Dicky-Pedia: The Rant.

Well, this one should theoretically be easy, since good ol' Dicky-Pedia should do all the heavy lifting.

Well, I constructed that little beut as a Swiss army knife of arguments, that I think are handy, and need to be kept at the ready.

And, as I sort of explained in a previous post, by having them all inter-linked, and linked to a bunch of my earlier rants, and thus interlinking a bunch of those, it's now a sort of Swiss army knife of Swiss army knives.

Very handy.


And very handy to never have to type them sumbitches again.
I was really tired of having to answer the same shit every time a new theist pops up on RD.net, (or any other forum for that matter) who thinks they've just got this killer knockdown argument that I've never heard before....when of course, I've heard every theist argument that ever was.

And aside from a couple (none spring to mind, but I'm being generous) they're mostly quite rancid.
Another reason it's a pain to answer them anymore.

Anyhoo, religion.

The whole religious mess starts, when people confuse the transcendent with the supernatural.

Then their mind locks in on the thing, and it becomes sacred, or holy, and from there, one can't seem to talk 'em down from it.

And you either get the knee-jerk shit of "blasphemy", this, or "you're going to Hell", that, OR you get the mind-numbing deluded shell game that is "sophisticated theology".

At least the former first two are honest in their irrationality, the smugness you get from the "sophisticated theology", crowd is just fucking baffling.
They think this horseshit is logical, and it's really infested with fallacies from top to bottom.
It's an ordeal to engage these people.

Whether it be the knee-jerk type, or the pseudo logicians, the argument pattern really boils down to my little illustration here.

I can't decide what's more irritating to debate, the full-blown theists, or the "spirituality", types.
Like, okay, you've seen the God of the desert is a nasty customer, so you've abandoned Judeo-Christianity, so now you want to "be spiritual".

Which would be fine, if it stayed as vague and waffly as that, and sometimes it does.
But no, sooner or later, you start to get the pseudo-certain smugness that you get with "sophisticated theology", and it morphs into "sophisticated spirituality".

And with nothing to back either up.
Nothing.

Okay, okay, you maybe had some numinous experience, and that sent you down the whole transcendent/supernatural fork in the road, okay.

But why that always leads to the embrace of either an ancient orthodoxy, or self-made smug solipsism, I don't know.

Hey folks, have your numinous experience, and just be happy with that, why can'tcha?

No, it's got to become an orthodoxy, and the orthodoxy has to spawn a little club, and the club has to get political, and then all the nasty shit starts.

Just because someone went to trip-out city one night.

Fine, go to trip out city, kiddies.
But keep the numinous numinous, and the transcendent transcendent.

There's nothing numinous or transcendent about an abortion clinic bombing.
Or waving "AIDS kills fags", signs at a funeral.

That's just the same old petty human bullshit.

But it all hides behind faith.

And faith has been made a virtue somehow in our culture.

So much so, you have some secularists and/or atheists espousing "faith in faith".
Those people are as frustrating to debate with as the "sophisticated theologians".
No, worse.
At least the "sophisticated theologians", are consistent in their position of trying to will their invisible friend into existence by an act of throbbing human need with the instrument of wordplay.
That can be practically understood.
The "faith in faith", person has no excuse at all.
None.
Yet they'll fight you tooth and nail.
I can't figure out what their investment is.
I think it's fear.
They abandoned their old superstitious ways, but they've kept the fear.
And the fear makes them distrust their fellow man, and that distrust makes them buy the "they need to be herded", arguments.
And once they go that far, then they usually buy the whole "we need bullshit!", package.
And then of course, they swallow the ideology of "we need bullshit!", which is this grim fatalist flavor of conservatism.

Which is funny, because it's the fatalist brand of conservatism you almost always see Christians buy into also.
Atheist conservatives with "faith in faith", I guess isn't too far a leap given that perspective.
They're both in the "people who hate people", club.

Ah, but the liberal branch of "faith in faith", that's a whole other ball of wax.
Seems to be a mutated strain of political correctness.
They think it's tolerance, but it isn't.
It's kind of an insult to the religious when you think of it.
"Oh, I don't believe this silly stuff, but you poor little things, you need it, don't worry, I'll protect you".
How condescending.
They won't fight you as nastily as the conservatives, but they'll make as much noise.
Screeching victim-y noise.

Faith in faith.
A nasty bit of business.

But yeah, faith.

No matter what nastiness it attempts to justify, you're supposed to respect it.

Never understood how that was supposed to work.
Because it doesn't.
It's one of those mindless "just because we say so, now shut up", things.

Neat trick that.

Like goulsies in freeze tag.

Gave you immunity, like a force-field if you stood on goulsies.

And that's what faith is in our culture.

Organized religion is that annoying kid who always hovered two feet away from goulsies, and ran to it and stuck out his tongue, and dragged tag out for three fucking hours.

And all this annoying destructive shit, because some people have trouble parsing their transcendent life moments from the supernatural.

Or, to hit it more squarely on the head, reality from make-believe.

It's kooky.

And tiresome.

Hence Dicky-pedia.

And hence this rant to tie it into a final explanatory narrative.
And now it is done.

(Audio version available)

(Click here for prequel)