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Petition: "Dear god, stop making bad things happen, its not funny any more."

"Yeah, stop making puppies cry."

Now, as one perspicacious commenter pointed out, one God is not enough - “Can we get a petition to stop all the other deities?” And, frankly, supposing God existed, and was omniscient, so he’d be aware of this petition, well, even then, I think he’d ignore it. He’s got better things to do.

But I like the spirit. I’m also interested in the wide variety of responses - my favourite of which is “God, please condemn the neopets team and give us a new one that listens to us.” Yes, someone has signed an online petition telling God to quit fooling around, by adding that a commercial website should fire its management. Who in their right mind thinks this will work?

Neopets is predominantly a kids’ site, so I’m being slightly unfair in this example. But there are a few people being serious - unless, of course, they’re marketing their web sites. Incidentally, tubgirl.com is so amazingly not work-safe. I mention this as a warning. It’s, frankly, not home-safe either. It’s a picture that is worse than goatse.cx, and some bastard sent it round on a mailing list I read once without warning, and I dearly wish I had never seen it.

Hmmm. I’m aware that I might be talking up these two websites, which I don’t want to do. OK. goatse.cx is a guy holding his anus open stupidly wide. tubgirl.com is a fat woman in a bath with diarrhea. If you ever decide to visit these web sites, beware what you’re letting yourself in for. I reckon short descriptions are less mentally damaging than actually seeing the damn thing, so caveat emptor, as it were.

On a related topic, Andrew Ducker, whose livejournal Cleodhna has been reading for quite a while, posts a link to the TGE project’s list of arguments (TGE stands for “Therefore God Exists”, which is the last line in pretty much all of the arguments they present on the page). There are currently 519 arguments on the list, with more being added regularly, I believe. Now, Andrew has already cited a few; I’d like to add my own personal favourites:

16. ARGUMENT FROM INTIMIDATION

(1) See this bonfire?
(2) Therefore, God exists.

44. CALVINISTIC ARGUMENT

(1) If God exists, then he will let me watch you be tortured forever.
(2) I rather like that idea.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

113. ARGUMENT FROM PREFERRED ANCESTRY

  1. I don’t want to be related to monkeys.
  2. Therefore, God exists.

122. ARGUMENT FROM CATCHPHRASE

  1. There are no atheists in foxholes.
  2. [atheist points to some atheists in foxholes]
  3. They don’t count.
  4. Therefore, God exists.

159. ARGUMENT FROM STUPIDITY

  1. God is too stupid to do anything about the horrendous evil and suffering in the world.
  2. God made man in his image.
  3. I am stupid.
  4. Therefore, God exists.

166. ARGUMENT FROM CUTENESS

  1. Cuteness is not an evolutionary advantage.
  2. But bunnies are cute.
  3. Therefore, God exists

29, 174, 175, 192 and many others are good as well.

I particularly like their FAQ’s straightfaced claims that the list of arguments is a serious attempt to catalogue arguments made for God’s existence, with the resulting list intended as a useful knowledge base for Christians and atheists alike. Especially their argument of “if this was an atheist site, why aren’t there any atheist arguments on the site, huh? Answer me that”.