Smug twit
I’ve never had any respect for Alister McGrath, but apparently he thinks I’m a credible source on atheism. He has a book titled Coming to Faith Through Atheism, containing 12 essays about how people returned to religion after a dalliance with atheism, driven by how much they disliked Dawkins and the New Atheism. That sounds incredibly cliched — it’s practically a joke how often theists claim that they used to be an atheist, but then they saw the light.
Fine. More pedestrian pablum from a conventional Christian who doesn’t like Dawkins. I even have some sympathy with the thesis that Dawkins has become a detriment to atheism. However, an argument against one particular flavor of atheism is not an argument for the ridiculous Christianity McGrath favors. I also mildly resent that he cites me (and Ashley Miller) some kind of supporter of his ideas.
Yet it wasn’t just that Dawkins and others set out to make religious faith a badge of shame. The “New Atheism” encouraged a discriminatory rhetoric of denunciation and demonisation directed not primarily against religious ideas, but against religious people. Many were alarmed at this trend. The feminist atheist blogger Ashley Miller distanced herself from those who suggested that “people who are religious aren’t worthwhile and are certainly too stupid to be respected”. The debate ought to be about assessing ideas, she insisted, not about publicly ridiculing religious people: “We dehumanize people who disagree with us instead of arguing about ideas.” It didn’t exactly help with the public face of atheism.
Today, the “New Atheism” is generally regarded as having imploded, increasingly (though perhaps unfairly) being seen as the crystallisation of the cultural prejudices of old white Western middle-class males. Many of its former members, disenchanted by its arrogance, prejudice, and superficiality, have distanced themselves from the movement and its leaders.
Of course he’d think it unfair to view the failure of the New Atheism as a result of the cultural prejudices of old white Western middle-class males
, since he is one, and his stodgy Christianity is the epitome of Western middle-class bullshit. His religion is not an improvement on atheism!
What he doesn’t acknowledge is that neither Ashley nor I have abandoned atheism, which is something rather different than the peculiarly assertive, aggressive style of Dawkins’ atheism. We aren’t Christians! It’s a little rude to pose two people who oppose his position as somehow backing up his new book.
Why didn’t he link to my assessment of Alister McGrath?
That’s McGrath. Incoherent and contradictory, vacuous and vapid, and bumbling along, triumphantly making fallacious arguments that he thinks are irrefutable.
Jebus, but I love “sophisticated theology”. It makes its practitioners look like such hopeless dolts.
I’m still a bit assertive and aggressive, and I still categorically reject McGrath’s weird beliefs.
Did he become a boss-with-silly-hat Christian, a dances-with-snakes Christian or some weird flavor of Christianity?
Years ago, Alister McGrath anounced a new project. Scientific Theology. The idea was to use Scientific Method to put theology on aa sound basis and prove God exists and Christianity is true. He has written three books on the subject explaining his program and its goals. But precious little Scientific Theology itself. This has been going on since the seventies. The problem is, science starts with critical examination of claims. Are hypotheses logically consistant? Self contradictory? Demonstratable? But theology can’t demonstrate a sensible theology bthat can withstand scrutiny. McGrath’s failed Scientific Theology is a failed project that demonstrates that rather nicely.
Your dose of “sophisticated theology” for today. More failed natural theology that has been a failed project since Plated invented it. Plato’s “Laws – Book X”
I doubt it was very many people, somewhere around 0 to 1.
The truth value of a statement or position isn’t determined by the personalities or actions of those who agree it is true.
I don’t think much of Dawkins either for his Trans people fallacies and so on, but it has zero to do with whether the xians gods exist or not.
Dawkins was right about xianity and his book The God Delusion was well written and summed it up well.
OTOH, atheism is a the low hanging fruit of the problems of our age.
It’s not that hard to make a strong case for that statement.
That the gods don’t exist is obvious once you look at the data. Xianity has had 2,000 years to prove their case and they still don’t have any evidence or data.
Jasper Fforde’s humoristic SF novels did in one instance have something called “The Global Standard Deity”. A bland common denaminator.
Methinks this might be what McGrath would be content with.
Did the New Atheism fail?
US xianity is losing around 1% a year, so 2 million members a year.
That is a lot.
A few decades ago, US xianity claimed 90% of the population, including myself.
As of 2021, US xianity is down to 63% of the population and is on trend to go below 50% somewhere around 2034.
Even the fundies are losing members by the millions these days.
I doubt if the New Atheism can claim all the credit for this though.
I’m sure they helped a lot by simply showing that there is an alternative.
If you claim the gods don’t exist, the gods don’t do anything, most likely because they don’t actually exist.
Ironically, it is likely that one of the main drivers of the decline of US xianity is…US xians, mostly the fundie perversion of xianity.
When xian became synonymous with liar, hater, hypocrite, right wingnut, Trump voter, and sometimes terrorist murderer, a lot of people didn’t want to be one any more.
It’s a bit rich for McGrath to be making a claim of “sophisticated theology” when he seems challenged by the explicit or implied use of terms such as: some, all, or not all X people.
If those aren’t distinguished from each other, how can he distinguish religion from magic or from fantasy?
For those of you interested in McGrath’s Scientific Theology, all three of you, Google Wikipedia, scientific theology. There is a common theist complaint, “Science can’t disprove God!” But theology is not scientific, and is not supported by science. McGrath’s failed project is a problem for these theist complainers. Theology is basicallyanti-scientific in fundamental ways.
If people changed their theological beliefs based on their liking or disliking of prominent figures, oooh do I have some Christians I’d like to point out to him.
This seems like a reversal of books where people talk about how studying Christianity and their interactions with Christians turned them into Atheists. Except the kind of hatred Dawkins has for LGBTQ+ is also part of Christianity. What kind of logic is that? “This person in a group hates me so I’ll go back to this other group that hates me even more.”
Oh FUCK YOU, YOU HYPOCRTICAL SHITSTAIN!
Your fellow supersticous barbarians have vilified, censored, imprisoned and MURDERED atheists for millennia and you have the temerity to whine about non-existent “Religious persecutions” just because we’re no long afraid to call out your supernatural bullshit and antiquated beliefs!
Akira @10: Is the all-caps bit aimed at McGrath, or Ashley Miller (who wrote the quoted bit), or both?
@ 11
Sorry, reread the paragraph. If anything it makes me angrier that it came from an atheist.
What’s the atheist equivalent of an “Uncle Tom?”
He’s still bashing the Old New Atheists? That’s so two-thousand-and-late. I’d recommend he update his blither-points, but he probably already knows that would undercut his entire shtick.
@12:
In your rancid, hateful worldview, that would include me and Ashley Miller. I think I’m in good company!
Reading the incredibly disappointing “Surprised by Joy,” which I think is the religionist standard account of an atheist returning to church (some peddle it as the modern equivalent of St Paul’s conversion), I think even though McGrath is wrong about religion, he’s not wrong about people needing human connection. That said he shouldn’t cite people out of context to support the wrong argument.
I understand atheists going back to church. It’s lonely out here. When we don’t find a group of people who have similar values who we can hang out with, even so-called introverts feel it. For some of us hanging out to play DnD isn’t enough.
I tell people to find a group like the Unitarian Universalists, who don’t mind atheists (even let me teach Sunday School), or work with secular groups that do things like feed the hungry or build low cost housing. Or join a community theater group or a choir. Where I currently live I’ve found a community orchestra (the Jewish Community Orchestra), and I work with a volunteer org who train to deal with community emergencies. Also I hang out and play DnD. Abandoning atheism is not an option for me, not while being honest with my fellow human beings.
Wah wah wah.
Atheists, unlike theists, don’t follow leaders. This seems to be an impossible concept for theists to understand. The thought that an atheist would turn back to reliigion because of disagreement with some of the pronouncements of Dawkins is ludicrous.
If people turned back to faith because some atheist is an asshole, Ayn Rand must have been a great asset for the church.
If McGrath was much more famous, I would have a shirt saying “I am so vile I turned McGrath back to faith”.
@nomdeplume:
Unfortunately, ‘don’t follow leaders’ seems to be an impossible concept for a lot of self-proclaimed atheists to understand as well, and when you get right down to it that was a good chunk of the ‘deep rifts’.
The post about the trainwreck of New Atheism has someone called “skeptic” in the comments using the term “political correctness” to defend Sam Harris. That’s quaint. I guess in 2019 chuds hadn’t yet received the marching orders to start using “woke” instead as the new snarl word.
Sam Harris turned me away from Fake Intellectuals who can’t think their way out of a paper bag.
He also taught me a lot about using impossible and very improbable made up situations to justify hate and discrimination.
You have a gun in your hand pointed at a kitten.
If you don’t shoot the kitten, a nuclear bomb will destroy New York, killing a million people.
So what do you do?
Kill one kitten or kill a million people?
You don’t do anything.
You pet the kitten and give it some food.
There is no gun and there is no nuclear weapon planted in New York.
Sam Harris isn’t a good example of anything.
I didn’t become an atheist because of some atheist rock star. I’ve always BEEN an atheist because 1) theists haven’t proven their thesis, and 2) Theism is just weird.
PZ, is this how science works? Is it how scientific theology works?
https://www.gocomics.com/brewsterrockit/2023/10/06
We discarded superstition and the supernatural decades ago. Religion is just self-contradictory superstitious crap. Any rational mind will reject it.
It’s the very nonsensical way to justify vivisection of infants and other atrocities, repeatedly played via blood libel over the centuries and well established, there is no hidden nuke.
Just another excuse to justify killing people that otherwise are minding their own business, just as the kitten in the ludicrous situation was.
Not being Joe Mengele, I agree, pet and feed the kitten and well, never got the gun out of the safe, as I need a good reason to actually open that safe.
Good reason, such as protecting myself from the tyranny of an unperforated target at a range. Or semiannual maintenance of the damned thing.
Well, off to consider what I’m having for dinner. I’m currently largely decided on having food.
Probably have a nice cup of hibiscus tea afterward.
Then, a cup of coffee, just to fuck everything up. ;)
@24 “scientific theology”
There is a common theist complaint, “Science can’t disprove God!”
Yeah, science can’t disprove ANY of the gods or goddesses people have believed in at one time or another. Can any theist philosopher, from any religion, do that?
Besides, science doesn’t have to do any such thing. All we have to do is dismiss — for lack of evidence, among other reasons — all claims of the existence of any god(s), and get on with life while we wait for theists to present whatever evidence they have…
@wzrd1
You have a gun in your hand pointed at a kitten.
If you don’t shoot the kiteen, a million creationists will die. The question is, how many times do you shoot the kitten?
@wzrd1
You have a gun in your hand pointed at a kitten.
If you don’t shoot the kitten, a million creationists will die. The question is, how many times do you shoot the kitten?
cheerfulcharlie @ 29, obviously I need to borrow from one of the prepper types and shoot all of the creationists.
Then, go back to cuddling the kitten. Probably cook a duck, as I get Buddhist ducks, complete with head and feet for use in soup, the latter two parts going to the cat.
Yeah, that soup looks back at me, I also respect my food far more. Can’t do that with my other meats, my pot’s too small.
Note to self, get a bigger pot…
cheerfulcharlie @29: So if you shoot the kitten, a million creationists don’t die? And if you shoot it N times, N million creationists don’t die? Can’t read your mind, but I’m not sure that’s what you were going for.
While it’s true that I mostly stopped putting “atheist” in things like internet profiles because of twits like (post-elevator-gate) Dawkins, I didn’t become a theist again because of those twits. I became a theist again because I started to believe in gods. And I started to believe in gods again because I believe I’ve encountered the divine, which is not an experience I can say I had back when I was a Christian.
I’m not a Christian now and, short of a brain injury or a prolonged period of torture, I can’t think of anything that would make me one again. I don’t intend this as a knock on Christians but, rather, as a statement of my own personal animus towards Christianity and its deity, born out of my own negative experiences with them. I can appreciate that other people may have had positive experiences with the faith and its deity, and I’ve nothing against them.
I don’t, however, understand how one becomes a Christian again because they don’t like atheist trolls. That just doesn’t make sense.
@20- jenorafeuer
Aspects of New Atheism, in retrospect, hint at a cult of personality. Over on another blog if Dawkins, Harris, Pinker, etc get criticized there will be hell to pay and Hemant Mehta is derided there for his wokeness. Don’t mess with Dawkins, Hemant!
Peter Boghossian in his book about deconversion to atheism (ironic now I think of it) played heavily on the horsemen motif. Follow the leaders. People then revere(d) Boghossian (an atheist opinion leader). And he’s now pivoted into pied pipering freethinkers into antiwokeness in a huge way. I recall seeing him on a video podcast with Dawkins recently. It was not a pretty sight.
Back to OP, I had read The Twilight of Atheism years ago trying to get a fuller range of views, but don’t recall much about it.
More pedestrian pablum from a conventional Christian …
Seeing bland generic baby food walking around wouldn’t convince me to join any religion – but I might say, “Jesus!”
Rob Grigjanis @14
I don’t know anything about who The Orbit blogger Ashley Miller is. The part McGrath quoted came from a post done about an allegedly atheist shooter:
“There is anger and fear from atheists today upon the revelation that the most recent of the mass shooters in America was a non-believer who targeted Christians. They will blame us, they will think this is all atheists, they will think we are all the same as him.”
So there’s that…context.
Further on in the post: “Atheism can motivate terrible crimes, just like religion can…” Yeah, seems about right.
What was quoted above by McGrath in larger context:
“Furthermore, the atheist community is culpable of spreading bad ideas. We share memes and the belief that religious people are bad and that all religions and expressions of those religions are bad. That people who are religious aren’t worthwhile and are certainly too stupid to be respected. We dehumanize people who disagree with us instead of arguing about ideas. This is because we are human, but we have to guard against. Atheism itself doesn’t create these ideas, but atheist culture does — just like religions don’t encourage the bombing of abortion clinics, but some religious culture does.”
Ashley Miller goes on to talk about sexism and tribalism remaining despite lack of belief.
See:
https://the-orbit.net/ashleyfmiller/tag/poisons-everything/
The meme about a school shooter asking a girl if she was christian before shooting her has been soundly debunked.
hemidactylus @35:
Then you should read more of her posts!
Ah yes, the ABC’s religious section.
Where religious people put out religious opinions.
No, it isn’t.
His fabulation:
About as credible as Trump’s very manly men weeping tears at him and thanking him for his existence.
—
In memoriam:
More lies from the xians.
The shooter who asked one of his victims if she was a xian was the Oregon Umpqua Community College shooter.
He wasn’t an atheist!!!
FFS, can’t anyone at least get the main details right.
This shooter had a lot of issues and left a 6 page explanation behind. Basically he was depressed with no life.
“…while also proclaiming that his “success in Hell is assured.”
Look people, atheists don’t even believe in hell.
Not an atheist.
Atheists don’t believe in hell, satan, demons, or the afterlives.
Paranoia.
The reality is that almost no one in the world even knew this guy existed much less cared.
He was not an atheist.
He had a lot of problems and decided to do a murder suicide.
I always wish they would do the suicide first and then the murders but they always get the order wrong.
More on the Umpqua shooter.
He was a Republican.
Trying to assign one motive to him isn’t going to work.
He was a xian, Republican, paranoiac, manic-depressive with no life, who thought he had no future, and was going to come back to earth as a demon. Or something.
“When I die will become one of them. A demon. And I will return to kill again and again,”
Probably not.
We don’t know a lot about demons but they don’t kill anyone, most likely because they don’t actually exist.
@32 vucodlak
Interesting. Would you mind setting the record straight for the uninitiated? Personally, I would love to hear convincing evidence for gods (finally!) and I think a few other commenters here would like to know, too.
beholder @41: I’d ask if you could be less of a condescending arsehole, but I get the impression you relish the role.
Come on, Rob, this is Nobel Prize territory. No spoilers.
raven @39
Not entirely clear here who you are directing this at, but given Ashley Miller’s post was done October 2, 2015 and the Umpqua Community College shooting was done on October 1, 2015 she was probably talking about Chris Harper-Mercer and presuming he was an atheist, maybe based on stuff that came out before more was known. So perhaps she had gotten that wrong. Yet she specifically mentioned Hicks in the post and she seems correct about his nonbeliever status: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Chapel_Hill_shooting#Perpetrator
birgerjohansson @36
As for the whole shooter asking victim if they believed in God notion, that disputed exchange goes back to Columbine I think.
beholder @43: Fuck off, wanker. Vucodlak was making a personal statement about his belief, and you’re trying to turn it into a ‘gotcha’ moment.
I have no objective evidence for the divine, nor did I claim otherwise. My experiences in that realm are personal and subjective- they convinced me, but they would mean as little to someone without my life experiences and viewpoints as telling you that my dinner was delicious. Yes, I can give you the recipe, and you could make it and taste it for yourself, but that would tell you nothing about how or why I found it delicious. Even if you made it the same way, and have similar tastes, there’s no guarantee that you would even like it.
I didn’t bring up the fact that I’m a theist to evangelize. You’ll notice that at no point did I suggest that anyone else should stop being an atheist and believe what I believe. I brought up my beliefs because I became a theist after several years as an atheist who found Dawkins rather irritating after “dear Muslima,” but didn’t become a theist because I was annoyed with Dawkins and Harris et al. I felt it was a relevant anecdote.
I’m not interested in converting you or anyone to the worship of Isis (also known as Au Set, Iset, and a thousand other names). If you’re interested in learning about her, cool, I can recommend some excellent resources, but they’re pretty much all geared towards believers. If you don’t believe, they’re unlikely to convince you, because that’s not what they’re for. The same is true of my comment about my beliefs.
Rob Grigjanis @45
The takeway message I got from vucodlak was:
“I don’t, however, understand how one becomes a Christian again because they don’t like atheist trolls. That just doesn’t make sense.”
Which was contra McGrath from PZ’s OP above. I’ve soured on Dawkins, Harris, Boghossian and remain an atheist yet agree with vucodlak‘s point I quote.
46- vucodlak
I have my own idiosyncratic belief that my recently deceased dog will upon my demise come scoop me up like she’s a Norse battle maiden and take me off to somewhere nice with most of my former pets she’s been collecting, even the cat. Maybe not the ornery poodle from my childhood. I guess it’s my way of assuaging my death anxiety.
I reality she will meet my lothario hound mutt who was super cool and forget all about me forcing me to roam the earth a lost soul.
The only shooter I know of who asked his victims if they were xians was the Umpqua Community College shooter.
Which is why I addressed him in particular.
Apparently he did indeed ask his victims whether they were xians. And then killed them.
We don’t know exactly why though.
In his twisted world, he might have thought he was doing them a favor since they would go to heaven and meet god. Which BTW, he actually told them before he killed them.
Or he was sadistically toying with his victims while waiting for the police to arrive.
Trying to figure out what a mind like that does and why is foolish.
He is beyond my capacity at least to understand.
What we do know without a doubt is…that he wasn’t an atheist and that had nothing to do with his motivations.
hemidactylus @47: Yeah, I got that. I was addressing beholder’s weird focus on one part of the comment.
@40- raven
I do believe in daemons in the metaphoric sense coming from Unix, as BSD had a mascot:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon
An episode of Mr Robot did a deep dive into the main character’s daemons.
“Daemons. They don’t stop working. They are always active. They seduce. They manipulate. They own us. And even though you’re with me, even though I created you, it makes no difference. We all must deal with them alone.”— Eliot
“Romero, Mobley, Elliot, and Mr. Robot are driving in the car, out in the country. Elliot is sweating, looking sick, as he muses to us about daemons, they work in the background while our attention is elsewhere. They’re always there, always active, and we can try to do something else, but our conscious desires don’t drive us, our daemons do, and Elliot says he has more than most. Then he doubles over and vomits.”
https://mrrobot.fandom.com/wiki/Eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4
To me they equate to second nature habits, subroutines, or the idee fixe. Do people have ideas or do ideas have them?
I am an animist.
I believe in small gods like Anoia and whichever one is in charge of my shoelaces.
@ ^ chigau (違う) : I believe that sometimes I really don’t know what to believe..
I iz confused to use LOLcat speak. Plus tired. So tired.
I’ve only one thought upon review here.
FOOD FIGHT!
Followed by the thought, “I really don’t drink enough”.
Followed by, being a deist, I’ve been accused here for copping out and well, screw it all. And a general feeling, after following the last few exchanges of general disgust.
I sentence all to death. By chocolate.
Which oddly requires vanilla to complete the recipe.
And not a one addresses the real problem.
Repeal gravity, an unfair and oppressive law!
Yep, X = RND. Because, some trains just do need to be derailed.
Other random observation, for once, my breakfast of three pills didn’t taste worse than ass this morning. All praise the Lord Llance!
Or something.
So, is the circular firing squad done yet?
wzrd1 @54:
Darn, I must have missed that. Don’t suppose you have a link, or a post title? Luckily, I do drink enough. Maybe more than.
There seems to be a concerted effort across the internet to get us to shut up.
The question “what’s the harm in religion” keeps being thrown about along with variants of Pascals wager.
The “attacks on my beliefs are personal attacks ” is also getting a good airing allong with various ChatGPT wierd variants.
Rob Grigjanis @ 54, proclaiming being a deist, vs anything else and was attacked.
Sour taste in my mouth, pretty much, as my skin is fairly thick.
Just a lot of usual arguments.
Most being cop-out arguments, generally self-defeating. A few well earned and still lacking falsibility.
Truth is a double edged sword that I loathe and love.
And generates a joke about God and humor, expressed by monotremes.
The rest of my humor tends far darker.
wzrd1 @57: Sorry about the attacks. There are, occasionally, unexploded platypus eggshells lying around here.
PZ is right. We shouldn’t promote books by xtian terrorists. I’ve been thoughtfully reading the comments on this post. Many of them are thoughtful and worth consdering. But, I don’t want to wade into the ‘fish slap dance’ that sometimes goes on here (and is the usual crap on social media). I do want to add my perspective. Whatever people want to believe is their own right and should be personal. Most don’t want to be ahole xtian terrorist coaches shouting prayers to jebus on the 50 yard line with a captive audience. I am a proponent of rational civil discourse. Beating people up for mentioning their personal beliefs is barbaric. I appreciate that @58 Rob Grigjanis apologized to @57 wzrd1. That is a positive sign.
@53 StevoR said: I iz confused to use LOLcat speak. Plus tired. So tired.
I reply: I am too. I am sooo weary of the death, destruction and bullying that is demonstrated to be the true predominant ‘belief system’ in this world. I often need to remind myself (and hope others will join in this) to Step back from the societal madness, Take a deep Breath, Relax and make the small part of the world you control one of honesty, caring and decency to others.
shermanj @59:
It was an expression of sympathy, not an apology. I’ve never attacked wzrd1 for his beliefs.
We aren’t really attacking their beliefs.
No beliefs have called 911 or are lying bleeding in the road.
And even if we are attacking their beliefs, no it isn’t the same as a personal attack. That is a claim without evidence or data and may be dismissed without evidence or data as just wrong.
What we are mostly doing is defending ourselves from…the actions that are caused by their belief systems and belief ideologies.
The fundie xians are now seriously trying to destroy our society and the USA. They also support xian terrorism and have threatened to kill me over a 100 times by now.
I spend about zero time defending myself from the Bahias, Buddhists, Wiccans, or Pagans. Because they aren’t causing myself, my society, my neighbors, and my country any noteworthy problems.
raven @61:
Who is this ‘we’? If you’d said ‘most of us’, OK, I guess. But I’d certainly count beholder’s sarcastic JAQing off @41 as an attack. And Akira MacKenzie’s oft-repeated wish that all theists (even those fighting for social justice) should die (cue Akira coming in with his usual stylish retort of ‘boo-hoo’ or some such).
@62 you know what has Christian Nationalism is right? And what this branch of clerical fascism is doing right now? I would argue the “attacks on beliefs” of theists are miniscule, and do not carry any instituional power, unlike the opposite. All the attacks ,oppression ,persecution and subjuhation (attempts) of everyone and everything that is not “right” in the eyes of these fascistic warriors of superstition
@60 Rob Grigjanis said: It was an expression of sympathy, not an apology. I’ve never attacked wzrd1 for his beliefs.
I reply: O.K. thanks for clarifying that.
@61 raven said: We aren’t really attacking their beliefs. . . . What we are mostly doing is defending ourselves from…the actions that are caused by their belief systems and belief ideologies.
I reply: That is an important distinction: verbal expressions should be allowed. However, when they condone or incite real physical violence, engage in violence or acts of aggression, that is the barbaric manifestation of xtian nationalism as well as radical islam, radical judaism and any other violence prone group. Human society continues to be degraded by the barbaric violent people and elements in it. While I don’t share or support their beliefs, I know and respect many kind, decent Jews and Muslims and even a few Christians.
@54 wzrd1 said: I sentence all to death. By chocolate.
I reply: Well, if you are going to enforce the deadly dictates of Lord Cacao, then let it be a merciful death which requires dark chocolate! (oh, boy, I hope that doesn’t start another pie fight here, pardon the mixed metaphor)
Oh look, it’s a day that ends in “day” and Rob is still whining. Cry more.
@59, @62
If I decided to mention casually in a public forum that I believe Biden stole the 2020 election, others would be perfectly justified in critiquing a belief I volunteered for public discussion. Guess what? If I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t bring it up.
Asking for clarification isn’t “attacking” people, and it didn’t seem like vucodlak took any offense at the notion. Feel free to correct me otherwise.
@56 DanDare
Hoo boy, isn’t there?
@67: It’s hilarious that you think criticism amounts to trying to shut you up. What a delicate little flower you are. I know that twits like you and Akira will never shut up.
As I dodge the flying pies –
@67 beholder said: If I decided to mention casually in a public forum that I believe Biden stole the 2020 election,
I reply: Help! here is one comment people can’t critique effectively:
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2023/10/08/our-modern-world/
Posted on October 8, 2023 by tengrain
Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/07/amazon-alexa-news-2020-election-misinformation
Asked about fraud in the race — in which President Biden defeated former president Donald Trump with 306 electoral college votes — the popular voice assistant said it was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,” citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/12/rumble-video-gabbard-greenwald/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2
The 2020 races were “notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers,” according to Alexa, referencing Substack, a subscription newsletter service. Alexa contended that Trump won Pennsylvania, citing “an Alexa answers contributor.”
@69 Nice!
That got your attention, didn’t it?
Help, so barbaric, such personal attack. I am a delicate little flower under withering assault, won’t someone please think of my poor, poor personal beliefs?
(For the rhetorically-impaired, no, I don’t believe the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen. The 2000 U.S. presidential election was.)
I’m still astonished Unisted states being so fixated upon a foreign nation.
I should clarify, not the United States as a nation, just ever so many political leaders expressing undying loyalty to a specific foreign nation.