[leighton] Apparently I’m a dick who’s going to burn in hell. More drama from the creators of “Kirk Hasting’s “Top Ten Questions for Darwinists”. For this evening’s performance, we’re bored enough to present you with “Why Leighton is going to hell.”
There’s not really a Shyamalan ending here. Pretty much goes how you would expect it to.
38 Responses to “I’ve been a dick again…..”
Without having read that, Leighton goes to hell, I’m guessing? Or is the not-twist that the guy sucks at making his points and everyone is similarly fucked over by how badly the discussion goes?
And Kirk once again shows he doesn’t understand his own theology (and neither does Leighton). You’re both arguing from the perspective of works theology – we go to Hell for our sins. Hitler goes there for his sins, Leighton for his sins. However, “all men have sinned and come short of the glory of god” (Romans 3:23). We are saved by faith, and faith alone.
Which means that as long as Hitler confessed his sins before his suicide*, he’s going straight to Heaven. And as long as Gandhi remained a Hindu**, he’s going straight to Hell.
I may also note that Kirk’s application of Matthew 5:39 is not very Christ-like.
*unless you say that suicide is a sin – in which case I invite you to find that in the Bible. It’s from Plato and Neoplatonism, just like Hell, the trinity and so many other ‘Christian’ concepts.
**I don’t think Gandhi was very virtuous, but most people seem to disagree. Substitute virtuous pagan/atheist of your own choice.
As always, thanks for your usual candor!
They didn’t close the Skype chat window!? Holy hell, they’re like incompetent goons from a children’s movie.
Really? Hell won’t be pretty? I would have never!
I like how somebody badmouthing him specifically means that person must be hateful and miserable to everybody, and I like how he infers from that the existence of the devil somehow. And that apparently the true intent of the podcast is to spread nihilism or some shit. Man, we fans must be idiots! Let’s go absorb some of the love and warmth just radiating from Evidence 4 oh wait there is none.
God, Leighton, you are a badass. Though the forum’s love of cats may be rubbing off a little too much on you.
What a small, small world that man lives in.
OMG I never realized that being rude in an argument is proof of the existence of Satan! Hail Satan! And I loved Chuck’s contributions. “Once again Kirk has reached out with an olive branch, only to be kicked in the balls by Leighton.”
Personally, I would very much like to see one of the E4F guys come on the Irreligiosophy boards. I would make an effort to be as civil as possible towards them–but can they learn to think past roadblocks they set up in their own thought, like how they get hung up on open systems not describing exactly how entropy is reduced locally? Only then could it be productive.
I hope they do an episode about this. That’ll be hilarious.
They would never come to the forum. They probably think it’s some coven of miserable hellbound Satanists, and they’re too comfortable with their own shitty beliefs to ever really seek a challenge. That dude added two apologist tracts in his email, the thought to check against atheist counterarguments on teh Google never even occurring to him. That is not the sign of a person who is given over to meaningful discourse.
Even I took the apologetics at face-value because ancillary things like that hardly affect the overall argument in my view, but a cursory examination of them yields a very different story from what the apologists would have us believe. The explanation that Luke’s genealogy simply zig-zags around Mary is, to say the least, unparsimonious. The idea that Heli is Mary’s father arose as an explanation for the apparent contradiction and isn’t based on the bible itself. The more parsimonious explanation is that Luke and Matthew, being composites of other sources, used different sources for Jesus’ genealogy through Joseph, not realizing their work would be cross-referenced, or even that their works would be bound together while excluding many contemporary sources.
One can indeed come up with “reasonable” explanations for biblical contradictions but something that sounds reasonable only if you ignore the acrobatics it took to produce the explanation is simply a psychological comfort for those who already believe.
…why did the scene from “Pulp Fiction” where Samuel L Jackson asks :”Does Marcellus Wallace look like a bitch?” pop into my mind when Leighton was answering back?
Oh, and Mr Hastings, I really hope you are reading this. Leighton, and the rest of us atheist heathens, are not going to hell. You, and the others like you, drove us there.
The above email exchange is typical of many deconversion stories, including my own. Young bright-eyed believer wants to emulate the teachings of Jesus as they were presented ie: Love thy neighbour as you love thyself. Young bright-eyed believer urged to be honest and truthful, as these are, according to religious teachers, virtues paramount to leading a blameless life. Young bright-eyed believer honestly wants to be the best Christian possible and takes Matthew 25:34-40 seriously.
Then young bright-eyed believer learns of the provisos. And it’s pretty much that unless you are a celibate heterosexual male, you are destined for hell and must feel guilty just for existing as you are an affront in the eyes of the Lord and forget about Matthew 25:34-40, he was a hippie, if you want to avoid an eternity in hell you must either subjugate yourself to a heterosexual celibate male or be a heterosexual celibate male.
Young bright-eyed believer is, well, doubtful of all this. Where is god’s love? Where is true justice, if those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, comforted the mourning and visited the prisoners are cast out of Heaven if they are not Christians? What if they had never heard of Christ? Isn’t being good for the sake of being good a reward in itself? Isn’t honesty, kindness and compassion for everyone and not just for those of the same faith? Then what has the young bright-eyed believer being taught all these years?
Trying to reconcile the gap between the teachings of the faith and the policies of the religious leaders, the young bright-eyed believer starts really reading the Bible. And its eyes start clouding with the murders, the rapes, the contradictions, the incest. The young believer starts paying attention to the Gospels, and finds that they have four different accounts for the pivotal points of the Lord’s life: the Passion, the Crucifiction, the Burial, the Resurrection.
And when the young believer brings the questions and doubts to your door, Mr Hastings, you go against every teaching of honesty and try to cover up. And when the young believer is not satisfied, you threaten with hell.
And this is how the young person finds itself choosing between living with oneself and living in faith.
Having being raised to value truth, honesty, compassion and generosity above gender, race, religion or political affiliation, I personally chose to live with myself. And I have to thank you and the others like you, Mr Hastings, for saving me from any sort of eternity that I would have to spend in your company.
BURN. Erm, figuratively speaking.
Did he really block you…how childish.
I have said this before, debating in the end is not worth it. No matter how well you do, they will no listen, and then claim they won the debate.
*slow clap*
Bravo, good sirs. Bravo.
We all knew Leighton was going to hell, so that’s not news.
I love the desperate grasping at apologetic straws to give an answer why the genealogies of jeebus are completely in contradiction with each other. I mean, obviously there are no such errors in the True Word™ of Yahweh so it must be that Joesph had two fathers and one lineage traces through Mary and blah blah blah blah. All based on no actual evidence of course, just trying to make the square peg fit inside of a round hole that keeps getting smaller and smaller. Of course it could be that they are both made up to begin with, nahhhhhh Yahweh would never allow that in his big book of 100% true magic stories. I mean, he would never try to confuse people and cause them to doubt the validity of his existence by letting the people he has divinely inspired write contradictory accounts of his son’s life. That’s not the Yahweh I know. The Yahweh I know is always completely straightforward and always easy to understand. That’s why he wrote the bible through 40+ anonymous authors in 3 different languages over the period of a thousand years.
I really want to hear this debate now, I mean, even conceding his apologetics and assuming that this answer to the inconsistencies in the genealogy are correct, that still provides no actual evidence for the divinity of Hey-Zeus. It would be like me saying My grandfather’s name was Dave, my father’s name was Jeff, therefore: I’m the son of god.
Post the episode Chuck!
FUCK BALLS CUM SUGAR!
god i’m so fucking angry right now….ever since i became an atheist i just can’t shake this anger..
and leighton…you’re pretty much the meanest guy ever…for realz! but i could just be saying that…because i’m angry and full of hate…AND OBNOXIOUS! YES!
AOL Postmaster
Diagnostic-Code: Bible-Blocked
host [172.29.14.155] said: 554 5.7.1 Your mail could not be delivered because the recipient is only accepting mail from people who agree with the recipient in all aspects of their narrow minded, flawed belief system.
I didn’t notice the AOL address. Awesome sauce.
If you’d like to contact me, my electronic mail address is smuttbuckington@compuserve.com
lol oops. Wasn’t thinking of the hypertext.
So you didn’t copy the contents of the skype window? Fail.
…so with his couple of responses to ‘the genealogies of jesus’ and ‘was the tomb open?’ – the answer seems to be ‘the stuff in the bible *actually* means something other than what was actually written’
brilliant.
What Leighton lacks in dick, he makes up for a billion-fold in dickishness.
LMAO! That was good. I love it when people say ‘I’m done talking/emailing/whatever”and then there they are, right back in it. So, that’a a lie, Kirk is going to hell.
And then, to top it off, he resorts to the ‘you’re just mad at god’ fallacy and then judges you, presuming to know the mind of god.
Can we do this as a three act play for a podcast? I want to be Kirk.
If Leighton is a slave of god, that’s definitive proof that god is an assman. Get your butt into those assless chaps, boy.
I would have been pissed at being called closed-minded. Um, the theological story is so much smaller and petty than reality.
Good for you, Leighton. It’s time we stop coddling these people.
I would’ve much preferred if Chuck responded to what they said in regards to the empty tomb and genealogy contradiction.
I’m voting for the exchange to be read as a podcast (pretty please.)
I love how people claim God is both just and merciful, but dishes out an infinite punishment for finite crimes. Looks like there is a sky fairy that forgot about all that eye for an eye business.
Nice work, Leighton! You’re a bastard, but I like you.
Kirk doesn’t mention the fact that the word “Εγεννησε” is used to
indicate bilogical parentage, not son-in-law. I doubt you would find in reputable source that says εγεννησε means son-in-law in any context. Yet another failure of apologetics.
You know, I’d like to hear Charlie’s thoughts on Kirk’s final reply.
I realize that Charlie’s interjections are largely for comic relief and to offset Leighton’s brutally honest expressions of exasperation, but when we finally hear what Kirk really has on his mind, his superficial pleasantries can be hardly referred to as an “olive branch.”
In my experience, an olive branch starts with a truly humbling statement. Kirk responds by throwing all sorts of compliments at both Chuck and Leighton. This is sooo fake. If he wants to win some favour and preserve genuine relationships, what he needs to do is actually man up and take some responsibility for at least some of the more obviously fallacious statements that he and his counterpart make.
A real argument is a give and a take, back and forth, where you can whittle away at the rhetoric and the presuppositions so that you can get to the heart of the matter. For example, both Chuck and Leighton are more than willing to grant certain premises over the course of a debate in order to make a specific point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the E4F crew seems even unable to grant a premise from the opposing viewpoint when forming their arguments.
From the standpoint of a rational or scientific argument, all of the premises and ideas put forth are contingent–purely on the balance of empirical evidence that has been gathered over time. Kirk’s claim that he cannot trust what Chuck and Leighton have to say because they automatically presuppose that there is no God is such a strawman. By their own admission, both Leighton and Chuck were once believers, presupposing the existence of God! Their current positions–and one could reasonably assume that all their future position–on matters of science or religiosity were deducted from a slow gathering of facts and information on both sides of the argument, with them eventually siding with the position that has the most evidence supporting it.
Anyway, I’ve rambled off topic here a little. What I wanted to really get at was that, given what Kirk was really thinking–that Leighton was going to burn in hell for being the harbinger of all that is evil and wrong with the world (not an extreme statement at all)–all of his supposedly extended “olive branches” are complete bullshit. None of his compliments or somewhat friendly statements carry any weight when we see the dishonesty at their root. Kirk is just trying to gain respect by complimenting and being fake nice, and when he gets the respect, then he hopes that his empty arguments will hold more water, and that he will eventually convince his adversaries that he is correct.
Leighton, on the other hand, has pulled no punches, and though some would argue he could use less strong language at times, he cannot be accused of being dishonest at any time. He is honestly expressing the exasperation he feels toward someone who wants to avoid an honest discussion by trying to make himself look like the innocent victim who only wants to compliment his opponents and plead for compassion toward his apparently poor public speaking skills.
Anyway, this has been a disjointed rant, but please, Chuck, tell us, what is your assessment of Kirk’s final reply?
please, Chuck, tell us, what is your assessment of Kirk’s final reply?
I didn’t read it.
Well, then, you’re a skunkdick. That is all.
I like how Kirk uses his Jedi powers to detect that Chuck still has some good in him. I guess in his mind (can I call it a mind?) Chuck is Darth Vader and Leighton is the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious.
Sigh.
Leighton my love, if I were twenty years younger, better looking, not married, and not on the other side of the world…
I cannot believe how wrong the kitty is. Drag us down into your bitter world? What, this the podcast that has had my husband and I laughing so hard we’ve almost yaked!?!? That has given the world (or at least OUR world) the ‘skunkdick’!?!?
Bad Kitty! (Apologies to Madagascar)
Annie, you really need to visit the fan page on Facebook more often. It states rather clearly that I have no standards, Shan Chard approved, and therefore the only prerequisite is you need to have two legs.