Cynicism Personified: TOP 10 REALLY ANNOYING FALLACIES

October 20, 2003

TOP 10 REALLY ANNOYING FALLACIES

Well, since this is my blog and I have a lot of anger about stuff, here's the TOP 10 REALLY ANNOYING FALLACIES, brought to you by Cynicism Personfied, and our sponsor, lack of sleep.

Note: I am sick and tired. Literally. So if my writing is run-onny and weird, that's why.

THE TOP 10

10. ATHEISTS ARE SATANISTS. ATHEISTS HAVE NO MORALS. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Atheism means one believes god(s) doesn't/don't exist. Very simply, we don't believe Satan exists either. It's all irrational mishmash. Furthermore, atheists are just as likely (if not more likely) to have morals as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, etc etc. A lot of trouble happens due to religious persecution, fundamentalism, terrorism, jihad, ethnic cleansing, genocide, priests raping little boys, discrimination, etc, and atheists have no part in that bullshit. Whether or not an atheist is moral by your standards depends on the person, of course.

9. FILE-SHARING IS ILLEGAL, AND YOU CAN GO TO JAIL FOR DOWNLOADING. This is a recent grievance, and it might go up in the Top 10 in the future. Recent actions taken by the Record Industry Association of America have led people to believe that file-sharing (e.g. KaZaA) is illegal. This is NOT TRUE. What's illegal is downloading music without actually owning a CD or paying for it via iTunes or something. However, you're not going to go to jail for it. The RIAA can't be bothered chasing down people who just download a few songs a day. They only go after the big supernodes who share thousands and thousands of songs. If you download KaZaA Lite then you'll be safe from their prying eyes. It has a built in primitive firewall that blocks bad IP ranges. Also, KaZaA Lite doesn't have advertising or spyware. If you want to be extra safe with file sharing, don't keep your music in your shared folder for long, download Spybot - Search and Destroy and run it frequently, get a firewall like ZoneAlarm, and get an antivirus program like Norton AntiVirus. You should probably download these free privacy apps even if you don't do filesharing.

8. "FLAMMABLE" MEANS SOMETHING CAN BE LIT ON FIRE, AND "INFLAMMABLE" MEANS SOMETHING CAN'T. Wrong. Both mean the same thing: can be lit on fire. I am not positive flammable is even a correct word, though it has entered the language due to constant usage, and dictionary.com traces its etymology, so I'll accept it. See their note about usage: "Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in- has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means “not flammable” or “noncombustible.” The prefix -in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix -in, which is related to the English -un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this -in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity's sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings." QED.

7. VEGETARIANISM OR VEGANISM IS RIGHT BECAUSE IT RESPECTS LIVING THINGS. If you think you can't eat living things, that means you can only eat fruits, eggs, seeds, cheese, other byproducts, minerals, etc. Plants are alive too! Vegetables are the roots, leaves, and flowers of plants, and they are just as alive as animals. Naturally, when you harvest them, they die just as animals in slaughterhouses do. Fruits, however, fall off trees by themselves, because they are seeds. And vegans have it a lot worse. They don't eat eggs or any dairy products. By that logic, they shouldn't eat fruits or vegetables, because they are byproducts of living plants. Plants are different than animals, but they're still organisms. Think hard about this before you bite into a carrot: it's like biting into a hamburger. The carrot IS the plant. And PETA is a moronic organization.

6. TOMATOES ARE VEGETABLES. No, they're fruits. Fruits are the edible seeds or ovaries of a plant, and tomatoes fit that description. They aren't vegetables, which are the edible roots, stems, or flowers of a plant. QED.

5. THE UNITED STATES IS A DEMOCRACY. This is technically not true. Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people. As you might know, the popular vote does not determine the president. The electoral college decides, and their decision doesn't need to reflect the popular vote. The USA is an electoral capitalist republic. Think about this next time you want to spread democracy to Iraq or somewhere.

4. PONG WAS THE FIRST VIDEO GAME. While it was up there, pong wasn't actually the first video game. Now, there are two possible candidates for the first video game depending on whether you consider computer games video games as well. There's no reason not to. Video game systems house computers, and the display apparatus (a television) is similar in function to a computer monitor. You can use computers on your TV, you know. The first video/computer game was a Tic-Tac-Toe game displayed on a cathode ray tube, invented by A.S. Douglas in 1952 at the University of Cambridge, UK. A lot of people don't consider computer games video games, and they credit Ralph Baer's invention of a game played on a television as the first video game: the Magnavox Odyssey, in May of 1972. While it was definitely the first video game console, I do not consider it to be the first video game. It's up to you. However, the Odyssey had a Tennis game, which was the basis for Pong. Pong itself wasn't created until a number of months later in June of 1972 and later.

3. THERE IS A NUMBER THREE. Wrong. There is no #3.

2. SHORT-LIVED IS PRONOUNCED LIKE THE PAST TENSE OF LIVE.
Out of all usage errors, this annoys me the most. Just about everyone I know says "short-livd" when in reality it's "short-lievd." Same goes for long-lived. Think about it: it's like saying flat-footed or large-breasted. Short-lifed. But you don't say lifed, you say lived, because in Middle English they elongate syllables like these. Here's what dictionary.com has to say about it."The pronunciation (-lvd) is etymologically correct since the compound is derived from the noun life, rather than from the verb live. But the pronunciation (-lvd) is by now so common that it cannot be considered an error. In the most recent survey 43 percent of the Usage Panel preferred (-lvd), 39 percent preferred (-lvd), and 18 percent found both pronunciations equally acceptable." I don't really agree with them that them more common pronounciation can't be considered an error. As my esteemed grandfather used to say, "The masses are asses." This is a fallacy: argumentum ad populum. Just because something is common, doesn't make it right. Just look at religion! Here's what they say about long-lived: "Some uncertainty exists as to the correct pronunciation of long-lived. Should one say (lônglvd) or (lônglvd)? The answer depends in part on how one looks at the word. Historically, the first pronunciation is the more accurate. The word was formed in Middle English times as a compound of
long and the noun life, plus the suffix -ed. This suffix, though identical in form to the past tense suffix, has a different function: to form adjectives from nouns, as in the words hook-nosed, ruddy-faced, and round-shouldered. (Note that English has no verbs such as “to hook-nose,” and “to ruddy-face,” that would have formed participial adjectives ending in -ed.) In Middle English, the suffix -ed was always pronounced as a full syllable, so long-lifed (as it was then spelled) had three syllables. The f in the middle, by a rule of earlier English phonology, was voiced between the two vowels to (v); eventually, the spelling became long-lived to reflect the pronunciation. (We see the same alternation in life and lives; in Middle English, lives had two syllables just like -lived.) However, this new spelling introduced an ambiguity; it was no longer clear from the spelling that the word came from the noun life, but rather looked as though it came from the verb live. In this way a second pronunciation, (lônglvd), was introduced."

And finally, the #1 really annoying fallacy:
1. JESUS CHRIST WAS WHITE, AND HE WAS THE INVENTOR OF CHRISTIANITY. THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD. Let's clear up his name. His name was Yeshua (יהושע), a shortened form of Yehoshua (יהושע), which is essentially the English name Joshua. The name "Jesus" comes from the Latin Iesus, which derives from the Greek Iesous (Ιησους). Christ is a derivative of the Greek Khristos meaning "messiah," or more literally, "the anointed one," and the appellation was not applied to Yeshua while he was alive. In his time, he was known of Yeshua of Nazareth. Nazareth is an ancient city in the Middle East. HE WAS A FUCKING ILLITERATE CARPENTER. He spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew, although he purported to be an Orthodox Jewish preacher. 70-100 years (that figure could be slightly off) after his crucification due to "revolutionary actions," or as President Bush might say, "terrorism," Saul of Tarsus, or St. Paul, created Christianity, claiming that Yeshua of Nazareth was the Christ. Now, there was a basis for this. In the Torah (Jewish Bible/Old Testament) there is a prophecy regarding a messiah that will save the Jewish people from Babylonian and later Roman persecution. JESUS DIDN'T SAVE THE JEWS. He wasn't the Jewish messiah. YOU CAN'T USE THE BIBLE FOR EVIDENCE OF THIS. The New Testament was written in the 4th century (we're talking 300 CE here) and it was only loosely based on actual history. It got even worse when King James I translated it from the freaky Greek and Latin to English. If you're Christian, you're buying into a load of historically screwed up stuff. Hell, Christmas was put on December 25th to detract attention from a pagan Mithraist holiday, and has no actual link to the life of Yeshua of Nazareth. Similar to this is Valentine's Day, which was created based on a dead guy named Valentine who the Pope made a saint and created a holiday for on the same day as a pagan fertility rite. You've got similar histories for Easter, Michaelmas, and other lesser known Christian holidays. What it all boils down to is: THE CHURCH INVENTED CHRISTIANITY. THE HISTORICAL LIFE OF YESHUA PLAYED NO PART IN IT.

Thanks for reading. Look for a blog entry about the new $20 bill next time.

Andre

Posted by Andre at October 20, 2003 04:04 PM

Comments

Dude. You should seriously get off the topic of being athiest. Nobody cares whether or not you're athiest! The more random stuff is funny, like tomatoes being fruits. They taste more like a vegetable though, since they aren't sweet.

Posted by: John Sillings at October 20, 2003 08:34 PM

You just say that because you envy my logic skills.

Posted by: Andre at October 21, 2003 08:46 PM

yea....right....
First of all, no one really gives a sh** about any of what you said. Lol. I understand that it is a blog, but John is right, don't bring religion up. It's not a very smart thing to do.

Posted by: theraj at October 22, 2003 08:17 PM

What's wrong with religion up? That's what I hate about stupid ass religions like Christianity. It's so retarded. You'd think if religion were going to teach you anything it'd teach you understanding and tolerance, but no. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN CHRIST THEN U DIE PLZ !!!! LIGHTENINGZ BOLT PLZ ZEUS I KILL U PLZ LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

And vegetarians suck too. Go read up on your Maddox you crazy vegetarian doofs.

Each time a cow gets whacked by a hammer so it can be slaughtered it's music to my ears, and a +1 day count to my life span. I LOVE the idea of being able to kill something so that I can survive. It's awesome.

Posted by: PIMPIN' DOOD at October 22, 2003 09:55 PM

i take it that this page will be very short LIVED! tomatos suck! and in short, SPONG MONKEYS!

Posted by: that person at November 13, 2003 03:45 PM

Dave - Don't even bother contradicting what I said. Chances are your opinion will change in a few days anyway. XD

Posted by: John at November 17, 2003 07:55 PM

Hi,
I enjoyed your list - but I don't care for the color scheme (blue on black isn't easy to read on my laptop).

Thought you might enjoy a true story:
I was sitting at a Village Inn restaurant eating a late lunch and reading George Carlin's book, Brain Droppings. I was reading a section about how newscasters misuse words (for example an event is "ironic" or a "tragedy" or both - when the things they are reporting rarely fit the correct definition of irony or tragedy) --- anyway I was reading and laughing out loud and when I was paying the bill, the manager asked me what I was reading that was so funny. I told him that it was George Carlin's (then) new book --- however being that I was in Utah where some people are easily offended (they cut the love scene out of the movie Titanic), I added that it was rather cynical and not for everyone. The manager said "well I guess we all sin sometimes".

Posted by: Blaine at January 4, 2004 07:59 PM

Brilliant, Blaine.

Posted by: Andre at January 19, 2004 12:12 PM

vegetatians are awesome you ignorant f-word
you think you are so tough HA
ohhh look at me Ipretend I like it when things die
aww I think I am soo cool with my gay opinions that no one cares about
lol are you over weight by any chance?
maybe a little on the pudgy side...? bad health perhaps?

Posted by: lacey at February 5, 2004 11:18 PM

I'm going to assume you're talking to me, and not PIMPIN' DOOD, whose opinions do not reflect mine in any way. That's the comments section you know.

I didn't diss vegetarians. Some of my good friends are vegetarians. In fact, my pal the Raj, whose webpage is linked on my main page, is a vegetarian. Did you even read my article? I just tried to shed some light on the fact that people must kill things to eat, and plants are living things just as much as animals.

And no, I'm not pudgy, I have a history of being rather thin. For my early childhood, I was in the 5th percentile for weight. I'll post a picture of myself sometime so you can see. :P

Posted by: Andre at February 5, 2004 11:44 PM

please willest thou stop bitching about jesus and vegetables? thank you vey kindly.
[script kiddy]

Posted by: Tom at February 10, 2004 08:27 PM

Hi,

Your take on Christianity is flawed. No Old testament quotes refer to the Messiah as someone who will rescue the Jews from Babylonian & Roman persecution. Please read the Bible carefully before you presume things. Jesus is the prophesised Christ. He is more than the amointed one - He is the Son of God as prophesised by Old Testament prophets, from Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel just to name a few.
Jesus is the Messiah but not the political Messiah of popular misguided messianic expectations of the Jews. Jesus' messianic purpose is not to be a military conqueror like King David. However, the prophets prophesised the Messiah as a suffering servant, who would die for the sins of the world and then resurrect and glorified as the Lord.
I share with you what the Lord said about the Messiah in the Book of Isaiah Chapter 53, circa 700 B.C.
"Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of
the Lord been
revealed?
He grew up before him like a
tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry
ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to
attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance
that we should desire
him.
He was despised and rejected
by men,
a man of sorrows, and
familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide
their facess
he was despised and we
esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our
infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken
by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are
healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone
astray,
each of us has turned to his
own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his
mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the
slaughter,
and as a sheep before her
shearers is silent,
so he did not open his
mouth.
By oppression and judgement
he was taken away
And who can speak of his
descendants?
For he was cut off from the
land of living;
for the transgressions of my
people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with
the wicked,
and with the rich in his
death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord's will to
crush him and cause
him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes
his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and
prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will
prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life
and be satisfied,
by his knowledge my
righteous servant will
justify many,
and he will bear their
iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a
portion among the
great,
and he will divide the spoils
with the strong,
because he poured out his lfie
unto death,
and was numbered with the
transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for
the transgressors.

Posted by: Kenneth at April 9, 2004 02:18 AM

That may have been a reaction to Assyrian aggression towards Judah, which was happening around the 720's BCE. Regardless, it's just another one of Isaiah's prophecies, and this one happened to be somewhat on the mark (though it's a stretch). He's made many, and here are just a few that never happened:

In Ch. 19, Isaiah says that Egypt will become Jewish, and that Egypt and Israel and Assyria will have an alliance. Judaism is not an important religion in Egypt, and it's unlikely that Assyria will ever have an alliance with anyone... since it no longer exists. No relation to Syria.

In 30:26, he informs us that the moon will give off more powerful light in the future. Funny, because Luna only reflects light, it doesn't emit it. Then he says Sol's light will be sevenfold - which won't happen for millions of years at least.

In 52:1 he says nobody that is uncircumcised will come into Jerusalem. Well, since then, many have, including Christian and Muslim occupations in the middle ages.

And those are only some of his major misses. The Skeptic's Annotated Bible lists 13... and I am sure there are more.

Generally prophecy has a chance to be proven right if it's general enough, combined with a spin on events put on by believers over the years.

Posted by: Andre at April 10, 2004 02:41 PM

May God have mercy on your soul.

Posted by: Frank at June 28, 2004 04:31 PM

I agree with pretty much everything you said...i just thought i'd tell you, you are amazing!

Posted by: Mark at December 15, 2005 07:01 PM

2 years later, people still read this. It's pretty funny/interesting/true.

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wow, that sure is a collection of poorly put together arguments you got there. vegetables is not a tecnical word, and fruit in the context of food isnt either, you are talking about it in biological terms, but are talking about culinary terms. its the same way that rosemary isnt a herb technically.
vegetarians reduce the suffering as much as possible to animals. now i think this is faulted because we are essentially carnivores, and it is impossible to live from plant protein alone. i deeply envy their morals though, meat being so tasty and everything.
and what the hell are you even talking about there is no such thing as a number three. do you mean you should always write it as 3, because three is how you write it out long, whats wrong with that?

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