Against my better judgment ...

[Warpy]

261. Ridiculing people and ridiculing nonsense beliefs are not quite the same.

Ridiculing people, even if they spend a couple of nights a week babbling and waving poisonous snakes around in a little backwoods church, is a loser's game. To them, every night they get away with it is a night they know they're going to a better place when they die so they're not about to give it up, not even when friends in church die from it.

However, pointing out the mortality rate of the snake handlers by saying anyone who handles rattlesnakes and copperheads improperly is going to get bitten eventually is necessary to discourage otherwise sensible people who want to believe in something from believing in that particular something. Faith does not render the faithful bulletproof nor impervious to snakebite.

Most of the time, I confine my ridicule of the prevailing systems of faith in the US to atheist and agnostic boards unless the faith is becoming dangerous to the rest of us, as is the case of fundamentalist Christianity in which ignorant people misinterpret the bible for each other. There is nothing anyone can do short of shooting me that will prevent me from taking on those crackpot beliefs.

I will continue to ridicule everything that relies on a pack of lies to sway lazy people who won't look anything up: the antiabortion movement, the anti contraception movement, the anti union movement, the anti science movement, Creationism, and any other movement that puts superstition above reality.

And y'all are just going to have to cope.