Hate Mail/NormalBobSmith.com

Here is a fan mail from Nick regarding
The Alexandra Files
(Hate Mail page 32)

The picture is my own touch.

Hello NBS,

I was reading through your latest updates on your hatemail page, as I have gotten into the habit of looking for new updates. The series of emails from (and to) Alexandra are probably the most revealing of all the hatemail you get (or so I think). Instead of the angry bluster and "You stinking heathen!" rhetoric found in so many of the letters on your hatemail page, this contained what seemed to be the reaction of someone whose beliefs were genuinely prodded by the material on your page. I find it fascinating to see also after the first email (which was essentially a defense against anything she expected you might say in return) the rest was the pure, distillate fear-reaction that I have now come to expect when either the very devout, or the very young have religious beliefs challenged.

I have a tendency to be long winded, and damned if I am going to fight that tendency now, so here it goes. There is a lot of research to indicate that there is a neruobiological basis for belief in god. Coupled with that underlying effect or drive, comes so much of what you clearly explain in various parts of your site, "People want presents, who the heck would want to die when they could go to heaven," and my personal favorite, "people can be small-minded cretins." When these two meet, it always seems to produce the same set of reactions, regardless of religion, culture or sex.

1.) Explosive denial coupled with an Ad Homonym attack.
2.) Establishing one way or the other that the rest of the discussion takes place with the premise that everything said in the Bible/Coran/Torah/Bagavahd Gita/etc.... is true, and akin to arguing against gravity while a person drops lead bricks in front of you.
3.) Escalation of the mood or tenor of the argument regardless of your [my anyone's] response.
4.) Either dogged determination to, "NOT STOP UNTIL YOU BELIEVE!!!" or "Fuck you, I'm outta here" effect.

Let me just clarify something. I think when you simply tread on someone's toes around religion, the standard response is just anger [circa Greek letters], but when on some level the person's constructive basis for belief is attacked, exposing the fact that it is little more than custom and natural drive that forms the basis for their lifestyle, they enter into the aforementioned stages. As I said in my previous fan mail, I am an atheist, and there was a time when I thought that "everyone could be saved" from religion! Boy did I learn the hard way. People want to be saved from religion about as much as people want to be saved by atheism. In fact, it seems that a lot of the things that make "born again's" can make "sudden atheists" and that both have little to base their beliefs on besides human reaction.

Other than the side-splitting humour that pervades your site, the refreshing thing about coming to it, is that you have not formed some gut reaction against religion, but rather, you clearly understand and express why you don't believe. Thankfully you don't reiterate the basis for your beliefs endlessly, you have fun, make jokes, and respond to idiots with panache and nimble wit. But there is more there than that. I do not think you could engender the responses you get from (generally Christian) people if you did not have that reasoned, and therefore threatening, quality.

When people like Alexandra right in, there is part of me that just wants to scream and rage that if they could just apply some of their statements to themselves they would not have to ask such incredibly dense questions, or preach like they were something other than graduates of trade schools. There is another part of me though, and this is the part that I credit with keeping me sane (enough not take up manhunting as a hobby) is the part which tries to look somewhat dispassionately at what people say, and figure out how, how, HOW can they possibly be so stupid, so blind, or so hideously close minded. I like to think that not only do I get a stroke from laughing so hard at your site, but also some insight into the character and nature of the twits (sorry I mean people) who write in the hatemail. Or maybe not, maybe I am just going on about nothing. I don't know or care. I hope you respond to this email because I would appreciate your thoughts (be they of any tenor) on my disorganized ramblings.

Thanks for the great site!!!
Nick from M.A.