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72 comments
More wishful thinking from a typical numpty who finds his duplicitous authority rapidly waning. Intellect's a bugger of a nuisance to the mendacious at heart, it undermines undue influence, furthers the cause of pesky education, champions reality and asks awkward questions. Damn it!
So that's:
One fundamentalist idiot-and-a-half.
380 dullards
148 just plain ol' nitwits
To think I share the same planet with these people...
EDIT: Well, upon second thought, some of the retweets may have (hopefully) been to mock or otherwise refute the statement so I guess that number could thankfully be less.
So, how does this work with all the people saying that God doesn't want to infringe on free will? Make up your mind, fundies! You can't go around having 12 different ideas of God and then claim you know everything.
This is the same Driscoll who advocates "Christian MMA", claimed that Jesus was "a prize fighter", is a rabid homophobe, and claimed that masturbation was homosexuality because 'the man is being turned on by his own body', right?
I seem to remember something about how he gave us 'free will', or, apparently, ONLY free enough to consider whatever we want EXCEPT his existence? Riiiiiiight....
Blarghonius
So, how does this work with all the people saying that God doesn't want to infringe on free will? Make up your mind, fundies! You can't go around having 12 different ideas of God and then claim you know everything.
It worked for the Greeks...
It occurs to me that in my previous post, I may seem to be guilty of the poisoning the well fallacy. So, let me clarify:
Mark Driscoll's version of God is a patriarchal beat-up-the-weak authoritarian, with a disturbing focus attacking anyone who diverges from narrowly-defined sexual and gender norms. Driscoll appears to like this concept, and to like asserting his dominance over others.
Given that Driscoll is such an authoritarian social-dominator, we should not be surprised at the intolerance of dissent or independent thinking. Both of those are a part of how authoritarians maintain their power base.
I can describe the pattern, but it is hard to fix. A social dominator's usual reaction to a direct challenge is to double-down and become even more extreme. Longer-term but more effective approaches rely on educating potential and current followers, so that they realize the toxic nature of what Driscoll preaches.
Wow, you can't even QUESTION his existence. Can't even question it. If you start to find yourself having doubts, JUST STOP THINKING.
Having doubts? STOP THINKING.
Got a question? STOP THINKING.
OBEY ORDERS WITHOUT QUESTION. Obey orders of men who say they represent God.
That's essentially what he's saying.
Then why did he give us a mind, assuming he exists and actually did give us the ability to think? If God really does exist but never shows actual evidence of his existence, then what's wrong with questioning it?
This is nothing more than "Don't ask those questions!" brainwashing. Kind of like when I told my wife I was having serious doubts about our religion and she told me I just think about things too much.
And who are you to speak for god, Mr. Driscoll?
Perhaps your god made me a questioning unbeliever. Who are you to question his wisdom?
It baffles me that this guy wrote a book entitled, "Who Do You Think You Are?" and could ever be upset at an atheist who is, in comparison, about a billion times more humble than he. He thinks he's a child of the universe's sole creator and, as an atheist, I think I'll live, make my contribution and die. No ego involved. Creation and afterlife myths are BORN from our egos.
Anon, I'm not "pulling No True Christian"; in fact, I never mentioned Christians or Christianity. What I said was, in its entirety, I don't know what religion Mark Driscoll is but he sure doesn't belong to one that reads the Bible. . The Bible makes it clear, pretty early on, that humans are given free will. That is incompatible with Mr Driscoll's views. Mr Driscoll may well be the greatest Christian who ever lived, but his religion has no place for reading the Bible.
By all means criticize me for my view of the Bible (to which I am referring as a holy text used by Christians, Jews, Mormons etc., not because I believe what it says) is interpreted or that Mr Driscoll's views do include free will, but don't criticize me for what I didn't say.
@Hasan Prishtina:
No True Christian / No True Scotsman is a general term indicating the fallacy of asserting that because someone does something horrible, they can't possibly be a member of some group.
Driscoll reads the bible, and takes it very seriously. Thus, your use of the fallacy - you said "he doesn't belong to [a religion] that reads the Bible", but he does.
By the way: the idea of free will is not unambigiously stated in the Bible - the book is self-contradicting about that (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/free.html ). Different Christian groups have different ideas about free will; some say that humans have free will and others say that they do not.
@Anon
I am aware of what "no true Christian" means.
I am glad that you are prepared to discuss the interpretation of the Bible - I am also aware of the variation of interpretation. I am not saying that he is not a Christian; my statement Mr Driscoll may well be the greatest Christian who ever lived would seem to rule that out, no? Frequent use is made on this site of pointing out the hypocrisies of various religious figures by pointing to the contents of their holy texts; there have been quite a few since January 1. You have not accused them of "pulling No True Christian" even when, unlike me, they specifically refer both to the Christian's comments and to Christianity. Surely your vigilance should be directed towards those sorts of comments rather than mine.
@Hasan Prishtina:
As shocking as it may seem, I do not read all the threads on this forum, so I have not commented on them.
In any event, I have only recently come to realize that claiming "X has not read their holy book" is a form of the No True Scotsman (/Christian/Muslim/etc. ) fallacy.
Since the Bible (/the Qur'an/the Book of Mormon/the Vedic scriptures, etc.) is so self-contradicting, with enough rationalization someone can claim "what the book actually says is ..." and then say almost whatever they want - and all of those interpretations will be equally wrong.
They are still basing their claims on the supposed authority of the starting material, so claiming that they haven't read it is incorrect and claiming that they haven't properly understood it is also incorrect. In this particular case: Driscoll's interpretation of the Bible may be a transparent attempt to justify authoritarian behavior and at odds with many other interpretations of the Bible, but without adding a bunch of external information you cannot say that he is interpreting it incorrectly.
(When all external information is included, the Bible is shown to be a collection of myths and legends and other fiction, compiled over several hundred years in several different languages, and not suitable for any sort of decision-making, but that is another discussion.)
In any event, I have only recently come to realize that claiming "X has not read their holy book" is a form of the No True Scotsman (/Christian/Muslim/etc. ) fallacy.
How? Millions have been Christians and Muslims without reading (or being able to read) a word of their holy text. Jews, on the other hand, remain Jewish in the religious sense even if they are atheist. One is then, supposedly, caught by the No True Scotsman fallacy no matter whether one is discussing Trotsky, who was part of a government devoted to destroying Jewish religious life, or the Lubavitcher Rebbe who was very successful in spreading his version of very Orthodox Judaism. At this point, it starts to look rather absurd.
The Bible is certainly full of contradictions but that does not mean that everything is contradicted somewhere else in the text. There are few passages that suggest, for example, that the Bible's authors take anything but a dim view of adultery and they are pretty consistent on the rules on offerings of spices. There are indeed a great many questions on which legitimately it can be said that the Bible's authors, even including the New Testament, take a common view. One cannot say that such questions are open to interpretation unless you are prepared to say that of pretty much any text.
As for Driscoll, he has said that people "have free will or there is no love." Denying human agency, then, seems to go back on his own beliefs.
@Hasan Prishtina:
A person may or may not have read the book that they profess to base their religion on. If they have or not doesn't disqualify them from identifying as a member of the religion.
But we can't claim that someone hasn't read the book without evidence showing that they haven't. In Driscoll's case, we know that he has. He uses it in an attempt to justify his self-contradicting misogynistic homophobic patriarchal views.
If god gave us a mind, it was to plum the mysteries of existence. Just as we can fall to sin and be forgiven, so can doubt. In fact belief tempered by doubt and re-stregenthed by knowledge of faith is much stronger than untested faith.
Untested faith tends to produce atheist fundies, which are not fun either.
Using a christian perspective. I'm agnostic.
Actually, many people question God all of the time. In fact, I'd say it's best if one questions God's existence, or his word. Why? Because questions (honest questions, not rigged ones designed to get a particular response out of someone) lead to answers. Answers lead to learning, which leads to wisdom, which the bible says we should seek out. So yes, he did give us a mind so we could question his existence. How they use it is their own business.
You thought-police advocate.
Can you prove you have a mind, Marky-boy?
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Here's a cranial saw. Remember, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (KJV): Prove all things.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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