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Here. I am going to do exactly what you did. I have arbitrarily decided that every single person who believes in a god now has Alzheimer's disease. I'm very sorry about your condition. Just remember to write things down a lot so you don't forget them.
Umm.... how is one supposed to remember to write things down so as not to forget? I was going to make a point but I can't remember what it was ....
Something about this Orlando shooting has made something within me snap. The tolerance that theists want for themselves accomplishes little but to legitimize their mean spirited otherizing narratives about people who don't agree with them. It fosters superficially deniable dehumanization and outright hatred. It offers none of the tolerance and respect for others that they want for themselves.
Utah Lt. Governor Spencer Cox said it best:
Quote:
I am speaking now to the straight community. How did you feel when you heard that 49 people had been gunned down by a self-proclaimed terrorist? That’s the easy question. Here is the hard one: Did that feeling change when you found out the shooting was at a gay bar at 2 a.m. in the morning? If that feeling changed, then we are doing something wrong.
There we see a devout Mormon saying clearly that our consideration of others as people should be the same even if they live lives in accordance with a different set of beliefs and values. This sentiment was echoed several years ago by a ministerial intern I knew, the-now-Rev. Betsy Tabor, who said:
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It comes naturally for us to say that this is the friend, or the spouse, or the child given me to love. But imagine going through life thinking, this is the colleague, or the boss, given me to love. This is the difficult neighbor given me to love. This is the mother-in-law, or son- or daughter-in-law, given me to love. This is the indifferent gas station attendant given me to love. This is the woman talking loudly on her cell phone at the next table given me to love. This is the neighborhood watch person given me to love. Or the terrorist. Meeting the world, even with that possibility in our minds, would surely make it a better place.
These aren't instinctual responses to otherness. They are reflections of overcoming instinctual responses and rising above them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
I will go take a chill pill and probably be my old self after a brief hiatus, in deference to the handful of theists who I still respect, but good grief, if I the only one getting fed up here? Is there no one who understands that discourse can be honest, open, frank, though-provoking, paradigm-challenging, and STILL be civil??
That's the key. Deliberate ridicule is a failure of character of the person committing it, not the person who it is directed at, in all cases. There is nothing about ridicule that makes it more compelling, more righteous, or more legitimate than criticism voiced without it.
If a finite life does not matter, an eternal one can't either.
That's a distinctly non-Christian perspective, though, and that disparity explains a lot of the problem we see with Dominionism in the United States.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Yes, no matter how gently the news is delivered, the desire to shoot the messenger is usually enormous.
Yet the intention to do so from a place of respect rather than giving into a petty instinct to ridicule, is important - not just for the receive of the news but also for the deliverer of the news.
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Originally Posted by Clintone
Oh, come on! You claimed that all atheists were sociopaths!
No I didn't. As a matter of fact, I said the exact opposite.
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Originally Posted by bUU
Atheists are not sociopaths
That shows very clearly how some people simply don't care to read what they're replying to, but rather just post caustic, disrespectful replies as a matter of habit.
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Originally Posted by TroutDude
Or being loftily ignored.
Or being shown as someone who will lie about what others say just to have something to say in response.
That's a conceit. There is nothing you can ridicule that would not be better responded-to with some more direct and less petty means of disagreeing with it.
I disagree, as quite often the faculty of humor and ridicule is very powerful and useful when implemented correctly. The problem is when ridicule is used or performed in a base and non-intellectual way. The same is true of sarcasm which some people decry as "the lowest form of wit" but implemented well, it can be very intellectual and deep.
We, as a species, have the faculty of humor. I see no reason why it should not be employed when it can be done so usefully and effectively.
It brings to mind the quote where someone tried to dismiss Homosexuality as nothing but idle hands caused by boys and men who laze around all day doing nothing. Now one COULD go into the statistical analysis of whether there is any merit to this claim. And that SHOULD be done of course, as a round way to rebut it. But what was ALSO done was that a comedian simply came out with the line "Yea, that is why you never find gay men in gyms".
That was humor, sarcasm and ridicule. And EFFECTIVELY so. It cut right to the heart of just how much nonsense the original quote contained in a direct one liner that was as illuminating as it was funny.
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Originally Posted by bUU
Perhaps you can have some integrity in your participation in the forum.
Perhaps YOU can by doing things like.... you know.... not misrepresenting what people say..... and retracting and apologing for doing so when it is highlighted where you have. Then, perhaps, you can pretend to have a basis on which to admonish others on their integrity. Because without any yourself, you are running your finger through the dust in other peoples houses, without ever having cleaned your own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU
Or being shown as someone who will lie about what others say just to have something to say in response.
As I showed you to be for example? Such as the time when I said there was no difference between two things and you went on to not only claim I said there was a difference, but to say what the difference was that I had identified.
Yet I imagine it really sucks to be shown as someone who will lie about what others say just to have something to say in response. Thankfully I never have been. You however, oh well.
Last edited by Nozzferrahhtoo; 06-17-2016 at 04:54 AM..
The most effective response I had to a bully when I was a kid was to completely lose it and tell the bully exactly what a shameful, immoral miscreant he was. To my astonishment he burst into tears and fled the scene and never bothered me again. On another occasion I was being physically messed with and fought back for the first time in my life ... and again, boo-hoo and off the bully ran.
What that taught me is that they can dish it out but can't take it. It was a useful lesson.
Something about this Orlando shooting has made something within me snap. The tolerance that theists want for themselves accomplishes little but to legitimize their mean spirited otherizing narratives about people who don't agree with them. It fosters superficially deniable dehumanization and outright hatred. It offers none of the tolerance and respect for others that they want for themselves.
Sure, most of them stop short of actual schadenfreude about the shootings, the better not to violate their carefully constructed self-image. But neither do they see anything wrong with their "hate the sin / love the sinner" BS and all the other deflections and circumlocutions they insist on maintaining to justify their dogma.
It is no different other than in terms of degree, with other topics and less conservative theists. You can't maintain support for asserted truth without evidence, other than by dividing people into those who are and aren't acceptable to their god (which is just a proxy, ultimately, for what is and isn't acceptable to THEM). And as even our interactions with the non-creedal religion of UU shows, what should be at least a theoretically far less subclinically malignant form of theism, still demands their legitimacy be evidenced via contrived gentility and kudos to their entitled elitist magnificence before it will be considered on its actual merits or lack thereof.
I will go take a chill pill and probably be my old self after a brief hiatus, in deference to the handful of theists who I still respect, but good grief, if I the only one getting fed up here? Is there no one who understands that discourse can be honest, open, frank, though-provoking, paradigm-challenging, and STILL be civil??
Thanks Mordant. You are a really fine poster. For things like Orlando, abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls, the Tsunami,the atheist shooting of muslims, 9/11, the Khmer Rouge and on a personal level the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha, it makes me grieve or rage. And I shake my head over those who say inhumane things about it through the misguiding of Faith. And yet they are simply saying what they believe and suppose the deserving will get into heaven and there will be divine justice.
They don't see these responses as inhumane or wickeed - they just see it as accepting and advocating God's Plan.
Which is why I rage and grieve but don't snap (the only time I did was in an evolution debate at the staggering dishonesty, cowardice and cheating of one of the posters) and I can even come here and (hobbit -like }laugh and joke even in the midst of appalling tragedy. And I recall a fireman explaining how they had to develop a way of mentally distancing themselves from the sights they saw sometimes, or they couldn't do their jobs.
Umm.... how is one supposed to remember to write things down so as not to forget? I was going to make a point but I can't remember what it was ....
Good Post!
My dear old best mate (Now living in Peru) taught me to have a written Memory notebook. A Burmese friend of my wife's bought me a Filofax (remember those?). And it was a life -changer. Now I could live and work and not always be forgetting things. I do it here and note in a desktop file anything I want to do, post or discuss.
Utah Lt. Governor Spencer Cox said it best:There we see a devout Mormon saying clearly that our consideration of others as people should be the same even if they live lives in accordance with a different set of beliefs and values. This sentiment was echoed several years ago by a ministerial intern I knew, the-now-Rev. Betsy Tabor, who said:These aren't instinctual responses to otherness. They are reflections of overcoming instinctual responses and rising above them.
That's the key. Deliberate ridicule is a failure of character of the person committing it, not the person who it is directed at, in all cases. There is nothing about ridicule that makes it more compelling, more righteous, or more legitimate than criticism voiced without it.
I have to say that I agree.If the comments you posted said that something is wrong if you hear about a mass shooting and your feelings about it change if you hear it was in a gay bar, then it is a valid and praiseworthy comment.
And in principle, you are right about ridicule, though you should learn to let that slide off and just address the validity o the point made - remember, i you can refute it calmly, thee ridicule boomerangs. But, if one tries to use complaints about the ridicule to evade the valid point made, it sticks and burns the more.
Even better, discuss instead of teach. it is somewhat arrogant to act like we are here to lecture rather than reason the thing through. But the very act of showing that their lifechanging beliefs were based on nothing valid is enough to generate the hostility.
yes, it's a two way street in good teaching. Both the teacher and learner share and/or swap roles. The fundies telling other people that their brain "reset" event is the only real truth is a bad thing. I agree with you there. My sister says all the time "why do you get condescending?". I tell her because at some point it's not fair and/or rude to keep telling me "how do you know", "you made that up", "nobody really knows." or my favorite, leveling observational data with a book with once swipe of "Oh, I don't believe that." It's like not in believing the sun will come up tomorrow.
Fundies don't know what they don't know. And worse than that they tell us that what they do know is enough for everybody.
Might want to work on fahgeddabouting the whole Manifest Destiny thing as well. It's so last century. Or two.
aint that the truth.
I never understood "its our right to insult, degrade, and wipe out others". I fine with just saying "they have it, we need it, and look at what they are doing to each other." then wiping them out. lol ... sounds so bad.
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}laugh and joke even in the midst of appalling tragedy. And I recall a fireman explaining how they had to develop a way of mentally distancing themselves from the sights they saw sometimes, or they couldn't do their jobs.
