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Originally Posted by Buffy
Everything that's "rationally supportable" is not necessarily a good idea, dear!
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Now why would that be? The truth may hurt, but shying away from it achieves absolutely nothing. Is atheism the truth? Is religion the truth? That's what it boils down to in the original post, and the zest with which opponents will defend their particular opinions, which might constitute the propensity towards trollishness we've been invited to discuss here.
My point is that an atheist might defend his position by merely saying "There is no God. You make the claim, you bring the proof." Not like GAHD said because they have a love for always being right.
A follower of any kind of religion will have to convince you with unsupportable notions of the supernatural. And there are so many different interpretations, each one of them being seen as perfectly valid by any particular believer, that they will have to go on and on in elaborately worded posts in various forms to defend their own individual take on matters. See my point in the previous post about "envy" regarding the supernatural.
Fact is, this thread is about whether believers or atheists are more prone to trolling, and the nature of the matter leads me to believe that religious folks would be more prone. Considering only atheists on the one side and just Christians on the other side (forget about all other religions for a second), you already have Protestants, Catholics, Coptics, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists etc. on the one side, each one of which is split into millions of different viewpoints as each and every individual has his own personal take on the matter. I used to be a Dutch Reformed - in dry spells, half the congregation prayed for rain, the other half considered it poppycock; drought is, after all, God's will. Yet, they profess to be one united church. If there's a billion Christians on Earth, you have a billion individual takes on the matter; a billion different images of God, a billion different opinions regarding religious morality, a billion different takes on all matters Christian. If, opposed to this billion Christians, you have a billion atheists, you have one single opinion regarding the matter from the opposing side.
Who will be more prone to trolling? 1 billion vs. 1? You do the math.
Quote:
My definition of a troll is any post that is intended to incite conflict, so folks that don't know you as well as I do B, might have a rationally supportable argument that it's a trollish post! 
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Good thing the entire concept of a "Troll" is totally subjective, innit?
You define it, and I'll tell you who's the bigger troll.
But in my mind, it's kinda like porn. You'll know it when you see it. We might not agree to what is porn or not, heck - maybe a brace of freshly plucked chickens turns you on, the sight of which will be hugely erotic and entirely pornographic as far as you're concerned, whilst I may just whip out my recipe book in the same circumstances.
As far as I'm concerned, a post which is supportable via rational and empirical means is not trollish. Those who don't agree to the post because it might leave them in doubt as to their own convictions, and expose the bedrock of their religious foundation to be built with so much mud, might see it as a trollish post, but for all the wrong reasons.
Especially at a Science Site.
Which brings the whole scenario back to our frame of reference. At a Christian site, the biggest trollers would be atheists. At an atheist site, the Christians would be the biggest trolls. So what you should do, since I'm banging on about empiricism, is to take
x amount of Science sites, and count the amount of trollish posts as a percentage, and compare it to
x amount of troll posts at a Christian site. Compare the percentages, and viola - you'll see who the biggest trolls are. All about context, you see.
But that brings me, once again, back to my original point about religious envy, and the evangelical mission that all good christians are supposed to be on: They have to spread the word. A good atheist will spread the word if and when he bothers to do it. A good Christian
must spread the Word of God - it's a holy command from the Big Man hisself. Which, of course, means that trolling Christians have a much bigger incentive for trolling atheist sites than vise versa. Atheists will rarely visit Christian sites, because they're not on a mission to "save souls", as the Christians are.
So, once again, referring to the original post asking who the bigger troll would be, I'd have to stick to my opinion that the religious folks would win hands down.
