Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hscvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!mcnc!decvax!genrad!wjh12!hscvax!partridge From: partridge@hscvax.UUCP (partridge) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: anti-religious flame Message-ID: <824@hscvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 5-Mar-84 21:39:13 EST Article-I.D.: hscvax.824 Posted: Mon Mar 5 21:39:13 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Mar-84 00:26:28 EST References: <692@hscvax.UUCP> Organization: Harvard Science Center Lines: 35 - There are many ways of dealing with individuals who believe in a God; the generic categories of responses include insulting them, injuring them, and ridiculing them. Note the absence of "proving them wrong". There is no way you're going to prove one of these goons wrong because if you did he'd have a nervous collapse right in front of you, take out his machine gun, and go on a shooting spree. Also, keep in my mind why this cretin is a religious freak in the first place: precisely to avoid dealing with exactly those questions you would have to raise in order to prove him wrong. This leaves injuring him and insulting him. I personally prefer injuring them but there are a number of laws which make this approach sticky. And anyway, insulting can be almost as much fun as injury. If you do argue with him, keep clear of "faith" arguments because in the last analysis, if you believe in reason as the fundamental approach to thinking then you'll have to admit that choosing reason over some other method was a choice of faith. (This choice precedes the use of reason to make choices and therefore must be one of faith.) (Although of course in point of fact we use reason out of force of habit more than anything else.) Another way of dealing with these lard-heads is to tell them that you do believe in God but also believe in the existence of a larger super- system in which this universe and its God are just one small insignificant part. Then tell them that this super-system has no creator, that it's just been there forever. Now those are all reasonable approaches. What I do is different. I simply say, "Hey, you're an asshole". Then I say, "Not only that, you're a stupid asshole." It seems to have worked in the past. -- wdpiv "In the beginning was The Fish." genrad!wjh12!hscvax!partridge