SusanDoris the millstone
ThunderBunk
Shipmate
in Hell
SD I for one have had an absolute bellyfull of your simplistic bollocks. You are an absolute millstone around the discussion on the shape the church might take in the future. No idea can take off, because you wrap yourself round it and attempt to destroy it with your witless, joyless materialism. Just fuck off out of it. We've had enough.
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I have been finding this disingenuousness of the message from @SusanDoris frustrating, when the underlying meaning of the her posts is obviously "when you are all as enlightened as I am, you too will see clearly that those experiences that uphold your faith are figments of your imagination; belief in God is clearly nonsense and the Bible consists of fairy stories for the credulous". But when challenged on this she objects to being called disingenuous and talks of wanting to support all people. If challenged further she'll admit that she thinks faith is rubbish, but won't admit her purpose is to convince others that her way is the best way. Enough already.
1. Propose a topic with an innocent "I want to know what you think about blah blah blah."
2. Profusely thank everyone who posts (or at least those she takes a shine to).
3. Dismiss all theists with "that's just in your mind" or similar.
4. Refuse to engage with any criticisms or critiques of her position.
5. Get all offended when called on it.
6. Repeat
I for one find it tedious as hell. I would love to have productive conversations with people who believe differently from me (or don't believe, although that's really not possible; people who so claim are fooling themselves (see #4 above)). I hate to "send someone to Coventry" as Erin (pbuh) used to say, which is why I don't just scroll past. But perhaps the time has come.
It's a shame she only has one string to her bow though: 'I saw through this theist nonsense years ago, it's entertaining watching the rest of you bozos getting so intense about it ...'
Yes. We. Know.
A liturgy written by SusanDoris:
Let us pray ...although we all really know that's not what we're doing ...
The Lord be with you ... although we all know there's no evidence that he actually exists ...
And also with you. Yes we get that.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them in the name of the Lord ... even though we know it's all pretend and that it's physically impossible to lift them anyway without damaging ourselves ...
Understand, I've called Susan Doris to task on her take towards Christianity more than once. And I do find it tiresome. Just not unique to her.
To be fair, though, MPaul sent me a very thoughtful PM recently after I'd not posted for a while, enquiring after my welfare.
Unhellishly, I have a lot of time for Shipmates who hold to minority views, be they atheists, conservative evangelicals or Swedenborgians, Mennonites or representatives of other groups who are not well represented on these boards.
Mudfrog frustrates me at times but I'll equally rally to his defence when I feel he's talking sense.
SusanDoris does only seem to be able to strike one note though, but I don't think they on some kind of quest to get us all to agree with her. I think she genuinely enjoys the interaction and the cut and thrust.
Trouble is, she is using a gong and not a rapier.
Thirded. Atheism is hardly the distinctive trait with respect to ambushing discussions in poor faith.
It's a rare gift.
Understand, I've called Susan Doris to task on her take towards Christianity more than once. And I do find it tiresome. Just not unique to her. Not everyone who is a pain in the arse, just those who commit the same sin. ISTM, part of the reason SD grates is she is aiming at Christianity. It is a normal human thing to have the same behaviour grate when it is contra to our own beliefs and not as much when it is pro.
Being in the middle, so to speak, perhaps I notice it more on both sides?
If people are happy to take the bait and amuse her, that's their decision. Like some others, I find it tiresome, especially when she appears to home in on someone who is struggling with their faith, or when I've been interested in a topic which has been derailed.
Well. Presumably either because Thunderbunk's field of Fucks is now barren, and they have no Fucks left to give, or perhaps because they carefully conserve their Fucks, and only give Fucks when and if they feel the need to do so.
Thunderbunk can call whoever they want to Hell, without having to pass their choice by you first. What gets under their skin isn't the same as what gets under yours. If Mudfrog and/or MPaul have sufficiently got your goat to crack open a thread with their names on it, then knock yourself out.
But bitching about a Hell call is a time-honoured tradition on the ship, as is bitching about the bitching. So, there we are.
SD can be annoying, but she gets short shrift because she is an atheist. I'm challenging Thunderbunk and everyone else to look at it that way.
Kvetching, maybe. But the whines are flowing from someone else' twisted knickers.ETA: Yours. Just to make it obvious enough.
The whole Images thread was an exercise, it felt, in pointing out that God was non-existent as cannot be stored as an image, with sideswipes along the lines of being able to rationalise any experiences that she once interpreted being of God, so of course anyone else could when they too reached that prowess. and they too would stop believing in gods.
On the Let old churches die and build some new ones I have had several interactions with SusanDoris - where, following this post: she wanted to know if there were any atheists at some different kinds of church events and here where she enquired, after I had remembered an atheist present, if they had managed to get in that it was all anecdotal, followed by this interchange: .
So she is hoping to discredit Christian stories as "Christian faith relies on those stories".
Where she is saying she doesn't respect belief in Christianity - people, but not beliefs.
@mousethief there are several atheists on the Ship that are not involved in this schtick - currently it only seems to be @SusanDoris
@lilbuddha neither MPaul nor Mudfrog has been posting in the last few weeks, SusanDoris has been.
(Though this is just my interpretation and may be wrong, and she probably will find it amusing to be interpreted thus - I remember her being called to Hell on the old Ship and she took it all in her stride.)
Not that the call is completely unearned.
Though I will say that that is a unique charge, that I am reacting passively.
I mean the charge is usually aggressive, too aggressive or Jesus, Mary and the other guy, can you tone down the aggression?
Again, it's not SD's atheism that gets up my nose. If I'm honest, it's not even her proselytizing (despite what I posted earlier). It's her dogged determination to be so fucking positive all the time. About everything.
In my offline (not sure "Real" works in this context) life I write plays, working with a couple of other writers similarly engaged. If SusanDoris were a play my playwriting group was critiquing, I'd be suggesting more conflict. I'd be saying there's no real plot, that the characters are two-dimensional and uninteresting because they have nothing terribly important at stake in the story line. SD's defenses of atheism and materialism seem so bloodlessly PollyAnna-ish. While what I've seen of her responses to Christianity is limited, they're not actual attacks so much as they're pats on the head for the poor kiddoes fearing the nonexistent monsters under the bed. There's just no "there" there.
And that's why it's so disruptive to discussion, all those little substance-free Polyanna like comments that cannot and will not be backed up, placed so very unhelpfully in the middle of interesting conversations.
However, she must be about 80 years old, and blind, so I give her slack, I think I'm having an oxytocin rush.
Is it that part of the irritation is that it has been harder to debate seriously in Purgatory, around the disruptive saccharine comments of SusanDoris and the seagull like deposits from WildHaggis?
Where she does make serious points, she is not always able to follow through on the discussion, which disrupts any debate. That's the challenge that @LeRoc and @mousethief have been trying to address.
Ah, I see I've reached the end. That was very interesting. The new Ship format has made it much easier for me to find my way around ... ... and post more often!
I'll have another read through and perhaps respond here and there.
But I can understand CK's irritation.
Reading SusanDoris, I get the sense of messages coming through from a long way off; somehow the process that she has to go through to translate between text and spoken word adds a distance, loses some of the immediacy, the stream-of-consciousness -ness that one gets from Shipmates sitting at the keyboard.
The feeling is entiely mutual. You are another one whose small-minded maunderings have triggered a similar response.
I do the same, embarrassingly often - and not deliberately. It’s only afterwards that I realise my substance-free comments add nothing to the discussion.
But I don’t get called to Hell. So I assume it’s Susan Doris’ atheism that folk really have a problem with, not her posting style.
🤔
This is not due to using screen readers and dictation. I have many blind friends and their posting styles are as varied as my sighted friends.