Hey mom and dad, and I guess Alan,
I was thinking about how bummed I've been the first two days of class because I have yet to see my favorite crazy fringe cult of personality folk, the LaRouchebags. I'll explain them in a little bit but I should say that at least I was able to have a reasonably decent Ask an atheist tabling day yesterday.
As always a lot of people who were excited that there was a club that catered to their worldviews and blah blah blah--no one wanted to come up and argue. I know that that should be considered a good thing, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just like arguing with folk. But the closest I got to in an argument was this elderly black man who came up and asked me (I'm a little fuzzy on the first few questions)a couple of questions and here's my recollection of the ordeal:
EBM: Do you guys hate religion?
Me: No, of course not, why should we?
EBM: Because it's the exact opposite of atheism.
Me: Well I would disagree, I mean, I think religion can do a lot of good, I've got nothing against that--of course I'm against the bad things that religion and its followers do but really--like ok, do you accept evolution?
EBM: Yes.
Me: Do you fell that homosexuals have the right to marry?
EBM: Yes.
Me: Do you think the Earth is 10,000 years old?
EBM: It's 6,000 years, yes.
Me: All those things accept for the age of the Earth part are all I need to be concerned about reall--
EBM: I'm just pulling your leg, I'm a communist.
at this point we were all talking about once and he said something like I just came over here to test you guys and mess with you and I asked,
Me: Oh, how did I do?
EBM: Ehhh you need to strengthen your arguments a little more it comes off as too [I can't remember what he said here]
Me: Well I meant all the things I said, if you're down with evolution, separation of church and state, not supporting the literal truth of the bible--which I would be no bs on, if we continued.
Then it kind of fizzled out and he went back to the communist table that was set up a little up bruinwalk. The reds love us cause of the irreligious and secular aspect and they all seem nice but I generally try to distant our club from there's cause yeah Marxism has flaws, but mostly because I don't want BASS to be anything else but nonpartisan. But what was cool about that whole thing was that Alan told me that he thought I handled him really well, and that I was articulate and had an answer for every thing he threw at me. And Alan is someone who's opinion I totally respect even though I think he's way too nice towards me, haha.
Regardless, I can only agree that I have improved a certain amount by putting myself into these situations but I know I still got a lot of work ahead of me. I think that the LaRouchebags can help some of that and I've decided to make a more detailed post about them later on. Far now though here are some quick things and links about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Lyndon_LaRouche
They want to turn the Sahara Desert in fields of crops
Think that Newton was a fraud and stole every thing from Kepler
They worship Kepler so much that they took his work on harmonics and concluded that they should sing as choirs. At our schools. With chorus lines found in their songs like, "he is a nazi" repeated 5 times.
And one of them has accused me of being a protectionist
Another called me a Malthusian
And another called me a Tory because I didn't want to help take down the British empire....
What?
Regards,
Joe Creason
