Daily Archives: Saturday, 16:16, November 27, 2010
Things that Irk Me Thusly
I’m going to lay out a few things that vex, annoy, irritate and to some extent mildly anger me. This will not be nice, friendly, kindly, accommodating, or seem particularly civil. In some cases I might get downright abrasive, but there are things that need to be said as frankly as I can be about them. So, I’m going to put down the things that bother me the most without actually being so egregious that they put me into a frothing rage. I’ll save that for later. I’m just as prone to dislike as anyone, perhaps even more than most, so here it is: The things that make me slightly cross, and overall, serve to darken my mood:
- I’m annoyed with people who tell me that they hope to hell that their god strikes me down, and still pretend that they are pious followers of a kind, forgiving god who loves everybody unconditionally…on the condition that they accept Him.
- I’m annoyed by those who tell me that I must believe in their invisible Devil because I don’t believe in their equally invisible God, even though I find the idea of believing in an invisible anything a comical waste of my time.
- I’m annoyed by fringe-claimants who suppress all dissent, squash all criticism on their websites, even to the point of making commenting on their sites impossible, and who get off on vilifying and demonizing their critics as intellectually and morally inferior, while whining endlessly about alleged ad hominems and perceived personal attacks.
- I’m irritated by those believers who repeatedly ignore points that their critics make, and attempt to shoot down points that they don’t, both without even bothering to read or listen to what they actually saying.
- I find myself irritated with fringe-claimants who smugly attribute faith, orthodoxy, or dogmatic fervency to their critics without even showing that they even know what these are.
- I’m annoyed by believers who accuse skeptics of faulty arguments and hair-splitting about minutae while happily committing the very same themselves.
- I’m annoyed by believers on their high-horse who smugly admonish skeptics to question their own beliefs and assumptions, having no clue that this is what skeptics generally do, without ever attempting to follow their own advice.
- I’m annoyed by intolerant ideological demagogues who insist that they alone know the Truth™ and the Right Way To Live™ and try tirelessly to mislead or force by law or violence others to believe and act as they do, yet claim the high-grounds of moral values and patriotism.
- I’m irritated by religious believers who plant literature deliberately intended for proselytizing to others in publicly funded libraries, and the employees of these libraries who allow them to do it.
- I’m annoyed by people who read implications into arguments that do not actually exist where they are seen, and who intentionally ignore what the arguer is actually saying as well as how it is said.
- I’m annoyed by willfully ignorant ideological bigots who insist that the verbatim text of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution neither says nor implies freedom from religion as well as freedom of it. Here’s a suggestion: Read the damn thing, Gomer.
- I’m irritated by paranormal believers who have to explicitly and defensively state that they are “open-minded, not closed-minded,” when they are just being credulous, and at once, very closed-minded indeed regarding the real world that they cannot accept.
- I’m annoyed by people who widen the definition of the word ‘religion’ to derisively mean anything that disagrees with their opinions, beliefs and values, broadening the term so much that it means everything and therefore means nothing at all.
- I’m irritated by pseudoscience believers who smugly assume that the limits of their intuition and personal knowledge define the limits of reality, that anything they haven’t heard of doesn’t exist or hasn’t been done, while accusing skeptics of the very same, and cluelessly thinking themselves to be well-read and wise.
- I’m annoyed with self-righteous, narcissistic people who want to drag the rest of civilization down to their level of Dark Age, or New Age, superstition while painting themselves as being on the side of life, love, truth, hope, respect, kindness, light, and right.
- I’m annoyed with people who reject or ignore the very thinking, process, and methods, indeed the very workings of science, medicine and technology while freely enjoying the fruits of the hard-won labors of research workers.
- I’m irritated by the conspiratorial thinking of cranks who look first to the supposed motivations, biases, vested interests, beliefs, attitudes and personal characteristics of their critics, and only as an afterthought, often not ever, addressing the actual arguments and evidence their critics put forth, and call it ‘skepticism.’
- I’m annoyed by those who demand that skeptics examine “all of the relevant literature” on the subject of their pet belief, to be taken seriously, when this is simply not possible due to the vast amount of literature on any given topic, most of which is garbage.
- I find irritating cutesy-talking, condescending people who refer to nonbelievers as ‘blind,’ ‘naive,’ ‘sheeple,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘pathetic,’ ‘orthodox,’ ‘doctrinaire,’ ‘stubborn,’ ‘obstructionist,’ or ‘dogmatically fervent,’ to satisfy their need to feel superior to the rest of benighted humanity.
- I get mildly angry with whiny members of religions that enjoy undue political privilege in this country who moan and bitch and play the ‘persecution card’ every time someone criticizes the hypocrisy of their leaders who can’t follow their own moral rules and get themselves into scandal after scandal because of it. If you can’t abide by your own insane Bronze Age rules, you have no right to expect everyone else to.
…and finally…
- I take exception to alleged psychics who seriously think themselves to belong to a special beleaguered subset of humanity called ‘psychic people’ and who have the nerve to get defensive about ‘X-Men’ references when they bring it up in a public forum…’Nuff said.
