Comments on: An Atheist, Post-Death, Meets God

By: John Shore

John Shore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:52:43 +0000

Done here. Thanks, guys. Comments closed.

By: Mike (FVThinker) Bur

Mike (FVThinker) Bur — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:48:59 +0000

Leo,

"Man-up" would be sexist, not homophobic. I recognized that as I was writing it, but a similarly effective, gender-neutral phrase doesn't exist. It was our host that first introduced "bulls**t" [without asterisks] to these pages. And you seem continue to make my point by saying that evolution is bulls**t with " 'bulls**t' Ha! part of evolution, I guess. " (I think I got the quotes right)

By: John Shore

John Shore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:46:13 +0000

For $12 I'll send you an autographed and inscribed copy of "Comma Sense: A FUNdamental Guide to Punctuation." Fun for the whole family!

No, but one reason you never read in the blog comments anything like "Katrina is God's punishment for homosexuality," or whatever, is because I delete that kind of nonsense the moment I see it.

By: Mike (FVThinker) Bur

Mike (FVThinker) Bur — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:40:42 +0000

Thanks. Duly noted. It is good to learn stuff.

By: John Shore

John Shore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:38:13 +0000

Then all you need is commas separating the phrases: "Some people think that ballet is boring, flies are fun, and dogs should learn to play Scrabble." Simple. What you don't want to do is use quote marks if you're not actually quoting someone. If you write this: Some people think "ballet is boring."—then it's assumed you're quoting someone who actually said or wrote, "Ballet is boring." And you use single quote marks for a quote within a quote: Bill said, "And that's when she said to him, 'Dogs playing Scrabble? Are you insane?' God, I love that woman."

By: Mike (FVThinker) Bur

Mike (FVThinker) Bur — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:28:44 +0000

I would be happy to find a better vehicle to accomplish my goal if single quotes are not the way to do it. Who better to show me than you. I want to, in a single sentence, demonstrate three phrases. Those phrases would be single objects within the sentence and cannot be misconstrued as a single stream of words.

By: John Shore

John Shore — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:05:07 +0000

Mike: I don't know where you learned the usage rules for quotation marks, but yowzer, what you've said about them is wrong. "I used single quotes simple to delineate multiple phrases in a single sentence" is just …. wow. Brain Fail.

And, again: do you really think it helps your ongoing endeavor to appear imminently rational to argue a point someone made over three weeks ago in an entirely different post—and then make it clear they didn't actually say the thing you're complaining about?

I'm so torn between allowing you to continue to bury yourself, and shutting down this comment thread because it's so uncomfortable to watch.

By: Leonardo

Leonardo — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:17:16 +0000

Dear Mike: I said nothing about Katrina. Really need to take me out of context. C'mon, you have more than that!!!!.

By: Leonardo

Leonardo — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:13:37 +0000

sorry: He said he liked deep thoughts

By: Mike (FVThinker) Bur

Mike (FVThinker) Bur — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:12:58 +0000

I said: "spout off with stupid stuff like “We have earthquakes as the aftermath of the ‘great deluge’. or ‘Katrina is God’s retribution homosexuality.’ or ‘Evolution is a theory in crisis.’” Of course these things were said. Leonardo talks about the great flood/deluge on Oct 20th on http://johnshore.com/2009/10/19/blame-god-or-look.... There has been disparagement of evolutionary theory scattered here and there on these pages. I don't recall if anyone here specifically referred to Katrina (Leonardo vaguely attributed these 'natural evils' to God's retribution). Notice, though, that I prefaced it with like and I used single quotes simple to delineate multiple phrases in a single sentence. Unfortunately Wordpress does not support searching comments to aid in my citation search. FYI: It looks like Wordpress does have some optional plugin that would extent the search, but I don't know if that would be for everyone or just the blog owner.