I really, really, really hate getting Christian (Look at this! Another Proof of God!) stories in my e-mail. These things are even worse than porn spam, and they are, without at doubt, the thing I hate the most about the internet.
They are so poorly thought out, and are so hideously biased against us Infidels who don't believe that it makes me sick. They tell stories that you KNOW never happened, and people BELIEVE this SHIT.
I don't get Atheist Spam! Why?
This is not a thread about whether or not there is a God. This is a thread about God Spam.
Here, Read This, the barest sampling of what I get on a typical day, and tell me if you don't get pissed off, just a little.
quote: "Subject: FW: Choose #1 or #2 -
> This one should keep us all thinking.
I chose #2, now you pick one.
This is a true story of something that happened just a few years ago at USC. There was a professor of philosophy there who was a deeply committed atheist. His primary goal for one required class was to spend the entire semester attempting to prove that God couldn't exist.
His students were always afraid to argue with him because of his impeccable logic. For twenty years, he had taught this class and no one had ever had the courage to go against him.
Sure, some had argued in class at times, but no one had ever really gone against him because of his reputation. At the end of every semester on the last day, he would say to his class of 300 students,
"If there is anyone here who still believes in Jesus, stand up!"
In twenty years, no one had ever stood up. They knew what he was going to do next. He would say,
"Because anyone who believes in God is a fool. If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove that He is God, and yet He can't do it."
And every year, he would drop the chalk onto the tile floor of the classroom and it would shatter into a hundred pieces.
All of the students would do nothing but stop and stare. Most of the students thought that God couldn't exist. Certainly, a number of Christians had slipped through, but for 20 years, they had been too afraid to stand up.
Well, a few years ago there was a freshman who happened to enroll. He was a Christian, and had heard the stories about his professor.
He was required to take the class for his major, and he was afraid. But for three months that semester, he prayed every morning that he would have the courage to stand up no matter what the professor said, or what the class thought.
Nothing they said could ever shatter his faith...he hoped.
Finally, the day came. The professor said, "If there is anyone here who still believes in God, stand up!" The professor and the class of 300 people looked at him, shocked, as he stood up at the back of the classroom.
The professor shouted, "You FOOL!!! If God existed, he would keep this piece of chalk from breaking when it hit the ground!"
He proceeded to drop the chalk, but as he did, it slipped out of his fingers, off his shirt cuff, onto the pleat of his pants, down his leg, and off his shoe. As it hit the ground, it simply rolled away unbroken. The professor's jaw dropped as he stared at the chalk. He looked up at the young man, and then ran out of the lecture hall.
The young man who had stood, proceeded to walk to the front of the room and shared his faith in Jesus for the next half hour.
300 students stayed and listened as he told of God's love for them and of His power through Jesus.
You have 2 choices
1. Delete this and never look at it again.
2. Pass this along to your Christian
and non-Christian friends, giving them
encouragement we all need every day.
When you choose option 2, you have chosen to STAND UP"
FUCCKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!! I hate hate hate hate hate this crap!
[ February 06, 2002, 14:21: Message edited by: thoughtcriminal84 ]
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
I never got any of that bullshit. I don't even get porn spam. This stuff is real stupid. Why can't they accept the fact that people make thier own decisions, and others have no right to interfere, unless it's for the persons safety, or well being.
Posted by MaGiC (Member # 59) on :
Thoughtcriminal, I hate to point out that you did number 2....
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
Spam is spam is spam, regardless of content. Kill it all.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
Send it along... with a pre-message.
"This is Christian Idiot Spam. The following is an Urban Legend. It never actually happened. Still, some idiots out there are continuing to pass it around, hoping to gain support for their sky-god worshipping practices. If someone passes you this email without this pre-message, send them back a scathing response about lying in the name of God, and if you know them personally, punch them in the snoot. God will thank you for it."
Posted by G.K Nimrod (Member # 205) on :
What amazes me is how one teacher can keep students dumbstruck and awe-inspired by dropping a piece of chalk on the floor. Once a year. For twenty years. That sort of crowd-control would've given Hitler something the cat couldn't scratch.
Of course, they neglected to tell you that the school was next to a weather station on the south pole and the students were little penguins.
No wait, even penguins know better.
Seriously, this is the kind of warped "David&Goliath"-concepts the taliban use.
Posted by Antagonist (Member # 484) on :
Yes, spam is annoying. Yes, spam is most often useless. Yes, spam is probably the most insufferable garbage of the internet, rivaling in frustration with pop-up ad windows.
While transmitted via spam, this story has some worth to it. Unfortunately that worth has been lost because of the bad etiquette that it has been passed along.
I actually would like to hear a professor try to logically deduce that there is no god. It would be a most futile attempt, however, as faith is defined as a belief and trust in that which has no basis in logic.
[ February 07, 2002, 15:54: Message edited by: Antagonist ]
Posted by thoughtcriminal84 (Member # 480) on :
quote: Thoughtcriminal, I hate to point out that you did number 2....
Yeah, I know I did. I realized that while I was posting it, but I couldn't resist.
See, I even went to the trouble of writing up a detailed refutation of the Professor's "Chalk Gambit" just to show how idiotic this story is, and that anybody could have stepped up at anytime and told him he was full of shit on philosophical grounds...Meaning that these nitwits could have stopped this Abominable activity YEARS ago, with a simple sentence: "Maybe God doesn't feel like stopping the chalk, Professor!" which is as logical as assuming that the Supreme Being of the universe would come perform tricks for a atheist professor...
But after sending it to about thirty or so of the sixty previous recipients, I gave up. I doubt any of them would even realize that the message I was sending was highly sarcastic...I didn't want to be the source of ANOTHER god spam spree.
The part of the story that bothers the most is how after the chalk doesn't break, the professor GETS UP AND RUNS OUT OF THE ROOM.
What? Not only is the Atheist (in context of this fairy tale) Wrong, he's obviously a fucking pussy too.
I'll say nothing about the Christian getting up and regaling the class room of three hundred with tales of Jesus for the last half of the class.
Christian spam is full of this tactic...the unbeliever is always an idiot, usually morally suspect, and when confronted with whatever abysmal "evidence" of Jesus the story reveals, he or she is usually a cowardly idea convert.
Sorry, gentleman. I know this is stupid to even talk about. But to me, it's like getting a daily e-mail telling ME i'm an idjit for not believing as THEY do. It pisses me off.
I really want to do something in return for this, like start up an atheist chain letter...but I'm not evil, so I won't.
I'll join CSICOP instead. You get a neat coffee mug when you do...
[ February 07, 2002, 16:16: Message edited by: thoughtcriminal84 ]
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
huh huh.. he said you did number two
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:I actually would like to hear a professor try to logically deduce that there is no god.
No God, hard. Perhaps impossible, given the Deist version of God.
But doing so with a particular VERSION of God, that's easy.
Step 1: Define the attributes of that God. Step 2: Determine whether existence as we know it is compatible with the attributes described in Step 1.
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
I find it interesting that you have this one alleged divine intervention which is meant ot make us all believers, yet there are countless other events which could have done with this self-same divine intervention, and we're just supposed to believe nonetheless.
And also, how come so few Christians attended this class? I believe Christianity is the dominant religion in the US, yet somehow noen of them went to this college, or at least this class. This is serious, people, we must know - WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHRISTIANS GONE?! Why don't they want to go there? Do they know something we don't?
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHRISTIANS GONE?!
And why won't they stay there?! Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
*jumps up and down, waving arms*
Hi, there. I'm Omega. I don't think we've met.
As for why we won't stay somewhere else: we like you too much. Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"...WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHRISTIANS GONE?!"
Boiled in their own communion wine and buried w/ a crucifix through their heart, hopefully.
And for those who don't get it, it's a paraphrase of an unrelated quote. I didn't simply make it up.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:As for why we won't stay somewhere else: we like you too much.
Well, I guess this explains why I have been getting asked to join a campus bible study group so often lately. Like really often. Like three times a day the past four class days.
It's a little annoying running across campus in a huff because you have to be in class in five minutes and someone stops you to drone on and on and on about loving Je-ZUS!* and joining their group which meets five times a day every weekday except on the first Monday of each month unless that month has an occurence of a full moon or lunar eclipse.
*Yes, two of the groups that stopped actually pronounced it like that. I'm not Christian, but that even made me whince.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Tell them you're glad they love you, but you really do have to run, and you'll talk to them later.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I try to be as polite as possible all the time. The most I do is try to hurry the conversations along. This usually entails me saying I'll try to come if I have the time free.
I used to tell them that I wasn't interested because I was agnostic. The three people soliciting me that time immediately began praying for my soul. That was kinda creepy, especially since they kinda had me surrounded. One was before me, and the other two were flanking me.
Posted by Antagonist (Member # 484) on :
quote:Originally posted by Siegfried: I used to tell them that I wasn't interested because I was agnostic. The three people soliciting me that time immediately began praying for my soul.
If all they did was start praying for your soul, then just imagine what would have happened if you said you were an atheist. Or worse, an orthodoxy christian.
Probably they would have beat you over the head with an iron-bound bible, or suddenly proclaimed themselves Knights Templar and stabbed you repeatedly with a sword, then cut off your head and fling it into a lecture hall of "infedels" to scare them into proclaiming themselves Christians that have found Je-ZUS's love.
Ahhh. I love catholics. They're so.... eager to bend the rules for their cause.
Posted by Jernau Morat Gurgeh (Member # 318) on :
quote:I used to tell them that I wasn't interested because I was agnostic. The three people soliciting me that time immediately began praying for my soul. That was kinda creepy, especially since they kinda had me surrounded. One was before me, and the other two were flanking me.
Couldn't that legally be considered as some sort of abuse? I know I wouldn't tolerate that.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I prefer the paradigm-popping approach: "Awww...isn't that cute? By the way, my gods don't like your god because the last time they were over at your god's place for tea, his dog pissed on their coats. Just passing along the message. Hey, are those plans for a Crusade?"
My problem isn't with Christians, my problem is with proselytizing Christians who refuse to accept anything works but what they think. This is a major problem across the board with most things in the world. The friends I have who are Christian are cool because they know that I don't share their beleifs & they're open to that, & in turn I respect theirs. 'S all 'bout tha luv, people...'s all 'bout tha luv.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Must. Resist. Urge.
Oh, dammit, I cannot.
"Proselytizing Christians", unfortunately, form a majority (in my experience).
And I'll reserve my "luv" for those who actually deserve it.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
::shrug:: I try to just let these encounters go. As long as they are not physically assaulting me, I figure I can just live with it. Life's too short to make a stink about something we won't know the truth about until we die.
Many, if not most, of my friends are some flavor of Christian. My family is Roman Catholic. In general, they leave me alone about it. In turn, I leave them alone about it. Sometimes I'll get into a philosophical debate about it, but it rarely turns nasty. I do have a couple of friends who are trying "covert conversion." They figure that sending me emails (I got the one in the OP two years ago, by the way) and a non-stop stream of invitations to church and church social activities is the way to accomplish their goals. So far, it isn't working very well.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:someone stops you to drone on and on and on about loving Je-ZUS!* and joining their group which meets five times a day
Addicts do stuff like that.
Me, I like to drop my voice into a lower register and growl in my most gravelly voice: "Rob isn't in here anymore. Go away or I will eat your soullllllll..."
Well, okay, I've never done that. But I want to.
Posted by thoughtcriminal84 (Member # 480) on :
I don't remember this very well, so it probably won't be interesting, but when I was a kid we went to a Baptist encampment...slept there a few nights, with mom and pop. It was fun, as far as psuedo-camping is fun, hey I was five.
One night we went to one of the sermons held by the preacher, and at some point half the people there started speaking in tongues. It was loud the way rock concerts are loud, with people overcome with the "majestic power of the all seeing all being Tetragrammaton" filling them.
It scared me quite badly. My dad too. He pulled us out of there, and we left that night. I've asked him about that a few times, since I was but a wee boy at the time, but he refuses to talk about it...It was shortly after that that we stopped going to church, so, who knows...
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
Truth is we don't KNOW if there REALLY is a "GOD". There are people trying to prove there is a god, and people trying to prove there isn't a god. If I had a choice of being baptized, i woulda said "ta hell with all this hokey theological crap. I just want Christmas!"
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
quote:Originally posted by Antagonist: Yes, spam is annoying. Yes, spam is most often useless. Yes, spam is probably the most insufferable garbage of the internet, rivaling in frustration with pop-up ad windows.
I've recently come across a nice little program called pop-up stopper. it stops them dead in thier tracks. only problem are, if you use the "open in new window" command it won't work. you have to use a shortcut key like ctrl and shift. and you can't start a web browser while it's running. again you need to click ctrl and shift, while clicking on the .exe
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
And further, they only seem to work with IE...
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
True, but it's really worth getting, specially for pop-up heavy sites like cheatplanet or megagames.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Sounds like something that would make surfing porn considerably less interactive. No need to frantically thrash Ctrl-W and all...
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