BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: What if LULz?
Monday, April 13, 2009
What if LULz?
I've never seen or heard of this, but according to PZ it's a common evangelist party game. They construct an absurdly leading scenario, along the lines of, "What if God made everything in the world for you to enjoy and made you live and made you happy and made things beautiful... wouldn't you owe him your thanks and praise?" And you're supposed to be a good sheep and say, "Yes. Yes I would." Apparently there are several redundant questions of that type, and at the end they say you've just accepted Jesus into your heart. Or something like that.
It seems a fairly farcical practice; if you're stumped by it just imagine substituting Zeus, or Allah, or Little Green Men, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for "God," and see how much sense it makes. Better yet, you could directly challenge the the scenario itself. It's non-representative of the real world, it's selectively and misleadingly presented, it's Biblically illiterate, etc. That's more or less what Christopher Hitchens does when a radio talk show presents it to him, and as he dissects the premise (with his usual line of anti-theistic attack) the radio guy insists on sticking to the utterly failing script, and it becomes almost Monty Python-esque in its absurdity.
Paraphrasing:
Radio dude: But if God created you and made you healthy and happy and successful in the world he made for you to live in, wouldn't you owe him thanks and obedience?
Hitchens: No. Do children owe their parents thanks for creating them? No slave should praise his master. And under your scenario, does that mean that sick and weak and broken people don't owe thanks to your god?
Radio dude: That's not the way the game works. Here's the next question that's exactly like the first three, but phrased slightly differently!
I almost felt sorry (And might have have, if he didn't use that annoying, patronizing, game show host voice the whole time. That made it all too easy to imagine his smirking chimp face.) for radio guy by about the 4th question, since his little ambush scenario was being utterly demolished. And yet he kept gamely on, trying to use these idiot questions on one of the most articulate, anti-theistic, and verbally-nimble men alive. It was like watching elementary school children trying to tackle a full grown man in a quick game of rugby. Except that in this case, the full grown man wasn't being nice and gentle and playing along. He was simply running over the little tots.
