Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mobius on September 03, 2010, 12:41:22 pm
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YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheThinkingAtheist)
Website (http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/)
Interesting channel and interesting website, they have a long list of Bible-related oddities there. I think they should focus more on the New Testament, however. Do you guys know TTA?
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I was always more of a thunderf00t fan
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Meh. Preachy atheists are no better than preachy theists.
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yeah, but they're funny sometimes.
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Don't they know that the bible's first page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1-A209boQ) has been found? No need for that site anymore.
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99 percent of all debates are obsolete. Period (for real). (well, I'm drunk right now, but thats the f****** truth).
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I prefer invisible pink elephants.
And teapots in orbit around Jupiter.
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Flying Speghetti Monster all the way!
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This is why I'm a Deist. :P
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/me is irreligious.
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It is highly probable that we live in a simulation.
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It is highly probable that we live in a simulation.
Going on within a simulation, of a simulation.
Anything beyond what we can comprehend or prove is basically balderdash, until we can comprehend or prove it.
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/me is highly religious, worship many things. Worships female electric fractaly entity often encountered within hyperspace~
* watsisname also enjoys worship of the sun, bacon, beer, cats, ORANGE CHICKEN, marbles, teapots in space, cyclonic systems, dreamstate-inducing compounds, BACON, mashy topatoes and stuffing :3
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I was always more of a thunderf00t fan
I've unsubbed him since he went out and broadly attacked Muslims in his videos.
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I was always more of a thunderf00t fan
I've unsubbed him since he went out and broadly attacked Muslims in his videos.
You mean when he jumped on the Fox News "no mega mosque on ground zero" train? I'm still subscribed, but I am really having a hard time taking anything he says seriously at this point. Same with Pat Condell.
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man broadly attacks Christianity: awesome
man broadly attacks Islam: disgusting
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man broadly attacks Christianity: awesome
man broadly attacks Islam: disgusting
It's not that there is a double standard. Thunderf00t used to attack specific Christians that made specific claims. He used to respond to their assertions with scientific explanations. Now, he generalizes all Muslims and says that they are all extreme.
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if by 'specific Christians' you mean creationist's that's a fairly substantial subset, and I think he's been fairly consistent on being critical of the faithful.
now I challenge you to find a specific sentence he has said that says all Muslims are extremist. give me a video and a starting/ending time.
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man broadly attacks Christianity: awesome
man broadly attacks Islam: disgusting
Try The west attacks Christianity... its all ok because most western countries are still officially Christian of one flavour or another
The west attacks muslims... its no ok because most western countries are still officially Christian of one flavour or another
/me goes off on a rant frequently often using phrases like politically correctness and bull poop
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if by 'specific Christians' you mean creationist's that's a fairly substantial subset, and I think he's been fairly consistent on being critical of the faithful.
now I challenge you to find a specific sentence he has said that says all Muslims are extremist. give me a video and a starting/ending time.
Just watch his most recent video. He says that Muslims shouldn't (but does note that they have the right to) be able to build the cultural center because non-Muslims are forbidden from entering Mecca. He then uses this as a broad spectrum argument claiming religious intolerance across the board.
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well, first off, "because non-Muslims are forbidden from entering Mecca the cultural center should not be allowed to be built" was NOT his thesis, in fact "not be allowed to be built" is specifically refuted several times directly, this is a common misrepresentation of his position. what he was saying is that "if you consider yourself a member of a religion that will not allow someone of a wrong faith to enter a city, then you are not in a position to be talking down to anyone on the subject of tolerance." no, he is very specific, he is saying those who pray to that city are the ones who don't have the moral position to be lecturing on tolerance. now you might say, "the vast majority of Muslims do that, it's effectively all of them" well the vast majority of Christians are to some extent creationist.
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I am thoroughly convinced Theism needs to die out (amongst other things) for our species to truly move forward.
Attacking faiths you are familiar with is reasonable if you see logical fallacies in them and can explain them coherently and without insulting the people of that religion (*I say hypocritically because that's not really how I go about religious people who are being preachy these days).
Attacking faiths you are not familiar with is dangerous, because it's much easier to fall victim to their brainwash/word twisting psychobable, it's also easier to make mistakes, as well as insulting the people of that religion.
As far as I know this guy walks a line reasonably enough, and while I admire him 'fighting the good fight', you simply can't beat off other peoples ignorance, stupidity and indoctrination with a few words, especially not 'general' ones.
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well, first off, "because non-Muslims are forbidden from entering Mecca the cultural center should not be allowed to be built" was NOT his thesis, in fact "not be allowed to be built" is specifically refuted several times directly, this is a common misrepresentation of his position. what he was saying is that "if you consider yourself a member of a religion that will not allow someone of a wrong faith to enter a city, then you are not in a position to be talking down to anyone on the subject of tolerance." no, he is very specific, he is saying those who pray to that city are the ones who don't have the moral position to be lecturing on tolerance. now you might say, "the vast majority of Muslims do that, it's effectively all of them" well the vast majority of Christians are to some extent creationist.
So basically, you're saying
IF you support rejections of any Non-Muslims from the city, THEN you're intolerant and not in a position to decry intolerance.
IF you pray towards Mecca, THEN you support the rejections of any Non-Muslims from the city.
chain rule allows us to say that your argument is
IF You pray towards Mecca, THEN you're intolerant and not in a position to decry intolerance.
You assume that *ALL* Muslims support the rejection of Non-Muslims from Mecca. Here we are again with the generalizations.
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who said I assume that, I merely considered what you might respond with, if YOU don't have that assumption then my last line there is voided.
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well, first off, "because non-Muslims are forbidden from entering Mecca the cultural center should not be allowed to be built" was NOT his thesis, in fact "not be allowed to be built" is specifically refuted several times directly, this is a common misrepresentation of his position. what he was saying is that "if you consider yourself a member of a religion that will not allow someone of a wrong faith to enter a city, then you are not in a position to be talking down to anyone on the subject of tolerance." no, he is very specific, he is saying those who pray to that city are the ones who don't have the moral position to be lecturing on tolerance. now you might say, "the vast majority of Muslims do that, it's effectively all of them" well the vast majority of Christians are to some extent creationist.
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"if you consider yourself"
is the key part of that which you seem to be missing.
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The entire argument is specious anyway.
If you start arguing that we should give people rights based on their actions the whole concepts of rights falls apart. Similarly if you start arguing that people should only be able to claim their right based on what rights they believe others should have then you very quickly end up with system where no one can claim their rights.
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So ... what's the concept of rights? :confused:
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So ... what's the concept of rights? :confused:
I hereby refer you to the last 600 years or so of western philosophical debate. :p Good luck!
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kara's post wasn't very clear on his point, but one thing was clear, he as many MANY before him is talking about rights, when this has never been the issue, no mater how badly he or many other people might be trying to stawman it into that.
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well the vast majority of Christians are to some extent creationist.
This is so wrong I don't even know where to start. First of all, creationists are mostly based in the US of A - that's not where the majority of Christians live. Sure, there are creationists elsewhere in the world but their numbers are very few compared to the states. Secondly, they're hardly a majority in the US either.
But I guess you know that so I'm going to assume that you're saying since they believe in the bible they're to some extent creationists - that is just utterly wrong. The vast majority of Christians don't see the bible and the theory of evolution clashing - it's rather a common practice to regard the bible as a metaphor, not taking it literally. Those that do take it literally tend to be recruited from the shallow end of the gene pool - they usually pick a bible segment that they like, stick to that like glue and ignore the rest; this kind usually ends up as sect members and/or creationists. Those people, thankfully, aren't in the majority.
What I can say is that the vast majority of Christians would probably find your statement insulting :)
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most Christians don't believe that in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth?
I live in the USA, so maybe I have a biased experience.
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Actually, he might not be that wrong, it's quite hard to define since the term 'christian' has changed in the last 50~ years.
I *HATE* the whole "bible as a metaphor" thing, because it's just an excuse to pick and choose from the bits of the bible that you like and ignore the rest.
If you view the bible in this way I don't understand how you could possibly call the bible "The Truth", or accept any part of it as actually not being a fairy story.
And I can't really speak for non-Brits confidently but I'd like to believe most of them(Brits) aren't stupid enough to ignore evolution, we're a bit more advanced than that (as a culture).
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I'm fairly sure most Christians hold at the very least that God started the universe and 'guided' evolution, I doubt most Christians truly accept we came into our current form via a constant hostile competitive environment selecting the most successful out of a randomly changing population.
I consider that to be a form of creationism.
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I'm just saying, most Christians (I sincerely hope) don't really believe that God created everything in 6 days, that woman was created from Adam's rib, that Noa built a ship that was big enough and had proper facilities to house a pair of every non-aquatic species on the planet (let's ignore the fact that a pair of a species isn't enough to repopulate it..), etc.. Intelligent people just can't take that sort of thing literally. It's not an excuse to pick and choose which segments to want, it's a way of looking at the whole thing. We should have grown past this sort of thing anyway but I guess we're slow.
I met a lot of Christians, albeit here and not in the US, and none of them had a problem with the theory of evolution. And yes, all of them believed exactly that, as you say, we came to this form "via a constant hostile competitive environment selecting the most successful out of a randomly changing population".
This doesn't stop them from going to church on Sundays though. You can attribute that to most people not really being fanatical about religion. They were brought up in a certain spirit so they go to church; they accept the basic moral values that stem from Christianity but don't take the bible literally. And it's a good thing, too. Taking any religion completely literally is a form of fanaticism. And we all know where that leads.
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I was pretty shocked when I found out too.
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If those aren't real one would also suggest nor is the whole christ bit, or the moses bit, etc.
If it's all metaphor then it should simply be regarded as philosophy and not 'religion', but - it is.
The reason it's called religion is because it's an attempt to define the undefinable and give rise to the concept of a greater existence when there most likely is none, and instead of being any form of historical accounts you wish to tell me these 'more intelligent than bible literal' people, wish to face down the light of science with metaphors?
Honestly, if you're intelligent enough to decide god didn't make the world in 6 days you're intelligent enough to realise that the likelihood of god actually existing in the form the christian bible depicts is practically zero.
Creationism _is_ very strong amongst the indoctrinated, even here in England, one of the most scientific nations in the world you occasionally get people laugh ignorantly and suggest we never evolved from monkeys, and even some go on to taunt you about being a monkey.
Honestly? The entire subject is retarded.
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I actually remember almost weeping for humanity when it finally dawned upon me how utterly pervasive it was, and the only reason that I hadn't figured it out up to that point was a combination of me assuming that no one believed it and me not associating with the strongly religious. it was a sickening sensation of loss. you see the key thing to remember is that most people don't actualy care, and just accept the first explanation that seems somewhat passable.
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This is why I started that thread, once... about "if you don't believe in such-and-such, cut it out of your Bible".
And then, optionally, get in fights-to-the-death with as many people with slightly different versions of it as possible. But not atheists... I prefer to live.
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I actually remember almost weeping for humanity when it finally dawned upon me how utterly pervasive it was, and the only reason that I hadn't figured it out up to that point was a combination of me assuming that no one believed it and me not associating with the strongly religious. it was a sickening sensation of loss. you see the key thing to remember is that most people don't actualy care, and just accept the first explanation that seems somewhat passable.
Yea, I think I'm going to spend the rest of my days in denial about that :)
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haha.. I'm in the next stage of that, anger, it genuinely frustrates me how people can be so.... .....ugh.
How many human hours, how many precious thoughts and brilliant potentials have been wasted on/by the premise of religion?
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and to refute the "it's just like that in The States" argument.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/01/evolution-darwin-survey-creationism
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6889918.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222923/One-Britons-say-children-taught-creationism-science-classes.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4410927/Poll-reveals-public-doubts-over-Charles-Darwins-theory-of-evolution.html
I forget which news papers are good and bad in the UK, so I just grabbed a bunch of them hoping one of them was reputable, if I failed please tell me.
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I'm in the next stage of that, anger
soon you'll be promising to be a good person from now on, if only people will just accept that the earth did not just voip into existence 600 years ago. you'll never pig out on poky again
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indeed!
The times and the Telegraph are 'okay' out of those four, the other two are your typical tabloids, though I always felt the telegraph was our countries equivalent to fox news, and the times has slowly been heading that way too.
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How many human hours, how many precious thoughts and brilliant potentials have been wasted on/by the premise of religion?
You'll probably waste more time trying to figure that out, that's for sure. :P
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indeed!
The times and the Telegraph are 'okay' out of those four, the other two are your typical tabloids, though I always felt the telegraph was our countries equivalent to fox news, and the times has slowly been heading that way too.
I can't imagine anything being as obnoxious as Fox News, unless The Onion took itself seriously.
This is why I'm Deist. Remarkably enough, I was raised Christian and when I told my family that I was more agnostic, they though "Oh, it's just a phase. He'll grow out of it and turn back to the Church." Then when I mentioned to my family that after much introspection, reading, and soul searching, that Deism coincided with my beliefs more than Christianity did, many members disowned me and most of those that didn't look down on me. But hey, God is love, right?
I can count on one hand the number of Christians I have met in my life that actually act like Christ and practice the spirit of love they preach.
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I have never met your family and I already hate them :P
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indeed!
The times and the Telegraph are 'okay' out of those four, the other two are your typical tabloids, though I always felt the telegraph was our countries equivalent to fox news, and the times has slowly been heading that way too.
Eh? I'll admit I've been out of the country a lot recently but when did The Guardian turn into a tabloid? :p
kara's post wasn't very clear on his point, but one thing was clear, he as many MANY before him is talking about rights, when this has never been the issue, no mater how badly he or many other people might be trying to stawman it into that.
You've missed the point completely then.
If you are trying to say "Because you do A, you shouldn't do B" you can quickly find an example of A for almost any person or group of people that gives you an excuse to say that they shouldn't do B.
And that's why it's a specious argument. You're trying to defend the claim that because Islam doesn't allow people into Mecca then no Muslim has the right to complain about the lack of tolerance over the Ground Zero mosque nonsense. But the simple fact is that I could easily make that into an argument about anything you want to do.
You consider yourself an American so......
You consider yourself a Libertarian so......
You consider yourself a Freespace fan so.......
It's a silly method of arguing, especially as it requires a generalisation about people's beliefs. How do you know that those Muslims do have an issue with people being allowed into Mecca? Maybe they wouldn't mind it. You simply do not know but have made the generalisation that since they are Muslims they are part of a religion that agrees with it and therefore must pay the price. You should see how easily I could turn that around to point out things you can't talk about simply because you are American.
I mentioned rights simply because they are analogous to the situation. Just because you do A doesn't mean you lose the right to do B. Similarly just cause the group you belong to says/believes A doesn't automatically mean you can't do B.
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saying "Because you do A, you shouldn't do B" is light eternities away from "Because you do A means you lose the right to do B".
and what was being said was "Because you do A, you have no ground to complain about them doing A". it's like Michal Jackson condemning the Catholic Church for being a pedo haven, or Bush demanding proof of something.
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saying "Because you do A, you shouldn't do B" is light eternities away from "Because you do A means you lose the right to do B".
It's analogous. Whether you lose the actual right because you don't have it or you lose it because peer pressure forces you to do nothing the result is the same, you don't do it.
and what was being said was "Because you do A, you have no ground to complain about them doing A". it's like Michal Jackson condemning the Catholic Church for being a pedo haven, or Bush demanding proof of something.
Except that they aren't the same thing. Non-entry to Mecca has been the case for centuries, America is supposedly founded on religious freedoms in a way that Saudi Arabia isn't.
Furthermore as I pointed out, you are making massive generalisations and treating all Muslims as one entity. Were someone to do the same about any other group I'm sure you'd quickly point out the mistake there.
Besides, do you therefore think that Muslims lose the right to complain not only about not being able to build a cultural centre but up to and including being excluded from New York City because non-Muslims can't enter Mecca. If not, at what point exactly do you think they do get the right to complain?
How far do you take this anyway? Should a murder be unable to complain about the death penalty? The example of Michael Jackson is actually a very interesting one. Should a man found innocent by a jury of his peers be prevented from talking about a subject related to the crime he was found not-guilty of? Seems that you think public opinion and not the rule of law should determine that.
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no, one is a person's opinion, the other is law.
being pissed at someone pissing on a grave is markedly different from forbidding them from peeing. I think saying "you have the gall to ***** about that" is something anyone should be able to say if something hypocritical is being done. intolerance is intolerance, even if you both are in the wrong, if one of you complains about it, it is still a valid criticism to point it out.
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But that's exactly the problem. The supposed intolerance on the side of the Muslims is drawn from a broad generalization that in no way reflects the opinion or attitude of any given member of the religion.
Let's take a look at a slightly different example that makes just about the same point in a more relatable way.
"A small group of white anglo-saxon males lynched a black man, some sixty years ago. That means you have no right to complain when a black person kills a white person today."
A broad generalization that may or may not be true for some small percentage of the population, but is seriously ****ed up when applied to the whole.
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being pissed at someone pissing on a grave is markedly different from forbidding them from peeing. I think saying "you have the gall to ***** about that" is something anyone should be able to say if something hypocritical is being done. intolerance is intolerance, even if you both are in the wrong, if one of you complains about it, it is still a valid criticism to point it out.
But who is being intolerant? You're generalising all Muslims based on the opinion of those Muslims in charge of Saudi Arabia. Which is rather silly given that most of the Muslims who will use that community centre are much more secular than those in charge there.
So based on the fact you are being intolerant against all Muslims by generalising them should I now argue that you should shut up too?
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Oh, come on. Much of the world is filled with Muslims. If all of them were bad, the United States would be faring a lot worse now.
I've met a fair share of Muslims during my time in school, and I know that there are a number of them who are good people.
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no I'm not talking about all Muslims, I'm only talking about the ones who think it's a good idea to construct a shrine to there religion in a plot that had a building damaged to the point of being abandoned by followers of that religion.
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Shrine? I was under the impression it was more like a YMCA
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with a prayer room.
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no I'm not talking about all Muslims, I'm only talking about the ones who think it's a good idea to construct a shrine to there religion in a plot that had a building damaged to the point of being abandoned by followers of that religion.
Wat.
You reference the Islamic community as a whole when you bring up the refusal to let non-Muslims into Mecca, which may or may not be the attitude of those building the community center. You're generalizing either way, and it's still wrong.
And that's also like saying that Christians shouldn't be able to build community centers in Oklahoma City because a follower of Christianity did much the same thing there with a car bomb as the 9/11 terrorists did with planes.
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no that is a moronic comparison, because Oklahoma City is like 95% Christian, try to come up with an example where a minority attacked a majority please cause otherwise you are just throwing out nonsense.
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Southern slave revolts. BAN PREDOMINANTLY BLACK CHURCHES IN THE SOUTH.
Oh yeah, and weren't white people a minority in North America when we started with the raping and the pillaging and the murdering of the natives? BAN ALL THE CHURCHES.
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Majority/minority matters for ****. It should change absolutely nothing. The fact that it apparently does for you is a frightening prospect.
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Well, you can punish a minority for the actions of a minority of the minority. It isn't feasible to do the same for the majority. MOB RULE YEAH.
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no, it is very much central to what is happening and the stark differences between how the two events played out, if you don't care to understand that's fine but you shouldn't be talking about it if you don't care.
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So, are we allowed to build churches (or some kind of American military base or embassy) in Iraq? Didn't we kill an order of magnitude more Iraqis than Al-Quaida has killed Americans? I'm pretty sure we're the minority over there.
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BAN ALL THE CHURCHES.
I could live with that :p
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no that is a moronic comparison, because Oklahoma City is like 95% Christian, try to come up with an example where a minority attacked a majority please cause otherwise you are just throwing out nonsense.
That seems totally spurious to me. Why does it matter who the attackers and victims were? It's okay for white people to kill white people but not okay for brown people to kill white people? The brown people should be punished disproportionately?
And before you say that you're talking Christians and Muslims, not white and brown people, it's the same majority/minority relationship.
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So, are we allowed to build churches (or some kind of American military base or embassy) in Iraq? Didn't we kill an order of magnitude more Iraqis than Al-Quaida has killed Americans? I'm pretty sure we're the minority over there.
that is a much better example, thank you.
I would say if a bunch of American Christians started building a Church in Iraq, or if Some American developer started building something I could totally see that brewing hostility. an embassy is a place for official government interaction, so it has a legitimate purpose, never the less I totally understand why it is often the focal point of attacks.
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not okay for brown people to kill brown people?
not sure where you are getting that from.
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not okay for brown people to kill brown people?
not sure where you are getting that from.
Sorry, fixed.
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ah, ok, brown people killing white people is just as bad as white people killing brown people.
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no that is a moronic comparison, because Oklahoma City is like 95% Christian, try to come up with an example where a minority attacked a majority please cause otherwise you are just throwing out nonsense.
Try this one on for size. Casualty statistics, there were 2,977 victims of 9/11. Ever taken a look at the estimates for Iraqis killed during the war? Most conservative estimates ball park it at least 90,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War). Do you feel like you should be forced to personally take the blame for that? I mean your an American, you're part of the group responsible. It's quite reasonable that you should be held accountable for that tragedy and be forced to cough up you're rights as restitution. Its obvious that all Americans are should be ostracized and be treated like savages, Hell they burn other culture's religious books. Have you ever looked at some of the things in their Holy Bible? Its barbaric! Filled with stuff like homosexuality being an abomination, legal slavery, stoning people to death. It's quite obvious their religion is daemonic.
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ah, ok, brown people killing white people is just as bad as white people killing brown people.
That's not what I asked. You're postulating that brown people killing white people is worse than white people killing white people. Why?
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no I'm not talking about all Muslims, I'm only talking about the ones who think it's a good idea to construct a shrine to there religion in a plot that had a building damaged to the point of being abandoned by followers of that religion.
Except that the so called Ground Zero Mosque isn't actually at Ground Zero.
But you are actually still making generalisations here. All Muslims are to blame for the actions of the 9/11 hijackers so therefore any time any of them attempt to do something you don't like they must all shoulder the burden of those actions. They should all feel collective guilt over the actions of a few extremists who espouse completely different politics from them just because they happen to share the same religion with them (along with over a billion other people).
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ah, I was hoping someone would take that bait, the building at 51 Park Avenue was a Burlington coat factory that was severely damaged during the 9/11 attacks, a landing gear and part of the fuselage hit the roof basically rendering the building uninhabitable.
Only if they are going to do something that shows insensitivity to the subject, like building what is effectively a mosque in a plot that had a building damaged to the point of being abandoned by followers of that religion.
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Only if they are going to do something that shows insensitivity to the subject, like building what is effectively a mosque in a plot that had a building damaged to the point of being abandoned by followers of that religion.
Doesn't work for me, logically, on two levels
1) It assumes that all followers of a religion are sufficiently homogeneous or share an identity to the point where all Muslims bear collective guilt (absolutely insane)
2) It is a double standard because all Christians do not bear guilt for the actions of Eric Robert Rudolph and I doubt you'd argue they would.
Feels like dressed-up outgroup fear and outgroup homogeneity to me. These Muslims are as distinct from the attackers as any Christian on the street is from the above mentioned Rudolph. They share no responsibility or guilt.
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before making recent notariey, I probably wouldn't have thought much of members pastor Terry Jones' church but now I have a particular dislike of them.
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before making recent notariey, I probably wouldn't have thought much of members pastor Terry Jones' church but now I have a particular dislike of them.
But you don't extend that dislike to all Christians.
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Generalizations like that can be dangerous and only serve to further totally unnecessary strife between religious groups. Muslims, for example, are a very numerous group - if all of them were terrorists they'd have run out of buildings to destroy a long time ago. Not sure how to get this through to you: Islam didn't take down the WTC. Regular practitioners of Islam shouldn't be made to share collective guilt over something a small group of extremists did. Backing down from that community center would actually be a public admission of shared responsibility for the 9/11 tragedy. If they did back down, people could very well ask: "why did they back down? They must know that they're to blame. If they weren't guilty, why would they cancel such an expensive project?"
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But you don't extend that dislike to all Christians.
as i don't extend my dislike to all mosques.
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But you don't extend that dislike to all Christians.
as i don't extend my dislike to all mosques.
Yes you do. The only possible reason you have to dislike this particular mosque is because it is near Ground Zero (though no closer than any number of strip clubs, gambling parlors and other seedy ventures). If you believe that mosques in particular do not belong on Ground Zero, you do so because they are Muslim. And if you believe that Muslim temples in particular do not belong on Ground Zero, it is because you believe Muslims are somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
They are not, any more than Christians are responsible for the Westboro Baptist Church.
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thanks for telling me what I think.
"it is because you believe Muslims are somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks."
where could I have gotten that idea from?
"Christians are responsible for the Westboro Baptist Church protests."
fixed that for you, and yeah, I would agree with that statement.
if a Christian center was built near the site of the Matthew Shepard murder, I would be calling bull**** too.
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But you don't extend that dislike to all Christians.
as i don't extend my dislike to all mosques.
:doubt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29
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Then that makes your positions internally consistent but even more wrong. Group rights are not abrogated by the actions of subgroups. Placing collective blame on all Christians or Muslims for actions of group members is an absurdity which obligates you to protest - for example - the presence of a statue of a weeping Jesus near the Oklahoma City bombing site.
If you protest again that attacks by Christians on Christians are not the same as attacks by Muslims on Christians, a position you seem to have abandoned, you are simply returning to the notion of collective guilt.
where could I have gotten that idea from?
If you believe all Muslims are responsible for the 9/11 attacks, I don't think you're getting your ideas from very good places.
The fact is that under our legal and ethical systems, groups do not lose their rights when some member of the group carries out an unlawful act.
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Since apparently in your opinion all Muslims need to take responsibility for 9/11 are you going to take responsibility for all the deaths on non combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan?
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I will for Iraq.
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and the site of a horrible act perpetrated by/in the name of/because of a religion is the wrong place to try and extol it's virtues.
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and the site of a horrible act perpetrated by/in the name of/because of a religion is the wrong place to try and extol it's virtues.
Interesting. So why, then, is the site of a horrible act perpetrated by a group of insane schmucks in the name of a perverted geopolitically motivated fundamentalist mutation of a religion the wrong place to try and extol the actual virtues of the religion?
Seems like an ideal location for me. I'd love to have a Christians church preaching love and acceptance at the site of any hate crime carried out by Christians.
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because even if it is not the intention, it will appear to be an act of either trying to hide/delude the magnitude of it, or as an act of dominance, or both, that is the symbol people use to point out what is wrong about you and buy going there you only associate yourself with it further.
this isn't isolated to religions, I think it would be a bad idea to built a National Gaurd recruitment center in Kent State.
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What you're now arguing is that the fundamental problem is that people misunderstand what happened. They're afraid, and so they're going to treat this as some kind of 'act of dominance'.
And like your previous arguments that the struggle for gay rights should throttle back to avoid causing a backlash, it just feels misguided to me. If minority groups start knuckling under to the tyranny of the majority, not only are they just as bad off as they would be if they'd kept fighting, but we as a democracy and a civil society have given up a critical part of our own creed.
You're basically back to arguing that it's a bad idea because people won't like it.
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"it's a bad idea because people won't like it."
basically yeah.
the "we can't back down or it will make us look weak" argument is not necessarily a good position. after all why did we stay in Iraq for so long after it was obvious that we were wrong going there, that is/was one of the arguments for staying.
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If minority groups bow to majority groups ever time the majority groups exhibit displeasure, they are no better off than if they exert their rights and draw displeasure, except they lack at least the chance of improving their image and station.
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unless they incite hostility in the majority population, in which case they can go from being tolerated to being despised.
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unless they incite hostility in the majority population, in which case they can go from being tolerated to being despised.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/mlkbirm.htm)
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oh, so you mean like when the American Indians decided to resist US oppression? that worked out real well for them. no, I think slowly inching your way is more effective than trying to force the issue.
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unless they incite hostility in the majority population, in which case they can go from being tolerated to being despised.
Ceding basic rights is a line that should not be voluntarily crossed. And one of those rights is fair and equal treatment under the law.
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oh, so you mean like when the American Indians decided to resist US oppression? that worked out real well for them.
You mean in the sixties? Yeah, it did.
You're forgetting that they weren't actually citizens or anything, and as foreign nationals the situation isn't remotely comparable.