Somebody was a little peevish that I slammed a woo-wooish poll. It’s not much of a note, but for some reason Mr Spagnuolo’s complete obliviousness tickled me.
I read your article about the lost girl and the man that gave credit to God for helping him to find her. You Sir, are a dick. Your arrogance has made you blind to the point where you take pot-shots at things your ‘scientific’ mind can’t even begin to comprehend. Quit being a dick.
-Chris Spagnuolo
I can’t. It’s who I am.
I think, though, that I am able to comprehend some guy finding a lost girl in a swamp by chance. Mr Spagnuolo can’t even do that! Maybe it’s his dicklessness that is the problem.
He’s in thrall to the bible bogey. It’s rotted his brain.
I hate it when the pot calls the kettle a dick.
His “critique” is so lame that I can’t even think of a way to ridicule it. That’s kind of sad.
Spagnuolo?
Is he related to the FSM (May the dust of the volcano never settle on his Bolognese)?
Um, Mr Spagnuolo, Pee Zed’s a poopyhead. Please endeavour to get your insults accurate.
Ah, but can you comprehend the odds that God helped him find her? Oh, you can?
Well anyway, has anyone ever found anything without God’s help? Huh? And if you think you know that they have, how can you prove it if God might have to help anyone to find anything?
As for his calling you a dick, I think it’s a matter of his needing some dick badly, so he keeps seeing it in everything.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Dr Ray Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes it’s true. [pause] This man has no dick.
Yes, yes. Your inability to stay focused on the small picture of anecdotal made-up miracles and ignore God’s inaction on the problem of Evil for the other gadzillion lost children makes you…. a dick. I never saw it before, but wow. I have seen the light, er, dick.
You missed a great opportunity here. You could have written “I AM THAT I AM.”
Oh yes, we are all blind to the ‘truth’ that it was all part of Spagnuolo’s magical sky-daddy’s plan for the child to be found, instead of it being done by an actual human being. A plan, by the way, that included the child being lost and traumatized by the incident in the first place. No, it is simply absurd that a person could actually happen to walk through an area and happen to notice the fact that a child wandering by herself is slightly out of place and probably in need of aid.
I had no idea there were so many atheists living in Orlando. I know that there’s a fantasy land near by.
By capitalizing sir when it is not in the beginning of a sentence is he calling PZ royalty? So it implies that PZ is not just any dick, but King Dick? I’m a firm believer in democracy, and reject any notion that we need a King Dick (or Queen Vagina). Why does Mr. Spagnuolo hate democracy, and by extension America, by extension Jesus?
How to handle an athiest
If stuff can only be found with god’s help, does Mr. Spagnuolo need god’s help finding his own dick? Inquiring minds want to comprehend….
Then how did the girl find the swamp to get lost in?
And he’s a twat.
Wait a minute…what have you two been up to?
Why are Christians so obsessed with dicks?
colonel cocoa:
The difference is, we know that Fantasyland (and the rest of the park) is a facade. We don’t wander around believing that a giant anthropomorphic mouse is controlling our lives. (Instead, we believe that the people who own the giant anthropomorphic mouse are controlling our lives.)
I can’t. It’s who I am.
Can’t help myself:
Excuse me whilst I digress…
All I can think of upon reading that email is an exchange between the two main characters in one of my very favorite 80’s movies: Say Anything…
Lloyd: “I’m a dick”
Diane: “No…”
Lloyd: “You must think I’m a dick”
Diane, sighing: “Lloyd, we shared the most intimate thing two people can share”
Lloyd: “Yeah, but you shared it with a dick…”
Ahh… I miss 80’s movies dialog…
Now back to your regularly scheduled idiot bashing.
I await the irony of a believer criticizing the results of the poll for “not being scientific.”
A little off the topic, but I found this video hilarious and thought I had to share it.
Prepare to witness an epic singularity surpassed only by the Big Bang:
Mayor: Is this true?
Prof Venkman: Yes it’s true, this man has no dick
Ursulamajor:
This would be my question. Along with does God provide Mr. Spagnuolo with the magnifying glass and tweezers also?
Here’s what I find amusing about the Christian reaction to this story. In the Bible, there are two supernatural characters that speak to people. When God speaks to Saul (later Paul), it is with a powerful flash of light, and the voice is audible – the men with Saul can hear it too. In the Old Testament, when God speaks to Samuel as a child, it says “the LORD came and stood and called”. When God speaks, it is not a whisper in your ear, and it is not a voice in your head. It’s a Voice.
However, there is a whisperer in the Bible. He’s the other character – the naughty one, old Nick. When he speaks, only you can hear it. It’s a voice without direction. It can seem like the voice of God, sure, but remember, “Even Satan can disguise himself to look like an angel of light.” (2nd Cor. 11:14)
So here’s the problem. A lot of churches insist that God doesn’t speak to people anymore, because we already have the complete message, so to speak. At the end of Revelations, John writes, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.” Many take that to mean anyone who claims to have any word from God to be full of shit. Certainly, if God told you where someone you were looking for was, it would be a word of prophecy. Since the Bible is meant to be the complete message from God to man, you’d have to add that to the Bible, and subsequently deal with said plagues (do they mean all of them? At the same time? Ouch).
The only conclusion, then, is that the devil told James King where to go.
Why would the devil do that? Well, God is quite content to let children die horribly and frequently. I’m sure he expected the same thing to happen in this case. When the devil thwarted his plans by using a schizophrenic god-botherer to save that girl’s life, he would’ve been right pissed off! And giving him the credit for doing what he promised he wouldn’t – a brilliant stroke! Score one for the devil!
Sooooo … if I act more arrogant, will my dick get bigger? It’s worth a try.
Wasn’t the man actually looking for her? Is it divine intervention when a person actually finds what they seek? I found my tv remote in the freezer once without actually looking for it, but did not hear the trumpetting of angels or a beam of heavenly light illuminating said remote. Perhaps it was the God of Frozen Charleston Chews that guided me on my path…..
“Maybe it’s his dicklessness that is the problem.”
The evidence doesn’t point to such a conclusion. The lack of a dick does not make one into an idiot, as proven by the many women who are able to understand the simple concepts this dick-endowed Mr. Spagnuolo cannot. Therefore we must conclude that there is no causative relationship between the possession of a dick (or lack thereof) and being a moron.
Damn it Johnathon.b.jacobs!!
Yeah PZ, stop being such a dick!!
“I dont want to talk to a scientist you mother fuckers is lyin and gettin me pissed!”
Well, there’s one more vote for luck in the poll.
Since I don’t believe, I also don’t credit god with this fatal accident just reported in the same paper: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-man-killed-after-crashing-tree-lake-20100420,0,5351750.story
(Is that dicky enough?)
Rev. #28…
Oh, I hate it when that happens…
To the point where now, if I want to say something clever or funny, I’ve taken to using google chrome’s “find in page” function to list out the instances of the word or phrase I’m looking to use… just so I don’t end up doing, well… what you just did.
Reminds me of the classic Ghostbusters exchange:
Dr Ray Stantz: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: Is this true?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes it’s true.
[pause]
Dr. Peter Venkman: This man has no dick.
Yeah and now Orac joins the Ghostbusters party.
A dick is more useful, and more fun to play with, than a sack of hot air like Mr. Spagnuolo.
Why do people keep saying we can’t understand god?
I understand the concept of zero. It’s not that hard.
Perhaps he meant you were a fine detective. Doesn’t explain why he wants you stop at bottom, though.
Crispy Jeebus Squeezers are quite puzzling sometimes.
I saw him on CNN. The “divine intervention” part was that he went and searched in a totally different area than everybody else was looking. Yeah, real miracle there. /snark
I want to find out this moron had something to do with her going missing in the first place (and hence, knew where to look) just to see how fast the bleevers back away from this supposed miracle. I bet they leave skid marks.
It must take some god-sized dickery to not guide someone to find tiny footprints in the snow.
This reminded me (in reverse) of a quote from Harlan Ellison, when JMZ (who wrote Babylon 5) was complaining that he wasn’t having difficulty selling his scripts.
“If they aren’t selling, then they’re crap. Stop writing crap!!”
PZ, if you’re a dick, then that totally changes what it means to have a runny nose.
Voted again in celebration!
Oh, the godly logic…
I am overwhelmed.
Why…why…you’re ALL dicks!
(Welcome to Pharyngula, Spagnuolo.)
#34
I thought I smelt a troll.
Per Mr. Spagnuolo, PZ is a dick for not believing gawd helped that smuck find the lost girl. Doesn’t that make gawd a dick for leaving all those other lost children unfound?
Hey gawd, stop being a dick or Spagnuolo will stomp his feet and whine.
Classic. Even down to the quotes around ‘scientific’. Like it’s a made-up word, something with only pretense behind it.
We comprehend perfectly well, thanks, Chris Spagnuolo. We comprehend that you see only this anecdote, and accept it totally without looking for the full picture, because it accords with the way you feel about the world and you don’t want any contrary evidence to make you feel uncomfortable. You do’t want to think about dorowned girls that nobody found, or even about the searchers who covered other parts of the swamp but found nothing, because there was nothing there to find. It’s all just supposed to be a feel-good fest, and we’re all mean spoilsports for pointing out that this a perfectly normal event.
Inferno #21,
I could not bear to watch that all, but I found a sign almost in the beginning, around the 5 second mark especially funny: “GOD HAS NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF THE WICKED”
Maybe supposed god doesn’t, but it’s followers sure do.
Nice!
Moron fight!
Did you just equate masculinity (via a dick) to rationality?
I mean, sure, he did it first by equating it with being a a jerk, but since when do you stoop to their level?
I’m a bit disappointed. You don’t usually say things like that.
I dunno. If I were to find myself right now without a dick, I’d have a hard time comprehending anything about people being lost in swamps.
For your information, Mr Spagnuolo, dicks happen to be quite nice things indeed. And you, Mr Spagnuolo, are no dick. Hmpf.
All this talk of dicks is just getting me hot and bothered. :P
KJ
What this thread needs is some dancing dicks.
(Quite possibly nsfw, but most probably not what you were thinking of at all. Or maybe it was.)
“I yam what I yam. Ha-ca-ca-ca!”
(I’m part Icelandic, that’s where my long, unpronounable name came from. My friends call me #2a28e.)
You’re Popeye?
#58
Maybe that’s a pet name for a dick.
XD
KJ
Here’s another response:
God told me that he didn’t have anything to do with the guy finding the girl. It’s all a hoax. Really, this is straight from God’s mouth to my ear.
Wait, you don’t believe me? Why not? Is it because your “scientific” mind just can’t wrap itself around the miracle I experienced?
I wonder why these jerks are on this board at all. I mean, they are obviously going to find a lot of cool-headed, logical people, and I knoow they want to save us, but they seem to have missed that we are just as ‘set in our ways’ as they are.
Troll@38
Good on that kid. He’s standing up to what he believes in, and not letting his mothers threats of no xmas gifts deter him. +1
Pissant #34 wrote:
Yeah, because he hates that. You know, because he doesn’t find watching the regulars take turns stomping the morons who come here entertaining – or profitable.
Fucking clown shoe.
My mother taught us to pray to St. Anthony when we lost something.
Usually the prayer was answered, but now that I am older I realize that while praying we also gave a lot of thought about the last time we saw the missing item or where we might have left it.
So, was it our rational thinking that found the item or did we do it with St. Anthony’s assistance?
Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick. I ‘hate’ misused quotes. They ‘suck’ and just show a lack of writing talent. ‘Mr Spagnuolo’ should take a writing class and learn to ‘write’.
On a side note, this might be the 7th or 8th time I’ve seen this story. It’s the first time I really noticed the name of Ms. Blooms hero. I bet the fundies had a biblical orgasm when someone named after the horrible translation written in 1611 found her while praying. That kind of random coincidence is all the proof they need to know that the King James bible is infallible.
#63
Ha ha ha ha…fucking clown shoe…ha ha ha ha!
Best insult of the day Wowbagger. Thanks for brightening my day.
KJ
Which may explain why some people like to come here and shit all over your blog!
Well, if you’re gonna, get on with it then.
At least then we can judge whether your shit is stinky.
@#40< blockquote>I want to find out this moron had something to do with her going missing in the first place
Well, the police was wondering that too and questioned him at length, them made him sign a written statement about the event.
One of the police officers told a reporter “He is my hero!” .. and let it follow by ” .. for now ..”.
Even some (more than one) of my very religious friends and coworkers, after having praised God for this ‘miracle’, let their praise follow by a “ .. but there IS something fishy about the whole thing!“.
@CE #19
He’s wiggin man he’s wiggin
LLoyd LLoyd all null and void
Got dummped in the Malibu! Now he don’t know what to do!!
PZ Myers 3:14!
(Exodus 3:14): “I am who I am”
I just found that. I laughed at least…
Whoa! Nice one Dr. Myers!
@jonathan.b.jacobs, nice quoting there! Very apt, and extremely accurate
Quit being a dick.
-Chris Spagnuolo
I can’t. It’s who I am.
And with that Mr Myers was awarded the….Duh duh dum dum
April 20-10 Biggus Dicus award.Suitable for framing.
PS I’ll get around to that award sometime soon.
If he bugs you again, remind him that his name is an anagram for “Guano Slop”.
#64: Did you use this prayer, “Something’s lost that can’t be found. Good St Anthony, look around!”?
My father taught me a prayer for lost things, too, although it wasn’t to St. Anthony. It went something like, “Jesus Christ, where the fuck’d it go? I just had the goddamn thing! When I find it I’m shoving it up my ass so I’ll always know where it is.”
Sword in a field, Chris. Sword in a field.
Well since the Ghostbusters line has been used, thought I would try this appropriate Team America quote:
Gary Johnston: Pussies don’t like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls.
A conservative group–shocker–is demanding Sen. Linsey Graham come of the closet. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/lindsey-graham-gay-conser_n_544554.html
I would just like to offer an apology on the behalf of central Florida. Our bad.
Just for that, Mr. Spagnuolo, I voted in that poll again.
So there.
What part of the reasoning did Mr Spagnuolo not understand ?
If you absolutely need God’s help to find a missing person, then, if they’re not found, it means that God didn’t help.
Because he was busy elsewhere ? Because he didn’t bother ? You explain it to us, Mr Spagnuolo. It’s your god, after all, so you should know.
Poll Results so far:
I just love that bit in parentheses!
Godboy: “Stop being a Dick!”
PZ: “No, now get out of the clown car and stop being a clueless wanker”
Godboy: “See! Atheists are all mean-spirited! ”
I think it was lassie the dog that guided him and you sir, are a dick, for not even mentioning this possibility!
I have a number of shorthand ways of swiftly determining whether someone is a moron. One of these is if they use the words “scientific” or “liberal” with a sneer, or as if they somehow imagine these adjectives are negative descriptions.
Oh, by the way, PZ Myers can’t be a Dick.
He’s actually a Paul.
Burn.
Inferno @21
Like a blind man and a deaf man arguing over the sound red makes.
If Dr. Myers were really being a dick he would give us your email address.
As always Mr Pratchett has something to say…
“When someone is saved from certain death by a strange
concatenation of circumstances, they say its a miracle.
But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of
events – that must also be a miracle.
Just because it isn’t nice doesn’t mean its not miraculous.”
Interesting Times
I’d suggest the following:
Every time something gets lost, do one of the following things; pray to St. Anthony for assistance; pray to Ganesh for assistance; Pray to Odin for assistance; sit down, take a deep breath, relax and think about where it might be.
Record the results and compare.
I’m really serious, you should try it. I’ve done a similar thing with prayer.
It really hammers the point home when you manage to have a profound emotional response from a prayer to a god you don’t believe in.
#39
Surely the miracle would be if he found her where everyone else had already searched.
Heh, it kind of reminds me of this exchange from the Q&A after PZ’s Rochester lecture:
Questioner: It seems to me that militant atheists might actually alienate religious people. How do you feel about militant atheists?
PZ: (confused pause) Uh, I love myself!
(audience laughter)
PZ: Seriously, have you seen my website? Do you know who I am?
hehehehe….
Ahh yes, Santo António de Lisboa. And Padua. Also. You see a lot of him around these parts.
Given that Lisbon has the patron saint of finding stuff taking care of it I’m always surprised how often documents that would be embarrassing for the Portuguese government go missing.
He’s portrayed with a big flower and book (a combination that always make me think of Morrissey) and a small child (Titanic should get on that).
wheelbrain @ 24 mentions the injunction in Revelations, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book” and notes that many xians see it as a claim to biblical inerrancy. I’m currently reading Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, which discusses the history of the early Christian texts; Ehrman chalks up that line to the author’s frustration over the innumerable transcription errors that were already plaguing the early gospels–in essence, the Revelations author is simply warning scribes to copy the text correctly or they’ll be damned. Ehrman gives examples of several similar imprecations in other early christian texts as well.
#2a28e@ #75:
#64: Did you use this prayer, “Something’s lost that can’t be found. Good St Anthony, look around!”?
Up here on the Prairie the plea goes: “Tony, Tony, turn around. Something’s lost and must be found.”
Of course, depending on your location, that could be: out here on the Prairie, down here on the Prairie, back here on the Prairie.
Comment testing sign in via Google. Yay, apparently no more cryptic ID..
In the words of Tommy Saxondale, “Welcome to dick club”
Here’s a link for the Saxondale reference:
One thing, which never stops wonder me: They know who they are sending these messages. They know the story would go through critical scrutiny.
It is almost clear that atheists don’t put evangelical stuff in their pages. It is just like christian is putting pro -atheistic stuff in their page. (Not gonna happen.)
And they are always so upset afterwards.
So why they send them anyway?