Smith, formerly of Vante, scrubbed this video from his channel — this is a re-post by someone wanting to show that Smith lied to the Blaze about his other videos — and evidently in his own description of the video (since scrubbed), Smith made fun of the cross-carrier.
None of which is why I posted this.
It’s Smith’s narcissism and self-righteousness that needs airing. Repeatedly.
Again, I’m not religious, but I didn’t need to do “research” — and confront people who are believers, then post video and commentary demeaning them — to understand that religious belief involves a leap a faith, and that applying logic (and Smith is very proud of his intellect, evidently, though I think the last several days have proven he’s quite delusional about how he rates) to the question doesn’t work. By design. His pseudo-intellectual twaddle notwithstanding.
This guy is the poster child for progressive moral vanity. If I could bronze him I would.
Hell, even his “apology” for the Chick-fil-A video comes off as a self-righteous and preachy bit of justification and self-aggrandizement:
The left’s power comes from their ability to shame and to make us believe that we’re outliers and outcasts and haters. We aren’t. And it’s about time the tides were properly turned on those who have for decades now tried to drown us in their self-righteous pisswater.
[…] Everyone Thinks He’s A Jerk UPDATE: He’s Now An Unemployed JerkUpdate: Jeff Goldstein shares one of Smith’s previous video, showing his douchiness pre-dates this incident…Share […]
Don’t get too close to that cross, you’ll get Jesus Cooties!
This pinhead is the perfect example of the dangers of false self-esteem. He really fancies himself quite the thinker.
If this douche thinks I’m going to waste 8 minutes of my life listening to his bullshit, he needs to think again. A concept that seems to be new to his attention-whoring ass.
The left’s power comes from their ability to shame and to make us believe that we’re outliers and outcasts and haters.
Did you catch a load of this from Tingles? Why, we’re extremists still fighting the Civil War!
Matthews is an historian now?
oh joy a 7 minute “apology”.
Smith, dude, you’re doing it wrong!
“collateral damage”? really? You just couldn’t help yourself because all those cheerful polite people in line enraged you SO MUCH you just had to bully Rachel?
Damn. Hope this prick is unemployed long enough he has to take a counter/service job.
I am not in the closet, but if I was, I would be proud. LOL
Matthews is an historian now?
Just an old school liar, leigh.
This guy is the poster child for progressive moral vanity. If I could bronze him I would.
See, that’s another thing that the hate-ChickFilA apparatchiks deliberately ignore. In Cathy’s statement, it is not primarily about same-sex marriage, it is about the arrogance, the “sin of pride” of people who claim to know better than God the makes Cathy ask God to have mercy on this generation.
Of course faith is irrational. We all hold a certain number of irrational beliefs each day. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Interesting that Matthews doesn’t believe Cubans are Hispanic.
wonder, too, what he’d think of the melanin-enriched attorney I work with who has a large Gadsden flag in his office.
wonder, too, what he’d think of the melanin-enriched attorney I work with who has a large Gadsden flag in his office.
Race traitor, oreo, all the standard leftist epithets no doubt, Darleen.
‘ I’m not an asshole! I’m a just well meaning twerp who had a bad day and it’s all your stupid hatey Christer fault ! Why don’t you fall down in shame when I curse you! What gives you the right to defy ME and your betters? WHAT? Don’t you know how terrible you are and how much you deserve to die instead of get the second chance I’m offering you? Why am I being punished? I’m good! I’m right! I should be doing the punishing! It’s not fair! Just look at Bill Quick, one of your own! He knows about your hate! Even he calls bullshit on you! ‘
SW
this guy has been quite the Dem party activist for years (about my age). Worked for O! last time, has met Clinton several times, and a number of high up political officials for years.
He was just going to sit out the election, but now says he’s warming up to Romney.
If Tingles were to say something like that to his face, I wouldn’t have time to get the popcorn before Tingles hit the canvass.
I believe that faith is a rational response, myself.
But then, when I’m an asshat about my opinions, at least I freaking know it and try to pray to God for more humility.
to understand that religious belief involves a leap a faith, and that applying logic … to the question doesn’t work.
Actually, it does. Just not in the way Mr. Douchebag approached it.
Consider this scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He’d been consulting that little book during the movie and it had thus far led him right. Then it shows the guy walking in air, across the abyss. Indy looks at the chasm, rightly gauging it to be too far to jump across, but he trusts the book, so he steps out into the abyss, only to land on a cleverly disguised, very solid bridge.
The leap of faith isn’t a substitute for knowledge or even logic: it’s just the only means possible for mortals to acquire spiritual knowledge. It’s a method. Indy never would have known about the hidden bridge if he hadn’t trusted the book and taken that first step. As soon as his foot hit the bridge, he knew that something solid was there, and his faith/trust is replaced by the certainty of experience.
The guy in the video was essentially at the bottom of an abyss, so he reached out to grasp the hand of an invisible Jesus. Prior to reaching out, he didn’t know if anybody would be there, but someone had told him that exercising faith in Jesus would work.
So he gave it a shot and essentially clasped a warm fleshy hand, which drew him out of the hole he was in. His experience of his heart melting and finally turning his life around wasn’t faith and it wasn’t irrational—it’s reality. It’s what happened to him. It was the initial reaching out that required faith.
And I guess that’s irrational only if you think that you shouldn’t trust anything anywhere anyhow.
If you’ve put your trust in something real, you land on solid ground on the other side of the leap. If you’ve put your trust in your own moral vanity, well, great is the fall thereof.
” oreo”
I’m white, in the stumpy lowlands germanic sense, with a sliver of something else, probably mediterranean that gave me olive skin if I get any sun.
I’m what the lispy spanish speaking lady who often cuts my hair calls “un moreno” when she gives me unsolicited fashion advice.
I think that means a black eye or a deep bruise literally (or maybe that’s morado? Shit, I dunno. ) but can also mean a dark haired(medium rat-brown) and sort of dark eyed person (dull hazel) if they have swarthy skin . Maybe it’s related to Moor.
The point is: I’d much rather be known as an Oreo than a Fluffer Nutter or a Macarooon.
Unfortunately I’m probably found more in snicker doodle or oatmeal cookie territory.
OT: USA! USA! USA! How’s about that Michael Phelps?
Dennis Prager’s column Mormons have irrational beliefs? Who doesn’t?
Here’s a funny thing: there was a court case just weeks ago involving a white Chelsea footballer who was alleged to have subjected a black QPR footballer to racial abuse on the pitch. Said abuse is a criminal offense in the UK. A black teammate of the Chelsea player supported his white colleague. The QPR player’s brother (also black) tweeted that the black Chelsea player was a choc ice (black on the outside, white on the inside). The QPR player’s brother is now the subject of a police enquiry.
As for his being Christian for 25 years, what he means is that he was born to parents who self-identified as Christian and then when he went to college he decided it was bunk.
Which, that happens pretty often. I don’t know what kinds of Christians his parents were: if they had prayer and scripture study in the home and consciously tried to follow Christ’s example or if they only darkened the doorway of a church for baptisms, Christmas, and Easter.
Either way, a child’s understanding of Christianity never survives into adolescence, and an adolescent understanding never survives into adulthood. When you hit the college years and leave your parents’ influence, either your understanding matures or it withers on the vine.
The determining factor as to which path you take?
Depends entirely on what you want out of life. What sounds right and good to you. What your priorities are. What inspires you. What floats your boat.
And if garnering the favor of “the smart people” is your top priority, well, self-identifying as Christian won’t get you anywhere near there.
After that, the script pretty much writes itself.
I’m not going to argue with you. I didn’t say we need to surrender logic; I said relying on logic to prove faith-based assertions doesn’t work.
Mormons have irrational beliefs? Who doesn’t?
The thing that always bugged me about Mr. Spock is that it was assumed that he could reliably produce the most logical conclusion in a given situation.
It bugged me because all logical conclusions must arise from correct basic assumptions plus an accurate accounting of all factors that affect the situation.
Can a mere mortal have all that knowledge? In some situations, yes; otherwise, there would be no footprints on the moon.
But when people say, “Hey, you gotta admit. Some of your beliefs are pretty weird,” I can only reply, “Weird compared to what?”
And the answer must always be, “weird compared to what you think is normal.”
I was pretty weirded-out when I started studying neo-Platonism and Christian mysticism, because it was all based on assumptions about the nature of God and the cosmos and scripture that were very different from the assumptions I had.
Hence, weird.
But at what point did I become the standard for what is weird and what is normal? Are my powers of perception and apprehension so superlative that I know everything about everything?
Please.
Weird is, by definition, a relative term, and once something “weird” becomes commonplace, it’s not weird anymore.
Therefore “weird” is entirely useless as a criterion for evaluating whether something is true. It’s only an indication of the limits of your experience.
When and if all the mysteries of the universe are opened to my understanding, I expect most of it to be “weird.” The ways of divinity are bound to be “weird” to us mortals, and I would be most untrusting of any prophesy or doctrine that claimed to be of divine origin but that was perfectly in harmony with human understanding.
I didn’t say we need to surrender logic; I said relying on logic to prove faith-based assertions doesn’t work.
No it doesn’t and that’s what the priests taught in Theology classes. Faith is illogical. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I said relying on logic to prove faith-based assertions doesn’t work.
Wasn’t meant to be an argument so much as an opportunity to expound.
QED.
Relying on human logic to prove faith-based assertions is like using an anemometer to measure the distance to a star: wrong tool for the job.
Faith is illogical.
Faith is a synonym for trust. Would you categorically call trust illogical? Because trust is often called for.
All languages that you do not speak are gibberish (i.e., illogical). They’re a string of incomprehensible syllables that mean exactly nothing. The writing is incomprehensible marks on a page.
If you don’t speak Spanish and I start speaking to you in Spanish, you could very well accuse me of uttering nonsense syllables. You have no way of knowing whether I’m using actual Spanish words and phrases or if I’m just making noise.
Here, let me explain Spanish to you: It’s an SVO language derived primarily from Latin. The nouns come from the Objective case, meaning that plural nouns end in S (unlike Italian, which derived its nouns from the Nominative case). It has two numbers: singular and plural. Verbs are conjugated, nouns are not declined except for clitic and personal pronouns. Words that end in N or S or a vowel are typically accented on the penultimate syllable and words that end in other letters are typically accented on the last syllable, and where they’re not, the accent is marked with a grave accent mark. Most syllables are open.
Oh look! Here’s an entire Wikipedia article that describes the linguistic characteristics of the language.
Got it? Good!
Ahora puedes hablar español, ¿verdad que sí?
I thought not.
That’s the equivalent of what Mr. Douchebag did when he studied religion. He may have come across all kinds of accurate information about religion, but it didn’t help him understand it, any more than reading that Wiki article helps you speak Spanish.
The only way to understand a foreign language is to practice it, whether speaking it or reading it or listening to it. You have to do it, not read about it.
The “leap of faith” in language acquisition is to give it a shot, to jump in and try it out, and to stick with it until all of the words and phrases finally emerge from the fog of gibberish.
And if you don’t care to learn Spanish? That’s fine, too. Just don’t accuse me of engaging in illogical communication strategies.
Gay Leftist Admits to Vandalizing LA Chick-fil-A
We’re on the same page, di. Honest.
Mr. D-bag don’t need no lessons on nothin’. Just ask him.
We’re on the same page, di. Honest.
Oh, I know. Just an opportunity to expound.
I’m not sure if you arre familiar with the Catholic Mass, di.
During the blessing of the Host, the priest instructs the parishoners: “Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith”. The response: “Through Him, with Him, in Him. In the unity of the Holy Spirit. All glory and honor are yours, almighty Father. Forever and ever.”
@ 3:13:
Ah, good. Sometimes the interwebz cause confusion. Thanks for the exposition.
It beats talking about gun porn.
Gay Leftist Admits to Vandalizing LA Chick-fil-A
I knew it, nr. I told the husband last night “You wait. This is a hoax.”
It beats talking about gun porn.
Sometimes you are completely irrational, leigh.
Oh my.
Second City performs Rahm Emmanuel’s true self.
Definitely NSFW.
Heh, SW.
It takes less faith to believe in such things when you’ve seen a platoon of Nazis melted into goo by the Ark of the Covenant, and had a guy’s hands rooting around your chest thanks to the power of Kali.
But, yeah. It also took a leap of faith to sit on top of a Mercury rocket, or head down the Ohio and the Mississippi in a boat with nothing but a hand-built “steam engine” to keep from getting dashed against the rocks.
I read a Larry Niven novel called Ringworld. Not my favorite novel but it was rather hard on the utility of using judgmental language in a big varied universe.
Sane sounds great doesn’t it? Great word. But sane doesn’t get you much. Sane doesn’t have any standard meaning. What is sane for one species or population is insane for another. And it says nothing about effectiveness.
Being sane is little comfort unless your sanity is based on something that works well.
Sane by itself tells you very little. Cultural norms can be awfully strange to an outsider. The majority is always sane. It’s a matter of convention and compatibility. The Chinese were sane when they designed stretches of the great wall with a certain curvature that was intended to discourage invasion by evil ghosts (and not the evil ghost euphemism for outsiders and barbarians) . The Aztecs were sane when they based an empire on human sacrifice, pyramid building, and ritual combat to take captives which was ALREADY a long time practice when they arrived in the valley. Sane doesn’t get you very much. Sane can be quite stupid and destructive. Some of the insane might get much better results than the sane majority. Or they might do even worse.
“Reality based” is a lot like sane. It is true for certain (potentially fluctuating) values of ” reality”. But an incompetent society with a sane majority still fucks up a lot and produces less and the individual suffers more for their maintenance of their sanity.
Once you fiddle around with definitions and stamp out deviation and judge terms on whether they sound good or not you are well on your way to living in a tautological vacuole and making self deception a part of your everyday life.
Eventually you are filming yourself bitching out a young woman in a fast food drive thru window after she hands you a free water and anticipating that you will be celebrated for it, and if you aren’t you will appeal for what you take to be sanity because sanity is a nice sounding word and we all want to be sane.
The whole “Vulcan logic and lack of emotion” thing was, in the back-story, a religion. So, in essence, Spock had faith that logic could lead him to the right solution.
Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith
That’s one of the differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity: we define a “mystery of God” as something that you can understand only through revelation, not something that defies logic.
For example, traditional Christianity contemplates the Triune God, who is One in Essence but Three in Person (similar to this thing), and the contemplation of those two irreconcilablities is a way to break free of our mortal limitations and comprehend the Divine, which is utterly alien and utterly Other from anything we mortals experience or imagine.
LDS doctrine, on the other hand, cuts all kinds of Gordian knots (one reason we’re considered such heretics). Our Trinity consists of three separate personages who are the same species as we are (just in the adult form, whereas we’re all grubs). They exist in space and time (though they can perceive it as it is, whereas we don’t).
We define a miracle as any Divine intervention, regardless of whether there’s a rational explanation for it. God isn’t supernatural (above or outside of nature) and doesn’t break natural law. We believe that Jesus turned water into wine by using natural laws with which we’re unfamiliar, but that he could invoke because of his superior virtue.
No God of the Gaps, in other words.
For example, in the Miracle of the Gulls, the Utah pioneers got swarmed by these ugly beasties, who were going to destroy their first crop in the valley. After fervent prayer, an enormous flock of gulls came in and ate them all, sparing the harvest.
Some would say it can’t be a miracle because no natural laws were broken. The crickets were just doing what they do every few years, and the seagulls, native to the area, were not behaving out of character.
But if God sent them in force in response to prayer, then it was—by our definition—a miracle.
(The crickets still swarm every few years, damaging crops like crazy, but there’s no sky-darkening flock of gulls that swoop in and save the day. Because it’s not needed. Those farmers won’t starve to death because of one bad crop.)
Anyway, po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to. Clarity over agreement and all that.
So, in essence, Spock had faith that logic could lead him to the right solution.
He trusted logic. It often was worthy of that trust.
I was a bit like this guy as a teenage agnostic. Think I outgrew it by the fall or winter of freshmen year.
At some point you realize you’re not necessarily so smart, other people aren’t necessarily so dumb, and being a dick is simply being a dick.
The Chinese were sane when they…
I often wonder which things I consider to be normal and rational will be in 100 years considered as (or shown to be) so totally wrong as to be laughable.
It has to be something that I’d never suspect, something I consider to be so foundational that I don’t even know that I think it.
At some point you realize you’re not necessarily so smart, other people aren’t necessarily so dumb,
Yeah, but humility is nowhere NEAR as thrilling as moral preening.
Hence its paucity.
At some point you realize you’re not necessarily so smart, other people aren’t necessarily so dumb, and being a dick is simply being a dick.
Yup, bh. Freshman year of college taught me that I don’t know jack. No matter how long I study and how much I learn there is still always going to be stuff I don’t know. And that’s okay.
Di, Catholics are big on Mystery and Miracles. Transubstantiation, Triune Godhead, Virgin Birth, Resurrection, et al.
– This dude is in the throws of a personal belief crisus so much like the same things I see in every hard core Leftist and Atheist I’ve ever known.
– Some people never get past the childhood rebellion of being controlled. They never seem to parse the difference fron simple denials of the things they desire and the social needs to adjust to civil limits of behavior. To them its all about “what daddy and mommy won’t let me do.”
– And its no different when they try to sort their natural desires and feelings against the teachings of most sane religions. There’s a simple truth that most people of faith get, accept, and understand at some point in their nonage.
– Sometimes when you put your faith in God and you prey for things the answer is “no”.
– People like this dude never can peocess that fact as an adult must to develope and grow in wisdom and understanding.
– Thats why you see me posting that so many of the past two+ generation are over educated under developed children. Normally you simply wouldn’t take such people serious.
– Unfortunately They are now expected to take the leadership role as we in the older generations pass on. Until we reverse the systemic dis-education in our school system and entertainment industry, it will not get better.
– We need urgently to put the true meaning of “Liberal” back in a liberal education.
I think we need to put the definition of “education” in there, too, paleo.
From Maggies Farm:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20283-Hate-Crime-hoaxes-in-academia.html#comments
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/07/31/hate-crime-hoaxes-present-burdens-lessons-college-campuses#ixzz22cWru4v2
Inside Higher Ed
Another Chick-fil-A Vandalized
– You know, sometimes when I try to sort through the causes of all this misdirected attitudes, ideas, and chaotic behavior I wonder to myself if we’re seeing the result of the kids involved knowing deep down they’ve been short canged in their educations, and this is simply the way it manifests.
– At any rate, educationin itself, cold hard facts, departs no real wisdom.
– When you realize that as you’re growing up, you immeduately gain an understanding and appriciation for humility, and humility is the first step to wisdom.
Oh good God, I just saw a video Ann Sorock of Legal Insurrection did of a bunch of gay guys harassing some old black man with a Bible.
After picking my jaw off the floor, I posted it
the hate is off the charts!
– Darleen, morally confused people beget confusion and chaos, even to their own causes.
– Think of it as a small piece of the tower of Babal.
– People who are confident and have the courage of their convictionc need no one elses aprobation.
– “And I have become as the angel of death, destroyer of nations.”
The best part of this is Smith’s impetus for this particular tactic of douchebaggery. It seems he was inspired by this pinhead who seemed to think that Proverbs 25:21 created an opportunity for some awesome Alinsky Rule 4 action upon CFA.
“See, so they HAVE TO give us water and then we can tell them how much we hate them and then we win! Jeebus says so!”
One leetle problem with this brilliant plan. It’s generally referred to as Proverbs 25:22:
God is hilarious.
Hmm.. If an assertion can be proven, regardless of the tools required, then no faith is necessary. That’s the essence of the Great Mystery, there is no proof and no proof is ever possible, at least in this world. There’s no point in seeking proof because proof is a foreign concept in the metaphysical rhelm. Either you have faith in the truth of the assertion, or you don’t.
And don’t even get me started on the nature of “truth”. I didn’t spend all that time studying philosophy for nothing!
Well, okay, a little something on the nature of “truth”. You’ve got 15 minutes to explain the Big Bang theory, the origin of the universe, and the evolution of life on earth.. To a stone-age sheepherder. Go for it. And if your answer doesn’t sound a lot like “In the beginning the earth was without form and void…” you’re not really trying.
The gulf between that sheepherder’s understanding of the world and our understanding of the world is probably less than the gulf between our understanding of the world and the whole truth. The more we learn the more we realize just how little we really know. And that’s the truth.
Di, Catholics are big on Mystery and Miracles. Transubstantiation, Triune Godhead, Virgin Birth, Resurrection, et al.
Oh, we do Virgin Birth and Resurrection, too.
Which is All Very Believable because it happened 2000 years ago, but if you assert angels in 19th-century America bearing golden plates inscribed by ancient prophets you are, by definition, a lunatic or a fraud.
Believing is God is made difficult with the recommendation that subscribing to a particular religion is the best way to do it.
Believing is God is made difficult with the recommendation that subscribing to a particular religion is the best way to do it.
All religions claim the approbation of the divine, because if they don’t have God’s approval, what leg are they standing on? Why preach a gospel you don’t believe to be The True One?
That said, there’s no reason to bother with middle-men: go on your own quest to find God without all that Doctrine and Rite and Hierarchy. Then if God wants you to join up with a particular community, he’ll let you know his own self.
Word.
“Keep your faith in the Lord, your eye on the preacher and your hand on your wallet.”
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This.
I have issues with some of the doctrine I was raised to believe (Missouri Synod Lutheran) but that doesn’t interfere with my faith.