Oh, how far we've come

It's not superstition if you use different words.

I think Sam's idea would make a great translator website. The Ghetto Translator, for example, lets you enter any URL to see that website's text conveniently transformed into hip-hop.

A Religion Translator site could let you turn any religious page on the web into another religion. Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees could surf the web confident that every reference to "God" would be changed to the creature we all know is the real supreme being. Beliefnet would suddenly be interesting for five minutes.

The stupidity of any article by an oh-so-thoughtful "moderate" Christian could be quickly revealed by seeing how well it reads when alternate concepts are substituted in the Religion Translator. Casual references to "God" that a writer makes as if we all agree that God exists (or is at least a non-silly idea) would be revealed as the thoughtless dribbles they are.

Hmm...if this ridicule automator were to gain a high enough profile (comparable to, say, the Blasphemy Challenge), people who write about religion regularly on the web would know that their own writing would eventually be put through it by someone, such as a blogger who delights in mocking lazy thinkers. Could that dread cause these writers to think as they write?

Probably too much to hope for. But I think it would be a fun widget. There could even be a function to email the results to the author with the subject header "Please explain why your original makes sense but this version does not." In fact, maybe a sense of challenge or outright hostility should be part of it. Call it The Stupid Test. "So-and-so has written a new article about the benefits of religion. Obviously the first thing we need to do with this article is to run it through The Stupid Test at thestupidtest.com to see how it reads without Christian blinders on..."