It seems religious fundamentalists are incapable of grasping irony.

We expected to get a response from one of the two opposing views that seem to watch our website on a daily basis. Sure enough, the owner of the MM website came through and stated his faulty opinion.

We are not going to address his opinion except for one part. The rest of it is not worth discussing all it does is prove our point about tattoos correct. We did like one thing that owner said. He called us a religious fundie which we thought was quite funny.

I think the fundie is quite funny. His willingness to disregard, without explanation, numerous arguments, is rather typical of the fundie. He proclaims himself correct, with great, yet unjustified arrogance, and without the curtesy of an explanation. How typical.

But the point we want to address comes at the end of his ‘rebuttal’.

yet as is typical of the fundie, their selfish desire to force their position upon others,(source)

There are a couple of main meanings to the word force and it is the second one in the dictionary, the one that we will use, that applies the correct definition to this term as used by the owner of the MM website.

To compel; to constrain to do or to forbear, by the exertion of a power not resistible. Men are forced to submit to conquerors.

Webster, N. (2006). In Noah Webster’s first edition of An American dictionary of the English language. Foundation for American Christian Education.

We looked at what we wrote again and found nothing in our words that would bring any person to the conclusion that we were looking to ‘force’ unbelievers to follow God’s ways and instructions. Especially in the area of getting a tattoo.

We simply stated what God has said about the topic and left it up to people’s choices. We did not advocate for laws banning tattoos, we merely explained that they offer nothing constructive to the world, which they don’t.

Please. The fundie plays a lot of semantic games to make it look like he does not desire to force his views upon others, yet the mission statement of organised religion is all around forcing positions upon others! The fundie desires a world where the LGBT community does not exist, where girls as young as 11 should be expected to risk their lives to have babies (because the fundie doesn’t think the 11 year-old is really a human of note), and he misleadingly pontificates that Christians should not get tattoos, even though the New Testament does not actually have anything to say on the matter.

He should also note that I said he desires to force his views upon others, and I have no reason to conclude otherwise. This applies whether he is discussing how non-believers should behave, or how other Christians should behave. The fundie has long ranted at how the secular world is trying to selfishly force its views upon others, yet he has long had things backwards. The secular world is not trying to re-write laws so that women and girls are denied life-saving procedures. The secular world is not trying to restrict who can get married (and the secular world is not trying to falsely define marriage as a religious institution, because guess what fundie? It’s not a religious institution).

Nor does it change the fact that abortion is murder and that stopping those that disagree with this position is NOT forcing one’s religious views on another person who disagrees with the religious person.

Emphasis mine. This is the very definition of forcing someone into an action that you do not agree with! The fundie openly admits it here! It has been explained to the fundie, over and over and over again, that where abortion is legal, abortion rates go down. It has been explained, complete with links and evidence, that pregnancy and childbirth are the greatest killers of teenage girls. The fundie needs to stop lying to himself and to others with his faux pro-life arguments, and look at the actual facts. Sadly, I do not believe him capable of doing so.

Is it even worth continuing to engage with him at this point? Facts, logic and reason are irrelevant to him. There is no benefit to these conversations, for he has made it plain he will ignore huge chunks of rebuttals, for flimsy reasons. Perhaps it is time to do what I keep telling myself to do, and walk away.