Culture

Case Study In Hersterical Effeminacy: Bad Times Are Coming

All have heard the ancient litany: hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. The wise know the cycle is unbreakable.

It can be argued which point in the endless circle is best. The strong men who labor to make the good times earn the right to call themselves men. But the men at the start of good times have the leisure necessary to become scholars and to advance culture.

However that debate is resolved, the nadir is clear. It is not the hard times, which may be endured, struggled against and overcome. Those amidst the chaos know the cliche’s truth, and can take cheer from it: there is nowhere to go but up.

Therefore the worst era is the Time of Weak Men. The time when it obvious what was lost, to see how easily it could have been saved, to witness the falling off and despair. To see men embrace weakness. To be among those who surrender piece-by-piece for crumbs of comfort. To know that, every day, worse is coming.

Weakness builds upon itself: the stricken encourage others to join them in their submission. The weak hate the strong because the weak are reminded they could be strong if only they had the will.

Our example of a weak man encouraging others in his hersterical effeminacy is drawn, as much else is, from the coronadoom.

A blubbery bugman—the state of his physique is part of the argument—states his delight in the idea of vaccine mandates. They make him feel safe:

[Vaccine mandates] should be imitated at state and local levels too. And corporate America should follow suit. And we need vaccine passports and vaccination permits before entering public places like restaurants, theaters, and sporting events. Make the selfish and stupid bear the burden of their selfish stupidity, not the rest of us.

This terrified man has no understanding of the relative risks of disease, nor of the possibility of vaccine side effects, nor even of the need for vaccines in differing populations. He needs to feel safe, he must have all be as weak as he is.

My patience being all used up by the intensely selfish and dumb, I replied ungently [to a correspondent worried about increasing tyranny]:

Stop talking like an absolute ass. The unvaxxed have no right whatsoever to threaten the rest of us because they are selfish. You don’t wanna vax, we don’t have to hire you. Own your selfish, stupid choices.

How is it the unvaxxed “threaten” this dear poor sweet creature? He himself is vaxxed, and we can infer he believes the vaccine will protect him—from the disease. But not from those who have incorrect beliefs.

This weak man, in his abject fear, has lost his ability to reason. And Reason, you may be sure, is matter of supreme importance to him. This is why it would do no good, no good at all, to tell him that if the vaccine protects him from the worst the bug can do, the origin of the bug doesn’t matter (from a vaxxed or unvaxxed person). And that if he did become infected, he’d not only have the protection created from the vaccine, but also that from defeating the bug itself. Though his fat and sloth would work against him.

He can’t see that, though. Any thought of suffering, even of the remotest vaguest kind, turns him into the same kind of goo that fills his donuts.

Yet isn’t this a paradox? Becoming a blubbery mess brings tremendous risk of disease and death. He might even know this, but will do nothing, and will instead continue to feed his maw—and his malice. For, you see, he only seeks the reform of others, not himself. This is the sine qua non of the bugman.

And what’s this about his patience nearing an end? What happens when it is exhausted?

This is when he will advocate punishing those who disagree with him, recommending, perhaps eventually, even violence be used against those who create fear in him.

He already supports not hiring, and presumably firing (as Duke is doing), those who frighten him. He now says he would stop his enemies from going out in public. It can’t be long before he suggests open violence.

Now this weak man isn’t, perhaps, guilty himself of spreading his fear to this next fellow, but somebody did. This is the editor of a student newspaper at a “major” state university. He opens his op-ed:

Even after receiving my vaccine, I still feel anxious.

Whether it’s walking through a store without my mask or making small talk with a stranger I’m thinking about an invisible virus flying through the air.

More than a year of stay-at-home orders and the feeling of normal life just isn’t coming back.

That anxiety is greater than ever, now that I’m back in Mount Pleasant for my last year at Central Michigan University. Despite my hope for a speedy recovery, the world, this country, and our campus are far from safe.

The pathos is dripping from the page. Kids his age scarcely suffer, even when the get the disease unvaccinated. Yet here he is telling them world what a sissy he is, and how he embraces his effeminacy.

We know that, every day, worse is coming.

BONUS! Two American professors:

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Categories: Culture

70 replies »

  1. Nuke the universities and the news people. Then tell the crybabies they are ever so much safer. They are totally clueless and will go for anything you tell them makes them safer. So do things that actually do help and they will go right along, the drooling idiots they are. It is good to be a Delta, especially for those who are not. Rule the world. Deltas are there for a reason and that’s totally approved slavery and abuse of said group.

    Oh, and fire all the “we are pregnant” males out there. I mean, really, these men should stay home flat broke and starving to protect their pregnant concubines. What kind of a man won’t starve to death to save the wife until she and the baby starve to death. Actually, the Ice Cream President and his sidekick, the Ice Cream Speaker, will force everyone else to pay. And everyone else is stupid enough to go along with that……

  2. Let’s say that hypothetically everyone did get vaccinated and everyone wore a mask at all times. These people would still be terrified. Probably they’d start complaining about the people who walked 5 (or even 4!) feet from them.

    The problem is in their characters; they cannot rationally assess risk and they are too weak to deal with uncertainty. They have an external locus of control and assume that if the world changed enough, they would feel safe. But in fact their characters as such that they will find a way to feel imperiled no matter what the external situation is. They were likely always like this, but only have started talking about it now because it has become socially acceptable to do so.

  3. Students should come to class with an x-ray of their lungs printed on a T-shirt demonstrating to these finky proffs that everything is fine.

  4. Just to niggle, I’ve heard that cycle point and you knew what? I really don’t think it’s true.

    Many parts of the world, Africa for instance, have had hard times forever, because their strong men don’t improve shit. And they are tough guys, they really are. Times have been hard in the American ghetto and strong men have been created and they haven’t improved anything either.

    The Victorian era produced some extremely good times historically, and it had its share of strong men. It also created strong men during these times on purpose. But more importantly it valued wise men and just men (the level of honest administration in the Victorian era, while not perfect would boggle modern man). It also most importantly produced a lot of wise men of faith, using the European empires to bring the gospel everywhere and destroy slavery.

    Elevating fortitude above prudence is how you get conservative commentators mocking the Taliban for not knowing how to deadlift. Just astoundingly confused values.

    Just a small point but I hear the cycle all the time and it puts the focus on the wrong thing and that bugs me. Love your work and enjoyed this article just a nitpick.

  5. I don’t understand why these scaredy cats can’t do everyone a favor and just off themselves so the rest of us can get on with the business of living.

    Perhaps it is because it is they who are the truly selfish and greedy.

  6. Perhaps the goal of this whole covid op is not just vexxines and marks, but a test to check the profress of the technocrats plans to create a fearful docile population first and foremost.

    For many decades, the corporate mainstream media and the CIA have been synonymous. They were married down in hell and now daily do the devil’s work up above. Now that news is conveyed primarily through digital media via the internet, their power to induce electronic trances has increased exponentially. Linguistic and visual mind control is their raison d’être. Fear is their favorite tactic. And since the fear and anxiety of death is the archetypal source of all anxiety, death becomes a core element in their fear-mongering.

    In a recent powerful article, Canadian independent journalist Eva Bartlett, a brave and free war correspondent who has reported from inside Syria and Gaza, has shown how the ongoing Covid-19 “fear porn” spewed out by the media has dramatically increased people’s anxiety levels and thrown so many into a perpetual state of near panic. This, of course, is not an accident.

    Fear immobilizes people and drives them into a cataleptic state where clear thinking is impossible. They become hypnotized in a “private” space that is actually social, an instantaneous identification with the media news reports that are addressed to millions but feel personal and greatly exacerbate the great loneliness that lies at the core of high-tech society.

    As I have said before, the new digital order is the world of teleconferencing and the online life, existence shorn of physical space and time and people. A world where shaking hands is a dissident act. A haunted world of masked specters, distorted words and images that can appear and disappear in a nanosecond. A magic show. A place where, in the words of Charles Manson, you can “get the fear,” where fear is king. A locus where, as you stare at the screens, you are no longer there since you are spellbound.

    In a high-tech society, loneliness is far more prevalent than in the past. The technology has imprisoned people behind their screens and now the controlling forces are intent on closing this mechanistic circle if they can. They call it The Great Reset.

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-incantational-bewitchment-of-propaganda-once-upon-a-time-people-sat-together-and-talked/5754669

  7. “… nor the effeminate … shall inherit the kingdom of God”

    Now that I have lived through The Great Hysteria, I can understand why. There is no man who more effectively hates his neighbor and his family than the effeminate coward.

    Another effeminate man child in the comments shrieked hysterically that “children under 12 are at risk”. As if children under 12 were not at risk of getting sick or dying in 2019. As it turns out, they are far less at risk from the coronavirus than they are from dying in car accidents or the flu, but today’s effeminate coward is a monomaniac. It isn’t general risk that matters; it’s that a child has a risk greater than zero from what scares the coward.

    The upshot is that men like this will trade the inheritance of their children for symbols of their dark god, “safety”. And they’ll do it “for the children”.

    The right response is mockery. They should live in utter shame for their effeminacy, in the hope that some might repent and the others made impotent.

  8. “Any thought of suffering, even of the remotest vaguest kind, turns him into the same kind of goo that fills his donuts.”

    Normally I’m not a big fan of ad hominems, but this one is pure genius and completely justified; for me a “covfefe through the nose” moment.

    Appropriate that the new “Moo (Mu) variant” is now threatening vexxed cattle herd immunity. As the Babylon Bee reported. they will soon be selling 5 gallon buckets of Pfizer from warehouse pallets at Costco.

  9. Hoyos, what you say is true. The “strong men” quote is not universally true. It makes sense in the case of survivors, but survivors and the strong are a minority. And even before they turn out, hard times usually leads to an increase of even worse immoral and effeminate men before the “strong” eventually show up.

    Here’s something worth reading, though in the context of militarism:
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/02/hard-times-dont-make-strong-soldiers-warrior-myth/

    And, after all, it makes a degree of intuitive sense. Westerners subject their soldiers to harsh conditions to prepare them for the rigors of combat, so why wouldn’t whole societies work the same? Shouldn’t people (although the trope often specifies men) who’ve dealt with hard conditions all their lives make the best fighters, in contrast to the flabby, decadent inhabitants of the glitzy cities?

    Except that’s not how things turn out. The divide between supposedly decadent civilization and its supposedly hard and uncivilized opponents reaches back to the development of farming and the state. Early farmers, with their higher population density, seem to have outcompeted their nonfarming neighbors. It seems that in many, perhaps most, cases, it was farmers who expanded, rather than the practice of farming itself, pushing the surviving nonfarmers onto more marginal lands. Likewise, early states, with their complex and specialized hierarchies, generally outcompeted their nonstate neighbors. Urban communities first dominated their countryside and then expanded that dominion outward. Nonstate peoples were often set with a dilemma: develop their own state institutions in order to compete with the brutal efficiency of state violence, or else find themselves violently incorporated into the tributary networks of expanding states. By and large this process was one in which the “strong men” created by “hard times” lost, again and again.

    By the time of Julius Caesar’s writing in the 1st century B.C., the trope of hard-fighting barbarians whose ascetic way of life made them both morally and martially superior was firmly set enough that Caesar could lean on it as a shorthand to build up his own military accomplishments.

    Thus, in Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, the tribes he defeats early on, the Helvetians and Belgae, are represented in these terms. In particular, Caesar claims of the Belgae that “of all of these people [the inhabitants of Gaul], the Belgae are the strongest because they are the furthest from culture and civilization and least often visited by merchants, all things that tend to effeminate the spirit.” That specific word “effeminate” (effeminandos in the Latin) provides a clue to why it is always strong men in this historical mirage, as the entire intellectual construct is deeply rooted in anxieties about declining masculinity, specifically. Later in the narrative, with these early adversaries defeated, he repeats the trope for the German Suebi, who will promptly be defeated by him in the narrative, setting them up as the most “warlike” of the Germans, as a direct product of the cold climate and harsh daily conditions they live in.

    Yet, Caesar is about to crush these Gallic and German “supermen” with an army of excessively civilized Italians who are not only exposed to all of the things that tend to “effeminate the spirit” but in fact are responsible for producing those things. Indeed, of all of the Gauls, it is not the warlike Helvetians or Belgae who give Caesar the most trouble, but the Arverni, who live in what is today Auvergne, France, right up against the areas of Greek and Roman settlement and right on the trade routes bringing supposedly effeminating Mediterranean goods and culture into Gaul. Caesar knows this, of course, but his Commentaries is a political document, and he also knows good politics: tapping into stereotypes his audience already believes to build up his military success. Better to brag about defeating the Helvetians, Belgae, and Suebi, which no Roman had done before, than the Arverni, who had fought and lost against Rome once before. Accuracy was beside the point.

    Perhaps the most influential ancient work of this sort is Tacitus’s Germania, written in 98 C.E., which sets out to describe the customs and society of the peoples across the Rhine from the Roman frontier. In brief, Tacitus describes the Germans as indigenous to their lands without being intermixed with other peoples, contemptuous of wealth, beauty and luxury, singularly focused on military virtue, pious, monogamous, and chaste, if unsophisticated and uncultured—a product of the harsh lands they inhabit. Again we have our “strong men” molded by hard lives.

    Except the Germania is not about the Germans at all, but a critique of Roman decline in the tradition of the Roman historian Sallust, thinly disguised as ethnography. Tacitus’s tone in his writing overall is one of frustrated discontent at the moral decay he saw in Rome, and it is nearly impossible not to see this sharping the Germans of the Germania.

    So it comes down to what one’s definition of “strong” versus “weak”; and “good” versus “bad” times comes to.

    Immorality creates bad times. Morality creates good times.

    But immoral times leads to increasing immorality. And moral times likewise can increase moral men.

    We know things never stay that way in either case, so when does the turning come?

    I’d say it comes to the act of remembrance and forgetfulness over the passage if time. Where good times and morality that produced them is taken for granted. And bad time produce reconsideration of morality. Because morality is natural law.

    Moral times create moral generations.
    Moral generations create good times.
    Good times create forgetful generations.
    Forgetful generations create immoral times.
    Immoral times create immoral generations.
    Immoral generations create bad times.
    Bad times create demonic generations.
    Demonic generations create critical times.
    Critical times create survivors.
    Survivors create desperate times.
    Desperate times create repentant generations.
    Repentant generations create moral times.

    Of course somewhere in there lies the providence of God, without Whom mankind can never recover. So maybe repentant people create graceful times, leading to grace-filled generations, leading to moral times.

  10. Antemodernist,

    There is probably also the result of a diabolical disorientation, where things are so topsey turvey that good is evil and evil is good, black is white, up is down, that the morons are convinced they are the strong being sensible and good.

    But who is teaching them this? The effing television and media, who are the employees of criminal conspirators. The line between information and infomercials has disappeared. They can’t tell anymore because once you let go of the reigns over your passions so you can indulge in whatever you like, the feelings overide the rational.

    That is how and why one particular trumpeteer fellow who hangs out around here eventually had to argue in his defence of homo-pleasure that anal sex is much safer and therefore moral because man-woman sex results in pregnancy and the woman might die of complications in childbirth.

    That a sodomite might equally die of complications due to anal prolapse and the consequences of screwing around with his organs in unnatural ways did not occur to him. But you see, he was so committed to his liberal cause and absolutely HAD to win an internet argument to assauge his emotional fear about being wrong that he had to succumb to irrationality and framing perfectly natural things as immoral and evil because a minority might experience a tragedy by chance, and ignore the 100% committing willful self-harm on each other!

    So too for the vexxines, where the problems are acceptable, and that masks work because we’re committed. It’s akin to a gambling problem, where the only solution is to invest more into the game in order to win all of your losses back.

  11. Johnno, excellent write up thanks. I often think our reaction against effeminacy has pushed us into the opposite error, into a narrow, almost ghetto, version of masculinity. I love working out myself, have done grappling, etc., but I know it’s not a replacement for well, anything.

    Audie Murphy wouldn’t know what a bench press was, and was very small in stature. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, Great War infantrymen, would probably be considered effeminate by meatheads with all their bookishness. Evelyn Waugh, same boat, was a commando in the Second World War.

    This is part of why we need a connection with the past, it shows how some ideas are just not accurate. Don’t get me wrong, I think the intuition that we are not the equal of men in other periods is accurate, just the response can be very surface.

  12. In “I Claudius” Robert Graves has his anti-hero speak virtually the same piece regarding the collapse of the republic, the rise of effeminacy, money madness, women of the governing classes who no longer feel the need or desire to have children because they interrupt their fun and ruin their figure, loss of any civic ideal, and a rise of decadence. It’s a fabulous and rather funny book. Be warned though it champions Israel and, like Gibbons, is rather tough on Christians, though the author admits much of the Roman knowledge of the burgeoning religion was incorrect. Based on the writing of Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonious, and Cassius Dio it’s worth a read.

  13. Johnno-

    A guy named Ted who lived in the woods wrote down quite a few prescient thoughts about technological atomization of mankind.

    Plantagenet-

    It is almost as if those ancient observers and writers were far more canny and sophisticated than the typical modern is willing to admit…

  14. Among homo sapiens— unlike most of nature— ’tis not always the brute that dominates the pack.

    I submit that, quite often, it is the proficient Machiavellian.

  15. This is a showcase for the collectivist(i.e. fascist/socialist/communist) character: take no responsibility and project everything you don’t like onto others. And what you are going to end up with is “strong leaders” like Kim or Adolf or Pol Pot.

  16. “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” Voltaire.

  17. I enjoy the BAP vibe in this post.

    Actually surprised that the irrationally panic-stricken professors didn’t get more compliance with their pathetic pleas. If I was a student and thought the man truly feared for his family, I would have worn the mask out of pity. Is that wrong? WWJD?

  18. Johnno: “That is how and why one particular trumpeteer fellow who hangs out around here…”

    You mean the Trombone, Swordfish. People always get him and Tunafish Trumpet confused. I know all these cats. We used to have a band, “Deepsea Dipsticks”, with Blackfish Bassoon, Cuttlefish Zither, Moustache Triggerfish Glockenspiel, some other schmooks, too. It was the nineties. Good times.

  19. “WWJD?”

    Jesus would’ve touched him, removed his mask and said, “Go, sin no more.” The professor would imagine himself miraculously cured and immune, but Jesus actually didn’t even do anything. Or if He did, He healed his brain.

  20. Soft weak queefy societies won’t even leave a stripmall or EBT card behind for the archaeologists to discover under the pretty pink egalitarian Ozymandias sign.
    This one is a transgender pyrofex and so far we have found no male or female specimens.

  21. Australia officially signaling – Booster Shots – Forever! – Locking down harder even after reaching 70% vexxine goal!
    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/nsw-residents-told-to-expect-covid19-booster-shots-indefinitely/news-story/abda9fcf5d5344c6c8ed22bc5d939b16

    Australia arresting reporters for criticizing their god – the government!
    https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/09/02/monica-smit-arrested-for-advocating-freedom-australia-is-ruled-by-crime-bosses/

    Italian Mark of the Vexx expands! Obviously because it’s working – even after reaching 70% vexxine goal!
    https://news.yahoo.com/italy-extends-covid-19-green-102610728.html

    Italian “fully vexxinated” will soon change its definition to 3 shots instead of 2! Now we’ll need to meet another 70% goal to go back to normal, this time we’re serious!
    https://www.fromrome.info/2021/09/02/mario-draghi-affirms-that-his-government-will-seek-vaxx-obligation-for-all-for-3rd-dose/

  22. There are people who got vaccinated solely because they thought it would give them their rights back. And there is a significant subset of those people who now will do the same thing with booster shots, still honestly believing that once they have a booster they will be given their rights back.

    As long as no one explicitly tells them that their rights are never coming back, they will continue to believe that this time it’s going to happen. At least Charlie Brown usually suspected that Lucy might yank the football away.

  23. Are you by chance talking about Mark Shea? I had absolutely no idea who he is when I fell over an article by him the other day, and found what he was saying, appalling. What a horrible specimen of a person. Don’t all reasonable people find hysterical effeminacy in a man appalling? You state it beautifully here, and I thank you for making the case. As a woman in her 60’s, mid, actually, I had Covid in April, along with my husband. Yes, it was a crummy month, and after the first week my opinion that it was engineered was confirmed. It’s not like the flu or a chest cold, as some have said. We got zero from our doctor and went to the ER a few times when things felt weird. Got nothing there either. (Put together an America’s Frontline Doctors or Dr. Zelenko protocol, because believe me, they won’t do anything for you at your doctors or hospital.) But the hysteria by young people is completely unfounded. There has never been a more clear example of the relevance of spiritual faith, than right now in our time. The lacking in faith are so frightened they are histrionic, and the spiritually mature hopefully, take a more reasoned approach. My husband and I put ourselves in God’s hands, and He brought us through. We’re grateful. Young people have almost nothing to be afraid of! We went out most days, got out in the sunshine, even though we often felt like crud. We manned up. Good God Almighty, people are going out of their minds about this. Children do not get sick and do not transmit Covid to others. And they are talking about giving these vaccines to children??? To keep ADULTS SAFE???
    Isn’t it enough we abort children left and right in our country? Must we put chemicals in them that may shorten their lives or cause them to be infertile too? If we do that, there is no hope for us at all. God needs to send the meteor, because we are hopeless.
    I called Mr. Shea out on his hysteria and his lack of compassion, reason, and logic. Most of his commenters either dumbly agreed with him, in 5 words or less. You’ll be interested but not surprised perhaps, he did not print my response to him. Cowards are like that.
    Keep writing. It’s nice to hear the words of a man in our culture for a change.

  24. Ah, sorry, I forgot. I never heard that “strong man, weak man” saying. I find it very apt. Very.
    Hat tip to Michael Dowd for mentioning Abp. Vigano’s spot on identification of the evil link now completely evident between government and church. We knew it was no accident that the ascendancy of Barack Obama took place at the same point in time of Jorge Bergolio. If anyone is interested in the backdrop to the evil, Abp. Vigano, who speaks like a prophet, is worth reading.

  25. “There are people who got vaccinated solely because they thought it would give them their rights back. And there is a significant subset of those people who now will do the same thing with booster shots, still honestly believing that once they have a booster they will be given their rights back.”

    They never lost their rights. Inalienable. Like Sigourney Weaver. Can’t sell ’em; can’t give ’em away.

    Young people in their teens, early twenties, should be hopping mad. The lockdowns/quarantines were very hard on them, for no reason. They were not at risk from the virus at all. They are at way more risk from adverse events due to the vexxines, according to VAERS and even some admissions from the Vexxine Manufacturers. The results of which we can’t know yet because there are no longitudinal trials. It takes time.

    Sorry for posting so often, but this whole thing is so wrong!

  26. Ulrich Beck (German sociologist 1944-2015) focused his work on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in The Modern Age, coining the terms “risk society” and “second modernity” or “reflexive modernization”. Among his many canny insights on Our Age was ~ that while earlier periods of historical “modernization” prompted both general and atomized REFLECTION, “modernization” in our time was generating “REFLEXTIVITY” towards perceived risks. In layman’s terms, we’ve become a bunch of fraidy cats. — Addendum — : “Thought Huskies” (my term) from both aisles of the Corona-Reset-Debates are presently attempting to claim Beck as their intellectual comrade. I think he would be avoiding the fray altogether and having a Teutonic chuckle privately. Quoting from an obituary published in The Guardian: “Beck was a lateral thinker, a Querdenker in German, who was at home within and committed to the discipline of sociology but refused to be confined by conventional parameters. For that he was willing to endure criticism from colleagues.”

  27. Well, Mark Shea is a special kind of vicious, his diatribe demanding discrimination against intelligent people who decline to become GMOs from an untrialled concoction made with aborted babies is exactly what I’d expect from him. He drips hatred toward anyone who disagrees with him. I wish someone would tell these scairdy cats that the flu has a 99.7% survival rate, that in very vaxxed Israel the majority with Covid are the vaxxed. Masks do not work against viruses. The PCR test does not differentiate between Covid and the seasonal flu. A positive result from this flawed and easily manipulated test does not equal a “case” of Covid. Asymptomatic people cannot spread the flu, and IVERMECTIN works. Healthcare is a mess, the unvaxxed are way better off avoiding them, as they are incentivized to diagnose “Covid”, and put people on vents. I have been in healthcare, direct patient care for 43 years, including infection control, and I have never seen anything like what is going on, NON-medical people and politicians are making medical decisions and dictates that make no sense. Oh, and IVERMECTIN WORKS.

  28. After the morning meeting today at work, someone posted that the National Guard had been called to staff the local hospital where his wife works because they were understaffed and had run out of ventilators. I commented that most the US hotspots are on the down side of the curve and things should be getting back to normal soon. My manager piped in and said that was only because of increased mask use!

    When is this crap ever going to end?

  29. Cases go down: That proves that masks and vaccines work!

    Cases go up: That proves that too many people aren’t wearing masks and aren’t getting vaccinated!

  30. My bicycle helmet doesn’t protect me unless you wear a bicycle helmet (whether cycling, or not–all must wear a helmet).

    The US is populated with many unserious, frivolous people…

  31. Johnno,

    That is how and why one particular trumpeteer fellow who hangs out around here eventually had to argue in his defence of homo-pleasure that anal sex is much safer and therefore moral because man-woman sex results in pregnancy and the woman might die of complications in childbirth.

    Nice to know you can’t stop thinking about me, but I didn’t argue that anal sex is moral because it’s safer than pregnancy.

    First, I don’t need to argue that anal sex is moral at all. Whatever consenting adults do in the bedroom is no one else’s business, so is neither immoral nor moral.

    Second, why be concerned about others health when it comes to them having anal sex, but not concerned enough to wear a mask during a pandemic? Call me sceptical if you like, but that looks more like homophobia than concern for others. (AKA concern trolling.)

  32. “Whatever consenting adults do in the bedroom is no one else’s business, so is neither immoral nor moral”. Have you ever considered that one day you will face God and have to convince Him of your theories on immorality? Surely you are an atheist, which is okay if that’s what you want to be. As long as you realize that is completely contrary to what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has told His people.

  33. swordfishtrombone: “…but not concerned enough to wear a mask during a pandemic?” Because masks do absolutely no good, except for “virtue” signaling.

    “Call me sceptical if you like, but that looks more like homophobia than concern for others.”

    But, swordfishtrombone, you seem to believe Fauci, who pushed AZT for AIDS? It was very profitable for him, I’m sure, but not so much for the male homosexual population. AZT was poison.

    Still remember when Africa was supposedly an AIDS epidemic, based on testing of pregnant women going to OB-GYN clinics. So, false positives, due to pregnancy; very expensive, poisonous treatment, AZT, very profitable, of course. Not the cost-effective treatment of real diseases that were prevalent.

  34. Nice to know you can’t stop thinking about me, but I didn’t argue that anal sex is moral because it’s safer than pregnancy.

    What??? And lose a prime living reoccurring exhibit of irrational slippery slope thinking in action???

    Never!

    First, I don’t need to argue that anal sex is moral at all. Whatever consenting adults do in the bedroom is no one else’s business, so is neither immoral nor moral.

    Says the guy who spent many posts arguing for homosexuality to the point of saying anal sex was safer and more awesomer than heterosexual intercourse. Just as I predicted at the start.

    I also like all the qualifications you have here. How about another prediction? I’m wondering how long it’ll be until “adults” in your sentence is changed to “persons”, with very very increasing emphasis on the “consenting.”

    Also, if it’s not done in the bedroom, but at a public parade or in front of children, will you join me in criticizing the sodomites? Expecially the ones advocating for exhibitionism as part of their extroverted identity?

    Second, why be concerned about others health when it comes to them having anal sex, but not
    concerned enough to wear a mask during a pandemic?

    Because masks don’t work. Don’t pretend you don’t know any of our views here…

    Call me sceptical if you like, but that looks more like homophobia than concern for others. (AKA concern trolling.)

    Why? Can’t it be both?

    And I’d prefer you describe my feelings as ‘anti-sodomy’ or ‘anti-faggot’ if you prefer the slang, as ‘phobia’ has a specific scientific definition. Please be accurate.

    And I’d also like you to answer the question you dodged last time – will you out Fauci for murdering sodomites with AZT? Or… don’t you care, and you don’t see sodomites as people and are just using them as a prop in your little internet virtue signaling?

  35. Evengeline,

    Have you ever considered that one day you will face God and have to convince Him of your theories on immorality? Surely you are an atheist, which is okay if that’s what you want to be. As long as you realize that is completely contrary to what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has told His people.

    Do you care what Allah allegedly says? Presumably not. If you don’t believe in a god, you don’t care what it is alleged to have said. And God’s morality is primitive. He condemns gay sex, but condones slavery, rape, and genocide. In fact, he seems to have the same morality as the people who wrote the Bible, which I wouldn’t expect to be the case if God was real.

    Also, it’s not that I *want* to be an atheist, it’s that I can’t believe in a God for which there is no evidence.

  36. swordfishtrombone: The man who is unwilling to analyze a scientific paper, out of fear of contradicting a holy scientist, but willing to proudly brag about being smarter than God Himself.

  37. philemon,

    But, swordfishtrombone, you seem to believe Fauci, who pushed AZT for AIDS? It was very profitable for him, I’m sure, but not so much for the male homosexual population. AZT was poison.

    I’m British, Fauchi is American, and I barely know who he is. I don’t really care what he says about anything absent scientific evidence. Your claims regarding Fauchi and AZT are just claims, and from past experience I’ve learnt that most of your claims are misinformation, so I have no reason to accept them.

    Still remember when Africa was supposedly an AIDS epidemic, based on testing of pregnant women going to OB-GYN clinics. So, false positives, due to pregnancy; very expensive, poisonous treatment, AZT, very profitable, of course.

    I have no reason to accept these claims either.

    In 2020, about 37 million people worldwide were living with HIV and 680,000 deaths had occurred in that year. An estimated 20.6 million of these live in eastern and southern Africa. Between the time that AIDS was identified (in the early 1980s) and 2020, the disease has caused an estimated 36 million deaths worldwide. HIV/AIDS is considered a pandemic—a disease outbreak which is present over a large area and is actively spreading. [Wikipedia]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS

  38. Trombone in a nutshell:

    “I don’t believe in God, only wikipedia, and fact checkers sponsored by the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma, and big news corporations with revolving doors between their offices and the alphabet intelligence services and White House staff.”

    Our boy here likely still believes in Hussein’s WMD, and that everything was absolutely fine in Afghanistan until a week ago when something happened that nobody saw coming, and if you claim you did, then you’re obviously lying, because there is no way you could know better than the CIA, CNN and the editors of Wikipedia (who could be any one of us for all he knows) put together.

  39. Here’s a blast from the past from the ofgicial TV News, back when it had more credibility!

    https://youtu.be/0u8ObojeZgo

    Notice the difference? But notice the similarities?

    I wonder what the Trombone thinks? Maybe he’ll look it up on Wikipedia before he gets back to us.

    Just kidding! He won’t!

  40. Johnno,

    Says the guy who spent many posts arguing for homosexuality to the point of saying anal sex was safer and more awesomer than heterosexual intercourse.

    You’re just repeating the same false claim. The whole point of my argument was that it isn’t valid to argue that something is immoral just because it’s potentially unhealthy to the person or persons involved. That’s why I said you’d have to say “normal” sex (and pregancy) is immoral also. Or dangerous sports. Or drinking alcohol.

    I also like all the qualifications you have here. How about another prediction? I’m wondering how long it’ll be until “adults” in your sentence is changed to “persons”, with very very increasing emphasis on the “consenting.”

    Irrational slippery-slope claim. And the only reason I have to add qualifications at all is that I’m dealing with an intellectually dishonest person who will take every opportunity to twist my words. Most people know that in regard to sex, “adult” and “consent” go without saying.

    Also, if it’s not done in the bedroom, but at a public parade or in front of children, will you join me in criticizing the sodomites?

    Of course.

    Because masks don’t work. Don’t pretend you don’t know any of our views here…

    Most readers of this blog don’t comment. Maybe I was addressing them through you.

    Why? Can’t it be both?

    Okay, so you’re homophic and concern trolling. Yay for you.

    And I’d prefer you describe my feelings as ‘anti-sodomy’ or ‘anti-faggot’ if you prefer the slang, as ‘phobia’ has a specific scientific definition. Please be accurate.

    Words have useages, not fixed definitions. You’re homophobic.

    And I’d also like you to answer the question you dodged last time – will you out Fauci for murdering sodomites with AZT?

    See my reply to philemon, above. Maybe you’re the same person, as he/she asked exactly the same thing?

  41. And God’s morality is primitive. He condemns gay sex, but condones slavery, rape, and genocide.

    Ah, here’s how we know we’re dealing with your average wikipedia user whose knowledge doesn’t go further than the text abstract that could fit on a cue card.

    FACT CHECK!

    Does God condone slavery, rape, and genocide?

    FALSE AND MISLEADING STATEMENT THAT OMITS CONTEXT.

    You may have come across such statements made by people who subscribe to radical far-wrong ideologies such as atheism and sodomy activism circles.

    God make a distinction between unjust slavery and debt slavery. Unjust slavery was forbidden where innocent people are taken captive for no reason, having committed no crime.

    Debt slavery was allowed, such as when a person had to pay back their loan, much like credit card companies and banks operate today by demanding a portion of your salary with interest, provided by your labor. Similarily – see the concept of taxation.

    Debt slavery could also be the result of crimes where injury or destruction of property was committed and the guilty party did not have the assets to make restitution. Fraud was also a criteria.

    Additionally, voluntary slavery for purposes of employment and food and shelter was also allowed.

    All slavery contracts were limited to the time period up to the Jubilee Year, when all debts had to be forgiven and subsequently all slaves were to be freed and given a stipend and portion of land as their personal private property by their masters. Some could choose to freely remain slaves if they so wished.

    Some Israelites did illegally keep and engage in the slave trade. But this was against God’s wishes, but this is what happens when people become more liberal and stop believing that God exists. They begin to break God’s laws and then engage in things like sodomy, rape, genocide and socialism,where money is printed and the burden of debt is placed on the shoulders of the middle class population against their will for government programs; hence slavery. But half of the people willingly vote for debt slavery everytime and see it as a good.

    Sadly, people who only read wikipedia and clickbait blogger atheist Top 10 lists of why God doesn’t exist and Christianity suxxs, and who never bother reading the source material or expert commentaries (as opposed to “experts”), misunderstand historical context where ancient peoples had reasons for certain practices in a time when there were no hospitals, Wal-Marts, cellular phones, or government services, or even much of an organized police force, or even electricity.

    This is similar to claims about God condoning rape, where in various accounts, God is nowhere involved in the picture, and certain laws where raped victims were legally made the bride of rapists was a matter of social justice where the rapist had to legally make restitution to the victim by paying her parents back 3 times the dowry price for having made her unmarriageable by destroying her virginity. Something for which was often very unaffordable, thus necessitating that the culprit be made a slave to pay back the debt. And nowhere is the victim entitled to live with or provide the culprit with the services of a wife.

    Ditto for genocidal claims, where God only ordered to kill those who billegerently took a stand against Him and therefore were considered enemy combatants and acceptable casualties and collateral damage. Those who fled beforehand when warned to do so were not to be pursued and those who helped Israel before as informants or were otherwise considered protected remained alive and were even rewarded. Therefore the wars were of conquest and not genocidal missions. Regardless of how athiests feel and want to baselessly and erroneously weaponize terminology to make emotional appeals where they lack facts.

    In fact, he seems to have the same morality as the people who wrote the Bible, which I wouldn’t expect to be the case if God was real.

    Ackshully… aside from the people who wrote the Bible, and aside from your hilarious circular reasoning, the majority of the people everywhere throughout pagandom at the time were all hip and on board the homosexuality wagon, which even included the behaviours of some of their pagan deities, aling wirh beastiality. So the Israelites stood out for some reason, taking upon themselves moralities that were entitely foreign to that region amongst empires like the Egypt and Canaan. So why did the Israelites suddenly adopt such morality out of the blue, whilst also recording how much difficulty they themselves had conforming to it, hmmmmmm? What do you think Mr. Trump-bone?

    Also, nobody cares about what you would personally expect to be the case. You’re about as reliable as an overcycled PCR test. Nothing but little isolated fragments of information that are then run with and blown out of proportion.

  42. The whole point of my argument was that it isn’t valid to argue that something is immoral just because it’s potentially unhealthy to the person or persons involved. That’s why I said you’d have to say “normal” sex (and pregancy) is immoral also. Or dangerous sports. Or drinking alcohol.

    You attempted an absurd argument via grotesque reductio ab absurdum where because every activity can he deemed risky nothing is therefore worth doing. But other activities have a noble or useful goal in mind. What has sodomy? And why did you equate your own grandmothers sacrifice in childbirth as the equivalent of cumming into an asshole? The risk involved here has no purposeful end. Other than feeeellllings.

    Irrational slippery-slope claim.

    Nope. It’s entirely rational, see above where you argued sodomy should he considered good, because alcohol consumption also potentially harms your liver. So therefore if I want to condemn sodomy, I need to condemn all alcohol consumption and sports where injuries might occur. Following such logic, noone should get out of bed in the morning in case they fall over and injure themselves, or cease medication due to side effects. You have turned these into equivalences to defend homosexuality.

    But this absurdity doesn’t work because in life there is always acceptable risks. When things get too excessively dangerous, their use and activity is deemed unacceptable because the risks outweigh any benefit. Sports have rules to prevent injuries ams banned movesets. Alcohol consumption has regulations and societal pressures against alcoholism. Medication, vaccines, etc. also have regulations where a product is pulled from the market or banned if it is found to be producing too many bad results, at least they did before covid hersteria. Similarily sexual intercourse also has moral regulations and limits, which sodomy falls outside of that scope, being more risky and producing no benefit, like children.

    And the only reason I have to add qualifications at all is that I’m dealing with an intellectually dishonest person who will take every opportunity to twist my words. Most people know that in regard to sex, “adult” and “consent” go without saying.

    No, the reason you added qualifications is because you know very well that there are limits to sexuality. Or do you think pedophilia is safe? I mean you accept that there is some risk to sodomy, so why not apply that to pedophilia? I mean it’s not so different from alcohol and less risky than a dangerous sport, amirite? What is more risky? A kid having gentle touchy feely intercourse with a “responsible” adult, or attempting a 900 degree skateboarding maneuver in the air at the X Games? If “consent” is all that matters, then don’t worry, society is working on it, underage kids can already define their genders, get put on hormone meds, get sex ops and abortions, and get vaccines, without critical oversight and parental knowledge. It’s only a matter of time. Many homosexuals openly admit they are already ahead of the curve and declare they have suffered no ill effects due to it (other than the obvious sodomy). So it’s only a matter of time until the trumbone toots for adult/child sex… consensual and only in the bedroom of course! Very safe!

    Words have useages, not fixed definitions. You’re homophobic.

    Whatever happened to respecting one’s pronouns and self identity, you bigot?

    Words do have definitions despite your feelings, so as somone famously put it, “I have no reason to accept these claims either.” Nyyyaaahhh!

  43. This little gem deserves its own highlight :

    Most readers of this blog don’t comment. Maybe I was addressing them through you.

    BWAHAHAHAHAHA! WHAT??? WHY??? WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT????

    Hoooooo boy…. where is that Jim Carrey gif where he’s bewilderingly looking around asking, “Who are you even talking to?”

    Briggs should embed it here.

  44. China cuts down on the weak men. Only strong men allowed!
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-decrees-no-sissy-men-allowed-tv

    Now, China’s government has banned effeminate men on TV, and told broadcasters on Thursday to instead promote “revolutionary culture” across all aspects of Chinese culture, according to the Associated Press.

    Broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,” the TV regulator said, using an insulting slang term for effeminate men — “niang pao,” or literally, “girlie guns.”

    That reflects official concern that Chinese pop stars, influenced by the sleek, girlish look of some South Korean and Japanese singers and actors, are failing to encourage China’s young men to be masculine enough. -AP

    In January, China’s education ministry called for more physical education as an antidote to male feminization – vowing to recruit better gym teachers and introduce fitness-based incentives such as free college education.

    The response came after a delegate of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a top political advisory body, had suggested that Chinese schoolboys are “weak, self-effacing, and timid,” and may be unduly influenced by so-called little fresh meats — handsome, well-groomed, delicate-featured celebrities in the vein of K-pop stars. The proposal also described the feminization of Chinese boys as “a threat to the development and survival of our nation.” -Sixth Tone

    “Finally, the education ministry does something right,” wrote one user on Weibo who claimed to be a teacher. “Boys now are in dire need of more exercise so they can be manlier. They’re too gentle these days.”

    Uh oh… Hollywood is going to have to adjust now… No longer can they just eliminate the references to gays in the subtitles…

  45. Johnno: Of course, China still has a surfeit of males due their One-Child policy.

    “…and told broadcasters on Thursday to instead promote ‘revolutionary culture’ across all aspects of Chinese culture.” Like Mao? Lovely.

    “That reflects official concern that Chinese pop stars, influenced by the sleek, girlish look of some South Korean and Japanese singers and actors, are failing to encourage China’s young men to be masculine enough.” Their target demographic isn’t male per se. Well, a small part of it might be, but I’d be willing to bet young girls are the primary consumer market.

    Honestly, we have so much in common with our Chinese cousins! Older men disapprove of younger “girly men”. Well, unless they’re into Twinkies, which, of course, some of them will be.

    Somehow, I don’t think PE is going to help with that.

  46. “I’m British, Fauci is American.” How parochial of you. Fauci was also involved with the WHO, which is international as I recall.

    “..and I barely know who he is. I don’t really care what he says about anything absent scientific evidence. Your claims regarding Fauchi and AZT are just claims, and from past experience I’ve learnt that most of your claims are misinformation, so I have no reason to accept them.’

    What you mean is that you don’t actually read scientific papers at all, let alone critically. And you believe everything you read on Wikipedia

    Still remember when Africa was supposedly an AIDS epidemic, based on testing of pregnant women going to OB-GYN clinics. So, false positives, due to pregnancy; very expensive, poisonous treatment, AZT, very profitable, of course.

    “I have no reason to accept these claims either.”

    More fool you, then. They happened. They were used to pressure many governments into wasting money buying expensive experimental therapies (primarily Fauci poisons) instead of the inexpensive, effective drugs they needed to treat actual diseases, not false positives.

    I’m still wondering how Fauci managed to survive since 1984?

  47. swordfishtrombone: Factcheck this:

    https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html

    I demand non-Wikipedia sources, only peer-reviewed papers, and if there are studies cited, they must be Double-Blinded-Placebo-Controlled. (Real placebo, of course, not, well, it was close to the drug delivery chemical.)

    I sincerely hope that that you have not had the clot-shot, and that, if you had, you do not have any Serious Adverse Events in future. And I hope you protect your children from getting the clot-shot.

  48. Johnno,

    Does God condone slavery, rape, and genocide? FALSE AND MISLEADING STATEMENT THAT OMITS CONTEXT.

    Is rape wrong? If morality comes from God, the answer can’t depend on historical context. If rape is wrong now, it was wrong 10,000 years ago. If God is real, why didn’t he just say “slavery, rape, and genocide are wrong.”?

    God make a distinction between unjust slavery and debt slavery. Unjust slavery was forbidden where innocent people are taken captive for no reason, having committed no crime.

    False. It’s almost as if you don’t know your own Bible:

    “However, you may purchase male and female slaves from among the nations around you. You may also purchase the children of temporary residents who live among you, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat them as slaves, but you must never treat your fellow Israelites this way.” [Leviticus 25:44-46]

    This is straightforward owning-human-beings-as-property slavery, With racism thrown in for free. Cheers, God! How could we possibly create a better morality than your amazing system? I mean, apart from the genocide, torture, violence, war, slavery, rape, homophobia, sexism, racism, etc.

    This is similar to claims about God condoning rape, where in various accounts, God is nowhere involved in the picture […] Ditto for genocidal claims, where God only ordered to kill those who billegerently took a stand against Him and therefore were considered enemy combatants and acceptable casualties and collateral damage.

    “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” [Numbers 31:17-18]

    God certainly seems to have been involved in the slaughter of the Midianites, as he commanded it, along with the ensuing rape of young virgins. And does it not occur to you that people who commit genocide always have a rationalisation? Genocide is still genocide even if it’s against people who are “belligerent”. And I love your use of “collateral damage”. Again, if God was real, there wouldn’t be any need for collatoral damage as he’d be able to magically prevent it.

    Ackshully… aside from the people who wrote the Bible, and aside from your hilarious circular reasoning, the majority of the people everywhere throughout pagandom at the time were all hip and on board the homosexuality wagon, which even included the behaviours of some of their pagan deities, aling wirh beastiality. So the Israelites stood out for some reason, taking upon themselves moralities that were entitely foreign to that region amongst empires like the Egypt and Canaan.

    It seems like the only way you can claim the Israelites morality stood out is that they were homophobic, and the reason you know homophobia is moral is that the Bible says it is. That’s circular. And also complete nonsense. In most respects, the Israelite’s morality was the same as that of other contemporaneous peoples, especially those in that geographical region, and certainly not what anyone whould expect to come from a loving God.

    Also, nobody cares about what you would personally expect to be the case.

    You do, apparently, as you replied four times in a row.

  49. Is rape wrong? If morality comes from God, the answer can’t depend on historical context. If rape is wrong now, it was wrong 10,000 years ago. If God is real, why didn’t he just say “slavery, rape, and genocide are wrong.”?

    What is clear here folks, is an example of someone who typed something out without reading further. Also someone who is not aware of the 10 Commandments, where slavery, rape and genocide are subsections covered under theft, adultery and murder.

    This is straightforward owning-human-beings-as-property slavery, With racism thrown in for free.

    Why yes it is! As mentioned you either didn’t yet read or deliberately ignore the context of debt slavery and slavery as a just punishment. Much like how other nations or banks can buy or hold US debt and IOUs, which can be traded, debt slaves could also be bought and sold. And in Israel’s case, all, Israeli or not, were to be freed. Given Israel can control what happens within its borders, God made sure this practice was reduced. And by becoming slaves in Israel, other nationalities had it better.

    God certainly seems to have been involved in the slaughter of the Midianites, as he commanded it, along with the ensuing rape of young virgins. And does it not occur to you that people who commit genocide always have a rationalisation? Genocide is still genocide even if it’s against people who are “belligerent”.

    Ah yes, those good ol’ Midianites. Never did anything wrong did they? Nope! Perfectly nice people who mean ol’God just wanted to destroy for no reason.

    Well here’s the part Trumpbone omits because it wasn’t included on the scepticles website for him to copy and paste. So the cliff notes version –

    Israel wants to pass through Midianite lands to get to Canaan where they were to take the promised land.

    The King of Moab is afraid of them, and possibly allied with Canaan, whatever the case, he won’t let them pass. Israel is like, alright, we’ll take the long way around and not bother you.

    But this isn’t good enough for the Midianites, the King then tries to get a mystic called Balaam to curse them. Balaam, however, is ordered by God to bless them and declares that Israel is under His protection. This doesn’t sit well with the king who, like rumpbone here, thinks he knows better than God.

    The king forces Balaam to give him a solution to the Israeli problem. Balaam says that the only way would be to get the Israelites to sin and therefore anger God themselves.

    The King hatches a plan, he then settles on adultery and prostitition, he rounds up as many Midianite women as he can, all the hottest ones, and sends them off to seduce the Israeli men. And not only to seduce them, but to engage in the good ol fashioned pagan tradition of temple prostitution where the Israelites would have ritual sex in the context of worshipping the child devouring demon Baal Peor. On one occasion one Israeli fellow tried screwing one of these Midianite women in the area of the Ark of the Covenant as a direct affront to God.

    This strategy worked successfully. God was angry and numerous times punished Israel with plague and disease for their sins. MANY Israelite men were killed.

    After recovering and getting their heads on straight, neither God nor the leftover men of Israel would take this, much to swishfish’s chagrin, and so they led a Midianite campaign to destroy all of their cities. The usual warfare rules applied. Those who fled the cities would be spared, why fight more people than you need to? Those who remained were considered belligerent and collateral damage, nobody cares about how swishfishtoot feels about it, such is war and the consequence sinful man has to bear by having to live in a world apart from God and which chooses to worship false ones and therefore lives and dies by such consequences. In these ancient times cultures accepted such dueling god battles as a matter of honor and dick measuring contests, so if the fishbone doesn’t respect their culture, it’s because wishbone is obviously racist and projects his racism on God.

    So anyway, as usual, Israel defeats the Midianite cities. The men were all killed both the older and the younger. This was unusual, because the typical method during these times was to DING DING DING – make them into slaves and sell them for profit! But God had curtailed this so the Israelites couldn’t, neither in Midian nor in Canaan.

    Killing the men was also offering them mercy as slavery was dishonorable, and the culture of the Middle East was an honor-bound society much like feudal Japan. Death was preferable to dishonor. Israel could never profit from slave trade, they could only purchase. And along with the honor time setting, there was also the duty of revenge, which is why Israel had to attack the Midianites for what they did least they lose face and face more difficulties in their affairs with other nations who’d see them as weak, and also by killing off the men there was no chance of any Midianite generations returning to take revenge.

    Women were not a threat, no matter how much feministfish likes to imagine and prays they be drafted for equality. So typically the lives of women were spared, by letting them be assimilated through arranged marriages. It was either that or they risk dying on their own without support. Consider the times they live in where government didn’t just send them money taken from other women’s husbands. They could have sold the women as slaves, but again this was a no-no, they could only buy slaves – which unlike what tbe fish thinks, would be costly as you had to be able to feed and shelter them through your nomad trek through the wilderness on top of that. So it was not at all like shopping for shoes at WalMart. It was an additional burden to take on another wife or a slave.

    But this time an exception was made and the women who were NOT virgins were put to death.

    Why?

    Because of what led to this whole affair. The King got them to go prostitute themselves to the Israelites. And he needed large numbers to get this to happen. So he coyldn’t just hire the typical number of professional whores. This was either voluntarily done or by force. We don’t know, but we do know that the pagan demons worshipped in these lands and the promiscious culture that surrounds it didn’t consider adultery a problem, and considering the Midian men didn’t revolt at their wives and daughters being used there was likely complete compliance, much like mask mandates and getting jabbed to show how virtuous you are and what you are doing to keep your fellow countrymen safe by eliminating the Israeli virus.

    So that is why all the women, except for the virgins were killed. The virgin girls were naturally innocent. They had the choice to marry and intergrate or reject the offer and be left alone.

    So no rape was involved, nor genocide, considering other Midianite people were already living amongst the Israelis and marrying them, such as one of Moses’ wives Zipporah. Not to mention numerous foreigners who woyld journey with them for safety in numbers and also foreign slaves, and since there were no independent women’s institutions, marriage to someone ensured they’d be looked after. And I don’t know any racists who would pollute their descendents like this so the “racism” is all in the boneybone’s head. Typical atheist lefty.

    It seems like the only way you can claim the Israelites morality stood out is that they were homophobic, and the reason you know homophobia is moral is that the Bible says it is. That’s circular. And also complete nonsense. In most respects, the Israelite’s morality was the same as that of other contemporaneous peoples, especially those in that geographical region, and certainly not what anyone whould expect to come from a loving God

    BWAHAHAHAHA! That’s not circular reasoning you idiot! Yes, in “most respects” Israel had certain shared moral codes and honor systems and cultural values as the rest of them. But homosexuality, and beastiality were not one of them. As evidenced from Caanan, Sodom, Gammorrah and the deities worshipped in the region who engaged in such practices and were therefore emulatable. Monotheism, ritual purity and strict regimentation of sexuality were highly unusual. The most the region wanted was in the cases of legal marriage where the girl had to be a virgin. This was for reasons of legality and protection of assets so that you know she was not already married to some other guy who may lay claim to your assets or descendents inheritance by claiming the woman was his or that your descendents were actually his or that you owe him dowry money or other repayment as restitution. So it was best to marry a virgin girl or a known widow. You couldn’t trust or take a risk with a “used” woman. What happened after the marriage contract was formed and her virginity takwn to seal tge deal? Well… it depended on whatever society you inhabited.

    A loving God created sexual reproduction for children. Not for anal happy-fun-time. You can repeat words like “homophobia” and “loving” all you like, much like “follow the science”, but this is at odds like reality. The question to you homofish is, what have these people ever done to you that you avert your eyes from the damage they do to each other and the damage, neglect and abuse done to them that leads to sodomite behaviour? The fact is that you do not care. As evidenced by your declaration that whatever happens between adults in the bedroom is not your concern and you don’t care about the morality of it. That’s the only truthful thing you have admitted so far – that you do not care.

    You don’t care about the people who’ve fallen into such habitual issues.

    You don’t care what happens to them as a result of it. Yiu do not care about what led them to become this way.

    You don’t care that evil men like Fauci killed any of them through medical malpractice. You don’t even care to verify that story by looking it up.

    These people are just props for you to virtue signal. They are stepping stones for you to feel good. You even discarded your own grandmother in the process of doing so. That is truly sick and pathetic.

    You do, apparently, as you replied four times in a row.

    Nice try. You know that I was only referring to your emotional appeals. Other detailed rational arguments I have no problem caring about.

  50. Johnno,

    You attempted an absurd argument via grotesque reductio ab absurdum where because every activity can he deemed risky nothing is therefore worth doing. But other activities have a noble or useful goal in mind. What has sodomy?

    My conclusion wasn’t “therefore nothing is worth doing”, it was that health risks alone aren’t a valid reason to interfere with someone else’s private life. The “goal” of gay sex is the same as that of almost all straight sex: to express love and affection, to relax, and to have fun. If health is your only concern, are you okay with lesbianism? AFAIK, lesbian sex is safer that straight sex.

    [Me: And the only reason I have to add qualifications at all is that I’m dealing with an intellectually dishonest person who will take every opportunity to twist my words. Most people know that in regard to sex, “adult” and “consent” go without saying.]

    No, the reason you added qualifications is because you know very well that there are limits to sexuality.

    Of course there are limits, I already spelt the most obvious two out.

    If “consent” is all that matters, then don’t worry, society is working on it, underage kids can already define their genders, get put on hormone meds, get sex ops and abortions, and get vaccines, without critical oversight and parental knowledge. It’s only a matter of time.

    False. Underage kids can’t get “hormone meds”, “sex ops” etc without “critical oversight”. That’s just another right-wing lie. And this is another slippery-slope argument.

    So it’s only a matter of time until the trumbone toots for adult/child sex… consensual and only in the bedroom of course!

    Slippery-slope. I might as well say it’s only a metter of time before you try and outlaw divorce, homosexuality, and sex before marriage.

    Words do have definitions despite your feelings, so as somone famously put it, “I have no reason to accept these claims either.”

    Fine, here’s the definition of “homophobe” from the OED:

    a person with a dislike of or prejudice against gay people. [Oxford English Dictionary]

    The meaning of words changes over time, like “tweet”. So, homophobe fits you absolutely perfectly.

  51. Slippery-slope. I might as well say it’s only a metter of time before you try and outlaw divorce, homosexuality, and sex before marriage.

    This is true though (as long as “homosexuality” is understood to mean “homosexual acts”). I will admit that this is our goal. You can tell that this is our goal because we believe in (such supporting the family or believing in God’s plan for marriage) are incompatible with no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, fornication, etc.

    Ten years ago it would have been a “slippery slope argument” to suppose that the left would seek to force all legislatures to enact same-sex marriage laws, or to recognize the existence of “transgendered preteens” or to deny the statement “only women can get pregnant.” Yet here we are, as anyone could have predicted 10 years ago since the rationales behind the pushes the left were making a decade necessarily lead to the place we are now.

    Midwits like you think that any observation of a process you don’t like is a “slippery slope” fallacy, because you convinced yourself to be dumb enough to think that causation and logic are at odds with each other.

  52. Also someone who is not aware of the 10 Commandments, where slavery, rape and genocide are subsections covered under theft, adultery and murder.

    Neither slavery nor rape are mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Nor is genocide covered under murder, as it’s a different crime. In any case, what’s the use of God saying murder is wrong in one part of the Bible if he’s commanding it in another? A real God wouldn’t be so glaringly inconsistent. Or so cruel, stupid, and bloodthirsty. Or so enthusiastic about animal sacrifice, for that matter.

    Why yes it [owning people as property] is! As mentioned you either didn’t yet read or deliberately ignore the context of debt slavery and slavery as a just punishment.

    Enslaving people from surrounding nations isn’t “debt slavery”, it’s just slavery. You deliberately ignored this fact. And incidentally, “debt slavery” is still slavery under any modern definition, and enslaving people isn’t “just punishment”. How come secular human moral standards now are much higher than God’s were in the Old Testament?

    Ah yes, those good ol’ Midianites. Never did anything wrong did they? Nope! Perfectly nice people who mean ol’God just wanted to destroy for no reason.

    (Followed by tedious explication of ridiculous Bible story which I already know, and which is just as stupid, cruel, and unbelievable as every story in the Old Testament.) All you’re doing here is trying to justify slavery, rape, and genocide: Some people did something wrong, therefore it’s acceptable to commit mass murder. This is no different to the sort of reasoning Hitler used to justify the Final Solution. My question to you is: why can’t am omnipotent and loving God find a better way of dealing with a problem than destroying people? And incidentally, if you have to think up excuses as to why things in the Bible aren’t as bad as they seem, then each excuse makes it less likely that the Bible is the work of a loving God, not more likely.

    The virgin girls were naturally innocent. They had the choice to marry and intergrate or reject the offer and be left alone.

    It doesn’t say this in the text.

    That’s not circular reasoning you idiot!

    Sure it is. You’re using the Bible to justify the Bible. This is why you need non-Biblical evidence for God, which you don’t have. Also, it’s false to claim that most pre-biblical people were pro-gay. They mostly just tolerated it.

    A loving God created sexual reproduction for children. Not for anal happy-fun-time. You can repeat words like “homophobia” and “loving” all you like, much like “follow the science”, but this is at odds like reality.

    A “loving God” who condones slavery, rape, and genocide, and who sits around doing nothing while children die of cancer (and he’s responsible for the cancer)? And what difference does it make what your (alleged) God (allegedly) created sex “for”? Our legs are “for” standing and walking, but that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to use them to operate the pedals on a car.

    The question to you homofish is, what have these people ever done to you that you avert your eyes from the damage they do to each other and the damage, neglect and abuse done to them that leads to sodomite behaviour? The fact is that you do not care. As evidenced by your declaration that whatever happens between adults in the bedroom is not your concern and you don’t care about the morality of it. That’s the only truthful thing you have admitted so far – that you do not care.

    What a pathetically stupid argument. You have no evidence that gay people are gay because of abuse and neglect, but if they were, then you’re saying that it’s morally acceptable for people whose behavior is due to abuse and neglect by others, to be tortured for all eternity by a “loving” God.

    You don’t care about the people who’ve fallen into such habitual issues. You don’t care what happens to them as a result of it. Yiu do not care about what led them to become this way.

    Yeah, you’re the caring and compassionate one here. /sarc

    You don’t care that evil men like Fauci killed any of them through medical malpractice. You don’t even care to verify that story by looking it up.

    I did look it up, and it’s a pack of lies.

    You even discarded your own grandmother in the process of doing so. That is truly sick and pathetic.

    I didn’t discard my own grandmother, you lying liar. God did, if Genesis 3:16 is true.

  53. My conclusion wasn’t “therefore nothing is worth doing”, it was that health risks alone aren’t a valid reason to interfere with someone else’s private life.

    And as I predicted, the swordsboob has now made the argument in favor of pedophilia/pedaresty. Because the main argument against that is that it’s harmful to children. But if “health risks alone aren’t a valid reason to interfere with someone else’s private life” then by that turn pedophilia/pedaresty is acceptable and can be a valid private lifestyle choice.

    The “goal” of gay sex is the same as that of almost all straight sex: to express love and affection, to relax, and to have fun.

    BZZZZT WRONG! There is no allowance for the procreation of children. The entire end “goal” of sex. So all you’ve argued is that sodomites share the same goals as immoral normal-sexuals who also engage in sodomy, contraceptives, masturbation and of course, child-murder.

    If health is your only concern, are you okay with lesbianism? AFAIK, lesbian sex is safer that straight sex.

    Nope, and again your ONLY rationale for normal-sex being “safer” is lack of pregnancy. That’s your only criteria. Mine doesn’t rest only on physical harm, but also psychological harm, often caused by the general hollowness and depravity of engaging in the act itself which leads to depression, further psychological issues and suicide, though I’d argue that lesbianism is rather the symptom, and making the symptom flourish only exacerbates the underlying issues.

    So, even if the flopping and flapping or artificial dildoing between lesbians is “safer” considering women’s body parts are designed in such a way that the anus isn’t, the lifestyle and relationship itself leads to issues in statistics greater and more disproportionate in the population than rare hazards in childbirth ever do. Not to mention the harm it does to society philosophically when there are enough dunderheads trying to normalize it and eventually arguing themselves into a corner, just as you do, which as much as you would like to limit yourself to only “consenting adults” you have opened the door to justifying pedophilia and pedaresty. The latter which often leads to homosexuality and more pedaresty.

    Most people know that in regard to sex, “adult” and “consent” go without saying.

    Yeah? Well, an increasing number of people, thanks to your rationale are running with it to claim that it doesn’t go without saying anymore. Some even get published in well known lefty journals and newspapers and websites arguing that what you consider the limit shouldn’t be the limit anymore.

    False. Underage kids can’t get “hormone meds”, “sex ops” etc without “critical oversight”. That’s just another right-wing lie. And this is another slippery-slope argument.

    FACT CHECK!

    Canada.

    There are others, but that alone should suffice. In fact, a parent can now go to jail for trying to stop their children from “transitioning.” Of course you might argue that “critical oversight” counts under the quack dick-cutting doctors, the government and the courts. But of course, much like our vexxine times, anything goes and there is actually no “critical oversight”, show up, put down the money/government funding, and everything is kosher and no need for your parents to even know about it!

    Of course all those ex-trans folks have another story to tell you about all that “critical oversight” that gulliblefish think exists. But to the fish as to the mainstream lefty media, these people, like ex-gays, do not exist, they are a right-wing conspiracy!

    Slippery-slope. I might as well say it’s only a metter of time before you try and outlaw divorce, homosexuality, and sex before marriage.

    You are quite right! I want things to go back up the slope from which they fell and are still falling.

    Fine, here’s the definition of “homophobe” from the OED:

    a person with a dislike of or prejudice against gay people. [Oxford English Dictionary]

    The meaning of words changes over time, like “tweet”. So, homophobe fits you absolutely perfectly.

    Well, just like “man” and “woman” and I’m changing it to mean what I want it to mean! I don’t need Oxford any more than I need science! So take that! Whatchu gonna do now trumpy?

    Neither slavery nor rape are mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Nor is genocide covered under murder, as it’s a different crime.

    That’s because the 10 Commandments are a condensation of the entire moral law and exist as general principles, which can be expounded on and has been so by Rabbinical commentators, Christ Himself, the Holy Catholic Church and so on. Your buddies do the same thing when they take principles in secular constitutions and charter rights and extend them to honoring ‘dick-in-the-bum’ activities and other rights as development upon the principles that are written therein. So, yes, they are covered, unjust slavery being a form of theft, and rape being a violation of coveting thy neighbor’s wife and adultery. If you don’t like the generalities then you can seek out the further laws in Deuteronomy where rape is explicitly forbidden.

    In any case, what’s the use of God saying murder is wrong in one part of the Bible if he’s commanding it in another?

    Really? Where? Where does God condone unjust taking of life – ie murder? Everything I’ve seen is entirely justified. Are you even reading the Bible, bro? Or just what other fish from your school of bum-sex say about it?

    A real God wouldn’t be so glaringly inconsistent. Or so cruel, stupid, and bloodthirsty. Or so enthusiastic about animal sacrifice, for that matter.

    Yawn… here are swordtoot’s feeeeeellllinngssss on display. No dopey, it’s entirely consistent. And also JUST. Maybe a pure white pacifist like you would prefer to throw flowers at Nazis, Commies and real rapists and reduce their prison terms and let them go free from prison while jailing “homophobes” and “carnivores” and “McDonalds franchisees” all while championing government that shoot dogs dead and Dr. Fauci for killing beagles and kittens with mRNA experimental shots, so you’re the only Mr. Inconsistent here. But you might be glad to learn that the animal sacrifices (intended to symbolize drawing the wrath of God away from sinful mankind foreshadowing God’s own sacrifice and suffering and death by scourging and crucifixion, all to save you, are over and done with, and are now bloodless and available to you for your salvation in the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Holy Catholic Church. The bloodthirst was necessary because mankind is bloodthirsty, and therefore symbolized God absorbing that bloodthirst against Himself in order to forgive and save you from going to Hell, which is all that’s left when you prefer to deny Him and have it your way.

    Enslaving people from surrounding nations isn’t “debt slavery”, it’s just slavery. You deliberately ignored this fact.

    I didn’t ignore it. They didn’t enslave people from other nations. They purchased those who were already salves. And unlike the other nations, these slaves were set free, given land and money to begin their life every Jubilee year, a practice in remembrance of God freeing Israel from slavery in Egypt, and also signifying the freedom God wants them to have from sin and depravity – like sodomy. It was an additional way for God to save other people. What would you prefer them to do? Ignore other national slaves? Invade and conquer the other lands and kill everyone and then free the slaves? Well?

    And incidentally, “debt slavery” is still slavery under any modern definition, and enslaving people isn’t “just punishment”. How come secular human moral standards now are much higher than God’s were in the Old Testament?

    Of course it is! It’s when you don’t pay your credit card and bills and so someone comes in and takes your wages or seizes your mortgage and repos your property until you do, and with interest! They might even put you in prison where you will work for free for below minimum wage! So it looks the same to me! You just happen to have banks, loans and credit and Christian charities now to soften the debt lifestyle compared to the past. That’s called progress and you can thank the Church for much of that where bishops and priests would also buy and free slaves, as did latter abolitionists thanks to Christian charity. You’re welcome! So yes, slavery still exists, and it’s the acceptable kind that society believes is entirely justified, except for the communists, who prefer another kind of slavery where everyone’s labor and property belongs to everyone else. Do you need me to explain for you how that works out?

    (Followed by tedious explication of ridiculous Bible story which I already know, and which is just as stupid, cruel, and unbelievable as every story in the Old Testament.)

    Oh I see… so when you get called out on your ignorance and lose the argument, there’s always the classic fallback…

    “Oh… oh yeah…? Well… (*sniff*)… the whole story was… was… entirely made-up and false anyway… (*waaahhhh*!!!)” – swordfishdumbone

    Well okay then, that means all the (*snicker*) “genocide” and “rape” didn’t happen then (BWAHAHAHA!). So whatchu complaining about? Either the events happened or they didn’t. But either way, even if they are made-up, God still comes out looking pretty good when you know the story, which clearly you didn’t, but are pretending you do, because anyone who did wouldn’t utilize it as an argument for fallacious allusions to “genocide” and “rape” that are nowhere found in the story. See you for example saying:

    All you’re doing here is trying to justify slavery, rape, and genocide: Some people did something wrong, therefore it’s acceptable to commit mass murder. This is no different to the sort of reasoning Hitler used to justify the Final Solution.

    Okay… I guess the allies shouldn’t have bombed and fought the Nazis then. Thanks dumfish, your reasoning here is as profoundly inconsistent and irrational as your attempts to justify sodo-sex because… lllluuuuuvvvvv!

    My question to you is: why can’t am omnipotent and loving God find a better way of dealing with a problem than destroying people?

    A “loving God” who condones slavery, rape, and genocide, and who sits around doing nothing while children die of cancer (and he’s responsible for the cancer)?

    I’ll do you one better! My question to you back to myself is, “Why can’t an omnipotent God suspend the laws of gravity to prevent someone from jumping to their death? Or Why can’t an omnipotent God just make food grow from rocks to feed starving people? Or why can’t an omnipotent God turn an asshole into a vagina? Or why can’t an omnipotent God change a dude who wants to be a girl into a girl?”

    Answer: Because He’s NOT entitled to. He set the rules and the limits and gave you the world to live in and instructions on how NOT to F&$# things up. But we keep disappointing Him and destroying ourselves. It’s what we want. And He’s not obliged to go along with every whim of ours, and you can’t tell Him what to do. To do so is to make yourself Judge and Jury over God, and the ones who do so are the ones who like arguing that ass-sex is good, and chopping off your dick turns you into a woman. So these are not to be taken seriously and have no business telling God how to conduct justified warfare when they can’t even get the definitions of words such as “genocide” and “rape” correct, and can’t even read the story, or if the text is too old-fashioned and difficult to even look up Tradition and long-standing Commentary on it.

    Also cancer and illness and disease etc. are a result of Original Sin that destroyed the world. But God also gave us Ivermectin, which along with anti-viral properties also holds promise as a treatment for cancers and tumors… but it is not being followed up on and being suppressed as “horse paste” for people… hmmmm… why do you think that is? Is God running Rolling Stone and the mainstream media and MERCK Pharmaceuticals?

    And incidentally, if you have to think up excuses as to why things in the Bible aren’t as bad as they seem, then each excuse makes it less likely that the Bible is the work of a loving God, not more likely.

    What excuses? It’s a logical progression from the text in black and white. It’s like trying to argue that because I am saying that 2 + 2 leads to equaling 4 that I’m “making up excuses” to explain that 4 is not so bad because you insist that 4 = RAPE!!!!!

    It doesn’t say this in the text.

    It’s logically implied as a result from the text wherein you have to know who the Midianites are, what they did, why they are going after them, and why only this particular group was spared, and what their previous encounters with other nations were like, and the names of Midianite survivors living amongst them before and long after the fact. So the action is consistent with the entire context.

    It doesn’t say “AND RAPE THEM” in the text either, but that isn’t stopping you…

    Sure it is. You’re using the Bible to justify the Bible.

    Well of course! The accused is defending itself from false accusations by demonstrating from the record that the accusations being brought against it by the prosecution are baseless and entirely made-up. Is a defendant pointing out that he was never in the vicinity of the crime circular reasoning?

    If you say Mr. Bible tweeted “RAPE AND GENOCIDE”, and Mr. Bible presents a screenshot of the actual tweet in court and in it the words are nowhere present, then how is that circular reasoning?

    Circular reasoning is when you declare something as true that you’ve yet to prove, then use the declaration in and of itself as the proof.

    Stop using debate terminology you don’t understand.

    If you have some lost Midianite text you’ve suddenly discovered in the Dead Sea to contradict the event and show the Biblical account was a distortion, then do so. So far, it’s just what you and your skeptical friends feel happened and is nowhere in the text, nor even consistent with the definitions of the accusations you are levying which last time I checked, Oxford hasn’t altered for the sake of Orwellian progress.

    This is why you need non-Biblical evidence for God, which you don’t have.

    I’m… using non-Biblical evidence… when presenting to you the exact story in the Bible…?

    Also, it’s false to claim that most pre-biblical people were pro-gay. They mostly just tolerated it.

    Oh… HAHAHA…. okay! Yes, yes… I agree… They mostly just tolerated it! As in, you guys do what you want, I’ll be over here…. I agree swishfish, there were certainly no pride parades/seasons/years or TV and internet commercials and corporate logo changes at the time, not that we know of anyway… But I guess that’s what you need today to overthrow the ol’ Jewish change of pace we’ve labored under that suddenly occurred way back when out in the desert in the midst of a gay-tolerant land and culture for absolutely no reason. So I hope you have at least learned that the ‘cultural bias’ argument you were making is horseshit.

    And what difference does it make what your (alleged) God (allegedly) created sex “for”? Our legs are “for” standing and walking, but that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to use them to operate the pedals on a car.

    Yes yes… because ass-sex leading to anal prolapse and scat fetishes leading to disease is a very efficient and equivalent use of the functions of the body and a boon for society just like engineering and operating a vehicle… Absurd false equivalencies are certainly a thing with you aren’t they? You might as well argue in favor that the exhaust pipe should be placed inside the vehicle with the windows rolled up. That’s more similar.

    What a pathetically stupid argument. You have no evidence that gay people are gay because of abuse and neglect

    This is demonstrably ignorant. If you don’t like me, you only need to read their own literature, or heck consult some of the Hollywood movies they themselves made in the art house scene that are not mainstream happy clappy pieces. A disproportionate number of them do suffer from problems and acknowledge what led them to it, even if some have argued that they don’t feel unduly harmed by events such as being taken advantage of by an adult, for example. Look up many ex-gays as an example of those who turned away from the lifestyle as a result of coming to terms with their past problems. Some also admit it but as yet were not able to leave the lifestyle for various reasons. The ones who have no issues are extremely rare, but the data showing a sudden surge in those identifying all all kinds of sexualites and genders points to the fact that many youth turn to this lifestyle because it’s “celebrated” and they get “cultural recognition” and “praise” online and from the community for “coming out” as whatever. So there is a feeding frenzy of it from people who for whatever reason are trying to fill a void in their life, or those who are simply opportunists and draw benefits from the various new protections and promotions for identifying as part of the group.

    but if they were, then you’re saying that it’s morally acceptable for people whose behavior is due to abuse and neglect by others, to be tortured for all eternity by a “loving” God.

    Because encouraging them in that behavior is further damaging to them, turns victims into predators, abused into abusers, and they are well cognizant of what they are doing, which is why they succumb to inordinate pride and name their festival after it. Once you are addicted to the drug, it’s extremely difficult to get out of it. When you embrace it completely, there is no helping you, you love it above everything else, you start to turn to other more dangerous and depraved drugs, and there is only one place you will end up. Just as it is for your physically, it’s the same spiritually. Some of us are trying to help. People like you are trying to stop us. If the fallen do escape Hell it is because they repented and their hearts were inclined away from further sin. So long as that is there and they are trying, there is hope.

    Yeah, you’re the caring and compassionate one here. /sarc

    Yes. /srsly

    I did look it up, and it’s a pack of lies.

    Alright, then show us the fact-check/debunk, we’re interested.

    I didn’t discard my own grandmother, you lying liar.

    You used her death during childbirth as a prop to argue that anal sex was safer and equated her attempt to give life to a child as being no more noble or different than cumming into an asshole. You said this both to try and make your argument sound reasonable and to shield yourself by using her death to buy you sympathy so that you and your argument might escape criticism.

    Let’s be charitable. Perhaps this is trauma on your part and you are frightened by the thought of it and possibly losing a loved one, assuming she was alive when you were born. Being frightened by it you have rationalized to yourself that heterosexual sex is risky, and by carrying that philosophy over you wind up thinking that homosexual acts are safer. But this is an error, they are not, and have even more far reaching consequences, both towards homosexuals, and as philosophical repercussions upon society at large.

    God did, if Genesis 3:16 is true.

    Yes, it’s called a consequence for sin. Most consequences are not a result of God doing something actively, but as a logical outcome of going against the systems of the natural world He created. God is as responsible for it as jumping to your death due to gravity. They had a world in which childbirth was not such a risk and death didn’t exist. They thought they knew better, and didn’t realize how one fault can cascade into many many things – the slippery slope, if you will. Error compounding error. Violation compounding violation. Cause and Effects (plural). But God mitigated the punishment, allowing them to live for awhile longer, and to repent while experiencing a world that now was dying and painful. Paradise was lost. It was lost because humanity chose not to believe what God said even though He explicitly told them what would happen. He allowed them to choose to disregard Him and to invite death in if they so chose because He didn’t create them to be automatons, they had free will and could exercise it to the extreme of being able to reject Him and everything He created for them. Unlike the fallen angels, mankind can learn with time and repent. A new world without death will come, but this world will be for those who are committed accepting God’s authority, that He is telling them the Truth, and to maintaining it and living within its boundaries. Anything else leads inevitably to Hell. So for those who wish it, that is the only place for them and it is one of their own making. All the bad things you experience in this life are a signal to what’s on the other side, just as the good things are. The creation is a shadow. Even if you never read the Bible or heard of Jesus Christ, the Natural Law is still all around. Yet people choose to ignore it. In the end we will all discover that we have no excuses when we are judged.

  54. For years I’ve been advocating that we enclose the universities with impermeable walls: let no one out once he’s inside. (Besides, if the noise from them should ever get to be too annoying, we could fill them with water.) They’ve become an infinitely greater hazard to the nation than the Chinese Lung Rot. But private “bugmen” such as Mark Shea – once held up to me as an ideal representative of my faith – are a less tractable problem. Unfortunately, getting their citizenship pulled wouldn’t affect much. Come to think of it, given contemporary conditions, they’d probably keep voting anyway.

  55. Proof of:
    – COVID vaccination,
    – a negative AIDS test result,
    – citizenship,
    required for admission.

    Post this in all businesses and this pandemic will be over in 30 days.

  56. Johnno,

    (Your reply is an absurd 3,121 words long – 5 times longer than Briggs’s original article. It seems like you’ve deliberately tried to make it impossible for me to reply, and effectively, it is. Some of us have lives. So, this is just a partial reply.)

    (Slavery, genocide, and rape aren’t covered by the Ten Commandments.)

    So, yes, they are covered, unjust slavery being a form of theft, and rape being a violation of coveting thy neighbor’s wife and adultery. If you don’t like the generalities then you can seek out the further laws in Deuteronomy where rape is explicitly forbidden.

    This is dishonest. Slavery can only be considered to be theft if people can be treated as property in the first place, which means it’s okay to own slaves, and only wrong to steal them. And “coveting thy neighbour’s wife” clearly doesn’t mean raping your neighbour’s wife, and doesn’t include non-wives, nor men, who can also be victims of rape. I note that you claim that “coveting your neighbour’s wife” could mean rape, yet elsewhere, “taking young virgin girls for yourself” apparently doesn’t. This is you twisting yourself into knots trying to defend your indefensible holy book.

    As for Deuteronomy forbidding rape, I note that you don’t cite an actual chapter and verse. I’m aware that it says rapists should marry their victims, but that’s just another terrible, immoral idea, typical of the sort of thing a loving God wouldn’t say.

    These inconsistent rules aren’t what we’d expect from a loving and omnipotent God, but they’re exactly what we’d expect a bunch of ancient goat-herders to cobble together.

    Where does God condone unjust taking of life – ie murder? Everything I’ve seen is entirely justified.

    Killing people because they worship other Gods [Exod. 22. 20. Deut. 13. 6. & 10. Deut. 17. 2. 6.], are witches [Exod. 22. 18. Levit. 20. 27. Deut. 18. 10. 11.], commit blasphemy [Levit. 24, 15. 16.], commit adultery [Lev. 20. 19. & 18. 20. Deu. 22. 23. 27.], or are children who curse their parents [Exod. 21. 17. Lev. 20. 9. Exod. 21. 15.] are all justified?

    On the other hand, you can beat your slave to death and only be “punished”, and if they live for a day or two, you can get away scott free:

    “And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.” [Exod. 21:20-211]

    They didn’t enslave people from other nations. They purchased those who were already salves.

    This is industrial-strength sophistry. How can God be against slavery if he says it’s okay to buy slaves? That’s akin to saying it’s wrong to murder someone, but okay to hire a hitman to do it for you. And again, this is racist. And also, there can’t be a slave trade unless some people are prepared to buy slaves, so those buyers are just as responsible for the existence of that slave trade as the slavers are.

    It’s [debt slavery] when you don’t pay your credit card and bills and so someone comes in and takes your wages or seizes your mortgage and repos your property until you do, and with interest! They might even put you in prison where you will work for free for below minimum wage! So it looks the same to me!

    I don’t care what it looks like to you. It isn’t true that you can be sent to prison for non-payment of credit card bills in the UK or USA, except for some legal loopholes.

    *

    God still comes out looking pretty good when you know the story

    God comes out looking pretty good if you get your standard of goodness from God, but that’s circular (again). If your standard of goodness comes from modern secular morality, then the whole story is profoundly immoral. Moses would have been indicted for war crimes, and I doubt if the “I was only following God’s orders” defence would have gained much traction at the Hague.

    I guess the allies shouldn’t have bombed and fought the Nazis then.

    This is a false analogy. We didn’t go to war because some German girls had had sex with some allied men, and our war aims didn’t consist of wiping out all German men, women, and children, except for young virgin girls, who we’d enslave. Even so, the bombing of German cities *was* morally questionable, as was the use of atom bombs against Japanese civilians. Would a loving God order the use of atom bombs?

    My question to you back to myself is, “Why can’t an omnipotent God suspend the laws of gravity to prevent someone from jumping to their death?

    If you could stop someone jumping off a cliff, I assume you would. Why are you better than your God?

    Answer: Because He’s NOT entitled to. He set the rules and the limits and gave you the world to live in and instructions on how NOT to F&$# things up.

    This is one of the poorest responses to the Problem of Suffering I’ve read. God isn’t entitled to intervene in his own creation? He intervenes all the time in the Old Testament!

    And He’s not obliged to go along with every whim of ours, and you can’t tell Him what to do.

    Praying for your child not to die of cancer isn’t a whim. And why can’t we expect a loving God to create a universe without childhood cancer in the first place? The universe we inhabit is exactly how we’d expect it to be if there is no God.

    Also cancer and illness and disease etc. are a result of Original Sin that destroyed the world.

    I love the thoughtless way you just chuck this in. Eve eat an apple, so billions of people have to suffer illness and disease for millions of years. This would make perfect sense if God is evil, but not if he’s good.

    *

    If you have some lost Midianite text you’ve suddenly discovered in the Dead Sea to contradict the event and show the Biblical account was a distortion, then do so.

    The massacre of men, women, and children is ordered by God in the text. The taking of young virgin girl sex slaves is ordered in the text. There is gratuitous slaughter of animals. The entire story is a revolting bloodbath of immorality, where God is depicted as being a brutal tribal warlord rather than a loving omnipotent God. If you think that the killing of tens of thousands is justified by “sexual immorality”, then you’ve got a screw loose.

    *

    So I hope you have at least learned that the ‘cultural bias’ argument you were making is horseshit.

    Sorry, but no. There is absolutely no moral idea in the Old Testament which is ahead of its time, which is what you’d need in order to be able to provide evidence that it came from a loving God. Modern-day secular morality is superior to it in every way, from gay rights to church-state separation, to the emancipation of women, welfare programs, religious freedom, pensions, human rights, democracy, education… I could go on all day. None of these were God’s idea. His idea, as depicted in the Slaughter of the Midianites, is mass murder as the solution to almost any problem.

    *

    Yes, it’s called a consequence for sin. Most consequences are not a result of God doing something actively, but as a logical outcome of going against the systems of the natural world He created. God is as responsible for it as jumping to your death due to gravity. They had a world in which childbirth was not such a risk and death didn’t exist.

    The Garden of Eden story is a fairystory like Shrek, down to the inclusion of talking animals. We know from many branches of science and from history that it never happened. But supposing it did happen, then a loving God wouldn’t punish his entire creation, including completely innocent animals, with death and suffering in response to a single human doing one not-even-very-wrong-thing. An evil God might.

  57. I’m still fascinated by the fact that swordfishtrombone doesn’t just link to a famous atheist philosopher as an “authority” on God, especially since he begins by complaining that it is too much time and work for him to write a full reply. If we were talking about health by this point he would have long since just linked to a paper he didn’t read and say something to the effect of “if you disagree with the conclusions of this paper you are disagreeing with experts and the science.”

    But here he actually makes the effort to make his own (poor) arguments.

    Mr. Trombone, Hating God is no way to go through life.

  58. Rudolph Harrier,

    I’m still fascinated by the fact that swordfishtrombone doesn’t just link to a famous atheist philosopher as an “authority” on God, especially since he begins by complaining that it is too much time and work for him to write a full reply.

    Johnno got a reply much longer than his comment warranted. I wrote more, but some of the things he said (such as his remarks about my grandmother) were too revolting to quote, so I edited my response down a fair bit to avoid his schlock.

    I don’t generally cite “authorities” at all when I comment. I sometimes cite scientific papers in response to antiscientific claims such as those made by you. Regarding authorities on theism/atheism, I’ve read and/or listened to many of them, but this is one case where I feel everyone is definitely entitled to their own opinion.

    But here he actually makes the effort to make his own (poor) arguments.

    Put up or shut up.

    Mr. Trombone, Hating God is no way to go through life.

    This reminds me of the line “blasphemy is a victimless crime”. I don’t hate God, as I don’t think God exists. I hate the fact that some people get their moral ideas from his immoral holy book.

  59. Kay,

    (Better late then never.)

    Well, Mark Shea is a special kind of vicious, his diatribe demanding discrimination against intelligent people who decline to become GMOs from an untrialled concoction made with aborted babies is exactly what I’d expect from him.

    There are so many false claims in your comment that it’s impractical to provide links to refute them.

    1. Vaccines don’t genetically modify us.
    2. COVID vaccines (there are over 20) have been trialled.
    3. COVID vaccines don’t contain “aborted babies”, they were developed with the help of cell lines grown from fetal cells collected many decades ago. The Vatican says it is perfectly okay for Catholics to have these vaccines.

    the flu has a 99.7% survival rate

    4. COVID isn’t flu. It’s a totally different virus.
    5. COVID has a survival rate of about 98%. That’s the difference between 300 deaths per 100,000 and 2,000 deaths per 100,000, or nearly 7 times more.

    in very vaxxed Israel the majority with Covid are the vaxxed.

    6. Israel is 58% vaccinated, which isn’t high enough to stop covid spreading, and you’re conflating cases with deaths: the vaccinated are 9X more likely to avoid a serious case of covid.

    Masks do not work against viruses.

    7a. They don’t work at all, or they don’t work 100%? An easy way to gain even a 10% reduced risk of catching a deadly disease is beneficial.
    7b. They *do* work against the droplets of spittle which contain viruses.

    The PCR test does not differentiate between Covid and the seasonal flu.

    8. False. Even Briggs has corrected commenters making this false claim.

    A positive result from this flawed and easily manipulated test does not equal a “case” of Covid.

    9. False. According to the current definition of case, it does.

    Asymptomatic people cannot spread the flu

    10. False. This is one of the main ways COVID spreads. And it’s not flu.

    IVERMECTIN works.

    11. Maybe. It’s being trialled. It’s strange that you’re sure it works, yet you complain about the vaccines being untrialled?
    12. What do you mean by “work”? If it reduced deaths by 10%, would that count? How come that wouldn’t also apply to masks (see above)?

    Healthcare is a mess, the unvaxxed are way better off avoiding them, as they are incentivized to diagnose “Covid”, and put people on vents.

    13. The US healthcare system does seem like a mess to me compared to the UK NHS. Hospitals aren’t “incentivised” to put people on ventilators, they are paid for the cost of treatment, but they are losing money overall. And who in America wants to go to hospital unless they can avoid it?

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