Tuesday, December 23, 2003
(1:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Don't Feed the Trolls!
Although this is true everywhere, I find it annoying that the CRI General Forum is completely dominated by one or two trolls. The pattern is this: someone asks a genuinely thoughtful theological question worthy of sustained attention. Maybe there are a couple responses at first, usually brief ones, and usually someone slips up and says something that goes against the conservative talking points, so some troll writes in with the same thing he writes every time, about how he has the correct views and he's being persecuted and shut out because other people have different views (it's amazing how the American "conservative" tactics fit so well in every field -- religion, politics, whatever).
Then all of a sudden, the conversation is about the historical verifiability of the Bible, or the inerrancy of Scripture, or the penal-substitutionary theory of the atonement, or evolution, or whatever other stupid shit no one really cares about. And everyone jumps all over him! It's as though everyone is so glad to be able to hash out the same stupid, bullshit questions over and over again. No, Mr. Troll, don't you see that it doesn't make any sense for there to be a worldwide conspiracy of scientists who know the Bible is true but want to "disprove" it through Darwinism in order to take everyone to hell with them? Don't you see that the Bible contains many contradictory versions of the same events, and many irreconcilable theological views? Can't you fucking read? And he verifies, over and over, "No, I can't fucking read." This happens every time -- every time -- and it always explodes into this long, long conversation in which absolutely nothing is accomplished and nothing new is said. Meanwhile, the original good question languishes because everyone is so busy re-fighting the same battles.
Why is it that dogmatic maniacs always get to set the terms of debate? They know they're just asking the same questions over and over again, and their real goal is to keep the debate from moving forward. So what should we do, then? Ignore them. I mean, sure, go ahead and disprove the idiot conservative the first time, but if he keeps coming back, ignore him. If you want to be nice about it, tell him to re-read your previous post on the subject, because you have nothing more to say to his idiotic and irrelevant questions. If we don't ignore them, then we are just submitting to their totalitarian desires -- as Zizek says in The Sublime Object of Ideology, "totalitarian power is not a dogmatism which has all the answers; it is, on the contrary, the instance which has all the questions." No matter how eloquent we are in proving that Darwinism is not a secret ploy of Satan to lead us astray, or that our eternal destiny does not depend on believing that Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, or whatever, they still win, because we let them control the questions.
Oh, and also: Merry Christmas!
