Why be good?

[Jackalope]

Throw one in there. See what happens.

I dunno man, I like my halibuts finely ground.

[Longhorn]

When it eats itself, I'll be impressed.

IT ATE A GODDAMNED SHOE

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

[Jackalope]

All I can say is that little machine is far more interesting than whatever the fuck it is we were originally talking about.

[Exian]

I was sittin here wondering why Alex (being German) never unleashed this baby on us, when I noticed the blade (who's teeth are giant-ass buckets) moves vertically! It's a vertical rock crusher! I'm back baby!!!! Alex and his horizontal crushing can suck it!

[Thumpalumpacus]

When CD, Parkers and Steel took exception to my "atheists in foxholes" comment, they wanted to counter my comments with their own personal experiences (CD and Parkers) and the experiences of others (in Steel's case). When they put them into writing in an online forum, they had every expectation that what they wrote would be accepted and believed as true. 

Now, they may counter after the fact that they don't give a hoot whether I believe it or not...but that isn't consistent with their motivation at the time they first posted. At that point, it was their expectation that their anecdotal evidence would be demonstrate that I was in the wrong about "atheists in foxholes". IOW, it was their expectation that their personal eyewitness testimony would be sufficient to overcome my previous comments.

You're absolutely wrong. Why do you think I have that stuff online? I've had this "atheist in a foxhole" conversation several times before, and you're not the first theist to question what I've said about it -- hell, you're not even the first theist here at this forum; you can ask Drich about that. So I didn't expect at all to be accepted at face value, and that is exactly why I have this sort of stuff loaded onto my Tinypic. If you go and look at the upload dates, you'll see they long predate this questioning.

What that means for you is that your point about "there are no atheists in foxholes" is unoriginal, and your point about me expecting to be accepted at face-value is factually incorrect. And the idea that you lured anyone into a trap is laughable, given that your trap lacked the jaw of verifiability ... which is exactly why I was happy to show you some of my bona fides. I expect to have to show evidence for my claims, and I am more than happy to do it without shilly-shallying around.

I do, of course, appreciate you giving me this opportunity to once more demonstrate how your wishful thinking has obviously corrupted your thinking process.

[Thumpalumpacus]

When it eats itself, I'll be impressed.

[Esquilax]

We had to spend a day contorting ourselves through these ridiculous games for this? Really?

Are we going to get an apology for the insane overreach with which you began this stillbirth of an argument? Or are you going to stick to your dishonesty guns to the last?

I don't think you fully appreciate what has happened here today.

Randy, I understand exactly what went on here, though I certainly do not appreciate it: you impugned the character, personally, of a number of people here, whom you don't know, simply to make a cheap rhetorical point. In doing so, you demonstrated that the real human beings here on this forum, many of whom I've known for years and like a great deal, are less important than your feeling of being constantly correct.

Almost immediately after you took your ridiculous point to its ill-fitting conclusion, I posted a response detailing the many, many reasons one should dismiss the gospel testimony, while accepting that of my friends here. Here it is, it took me maybe twenty minutes from your post to write it. Your very next post- I hope you didn't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back there, by the way- asserted that nobody had addressed what you said, which is a complete lie, as I had done so literally two posts after you had hunkered down over a heap of newspapers and unclenched the argument in the first place. That's lie number one.

The thing is, you can't even claim to have missed my rebuttal, because that's the post you're quoting to respond to me. You just deleted all of the actual rebuttal, as if you can just pretend it was never there. So you're claiming that nobody has addressed what you said, while having laid eyes on a post that addresses what you said. That's lie number two.

So to recap: you begin by insulting all of us, for no reason other than that it serves your infantile, equivocatory purposes. Then you lie about it afterwards, multiple times, to make yourself look better, as though the rest of the thread isn't recorded for anybody to look at and link to anytime they like. It's not that nobody addressed what you said, it's that you're too busy declaring victory, that you're too much of an intellectual coward, to pit your baseless, fiat assertions (Randy's patented "because I said so!" style of argumentation) against the actual facts, and scholarly consensus surrounding these issues. You want the appearance of having intellectual justification for your beliefs, while cheating when it comes to the hard work, and this is aptly demonstrated by the fact that your responses are either nothing but claims, or "you don't actually disagree with me, you're just biased against me," which is toddler logic at its finest.

Now, if you want to come back and address the rebuttal I actually wrote, that's fine, though I doubt you can do it adequately. But what you can't do is sit here and pretend that nobody has written one, unless you like being the new forum charlatan, in which case by all means, encourage people to join you in the solipsistic echo chamber you call a life. We won't do it, but it's so very entertaining watching you swan around in your little imaginary world, chest all puffed up at victories against strawmen opponents using equivocations instead of arguments.

[Randy Carson]

While you're still cursing me, you haven't even begun to address the implications of the analogy I just suckered you into. You folks make all kinds of truly pathetic arguments against the gospels, but when I turn the tables on you to demonstrate dramatically how and why your arguments fail (and more importantly, why we can believe the gospels), you have nothing but epithets. And no chips.

You're completely full of shit, Randy.  I've never made any such argument to you, in whole, because I have no interest in discussing the topic.

What I *was* discussing was your ludicrous assertion that, in a moment close to death, that all atheists would "make it right" with God.  I notice that you haven't admitted that you're wrong about that.

So, again, go fuck yourself, you dishonest bucket of shit.

I get that you're angry with me, but I think my point was well made.

Why is what the authors of the gospels wrote about the things they saw any less credible than the things you wrote about (highlighted above for clarity)?

Alternatively, why should we give you the benefit of the doubt - and take you at your word - but not do the same with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Can you explain what makes YOUR write up of YOUR personal experiences more believable than theirs?

---

Hahaha suckered into? Every single person here knew exactly where you were going with that transparent bullshit. We just were hoping you weren't that stupid.

Of course you all did. And I really appreciate the fact that no one said a word in advance and let the whole thing play out to the end. That was nice.

I did post three questions to CD a moment ago...care to answer them?

[abaris]

Why is what the authors of the gospels wrote about the things they saw any less credible than the things you wrote about (highlighted above for clarity)?

OK, let me try something different to capture your attention here: WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE THAT THE AUTHORS OF THE GOSPELS SAW WHAT THEY PENNED DOWN?

They don't even put that claim out themselves and they spin quite different tales. So these are obviously not eyewitness accounts but a collection of tales that were floating round at the time in question.

[Cato]

The immaculate conception had witnesses? Must be where Islam got their rape evidence requirement.