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Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 1:14 pm
Quote:I was having a candid conversation with me wife today about the frustration that I often feel when engaging in almost any conversation w/ a couple of people that I am either forced or feel obligated to interact with on a regular basis. This conversation commenced about an hour or so before I was scheduled to interact with one of them.
My wife's recommendation was to simply remain silent and ignore everything they proffered. "Don't ask them anything. Don't ask them to explain or elaborate on anything that they voluntarily offer. Don't critique anything that they say. Just remain silent, say 'ah ha,' 'oh, yea, I see,' 'yea, isn't that interesting' etc. and shake your head in silent agreement." she said. In other words, just STFU! To which I replied, "Yea, but what you're really asking me to do is to interact with them as if they were a six year-old." To which she replied, "Precisely!" And then she went on to ask if I would seriously ask a six year-old to offer a clearer explanation of exactly where Santa and his elves live and work. (She then said something about using the George Castanza approach, referencing, of course, to the time George wrote down the sex moves guaranteed to drive women wild on his palm and then reviewed each step of the move as he performed the action. But I digress).
I did admit that heeding her advice was indeed something that I should spend a little more time and effort on cultivating but that it was very hard for me to do, primarily because the people that I'm referring to were adults in every meaningful sense of the term, not children. "Yea," she said, "they look like adults but looks in these particular cases are very deceiving." It's impossible to resist this logic.
So, how might I do a little more "cultivating," I wondered. What can I possibly do to remind myself that I must - at all costs - resist interacting with people on a thoroughly adult, rational and logical level - one that demands a degree of critical thinking uncommon for a six year-old - and instead just smile, shake my head as if I were in agreement with them while muttering soothing sounds of acceptance and approval?
That's when I came up with this brilliant idea: each and every time the person in front of me offered something headbangingly stupid that normally would have driven me over the edge, I simply looked down, listened, opened my hand and stared directly into my palm.
You know what? It worked! Instead of feeling frustrated and aggravated when they offered something too stupid to comprehend (which is most of the time) I was silently laughing the entire afternoon!
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.co...tianity%29
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 1:16 pm
(This post was last modified: January 19, 2015 at 1:17 pm by dyresand.)
funny enough i ask theists if they want a cookie and a juice box 
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Six year olds have the capacity to learn.
Not so sure that is true among believers.
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 1:28 pm
(This post was last modified: January 19, 2015 at 1:33 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
-At some point we stop treating children -as children- and expect a little more (especially when they become capable of or empowered to act as an adult). While we might use this as a strategy to reduce our immediate frustration with the individual telling ghost stories...it won't help at all to stop the larger frustration of having those ghost stories impact every waking moment of the rest of our lives when said dolt isn't in front of us....and it may even provide continued support for the same.
My son used to blame every bad thing he did on the cat. For a time, I just smiled...then....I smiled and asked him "oh, my goodness....and then what did the cat do?". Eventually, I started to ask him what he was doing when the cat was doing all of this bad shit, what he thought about the cat, and what the cat had done. Now I just stare at him and immediately demand that he stop fibbing (unless it;s a really damned good story). I think that play acting was/is good for him, but only as a step on the way to a different place - particularly because he wasn't likely to have formed a very thorough concept of responsibility or even reality (and that might still need some work). When he was telling me the story..there's a pretty good chance he believed it. It was an outlet for him, and my strategy was a way to reduce the tension between us mostly for my benefit....but it did nothing to stop him from -actually doing bad shit-.
He's only 3 ( I suppose i should start getting used to calling him 4, he has a birthday shortly). I think it's safe to expect more from anyone who's older than my son, and I don't think it's very good idea to continue letting him get away with shit just because he wants to tell me a story about how the cat did it. I also don't think that a reduction in my immediate level of frustration is worth the price we'll both pay if this behavior continued.
So, when someone tells me that they think a ghost told them to do, or not do something...and that on the basis of this ghost story, they will be leveraging their very adult rights and abilities to achieve the effect laid out by said ghost. I'm not going to pretend as though they are children, except insomuch as I stare at them and demand that they stop telling ghost stories immediately.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 2:55 pm
Quote:My son used to blame every bad thing he did on the cat.
And theists have a "devil" they invented for the same purpose.
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 4:40 pm
(January 19, 2015 at 2:55 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Quote:My son used to blame every bad thing he did on the cat.
And theists have a "devil" they invented for the same purpose.
(Theist robs a bank and kills several people)
(Later in court blames it on the devil)
(theist kills atheist room mate)
(proceeds to say said room mate is the devil)
(theist parents agrees and said he did a good thing)
The devil is a excuse for doing terrible shit.
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 5:00 pm
Does that mean I get to turn them over my knee and wallop them when they get too bratty?
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 5:06 pm
(January 19, 2015 at 5:00 pm)Davka Wrote: Does that mean I get to turn them over my knee and wallop them when they get too bratty?
Hey hey i wouldn't most theists have guns and they will blame the devil for their actions.
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 5:06 pm
This is absolutely DISGUSTING! How dare you suggest that we treat theists like 6 year-olds?!
...
I propose we change the number to 4 year-olds - Even some 6 year-olds have the intellectual capacity to think: "Wait... this is bullshit!"
Power to the 6 year-old! Stop the stereotype, NOW!
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RE: Treat believers like six year olds
January 19, 2015 at 5:08 pm
(January 19, 2015 at 2:55 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Quote:My son used to blame every bad thing he did on the cat.
And theists have a "devil" they invented for the same purpose.
Fucking perfectly said.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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