Thursday 24th April 2003
I'm still working on Deadache. But that's not what this is about.
From: Fenner, Dan
Rusty,
I really want this to turn out to be a practical joke. Is this actually how christians talk to each other when we can't see them? It's exciting brother. Last time I heard that, a guy was pitching Scamway to me.
More later....
Someone just sent this to me. Sorta. There's no rdodds@gremlin.net, so it's mine.
Date: 24 April 2003 07.30
To: rdodds@gremlin.net
Subject: Powerteam
I'm goin to contact the power team tomarrow, and tell them that we are going to proceed with the crusade. Dot and I feel the best time to have it will be in October. We'll schedule a date around that time.
I've also talked to Mike Henegan, my principal, and he said that $500 is not expensive, and that the schools often spend at least that much.
Please also email me that list of names that we can begin contacting from interested churchs, and church people who would want to see this happen.
It's exciting brother.
In Christ,
DanThat aside, along with the misspellings, typos, grammatical errors, satirical punctuation, and so on...what in hell is this about?
'power team', 'crusade', 'principal', '$500', 'schools', 'list of names', 'churchs' [sic], 'church people who would want to see this happen', 'In Christ'.
Call me paranoid, but I think I just intercepted a terrorist dialogue. Has anyone got that number you call if you see someone stealing your neighbour's biplane? Let them know about this. The world would be a different place today if someone had intercepted EMails like this before the Columbine thing in 1999 and the twin towers in 2001.
Loosely on the subject, there's the ongoing debate regarding the existence of deities. Which is a misnomer, since debates require evidence supporting baseless assertions, and the theists haven't got any. However, we atheists are known to make mistakes from time to time too. And I had to concede a point recently.
For years, I've maintained that the word christian merely meant one who believes that christ was a deity. By this logical definition, one species of christian would be the devilworshippers, who believe that christ not only existed, but was a deity; they just don't give a damn. Erm...as it were.
This definition irks other sorts of christians, who wish to pretend that devilworshippers might be something other than christians, as though devilworshippers alone make christians look bad.
Since myriad other things make christians of all sorts look bad, my definition of christian had a total absence of malice toward any sect of christianity, including the devilworshippers within the nomina dubia.
After several hours of backhanding volleys of u dont no what Christians is and Christian mens Christ-like u r a fool, I finally conceded the point. Christian does, in fact, mean christlike; after all: christ, if he existed, was fucking illiterate too.
That admitted, we move on to another topic of interest to christians. The rapture.
This came up in part because christians are morons and never shut up about Pascal's Wager. Also, Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the LeftBehind satire who sounds entirely too much like Barney Fife mated with Elmer Fudd, was on televsion talking about Left Behind as though it were a true story. Which would beg the question, of course: if Left Behind were a true story, published in 1995, then why are there any christians left on the planet after this rapture which was the basis for the novel?
For the answer, one must read the bible. Which is why christians don't happen to know.
According to the bible, the only people who will ever get into heaven are the Elect. The Elect are the 144,000 untouched males from twelve semitic countries who were predestined at the beginning of time. They won't all be alive at the hour of the rapture, since they've lived in various places and centuries throughout the history of the universe. The story requires that the universe is only six thousand years old or so at the moment.
Armed with this news to christians, we use another tool not in their munitions dump: math.
Arbitrarily and liberally estimating the lifespan of a homosapien of semitic origin over the last six milliennia to be approximately fifty years, we can divide our six millennia by fifty to get eighty generational iterations. Primarily because we're not christians and so we have some chance in hell of knowing what a generational iteration is. For those who don't know what a generational iteration is: it's a rendundancy. But that's immaterial at the moment.
Also, we can divide 6,000 by fifty. Behold and be awed.
So. About that. 6000/50=120. This is a coincidentally convenient number. 120 iterations; twelve countries. And you thought the BibleCode was neat....
120 iterations in which 144,000 semites live and die [presuming, of course, that the rapture happens in the next five minutes or so], equates to twelve hundred semities alive per iteration, on average.
Twelve hundred. The result of dividing 144,000 by 120, where 120 is ten times the number of countries in which the semites live, and 144,000 is the number of countries squared, onethousandfold.
Can I get an amen!
Now. We have twelve hundred heavenbound semites alive today. We'll disperse them evenly throughout the twelve countries they'd inhabit. That's a hundred semites per country. The odds against any two of each set of one hundred ever having met are daunting.
Are five minutes up yet? Poof.
This is CNN. Top story this hour: each of twelve countries you've never heard of before lost approximately the passengerload of a Greyhound this afternoon in the Rapture foretold of in Revelations....
I guess that wouldn't be such big news after all, would it.
An anonymous country which hasn't even got electricity in the outer regions, let alone telecommunications, loses a hundred guys who have never slept with a chick and who were in no way related to any of the other ninety-nine who disappear at the same time. Columbo couldn't figure this one out, let alone Kirk Cameron.
So. As Barney LaFudd kept stuttering: 'tha rapyur cuh habbun a enny taim! Ennywair! Ennyhow!' And you'd never hear a damned thing about it.
As for the rest of we 6.5billion people alive today? And the incalculabe number of people no longer alive today? I give you Eccliesiasties 9.10: Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
Lights out. Welcome to Sheol. You'll have no use for your brain, body, or nerve endings here. No pain, no thought, no work, no nothing. Well: aeons of nothing; but you'll never notice those.
Kinda defeats Pascal's Wager, don't it.
The christians can defraud all they like with their believe in christ and go to heaven shit. And they can threaten all they like with their believe in christ or burn in hell shit, too. But that's okay. In a burst of irony, the evidence against this bullshit is READ THE bIBLE U IDOIT!!!!!!!!!!1
Apologies to Jeff Fucking K.
So that's that. Christians are morons. Christians are not going to heaven, whether heaven exists or not. No one is going to hell. Most of us are probably going to Nastrand, in the event that the bible is all bullshit and Odin is taking it personally that no one believes in him anymore. Otherwise, we're oka--well...Quetzalcoatl could demand a percentage of us as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the others of us who don't believe in him; but other--of course, several million cows in India might be a bit upset about that BigMac at lunch; otherwise...um...nevermind. If any deities exist: someone's fucked.
--Gremlin