The doctrine of total depravity

I like protestants, generally for the lol factor.

While all faithful are faithful by stupidity and nothing elseⁱ, the exact distribution of the simply stupidⁱⁱ, the wilfully stupidⁱⁱⁱ and the inadvertently stupid^iv varies throughout history.

The current distribution would seem to roughly concentrate the simply stupid in catholicism and orthodoxy (eastern catholicism), the wilfully stupid in the various protestant sects (which is pretty much what "christian" means in the US these days - fitting seeing how wilfully stupid Americans are in general) and the inadvertently stupid in various exotics, such as buddhists or whatever. Consequently the protestants would be the funniest of the bunch, there's nothing quite as amusing as the dude trying to argue the roundness of the cube. Here, let's have a homemade sample :

Since the intersection of a number of spheres would clearly and necessarily be a rounded object, it should not surprise anyone that the cube - as the intersection of six conveniently chosen spheres with the centers conveniently placed in six different spots each a different infinity away - is as round an object as any other and indeed rounder than many.

There you have it, I've summed up thousands of years and billions of paragraphs worth of "religious debate". They're all the same thing, which is to say wordplay for the swaying of the stupid.

And now that we've had our introduction, let's consider the protestant doctrine of total depravity. This doctrine, settled upon by the Dortrecht in the early 1600s as a response to some internal debate^v states basically that people are by nature not inclined or even able to love god, but rather are without exception inclined to serve their own will and desire and to reject the rule of god. In this view man does not want to, and is indeed incapable of choosing god. To round matters up, even the practice of religion or philanthropy are wicked to god to the extent that these originate from a human imagination, passion or will, and are not done to the glory of god. Because they know what's what with this god fellow and they're telling us all about it.

I find this point hysterical because restated in less stupidity-inflamed terms, it simply says that religion sucks. It makes no sense, interests nobody and generally speaking has about as much to do with people as high heels have to do with deer.

Now imagine a herd of deer which are by nature not inclined or even able to wear high heels, but rather are without exception inclined to run around the forest chewing shoots and making colts and reject the wearing of high heels. Not only are they not interested in wearing high heels, but they are indeed incapable to do so. Even should they accidentally step into a shoe somehow left in the forest, they couldn't really be said to be wearing high heels in any sense.

Sound about right ? Well... that's because it is. "Faith", of any sort and of any flavour is pretty much a pack of deer pretending they're going around the forest in high heels. Isn't it so very muchly refined and above the station of those savages who know enough to not give a shit about all this nonsense ?

It's not a matter of finding the right make (are Prada high heels better than Dior high heels if you're a deer ?) or material or cut or color. There may be a matter of the height of the heel, in the sense that if you're a deer choosing a heel you'd best go with the shortest available, and in this sense if you're about to pay actual money to one of the religious bullshit artists you're certainly better off going with whichever is cheaper - as the benefit they deliver is universally equal. But that aside it'd just be a lot more sensible to come to the realisation that deer neither need nor have any reason to wear high heels.

Cheers.

1. There is no redeeming quality to religion - it is just a personally convenient and socially supported choice to be stupid, very popular since it's so much easier than any alternative [↩]
2. The simply stupid are people with no redeeming intellectual ability. An IQ below average, if you take IQs to be measuring anything (even if it rarely goes under 60 or so - the actual retards rarely have enough in them to bother with or care about such topics). [↩]
3. The wilfully stupid are those who display sufficient skill and intellectual ability in other fields such that indubitably were they to apply their mind to the matter of religion they'd soon enough come to the realisation that it's all meaningless bunk. Indeed many have. Nevertheless for whatever reasons they choose to suppress this obvious realisation. Often enough it's just a desire to be left alone - such as displayed by the researcher living in a community of dunces who have for whatever reason put religion at the core of their identity. Since he'd rather do what interests him than what the community needs, the self-centered, immoral man will just "live and let live", of sorts. Also often enough it's just a desire to exploit and control - hence the expression "conveniently stupid" applied by this sort of self-centered, immoral man to his duncy confederates. In any case the wilfully stupid is an emotionally defective citizen of the world, and quite immoral a being. [↩]
4. People can err. If someone gives you some pears and for whatever reason that someone also tells you they come from yonder plum tree you might temporarily conclude the plum tree indeed is a pear tree - at least until you bother to examine the foliage, the fruit, the flowering or pretty much anything else. Often these people have had idiot parents expound whatever religious nuttery to them during childhood and have never happened to examine the matter since. [↩]
5. A bunch of arminians had their five articles of remonstrance, the rest of the church remained unimpressed. Apparently these emo kids of yore weren't protestant enough to protest quite everything all the time. South Park did it. [↩]