Essay talk:Religion is Dumb Is Horrible

Now, Stabby, I don't expect you to be surprised to hear this. I expect a groan and a roll of the eyes. Religionisforidiots (or RIFI, an acronym I find pleasing somehow) was me. I made the sock account briefly after this edit was reverted, as the result of mounting frustration at the scorn for religion I see on this site. Thusly, I created RIFI in an attempt to highlight the irrationality of the anti-theism of this site. I don't think I succeeded. For one, I would have had to participated, posing as a militant atheist, in a number of the debates on this site like the one over the article on Maratreanism, the one over Chick-fil-A, and a million other discussions where I failed miserably to change anything except people's opinions of me. For the worst. Simply put, RIFI was late to the show, and kicking up debates that have long since settled would have outed RIFI as my sock, and discussion would focus on me, brx, instead of the points I was trying to make. I don't know if you know this, but there is something of an "argumentum ad brx" meme here, where everything I endorse is automatically wrong. It's usually only new users that ever agree with me, and that never lasts very long. But this isn't about my persecution complex. This is about my great pleasure at your response. I was not trying to upset you. If I did, I'm sorry (I've learned that assuming I've upset people on this site gets them in a huff- just ask Ace McWicked:"Who's upset? I'm not upset!  I'm mellow as ever!  I'm Ace McWicked!  Don't you go calling me upset.  Not that I care if you do, because I'm mellow"). No, what I wanted was for someone to step up and amidst the cacophony sound a reverberating clarion of reason, that could be referred to in the future, to help settle the debate on how to treat the topic of religion here on RationalWiki. At first it seemed that AD might step up to the plate, but he failed to rise up to the occasion and ultimately his words could only be used to enable the hostile attitude I campaign against. You, however, came through. I'm happy for that. I want to see more of this on this wiki. I hope you don't take this attempt at social engineering in spite. I hope you take this opportunity to keep making more righteous commentary.

On another note, I constructed RIFI (in ten minutes, like you had said) from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Theamazingatheist, and some of the stuff I've seen here. And yes, it did feel a little bit icky defacing the article on MLK-- "Shut up, Brx." 05:20, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Confirming that I am in fact brxbrx being silly--Religionisforidiots (talk) 05:27, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I assumed that RIFI was a troll. But, his essay was such a handy distillation of some of the  ideas that I was inspired to write a response to its essay anyways.   05:29, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And whatever, I didn't mind this bit of trolling so much. Its edits got swiftly reverted and it got me to actually start and finish and essay on the same day.  I actually enjoyed writing it.   05:31, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess you blanked a big chunk of the saloon for attention (and because idiot newbies might do that), and it worked. I was also mildly surprised to see that the Evolution template is not a random selection of articles from the categories, the way some of the other sidebars are, as an aside. Ochotonaprincepsnot a pokémon 1013 points 05:35, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yah, most of the older "bottombar" subject templates are static lists. It's a holdover from before RW decided to standardize around dyanimic sidebars.   05:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I blanked that bit of the Saloon Bar to make for a more convincing noob. And the navbar templates are often hybrids, with some fixed links and some templates for dpl (or something like that- I only know this because I joined ADK in renovating them one day- that was when I first removed Dawkins from that list)-- "Shut up, Brx." 06:14, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I am mildly irritated you wasted some minutes of my time, and even more of the time of others, to make some oblique point about how we're too scornful of religion. Did you expect that your edits to the MLK article would be left? Or that you would receive agreement for the asinine "Are we not Atheists"? If you feel hobbled by your reputation, create a new goddamn account. Don't troll with a sock and demand explanations and essays to make your point, okay?--talk 09:23, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I wasn't expecting agreement. I was hoping others would step up and condemn the edits.  I said as much above.-- "Shut up, Brx." 13:57, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * No, what I wanted was for someone to step up and amidst the cacophony sound a reverberating clarion of reason, that could be referred to in the future, to help settle the debate on how to treat the topic of religion here on RationalWiki.-- "Shut up, Brx." 13:59, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

copyrighted
Just a little detail. It looks like you are claiming copyright on the whole thing with the heading. "This essay is an original work by and copyrighted to Stabby the Misanthrope."

You really can't claim copyright to the bit on the left as you didn't write it. I assume you feel these details are important or you wouldn't have bothered with the copyright notice.--Weirdstuff (talk) 10:40, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * For the record, I'm only claiming copyright on my own words, not the text I'm critiquing. I put the copyright up because I'm especially fond of the line "he goes to sleep at night dreaming of piles of human bodies, wishing they were bigger," and would like the option of using it in a published story someday without having to slap a CC-by-SA notice on it.   11:28, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that you've corrected it now. Meanwhile I which you luck with claiming copyright over a fifteen-word sentence fragment. :-) --Weirdstuff (talk) 13:38, 14 September 2012 (UTC)