…Um.. in retrospect, Dr. Myers, could you delete my previous post? I just remembered that keenspace records trackbacks, and suspect this would result in another of our fights.
Kristjan Wagersays
Good list, but I have to take issue with:
12) Use multiple versions of Pascal’s Wager as though you thought them up yourself.
Pascal’s Wager (no relationship) is so banal that it’s quite likely that people have thought up versions themselves. It’s sad that they beleive them to be clever, or insightful, but that’s another thing entirely.
E-galsays
Here’s one I saw yesterday:
When scientists can prove that the origin of life can happen spontaneously, or show how life originated, then I will become an atheist.
Karleysays
RHJunior? I remember him from Yerf. I just recently stumbled upon him again when he decided to declare “war” on DC (I Drew This) Simpson. Just for existing, I guess. http://lupinia.us/ireadthis/index.php?topic=1999.0
Heck of a friend you got there.
SEFsays
PZ apparently doesn’t need the aid of a list in order to irritate me. It looks like one of the new things he’s stuck on his blog (I suspect a video thingy) is fatally crashing Internet Explorer on my computer – complete with the popup that threatens to go tell Microsoft all about what the naughty software just did.
It’s unlikely to be a coincidence having taken it down twice in quick succession whereas other sites hadn’t killed it. I’d only just got it working here again too. So now I’m back to Firefox which will almost certainly crash the whole computer (being far too selfish to only commit suicide) very shortly. I typically only get to look at a couple of PZ pages and perhaps make one post before it does.
Taylor Selsethsays
I get tired of theists using the “atheists are just angery because they probably had a bad experience in sunday school” BS talking point. You hear this from “liberal” theists. A weak ago on the puplic radio progeam “Skeaking of Faith” the guest was a rabbi talking about kids and religion and how kids should be not be indoctrinated into a religion she seems to come across as saying that Atheism was a form of rebellion against indoctrination, not a resonable philosphical position.
Kristjan Wagersays
SEF, sounds like you have serious computer issues – but even a total death by Firefox is to be prefered to a minor crash by Internet Explorer.
My secret is that I don’t have the right plugins in my Firefox – thus I avoid all those issues. If I really want to see it, I use IE tab to open the page/post in question.
Kagehisays
Heh SEF, that’s what you get when you get all your tech support from a non-existent God. The rest of us are a) not usually stupid enough to use IE, and b) don’t have crashes, hangups or glitches like you describe from Firefox, or anything else. In fact, the only places I have “ever” had Firefox or Opera cause me problems where either some flash based sites (which usually just get stuck) and some badly encoded MPGs, which “will” crash Firefox, even when using a plugin to run an external app to play them. Near as I can tell, the same sort of morons that use the defective MPG encoders that cause this must have got the encoders from porn sites, because of the few I clips I have looked at one those, 99% of them crash Firefox.
Now… When I used to use IE all the time, 90% of the sites crashed it for no damn reason at all, even when they where things like http://www.wellsfargo.com, never mind seedier locations. Usually it was a sign that something got royally fracked up in IE, which is so heavilly tied into the OS that if you are dumb enough to use IE all the time and “risk” it getting that screwed up (which seems to be pretty much inevitable), damn near everything will crash, including help files, if they contain the right triggers for the defective dll or setting that got mucked up.
Try finding someone competent to fix your OS, then, if it still happens, babble about how/if PZs site does something bad (you would still be full of it, but at least you could claim some vague legitimacy to the claim).
Zuckerfroschsays
One good way to get under my skin (not listed) is to have only one response when discussing evolution:
“I didn’t come from a monkey.”
She was kinda cute, but man, dealbreaker.
Chinchillazillasays
Silly PZ. You’re just angry at God, you know.
(I hear every last one of those on a daily basis.)
Kristjan Wagersays
Actually that whole list doesn’t really work. No, what would really work, would be to C&P Charles Wagner’s blog into the comment section of Pharyngula…. multiple times.
SEFsays
My secret is that I don’t have the right plugins in my Firefox – thus I avoid all those issues.
Neither do I! I get the box saying a plug-in is required. However, that obviously isn’t the reason FF then locks up my whole computer after a few page views or some minutes reading. FF must have reasons of its own – eg basically being a serious hogger of resources (it takes ages to load and impacts badly on other things).
IE was fine before but then suddenly couldn’t show the images because I think at some point PZ started linking them in a way which ZoneAlarm interpreted as being naughty (adverts or whatever). When FF was crashing (just because it could!), I managed to start using IE again by removing the ZA alarm restrictions on just PZ’s address. However, now IE has decided to crash too. It looks like it may be because PZ has too many multimedia widgets visible above the fold, because it had coped with just the one (without me actually risking playing it of course!).
Randysays
Gee PZ. there are only 50 ways to leave your lover and there are nearly 300 ways to piss off an Atheist. I wouldn’t write a song about it, one would never get airtime with a song “300 ways to iritate an atheist”, it would have to be at least an 8 Minute track.
That list was taken without attribution from the IIDB humor forum. I remember because I contributed some of the entries, including the one Hank Fox liked.
Taisays
hmmm… currently being subjected to #44, with healthy doses of #40-42. I’m sure the agnostic fundamentalists are just as irritating as the theists, sometimes.
onclepsychosays
Steve Reuland: “That list was taken without attribution from the IIDB humor forum. I remember because I contributed some of the entries, including the one Hank Fox liked.”
Yes Steve, I must confess to my misconduct, I am the one who unabashedly copy-pasted that list on my blog without attribution some years ago. My blog is in French and I didn’t mean for one second to say that I myself provided all these tricks. Otherwise I would have translated all of them for the benefit of my (meager) readership. Anyway, it seems that now it is my most successful page, so I will edit it and give full credit to its creators anytime soon. Congratulations for your job and sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks also to PZ for is fantastic blog and for linking to me.
SEFsays
I don’t think that one counts, because it only irritates one atheist
Then it looks like my one doesn’t count either then, since it seems no-one else has had the same problem (or hasn’t been able to get back onto the blog-site at all in order to say so!). The only people to post in response seem to be thoroughly dismissive of the software incompatibility problem.
Fortunately, with PZ being such a prolific blogger, it hasn’t taken very long for the offending item to fall off the front page. Which means I can now get back onto it to read the newer things and even look back at previous items via the archive pages (a link to which I’m obviously going to have to keep separately for next time) because those don’t show the multimedia images on the entry listings. Though I will have to remember which item to continue to avoid reading.
Joshuasays
Another way to irritate atheists?
290) Claim that you used to be an atheist, but then you realised they were just as bad as theists, so now you’re agnostic.
291) …and continue to insist that there’s really a difference between the two positions.
I just learned recently myself that it is the Orthodox Jewish belief that the Books of Moses were written by Moses. It seems very unlikely and I don’t see what bearing it should have on Judaism one way or the other. But any analysis of the Bible contrary to that done 1000 years ago is just not regarded, never mind if there might have been some developments in semiotics, textual analysis, historiography or our knowledge of the Sumerians since then.
Oh, I can add to this list.
People who make a comment and then trail it off like this…
Example: I believe there was a designer…
Another one that gets me is people who use exclamation marks after nearly every sentence.
Example: You are going to burn in hell!! Go and read the bible!! Do it before it is too late!!!
Sometimes they combine the 2.
Example: There must be a designer…
You are going to burn in hell!! So there!! I will pray for you…
My impulse is to type back to them in the same way though I doubt they would find it as annoying as I do.
Heh.
“When asked what’s wrong with evolution, tell them that it doesn’t account for the origin of matter.”
I’m only about halfway through the list, so this may be on there, but one of my least favorite is:
End every lost argument with the passive-aggressive “Well, I’ll pray for you,” or “God loves you anyway.”
Here’s one more. Send them a letter after the rapture. link
Please do not spam him: He’s a good friend if you ignore the Christian batshittery, but this series of comics by him DRIVES ME UP THE WALL!!!!!!
http://utlt.comicgenesis.com/d/20021113.html
http://utlt.comicgenesis.com/d/20021115.html
http://utlt.comicgenesis.com/d/20021118.html
…Um.. in retrospect, Dr. Myers, could you delete my previous post? I just remembered that keenspace records trackbacks, and suspect this would result in another of our fights.
Good list, but I have to take issue with:
Pascal’s Wager (no relationship) is so banal that it’s quite likely that people have thought up versions themselves. It’s sad that they beleive them to be clever, or insightful, but that’s another thing entirely.
Here’s one I saw yesterday:
When scientists can prove that the origin of life can happen spontaneously, or show how life originated, then I will become an atheist.
RHJunior? I remember him from Yerf. I just recently stumbled upon him again when he decided to declare “war” on DC (I Drew This) Simpson. Just for existing, I guess.
http://lupinia.us/ireadthis/index.php?topic=1999.0
Heck of a friend you got there.
PZ apparently doesn’t need the aid of a list in order to irritate me. It looks like one of the new things he’s stuck on his blog (I suspect a video thingy) is fatally crashing Internet Explorer on my computer – complete with the popup that threatens to go tell Microsoft all about what the naughty software just did.
It’s unlikely to be a coincidence having taken it down twice in quick succession whereas other sites hadn’t killed it. I’d only just got it working here again too. So now I’m back to Firefox which will almost certainly crash the whole computer (being far too selfish to only commit suicide) very shortly. I typically only get to look at a couple of PZ pages and perhaps make one post before it does.
I get tired of theists using the “atheists are just angery because they probably had a bad experience in sunday school” BS talking point. You hear this from “liberal” theists. A weak ago on the puplic radio progeam “Skeaking of Faith” the guest was a rabbi talking about kids and religion and how kids should be not be indoctrinated into a religion she seems to come across as saying that Atheism was a form of rebellion against indoctrination, not a resonable philosphical position.
SEF, sounds like you have serious computer issues – but even a total death by Firefox is to be prefered to a minor crash by Internet Explorer.
My secret is that I don’t have the right plugins in my Firefox – thus I avoid all those issues. If I really want to see it, I use IE tab to open the page/post in question.
Heh SEF, that’s what you get when you get all your tech support from a non-existent God. The rest of us are a) not usually stupid enough to use IE, and b) don’t have crashes, hangups or glitches like you describe from Firefox, or anything else. In fact, the only places I have “ever” had Firefox or Opera cause me problems where either some flash based sites (which usually just get stuck) and some badly encoded MPGs, which “will” crash Firefox, even when using a plugin to run an external app to play them. Near as I can tell, the same sort of morons that use the defective MPG encoders that cause this must have got the encoders from porn sites, because of the few I clips I have looked at one those, 99% of them crash Firefox.
Now… When I used to use IE all the time, 90% of the sites crashed it for no damn reason at all, even when they where things like http://www.wellsfargo.com, never mind seedier locations. Usually it was a sign that something got royally fracked up in IE, which is so heavilly tied into the OS that if you are dumb enough to use IE all the time and “risk” it getting that screwed up (which seems to be pretty much inevitable), damn near everything will crash, including help files, if they contain the right triggers for the defective dll or setting that got mucked up.
Try finding someone competent to fix your OS, then, if it still happens, babble about how/if PZs site does something bad (you would still be full of it, but at least you could claim some vague legitimacy to the claim).
One good way to get under my skin (not listed) is to have only one response when discussing evolution:
“I didn’t come from a monkey.”
She was kinda cute, but man, dealbreaker.
Silly PZ. You’re just angry at God, you know.
(I hear every last one of those on a daily basis.)
Actually that whole list doesn’t really work. No, what would really work, would be to C&P Charles Wagner’s blog into the comment section of Pharyngula…. multiple times.
Neither do I! I get the box saying a plug-in is required. However, that obviously isn’t the reason FF then locks up my whole computer after a few page views or some minutes reading. FF must have reasons of its own – eg basically being a serious hogger of resources (it takes ages to load and impacts badly on other things).
IE was fine before but then suddenly couldn’t show the images because I think at some point PZ started linking them in a way which ZoneAlarm interpreted as being naughty (adverts or whatever). When FF was crashing (just because it could!), I managed to start using IE again by removing the ZA alarm restrictions on just PZ’s address. However, now IE has decided to crash too. It looks like it may be because PZ has too many multimedia widgets visible above the fold, because it had coped with just the one (without me actually risking playing it of course!).
Gee PZ. there are only 50 ways to leave your lover and there are nearly 300 ways to piss off an Atheist. I wouldn’t write a song about it, one would never get airtime with a song “300 ways to iritate an atheist”, it would have to be at least an 8 Minute track.
It should be 290 ways, unless there’s some weird math being used at the higher end.
And where’s “Misspell PZ Mghiars’ name”?
I don’t think that one counts, because it only irritates one atheist…all the others consider it great sport.
Well, it cheers up an agnostic or two…
That list was taken without attribution from the IIDB humor forum. I remember because I contributed some of the entries, including the one Hank Fox liked.
hmmm… currently being subjected to #44, with healthy doses of #40-42. I’m sure the agnostic fundamentalists are just as irritating as the theists, sometimes.
Steve Reuland: “That list was taken without attribution from the IIDB humor forum. I remember because I contributed some of the entries, including the one Hank Fox liked.”
Yes Steve, I must confess to my misconduct, I am the one who unabashedly copy-pasted that list on my blog without attribution some years ago. My blog is in French and I didn’t mean for one second to say that I myself provided all these tricks. Otherwise I would have translated all of them for the benefit of my (meager) readership. Anyway, it seems that now it is my most successful page, so I will edit it and give full credit to its creators anytime soon. Congratulations for your job and sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks also to PZ for is fantastic blog and for linking to me.
Then it looks like my one doesn’t count either then, since it seems no-one else has had the same problem (or hasn’t been able to get back onto the blog-site at all in order to say so!). The only people to post in response seem to be thoroughly dismissive of the software incompatibility problem.
Fortunately, with PZ being such a prolific blogger, it hasn’t taken very long for the offending item to fall off the front page. Which means I can now get back onto it to read the newer things and even look back at previous items via the archive pages (a link to which I’m obviously going to have to keep separately for next time) because those don’t show the multimedia images on the entry listings. Though I will have to remember which item to continue to avoid reading.
Another way to irritate atheists?
290) Claim that you used to be an atheist, but then you realised they were just as bad as theists, so now you’re agnostic.
291) …and continue to insist that there’s really a difference between the two positions.
It’s doubly annoying if you’re a former vicar, and therefore a Serious Thinker With Sensible Ideas.
I just learned recently myself that it is the Orthodox Jewish belief that the Books of Moses were written by Moses. It seems very unlikely and I don’t see what bearing it should have on Judaism one way or the other. But any analysis of the Bible contrary to that done 1000 years ago is just not regarded, never mind if there might have been some developments in semiotics, textual analysis, historiography or our knowledge of the Sumerians since then.