Random rantings from the ether
This morning I received my Fisher Price(tm) My First Theist Rant(tm). Unfortunately, it was rather short and didn’t contain any of the hallmarks of a good quality theist rant (”godless liberal”, “commie”, “burn in hell”, etc.) but it did contain a number of rather weak fallacies, so it’s not all lost.
Bill (for that is what he claims his name to be) sent me the following (very slightly) amusingly rambling and pitifully incoherent email:
Oh, hell. You could be right. Maybe there is no Heaven nor Hell. Maybe there is no right nor wrong.
Maybe it’s ok for you to kill me, and me to kill you. Maybe It’s no big deal. After all, we have no one to answer to, right?
Anything goes since God doesn’t exist.
OK, whatever you say.
What’s in your wallet?
You ass.
For Bill’s edification, and for my own satisfaction, I shall now attempt, in the traditional fashion, to fisk his email to me:
Oh, hell. You could be right. Maybe there is no Heaven nor Hell. Maybe there is no right nor wrong.
Perhaps Bill would like to enlighten me as to what I might be right about. His vapid concessions here seem to indicate that he doesn’t actually concede anything at all, and appears to be a baiting tactic or poor attempt at sarcasm. Aside from the obvious non sequitur, he’s also setting up a rather weak strawman.
This does not bode well for rational discourse.
Maybe it’s ok for you to kill me, and me to kill you. Maybe It’s no big deal. After all, we have no one to answer to, right?
This is a prime example of sociopathy, and basically boils down to the idea “if I didn’t believe in gods, I’d go around killing people because I’d have no reason not to”. This says absolutely nothing about the truth of any god beliefs, and everything about the morality (or lack thereof) of such a person.
It most certainly is not ok for you to kill me, and me to kill you
. I don’t want to be murdered by a religionist (or at all, for that matter) because he can’t understand that he doesn’t require a bizarre belief in supernatural entities to justify his actions. I also have no desire to kill Bill. While I think he’s a hopelessly crazy person, he make the world a slightly less boring place, and I’m sure his family would miss him.
It certainly is a big deal
: I only have one life and I plan on using it to the fullest advantage that nature has lent me. Should somebody decide that it’s their (god-given or no) wont/prerogative/destiny/duty to alleviate me of my life, you can be sure as the dawn that I will defend myself to the limit of my abilities. The same goes for others that I care about.
There’s also another strawman here (we have no one to answer to
) which he sets up and knocks down with a rather pathetic mis-attribution, but I’m just sitting at the side watching him waste his time and energy. It’s rather sad, really.
Of course there are those that I answer to: currently, and without a god belief, I am answerable to my family, my friends, my peers, my work colleagues and, by no means least, the laws of my country of residence. Each of these relationships demands that I act with probity and compassion. I could, if I chose, act like a complete prick, but I’m sure that this wouldn’t be tolerated by others for too long.
Anything goes since God doesn’t exist.
Oh dear. I wonder if Bill knows that he has a classic symptom of a sociopathy. He should possibly put himself forward for sectioning before he does something truly tragically stupid.
This is a common concept amongst the religious: without a celestial sky-hooked security camera, one has no reason to be nice/not be an arsehole. This idea is, naturally, patently ridiculous. And not a little frightening.
OK, whatever you say.
Oddly enough, I didn’t actually say any of the things that Bill appears to be attributing to me. Perhaps he’s mistaken and meant to send this to someone who did say these things. Or, perhaps, he’s just making shit up. Ockham’s razor (which comes in very handy in situations like these) tells me that, as he sent this to my obfuscated email address on this blog, he did this deliberately. Therefore I can safely concluded that Bill is just making this up as he goes along.
What’s in your wallet?
What? This one certainly comes out of leftfield, and is an excellent example of a non sequitur. Although I don’t feel that it’s any concern of Bill’s, I don’t own a wallet. Just as I have no need of gods, I have no need of a wallet, and managed perfectly adequately without either.
You ass.
Ah, don’t you just love that divinely-inspired attitude of love and peace?
Sadly, it’s rather pathetic, even for an ad hominem. Assuming, of course that the expansion of this sentence is to be read as “you (are an) ass”. If not, it’s just incoherent. Either way, it doesn’t help his argument, whatever point Bill is trying to make.
You might be asking yourself as to why I bothered to dissect such a vapourous email. I wondered this myself for a little while when deciding whether to respond at all, and I came up with two reasons for doing so:
1) to point out that it takes longer to dismiss the crap generated by baseless and ridiculous claims than it does to make them; and
2) I wanted to respond to Bill while, if possible, providing an insight into the mind of someone who apparently thinks that it’s both big and clever to write random emails to someone who they disagree with, scatter a number of baseless assertions and misattributed opinions around the place, and end it all with a parting shot of a particularly limp ad hominem, when in reality it’s neither big, nor clever.
I’ll give over my parting note to the panel of judges.
The final score
Using the TRINITY (Theistic Rant INdicator of Insanity and TrivialitY) scale, I have rated this as having an OTRSS (overall theistic rant satisfaction score) of 2/5: poor.
BAQ (baseless assertion quotient): 70%
Appearance: 7/10
Logic: 2/10
Randomness: 7/10
Scripture: 0%
MacGuffin factor: n/a
Remarks: Feeble, could do much better. High randomness factor for What’s in your wallet?
.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Excellent post. I winds me up no end when theists try to equate “no heaven and hell” as meaning “no right or wrong.”
Bloody lunatics.
Anyway, nice fisk.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Oh dear. I wonder if Bill knows that he has a classic symptom of a sociopathy. He should possibly put himself forward for sectioning before he does something truly tragically stupid.
It’s a bit premature to declare him a sociopath: he’s more likely a baldfaced liar or at least someone who hasn’t thought his position through.
June 15th, 2007 at 1:57 am
I’d imagine Bill’s reference to your wallet was a poorly phrased allusion to the fact that American money contains the phrase “In God We Trust”. I don’t know what he thought that was supposed to prove.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:22 am
AV wrote:
To be fair, I did make sure I said he had a symptom, not that he actually was. :-)
Indeed.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Ebonmuse wrote:
To be honest, that idea never even occured to me, principally because
1) I’m not an American and I don’t live in America; and
2) I never thought that Bill would be so arrogant or ignorant to presume that I was, especially when I make a point (admittedly not within the context of this post) of saying that I’m not.
If I had, I might have lowered his randomness score, but perhaps raised the OTRSS a point. :-)
June 18th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Is there any chance that the ‘wallet’ comment was a reference to the catchphrase of the rather crap Capital One credit card adverts on UK television? I don’t see the link, but that’s the first thing I thought of.
Do you know if he was British?
June 18th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
No, Tobe, if he really was who he claimed to be, he was definitely from the USA. A Google search for his full name and email address led me to a variety of web sites that exposed his traditional right-wing political affiliations.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Ah well. I hate those damn adverts so much, I’d blame them for anything if I could.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I know exactly what you mean about those adverts, although I don’t hate them as much as adverts for celebrity magazines or McDonald’s (or just any fast food, for that matter).