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Annoying and Unnerving Religious Blabla

Dear fellows,

At the moment, there is one thing which really annoys and unnerves me, namely the religious blabla some people offer if one challenges their religious beliefs. I am not talking about the suddenly outbreaking fury and anger the usual believer gets into, but the wise-sounding and thereby morally superior-seeming talk given by religious intellectuals. 'I think your belief in "reason" is misguided, too.' 'Well, the Lord's ways cannot be grasped by human beings.' 'I will pray for you, so you may be forgiven.' '...', and so forth. All this talk is offered in a patriarchal tone of voice, suggesting something like 'I know better, yet I shall be patient with you.' This bloody arrogance makes me so sick, this vomit of intellectual nonsense they spit in everyone's face who can see, so that he may be blinded by their corrosive acid of stupid lies. I tell you my patience with and respect for these people are totally used up. Henceforth, I shall speak out against their crappy talk whenever I encounter them.

Have you experienced similar things up to now?

Tags: annoying, arrogance, blabla, blind, forgive, grasp, intellectual, lies, nonsense, patience, More…

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Permalink Reply by eric stone on January 10, 2010 at 12:24pm

I would answer them as follows: as for the Lord's ways not being grasped - well you can apparently grasp that we cannot grasp them so they can in fact be grasped.
as for I will pray for you - well if that makes you feel morally superior then by all means pray-on.

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Permalink Reply by ryan cameron on January 10, 2010 at 12:55pm

I'm listening to a Rabbi on CBC doing that on a national broadcast. The Rabbi says a lot about how he sometimes doubts God's existence given the horrible pain seemingly innocents have to endure, but then he thinks about how much God has done for him and all God asks in return is you give him the "benefit of the doubt". He makes a conscious choice every day to "give God the benefit of the doubt" and that makes his life worth living.

Its a patronizing, sanctimonious tone, and he kind of pastes his "god" onto basic human goodness, stating that "the only explanation for human compassion is god, how else could it possibly be explained"

So, in essence, the "good that god does for us" is when a person does something compassionate for someone else.

Religious pointy hats like this person clearly are painting themselves into a smaller and smaller corner, as they constantly have to find a way to use "bla bla bla" to justify their existence and positions of respect in society. They are strongly motivated to maintain various strings of circular logic and even made up phrases to keep their jobs. On top of the financial reasoning, there is the problem they face that if they truly admit there is actually no god, they would thus become accountable to all the people they had spend their lives misleading.

Its kind of like the conflict of taking dental advice from the CEO of a candy company, but significantly more so.

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Permalink Reply by Jiohdi on January 18, 2010 at 4:21pm

reality is a collection of energy... why are you expecting energy to always be intelligent and full of insight and wisdom? what you see is simply the manifesting of this energy in a very complex form that has the ability to rationalize and theorize about its own apparent existence and its doing a wonderous job of it just being able to think and talk... so why would you, who seem to think are better than those who are believing and speaking such things, why do you get angry? reality is perfect until you compare it to something its not... its your false expectation that is the root of your own annoyance, not their reality which is doing a miraculous job just by being what you find them to be.

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Permalink Reply by Timothy W. Brown on January 23, 2010 at 2:48am

When someone tells me in an arrogant tone "I will pray for you, in hope that you will be forgiven.", I respond in an equally arrogant tone "I will continue to hope that you stop praying."

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Permalink Reply by Waylon Hedegaard on January 23, 2010 at 8:16am

If it's meant well, I usually leave it alone, but if they get that superior attitude then I use a different line. I've taken to using their own absurdities against them, particularly to the "I'm praying for you" line of moral superiority. I reply, "Gosh thanks. I'll sacrifice a goat for you too." Or "When I spread chicken entrails on the kitchen counter this morning, it said my soul was just fine." Or "Hey, I appreciate that. I'll be over in the at 6:00 am with my prayer bells to scare away the demons before you go to work."
I find that fighting them by taking equally absurd beliefs and throwing them back at them throws them completely off guard. The funnier and more absurd the better. Having a few pre-made one as ammunition helps a lot. Try to sound earnest though. Like you're really serious. This can be very entertaining. Oh, the looks are priceless.