User:Luigifan18

Yo, I'm the Internet Wanderer Luigifan, and I stumbled upon this website through TV Tropes while piddling around one day (well, before they deleted their page on this site…). To put it bluntly, this place is hilarious, and it's really made me rethink several beliefs that I've held for a long time, particularly my faith in Catholicism (well, this place and Reddit, where I happen to be active on both /r/religiousfruitcake and r/antitheistcheesecake, often having to tell both of them to stop blindly hating on each other… I've actually created a community named /r/fruitandcheese to serve as neutral ground between them, but only time will tell how that turns out).

Essays

 * Essay:The Word Of The Lord Should Not Be Static — An essay about why it makes no sense for God's perfection to be used as an excuse for having a strict, inflexible religious dogma
 * Essay:Why Heresy Is Good And Blasphemy Is Bad — An exploration in the role that heresy can play in challenging dogma and improving religion, and blasphemy being nothing more than hate speech
 * Essay:Why are logical fallacies effective? — Answering the question of why logical fallacies are effective at persuading morons people
 * Essay:A critique of the Catholic Church's response to its pedophile priest problem (WIP) — An examination of the Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, the moral and survivalistic dilemma the Roman Catholic Church was put in by the actions of its pedophilic priests, the limitations on the Church's ability to solve the problem, the inefficacies of the Church's response, and how it could have handled the situation better

Drafts

 * User:Luigifan18/Restoration notice/Laird Shaw (Basically, I want to convert this into a template.)
 * Draft:Church of the Current Thing
 * Progress & Regress Pokémon
 * Azureality & Crimsolusion
 * Continuation 1

Launched Pages
None so far

Pages where I've written miniature essays that really need to be reviewed and fact-checked by people who have more time to devote to research than me
These are mini-essays that I've written that have not yet been reviewed and approved or disapproved of by other editors. Please feel free to take a look at them and let me know what you think! (Bear in mind that all revision links lead to the edit where the mini-essay was originally created; it may have been updated since then.)


 * Page: Responding to Sam Burke's Argument That Christianity Entails Anti-Natalism
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=prev&oldid=2470932
 * Revision 1 Description: How cultural background affects the baseline assumption of which religion is treated as the default "truth"
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=next&oldid=2470933
 * Revision 2 Description: Why children of fundies often become apostates
 * Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=2527002&oldid=2506438
 * Revision 3 Description: Expanding the first mini-essay to specify what is required to produce someone who is actually a blank slate towards the subject of religion
 * Page: Risk
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Risk&diff=prev&oldid=2471882
 * Description: Expanding on the plane crash vs. car accident example of poor risk calculation
 * Page: Silver bullet
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Silver_bullet&diff=prev&oldid=2472305
 * Description: Why the term "silver bullet" is specifically used for a simple "solution" to a complex problem.
 * Page: Hell
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Hell&diff=prev&oldid=2475065
 * Revision 1 Description: A slightly less unfair viewpoint on the subject of why people might deserve infinite torture (and why it's still somewhat questionable)
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Hell&diff=prev&oldid=2490133
 * Revision 2 Description: This is simply an expansion of the original mini-essay.
 * Page: Cognitive dissonance
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=prev&oldid=2475158
 * Revision 1 Description: Awareness of needles & expanding the genocidal army analogy
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=prev&oldid=2475179
 * Revision 2 Description: Exploring just what the heck the word "soul" describes if not the spiritual part of a person that supposedly lives on after the physical body's death
 * Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=2510559&oldid=2496024
 * Revision 3 Description: I expanded the genocidal army analogy again to account for the "flight" and "freeze" parts of the
 * Page: Science and religion
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Science_and_religion&diff=prev&oldid=2479324
 * Description: Exploring religion's purpose (religion exists and has existed for most of human history, so the theory of evolution would suggest that it's useful for humanity in some fashion)
 * Page: Freedom of religion
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&diff=prev&oldid=2481286
 * Revision 1 Description: Regional religious dominance ≠ state endorsement
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&type=revision&diff=2502769&oldid=2481287
 * Revision 2 Description: Religion being seen as a threat and the impact of this perception on freedom of religion
 * Page: Dogma
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Dogma&type=revision&diff=2487316&oldid=2260086
 * Description: A truncated version of my critique of the concept of dogma
 * Page: Haig's Law
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Haig%27s_Law&diff=prev&oldid=2490115
 * Description: A somewhat expanded synopsis of the law of exclamation
 * Page: Slippery slope
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Slippery_slope&diff=2491429&oldid=2491426
 * Description: In which I draw a parallel between unfounded slippery slope arguments about same-sex marriage and Pascal's Wager to demonstrate that both are examples of how easily an argument that rests on no actual evidence can be reinterpreted to argue in either direction on an issue.
 * Page: Overton window
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Overton_window&type=revision&diff=2495069&oldid=2495047
 * Description: The relationship between the Overton window and heresy
 * Page: Honor killings
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Honor_killings&type=revision&diff=2496447&oldid=2470030
 * Description: An examination of the relationship between religion and the wider culture it arises from (as well as throwing some shade at the Middle East)
 * Page: Secular religions
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Secular_religions&diff=prev&oldid=2496465
 * Description: A rant about how debates between theists and atheists tend to go nowhere, since neither side has definitive evidence, theists struggle to come up with arguments that don't commit at least one egregious logical fallacy, atheists are stuck with the nigh-impossible task of proving a negative, and neither side can admit that the other is right without getting smacked by a blimp-sized lump of cognitive dissonance
 * Page: Anecdotal evidence
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Anecdotal_evidence&diff=prev&oldid=2502491
 * Description: Piling on additional reasons why anecdotal evidence is not reliable
 * Page: Lie detection
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Lie_detection&type=revision&diff=2510148&oldid=2502675
 * Description: Exploring additional circumstances behind stress-free deceit and hesitant truth-telling, as well as the nature of honesty
 * Page: Red Queen's race
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Red_Queen%27s_race&diff=2506060&oldid=2427199
 * Description: I added a closing statement about the trouble an unrestrained Red Queen's race can cause and how difficult it can be to prevent one from escalating.
 * Page: Militant atheism
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Militant_atheism&diff=2506481&oldid=2469387
 * Description: I got carried away ranting about the Four Horsemen of New Atheism.
 * Page: Atomwaffen Division
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atomwaffen_Division&diff=2511047&oldid=2510991
 * Description: Okay, this one barely even counts as a mini-essay. All I did was type up a quick counterargument to the closing line of AWF's mission statement (and I'm not sure if it's actually a counterargument or just a statement to the effect of "Nazi scum should fuck off"). I'm only putting it here because as I was about to hit "Save changes", I realized that I should advise readers to have some sort of backup plan before they actually run their mouths off to someone who is likely to have few (if any) qualms against murder, so I added a disclaimer. I don't want to get anyone killed…
 * Page: Speed of light
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=2526941&oldid=2526934
 * Revision 1 Description: In the midst of adding some notes and making some quality-of-life edits, I ended up going on a tangent on the difference between cranks and denialists — yes, most people who are either of those are also the other, but there is a distinction to be drawn between them. I went into more detail in the article, but the distinction boils down to this: cranks make positive unsubstantiated affirmations ("this idea is true!"), while denialists make negative unsubstantiated affirmations ("that idea is false!").
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=prev&oldid=2526950
 * Revision 2 Description: While cleaning up a few things that I missed in the previous edit, I decided that at the point where the article states that all observers would observe the speed of light being the same, I would have to include a disclaimer that this only applies to properly functioning observers, given the kerfuffle that ensued in 2011 when some instruments erroneously reported that some neutrinos had apparently broken the speed of light.
 * Page: Word magic
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Word_magic&type=revision&diff=2526996&oldid=2462287
 * Description: I expanded the "Explanation" section to explain that the existence of a word, by itself, only denotes something that humanity is capable of imagining, which is only loosely related to whether or not that thing actually exists. (And, no, I didn't even stuff this one into a footnote. I'm putting it here simply because of the volume of information that I added.)
 * Page: Sin
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Sin&diff=2533899&oldid=2533896
 * Description: I went on a rant on how believing in predestination predestines the believer to be a rotten no-good son of a bitch.
 * Page: Axis of Evil
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Axis_of_Evil&type=revision&diff=2538776&oldid=2427720
 * Description: I wrote a note about how the leadership of Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil" really was unhealthy for their citizens (at least from a Western perspective) at the time he was starting to consider invading them, and what Bush should really be criticized for is the hypocrisy in only invading Iraq when it served American interests and cocking everything up.
 * Page: International relations
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=International_relations&diff=prev&oldid=2538775
 * Description: A set of footnotes on the pitfalls of deterrence
 * Page: Atheism
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atheism&diff=prev&oldid=2539194
 * Description: An honest assessment of the relationship between religion and atheism and the strengths and weaknesses of a religious worldview, scattered all over the page
 * Page: Islamophobia
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Islamophobia&diff=prev&oldid=2539160
 * Description: Exploring the blatant hypocrisy of the Islamophobic attitudes of Christian fundamentalists, who are guilty of many of the same sins as the Wahhabists who stoke their ire
 * Page: Evolution and morality
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Evolution_and_morality&type=revision&diff=2539594&oldid=2500722
 * Description: In which I point out that creationists do have a "precautionary principle" — namely, Christianity itself — and the problem is more that their implementation of said code (if not the code itself) is heavily flawed due to stagnation, hypocrisy, and corruption
 * Page: Falsifiability of evolution
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Falsifiability_of_evolution&diff=prev&oldid=2540002
 * Description: A small rant about Goddidit having no predictive power and how the closest thing it has to evidence or predictive power is the word of people who claimed to get memos from God Himself (and even Creationist fundies tend to be somewhat skeptical of new prophets cropping up — just look at what happened to Joseph Smith when he claimed to have a New New Testament!)
 * Page: Authenticity of divine revelation
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Authenticity_of_divine_revelation&diff=2539994&oldid=2475922
 * Revision 1 Description: A memo expansion on how polytheistic religions often have trickster/prankster gods (like Hermes, Loki, Coyote, or Veles) who would readily fit into the role of "Cartesian daemon" who makes it more difficult for all of the gods to reliably communicate with their followers (and even in Abrahamic religions, which tend to be monotheistic, Satan fills a similar trickster role who would not be above impersonating God to tempt people into sin)
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Authenticity_of_divine_revelation&type=revision&diff=2540000&oldid=2539996
 * Revision 2 Description: Okay, this barely counts as a mini-essay, but it's still important, since it closes a loophole that a wannabe prophet could use to try to refute the proof.
 * Page: No platform
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=No_platform&type=revision&diff=2539894&oldid=2502548
 * Description: A side note about someone issuing a "change my mind" challenge being a potential red flag for that person being completely unwilling to change their mind
 * Page: Snake handling
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Snake_handling&diff=prev&oldid=2540124
 * Description: A critique of Christianity being accused of being a "death cult"
 * Page: Animal rights
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&diff=prev&oldid=2540185
 * Description: A side paragraph on cruelty as the differential between infliction of suffering and the necessity of such actions
 * Page: White supremacy
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=2508668&oldid=2508634
 * Revision 1 Description: This isn't really a mini-essay on its own, per se; it's more of a quick bit of snark towards the inherent selfishness of bigotry (specifically, white supremacy being little more than an extreme progression of exclusively serving the interests of oneself and one's immediate family at the expense of everyone else). However, I later used it as the foundation of a more thorough mini-essay.
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=2540563&oldid=2540551
 * Revision 2 Description: I went on a tangent about how some crank "phenomena", denialist agendas, and conspiracy theories are not inherently bigoted, while other crank "phenomena", denialist agendas, and conspiracy theories are inherently bigoted (and crank magnetism can result in non-bigoted irrational ideas getting mixed in with bigoted irrational ideas). I also snarked a bit about how white supremacists don't properly understand what means.
 * Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=next&oldid=2540563
 * Revision 3 Description: This is an expansion of Revision 1 in which I postulate that one root cause of bigotry may be selfish-gene-driven behaviors and attitudes, as postulated and described by Richard Dawkins in his book Yes, I know it's ad hoc, and bigotry tends to be acquired  but I feel that this hypothesis could be a valid explanation for how bigotry became an element of the human psyche to begin with.
 * Page: Heaven
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heaven&type=revision&diff=2543742&oldid=2543645
 * Description: An attempt to nip the edit wars about heaven being real or not in the bud
 * Page: Nutpicking
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Nutpicking&diff=prev&oldid=2545084
 * Description: A series of diatribes about deranged and dishonest alliances
 * Page: Tea Party
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement&type=revision&diff=2545199&oldid=2523023
 * Description: Roasting the cavalcade of depravity that is the American Right
 * Page: Caffeine
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Caffeine&diff=prev&oldid=2545890
 * Description: Proposing a hypothesis that part of the reason why caffeine isn't seen as a "fun" drug (and therefore at risk of offending or stirring up a moral panic among fundies and other moral-guardian types) is precisely because it isn't illegal at all (not even for use by teenagers) and therefore lacks the "stick it to the man" factor of illegal or illegal-for-teenagers drugs like alcohol, heroin, or that would make rebellious teenagers extra-eager to use it
 * Page: Liberal bias
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Liberal_bias&diff=prev&oldid=2545923 https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Liberal_bias&type=revision&diff=2546482&oldid=2519370
 * Description: Over 3,000 bytes of calling conservatives out for being completely idiotic and unhealthy for humanity and exploring the pitfalls of capitalism
 * Page: Rationality
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Rationality&type=revision&diff=2545926&oldid=2467078
 * Description: Connecting "satisfice" with "sacrifice"
 * Page: Antitheism
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Antitheism&diff=prev&oldid=2545951
 * Description: Is religion capable of being wrong and misguided? Yes. Should religion be criticized and corrected? Yes. Should religion be despised and demolished? Hell no.
 * Page: Atheist fundamentalism
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atheist_fundamentalism&diff=prev&oldid=2545961
 * Description: A couple of brief rants about how any cause can potentially be hijacked by assholes and expressing sympathy towards the homosexual victims of Soviet oppression
 * Page: Saudi Arabia
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Saudi_Arabia&diff=prev&oldid=2547300
 * Description: Assorted remarks on how theocracy is overall a terrible idea
 * Page: Moral panic
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Moral_panic&diff=prev&oldid=2549064
 * Description: A brief synopsis of how moral panics can egg on counter-cultural rebels by turning the subject of the panic into a forbidden fruit and/or an icon of opposition to the status quo (basically, the psychology that drives the Streisand effect can also apply here)

Pages where I wrote mini-essays that were later deemed unworthy of mainspace
These are mini-essays I added to pages that were later removed by myself or other editors due to being detrimental to the quality of their host pages. Some of these have been moved to essayspace because I felt that they could stand on their own and were worth salvaging; others will simply languish in the fossil record unless I can think of a way to rewrite them into something that's actually useful.


 * Page: Heresy
 * Revisions:
 * Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heresy&diff=2488504&oldid=2480764
 * Revision 1 Description: Distinguishing heresy from blasphemy (albeit with definitions of my own devising)
 * Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heresy&diff=2502963&oldid=2502934
 * Revision 2 Description: Elaboration on why religion should be criticized and amended, but not outright demolished and abolished
 * Removal reason: Removed from mainspace because it was more an expression of opinion than of fact; now located at Essay:Why Heresy Is Good And Blasphemy Is Bad
 * Page: Freedom of speech
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_speech&diff=prev&oldid=2495907
 * Description: I couldn't help expanding on the bullhorn thing.
 * Removal reason: Removed from mainspace because it was pretty much just snark for the sake of snark.
 * Page: Logical fallacy
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Logical_fallacy&diff=2488676&oldid=2488671
 * Description: Using TV Tropes to explain how logical fallacies manage to be persuasive — first with TV Tropes' own neutral, non-judgmental language, then rephrasing it in a more RationalWiki-esque tone
 * Removal reason: Removed from mainspace for being a bit too insulting to cranks and people who fall for their bullshit; now located at Essay:Why are logical fallacies effective?
 * Page: Cleanse
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cleanse&diff=prev&oldid=2480619
 * Description: Assessing the cleanliness of the Ganges River & taking the piss out of homeopathy.
 * Removal reason: The Ganges mini-essay was cut for uncited speculation (but I'm planning on patching it up with actual sources and more coherent points and restoring it). The anti-homeopathy snark is still present.
 * Page: Internet crime
 * Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_crime&type=revision&diff=2511094&oldid=2511060
 * Description: Again, this is less a mini-essay and more me throwing some snark around. But seriously, I did take my role as a sysop pretty seriously while it lasted, and if ban evasion is a federal crime, then Ken, Mikemikemev, Grawp, Kamen Rider, and the rest of the usual disruption suspects are guilty as charged several dozen times over. I'm just not sure if it'd be worth the trouble of formally prosecuting them (probably not, considering how easy it is to clean up their messes and how the spectacle of a court case could possibly qualify as a troll banquet). (Heck, I'm not even sure whether or not I'm JAQing off here. The page had conflicting evidence on how seriously ban evasion could be treated as a federal crime, particularly for wiki sites, so I may or may not be full of shit.)
 * Removal reason: As it turns out, yes, I was full of shit.

Pages where I wrote mini-essays that are quality additions to the article
I won't be moving anything here based on my own opinions alone, since that would defeat the point of RationalWiki's mobocracy. If you think one of my mini-essays is a great addition to its page, please tell me that you like it and why you approve! (Either my own talk page or the talk page of the host article will be suitable, but please specify the location of the mini-essay if you use the former, or ping me if you use the latter.) If I get enough approval (say, at least three such remarks), I'll move a mini-essay here.

So far, this section is empty.