This blog is for positive exchanges and thought. It's about the ideas, and the pure pleasure of thinking and discussion. It is not about how bad atheists are, it's not about how bad I am. So listen up, the is is the only time I will say this:
I just received a comment on my blog, which I did not post because my policy is that I do not post personal attacks upon me or anyone else. It was full personal attacks and rude, arrogant, insulting the whole bit. I am so evil, I'm the most evil person ever. But the gist of it was "if religion makes you so happy how come you are the most bitter and unhappy person I've ever dealt with?" The basic logic here is "if you are so smart why aren't you rich." First of all, This person is assuming that he really knows me because we have exchanged some piss on message boards. That is truly deluded. If you think you really know me from message boards, I feel for the people who are really in your life. I don't even pretend to know people I've been dealing with on boards for ten years. There was a woman who I count as a dear friend. I have never met her, I have only known her on boards and called her. I called her every night for months even though she lives very far away (I had a calling plan). I became so enamored that I really begin to think I knew her well enough to fall in love with her. That relationship was good it did not get out of hand. But eventually she had to give me a rude awakening by reminding me "you don't know, we have never met, you have never seen me in person living my life you don't' really know what I'm like. I thought for minute there I was ready to marry her! But after being reminded that I was only falling in love with a mental image I had constructed, I began to realize that she wasn't really the person I wanted to marry. I began to realize how much of my feeling for her was based upon illusion.
You think you know me, you think you know that I'm so bitter and so hateful, but everything you have ever said to me or read from me back to you is based upon what you did to insult me and to start the ball rolling. I have been the target of character assassination and lies and misrepresentation, set up to give the responses of anger that that the atheists wanted me to give so they could destroy he good I was doing in my arguments. Of course I make myself seem some real creep by getting angry about it, but that's what you want. that's why try to evoke in me and you know you do. I am speaking to the person who wrote that letter. I am not saying that you DC guys have done this. But after years and years of this kind of treatment, how can you expect me not to be worked up and not to fly off the handle at the least implication of insult?
All any of you, the guy who wrote the thing and the DC guys, you are all just blaming the victim. How dare you be effected by our atheist attempts destroying your psyche and your sense of self esteem. Why would ever think that denying that ever went to college and constantly mocking everything you see yourself valued by would a negative effect? who would thunk it? All I ever tried to do from the beginning was tell them how to be happy. But they don't want to be happy. they love feeling miserable. they want to be trapped in their depravity and despair it feels good to be depressed, because its so easy to sit around and brood about it. It makes me some kind of major offender because I knew stuff they don't know and I have this vast body of scientific data they are too lazy to read, and it disproves their childish little bull shit.
get this through your little head. get it through the little head. when I insult it is always in a cycle. The atheist comes on with snide arrogant attitude, well your God is just big mean bully and christians are stupid blah blah."
i react to that with challenge to their knowledge base, because they don't' have one. usually those things are said in sheer ignorance with no understanding of theology, philosophy of religion, the studies on re or any of it. They construe the challenge to their knowledge base as personal insults then we are off the races. If you don't want me to do that then don't come on with litlte "I am so supior to stupid Christians" attitude.
Am I bitter? gee I don't know. why would anyone be bitter about both parents getting sick and dying, after three years of putting your whole life on hold to care for them, wipe their asses everyday, can't leave the house because they might die. Be their to give the a whole pharmacy full pills every day, make every meal, spend loads of time with them while the ramble incoherently and fade off into vegetation, all the while fighting with a mentally ill family member and an abusive alcholoic family member who spends all his time either saying "you are doing that wrong and then flies out the door when you say "Ok you do it" or getting drunk. Then when they die and you are trying to greive the mentally ill family member is so traumatized and going into a worse tailspin of paranoid delusions that you almost have to pretend they aren't dead, and don't dare express any grief or you get his huge howl. Then they take your career away, the only thing you ever really cared about and that you worked over decade on in Ph.D. work. Then they steal your house from you because they were house thieves and you were naive enough to think they were a mortgage company. The one and only thing you can find to make yourself feel better after losing the one thing you spent your life working for is exposing your ideas to these adolescent demons who can't understand them and have to be very very suspicious of every single thing you say, refuse to credit you with having even gone to college or having any knowledge at all, and have to ridicule every single thing you speak of and spread lies about you and try to destroy your reputation so that the only replacement for the career you worked so hard for becomes hell and you can't do it without harassed at every hands turn by stupid people who are too lazy to read a single page of any of the stuff you are talking about, who would be better?
You don't know jack fucking shit about me. You don't know that I'm not happy. You don't know that my bitterness is greater than my sense of gratitude to God because he's restoring the life I lost. In the summer of 2006 when I lost my house and had to move to an apartment (the kind where we found a vile of crack on the ground while moving in and where a knife fight broke out in front of our door)I was telling people "Joe Hinman died. I am dead. I'm just waiting for God to tell the corps to lie down." When I was caring for my parents (and still working on my Ph.D. the whole time) the one thing that gave me solace was the internet apologetics. But in that day it wasn't like it is now. You really enjoy message board discussion. But then the so called "new atheists" and Jesus mythers began spreading their lies and their poison and crating the social fad of hatred for Christianity, just like the Brown Shirts, making Christians the scape goats for all the ills of the world. Just as Hitler did for the Jews. So after having my real career stolen I could not even have my pretend career because they price of that was that I had to be totally mocked all the time, and then when I became human and reacted to the mocking, then that makes me so very bad. I'm just evil piece of shit because I get angry and the lies and the character assassination.
Most of the internet atheists are just too immature to listen or to think or to care about their lies. They would rather than than go to the trouble to research and find the truth. There are atheists who have become my friends. I value their friendship, even on message boards.Most of them are posting on my boards. The other kind, the trolls the bad mouthes the character assassins are not welcome. So yes, of course I am better, and I'm overly sensitive. These little hard hatred demoniacs who have no human feeling are gonig about that I have never suffered pain, I'm just a bad person. I'm just an evil religious person becasue that's how those kind of people are: they are too stupid to read any of material that disproves their childish bullshit and even though I can make good on all that I claim with scientific data, they continue to hound and harass and to claim I don't know anything, I never went to school, I'm lying about my degree ect ect.
So we have established that I"m bitter. Do they know how happy I am? I told you in summer of o6 I was saying "I am dead, I'm just waiting for God to tell the corps to lie down." Now I'm writing a book. We got a rent house. It was a total miracle, the only rent house in this whole part of the city for a price we can afford. It fell into our laps. As I drove down the street a little voice in my head seemed to say (but not really in actual words, more like a feeling) "go back that place you looked at at such and such a time." I did and the woman was walking out of the house. I asked her about it, it was for rent, the price was affordable. But we did not have the goods, bad credit, we had a rental history, but bad job, mental illness in one family member, horrible credit, forclosure on our record, ect ect. But this person just happened to be sympathetic to such a plight for personal reasons of her own and we got the house. So now we have a little yard for the dog, who we love so very much. He's happy. The dog is happy, so we are happy.It's a beautiful little yard and beautiful little house and a pleasure to live here. I feel that I do have a career after all and I am going about the task of making it happen and doing the career. So I don't say "Im dead I'm just waiting for the corps to lay down." Now I say "I am alive again thinks to Jesus."
You don't know me. You have no idea how I feel about life, myself, you or anything else. You want to make up a bunch of things, construct an image that paints me as worst person ever. I am lying about, I'm laying about knowing anything. Obviously that upsets me, why would it? Becasue I didn't get away with a lie? or because you are denying me the right I have to your respect as a degreed person who worked for a Ph.D. and came so close as to have only one more step before it was taken away. It was not taken away becasue my work was bad, I had a 4.0 for five years. All my professors knew I was good, they all told me I had a bright future as a scholar. It was taken away because I took too long getting through. I took so long because my parents were dying and I wasn't going to put them in a nursing home and forget them. But I'm such a bad person. I'm so evil I gave up my career to give my parents a coupe of last good years. What an evil bastard, but you know us Christians!
you weren't there the years and years and decades that my brother and I went to the coffee shop every night and had discussions intot he night, so long and so in depth that strangers would come over often and compliment us on how bright we where. I did not do that so they would see me. I did it to find truth. you weren't there and you don't know. You were not there during the thousands of hours that I poured over texts because I wanted to know. you are not in my head, you do not get the sense of utter pleasure that I feel in learning. You don't know what I feel about learning. I doubt that you ever derive any pleasure from learning. in fact I doubt that youc an learn.
I have been slandared and ridiculed time and time again because when a person lies about Christaintiy and I know that it's a lie and I can prove it, so speak up and say "you dont' know." that is mostly what I say when atheists get mad. Most of the time, like 90% of the time I have evolked their angry by saying "go to school." that's what gets me called "so insulting" and so on. I say "you don't know" when people dont' know, they find that really insulting. A few times I have been so angered that I break down and curse. That's wrong, I shoudl not do it, But those who evoke it only see that I did it, they never even consider what they do to make it happen. Then they spread lies about me.
like the most recent where they quoted me on a site "fundies say the stupidpest things" or something. I said something totally reasonable that any good sociologist would say, because they don't know anything about sociology the interpreted it in some stupid ass way then included me among the fundies! me! I ran the Fundy watch blog! I was warning the world about the fundies, and both the readers of that blog appreciated it!
My former blog atheist watch was good exercise in human behavior. If I wanted hits on any given day all I had to do was quote some nonsense, some atheist saying something stupid, and say "see atheists are hateful." /A hundred people would go look at that and then talk about it on blogs all over the place. but if I spent days writing an intelligent and well thoughtout blog peice to some thorny intellectual question, almost like cock work 75 people will look. If I go on Atheist watch and say "atheists are hateful" and quote some atheist saying "Christians are stupid" or something, 200 people tun in and talk about it all day. People want sensation, they wont conflict, they don't' appreciate thinking, and they want to blame and they love to villify.
Of course it's not at all bitter to huant someone's blog and ridicule everything they say and constantly push the line about how evil they are? that's not bitter at all is it? But you have no right to decide about my happiness you have no concept of it. I was happier when my parents were alive that's true. Perkins was about the best time in my life, and my child hood was so wonderful I can't let go of it. But you have no concept of happiness in my sense. You don't know how I feel and you can just but out. Even if I am not happy, the studies show God makes people happy. So if it wasn't for God I would be dead now. The first year after I moved tot he apartment after Amaquest stole my house, I consoled myself with thinking that I could go back to the old homestead, which was standing vacant, and put the car in the garage and keep the motor running. At one point I would actually put self to sleep at night thinking about "I will do this tomorrow night." I'd go to sleep with a little bit of good feeling because the bull shit could end.the corpse could lay down. Once I actually got busted up over something, not little fiddely atheists saying stupid things, but something like not being able to pay the light bill again, so I went over there. I was going to do it. Just as I was about to turn into the drive way a cop pulled up and sat there in front of the house for no apparent reason. Just at that moment. that's the only thing that stopped me from doing it. Now we have a garage on this little house. I could it do it at any time. I have no intention of it and I know I wont. Because God has restored my life.
I am also going to change the sitution vs atheists so that I wont be constantly riduclued and subjeted to character assasination. I'm not going to go on message boards anymore. they are so totally unfair, unable to think unable to even understand what a level playing feild is. they cannot be fair, they cannot understand. So I wont talk to them unless I control the zapper. Then I don't have to listen to their crap.
ok so thats the end of the negativity. From this point on personal attacks are not posted and we wont talk about negatives anymore.
I'ts utterly stupid to get so worked up over being todl "you don't know X, you need to read more about it."
Good post, Joe. I know you are a good guy and I know you've been dealt a series of raw deals. That 7th paragraph had me thinking of Job.
ReplyDeleteI also know you are a smart guy who can think and discuss on levels that most folks, both Christians and Atheists, may find difficult.
A lot of atheists on the internet tend to be in attack mode 24/7 and some of the most vocal ones act like punks on a playground, or worse, street thugs. Of course, some Christians act like that too. The Christians who have attacked my character since my deconversion are usually much more subtle, using scripture to call me all sorts of lovely things. I do my best to not respond in kind, in fact the other day after being called a swine, I responded and pointed out that I, an atheist, would never call him a swine.
You've always been kind and respectful to me, and that is probably because I treat you the same way, even if we disagree.
I look forward to being less busy at work so I can read more here and at Cadre.
Peace to you, my friend.
Thanks Mike. I appreciate it. I know many Christians can be just as bad as the trollish atheists. They also have their own "nice" way of putting you down, in the guise of concern. But you are right, we have to rise above all that and just move on. I wont deal with this sort of thing on the blog anymore.
ReplyDeleteJust want you to know I'm in your corner, Joe-- on the message board, on your blog, and in prayer. I feel like God sent me to your website when I needed help with the intellectual aspects of my faith-- and then sent me to your boards to try to repay you in kind-- with the gift he's given me. I'm good at encouragement and support.
ReplyDeleteI feel for you, for all you've been through-- and I'm glad God's showing you He still does have a plan for your life. I know that when all is said and done, when you look back on it all, you'll see that God worked it all together for good-- for you and others. Like you said, I don't know you and you don't know me-- but I think you're a great guy anyway.
Kristen
Thanks Kristen I really appreciate you.
ReplyDeletewow you managed to fit hitler in there? you are so easy to provoke.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts greatly resonate with those of Kristen. I have watched your blog for a long time and I find that it is often a refreshing change from the plain vitriol and ignorant hatred that often emanates from many an atheist website (and certainly a fine number of "Christian" websites as well.)
ReplyDeleteIt isn't about not experiencing pain or tragedy, is it about how one experiences it. The general picture that comes out of the aspect of the Hebrew understanding of the Divine upon which Jesus drew suggests that the Divine joins in our suffering rather than taking away every trial...
ReplyDeleteFrom the 38th Psalm:
Those who seek my life set their traps,those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they scheme and lie.
I am like the deaf, who cannot hear, like the mute, who cannot speak; I have become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.
LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.
For I said, "Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip."
For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.
I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.
Many have become my enemies without cause; those who hate me without reason are numerous.
Those who repay my good with evil lodge accusations against me, though I seek only to do what is good.
LORD, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God.
Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior.
gordon, thanks man! I really appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteHey Tiny, I hope you get a teaching post in Dallas. We gotta have coffee. great post buddy.
ReplyDelete