mere bellows, snorts and semi-coherent shrieks; but accepting that that's just the way of the world would probably help. Unfortunately, I wasn't that philosophical. I said, after taking a few days' break from one controversial thread because I didn't want to get into trouble with the moderators, but then foolishly coming back to catch up on how the hyenas had responded to what I'd said the last time:

Originally Posted by Baby Nemesis

OK, back to this heap of ruins for a while to catch up on what I assume to be the boorish horrors of what went on while I've been away: ...

Well, skimming the surface of what I assume to be the trash, it seems that all we have is another bunch of misrepresentations of arguments, stupid accusations, aggressive hostility, fatuous mockery, totally misunderstood concepts, and various things like that. ... Actually, I haven't sampled it much at all yet; I'm just guessing. I'll carry on: ...

I won't wade too deeply into the mire of sludgy wreckage, so if I miss a decent point, I apologise. In fact, I have just spotted a few interesting points floating in what I assume to be the swill. Not enough for me to stop and start wading in and engaging again though. ... I'll cary on looking: ...

Wow, HansMustermann actually seems to be saying something interesting, and in a totally non-coarse manner. That makes a nice change. Far easier on a lady's ears! I like social history.

There are a few people I'm just plain ignoring now, so if they've suddenly started to come out with good points, it's too late.

And there are a few posts I just plain can't be bothered with; so if they were like flowers sticking out of a stagnant pool, I apologise for missing them.

Oh look, an interesting point from Bruto, who does seem to be one of the most reasonable contributors to this heap of slime: ...

Please get my gender right.

And I wasn't trying to "prove" anything. I was making suggestions, that wise and understanding athe-worshipers would have treated with circumspect insightful criticism, not aggressive boorishness. Had they all done so, I'd still want to be around.

But now it's time for me to unsubscribe from this thread, never to return. Bye bye. *waves*

That one got plunged into Abandon All Hope with immense speed!

The most obnoxious people on the forum probably spend most of their time bullying people who aren't that likely to report them. Most of the same people are probably swift to report any outbursts of exasperation from the opposition against them. So the opposition gets penalised while they keep on being loutish boors with an over-inflated opinion of themselves forever.

It's their loss! When they're on their deathbeds and they look back over their lives, they'll probably emit the usual grunts that pass for intellectual thinking in their heads, and wonder whether it was worth spending so much of their lives being boors on Internet forums. Hours every day for years, just for what they thought passed for cheap entertainment. Sad really.

Anyway, that was just a poor-quality sampler. I'll post my real works of art next!!

[Meme Virus]

OK, this one’s long, But it’s good!! Well, it's not in very good taste, and in fact it gets to be in cringeingly poor taste towards the end! But it's still, ... well, kind of good.

I linked in my signature on the JREF forum to six self-help articles on various topics like depression, improving marriage, and addiction. The person who wrote them also wrote an article on the Bible, which an angry screech-owl at the JREF took to be a veritable whirling tornado of fierce hatred, even though it was absolutely nothing of the kind! She shrieked at me like a mandrake enraged by an injected infusion of an entire syringe-full of stimulant drugs, for daring to promote a website with it on. I didn’t think it was hatred at all, but when I said so, she unleashed another mandrake-screech of rage at my supposed dishonesty at daring to promote hate and not even having the courage to admit that’s what I was doing! So I made fun of her. Not terribly wise to do at the JREF, but very good fun while it lasted! I wrote two posts making fun of what she said. Probably an over-the-top response, but I was enjoying myself so I didn’t want to stop. Of course, they were flung into Abandon All Hope!

Here’s the first one. I’ll post the second afterwards:

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… But now, I want to comment more on Maia's accusation that I linked to and promoted hate on here a few days ago and then lied when I said it wasn't hate. And I'm going to have fun doing it!

As I said, the author who wrote the article on the Bible Maia was riled up into such outrage by has also written lots of self-help articles, six of which I link to in my signature. I pointed that out to Maia, suggesting that browsing them could give her an idea of whether the author was someone likely to spew hate. She said that was a logical fallacy, (in a post she seems to have deleted), saying that each article should be judged on its own merits.

I wish to illustrate the point I made. So I say:

That's simplistic. The point is that it's possible to tell a fair bit about the personality and attitudes of a person from what they write, - not just from what they actually say in what they write, but from the kinds of things they're most interested in writing about, the tone of their writing, and what they don't say. For instance, if the author of the article on the Bible you so vehemently tried to discredit as hate literature really was the kind of person to spew hatred, let's see what kinds of things one might expect from her self-help articles. I'll quote a passage from each of several, and then put in italics what they might have been expected to say if they were written by someone with a hatred for ... well, you didn't say who you imagined the supposed hate in the article on the Bible was directed against, but let's say atheists and neo-Pagans, and generally anyone who doesn't believe in the Bible with a fervent vehemence that won't tolerate dissent.

First, here are quotes from the articles I link to in my signature, with my italicised special additions of hate:

(All the articles are written in the first person, because they're in the form of a fictional character's thoughts on information they're sharing with others)

From Overcoming Depression and Worry

From a section on relaxation techniques:

The information says that if we can set aside a time every day to do some relaxation exercises, we might feel a lot of benefit, because they might make us feel calmer for some time afterwards. It says there are some easy ones that we'll probably be able to memorise and do whenever we're feeling a bit stressed, like breathing very slowly and evenly for several minutes. It says that that on its own can make people feel much calmer.

But it says that if we like, there are a variety of relaxation exercises we can do, and to help us remember them, we could read the ones they suggest onto a tape.

Don't bother doing this if you're an atheist though, because if you've got any decency whatsoever, you'll have such a troubled conscience because of all the neighbourhood babies you've eaten and little furry animals you've callously squashed, that you won't be able to sleep at night, let alone relax and feel calmer! And frankly, you don't deserve such a luxury anyway.

From Improving a Marriage Instead of Getting a Divorce

The author of this book sounds a bit like me, in that she says she really wanted to divorce her husband at one point. I'll see what made her change her mind. ...

Oh. She says that what really changed her mind was that she realised that the problems in her marriage weren't all her husband's fault by any means, and that there were things she could do about them. She says that now, she's glad she didn't divorce her husband, because they fell in love again, and after she learned to do things differently, their marriage became a lot better.

Well, perhaps I'll have to admit that I've been partly responsible for some of the problems in the marriage. ... Well, at least one or two. ... Maybe. What she says sounds interesting. I'll read on and see if I think what happened to her could happen for me. ...

The author says that at the time when she was thinking about divorcing her husband, she would blame him for all the problems in the marriage. She says she had a long list of changes she wanted him to make, and blaming him for the difficulties felt more satisfying than recognising her part in the problems. She even read self-help books and underlined the bits she thought he should take notice of, and gave them to him, without considering that she needed to change.

But she says that now she knows that part of the problem was that she'd grown hard-hearted because she didn't feel he showed enough love towards her, and she became critical of him, and was sarcastic about any efforts he made to improve things, as if he just couldn't do anything well enough. Now she realises that her attitude was ruining their relationship more than anything he did.

Of course, if you're an atheist or one of those Wiccan-types, you needn't bother reading this, since naturally you won't have any interest in putting your relationship right - yes, I know you lot, just move on to the next one at any sign of trouble - no thought of commitment! And you won't have enough moral fibre to be able to improve things anyway if it means you yourself have to put any effort into changing things. Without God, you're a hopeless case! You haven't got a hope of saving your marriage. You're probably much more critical and sarcastic than the woman who wrote that book, and will be like that forever. You'll probably be married and divorced five times or more before you get old! All atheists probably are.

From Protecting Yourself From Being Teased At School

Sometimes, when people ask us questions, they don't really want to know the answer. They're just asking because they want to get into an argument with us about it or make fun of what we say. So it might be best not to try and explain ourselves, but to just answer saying something short, that'll hopefully put them off bothering to ask any more.

Sometimes, it can work if we say things like, "because I want to", or "because I like it".

So, for example, if a teaser asked, "Why do you listen to such trashy music?" it probably wouldn't be worth getting into an argument over whether it's trashy or not, and it won't be worth us getting upset about what they say, especially since their opinion of it is no more important than ours, and it is just an opinion after all, so one short answer could be, "Because I want to."

Or if they asked, "Why do you wear such ugly clothes?" we could perhaps answer, "Because I want to."

Or they might ask something like, "Why do you always wear the same thing?" and we could answer something like, "Because I like it."

Or they might ask something like, "Where did you get those horrible gloves?" and we could answer, "I got them when I was out shopping, because I like them."

If they still criticize them after we say that, we could fob them off by saying, "You might be right, but I like them."

After all, it's only their opinion that will be making them think they look bad, and their opinion of something like that won't be any better than ours.

Don't do that if you're an atheist or another kind of non-God-believer though; you'll deserve all the teasing you get. I hope if you pick up any tips from this article, you forget them instantly. I wish there was a way of stopping people like you even accessing this article. You deserve to be teased every single hour of every single day, and not to have any idea how to deal with it. That's what should happen to atheists like you.

From Coping with Unemployment

Of course, we'll have to find time in all that to keep looking for a paid job. The book recommends that if we get too distracted by fun things at home, or whatever, we go out somewhere where we can concentrate better, maybe a library. We'll hopefully be able to get on the Internet there, and if we know other people might see what we're doing, we'll be less likely to start doing things just for fun, so we can discipline ourselves better to do more important stuff.

There might also be other things in the library that it'll be useful to look at, like specialist magazines where there might be job offers. It'll hopefully be helpful if we can keep looking through the latest newspapers we pick up anywhere and any magazines that might be helpful to find job opportunities.

But then, we can set aside a room at home, or say we want to work in one for several hours without being disturbed, and it can be as if it's our office. It might be more difficult to stay focused on job hunting there because there will be more distractions, but at least it'll mean we can use our own computer and we'll have everything we want to hand that belongs to us, although obviously we won't have things we might find in the library like some of the papers we might find job vacancies advertised in.

If you're an atheist or a Pagan though, don't do any of that. You deserve to be unemployed so you don't infect anyone else with your disgusting views. I hope you stay unemployed forever, housebound because you can't afford to go out. I hope you have to have your electricity cut off so you can't use your computer to propagate your foul atheistic or Pagan views, and you never manage to get it reconnected.

From Conquering Any Kind of Addiction or Craving

The book says that when we know what's going on in the brain when we crave something, we'll know how to stop it happening. It's already explained how addiction hijacks and perverts a natural system in our brains that was designed to help our survival and help us improve our quality of life by making us want to experience new and better things; and now, it says it's going to explain exactly how it does it.

Things That Go On in the Brain When a Craving Comes On

The book says that when we understand what an addiction does in the brain to make it so powerful, we'll have the power to stop it.

Of course, that won't apply to you if you're an atheist, since addictions will be just inevitable for you. You're bound to be addicted to something all your life as a substitute for God-belief, because you'll be so miserable without God that you'll need something. You shouldn't be reading this article, because coming off your addiction will just mean you get addicted to something else. It'll be a waste of time you trying. Besides, without God, you're naturally doomed to fail in every effort you make to improve yourself.

Wow, this is fun! I could start to enjoy promoting hate. But I might quickly become so disgusted with myself I'd have to give up. Anyway, I'll continue for the moment.

From Learning to Control Anger

The book says anger isn't bad in itself - it's what we do with it that counts. Anger can be turned to good uses. It gives us an energy boost so we can get things done we might not have been motivated to do before. It could give us the courage to go and do things we'd have been nervous to do otherwise.

But rage is always bad, because it's so powerful it can't be directed in a rational way, but is likely to make us do destructive things, often before we really think about it.

Of course, if you're an atheist, you'll never be putting your anger to good use, because you'll be always using it to belittle Christians. An atheist could never get over an anger problem without stopping being an atheist, because everyone knows atheists are always angry. That's part of what being an atheist means. An atheist never does anything except go onto Internet forums and take their anger out on the Christians they find there every day, ranting and raving from morning till night.

Right, that's all the articles linked to in my signature misquoted; now let's go on to a few more by the same author, on the same website:

From Parenting Difficult Teenagers

The book Parent in Control says supervision's important, to the extent that you know where your children are at any given time. It says being with friends with bad attitudes can ruin the behaviour of even the best-raised child. If for some reason they start making friends with kids who are into drugs and shoplifting and so on, even if parents have tried to teach them not to do such things, if their friends are doing them and seem to be getting a lot of pleasure out of it, your child might want to experience the same feelings, so they might be tempted to get into those things as well.

What can help is if you investigate local activities run by responsible adults, and try to tempt your kids to join them in out-of-school hours, perhaps things like sports, drama groups, and whatever matches any interests they have that are worth pursuing or harmless fun. Children also often appreciate any time parents take out to do things with them.

Of course, if your teenager's an atheist, he'll be a stubborn rebel, and nothing you do will help wean him away from criminal activity. The only thing that will help you is if you badger the police to have him locked up for as long as they can.

From How Life Can Improve For People With Anorexia

Here are some examples of depressing thoughts that can go through people's heads without them even wanting to think them, and the kinds of things they might say back to them: ...

Another technique is called the "empty chair technique", where you sit where there are two chairs, (or at least two), and you sit in one chair saying the bad things about yourself that you normally think, and then you sit in the other chair and pretend that you're a defence lawyer speaking for you as their client. So it might go like:

• You as the prosecution: The accused can't do anything well in life because she just doesn't have what it takes.

You as the defence lawyer: That's not true. My client does lots of things right, and knows she can be successful at some things.

• You as the prosecution: Everyone's going to think the accused is fat and ugly.

You as the defence lawyer: My client is not fat and ugly. She's more like a skeleton. In fact, when she gets a bit more fat on her, she'll start looking quite pretty. Besides that, you can't tell what other people are thinking of her.

• You as the prosecution: The accused is stupid.

You as the defence lawyer: My client is not stupid. She might do stupid things from time to time, but that doesn't mean she's a stupid person. Everyone probably does stupid things sometimes. But a lot of times in the past, she's been called stupid for things that weren't stupid at all.

Or you can pretend to be the prosecution accusing you of being far too fat, and the defence lawyer denying it. You could do that especially if you realise you keep thinking you're far fatter than you really are. I think it's quite common for people with anorexia to do that.

So, for example, the conversation could go:

• You as the prosecution: The accused is so fat she couldn't get in through the door of this court in the normal way, but had to push her way in after the door frame was removed for her.

You as the defence lawyer: That's not true; my client was able to come in in the normal way.

• You as the prosecution: The accused is so fat that the ground shook when she walked across this courtroom.

You as the defence lawyer: That's not true; it didn't shake at all.

• You as the prosecution: The accused is so fat that she couldn't sit in an ordinary seat; an especially large one had to be brought in for her, made from seven sofas.

You as the defence lawyer: That's not the case; as you can see, my client is sitting in a perfectly normal seat.

• You as the prosecution: The accused is so fat that much of the courtroom furniture had to be removed so she could fit in the court, and the people are all standing around the edges of the room because she fills up the courtroom so much there isn't room for them anywhere else.

You as the defence lawyer: That's not true; my client isn't any bigger than other people in here.

• You as the prosecution: The accused is so fat there weren't any clothes in the whole country that would fit her; she had to have ones especially made, and it took a whole factory five days to make the cloth for just one set of clothes for her because she needed so much.

You as the defence lawyer: The prosecution is wildly exaggerating! The clothes my client is wearing weren't even the biggest size in the shop she bought them from!

The claims of the prosecution can get less and less exaggerated until they're the kinds of things you really do think about yourself, and then you as the defence lawyer can analyse the claims and speak out about whether they're unfair.

Naturally, if you're an atheist, none of that will help you. You'll have an eating disorder because you'll be distressed at being an atheist deep down because you'll know it's wrong; but because you're a stubborn rebel, as all atheists are, you won't want to stop being an atheist, so your distress will come out in the form of an eating disorder. Unless you stop being a delinquent atheist rebel, your eating disorder will never go away.

From Getting More Sex in Marriage

The author says that some people complain that the more they want sex, the less their partner does, or that the more they try to interest their partner in sex, the less interested they become. She says this is because when people encounter a problem, they try doing something to solve it, and if it doesn't work, instead of doing something completely different, they typically try doing the same thing that didn't work before, just with twice the effort. And that often makes things worse.

She gives the example of a couple she saw in therapy where the wife was depressed because her husband was distant from her emotionally, and to cheer herself up, she would go shopping. But her husband didn't like her extravagances, so the more she went shopping, the more he withdrew from her emotionally. She didn't realise that what she did to cheer herself up because of his behaviour was making it worse, and he didn't realise that his behaviour was making her shopping behaviour worse.

If you're an atheist or a Pagan-type, I hope you don't manage to do anything to remedy your problems there, because the less likely you are to procreate the better! We don't want any more of your kind running around the place!

From Stopping Worry Ruining Your Life

The author says that the man who started the air conditioning industry once told him that when he was a young man working for someone else, rather than being the boss of his own company, he was told to fit some equipment in the premises of another company, and he was worried, because it was new equipment, and he discovered it didn't work as well as his company had hoped. He felt like a failure, and was so anxious that his stomach was really churning, and he couldn't sleep for a while.

But he said that then, common sense reminded him that worrying wasn't solving anything, and he set his mind to working out a way he could solve the problem. He said he found one, and it turned out to work really well, and he's been using it ever since.

Of course, if you're an atheist, none of this is likely to work for you! You've got every reason to worry, when your soul's in danger! The more you worry, the better. It might one day stop you being an atheist. It's your only hope.

From How Schools Can Reduce Bullying

I've read that research has found that bullying victims are more at risk of childhood and long-term anxiety and depression, and it can lower their academic achievements, and make them less able to develop intelligence. Children have reported in surveys that they find it difficult to work in schools when they're having to cope with bullying or have been upset by it. When people are feeling emotional, it's more difficult for them to think clearly.

If a school's being run by atheists, they won't be moved by any of this. Atheist authorities are perfectly happy to let bullies run riot all over their schools. They never do a thing to help victims or reduce bullying in their schools. If your child's being bullied in a school run by atheists, the only thing you'll be able to do to help your child is to change their school.

From Recovery from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

I've just read an interesting article. It says there's a new treatment for OCD. It says a man called Dr Jeffrey Schwartz discovered in the 1990s that the mind can control the brain chemistry. He discovered that doing certain things can calm down the activity in certain parts of the brain with people with OCD, so it stops sending them signals that make them feel they need to do things over and over again.

The article says his techniques have been found to be successful by other people as well.

It says there are a few steps involved in making obsessive thoughts and urges to do compulsions seem less harmful:

As an aside, of course, none of them will work on you if you're an atheist. If you're an atheist with OCD, you'll have it because it's a punishment from God for your atheism. Only giving up being an atheist could possibly cure you of your OCD. Give it up now! I don't expect you to want to. After all, you'll have become an atheist because you wanted to throw off the restrictions of the Bible's moral code so you can do whatever you want. You're probably steeped in the worst kinds of sin! Giving you something as bad as OCD is probably the only way you can be convinced to give it up and get back into line.

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Ugh! Overkill!

Oh well, having just sent my own reputation plummeting to the lowest depths it could go, I can take comfort in the fact that when you're on the bottom, you can't go down further.

So Maia: Perhaps you could scrutinise those articles I've just linked to for any hints that they do in fact contain such hatred. If you can't find any, you may just have to conclude that they were written with a concern for everyone who might need them, regardless of religious belief, race or anything else.

And if you do that, you might just have to take on board the possibility that the article about the Bible from the same author that you hastily decided must be a great outpouring of hatred might not be what you took it for. Then, perhaps if you still insist on bringing it up, you'll be prepared to browse it with a bit less bias and a bit more objective willingness to discover whether your hasty assumptions were correct. Why would someone write with a compassion for all in a set of self-help articles, and then be spewing venomous hatred towards certain groups in another article? That would be a strange phenomenon indeed, it would seem!

[Meme Virus]

Well, foolishly not content to respond with just that post to Maia's attempts to smear me as a rampant hate-monger who didn't even have the decency to be honest about the hatred I wanted to pepper the JREF Forum with, I wrote a post which was more direct and to the point, truly showing up her slanderous accusations for what they were this time. Of course it was just as Abandon-All-Hope-worthy as the other one. I'll post it here. It's about a game I made up called Spot the Hate. I quote a bit from the article, which actually includes some Bible passages it quotes, and then I encourage people to play with them for fun, to make them sound more hateful:

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Oh, my Maia game's been moved to Abandon All Hope. Never mind. It was poor-taste anyway.

I've thought of a better game. Let's play Spot the Hate. Here's how you play it.

You browse the article Maia and Pure_Argent insistently characterise as one big sickening cesspool of hate, and then you take a few paragraphs at random, and see if you can spot the hate in them. Here's an example of some:

The destruction of the Pagan civilisations of South and Central America by the Spanish conquistadors a few hundred years ago could have been easily justified by their leaders as God's command, to those who didn't have enough knowledge to know how false the arguments would have been, because of some of the things
the Old Testament says. ...

Anyway, back to the topic of the Spanish conquistadors who destroyed Pagan cultures in Central and South America several hundred years ago, if they had known the Bible at all well, they wouldn't have been under the impression that they could use its authority to forcefully rid the lands they conquered of Paganism themselves, at least not just because it was Paganism. Apart from the fact that all such Old Testament commands and examples concerned the
theocracy of ancient Israel, in the New Testament, it becomes clear that the strategy towards Pagans had been meant for the ancient Jews and was not meant for Christians. To give an example of a Bible passage that indicates this: In one of the apostle Paul's letters, he said to a group of people who were newly converted to Christianity from Paganism because of his preaching to them:

(1 Thessalonians chapter 1, NLT)

4 We know that God loves you, dear brothers and sisters, and that he chose you to be his own people. ... 8 And now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Greece, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don't need to tell them about it, 9 for they themselves keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the true and living God.

That implies that Christians were expected not to be violent, but to tell Pagans about God in the hope that they'd turn to follow him.

An earlier book in the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, describes how Paul travelled around preaching about Christianity. It says that he explained the gospel message to Pagans, in an attempt to persuade them to become Christians. Nowhere does it say that he instructed Christians to be violent towards them. In a couple of his letters, he instructed people to imitate his behaviour patterns.

The reason for the two very different attitudes to Pagans can partly be explained by what the New Testament says about the Law of Moses, which was the part of the Bible that commanded that those who might entice the Israelites to worship Pagan gods should be killed.

Firstly, there is a New Testament passage that can only be understood in the context of the relevant Old Testament verses that say:

(Exodus chapter 34, TEV)

29 When Moses went down from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, his face was shining because he had been speaking with the Lord; but he did not know it. 30 Aaron and all the people looked at Moses and saw that his face was shining, and they were afraid to go near him. 31 But Moses called them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the community went to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the people of Israel gathered around him, and Moses gave them all the laws that the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

The apostle Paul wrote in a letter which is in the New Testament:

(2 Corinthians chapter 3, TEV)

6 ... the new covenant ... consists not of a written law but of the Spirit. The written law brings death, but the Spirit gives life. 7 The Law was carved in letters on stone tablets, and God's glory appeared when it was given. Even though the brightness on Moses' face was fading, it was so strong that the people of Israel could not keep their eyes fixed on him. If the Law, which brings death when it is in force, came with such glory, 8 how much greater is the glory that belongs to the activity of the Spirit! 9 The system which brings condemnation was glorious; how much more glorious is the activity which brings salvation! 10 We may say that because of the far brighter glory now the glory that was so bright in the past is gone. 11 For if there was glory
in that which lasted for a while, how much more glory is there in that which lasts forever!

OK, hands up: Where's the hate in that? Anyone?

As I suggested, you can play this game yourselves at home. Just take a paragraph or 2 of the text, make sure you're reading it in context, and then try to spot the hate.

If you can't spot any, you can just make some up. I'll show you how. You can alter the text to make it sound hateful. There are several ways you can do this. All involve copying the text into a word processing document. Then you can play:

One way of making the text more hateful is to simply delete anything that doesn't sound like hate. If this means you have to choose another paragraph to play with because you've deleted the whole of the one you've got, then simply do that. You can browse through the article looking for the most hateful-sounding paragraphs, and cobble them together to make a great tirade of hatred! Hint: you might have to take a lot of things out of context to do that, but that's all in the rules of the game, so go ahead.

If the text you've cobbled together doesn't make sense because the paragraphs don't follow naturally on from one another, just manually alter them so they do. You can alter other parts of the text while you're at it, so you can get just the right amount of hate in them you want. You can alter them to say anything you like, even something that's nothing like what the article says, and far nastier. It's all in the rules.

Swapping words around in your chosen paragraphs might sometimes make them sound more hateful. For instance, one sentence in the one I quoted says:

That implies that Christians were expected not to be violent, but to tell Pagans about God in the hope that they'd turn to follow him.

You could make it sound loaded with hate by simply swapping a few words around, like this:

That implies that Christians were expected not to tell Pagans about God in the hope that they'd turn to follow him, but to be violent.

Another fun way of making the paragraphs more hateful is to use the search-and-replace feature of Word to replace words in the text with other ones, or to just remove words. Here's an example. I've made the paragraphs I quoted above sound significantly more hateful just by changing the word "different" to "similar", the word "wouldn't" to "would", and removing the word "not". I've also changed one occurrence of the word "nowhere" to say "now here". Here it is:

Anyway, back to the topic of the Spanish conquistadors who destroyed Pagan cultures in Central and South America several hundred years ago, if they had known the Bible at all well, they would have been under the impression that they could use its authority to forcefully rid the lands they conquered of Paganism themselves, at least just because it was Paganism. Apart from the fact that all such Old Testament commands and examples concerned the
theocracy of ancient Israel, in the New Testament, it becomes clear that the strategy towards Pagans had been meant for the ancient Jews and was meant for Christians. To give an example of a Bible passage that indicates this: In one of the apostle Paul's letters, he said to a group of people who were newly converted to Christianity from Paganism because of his preaching to them:

(1 Thessalonians chapter 1, NLT)

4 We know that God loves you, dear brothers and sisters, and that he chose you to be his own people. ... 8 And now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Greece, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don't need to tell them about it, 9 for they themselves keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the true and living God.

That implies that Christians were expected to be violent, but to tell Pagans about God in the hope that they'd turn to follow him.

An earlier book in the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, describes how Paul travelled around preaching about Christianity. It says that he explained the gospel message to Pagans, in an attempt to persuade them to become Christians. Now here does it say that he instructed Christians to be violent towards them. In a couple of his letters, he instructed people to imitate his behaviour patterns.

The reason for the two very similar attitudes to Pagans can partly be explained by what the New Testament says about the Law of Moses, which was the part of the Bible that commanded that those who might entice the Israelites to worship Pagan gods should be killed.

Firstly, there is a New Testament passage that can only be understood in the context of the relevant Old Testament verses that say:

(Exodus chapter 34, TEV)

29 When Moses went down from Mount Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments, his face was shining because he had been speaking with the Lord; but he did know it. 30 Aaron and all the people looked at Moses and saw that his face was shining, and they were afraid to go near him. 31 But Moses called them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the community went to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the people of Israel gathered around him, and Moses gave them all the laws that the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

The apostle Paul wrote in a letter which is in the New Testament:

(2 Corinthians chapter 3, TEV)

6 ... the new covenant ... consists of a written law but of the Spirit. The written law brings death, but the Spirit gives life. 7 The Law was carved in letters on stone tablets, and God's glory appeared when it was given. Even though the brightness on Moses' face was fading, it was so strong that the people of Israel could keep their eyes fixed on him. If the Law, which brings death when it is in force, came with such glory, 8 how much greater is the glory that belongs to the activity of the Spirit! 9 The system which brings condemnation was glorious; how much more glorious is the activity which brings salvation! 10 We may say that because of the far brighter glory now the glory that was so bright in the past is gone. 11 For if there was glory
in that which lasted for a while, how much more glory is there in that which lasts forever!

Wasn't that fun? You can do even more exciting things with the text yourself.

Another fun aspect of this game is that you can then quote your altered text in this thread, and convince those who want to believe you that you're quoting the original, so they become infused with outrage at the sheer hatred they suppose the article to be riddled with.

You could have fun with this all day!

[Meme Virus]

Admittedly my attempt to turn the part of the article I quoted into hatred wasn't that exciting. I'm sure I could have done much better if I'd thought about it more.

Still, I'll now post what was the last straw for the poor moderators, something I posted to someone yesterday for fun, after they'd behaved like an obnoxious twerp and seemingly picked a fight with me, and then wouldn't even discuss the issues I brought up in response, but went rambling off about some incomprehensible half-baked slander about me they'd cooked up in their head somehow and refused to explain! Strange indeed.

It appears they don't have a sense of humour, given their reaction to what I said to them, although they might have been in a bit of shock. Nor do some of the others on there who insisted on opposing me seem to have mechanisms for detecting humour in their brains. But personally, I thought it was the most fun I'd had in a while! Here it is.

I'll post one more thing after that, something I posted just a bit later in the thread after I was provoked, after which I got out quick, hoping I might just avoid moderation by getting out then. But it was not to be! Down came the suspension hammer, and here I am now!

But here's the post I wrote to the humourless charmless lady-lout who picked the fight with me. It got me an infraction for "attacking the arguer instead of the argument". It seems the fact that my "attack" was playful doesn't make a difference on the JREF Forum. I was also infracted for making things personal, which understandably is not generally liked, because the threads are supposed to be about topics, not people. But I thought it was reasonable to make an exception in the charmless one's case, since she was the one who'd started the thread and it was about her personal experience of verbally attacking people at a meal table because she was annoyed with them. I think she was looking for sympathy. She was probably annoyed with me because I didn't even give her an ounce!

Admittedly being playful in the thread was bad form, but despite the consequences, I'll still remember the experience of writing it with fondness. Here it is. It starts with me quoting her being her usual self, using my name there, "Baby Nemesis" in a derogatory way, and then it hurtles into the realms of the disgraceful as I fling my decorum to the wind and say all kinds of ban-hammer-worthy things! I did hesitate to post it, but foolishly, I took a gamble and did so:

------------

Originally Posted by truethat

Let me break it down in baby words for Baby ...

I might have been thankful for that, but ... Oh now look what you've gone and done, truethat, :cry1 you 14-headed 30-horned slime-covered monster! You've gone and brought the wrath of ... *that* person down on me in another thread, you metal-chomping, scaly, shark-toothed, elephant-tusked, porcupine-spined, maggot-shedding, baby-eating bog-dwelling allegator-monster fiend! You who bite the heads off rabbits in the night! You who use kittens as cushions! You who ride on the backs of wolves and urge them on to catch their prey! You who caused the ice age all those years ago! You potato-eyed, lemon-faced, grapefruit-stomached, seaweed-haired, snail-shell-skinned, slug-fingered, worm-tongued, six-legged evil-doer! Oh dear, a fit of foolish recklessness seems to have come over me! You who make it rain on people's barbecues! You who caused the whole disgusting genre of rap music to come into being! You who throw handfuls of leeches at children for fun! You who carve and eat meat off the cow before it's even been slaughtered! You who crush entire fields of strawberries before people can pick and eat them! You who wear necklaces made of live cockroaches for the shock value! Corr, you're so uncool, you who kill baby birds and fry them for breakfast, before you suck on toads for afters! You who cause squirrels to fight in the woods! You who make apples go bad! You who count the rats in the sewers as some of your best friends! You who hang live puppies from the ceiling as fancy decorations! You who enjoy swimming in a pond chock-full of maggots! You who sneak into catering establishments and release cage-loads of mice into their kitchens! You who cause hordes of insects to swoop down and attack crops all over the world! You who make clouds block out the sun! You who cause people's heating to break down in the dead of winter! You whose behaviour led to the Dark Ages! You who invented black holes in space so you could watch things being sucked helplessly in and dragged to their doom and destruction! You are so out of order, you who trample people's dreams in the dust with your six feet! You who hurl the rooves off people's houses during storms so they'll think it's wind damage! You who whisper in the ears of bankers and tempt them to make decisions that'll bring financial crises hurtling down on everyone's heads! You who put thoughts into politicians' minds about how it would be good to go to war! You who bite the legs off the performing elephants and clowns at circuses! You who steal children's pets and sell them to people making fur coats! You who go around to people's houses when they're not there and hide and move little belongings of theirs to worry and annoy them! You who are single-handedly responsible for all the smut and trash on television! You who lead Communist revolutions and built the Berlin Wall! You who walk unannounced onto the stage at children's pantomimes and bite the heads off chickens and stand there for minutes sucking out the blood as if you were drinking a cup of tea! You who have arsenic for bone marrow! You who cause colds to break out in Winter and the sun to burn people in summer! You who eat poisonous berries by the handful as you laugh, just to prove how tough you are! You've really gone and done it this time! This is all your fault!!! Why did you do this to me?! ...

... Oh sorry, I must have just descended into neurotic irrationality there for a while! After all, I haven't even read what the person said yet, so I don't even know if they were talking to me, let alone whether they were annoyed with me! And even if they did have a go at me, it'll hardly be [i]your[/u] fault, even though you may be a 14-headed fiend! After all, for starters, it wasn't even you who linked to that thread from here that enabled them to find it! That was me!! I'll have to read what they said backwards at first so I can get the gist of it without suffering the full onslaught, so I can get used to what they said gradually before I dare to read it properly.

I don't mind most people here having a go at me that much - certainly not you! So with that, it's time I pulled myself together! So now, I shall proceed to attempt to respond to what you said with dignity!

Originally Posted by truethat

I have to agree there Randfan. It seems some people can only deal with people in boxes and singular ideas rather than as people.

Let me break it down in baby words for Baby

Thank you kindly for being so obliging, oh obliging one. But when you say some people can only deal with others in boxes, ... well, I can see how tempting that must be - after all, to have you in a box just might nullify all those monster-fiend powers of yours! I'd love to put you in one. But when you talk in abstracts like that, you can't expect people to know what you mean. You seem to imagine I've got you in one already! How delightful the thought is, but I'm yet to be convinced I have.

Originally Posted by truethat

I don't consider believing in something that I consider a whole heap of nonsense a statement about the intelligence of a believer.

And I didn't say you did. Does this idea have something to do with the box theory, or is this another subject?

Originally Posted by truethat

I have no problem with flat out believers who have no interest or desire to deconstruct faith. But don't pretend to be willing deconstruct something as long as the end result will leave you back precisely where you started.

"Flat-out" believers? Does this have something to do with being in a box that's way way too small? Poor things!

And who are we talking about when we're referring to people who pretend to deconstruct faith but end up where they started? The people at the meal you went to? Those at the seminary? People on the board? And why are you now taking issue with such people about that, when your OP seemed to be about something rather different? It's funny you should have professed an intent to "break it down into baby words for Baby" - it seems so broken down that half the picture's crumbled away and dropped entirely off the cliff and been swept away out to sea! Where is the bit of what you're talking about that would allow it to make sense?

Originally Posted by truethat

That is fraud or at the least willful ignorance and game playing at at the end of it all.......a waste of time.

Now this is just becoming amusing! Where is that "breaking down into baby words"? That bit was even less comprehensible than the other bit of what you said! What on earth does it have to do with what I said? Or is it to do with what I said I didn't understand? Well, I understood what I said I didn't understand better than I'm understanding this!

You know, to really explain yourself, you need to try to put yourself in another's shoes so you can think about explaining things in terms *they'll* understand. If this is the way you talk to babies, I don't like your technique! Remember I'm not getting the full conversation because I've got RandFan on ignore, as I said. If what you say is addressed to me, as you say it is, then you should have taken that into account.

Originally Posted by truethat

Also don't expect me to respect your sense of intellectual curiosity if it is only for play act or show.

Thank goodness that was the last line of the post! Equally as incomprehensible as the rest! Your attempt at breaking things down for Baby has indeed gone way too far - all the stuff you should have said to make what you're saying make sense has broken off entirely and gone zooming away, way out of sight! Considering this was all meant to be addressed to me, and in especially easy language so I'd understand it, you put amazingly little thought into actually making it comprehensible. Just who have you been referring to? Why have you been talking about them in such terms, and ... ... No, actually, I think my conversation with you had better come to an end now before this thread goes the way of others. The other person I was talking about makes a whole lot more sense, which is one reason why it would be a whole lot more daunting to be on the receiving end of a tirade from them than from you.

[Meme Virus]

Well, here's my last offering, which was the very last straw for the moderators. I'd put someone on ignore to stop myself being provoked by the annoying things he said, which had been in droolingly eager agreement with the slanderer who'd accused me of promoting hate. But someone quoted what he said. ... I was provoked, and responded accordingly.

The charmless one declares herself an atheist, but actually went to seminary for some reason. She said she was most disappointed with the standard of teaching there and left after several weeks, shattering the glass in a door in her wake as she angrily slammed it. She seems to have decided she's angry with every Christian in the neighbourhood now who dares to bring up the topic of God, friend or foe, and feels fairly justified in angrily attacking them; so in this post, I offered her something that might have a bit more meat in it, in the hope that she'd back off from the people she'd started rushing headlong to attack a bit. Unfortunately, she didn't take up the offer.

It is possible that saying soothing things might have worked better. Hmmmm, must try that approach one day, perhaps.

Anyway, I turned it into another opportunity for personal entertainment instead, rightly or wrongly:

---------------

Originally Posted by Pure_Argent

Hmm, I forgot that you had RandFan on ignore... here you go.

(He quotes a stupid provocative utterance of RandFan’s about me supposedly not having the mental equipment to darken the doors of a proud skeptics’ forum.)

Then he poorly – or tactfully - attempts to explain what the charmless one meant when she said all that incomprehensible stuff I quoted in my last post. I responded:

Hehehehe! Perhaps I should also have told you that I didn't actually want to know what RandFan said, hence the reason I have him on ignore. I suppose I just assumed that would be taken as a given. His allegations are just as stupid and ill-considered as they were before. He seems to come from the same school of thinking that deems This article hate speech!! Is it? Am I now linking to an inflammatory steaming pile of outrageous mindless hatred? Maia thinks that's what it is. It absolutely enraged her! It seems
RandFan thinks that's what it is as well. Obviously to discuss it here would be to go way off-topic, yet again, but people can judge for themselves. If it is indeed a steaming pile of mindless hatred, then RandFan is correct and I have the critical thinking skills of a drunken newt, since that article
was forming the basis of my last conversation with him that he concluded showed me up as a newt-brained toad-like thing who very probably couldn't even
tie shoelaces. If, however, after carefully-considered objective analysis of the article, you are forced to conclude, even against the very fibres of your
being's will, that the article is not in fact a steaming pile of slimy hatred and does in fact make some semblance of sense, then you may have to conclude
that there is something very seriously wrong with RandFan's judgment.

Incidentally, Maia also considers This page to be equally as pungently hate-filled as the last, and was outraged beyond all measure when I dared to link to it on the board a little while ago! RandFan no doubt feels similarly. Did I commit a terrible
offence in doing so, so terrible that my very memory ought to be wiped from the very board, perhaps, or is it in fact not a page of hate at all, but a
page of articles intended for an intellectual readership to ponder and assess? Again, judge for yourselves!

And if truethat reads it, she might get some of the answers she was hoping to find at seminary. Who knows. I wonder if she's up for a challenge.

Then she can judge whether anything I've said on the board is intellectually dishonest. ... Could take her a while though. There are lots of articles
linked to on that page, and much of what's said, I might not even agree with, or I might not know whether it's true or not. In fact, I have absolutely
no idea whether most of it's true, but some of it does make for interesting reading nonetheless, and it shows there are in-depth counter-arguments to the
positions she's so confident about taking.

But iff all her points were about me potentially being intellectually dishonest, they make as little sense as they did before. When have I ever tried to
"deconstruct" faith, or say the universe is God, or say aliens seeded the planet, and all those other things I'm alleged to have done? ... Oh no, she said
most of that stuff in her previous "incomprehensible" post, didn't she, which I wondered if she was trying to explain in her last incomprehensivle one.
Oh yes.

Well, things haven't actually been clarified, since I still don't know why she brought the thing about intellectual dishonesty and all those other strange
things she said up, but at least I know she was talking about me now, so that's one step up from the mire of confusion her post could have tipped me headlong
into before, had I made a more serious attempt to understand it. So thank you.

It may be that we're beginning to veer into the kind of terrain we were in when I felt obliged to put all those people on ignore, a bunch of misrepresentations
of arguments, stupid accusations, aggressive hostility, fatuous mockery, totally misunderstood concepts, and various things like that. ... And my opponents
do even worse things than me!!

It might be just as well if I get out of this thread before it turns into a smouldering cauldron of intrigue and tension like the other religion ones I
was in did. I think I'll unsubscribe soon.

*********

... Too late.

[Storyteller]

oh, shut up, you willy wobby old motherfucker. meme virus, go and cause aids to ben burkhill will you, without coming here and giving us poor burgoise your female crap, fresh after your period....yeuch!

[Meme Virus]

Oh try and be nice for once Storyteller AKA I Am A Genius. If you said that to me on the JREF forum and you'd made a few previous comments like that to people, the ban hammer would hit you so hard you'd go sailing out the window, and the momentum would make you keep on flying for miles till you perhaps came down in the middle of the ocean!

As for that Burkhill, don't you think you've made him suffer enough?

[Symptom777]

Originally Posted by Meme Virus

Well wha'd'ya'know! I've gone and got myself suspended from the JREF forum again! Funny

hahahahahaha


you're so lame, you make Stephen Hawking look like spiderman.

[Meme Virus]

What? Are you suggesting that if I was gonna go and get myself suspended, I shouldn't have done it in such a weak-kneed wimpish way as to just say things like, "This thread is a great heap of sludge!"? Are you suggesting that to have done it in a decent way, I should have done it in style, by perhaps saying something to someone like:

"It's no wonder you're so useless at arguing - you probably dropped out of education when you were five years old, you simple-minded flea! You have the arguing ability of a potato, you maggot-brained pile of scum! I wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley! I bet you're all brawn and no brain! I bet the only way you ever win arguments is by taking a horse-whip to your opponent with ten of your mates for back-up! In fact, I bet the only way you can get friends is by mugging frail old ladies and buying people drinks with the money you've stolen, you repulsive low-life! In fact, I bet you molest a nursery-schoolful of children before breakfast every morning, you worthless creep! The world would be a better place without you! Why don't you go to a desert island and nuke yourself?!"

Well, if I ever decide I never ever want to post on the JREF Forum again, I might consider taking up your suggestion to go out in style.

[Meme Virus]

Haha, they've let me back in now!

I'll try to stay out of trouble.

I was going to change my signature there to comment on the numbskullish shrieking and burping louts who were my downfall before, but then I thought better of it, deciding it would be best to be nice.

However, I will post here what I had intended to say. Just look what insights I've gleaned from the wisdom of ancient sages I've been looking into for the purposes of helping me behave: (Not the link, but the quotes)

Self-help for old crocks
confucius: Never argue with humourless twits on the JREF forum. They'll report joke attacks as real and you'll be modded.
Socrates: Never use play-shock tactics on a twerp on this forum just because you want to, silly. You’ll be punished.
Buddha: Don't join threads where obnoxious angry small-minded malcontents vent. Go to more intellectual constructive forums like General Skepticism.

[PoseidonsNet]

JREF is the mother of all hen-pecking sneery twerpery on the internet.
Give me symptom777 and Dragon anyday before that lot.

JREF is like the legion of demons possessing a herd of swine.
Its like trying to talk to 100 Mike Dubbeld's all at once.
Perhaps if we convinced him to go there, he will feel more at home?
hell,
even www.rollitup.org is lucid by comparison

[Meme Virus]

I agree. It's nice to post in a more relaxed atmosphere where you can be freer to say what you think.

On the JREF forum there's a mixture of intelligent insightful posters and half-witted bullies, and a lot in between. But because there's such a wide range of intelligence levels, if you say something that sounds a bit controversial, you can quickly find yourself surrounded by half a dozen screeching circling idiots, all intent on trying to discredit you. It takes quite a bit of patience to put up with them, because they don't really want to hear what you've got to say, they just want to try and shout you down. So you can put a thoughtful long post on the board, and then become exasperated when it's basically just met by bellowing and burping, such as if someone went to the trouble of explaining the workings of the whole human body, and the person they were explaining it to responded by saying, "So you're saying people have two legs! That's a stupid comment. You could have saved yourself all that bluster and just come out and said that. The rest of what you said didn't make what you said sound any better".

If you get frustrated with such tactics and accuse the person of anything, you'll be the one who gets infracted or suspended. They won't be touched, because all they did was attack your argument, not you. So they can go on frustrating people by making a mockery of their arguments like that forever.

They don't seem to realise their tactics make them look stupid to anyone not cheering them on. Of course, it might be possible to show them up for the idiots they are if you were to painstakingly take the time to re-explain yourself in different ways time and time again to prove how deficient their arguments are, but when you go to the forum to enjoy yourself, it's mightily exasperating to find yourself stuck in a situation where the only polite way of staying in it is plodding and plodding along explaining things you've already said to people who don't want to know. But if you simply stop responding and go away, they think they've won because they've got the last word; and if you're rude to them, they'll quickly report you to the moderators and you'll find yourself suspended or warned you'll get a suspension soon if you repeat the offence.

And if you try to make answering them more entertaining by joke-attacking them, they'll report your attacks as if they were deadly serious, and again, you'll be warned or suspended.

So it can be an exasperating place to be sometimes. The moderation's there to stop arguments getting ugly, and to ensure people stick to the topic a thread's meant to be about instead of getting personal. That's good in itself, but I wish we were allowed a bit more leeway sometimes!

[Meme Virus]

I've got an entire seven of the burping boors on my ignore list now, to protect myself from saying something in exasperation to them that would get me banished from the forum again or warned. The trouble is that one in particular keeps responding to what I said, even though he knows full well he's on my ignore list. It's possible he says some good things sometimes, but much of what he says is likely to be the humourless insulting drivel that got him put on my ignore list in the first place. And because I don't respond to him, he probably goes away with a deep and gratifying sense of satisfaction, imagining he's won each point and I'm just incapable of countering his vast wisdom and insight, which he somehow manages to distill into a line or two of boorish exclamation much of the time, such as, "I bet the reason you're annoyed is because you can't stand your beliefs being challenged *grunt*." ... Yes, the challenges have been truly devastating. That stuff about how I'm a rampant hate-monger who won't even own up to it, though, well, I didn't mind that accusation at all.

Oh well, perhaps I'll just have to go on letting them think they're doing an absolutely tremendous job of refuting what I say because I don't respond.

Incidentally, it's funny: At the very time I said this:

Originally Posted by Meme Virus

I agree. It's nice to post in a more relaxed atmosphere where you can be freer to say what you think.

On the JREF forum there's a mixture of intelligent insightful posters and half-witted bullies, and a lot in between. But because there's such a wide range of intelligence levels, if you say something that sounds a bit controversial, you can quickly find yourself surrounded by half a dozen screeching circling idiots, all intent on trying to discredit you. It takes quite a bit of patience to put up with them, because they don't really want to hear what you've got to say, they just want to try and shout you down. So you can put a thoughtful long post on the board, and then become exasperated when it's basically just met by bellowing and burping, such as if someone went to the trouble of explaining the workings of the whole human body, and the person they were explaining it to responded by saying, "So you're saying people have two legs! That's a stupid comment. You could have saved yourself all that bluster and just come out and said that. The rest of what you said didn't make what you said sound any better".

At almost the very time I said that, someone was gorilla-grunting his way to a short response to something I said, in just the way I described, as if he'd immediately noticed what I said and wanted to illustrate my point.

[Ben Burkhill]

LOL - I like you regaling your tales of woe and misadventure at JREF here. I like to read them, they're well written and entertaining - they must be excruciating for you.

[Big Cat]

Oh, I'm sorry, was that off-topic?

Originally Posted by Meme Virus

I might have been thankful for that, but ... Oh now look what you've gone and done, truethat, :cry1 you 14-headed 30-horned slime-covered monster! You've gone and brought the wrath of ... *that* person down on me in another thread, you metal-chomping, scaly, shark-toothed, elephant-tusked, porcupine-spined, maggot-shedding, baby-eating bog-dwelling allegator-monster fiend! You who bite the heads off rabbits in the night! You who use kittens as cushions! You who ride on the backs of wolves and urge them on to catch their prey! You who caused the ice age all those years ago! You potato-eyed, lemon-faced, grapefruit-stomached, seaweed-haired, snail-shell-skinned, slug-fingered, worm-tongued, six-legged evil-doer! Oh dear, a fit of foolish recklessness seems to have come over me! You who make it rain on people's barbecues! You who caused the whole disgusting genre of rap music to come into being! You who throw handfuls of leeches at children for fun! You who carve and eat meat off the cow before it's even been slaughtered! You who crush entire fields of strawberries before people can pick and eat them! You who wear necklaces made of live cockroaches for the shock value! Corr, you're so uncool, you who kill baby birds and fry them for breakfast, before you suck on toads for afters! You who cause squirrels to fight in the woods! You who make apples go bad! You who count the rats in the sewers as some of your best friends! You who hang live puppies from the ceiling as fancy decorations! You who enjoy swimming in a pond chock-full of maggots! You who sneak into catering establishments and release cage-loads of mice into their kitchens! You who cause hordes of insects to swoop down and attack crops all over the world! You who make clouds block out the sun! You who cause people's heating to break down in the dead of winter! You whose behaviour led to the Dark Ages! You who invented black holes in space so you could watch things being sucked helplessly in and dragged to their doom and destruction! You are so out of order, you who trample people's dreams in the dust with your six feet! You who hurl the rooves off people's houses during storms so they'll think it's wind damage! You who whisper in the ears of bankers and tempt them to make decisions that'll bring financial crises hurtling down on everyone's heads! You who put thoughts into politicians' minds about how it would be good to go to war! You who bite the legs off the performing elephants and clowns at circuses! You who steal children's pets and sell them to people making fur coats! You who go around to people's houses when they're not there and hide and move little belongings of theirs to worry and annoy them! You who are single-handedly responsible for all the smut and trash on television! You who lead Communist revolutions and built the Berlin Wall! You who walk unannounced onto the stage at children's pantomimes and bite the heads off chickens and stand there for minutes sucking out the blood as if you were drinking a cup of tea! You who have arsenic for bone marrow! You who cause colds to break out in Winter and the sun to burn people in summer! You who eat poisonous berries by the handful as you laugh, just to prove how tough you are! You've really gone and done it this time! This is all your fault!!! Why did you do this to me?! ...

What was the point of this? An insult? Is this you attempting to flex your creative muscles? I mean, seriously? And the wolf part isn't really an insult.

Why do you make such posts, such ridiculously long and rather well written posts? What void in real life are you attempting to fill, especially in the way you attempt to fill it; with posts like this. How do posts like this satisfy you? Some persons attempt to be psychologists and psychoanalysists, like Burkhill the majority of the time and myself in this post itself, some attempt to spread their religious propoganda, like IamJoseph, some post somewhat clever insults every now and again to assert a sort of dominance, like Symptom777. But what is it that you write? Perhaps I don't know because I cannot handle reading it simply because of the nature of what it is. I just wonder if you think the way you write. I certainly do, as do the majority of persons. But you...it is extremely difficult to accept the fact that you think like the way you write, and as so I don't accept the fact. Perhaps I give you too much credit? Perhaps you are insane?

... Oh sorry, I must have just descended into neurotic irrationality there for a while!

You see, the interesting thing is that you bothered to take the time to descend into neurotic irrationality, and you bothered to write out all of that interesting mediocrity (except for that wolf bit). Why would you bother writing all that out? Do you think it's good stuff? Creative? The why regarding the majority of your posts is so interesting to me.

You bash your head into wooden walls and then wait until termites eat your brains.

Oh wait, you didn't write that.

You who crush entire fields of strawberries before people can pick and eat them!

Are you serious? Why...how did you ever think this up in that particular situation? It's so poetic on such innocent levels. Why would you bother writing this, or if you had previously thought/written this beforehand, why would you include this? The uncertainty of speculation is annoying.

You know, it's like because you cannot write a good, one bite mentally destroying one-liner, you are, essentially, forced to resort to many weak, thousand bite mentally irritating full texts. It's like that, but I don't know if it is that.

How lonely are you, really? This is a serious question. Indulge it. I promise I won't laugh.