“The Saddest Words In The English Language”

"The saddest words in the English language," says Bob Hutton, are "'If only…'." And there's many would agree with him. So many, in fact, that it's something of a cliché. But Bob's extremely predictable pious prattle aside, I got to wondering where this cliché first took flight.

Well, as far as a half-hour of googling can tell, surprisingly recently. In an eighteen fifty-four poem, Maud Muller, by the wonderfully named John Greenleaf Whittier, these lines appear:

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The Delusional Hutton

For any readers who may have been wondering why I seem to have stopped my series of posts critiquing Bob Hutton's drivel, over at The Hutton Delusion blog, well, frankly, I got bored with it. There's only so many ways you can point out that the concept of prophecy is fundamentally flawed, or that citing the Bible to prove the truth of the Bible is a classic example of circular reasoning, or that if we need God to draw us in before we'll be open to belief, then God is at fault if we're not drawn in. Or, of course, that Bob's go-to argument against any point he finds too complicated to deal with—'The devil has blinded you to the truth'—is a shittier riposte than a riposte made with the Crappy Sword Of Magical Frozen Shit, during a faeces-fight in the shit-disposal facility of a diarrhoea hospital.

And then there's the fact that Bob was beginning, seemingly, to see my critiques as nothing more than free publicity; to the point where he actually had the nerve to complain when I missed a post or two. Talking of which…

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On Winning

I had an email a couple of days back from a certain evangelical personage. Apparently, he's "won," as I've been too busy to address some puerile rantings he's made on the internet. I didn't know we were engaged in a competition, but okay:

Dear fundamentalists and would-be theocrats of every stripe…

Your Christ was never in my Christmas,
I never took him out.
The Qur'an tells you to draw no pictures,
I don't need obey its strictures.
For me they hold no clout.

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A new Hutton Delusion post, in which we find that Bob is no Ian Paisley, has befouled the intertubes.
—Daz

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A reply to Bob Hutton again. I'll hopefully catch up with his latest effort over the next day or so.
—Daz

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Born again‽ No, I'm not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time.
—Dennis Miller

I'm a bit late getting to Bob's latest couple of dribblings, not having noticed he'd posted them. (My own fault. I've been having fun with Thunderbird of late, and in a tidying-up exercise, I deleted the RSS feeds of a few blogs which seem to have deceased; in the course of which I deleted Bob's by mistake.) This is in response to the first of the two, The New Birth.

I'll dispense with his preamble, and get straight into his major points…

Thus begins my critique of Hutton's last-but-one post. Read the rest at The Hutton Delusion.
—Daz

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The Hutton Delusion

Gentle Reader, I have made a Decision!

The Bob Hutton posts are taking up too much of the religion/secularism/etc content of this blog, so I've begun a new one, The Hutton Delusion, just for him. 'cause I'm nice like that. My reply to his latest post is up already, so feel free to wander over and scoff—at me, at him, or at both.
—Daz

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A Cracked Pot

Brave Sir Bobby's posted again. Ho hum.

Basically it's the same as his previous post. "Your immortal soul is more important than footie, blah-de-blah-de-blah," with some casual racism, re: Germans (mostly, to be fair, attitudes which he’s ascribing to third-parties), thrown in for good measure. I can't find much to say about it really, except to point out that I don't know anyone who, if they believe or were to believe, that souls and damnation exist, would think football more important than avoiding eternal torture. Given which, his point is, well, not very pointy.

Anyways, I said I'd match all his posts so folks, if they wish, can leave copies of comments here, which have mysteriously disappeared there. So this rather perfunctory post fulfils that promise.
—Daz

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A Watched Pot

Hutton's posted again, this time on the general theme of priorities. (Y'know, I think he may actually have been reading some of my critiques of his posts! Not comprehending, mind—that might be too much to ask, and would probably prove a god exists, by way of being an actual documented miracle in its own right.)

He begins with a little anecdote which, by coincidence, kind of ties in with a few other bits and bobs I've read, watched programmes about and talked about offline lately:

Some weeks ago I witnessed a person get very angry because a kettle had been filled up and boiled for one person. This was a "waste of money". Strictly speaking, it is slightly (very slightly) more expensive to boil a full kettle than a part one (and of course, we mustn't forget the ozone layer, must we!) but what is a few pence compared to eternity?

Forgetting the eternity question for the moment…

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Hutton On Harris

So Bob Hutton, keen to be seen to be keeping up with the times, has posted on Rolf Harris's conviction for sexual abuse of children. In this, he reminds me of the BBC's stunningly biased "Thought For The Day" strand; pick a topical story, make a few perfunctory non-religious remarks, and then tack God, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed onto it.

Anyways, first off, I'd like to point out what Bob doesn't say.

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