Do Barbers Exist?

[Sibling Chatty]

Mine, too, Mero.

How un-warm and fuzzy of me.

==============

Yes, MB, it's the same glurgy, object-lesson-from-life kinda stuff that so many Southern Baptist pastors revel in.

It's also a very good lesson in not making half-assed analogies and not drawing idiotic conclusions.

It might just even be a lesson in "Not everybody thinks or believes like you, but that doesn't automatically make them stupid."

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Hmm.  There's a message in that email that I really dislike.  Consider these two parts together:

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist.
Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?
Would there be abandoned children?

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because
if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! That's what happens when people do not come to me."
"Exactly!" affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist!
That's what happens when people do not go to Him and don't look to Him for help.
That's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

A person with long, unkepmt hair has chosen to not visit a barber, and lives with the consequence of that decision: looking shaggy.  It's only the decision-maker that bears the cost of the decision.

The article draws a parallel between looking shaggy and human suffering, implying that just as a shaggy-looking person is personally responsible for looking shaggy, sick people and abandoned children are personally responsible for being either sick or abandoned.

Personally, I find this idea heartless.  I don't think that it's a good representation of any version of Christianity (or religion generally) that I'm familiar with.

[Griffin NoName]

Lambi, I think it is "dirty" hair that's at the heart of it. Dirty is a Big Bad Idea.

Personally, I have at least one major issue with this - moths prefer clean clothes so I never bother to wash my woollies

Bluenose, come on, we all know all Cretans are liers.

[Bluenose]

Yes, but why do so many of them lack the wit to even realise that they are lying?

[Darlica]

I opened this thread once when it was new, read the first few lines and closed it again. Treating it much like I would have done if I got it by email. Only, if I'd found it in my in box I would have sent a reply to the sender and the deleted the mail. My reply would have been something in the lines of this:

This is neither funny, witty or interesting. This is SPAM, please do not clog my inbox with mails like this.  However if you want to post me your own thoughts and ponderings because you need soundboard a want me to act like one you are always heartily welcome.

Sincerly
Darlica   

I was surprised something like this showed up here, I'm not indignant or anything, just surprised because posts here usually are on a higher level.

[Griffin NoName]

Well, I just deleted it.

I normally delete without reading anything like this.

So I am in agreement with you there.

I read it
a) because it was from someone I had lost track of and was pleased to get an email from at all
and b) because it didn't look like the sort of thing that person would normally send so I was intrigued enough to keep reading to the end in case there was something special about it.

Then I copied it here and deleted it without replying at all, which I never do and so didn't bother with this despite a) and b).

So the only odd thing I did was post it here.

I was in a flippant mood and thought it might provide some humour. It seems I was too flippant.

I didn't expect anyone to take it seriously enough to mind. ((I thought I had it covered by saying it was an email doing the rounds.)).

For that I am sorry.

[Sibling Chatty]

Heh, my first response, like Mero's, was Sweeny Todd. My second one was "Ack, e-mail glurgey crap."

It suffers from an overdose of all the self-righteous sneaky faux-proof bullshit that one egotist tries on another egotist to prove the eternal BS that I am right and you, therefore are wrong.

If I had posted it, I'd have probably titled it "Crap From My Mailbox".