I dearly dearly DEARLY hope that the Sift wakes up and stops even acknowledging that shinyblurry is here when he makes his soapbox comments.

I welcome him here as a person, but as an evangelical who is attempting to convert the masses, I am so bone deep bored by him, I can't hardly stand it.

I'm sorry that he upset you so much, Jigga. I know you are grieving. As soon as I heard the news about Hitch, I knew that there would be a communal outpouring of grief here on the Sift.

Ignore him when he has this hat on. There is nothing else for it. Trolling is accepted every single day here, and has driven away many a fine person from the Sift. SB's silly link is nothing, really.

It is your understandable grief talking, yeah?

If you really want to do something, encourage everyone to ignore sb. He'll go away when he stops getting fed. Or rather, the evangelical part will go away. Comments on cat videos as a normal human being, and not as a proseltyzing agent, are always welcome.

I think Shiny could have said something WAY worse than the link he posted. Not that I'm excusing it. It just seems a little harsh to compare it to the WBC. Although, it's almost more insulting than calling Hitchens a fag, considering that it's not just something said to make people angry, but a reflection of what Shiny actually believes. Hitchens would probably have just brushed it off as sophomoric and one more example of religion having to make fun of dead people rather than doing something Jesus might have done.

The more I debate religion, the more I come around to the conclusion that we all have just had different experiences with it. I was sort of "counter-religion" for years. As a person who was raised Lutheran, my experience with it was pretty positive, except for all the boring afternoons I had to sit in church. I'm a little more tolerant now than I used to be but it did take me almost a decade of religion bashing before I started to feel comfortable with it again. I imagine the recovery is worse for many others. And some people don't really have any experience at all except for what they see and hear from other people.

Now, I'm married to a girl who is still a practicing Lutheran, and we're both OK with each others ideas. We've had some arguments as far as raising our son, but if she wants to take him to church, so be it. No other Lutherans ever told me I was going to hell when I was growing up. They mostly just sang hymns, gave thanks and then sat around drinking coffee and eating cookies.

People are always going to believe crazy shit, religious or not. I think I've learned over the course of my short life that most people are wrong about most things. Every day that passes we learn a little more and every little bit we learn makes us more wrong about many other things. Worrying all the time about who's wrong or right shouldn't be the issue anymore. Just taking ideas and people one at a time, and exploring the value they might contain. Even too much of the best thing is bad (except for god of course, in Shiny's opinion), so we have to be careful about getting hung up of what the worst things are. Because even the worst things usually have a "silver lining" somewhere.

So I say tolerance is the best course of action here. Shiny can't hurt your feelings unless you let him. And he most certainly can't do anything worse.

I can't believe I'm defending shiny, but to be fair, he made this comment before Hitchens' untimely death.

_{ugh, I feel dirty}

Hitchens wasn't one to hold back criticism from the recently deceased and, as hpqp pointed out, the quote was from over a month ago anyway.

I'm not a fan of shiny either but, here on the sift, I have defended the freedom of speech of worse people so I would be a hypocrite if I didn't defend him now.

*discard

Discarding this post - discard requested by original submitter JiggaJonson.