Gandalf is Dead - Nietzsche

From a thread on Slacktivist which went way off the rails.

The more I think about this, the more annoyed I get. I don't know *any* atheists of the type described by you, and it's exactly this kind of straw-atheist building that gives atheists such a bad name. We are not crazy people out to get the religious, and we do not hate you. We are sane, mostly rational people who are baffled and annoyed by the completely unfounded beliefs of the otherwise intelligent people who surround us. I mean really, if you got off a plane and suddenly found yourself in a place where everyone thought that the Lord of the Rings was an accurate description of ancient earth, and they prayed to Gandalf asking him to bring back the elves, and every time you disagreed you were ignored, or taken to task for not respecting their beliefs, or told that Gandalf's teachings were the only source of morality and therefore it was necessary to follow them, or that belief in Gandalf didn't really hurt anyone so worry about whether there's any evidence, and so on, well, it wouldn't take you long to start tearing your hair and screaming "YOU PEOPLE ARE CRAZY!!!" And it wouldn't be because you disliked the Ringsians or thought they stupid. It would be a natural reaction to a totally baffling and senseless situation. And that's what it's like to be an atheist. At least for me.

In completely unrelated news, I've discovered an Avril Lavigne song that I actually like. A lot. I think it's because she actually sings in it, rather then just talks over the instruments.

I am an Uber Cool Nerd God