Comments on: Sinful Inequalities

By: Henry

Henry — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 23:04:22 +0000

Actually as trolls go, she’s by no means the worst that we’ve had. There was an anti-semitic lunatic who plagued us for weeks, continually posting comments that had to be deleted (he gave up eventually). This is minor stuff in comparison (if anyone is reading this comment, and is mystified, there are a bunch of comments by a persistent troll that have been deleted from this post).

By: Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:44:48 +0000

Henry: What do you make of the vexatious visitor? The “troll” characterization is starting to look excessively optimistic. You may be wanting an exorcism. If so, I recommend the Catholics, by reputation.

By: Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 00:35:31 +0000

“ ‘Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds,’ and even more explicitly…” God is neither human nor penguin nor saguaro etc. “… various wacky Mahayana/Vajrayana bodhisatvas and quasi-deitic demi-gods which have a pretty wierd ontological status – a lot of Tibetan Buddhists that I’ve read seem to treat these ‘instrumentally’ rather than as metaphysically real in the sense that the Judeo-Christian deity is said to be real…” “Yks blltrys – m thrdjckr ND trll ND thg. m n bd blggr. thnk v rspndd mldl t th stpd, sxst bllsht v xprncd n crkd tmbr. Srr f y thnk v vr-rctd t bng ttckd b th byz@CT.” This must be what they call “Speaking in Tongues.”

By: Henry

Henry — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 19:19:06 +0000

Deb/wilted pole Using sockpuppets is a bit pathetic. I’m barring you from commenting on my posts – I’m probably not going to try too hard to root out your pseudonyms, so I’m sure that you can sneak in if you want to – but if they’re up to the standards of your recent comments, they’ll probably be deleted anyway for irrelevance or offensiveness or both.

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:27:21 +0000

gah, I meant “Four Noble Truths”…

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:25:11 +0000

“I’m talking about the concept of the tao – the yin/yang, etc. The source of everything. It’s not a supreme being in the Judeo-Christian sense – an entity that interferes in human affairs, has children, keeps a ledger of good and bad deeds, etc. It’s a supreme being in the sense of the source of existence. It’s more like “May the force be with you” than “God bless you.” ” You’re just making this crap up aren’t you? So now you’re busy conflating Taoism (you know, ‘the tao’ and all that ‘ying-yang’ malarkey) with Buddhism (you know, the Five Noble Truths, the Eight-fold path, all that completely different stuff). Taoism is Chinese, whereas Buddhism originates in Northern India, and Lau Tzu the author of the Tao Te Ching was a near contemporary of the Buddha but, er, living many thousands of miles away in a completely different culture. You’re mixing up two completely different cultural and religious systems. I assume you a) know this and are just being deliberately provocative or b) are arrogant enough to continue prattling on about something about which you clearly know sod all…. [New Year resolution: must not feed the troll…]

By: wilted pole

wilted pole — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 14:07:09 +0000

Wow! Hanky panky deleted the vowels from Deb’s post. I guess he showed her.

By: Deb

Deb — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 14:03:34 +0000

I’m talking about the concept of the tao – the yin/yang, etc. The source of everything. It’s not a supreme being in the Judeo-Christian sense – an entity that interferes in human affairs, has children, keeps a ledger of good and bad deeds, etc. It’s a supreme being in the sense of the source of existence. It’s more like “May the force be with you” than “God bless you.”

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 01:21:45 +0000

Deb: The whole point is that Buddhists, far from having a conception of the supreme being that is “is infinitely more plausible, probable and sensible than the judeo-christian-muslim one”, don’t have any positive conception of a supreme being at all! To keep asserting otherwise is to display a lamentable ignorance of even the rudiments of what Buddhism, at least in its original Theravada form, professes. [I’m leaving out various wacky Mahayana/Vajrayana bodhisatvas and quasi-deitic demi-gods which have a pretty wierd ontological status – a lot of Tibetan Buddhists that I’ve read seem to treat these ‘instrumentally’ rather than as metaphysically real in the sense that the Judeo-Christian deity is said to be real…]

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 01:21:36 +0000

Yks blltrys – m thrdjckr ND trll ND thg. m n bd blggr. thnk v rspndd mldl t th stpd, sxst bllsht v xprncd n crkd tmbr. Srr f y thnk v vr-rctd t bng ttckd b th byz@CT.

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 01:16:45 +0000

Dear bellatrys, The point is that the buddhist conception of the supreme being is infinitely more plausible, probable and sensible than the judeo-christian-muslim one. The hypothesis that the supreme being is a human male is sexist, speciesist and stupid. What’s an ithy phallic?

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 01:13:51 +0000

And what’s with the threadjacking, deb? Not getting enough traffic on your blog? Hey, here’s a good blog with an interesting post (lots in fact) entitled “This atheist celebrates the birth of Jesus.” And it happens to be by an obscure female blogger whom I’m going to add to my regular reads – link via a dKos comment. (See, deb, this is how it’s done in civilized society. I don’t pretend to be terribly, terribly civilized myself, but I do know that you don’t threadjack and insult people wildly on a blog you’re a virtual stranger at, and then act like you’re the victim when people respond hotly. At least if you’re not a total thug.)

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 01:07:32 +0000

Yo, deb, study up on your ancient history before you stick your feet in your mouth again. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back all you like, dislocate your arm in congratulating yourself on being so much smarter than we theists – but at least get your facts straight. It’s the kooky Judeo-Christians that pathologically created god in their own image. Unless there have been serious revolutions in the field of history, Babylon, the Indus valley, the Cyclades, and Egypt all predate Judaism, to say nothing of Christianity. Unless again there have been serious revisions in folklore and comparative mythology that I’ve somehow missed, all those cultures were given to anthopomorphic depictions of the Divine, often (tho’ not always) with an explicitly ithyphallic tenor. —To the point that one of the earliest known Big Name Greek Philosophers, Xenophanes (not to be confused with the student of another Big Name Philosopher, Xenophon) wrote, “But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form,” and again, “Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds,” and even more explicitly, “The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.” (He also took a dim view of the glorification of athletes over mental achievement, proving himself to be ahead of more than one curve by several millennia, since we are not there yet by any means.) So if you’re going to flyte, get your facts straight, or be prepared to face a threefold return!

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:53:09 +0000

Wow Henry – guys make nasty posts making fun of my name, etc. and you don’t jump in. Now you’re threatening to delete my posts. Thanks for adding to the growing pile of evidence of how pathetic the blokes at CT are. Good luck trying to silence someone in a forum that allows anonymous posts. Gonna delete this one, Hank?

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 23:39:31 +0000

Deb – you’re on a warning. I don’t enjoy it when you jump into a thread on a completely different subject and start trying to stir the shit. I’m sorry that I defended you earlier from people accusing you of being a troll, because you’re acting like one – yelling out to cause offense and get attention. The level of conversation nosedives when you make a comment – you’ve got your own blog to post on, and I don’t appreciate what you’re doing here. If you keep on doing this, I’m going to start deleting your comments systematically from my posts. If it makes you feel happier and , you can call it censorship, or whatever you want – I can’t say that I care especially. Either shove off or stop acting like a ten year old.