"Lightning From the East" speaks

The question was:

Christians, do you believe in life on other planets?

And furthermore:

"And if you do, do you think they have the bible and did Jesus visit them too?"

To which I responded:

"'Mankind is the only one that can believe and follow god', huh?

Awful damn convenient, isn't that? Furthermore, how do you know? And if you really believe that, isn't all evangelism a waste of time? Since predestination is clearly written in stone, in your view?

And if you don't think that other species can find the love of god, does that mean cats, dogs and other pets are automatically consigned to the lake of fire and brimstone? What if we found another planet with humans already on it, and they were under the impression that THEY were god's chosen people?

I guess what I'm sayin is; your reasoning's got a couple holes in it."

Hm. Not sure who I was responding to. Perhaps that was part of a comment that has since been erased. But look what the Best Answerer ('Lightning From the East') said:

"The Bible does not say if there is life on other planets. It simply says that God created the heavens and earth and put man on it. But this silence on the subject does not require that earth is the only place with life on it. But then again, this doesn't mean there is life out there, either.

Let me propose some reasons why I believe there is no life on other planets. Now, I should tell you that these reasons are simply exercises in biblical theology."

...And then he proceeds to filibuster the hell out of this notion forever and ever and ever. By 'exercises in biblical theology,' he means, 'attempting to prove something by burying you under a ton of quotes from some book I really like.'

Then 'Mr. McKenzie, Tears of Joy' (who is actually a dog, according to his picture) steps in and does the exact same thing, except with questionable 'scientific facts':

"Earth has plate tectonics, which cycles fragments of earth's crust down into the mantle, resulting ultimately in a kind of thermostat that keeps the greenhouse gases in balance and surface temperature under control."
Yeah, great job on that one, Earth.

"Earth is far from the nucleus of the galaxy, where there's a massive black hole and more supernovae exploding."
Which kind of makes it sound like there was once some sort of Big Explosion there, which you guys swear up and down didn't happen.

"Earth is on the very inner edge of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone, the only place where you can have low enough carbon dioxide and high enough oxygen to sustain complex animal life."
Now you're just making up names...

"Earth's nearly circular orbit keeps it in the safe zone and maintains Earth at a steady temperature."
What now?

But my favorite stray observation came from 'Sirheinson', who let us in on this interesting Fact...

"mormons believe that jesus appeared to native americans after being impaled and before going to heaven, so..."

No, wait a minute...Go back to that 'impaled' thing.

'Steel Rain,'(who has a delightful pic of a B-1 bomber, dropping lots of bombs on unfortunate Others far beneath) sums it all up with this fantastic logic:

"God is alive, therefore there is life everywhere in the cosmos because God is everywhere."

Folks, I think I just found the central argument of all theology, and damn if it ain't Circular.

From the mind of 'St. Eian, Christain Kitteh'

The question was titled:

Atheist, why is this?

and furthermore wished to know:

"when ever a Christian makes a grammar mistake or spelling mistake or what ever, its typical and we are bashed for it?
but when we don't make any mistakes its, we are just trying to act Intelligent, so run along and go get your mom to read a fairytale story book for your bed time?"

But the real meat of the question is actually:

"is it because, we hate gays? or because, we attack abortion clinics? or is it because poor grammar makes you physically melt? or maybe you just cant answer the question so you respond with a 'your grammar sucks' statement, or 'you need to go back to kindergarten to learn how to spell.'"

'Because (you) hate gays,' huh? Well, yeah; that'd be a start. And I applaud you for your honesty. The abortion clinics thing too, yeah. That makes you hateful, yup.

"and please refrain from typing 'strawman' or 'troll' but like that's going to stop you anyways. go ahead and say 'not very christ like of you huh?' because you have no right to tell me to be christ like if your not christ like."

Well, you could just not set up strawman arguments, or not be a troll, but I getcha. And I'm years past using the 'Christians Aren't Christlike' argument for lots of reasons. What I did say was:


"What in the hell is wrong with good grammar? I'm sick of people who supposedly don't want Western Civilization to utterly collapse wholesale turning their back on the Greatest Polyglot In da World, Ingleesh!

But seriously folks: jackasses like you seem to think that ESL classes are a sin against Jeebus. At some point you must decide."

The 'Best Answer' was given to a commenter named I Need Scissors! , who said:

"Did you just admit to hating gays and attacking abortion clinics?"

To which the OP replied:

"you know what, yes! i do, i hate gays because you say i do, i attack abortion clinics because you say i do, im only what ever society says i am so go ahead and call me a delusional zeus worshipper because if all you call me that then i am one and i would be glad to be anything you hate!"

Which is an interesting argument tactic, to put it mildly.

An Explanation

Yahoo! Answers is one of the dumbest fucking things in existence. Even by the low, low standards of both The Internet and Yahoo in general, the Answers section is exactly where rational thought and discourse goes to die. Slowly, painfully and alone.

Somewhere here, in between teenagers who want you to do their homework for them, religious zealots and bigots of every kind, one may find me occasionally killing time. It works; it puts me in a place where I can practice my rhetorical skills. It's like standing on a downtown street corner in a large city, and every five minutes (sometimes less) someone walks up to you and makes the worst straw-man argument in the world. For no discernible reason.

It's a complete stranger. A nobody. Crazy, probably. Sad or mad, usually. People whose outsized sense of outrage has a manufactured feel about it -yes- but one can't help but pause and wonder how it feels to live your life that way.

Then you remember: it's my duty. I need to ridicule the ridiculous, and I'm under no contract to take seriously the rantings of the stupid. You need to do them the favor of letting them know How and Why they're wrong.

Many examples follow. At first, I used to hang around the Gender and Women's Studies board (and occasionally, 'Royalty', but that one doesn't get much traffic), but mostly settled on Religion and Spirituality. If you really want to see a community of people get sucked down a long, long Stupid Tube while badly debating an inherently unanswerable set of questions, that's where you wanna go.

Off we go, then.