Born again

Some use Skypeland as a place to try to find converts to their particular set of beliefs, such as atheism, fundamental Christianity or Islam. This sort of evangelism usually does not work particularly well.

A young lady approached me to tell me that my approach to dealing with Skype users who were rude and would not engage in polite discourse was off-putting. I pointed out that the reason I get large audiences for my Skypecasts was that I entertain my audience. This includes "not suffering fools lightly". If people want to be treated with respect in my casts, they have to behave and engage in a discussion, allowing others to speak. They are not allowed to use my audience as an opportunity to lecture others for 5 minutes or 20 minutes or an hour, uninterrupted and unquestioned, while they spew all kinds of misinformation and nonsense. I used to be less confrontational, but my skypecasts then had many fewer participants. People like controversy and contention. It is that simple. Other formats are boring.

She started out by probing me extensively about my personal religious beliefs. I was polite for a long time, but she became more and more aggressive. She believed in biblical literalism of course, and knew nothing about the history of the bible or the Christian faith. She claimed that she knew what parts of the bible to take literally and what parts to take allegorically, but of course there have been massive disagreements about this very issue for centuries; it is not at all clear cut. She believed in the literal truth of Genesis and the first Creation account (but not the second), even though we have contrary evidence. However she knew that the 6 day, 24 hour creation was allegorical and did not need to be taken literally. She dismissed all the previous scholarship on the bible for thousands of years; she personally knew better. She explained away all apparent inconsistencies in the text. She said that all the statistical evidence that prayer and faith healing does not work is wrong because she knew better. She claimed that one can learn more about creation and the universe by studying the bible than from studying the universe directly. She claimed that the inconsistent other versions did not exist or ignored their existence. She had no response to all the scientific knowledge in disagreement with the bible. She claimed that the "born again" movement in the US based on a particular interpretation of an ambiguous short passage in the gospel of John was much older than a few decades old, which is patently false. Eventually she told me that since I am not "born again" I am going to hell. I told her that she was a bit of a hypocrite and quite offensive, and not even following the main commandment; "love thy neighbor as thyself". Threatening and attacking others really is not very Christian.

So I decided, she needed to be blocked. And so I blocked her.