i hope this doesn't offend many but "evangelicals" have to be the dumbest population to

[Dawggie]

come down the pike in a long time.

My sister's one of them. But she lives in TN and is a realtor... What would you expect.

I really have to bite my tongue when my niece asks about Noah.


oh well.

[Gato Moteado]

1. the ruling class has always used religion to manipulate the people

all you have to do is talk to a few evangelicals and you can see why. they're easy to manipulate if you say the right words.

[Kitty Herder]

3. So very true. nt

[Kitty Herder]

2. No joke. Check these out these einsteins.

http://www.rr-bb.com/

Not only are they dumb, they're fucking scary as hell.

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. I didn't stay long, but I thought this was pretty reflective of what I've come to expect.

In a thread about the 5th submarine data cable cut to the middle east

What is really odd is I would have thought WE would have been the ones they targeted first. Of course, they might be working on that, too. But, I mean, you wouldn't think the terrorists would cut their own noses off---how will their inflamatory news be delivered abroad when they've cut off correspondence? Hopfully we'll be able to maintain communication with our satellites. Unless they have something up their sleeves to sever them too.

Right. That's logical. "The terrorists" cut their own data cable as a trial run on cutting ours.

I guess anything is inexplicable if you're incapable of thinking.

[ProgressiveFool]

8. not to mention, how's a guy who lives in a cave supposed to knock out a satellite??? /nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. Silly. The celestial sphere is only a little way up there.

Just stack up another turtle and we should be in reaching distance to those satellites. :eyes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

[SidDithers]

18. They'll just cut the cables...

that run between the satellites and the ground stations.

That's just commons sense.

Sid

[kestrel91316]

10. OMG, why didn't you WARN me?????? I clicked on the link

and it's the Stepford people!!!!!!

[ursi]

16. check out this dueling billboard video to counteract the "God" billboards we all see

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27598703

[Kitty Herder]

4. To be fair, they're actually more ignorant then dumb.

Ignorance can be cured.

[Lars39]

5. If one is willing to learn.

[Not a robought]

14. I don't know

In their board rules it says...

"No posting.... crimes or mutilation related stories..."

Check, no stories about Jesus.

[theoldman]

6. The number one problem of course is gross ignorance.

The number two problem is that they refuse to educate themselves. I have always said that two very knowledgeable people cannot argue.

[kestrel91316]

11. There is none so blind as he who WILL NOT see.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/1614.html

This sort of person has been pissing off the intelligent for hundreds, if not thousands of years.......

[asjr]

9. In my area (TN) they should have

to pass a written test before being allowed to vote. I have received so many ugly e-mails about Barak Obama being a Muslim and will kill us all I am sick of it. I never pass them along, but I have never written back do not send me anymore. I suppose I am just Chicken for not doing it but some of the things that are said are out of sight. I also get terrible ones about Hillary Clinton and just want to scream, but what really worries me is that these people believe all the lies. That really scares me. And they all listen to Rush and the Rev. Dobson.

[kestrel91316]

12. Obama may as well be Muslim - he's an infidel member of

the United Church of Christ. That's about as bad as being a Unitarian to the fundies.

[Der Blaue Engel]

13. Having been one myself

I wholeheartedly agree.

The big motivator for me to stay as long as I did (I finally left when I was about 20) was fear. If you've grown up with fear of torment by Satan, demon possession, eternal damnation in hell, being "left behind" and "persecuted" (read "tortured"), it's very hard to connect with the rational part of your brain that's saying, "WTF?" to the nonsense you're constantly being subjected to. Every time your rational brain kicks in, the crazy-fear mantras start shrieking in your head and you start praying like mad for forgiveness for "backsliding" and you "rededicate yourself to Christ," and all the shrieking dies down again for a little while until your next rational thought.

That said, for an intelligent person who's been at all exposed to the secular world, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the cognitive dissonance. Eventually, the crazy mantras and the fairytales start to fall apart and you're left with the knowledge that the only thing that was ever keeping you in line was fear, and you have to ask yourself if that's a good reason to believe in a deity. And the only rational answer is no.

So when I look at my two older sisters who were raised in the same environment and had the same exposure to reality after moving away from home and see that they've become even more enmeshed in radical evangelical churches with every passing year, I have to conclude that they simply aren't that bright.

[Warpy]

19. Dumb or afraid NOT to believe?

I realized I was the latter when I was 10. Some people, like my dad, take a whole lifetime to come to that conclusion. He told me he no longer believed a word of it shortly before his death.

Fundydom does offer something the cold world of the solitary unbeliever does not: community. That's probably what they're most terrified to lose, not the fantasy life that comes with it.

[Warpy]

17. They're not dumb as much as locked into magical thinking

and since they're all in for a very rude awakening in the next few years, we should be ready to help them pick up a lot of pieces as their eyes finally open and they see the wreckage around them.

Your sister is going to cling to magic for some time, but the real estate bust is happening in Tennessee, too, so reality is going to set in very soon. There will be no angels to swoop down and comfort her while she loses her business and her fantasy of what the future is going to be. Gawd won't be the one to punish the crooks, that's our job. She's in for a very hard landing and it will come sooner rather than later in her line of work.

[earth mom]

20. The truth hurts. They are ignorant. nt

[Beausoleil]

21. To most, I think it's avoiding the discomfort of uncertainty.

It's more appealing to know that you've been given all the answers, you don't have to think about it or question it. Any cognitive uneasiness you feel is either your own sinfulness or the devil in you. That's why all you need is faith, you don't need reason.
It actually seems like a tidy belief system. Delusional, but tidy.

[ladjf]

22. I agree with your post. And to add that : "answers" that are unverifiable

may well be untrue and are therefore unsafe to use as life values.