What grows continuously, lives in public places and can inspire fits of rage and bouts of depression at the same time?
I'm talking about groups of angry stupid people, of course. And naturally, I'm talking about them because I ran into one today. If you're not sure what I mean, it looked something like this:
I found them in the West Mall of my college's campus. Intrigued by the sight of a large crowd of students and the sound of an older man yelling, I had no choice but to investigate. As it turns out, the students were mostly members of a crowd of angry stupid people and the older man was a Bible scholar who periodically shows up on campus to hold an open forum about Christianity.
Forget the angry stupids for a minute so I can talk about the older man. I know absolutely nothing of his credentials, but he made some extremely interesting points. Of course, his arguments all rely on the idea that God does, in fact, exist, so one has to be the kind of person who believes that in order to engage in competent discussion with him.
Unfortunately, many members of the angry stupid group were the other kind of person. I know that that last statement could offend someone who takes it the wrong way. Since it's only fun when I try to offend someone, I'll clarify my meaning. If an angry stupid person who believes in God were to enter the discussion, they'd quickly realize that they managed to get the wrong directions to the evangelist conference. If someone were stupid, in the right place, and believed in God, they'd likely give a satisfied nod to everything the Bible scholar said without thinking about it. They'd be listening to exactly what they thought they should be hearing, so they'd have no reason to be angry.
Angry stupid non-believers are a different story, however. Classes are God to them. What's interesting is that you can actually correctly guess their major in school based on their arguments. The sociology major will try and apply some anthropological construct to his argument as he ponders the sociocultural influences that have acted upon our Bible scholar and his zeal. The pre-law student hits hard and uses every logic device from the Ball-Busting chapter of their Law 301 textbook. What they all share in common is their use of secular reasoning to debate a religious argument. The flaw there is obvious: any secular argument posed against reasoning based on the fact that "God exists" is like trying to knock down a brick wall with a pressure washer. The tool gets the job done in many situations, but it's the wrong one for the job at hand.
I wish I had a powerful ending to this post, but I don't.
