Man, you guys don’t even know what shrill and militant means. I get some doozies in my mailbox.
Two days ago, on the Saturday prior to Easter, I attended a Memorial Service for a fine young man who died tragically. In attendance were his family and friends, many of whom spoke of his deep love for people, his zest for life, and his profound spiritual and intellectual curiosity. Afterwards hundreds of people gathered at the family home, consoling each other with stories about their beloved friend. As I watched them drinking and smoking their grief away, I thought of those Masters of Intellectual Malice, the college professors who teach these young people that their lives are purposeless and meaningless, devoid of rhyme or reason, filling them with nihilistic despair. I realized that these Darwinists are the true terrorists threatening our society and our world. For while our “War on Terror” targets those who allegedly threaten our physical safety, the Darwinist Demons, who mock God and demean His creation, fail in their duty to serve as role models for our young people and thus attack the very soul of America and the world that they poison with their fraudulent and misanthropic ideology.
Oh, gosh, caught me. I just checked my syllabus, and he’s right: there’s a section on apoptosis — death and despair. And then there’s the unit on signal transduction cascades, in which I teach them that the only purpose in life is phosphorylation. I probably squeezed something about nihilism into our discussion of genomic integrity, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.
Now what does my correspondent suggest we do about us “terrorists”?
So on Hitler’s Hebrew birthday, let’s all say “Heil God Creator of Heaven and Earth” and “Darwinists Sind Unser Unglück” [Darwinists are our misfortune]. Let’s see our schools, colleges, and universities made “Evolution-Rein”. Let’s implement a “Final Solution” to the Darwinist scourge against God and Humanity. Let’s find spiritual concentration camps to restore our relationship with our Creator God, where we can purify ourselves with God’s Holy Fire of the nihilistic and fatuous doctrines of Darwin, who sought to make his spiritual depression and alienation a universal norm.
Wait, really? The answer is to celebrate Hitler’s birthday on 10 April by implementing a Final Solution against college professors? He’s such a good Christian.
Let’s see all the world’s people set free this Passover and Easter from the Darwinist Pharaohs of deceit, deception, and despair.
Let our Children Go, and let God inside them Grow!
IN JESUS’ NAME, AMEN!
Oh. Letting god grow inside children…must be Catholic.
Perhaps not the best tagline as of present time.
All together now:
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Poe’s law.
* Militant (adj.) [mil-i-tant]
1) using violence to solve goals, particularly with the use of weaponry
2) peaceful opinionated person against religion who opens his/her mouth
I think this person underestimates just how meaningful and fulfilling proper phosphorylation can be.
Stunning. The hypocrisy of their speech has no limit. I received this as a comment on my blog this past weekend. The comment is a response to my supporting Natalie Reed’s effort to call attention to a transgender bill in Canada. For the record, I am a happily married heterosexual male (that justification will make sense when you read below:
“You talk about wanting equality, yet you are quick to pull an athiest comment out by calling Jesus fictional. The answer is simple, you know damn well that homosexuality and denial of your true biological gender is a sin. So most of your kind will just forsake God entirely and pretend he and Jesus Christ doesn’t exist to justify your lifestyle. You accuse Christians of pushing their beliefs on you, yet you’re doing the very same thing by shoving your lifestyle in OUR faces. You ask for special accomodation for a deviant lifestyle because it was never legal to begin with. It would be like a growing group of people into incest wanting interfamily marriage made legal to accomodate them. That’s not how the world works.
This isn’t like the segregation of blacks from whites back in the day. This is something that goes against nature itself. It’s not something you’re born with, it is something you choose to do. And it’s mainly because of temptation that you give into that choice. Society at large will always shun the LGBT community because they want to be something they’re not. They aren’t happy with what they are born with, so they mutilate their bodies and pretend they’re something else. As long as you keep trying to say that Jesus and/or God isn’t real and try to get the laws changed to support your deviant lifestyle, we’ll always continue to oppose it and fight to protect the sanctity of the laws that both the US and Canada were founded upon.
And while no one can directly stop you from being LGBT, we can just as rightfully express how inherently wrong it is. If you don’t want to be persecuted by society because of what you choose to do, then seek help and learn to accept the gender you were from birth, not the gender you otherwise think you should be.”
Very Christian of him wouldn’t you say? (take that question however you want).
Hitler’s Hebrew birthday?
Wow… Really? This must be one of the worst cases of brain-diarrhea I’ve seen in a long time. :/
God is a Chestbuster from Alien? Who knew?
A week or two ago, one of the tire- and clueless zealots who approvingly frequent Ray Comfort’s webplace voiced approval of the Nazi practice of book burning, specifically regarding scientific works on evolution.
Now we have one here who thinks “spiritual” concentration camps complete with (“spiritual”?) gas chambers; an extermination campaign against science is the solution.
Yeah, but it’s the liberals, the ACLU, the professors who are the real danger, who are most like Hitler, sure.
Indeed, fascism comes to America wrapped in the flag and waving the cross. Fuck that, it’s there. Weed it out.
Heil Jesus? No thanks.
Oh the irony.
I’m doing that head-tilt thing.
Seriously, Hitler’s Hebrew Birthday?
Incidentally I believe that was Lost Cord Blood’s second album
‘Dolf Schicklgruber’s birthday was April 20th, not 10th. Why do I remember this? Because you can’t decide who you’ll share a birthday with :( As far as it goes he was a self-professed Catholic who despised and hated Darwin and evolutionary biology. So maybe your correspondent isn’t that far off.
… did that guy just invoke Godwin’s Law on himself?
Aren’t christians such loving, tolerant people? Always loving their neighbour, turning the other cheek, judging not…
Fucking hell, and we’re the evil scary ones? Anti atheist hatred with a nice big dose of anti-intellectualism. Keep ’em stupid, keep ’em praying, right?
Of course, no TRUE christian…
Now do you want to be looser nihilists like those awful Nazis? or do you want to be go getter aggressive winners like the Nazis!? Which is it men!? Are you Nazis Or are you NAZIS?
Why yes, aping Hitler’s hatred of Darwinismus and persecution of thought crimes is indeed the answer that fascists have to science.
I’d wonder even if it wasn’t a sort of Poe, except that I don’t think that emails are typical Poe territory.
Glen Davidson
Dubravko J.:
You don’t get around the Series of Tubes much, do you? At least this one has proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar, except that I kind of doubt “Darwinists” is correct German. And the only ALL-CAPS bit was the very end.
I’ve been trying to explain this to my wife, yet she keeps going on about dishes and laundry.
Incredulous Muttering To self: Hitler’s Hebrew birthday?
I just checked my syllabus, and he’s right: there’s a section on apoptosis — death and despair.
I must take exception. Apoptosis is not about death and despair, it’s about self-sacrifice: cells offing themselves in an orderly way for the good of the organism. (Warning to would be “social apoptosisists”: Apoptosis is something cells do. Not organisms. Cells. Do not attempt to claim that a person should apoptose because it’s not possible.)
I believe that was their third album.
O.O
Surely this sort of thing can be considered death threats and authorities can be called?
Donovan:
Hurr hurr hurr, it’s so funnay when teh menz joke about sticking their wives with all the housework.
I kind of doubt “Darwinists” is correct German.
DarwinInnen?
With protein names like Reaper, Grim, (Smac/)DIABLO, and Bad, you know apoptosis is absolutely the work of the devil!
#Phira
oh come on baby, don’t fear the reaper
I vote Poe. It’s not in all caps with atrocious grammar.
@ Ms. Daisy Cutter
Haha, it sure is surprising how literate this one is. Which makes it even more sad, since that kinda means he has at least some higher degree of education.
Not very original. The aptly named christofascists have a limited number of solutions to any problem. One of them involves concentration camps and mass murder.
Tom Willis, a creationist leader in Kansas, wants to herd scientists into slave labor camps and work them to death. And just for fun, he also wants to torture them.
Tom Willis also once wrote the science teaching standards for the state of Kansas when they fundies had control.
So basically, that God thing is like the creature in Aliens ?
Gross.
Why does this email make me want to put a finger to my lips and make bdur bdur noises?
I feel it would make more sense.
Louis
WTH!!!???? Guy is probably antisemitic as well and thinks Hitler was really a Jew.
I suspect this guys To Hate list is as long as Steven King’s, Michele Bachmann’s, and Rick Santorum’s. And his brains are equally as scrambled.
Aaw, I’m jealous. You get all the best titles, PZ.
Aaaaand for the jazillionth time, we’re the evil ones? I think not.
What the fuck is a Hebrew birthday and why is it relevant in any way?
While you can’t really diagnose mental illness from a single email (it might be a poe/ sent while drunk/ the moon was in the 3rd house, etc.), the cumulative various “we get emails” make the emailing-true-believers(tm) look like they need a dose of reality (and maybe some meds).
Dubravko J., not all higher education is created equal.
Also, that person (don’t assume it’s a “he”) may not have gone to college at all, even a fundie “college,” but simply paid sufficient attention in English class.
I think he is only 50% Christian. The other 50% is Fucktard.
Right. Because it is highly unlikely that anyone possessing that much vitriol (without the proper labeling!) must be mentally ill and in need of medication.
@ Ms. Daisy Cutter
Oh, I absolutely agree with that :)
Apparently, I was born in the year 5715, according to the Jewish birthday calculator I found in the google machine. They’ve got their own months, too. Who knew?!
Devoid of rhyme?
I must be doin’ it wrong.
So their god is a form of cancer?
“Let’s find spiritual concentration camps to restore OUR relationship with our Creator God, where we can purify OURSELVES with God’s Holy Fire of the nihilistic and fatuous doctrines of Darwin”. (emphasis added)
Honestly, I think he’s talking about Christians in that quote. I think he means putting all Christians into some sort of theological indoctrination boot camp that will, among other things, hammer creationism especially hard into their heads. Which makes the choice of a Nazi/holocaust theme all the more bizarre.
A pretty literate specimen, but I see they couldn’t resist the Power of random Capitalization.
Just curious. Does that email read any better in German?
[Downing tall glass.] “Mmm, that’s good Christian. Fresh squeezed?”
“No. Believe it or not, it’s from concentrate.”
No.
Hebrew birthday? Is that different from his other birthday on the 20th?
Unless I’m reading this incorrectly, he wants Christians to go to these spiritual concentration camps. These are apparently a good kind of concentration fucking camps?!
Minus points for lousy mixing of metaphors.
Ah, that’s what it did to you ?
Weird.
In my head I heard it read by some fellow wearing a tinfoil hat making random raspberry noises.
Calling Hitler “Schickelgruber” is completely without historical justification. It doesn’t make you look clever or sophisticated, just ignorant and silly.
Okay, there has to be some sort of next stage Godwinning. An Uber Godwin (sorry, I can’t do umlauts), or Super Godwin. Since he did it to himself, a Self Super Godwin, or such.
Also, on Hitler’s Hebrew birthday, we should call him by his Hebrew name, Schlomo. Schlomo was such a nudnik.
Boy, one minute you have the Christians telling us we’ve all got a Jesus Christ-shaped hole in our hearts that we consciously deny so we can fuck each other guilt-free, and the next minute they’re proposing concentration camps for the kids so that they don’t accidentally get exposed to a non-Jesus thought somewhere along the way and ruin the whole indoctrination process.
And I thought soufflés were fragile.
Best name for a rock band ever!
Brownian:
I hate it when they don’t filter out the pulp.
This is kind of off-topic, but has anyone ever actually fucked that Jesus- or god-shaped hole itself? If so, how was it? And were they struck dead immediately upon orgasm?
Hmmm. My Hebrew birthday is 26 Cheshvan, 5718. Calculator here.
Similarly, yesterday I was sitting around enjoying Easter with my family when I suddenly realized how much cats can be total assholes.
‘Cause, you know, one inevitably follows from the other.
I was confused from the very start. If this smoking and drinking was Christian behavior, I an appalled, but not surprised. If this was supposed to indicate the godless hedonism of the group, the fine young man certainly had a lot of friends.
This is a Poe, indeed, in the sense that it sounds like a joke to me but somebody is going to take it seriously. Either way, it’s crazy and confusing.
Well, if you take April 20, 1889 and plug it in to a Gregorian/Hebrew Calendar converter, you find out that Hitler’s birthday was on the 19th day of the month of Nisan.
This year, 19 Nisan is on April 11. So I guess, if the emailer is to be believed, all manner of professorial revenge will be taken in two days. Watch your back, PZ.
I still don’t get why Hitler’s birthday on the Hebrew calendar would ever be relevant though.
I thought only hopeless, despondent, nihilistic atheist types indulged in “drinking and smoking their grief away”, presumably for that god sized/shaped hole in their hearts.
It’s amazing –not to mention ludicrous– what religionists can read into something as disconnected with their psychological delusions as a scientific theory.
“I think he is only 50% Christian. The other 50% is Fucktard.”
Isn’t that the same thing? Something can be half water and 50% H2O…
I was going to say, all the ex-pat American Israelis I know (a lot; they’re my coworkers) reckon two anniversary dates for everything; the Hebrew calendar date, and the Gregorian calendar date.
Relative to the Gregorian date, the Hebrew date falls on a different day depending on the year, thanks to the Hebrew calendar’s being lunisolar. A Hebrew month is, on average, a little shorter than a Gregorian month, being usually 29 or 30 days. Occasionally they need to add a second month of Adar to make sure their calendar doesn’t slip too far out of whack.
So “Hebrew birthday” is actually a sensical construct. Weird that someone who seems to worship Hitler so much would know a thing like that, though.
Menyambal:
What makes you think it was? It sounds like the e-mailer, a xtian, found himself at a wake, where people were remembering and celebrating the loss of a loved one and freaked the fuck out because it wasn’t all godgodgodgodgodgodgod.
Ing: I Have No Mouth…
Yeah… “Hitler’s Hebrew birthday”… I picked up on that too.
What does that even mean? I don’t like abbreviations as a rule, but if ever a phrase called for a response of WTF?, it’s that one.
Umm,ok. So that was weird. Aren’t the fundies supposed to hate Hitler since he was so obviously a filthy atheist? /snark.
Hitler’s Hebrew birthday
By Grapthar’s Hammer!
“As I watched them drinking and smoking their grief away, I thought of those Masters of Intellectual Malice, the college professors who teach these young people that their lives are purposeless and meaningless, devoid of rhyme or reason, filling them with nihilistic despair.”
Oh yes I remember that course…Nihilism 101 was right in between Philosophy (To Hell With It) and Darwinism (The Dawn of A New Order).
Randomfactor:
By Grabthar’s Hammer!
@reasonbeing #6
I always want to ask people who say this, “Oh, really? And how often are you tempted to have gay sex?”
If they say ‘never’, then you simply ask them, “So you’re saying some people are tempted to have gay sex and some aren’t? I wonder if there’s something… different… like, biologically different?”
If they say anything else… well, they never do.
Um, have you ever hung out with Catholics?
I’m being completely serious. The last Catholic funeral I attended had a hell of a party afterward.
Thanks, Brownian. I may never be able to drink orange juice again!
Audley:
:snorts: When I was growing up (Catholic) every priest I knew, including the Monsignor, smoked and drank. They drank a *lot*.
He’s probably upset that the dirty bastards didn’t offer him any.
“As a rising young junior customs official, he used his birth name of Schicklgruber, but in mid-1876, 39 years old and well established in his career, he asked permission to use his stepfather’s family name. He appeared before the parish priest in Döllersheim and asserted that his father was Johann Georg Hiedler, who had married his mother and now wished to legitimize him. Three relatives appeared with him as witnesses, one of whom was Johann Nepomuk, Hiedler’s son-in-law. The priest agreed to amend the records, the civil authorities automatically processed the church’s decision, and Alois Schicklgruber had a new name. The official change, registered at the government office in Mistelbach in 1877 transformed him into “Alois Hitler”. It is not known who decided on the spelling of Hitler instead of Hiedler.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler
Just barely avoided the name schicklgruber.
I have a similar experience. Most of the family doesn’t smoke, but the wine was flowing quite freely. And slivovitsa, of course.
About the priests drinking… Everyone knew the priest at my (former) church drank, but he at least knew some measure. The one in the other Catholic church nearby though, he would sometimes come to mass a bit tipsy. And not to mention that one guy who usually couldn’t even talk for how drunk he was. Yes, on a Sunday morning.
Or, what Caine wrote.
So basically, that God thing is like the creature in Aliens ?
Or like The Thing, 80s version. I still have nightmares about people’s heads rolling off, sprouting legs and walking away.
:::shudder:::
Hmnn, So, people drinking and smoking after a funeral (probably as a way to cope) is truly a sign of the end of our morals. And is all part of a plot by atheists college professors.
Hmnn.
In my experience, only the fundie Evangelicals are tight-arsed about drinking.
The last Catholic funeral I attended had a hell of a party afterward.
Some of my grandmother’s family lived in New Orleans. When they died, they had a party before and after the funeral, and wine made more than a few rounds during the services as well, especially at the Catholic ones. Most of them had jazz musicians for the funeral march to the cemetery.
None of us ever minded when we had to go to New Orleans with my grandmother to a funeral–we were guaranteed to have a lot of fun, compared to the dreary funerals back in East Texas.
White funerals everywhere else are usually a colossal drag, although the funerals of blacks and Hispanics can be a treat to attend. I was a at a funeral in the Valley, and the mistress and the wife of the dead guy got into it because the dead guy had left some money to the mistress and his kid with her and the wife didn’t like it one bit. Hijole, the family laundry that got tossed out, and chinga this and puta that–it was better than a telenovela!
So many of the feeble-minded rightards want the government to imprison/kill the liberals, gays, atheists, and whatevers. No disconnect that doing so means a very large and expensive government.
kraut@76,
Yep. So Adolf Hitler was originally named… Adolf Hitler.
It is also my experience that drinking varies by the flavor of Christian. I was raised in a quietly teetotal family, and most of the Protestant churches we attended were also quietly non-drinking. Friends who were raised Catholic tell of finding their family’s priest on their couch in the morning, because “he couldn’t find his keys last night”–drinking is taken for granted, and to excess.
I just couldn’t tell from the e-mail whether the writer was for or against drinking, and whether the person who died was godly or godless.
He may have been assuming we all agreed with him.
@ #71—good call…I think I will use that line in the future.
@Menyambal #84
It’s like the old joke:
‘I once stayed at a hotel that was completely filled with conventioneers — yet when I went to the hotel bar, it was completely empty.
“Where is everybody?” I asked the bartender.
“It’s a Baptist convention,” he said, “so they’re drinking in their rooms.”’
It was a prayer?
I was reading this and I read “signal transduction cascades” and went, “THAT’S IT!”
I didn’t catch what it was called in class today (it was 8AM on a Monday, give me a break), and it’s been irking me all day.
Thanks, PZ! :)
Yabbut, Caine and Audley, I’m sure PZ’s correspondent doesn’t consider Catholics “real Christians.”
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
Oh no doubt, however, I’ve noticed other flavours of xtians tend to the same drinking habits.
I always want to ask people who say this, “Oh, really? And how often are you tempted to have gay sex?”
They’ll lie.
How do you keep a mormon from drinking all your beer? Invite another mormon to the party.
Baptists don’t recognize the authority of the pope, or each other in the liquor store.
“Calling Hitler Schickelgruber is completely without historical justification.”
“Just barely avoided the name schicklgruber.”
If Dolfie hadn’t avoided it history might have been a bit different. Heil Schicklgruber doesn’t sound that impressive.
But True Christians never lie. It’s forbidden by their religion (unlike Evolutionists and Muslims, of course).
Which means the total population of True Christians is . . . ?
What does a mormon do when they discover there’s beer being served at your party?
They pull up their undies and go home
You get such funny emails PZ. I just get crazy wannabe physicists that wants to discuss their revolutionary theory that obviously prove Einstein wrong.
It kinda gets old rather fast …
FTR: April 20 also marks the day in 1914 when goons working for John D. Rockefeller, recently inducted into the National Guard for this purpose, machine-gunned a camp of striking laborers in Ludlow, Colorado, killing 5 men, 2 women, and 12 children.
We can also on that day celebrate the anniversary of certain fireworks at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 (final fatality score: 1 teacher, 14 students [including the shooters]).
Look to your horoscopes!
The rant sounds as if it may have come from a so-called “Hebrew Christian.” They are Jews who believe in Christ.
Q. How many Baptists should you take fishing with you?
A. At least two. If you take only one, they’ll drink all the beer.
52 KG
Well, I figured if I wanted to get through to you I’d have to act silly or ignorant.
anuran #101
So you decided to do both. How clever of you.
I think what he’s saying is that because the Hebrew year is lunar the date and month of the Hebrew year on which Hitler was born corresponds to different days and months of the solar years. I’m too lazy to plug Hitler’s birthday into one of the website apps and figure out what day of the solar year 2012 that would be.
I cannot enlighten anyone as to why one would commemorate Hitler’s Hebrew year birthday at all, let alone in this peculiar fashion.
Seriously? Hitler’s Hebrew birthday?
I’ll give him 0.1 Time Cubes for that.
…
What.
WMDKitty, you GODLESS HEATHEN SCOURGE, those are TVTropes links!
*looks innocent*
Happy Hebrew, Herr Hitler.
Someone needs to tell the christians writing to PZ that their statements do not become more true, not even mo’ better, if they pile on the adjectives.
Not even if they pile on the nihilistic, meaningless, fraudulent, misanthropic, fatuous descriptions of PZ as a Pharaoh, not even then does their premise earn our respect.
Aw, come on now. I admit, german has a tendency to use a lot of uppercase letters, but this is quite the exaggeration.
“Darwinisten sind unser Unglück”, if you must.
Also, WMDKitty, you ruined my learning schedule. I’ve got 6 days left until my final exams and conservative estimates of TV Tropes infection in humans set remission time at several hours up to several days.
PRAY FOR ME, HORDE!!!!!elebenty
Did you know that the Japanese kanji for “boy” and “priest’s residence” is the same? Seems like they figured out something centuries ago that we’re just now waking up to in the west. (For those of you who want to look it up, I’m referring to the kanji ” 坊 ”, read as “bou”)