Well, that was sure a nice two months....

The resident objectivist weirdo has returned to the FilmScoreMonthly message boards, as is his wont -- he goes away for a month or two, and then returns for a spate of posting in which he acts deliberately confrontational in a bizarre rite of self-validation or something. Anyway, in a thread devoted to the passing of Pope John Paul II, one particularly annoying poster weighs in thusly:

I know I'm gonna get rapped in the outh for this but:

DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THERE IS A GOD?

Come on for Pete's sake, what on Earth gives you faith in this out dated premise?

The Pope was a man, just as you or I are. That's all we can ever be. He is not with God, just as all his life, God was not with him.

(Keep in mind that a fairly rigidly-enforced rule on the FSM boards is that even in the off-topic forum, discussion of politics and religion is forbidden. Expressing sympathy or mourning for the Pope is OK by the rules, discussing or attacking the Catholic faith is not.)

Now, that's enough of a rude slap in the face to begin with, but luckily for us, Our Objectivist Hero is not to be outdone:

Not from me. Beyond what you wrote, religionists such as the Pope stand for self-sacrifice and earthly suffering. That they do so based on faith [literally non-sense] is profane--and exposes them as moral charlatans.

Yet another example of why I refuse to truck with Objectivists -- with one notable exception, every single Objectivist I have ever encountered thinks nothing of behaving like this. They've got all the answers, and by gum they're going to offer those answers without regard for anything so prosaic as simple manners. Just change their Holy Book from Atlas Shrugged to a Bible, and they're almost like Jehovah's Witnesses.