Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

In this piece, I attempt to bring a sense of logic and reasoned thinking (and snarky replies and "translations") to a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian's mostly illogical statements. Because of the fundie's writing style, many of his statements appear in broader, lengthy contexts. I will not take his statements out of context; however for the sake of brevity and reply, I will attempt to summarize and reduce the length of his, erm, prose. None of his comments have been edited, so proceed by mentally inserting the word [sic] after each blockquote. The broad context that these statements appear in is a discussion of "foul" and "obscene" language.

Please note that I have no ill feelings or thoughts to those who are religious. I'm just bemused by those who take a 2000 year-old book literally.

NONE OF THE BELOW IS TO BE RELIED UPON FOR MAKING ANY DECISIONS AS BEING EXPERT ADVICE AS ONE SHOULD SEEK ADVICE FROM A PROFESSIONAL. (A PROFESSIONAL BEING ONE PAID FOR A SERVICE WHO HAS THE ACCESS OF THE FULL DETAILS OF YOUR SITUATION) THE ADVICE GIVEN BELOW IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

Duly noted.

If someone you thoroughly love begins using this type of language you should be concerned for them from a medical standpoint that the obscene language can be a symptom of an underlying problem. It can be a manifestation as a side affect of a brain lesion or tumor.

Headache, fever and "pins and needles" are symptoms of shingles. Fatigue and nausea are symptoms of hepatitis A. Chills and night sweats are symptoms of lukemia. Minor, relatively commonplace things are not symptomatic of anything. If this were used as an indicator of brain issues, every parent would be bringing their teenaged kids into the ER for a full workup.

One should wonder if taking a Tylenol stops the language as they are now in less pain resulting in less frustration.

What?

Abnormal Psychological or Psychiatric Foundations

Most of this paragraph is gibberish. I have reproduced it here for those who wish to subject themselves to a flood of meaningless information gleaned from genuine psychiatric problems and taken completely out of context. As before, swearing isn't an indicator of anything, per se.

My recommended approach here is cognitive therapy.

Despite the warning at the beginning of this rant, I will give medical advice. Don't put any weight behind it, but I'm just sayin'.

Guys have the mistaken belief that foul language is macho and a requirement of being accepted in to the group. What group? The group of fouls? Many guys are also copy cats trying to be cool as the guys in R rated movies. Explain that they are simply duped by some screenwriter, producer, director, actor, trying to make a buck at the box office. However now they are in the real world not the world of Hollywood and such language wont cut in real life. For years and years and years the emulation was over smoking cigarettes on the screen. All about being cool and with it. Now it is risky sex, language, and violence.

Hollywood deserves the blame for my inability to control my penis, gun and mouth (perhaps not in that order).

3rd THEOLOGICAL

This is the crux of his argument. Both of the previous headers were concerned with idle medical speculation by someone with WebMD open in one tab, and Wikipedia in the other. His actual argument centres around the idea that the Christian god considers foul language to be a sin. I'll take that at face value. I'm going to assume that, even though he's a fundamentalist Christian, he isn't concerned as to whether he's mixing fibres in his clothing, as that's also a sin. If he wants to take some aspects of the Bible literally, and pick and choose which, that's up to him.

Before I continue dissecting four pages of posts, I assume you will need a break. Watch this, then make yourself an espresso, then come back and continue.

There are those who think they are immune to the words of others and those who are immune to the words of others. Its like the person who can resist the temptation of French fries while in a fast food restaurant. Jesus taught us in the model prayer to deliver us from temptation.

As Fry put it so eloquently in the video, there are many things which are not necessary in life. This fundie's entire argument rests on the notion that foul language is unnecessary and harmful. By the way, he defines foul language at the beginning of the blog post, but it's quite long. Here his more succinct definition from the "Theological" section:

I personally find language to be filthy if I find it to be inappropriate to be said around a 5 year old.

But is the five-year-old listening? Is it aware of the meaning or context of the language you consider foul? Most importantly, should adult decisions depend on how children react to them? That's a terrible idea. Children are supervised. An adult (hopefully, for the most part) is capable of rational, logical thought. Most adults who possess such thought don't think like a five-year-old, and we shouldn't expect that of them.

As this was posted on one of many Conservapedia Facebook pages, it has a significant number of comments generated by a couple of rational thinkers, and yours truly (a semi-rational, quasi-logical kind of guy). Since these comments came from multiple authors, I shall add notation to help differentiate each participant.

Fundie
A lady Congresswoman was just shot yesterday and many others were shot and killed and wounded due to a guy that went off the handle. There is an attempt to cool things down in the USA because of the rhetoric which can be interpreted by some to be hate speech. When someone is cussing it means they are letting go of their emotions. On Facebook as opposed to My Space people usually identify who they are and tone down their emotions and language. My Space is more like the wild west whereas with Facebook it's more family oriented which is why it is more popular. Many of the comments made on this Conservapedia page are full of cussing.

The tragedy in Arizona probably has less to do with swearing (not hate speech) and more to do with violent rhetoric on extremist websites (commentary that is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.) Note that, like Fundie man, I think most people are capable of controlling themselves in the face of violent rhetoric, so I'm not blaming this hate speech for being a prime cause behind tragedies. The Arizona shooting, and similar violent offences are caused by an extreme minority who are unstable to begin with.

Nick Heer (me)
Profanity is the inevitable crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

Right [Fundie]? Note: I've removed his name throughout this writing, however the discussion is freely available if you look for it.

To which he replied:

Fundie
Here is another post of Nick Heer as he is not only rebellious in his attitude towards what a child might read on the internet but he also believes this:
Dear Right-Wing America:The Republicans have been consistently promising a socialist USA. I’ve been promised socialism, and I don’t see it. I’m disappointed.
So with Nick's view of cussing and Nick's political view need I say anymore my conservative friends as to why you should try and engage in any kind of discussion with him.

Fundie managed to find a moment to Google my name. Presumably with the query "nick heer AND socialism", to get to the meat of the matter. Not that it matters, but it's plainly obvious to anyone who actually read that blog post that I don't really believe socialism is the answer. It was a response to the constant bombardment of "President Obama is Stalin"-like comments.

Fundie
I am happy with family as all who are born again fundamental Christians who are a new person in Christ. Now when I used to be:
agnostic'
liberal
American and cusser like you I was unhappy and that's why I cussed because I was frustrated and I can admit that now that I am born again as I am free from the disease of a dirty foul immature language.

Used to be American?

Grammar issues aside, this man is like a one-man revolution. An era change unto himself. Again, his entire argument rests on his assertion that swearing is a problem, or that it is something to avoid. Yet he hasn't shown any evidence for why he believes this, aside from quoting scripture which, frankly, isn't a good enough argument for me. Telling an atheist to stop doing something because otherwise they'll go to hell is pretty stupid for obvious reasons.

Fundie
You may be happy now as scripture says sin has it's day but for me got real old like a drunk I saw laying on the street with urine flowing down his pants and the sidewalk as he looked at me and asked for some money for wine.

Poetic image.

I then replied, admittedly a bit confused by his babbling, letting him know that I am not frustrated and that I was listening to Greg Proops. I couldn't have imagined a less-frustrating place or time to be in. (By the way, I highly recommend Greg Proops' podcast) The fundie replied, correcting my lack of understanding that he was referring exclusively to his problems and frustrations, and not insinuating that I am frustrated. Fair point. He then replied with this gem:

I've never heard of Proop but here is what God has said from the book of John Chapter 3 which is summarized for you:

I've truncated this lengthy and mostly irrelevant post. By the way, he didn't summarize it – it was a direct copy-and-paste job, footnote references and all.

Another logical person chimed in to back me up (by the way, he was the original replier to the topic. However, I've only included stuff that directly relates to the comments I've posted so far.) This was the exchange, reproduced in truncated form for the essence of each reply:

Logical Reply
Well, if you consider"swearing" hateful, you clearly haven't seen how hateful people can get. Believe me, I have experienced MUSH WORSE when I was a kid, but that made me into a stronger adult.

Fundie
Now Jesus Christ summarizes for Nicodemus those who will enter upon Heaven and be born again. So He for me is the ultimate authority and he says "do you not understand these things?" and likewise your comment to me is the ultimate frustration to me that you want me to summarize. Why in the world would you say such a thing if you were not frustrated at me as I am old enough to be your Grandfather there is resentment which I sense from what you say. The fact that you cussed in your very first comment on this board after reading everything I said is prima facie evidence of your frustration. You could have argued your point without cussing but you were obsessively and compulsively letting go and you could not control it. You were saying who is this guy that thinks he can tell me I shouldn't be cussing, I'll show him right here and now that I can cuss and then you cussed.

This is the full comment, and I believe it was directed at me.

Logical Reply
It's called debate [Fundie], try it [once]
Btw, I am 18 and [you're] 60 - hardly old enough to be "my grandpa".

Fundie
Have you ever been shot at? I was nearly killed 5 times in the war and I don't think can be more hateful then when they are trying to kill you. Yet no I am not saying that all people cuss because they are being hateful. I'm not saying that at all but a lot of times they do. It can get to the point of being like a pathological liar if you have ever been around one wherein they lie and don't even realize they are lying. It can become the same way when people cuss. I have been around guys who know I am a born again Christian and really don't want to cuss in front of me but they can't help themselves and after they do, they end up apologizing because they could not control themselves. People can even cuss when they are having sex. So it's a fact that people do not only cuss out of being hateful or in frustration.

Again, reproduced in full because I think this one's pretty funny.

Following this, there are a few long, rambling posts about nothing. Really. There are a few gems though (only the relevant segments are below):

Fundie
As for my education level I have a BS degree from the University of Md. As for my intelligence level I have an IQ of Genius

[T]he federal government paid a $500,000 to train me to be a federal agent

[A]s a federal agent they made us guinea pigs using some of the first laptop computers I decided to go on the internet. There was this chat room that an ISP Provider called Prodigy had at the time called Agnostics and Atheists for which the Atheists did not like what I was saying to the agnostics so they had me thrown out of the chat room.

I told everyone at Church about it and they applauded me.

I am also Fundamental but not in the meaning that many people take away from that expression. I am more of a Fundamentalist like Billy Graham.

[T]he creation issue this God had to be mono thus the only one that would fit had to be either Islam, Judaism, or Christianity because they are the only ones that are monotheistic. I had to rule out Islam because it is too much of a copycat religion where there is just too much of the Bible in the Koran but then one could say half of the Christian Bible is the Old Testament of the Jews. I could never be a Jew though because that religion just doesn't accept Christ

I have written [this] for the 10 year old level

Being a Shinto/Buddhist you must be of great intellect to pick up on the fact that they have their own edition of the Bible.

Someone just asked me to pray for them on here because of bad ear infection which I did and gave some medical advice

So have a nice day.

Wow. He then made this whopper of a claim:

[P]hilosophically speaking atheism is a Universal Negative therefore it is a logical fallacy.

If you know what a universal negative is, you'll know that this is complete nonsense. Wikipedia has an excellent overview of this concept, brought on by Aristotle. It isn't that atheism is a universal negative that I disagree with – that much is true. It's the part where he claims that this makes it a logical fallacy. It is, in fact, a brand of extremely good logic when used in certain circumstances.

He then mutters on with yet another wall of text, this time using an invisible dog fence as a metaphor for the existence of a supreme being which one cannot see, yet exists. He then clears up this metaphor by posting what he could have said in the first place:

So the universal negative is that to say that God does not exists means to prove it you would have to turn over and look under every rock in the His universe looking for Him which you could never do. Then as soon as you move one rock he can move to another so it's a fallicy to say He does not exist because you cannot prove it.

See, the problem with this is making the assumption that god exists, and then stating that it's up to others to prove he does not.

Then he launches into a weird parable about a girl getting AIDS from a bi-sexual man (nice touch). Next, he writes a short story involving someone else in the discussion board (Logical Reply guy above). The summary of this story is that atheists and agnostics have no morals or ethical responsibility. Clearly this is idiotic.

And so it ends.