misrepresenting views and inciting hatred
a shining example is VWs assertions about me and my motivation; they come from her and not reality… and nothing I can offer from reality can persuade her otherwise. It’s simply a faith-based belief she chooses to hold and maintain. It is pernicious because it maligns my character and she doesn’t care. (Tildeb)
A few fellow bloggers have accused me in the last week of misrepresenting their views and maligning their characters. On a couple of occasions it was Christians, when I was attempting to draw attention to flaws in thinking in terms of concern for children. The other two occasions were with atheists: one when I saw harm in attitudes towards trans people, and the other discussing the impact of religion on society.
On all occasions I have quoted directly from the source, which I’ve linked to for context, and given my commentary underneath. The bloggers I quoted have been welcome to discuss their quote, to argue with my commentary and to clarify anything they feel has been misrepresented.
Tildeb, above, is angry that I suggested he hates religious people and believes they are unable to think coherently. And yet, skimming through a selection of his comments, I’m confused that anyone could think otherwise:
“I think it poisons everything it produces… including anything ‘good’ people try to attach by assumption to it…”
“That’s what faith is: a substitution for reality. It is identical to delusional thinking. It is a way to divorce beliefs held about reality from reality’s role to arbitrate them.”
“Religion is the mother ship of faith-based methodology and its children are all around us: from going along with the delusion that individuals really do have their very own ‘truths’ to all kinds of anti-scientific anti-intellectual, anti-expertise beliefs that are so contrary to reality that its a marvel that anyone in their right mind would go along and nod wisely and with dripping compassion and exuding tolerance as if this were all very reasonable and chic and oh-so-liberal.”
“Yes, religion poisons everything. And yes, the harm is ubiquitous. And yes, we end up spending time and effort pretending the real problem is pointing out the common thread: granting faith-based beliefs any respect at all.”
“The poison itself is faith-based belief. When you identify the use of a faith-based rather than evidence-adduced belief, you will recognize the poison at work. It always impairs the mind and impedes the acquisition of knowledge.”
To be fair to Tildeb, I am quite convinced he’s a well-meaning and non-hateful person. But at some point in these damning comments about religion being a poison and people being delusional, we are talking about people. If beliefs aren’t granted “any respect at all”, how do we separate that from people, whose very identity and deepest concerns are wound up in those beliefs? If religion always “impairs in the mind” how could we ever take any religious people seriously?
Tildeb thinks I’m misrepresenting him, but I can only see I’m taking his views to their logical conclusion. How do we separate hatred against an institution from hatred against the individuals who identify with that institution? I’m really not sure.
Things take a turn for the worse when we look at The Arborist’s (Arb’s) accusation of misrepresenting his attitude towards trans people.
This isn’t about hating a particular subset of people because they are a certain way, this is about disagreeing with the bullshit they spew and the demands they make. Case in point, the idea that somehow biological sex is merely a social construct (it isn’t, it is an observable fact), or that by the power of deep gender-feels, one can change an immutable features of ones physical body. (Arb)
Arb ‘disagrees’ with trans people by opposing their understanding of themselves, described as “alternative facts”, and reporting on crimes and other harmful behaviour of individual trans women. He disagrees with my assessment that he wants to erase them – but can’t tell me what he wants trans people to do. How do we separate hatred against a self-identified belief of a person from hatred against the person, whose very identity is in that concept? How can we help stop the rising hate crimes against trans people if we spread information about the criminal actions of a few, suggesting they are actions of a group identity they all share? I’m sure we can’t. I find his campaign against trans people to be seriously harmful, and laced in dangerously acceptable-sounding terminology that gives false credence, and avoids stating the full beliefs of this prejudiced group.
Finally, we have the Christians, one of whom never wants to be named or linked to by me again. I’d like to apologise to both of them for suggesting that they don’t care about children, as I know they do have their best interests at heart, and I cherry picked their comments to show them in the worst light possible. Although I still stand by my belief that a pro-life stance never has the best interests of children at heart.
For anyone else who feels I misrepresent their beliefs or their outlook, please tell me in the moment so we can discuss it, explaining why my summary is incorrect. Because contrary to what Tildeb thinks, I do care about how I use other people’s words.
“Because contrary to what Tildeb thinks, I do care about how I use other people’s words.”
Well actually, when it comes to Christians, the only part you really care about is portraying us in the worst possible light so as to confirm your own biases. That IS what atheists do and Tildeb is a prime example.
“How do we separate hatred against an institution from hatred against the individuals who identify with that institution?”
Here’s the harsh truth,Violet. You can’t. There is no lukewarm,no middle ground for you to exist in. If you believe we’re all horrible people who hate children and poison everything we touch, then you are going to treat us an enemy who must be annihilated. That is simply the logical conclusion,the end result of believing we are all delusional, dangerous.
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Here’s the harsh truth,Violet. You can’t.
Really?
So you hate, for example, all North Koreans, even though they’ve been indoctrinated into that weird cult of personality, and are completely shielded from knowing any better.
That’s interesting, Inanity.
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Was that your gracious acceptance of my apology? First part, I agree with you to a certain extent (as touched on in the post). I’m careful these days to be clear I don’t mean all religious people, and that I am highlighting the potential harm in particular subsets of belief. I think my tone has changed, don’t you?
Second part is what I’m trying to deal with in these posts. I think some of us anti-theists have to force ourselves to see the good, or even the neutral in religions, as our attitude can be particularly and unhelpfully confrontational. This is never useful.
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You clearly have not read closely Violet’s interchange with Tildeb.
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Oh, I have read it. And sadly, watched Violet attempt to rationalize it all.
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“How do we separate hatred against a self-identified belief of a person from hatred against the person, whose very identity is in that concept?”
I’m reminded of Christianity’s “hate the sin, love the sinner” teaching; the problem is that I haven’t yet met a Christian who completely hates all sins, but loves the sinning sinners who sin sins. It is extremely difficult to separate a person from what they do, given that most people act on what they believe.
I guess a good place to start would be in the belief department; all of us have them, basic ideas about the world around us. For some it’s sayings like: “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” “Actions speak louder than words.” But I don’t believe morality to be unmovable anchor that many would like to think it is. And so how one acts can differ from one day to the next, one situation compared to another. So I don’t think that one mistake irrevocably destroys the course of their life.
What did Governor Swan say in Pirates of the Caribbean? “Sometimes doing the right thing demands and act of piracy; piracy itself can be the right course of action?” Or was it: “Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons can be worse than doing the wrong thing for the right reasons …” Something like that.
It also helps to learn to see people as individuals who are always worthy of respect and dignity as members of the human race, and your own very distant cousin in some sense. You have stop seeing other people as the “them” who isn’t one of “us” and start seeing all people as an “all of us, together.”
Then walking a mile in their shoes and being compassionate is a good next step. Only when you put yourself through what others have had to deal with do you begin to understand where they’re at and how they arrived there. How any identity they embrace gives them affirmation that you previously could not. Perhaps education about that identity would also be helpful, because if the first thing you associate with any label or identity is it being evil or wrong; then you’re going to tend to think of the whole group as evil or wrong and it’s adherents, the best of them – simply misguided or misled or mistaken and the worst of them as the best possible example of everything wrong about what the group represents.
It really helps to embrace the middle for all of this, because it represents a compromise between two polar opposite beliefs. It establishes a common ground.
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Great points, thanks. I think we also have to think carefully about how we phrase opposition to harmful actions in contrast to opposition to people’s beliefs.
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That’s certainly true, language matters. So many in fundamentalist circles use a sort of coded language that makes sense to them, but it can sound harsh and unloving to outsiders. Christians tend to confuse what they mean by what they say from one denomination to the next anyway so that doesn’t help. Some are opposed to limiting speech because it’s not honest, they’re sort of like Divergent’s truth-telling faction, always telling what they believe to be true even when you don’t want to hear it. But their truth is biased as well as based in a particular source and doesn’t necessarily coincide with how others speak of the truth. If we could more carefully construct what we say, then how we act on what we mean would be different.
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You misrepresent what I say right from the start. You quote me as saying, ““I think it poisons everything it produces… including anything ‘good’ people try to attach by assumption to it…”
So what is it?
Religion is one of many vehicles for ‘it’ but not the only one. I’ve listed several. Do you remember any of them… because they all contain ‘it’, the poison.
What is the poison that religion delivers?
It is faith-based methodology. That is what I’m claiming is toxic.
Anyone who uses this methodology is spreading the toxin, is poisoning everything it is used to justify.
Now, does this mean that I hate these people or think they should be eliminated?
No.
On the contrary, I have have said they have a choice about when to use this methodology and the way to stop using it is to recognize when they do so and stop themselves for better reasons than using it offers. And the way to bring this about, I have already said, is through reason, by taking responsibility for how we think. I’ve hammered this point over and over again, to no avail.
For example, I have also said that there are many excellent scientists who are religious. Have I given any indication that I hate them or think they should be eliminated?
No.
On the contrary, I have said they can be good scientists as long as they don’t contaminate their science with faith-based beliefs. As soon as that happens, good science cannot be done. I have said the way good scientists who are religious are able to to function is to compartmentalize their faith-based methodology necessary for their religious beliefs from evidence-adduced methodology that is necessary for their good science.
Have I suggested we should kill of climate change deniers or users of alternative medicine?
No
This attribution of hatred assigned to me against people who use faith-based thinking is entirely of your own making. It is not reflective of anything I have said once you understand that what I’m criticizing is the method that uses faith – as I’ve said so many times – , that it is our personal responsibility to stop using it, that we should stop using it because it is toxic to gaining knowledge and produces claims equivalent to ignorance. The solution I have said is to think better and use a methodology that doesn’t poison everything it touches.
Now, how many more posts are you going to milk from your assigning to me the motive of hatred rather than a reasoned argument to stop promoting and excusing religious belief as if it possessed some benefit that it then bequeaths through granting it trust and confidence we call ‘faith’? How many more times are you going to keep doing this, VW? And how many people are you trying to dupe with this bullshit? What is your motive – other than exercising religious apologetics – to continue to misrepresent me? At what point and after how many false accusations you make may I begin to assign to you this motive of hatred you are so eager to assign to me?
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You’re taking it all so personally Tildeb. It’s a discussion point and you’re part of the discussion. If I do future posts on it, I won’t mention your name – is that better?
I understand where you’re coming from now, you may think you explained it a million times, but really you just drop bits here and there in a middle of a rant about the poison of religion.
However, although I understand you, you don’t appear to understand, or care, what I’m getting at. You don’t hate, and I believe you. But your style of communication projects what people interpret as hate. Have a think about that, instead of feeling sorry for yourself that sunstroked VW is misrepresenting you. The truth is, you are misrepresenting yourself, and expecting others to see deep into your soul to know you’re a good person with non-harmful intentions.
Read your quotes again and think about what those words mean to anyone else reading them – not to you, knowing your own motivations and the minutiae of your own thoughts.
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Reading comprehension is a skill that is developed only through practice. What I write is done as a whole – from beginning to end – laid out point by point to explain the conclusion and or criticism I have reached. It is not my job to write pablum and then spoon feed it to people in the hope I don;t offend or that they won’t jump to the wrong conclusion.
Those are not my problems. They are problems for readers with poor comprehension skills to address. Blaming me is not a productive means.
An alternative suggestion that would benefit all if personally implemented would be to read something as a whole and then think about it as a whole rather than reading something that one thinks reveals other stuff – like motivation or intention or quibbles – and then quickly jump to the comment section to tell the world what you presume to be revealed about the author.
My points laid out in sometimes long comments stand or fall on merit alone. The length is needed to fill out the reasoning for it. If people wish to engage and/or question this merit laid out in a comment I make, then that is a contribution worthy to the topic at hand whether in agreement or disagreement. And this process of fleshing out the merit of ideas is usually of interest to other readers who may or may not comment. Their emotional response is of no truth value but can be quite entertaining. Can be. More often, it is neither entertaining nor informative and not worth reading.
So my suggestion is that more people engage with the post and the comments made about it rather than shift the focus altogether to the tangential intentions and motivations that one presumes have been revealed about the author (like the typical Entertainment News and tabloid fodder) or one will quickly find one’s self accused of cherry picking quotes out of context in order to score points (as if someone is keeping score) rather than further explore to better understand the post’s topic itself and the comments about its merit or lack thereof.
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Fair enough, Tildeb, but we’re on an internet blog, not an academic course. The fact remains that to the casual reader you project hate and disdain (is that a better word?) towards religion and therefore religious people. The fact that you are refusing to take any of this on board and prefer to puff more wind about how great you are and how lacking anyone who doesn’t get you as you do is … em .. odd.
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Yeah, my style often is portrayed this way… especially by those who feel entitled to more respect. But from those who bother to understand my writing, I usually gain a fair bit of intellectual respect for my reasoning. And it is reasoning – mine as well as yours as well as everyone who participates – that matters when talking about an idea’s merit or lack of it. I don’t care how warm and fuzzy a Bad Idea makes people feel; I care much more about what differentiates a Bad Idea from one worth defending and/or promoting.
I care about explanations. I care about understanding. I care about knowledge. I care about what we can know. I care about what seems to be the case and how we can determine this. I care very much when someone presents an idea that cares about none of these as if such caring is of trivial concern, as if this caring really doesn’t matter… because, well, feelings and beliefs donchaknow.
This is the source material for much of my commenting, to point out that some idea is being misrepresented as caring about what is the case when it has to reject exactly that to remain fixed. And then, to undermine this caring, the person has to then misrepresent the caring of what is the case to be an act of hate against those who don’t care at all.
Can you say, ‘Oh, the irony’?
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Yes, I’m seeing a whole lot of irony from my side too. I’ll leave to your self-deluded bubble about your greatness.
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@tildeb
It’s a tone problem. You and your offensive tone offend people! 🙂 You just need to be nicer, and kinder and snuggle up to toxic concepts and ideas.
smh.
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Or explore non-toxic-masculinity forms of communication. 😉
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“This attribution of hatred assigned to me against people who use faith-based thinking is entirely of your own making.”
Oh totally. Like no one on the planet but Violet has ever noticed Tildeb’s outright hatred and hostility and hatred towards believers.
As if that isn’t bizarre enough,we’ve now got Jaime Carter suggesting maybe you guys should try to employing the Christian ideal of, “hate the sin, love the sinner.” Hey, I know, what if you guys actually started perceiving people as higher beings made in the image of our Creator? Than you could adopt a few other Christian ideals, forgiveness, judge not, turn the other cheek….
Of course, if you’re going to go through all that trying to create a more peaceful world based on Christian virtues, wouldn’t it make sense to just go all the way and accept Christ as your Lord and Savior?
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Tildeb’s outright hatred and hostility and hatred towards believers.
To believers, or the method believers use to defend their version of reality?
Think that through, Inanity.
Think it through carefully.
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John, I agree that’s what he means. But it certainly doesn’t come across like that.
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Are you kidding? I could make a copy n’ pasted tower to the moon, the MOON, with every time I’ve seen Tildeb write something like “…how you arbitate reality”
He hits that point home relentlessly, and he’s right to do so.
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So you think he comes across and friendly or neutral or accepting?
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Something between a tall glass of frustrated honeyed milk and a late afternoon spring kite.
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You’re such a diplomat. Give him some lessons. 😀
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*Arbitrate
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Says the woman who supported the Kill the Gays Bill in Uganda, then tried to convince us it had nothing to do with gays…
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Don’t think you’ll hear back from her on that one.
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I know. She doesn’t answer me directly ever 😀
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I sometimes get one reply but she rarely comes back to complete the conversation. I think you were particularly rude and personally insulting on more than one occasion, so I’m not surprised she doesn’t want to chat. Maybe you could apologise?
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No thanks 😀
After my Katy Faust experience I decided I wouldn’t feed trolls or indulge people whose discourse can incite harm against their fellow human beings.
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I don’t think there are really trolls, just lonely people on the internet. Most people calm down if you treat them like humans. The only person I couldn’t take was the conspiracy theorist, higharka, way too much effort for me, and in the meantime I was giving her/him exposure.
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The problem is human doesn’t mean “not dangerous”. Certain things have a knock on effect.
The anti-gay violence in Uganda for example went up 1000% to %2000. Rejecting and throwing out lgbt children became par for the course. Insulting, beating… and these things were being justified and excused by people like IB. Her argument was that it was designed “to protect the children”.
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So ignoring rather than challenging harmful ideas is best?
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Depends. If you go over to Askthebigot, you’ll see her top post is still the Story of Moira Greyland. That was the one where I called her out (again) for using fake commenters (including Lopez and Edelman.) Comments were shut down and everyone decided to ignore her and now she makes videos in her kitchen which get up to 200 views if she’s really, really lucky. They’re odd: https://vimeo.com/170818815 😀
While I was challenging her she was using it to create an audience. So in that case ignoring has been more productive.
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I don’t think I’ll look in that case. 🙂
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As if that isn’t bizarre enough,we’ve now got Jaime Carter suggesting maybe you guys should try to employing the Christian ideal of, “hate the sin, love the sinner.”
Actually this whole conversation reminded me of that “Christian ideal”. The only problem is, and it’s exactly what Jamie Carter was pointing out, that Christians in general fail so miserably at it. That’s a pithy sounding notion that in practice is just not possible. Some of the haughtiest people I know “love them some sinners.”
The ideals of forgiveness, being non-judgmental, turning the other cheek are not exclusive to Christianity. Maybe if most Christians practiced them a bit more you might have a point, but I’m not seeing it.
So here we are: atheists don’t corner the market on hatred and hostility and Christians certainly don’t corner the market on love, forgiveness, less judgment, or amnesty.
It seems to me that people are how they are. If you’re a hateful, unforgiving, judgmental person, the tenets of most religions(Christianity or otherwise) give you the framework to excuse such behavior, but you’d likely be that way even if you weren’t religious. If you’re a loving, forgiving, kind-hearted person, religion(Christianity or otherwise) can offer you the justification and hope of reward for being so, but you’d likely be that way even if you weren’t religious. Do people change? Sometimes. But mostly they don’t.
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The idea of hate the sin and love the sinner comes apart at the seams when Christians deal with gay people. As they are saying the sexual identity of these folk is inherently wrong.
Even when still a Christian this started to trouble me as it became clearer to me that for most people their sexuality was a not a choice.
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It’s the same argument being used by the feminist anti-trans groups – they don’t hate anyone but the gender self-identification of these folk is inherently wrong.
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I thought Tildeb was a girl.
Now it looks like I’m going to have to do something about my man crush.
I’m too embarrassed about it to even to tell a priest in the privacy of Confession.
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Don’t worry about it SOM, your god has different rules for internet relationships, just didn’t have a chance to get them on a stone tablet. 🙂
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Gee, thanks Violet.
Your interpretation of Divine Law is always stunning.
And this time it even makes me feel a little better about myself.
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Where does Tildeb use the word hate against religion or the religious?
Seriously, I hate it when people try to put anything uninvited into my mouth and especially words, so I can well imagine Tildeb hates this too.
If you want to see true hateful comments read a religious fundamentalist.
Better still, read the bible or the Qur’an!
Now, in these two glorious examples of last ditch toilet paper that even one’s backside would likely break out in a rash from using you will find all the hateful garbage you could possibly require.
From slavery to stoning kiddies – or having them torn to shreds by bears, rape, incest,murdering witches and homosexual and right through the gamut of hate to genocide all in glorious bronze age technicolour!!
I have not read anything Tildeb has written that is not right on the nail.
Fundamentalist religious people are, in general, quite a disgusting lot.
They have to be for what sort of normal person would send kiddies to be suicide bombers, or tell their children they will burn in hell for an eternity if they don’t beleive in the Christian god.
Under these circumstances, I am very surprised that Tildeb doesn’t actually include a few well chosen words of a vernacular nature in his comment.
I mean for fuck’s sake I would , – if we weren’t asked not to, of course.
When you have Dickheads like Mister SoM Catholic Hisself, IB, Tiribulis, Bruce, Becky, Colorstorm, Wally, James, The hilariously comical and funny duo Mr. Branyan and his daughter, CitizenTompaininthederriere and other humongous religiously indoctrinated halfwits out there Pissing on the Cornflakes of Common Sense it’s a wonder normal people aren’t burning down Mosques and Churches right left and center, for Christ’s sake!
As it is, these delightfully delusional individuals should bloody well consider themselves damned lucky that they are allowed to practice the crap they do.
And after all their practice you would think they would be good at it, would you not?
However, with over 40,000 Christians cults alone, it doesn’t require a degree in ”Rocket Science” to see they have fucked up even their own religions, and based on evidence, have a simmering hate-filled co-existence with each other that wouldn’t take too much to set off a major conflict as it has done so often the past.
For a up to the minute example, we only have to look at Syria do we not?
Allah-Yahweh must be so proud!
But, as usual, the Christian Fundamentalist Dipshits whining away on this blog always seem to think this is all directed at them and their stupid fucking religion and that make- believe Lake Tiberius Pedestrian twot.
The sheer arrogance …
No, Tildeb spotted it, as he always does.
Good one!
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Religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one and it’s fine to be proud of it, but please don’t whip it out in public and start waving it around… and PLEASE don’t try to shove it down my child’s throat.
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John,
Penis envy is unbecoming…
…even for you.
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Well, I didn’t write that, but I do find it poignant.
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@Mr.M
Sigh. The class of men, is the potential class of rapists. And, as the evidence shows, men in whatever guise they choose remain in this class.
Never argued this. Individuals are welcome to make choices and define themselves as they set fit.
However, they do not get to say what another should think or act about the same choices.
eg. The claim that transwomen are women – this is not a claim supported by evidence.
Therefore, if one wishes to believe that they may. I, in a free society, must also have the choice not to dogmatically believe someone else’s reality based on their subjective feelings.
Otherwise, you must accept the claim of others that Jesus christ is their personal saviour and he can and will save you. To disagree is to be christianphobic.
Yes, because radical feminism is about imposing oppression on others. 🙂 No, it isn’t it is about liberating females from the patriarchal structures of society. So, definitionally speaking if your activism is not working toward female liberation it isn’t feminism, but some other category. And, given the content of our argument(s), clearly, it is the second category of what you fall into.
Your choices are fine. But they ain’t feminism.
This so ironic. Why radical feminists oppose much of gender identity and trans-ideology is because of the way they use gender roles in their ways of defining what a woman is?
Because Gender and Gender Roles are toxic toward and hurt women the world over. Why do I petulantly repeat the statement “Women: Adult human female?” – because in that definition is illustrated what it is to be a woman and then the idea of the unfair and arbitrary imposition of gender on this female person that bends and malforms their character into the subservient class of people society expects today.
So, not unexpectedly, when radical feminists see trans-ideology promote and reinforce the idea of gender and gender roles, there will be necessarily be disagreement. Because, at the very base, the construct of gender is misogynistic and patriarchal. Females do not choose to identify with their oppression.
Radical feminists are for the abolition of gender and gender roles. You seem to be advocating for their preservation. Thus, it is you who are about supporting and maintaining the toxic system (gender) that hurts both women and men.
Males, when their privilege is threatened, will evoke pretty much anything in defence of the system that benefits them. Equating living under a patriarchal system that systematically devalues, oppresses, and kills women and then besmirching the woman who rally against those structures of society that oppress them – as ‘against civil liberties and empathy’ – is galling not only because of its perversity, but because also because this issues forth from a self-declared ‘feminist’.
Radical feminists, for the most part, do not accept men as feminists. Examples such as this illustrate the wisdom of their argument.
You oft repeat this message and it is directed against a community of women who are fighting against the patriarchal structures and norms of society that deleteriously circumscribes their lives – misogynistic norms like Gender feed the oppression of women the world over.
And let me assure you, there is nothing enlightened about that.
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How amusing, you leave a response for me by clicking reply to someone else?
Another comment, another array of rhetorical devices intended to deceive readers. At this point do you think you’re fooling yourself or other people?
You have argued time and again for me to give you definitions of gender or how people should define gender. That is in itself an imposition. Not just an imposition but one that boxes and oppresses free citizens. You and “radical feminists” (a group that doesn’t even make it into feminist mainstream acceptance for obvious reasons) are proponents of an authoritarian view. You get to define, you get to exclude. You get to tell another free citizen what the definition of man or woman comprises. In Franquist Spain a “real woman” was one who married and reproduced. The spinster aunt wasn’t a real woman, she was a second class citizen. That was based on the socio-cultural perceptions of that particular nation and religion at that time. That’s the model this radical feminism encourages. Let’s label, let’s divide, let’s create a hierarchy and let’s exclude anyone who doesn’t fit the standards we arbitrarily propose.
What radical feminists need to understand, just like extremist Muslims, extremist Jews or extremist Christians, is they’re welcomed to apply their definitions and curious practices to their own lives- but get the hell away from other people’s lives because as someone who personally has spent a lifetime having denigrating and fraudulent labels thrown at me I can say enough is enough. The last thing this planet needs is another bunch of fools who see no further than their own noses and do nothing but push more sectarianism and hatred.
And before you go off looking for yet more ways to dissimulate your hate speech against trans people, I’ve seen nowhere near as much emphasis from these radical feminists on banning unisex bathrooms or changing rooms. And isn’t it funny that when your girlfriend wears the skinny jeans and the cute shoes and her sandy blonde Fox News Bimbette hairstyle, she’s not perpetuating oppressive gender stereotypes, but if Kaitlyn Jenner does it, then she’s committed some sort of heinous crime. If it weren’t so utterly pathetic, it would be funny. Fortunately, no matter how much noise you make in places like this, you and your ilk have been laughed off the stage, and that’s where I’m sure you’ll stay. And that’s because your allegedly “effective” feminism hasn’t actually accomplished anything of value whatsoever- other than promoting myths, hate and discrimination.
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Ark, you’re just like Tildeb but with a comedy pantomime twist. You don’t see any hate in his words because you write that same sort of stuff and have convinced yourself it’s free of hate. If others reading it see it, you might want to consider you’re saying it in an unhelpful manner.
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Yeah, Ark; strop writing so much stuff about what is true and do a better job shaping it so that it won’t be nearly so offensive to the very people who don’t care about what’s true and all too eager to assign you to the hater column.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. That’s some helpful advice you’ve never encountered, I’m almost sure!
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Tildeb, in an earlier comment you conceded that we can never be 100% sure that invisible gods exist, and that people should be free to believe what they want. Did I misunderstand that? You know hate is unproductive and we have to respect others, but you are dismissive to the point of hatred (I can’t distinguish it, how could a Christian?) about religious people, and then disgusted that this is pointed out to you. I can only hope that Ark or John sort of understand what I mean, and that having someone who respect explain it might help. Ark or John, you may not agree with me completely, but do you know what I mean?
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No hate in Tildebs words at all.
Just plain disgust born out of frustration by the failure of – I am sorry to say – people such as yourself who continually try to find a way to slot religion and the religious in alongside normal people and try to make us live happily ever after the live long day, with tea and cucumber sandwiches on the Vicarage Lawn.
The trouble with playing in the middle of the road, Violet is eventually you will get mown down by traffic coming in both directions.
And you can see this happening from IBs remarks to you.
I’ll be perfectly honest … I utterly loathe religion and everything it stands for.
Feel free to quote me.
It is built upon a foundation of superstition and lies. Of unsubstantiated claims upheld by ignorance, fear and brutality.
Look at Islam.
It robs societies of it best and creates morons of others. Some prime examples of the latter can be found right here in the guise of ”Saved ” individuals such as IB, Colorstorm and Som, whose retchworthy diatribes if it were ” food”you wouldn’t feed as pigswill.
People need to sit up and pay attention. Religion not only ”poisons” everything it fucks it up too.
Som makes scathing reference to Islam … and rightly so, but he is too blind and arrogant to recognise an similarity within his own religion.
And he is CATHOLIC for the gods sake!!
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This is another odd feature of the discussion – what sides of the road? We’re not playing in football teams or driving on a road with two sides. It’s a discussion – no-one is right about everything, no-one is wrong about everything, and there are (gasp) more than two points of view available. And I’m not looking for one of these fictitious sides (or the other) to cheer me one. I’m thinking about stuff, and you’re all helping me. 🙂
Also, I didn’t know disgust and hate can’t be interchangable. I think you’re both being precious with the labels I ascribe to your attitude. You both have very negative attitudes that don’t allow for open and non-confrontational discussion. It’s like talking to someone and then shouting (angrily) back all the time. Interesting enough, in terms of gender roles or biological sex traits, the only atheist woman I came across online who does this was Arb. It’s very male and must be a product of your upbringing in our patriarchal society – chew on that. You too Tildeb.
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I think we can agree that, religion has had one or two years to present its credentials as a bona fide worldview.
And the irrefutable evidence is that, given every opportunity it has failed at every step of the way, so it would be charitable .. ha ha… if you were to extend a little more tolerance to those who see absolutely no benefits of religion or any belief in supernatural claptrap.
If you stopped trying to fawn over the malevolence that is god belief and had the integrity to say no, it is poison and demand that, unless ”Religion” can back a single foundational claim then it is time for it to simply shut the fuck up once and for all we might begin to see progress?
Maybe it’s about time you acknowledge that, the overall aims of religion, especially Christianity and even more so Islam is for humanity to toe the line, or else .
I fail to see what me being male has to do with any of this?
Should I suggest that your obvious cattiness and blatant intransigence was hormonal and must be due to you having a period?
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You’re consistently suggesting things like I’m fawning over or trying to get favour with religious people, simply because I won’t join the train of [not-hate-just-something-that-looks-exactly-like-it]. Stop being so childish. It’s not good versus evil issue. It’s a natural state of affairs versus progression issue, and people need time to adjust – hence most of the world population is still religious.
Funny you should mention periods, I put my PMT on the calendar so I know what to put my foul moods down to (not now) and don’t take them too seriously. But don’t ever generalise and assume this happens to most or all women, and don’t think that when we are in a bad it’s not related to actual actions that normally we are too cool and chilled to kick up a stink about. Apart from that, read about the patriarchy and how it allegedly endows men with a sense that THEY NEED TO BE LISTENED TO. This will tell you more:
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/07/cis-men-socialized-to-be-abusive/
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It’s a natural state of affairs versus progression issue, and people need time to adjust – hence most of the world population is still religious.
By supporting religion, no matter how tacitly or how benign it may appear on the surface, at its root is superstition, and a continual head-nod to granting legitimacy to a system that produces extremists right across the religious spectrum who acknowledge everything, from their own existence to suicide bombers to an invisible unverifiable creator deity.
If there is no real need for tea with the vicar and gentle, rambling Sunday sermons then there is no need either for the bible-thumping fundamentalist claptrap.
There need be no hate in recognizing the untenability of god-belief and pointing it out.
If people … adults … want to indulge such fantasies then good for them. Just count me out.
And do not expect privilege, do not harm others with it, especially children and we’re all good.
No one is going to tell me not to like Jimi Hendrix but I am most certainly not going to demand his music be played in schools or that his music be deemed the best there ever was or that shrines be built all over the place or demand his biography be considered sacrosanct. And I do not expect any tax breaks as a bona fide Hendrix fan, either.
And the more you read that last paragraph the more ridiculous it sounds.
And religion should be treated in exactly the same fashion.
The eventual, and perfectly natural demise of most religion won’t make the world suddenly smell of roses with everyone holding hands and running through alpine landscapes singing Julie Andrews songs all the live long day, but it will be one more stupid thing humans have invented that we neither need nor have to concern ourselves with.
And that will be a good thing.
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@littlestonegod
@violet
The title of this essay is ‘misrepresenting views.’ Surely violet (since the fella with the goofy hat is deaf to such things) you must agree that mentioning Hendrix, (he who excelled in the drug culture and mind numbing ear screeching chords of irrelevance) in the same sentence as scripture and truth, and a faith thousands of years old, is kind of well, pretty stupid, since Hendrix was/is not God. Oops, to some maybe he is.
As if a dopey musicians life and times can stand the mettle of comparison ‘after their kind he made them,’ or ‘male and female.’ or ‘He made great lights, one to rule the day, and one to rule the night,’ or ‘the seed within itself,’ (watch it, science here)
Sure no evidence. No proof. Except for the fact that life itself testifies that every word of scripture is true. Hendrix? Ha, one may as well mention Joplin, no not Scott Joplin, but the other twin brain dead female, who I suppose could hold a candle next to that wonderful trumpet player Joshua! Not.
Seriously violet, these insults against common sense are quite tiresome, and just puts on display the lengths people will travel to put a clown face on the truth of the only living God and His word which has eroded every hammer against it. The circus act is the pure misrepresentation of scripture.
The joke will always be on they who know God’s word is true. Is there more proof? Sure. Atheists such as doug here would have nothing to write about if not for Christianity to try to erase. That is hilarious. One traffics in the only life he has spending time and resources to try to villify that which is forever settled. This truth should actually wake the deaf and the dead.
I send this to you, maybe you can hear.
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Seriously, I think you should put down that bottle, put some clothes on and come away from the window.
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And FROM THIS WINDOW I see with an eye of the eagle, truth, and life as it is, with all the bones of good and bad, and see a creation in order, albeit ruined by misfits, but still, order at every turn, and can agree with Louis Armstrong: ‘What a wonderful world.’
You may want to try another point of view. You may want to rise outside of your selfish shell. Take a look from the windows of heaven if you can. But no. You pretend to be deaf, now blind.
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You would see a lot more if you took the Cornflakes Packet off of your head.
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Yeah, you are right. I should get a cement hat like yours, then I can be so weighted down I’ll have an excellent excuse for not being able to discern light from darkness.
So take your hat off, and leave the basement of illusions to the living room of reality in God’s world.
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And which god would that be, exactly, and where can I find it?
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Are you expecting my answer to change? No need to look any further from where you sit or in your garden.
I already proved to you that your camera reveals the Creator.
And as a bonus reminder, the combined ‘gods’ can neither count to three nor tie their shoes.
Now the true God? Ah yes, the beautiful clouds above, which reveal the firmament, are but dust for His feet.
Where can you find ‘it?’ Nowhere, God is not an ‘it.’ But in Him you live, move, and have your being. My answer is always the same.
Truth is always the same. One God. Nature and scripture confirm and affirm that He is true.
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Yes, but what its name?
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Ah yes, an apparent trap question. I have seen your footprints elsewhere and will not fall prey to your nonsense.
How many times do you need to be reminded that ‘names’ are a matter of relationship?
A judge on the bench is not called ‘Harry’ by either the prosecutor, nor is he called ‘Dear’ by his wife who is the court stenographer.
To you first, He is God. Without you giving Him the courtesy of existing, any other name is irrelevant, for names require context.
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Ah … so even as a narrative construct, dear old Moses was telling lies, then?
Fair enough, je comprends
So it stands to reason, therefore, your god is obviously not the biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth in that case.
He was just some schmo with a really bad attitude and a desperate need of a shower who pissed off the Romans, yes?
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Aaah such judgmental prejudice of a truly gifted musician …
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Prejudicial? Hardly.
Even a drunk is considered a good guy when he buys his drunken friend another drink. So what.
I understand context. You ‘misrepresent’ context. Simple really.
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And how do I misrepresent context regarding you god?
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Hello ark? Anybody home in there?
Misrepresent context? Uh, for starters, He is YOUR God too. It is HIS creation, His water, His dirt, His atmosphere, His trees, His gold, and everything else.
Whether you do not believe it changes nothing. You have no argument but to borrow from the useless and dry excuses of rebellious men.
‘By Him do all things consist, and He is before all things.’
See how easy? There is no science apart from He who put all things in motion.
Is it any surprise His name is Wonderful.
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Yes, I heard you the first time.
So he is your god, the creator. Fine. Got it. No name… just your god.
So in that case the biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth is simply as the Qur’an depicts him, nothing more than a prophet.
Why do you always have to string things out?
At last ….
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Ah but sir, you are forgetting at WHOSE name EVERY knee shall bow.
You see, you are caught in the web and trap of your own contradictions. God has no competitors, He did not share His genius of the blueprints for the oak tree with your lazy and blind false gods.
And His name? Ha! Wonderful it is. But if you can’t see His hand in a common rainbow, then His names will escape your notice also.
But rest assured, you will bow the knee.
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I wondered when the old, “Wait until you’re before the throne of judgement”! was going to appear. . . you know he’s got nothing when that gets thrown at you, Ark. (Umm. . .wait. ..)
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Oh, and CS. Its name could be ‘the ghost of Hamlet’s father’ for all you or anyone else knows.
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Oh to be so considered relevant on the radar of carmen. lol
But nope. No threats intended. Just the facts of life that every knee shall bow.
If you knew the Creator and all His wonder, you would gladly bow. Today.
The oceans of the world are kinda wonderful. Laughing hyenas which snicker while they devour their prey are wonderful.
Those camels are wonderful too. Gee, too bad they are all merely products of accidents.
And a man knifing his brother through the heart? Not so wonderful.
Yep, things went south, so you may want to wake up to the reality of an entire creation groaning.
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So, not the character, Jesus of Nazareth, then. That’s okay.
You continue to genuflect to your god.
Just keep children at arm’s length, please and for your god’s sake wash you hands …
*Shudders*
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I agree with a lot of your comment. But I don’t think I’m supporting religion by confronting specific harmful practices, and I don’t think I’m supporting religion by refusing to agree that we should give it (in its vast diversity) no respect and treat it like a poison. I think there are aspects of it that are benign and there are aspects of it that can even be useful (even if these aspects aren’t uniquely dependent on religion).
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Then perhaps it might be better for your argument if you were to illustrate those aspects of religion which can be separated from the superstitious foundations that we can truly regard as useful, and/or beneficial and specifically those that are unique.
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I just said there may none that are unique, that doesn’t mean they aren’t beneficial. I gave some examples in my ‘religion is harmless’ post.
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Sorry , Vi, I just quickly scanned the post once more and all I could see were bold type headings but nothing i could overtly call beneficial.
Give me a few examples here.
Keep it simple, no need to go overboard.
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I’m sure we’ll repeat a conversation we already had on the post. But here’s the clearly headed paragraphy, ye lazy stone god.
” religion can have a positive impact on lives
As with every other human endeavour, religious institutions are never without their flaws. But individuals within these institutions often bring comfort for people in times of grief, they provide valuable services to vulnerable sections of our communities and they provide a framework for life that many people are lacking. It would be foolish to pretend that the work done by church groups with families, with refugees, with homeless people, with old people, is all for nothing, or all has sinister ulterior motives. Yes, other people could provide these services, but realistically, what percentage of non-religious people dedicate themselves to these groups of people for free?”
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But we have already established that ALL this still sits atop a foundation of superstition and false premise and the insidious baggage it WILL and DOES bring to the party , so help me god(sic). Therefore we are losing absolutely nothing by recognizing this fact and acknowledging it and raise a generation of religion-free children who will produce the same comfort and services without any baggage or ulterior motives.
And, beleive it or not, this is already happening right now!
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Let’s see what happens. We can meet back here in 30 years’ time.
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Once again, you are … or appear to be avoiding the main point, or simply not recognizing the gaping hole in your argument.
Just because religious people are not necessarily all bad people does not mean that religion is not bad and does not taint everything it touches.
It corrupts from the get-go because it is built upon a lie and encourages people to accept that lie, from which it builds upon. Lies on top of lies, until eventually those lies become the new truth … and it must be true because it is all made by ”God” and we do this all for ”God” so how can it possibly be bad or harmful? After all we are saving people otherwise they will burn in hell or spend an eternity being separated for God/Allah/ Jehovah and therefore it is our sanctioned duty to save them … whether they want to be saved or not, and we will will try our utmost, and we shall strive to prevent Satan’s hordes, no matter where they hide, from thwarting our endevours, even if we incur a certain amount of collateral damage along the way, as we are all quite prepared to die for this glorious cause and soon we will be sitting at his right hand hand fr eternity.’
Er … hello? Ground control to Major Tom?
Any action based upon a lie, no matter how benign it might appear on the surface is wrong, and cannot become good unless the premise is jettisoned.
If you refuse to accept this simple glaring truth then, sorry , all you doing is giving tacit acceptance to a system that, in its extreme form currently encourages and sanctions murder.
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” If you refuse to accept this simple glaring truth then, sorry , all you doing is giving tacit acceptance to a system that, in its extreme form currently encourages and sanctions murder.”
And again you demonstrate how your attitude is just like that of a religious fundamentalist. Black and white. You’re with me or against me. We humans are so arrogant and so basic, and not matter how our world view spins, we fall into the same silly patterns of thinking.
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You do not sanction politicians that lie, even though many that work for them are decent people who have often been lied to and deceived right left and centre.
Why do you believe religion should be given any more leeway, especially as it is not only based on lies, but also supernaturalism as well?
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Religions are based on perceived supernatural revelations, not lies as such. It’s when people choose to interpret harmful paths from these revelations that problems begin.
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Yes … like the entirety of religion.
Or haven’t you picked up on this already?
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What’s harmful about Quakers? Why is religion itself more harmful than simply the harmful things humans do, for a million reasons and none at all?
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Because it promotes a falsehood as truth.
I’ve had enough.
I might as well argue with Dickheads like Colorstorm or SoM and at least with those two I can feel really good about any number of ad homs.
You are simply being obstreperous and bloody stupid.
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No, it promotes you something you evaluation as falsehood to be truth. Just as you promote something religious people evaluate as falsehood to be truth. I think you are more likely to be correct in your evaluation, but my opinion isn’t fact, and I hope to never treat it as such.
I’m disappointed that you have to resort to personal insults, but I’m not surprised. 🙂
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Oh, so therefore the Quakers are the One and Only are they? And Jesus of Nazareth was a real live human bean/god was he?
Good Grief, you’ll be telling me you have mini prayer sessions with your kids next.
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A reply which shows I either haven’t expressed myself clearly, or you’ve been skim reading all the discussions.
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Well, probably the former as you last comment was all over the place and made almost no sense at all.
Have another go…. I won’t be going for my din-dins for a few minutes.
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What are we arguing about?
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I don’t know … I am still cheesed off Liverpool couldn’t even beat bloody Bournmouth last night.
Oh, yeah … that religion taints everything and the sooner it gets shown the door the better.
And this will happen sooner rather than later if bloody do-gooders like you stop patronizing all the Sunbeams for Jesus.
My dinner is on the table.
Later …
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I just sent three interesting links tildeb’s way, given that he doesn’t appear to get what I’m saying either. All about the benefits of religion (or at least ways to think of it more positively). Maybe I should base my posts on things I agree with, penned by other people. 🙂
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If that isn’t an oxymoron I don’t know what is!
Truly, you slay me, and I am convinced you simply must be extracting the Michael!
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Read the links and see what you think. All at the bottom of this post.
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Aw … do I have to? It’s late and i want to grab a coffee and watch a movie.
Gimme a synopsis?
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Next time we have this argument I’ll point you back there. At this point I’m as sick of it as you are. 🙂
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VW, you assume in your reply to Ark that the revelation is/could be/might be/sometimes may be real and THEN interpreted by the ‘receiver’ for good or ill. What you don’t consider is that such revelations are – by all facts available – self-induced FIRST and then deceptively portrayed as if coming from somewhere other than the person who claims ‘divine’ revelation.
In common parlance, we call this deception a ‘lie’.
That’s a major component of what Ark is referring to as a lie. And we know it’s lie because the ‘revelation’ that includes incorrect facts demonstrates its human and not divine source.
Again, couching this attribution and portrayal of ‘revelation’ outside of religious framing is in fact a medical condition correctly identified as delusional BECAUSE we use reality to ascertain the truthfulness of its ‘perceptive’ claims and find it disassociated from reality. Nothing changes when we do exactly the same thing but frame it within religion. Here we find something remarkable! Only with religion do we find this sudden prevarication and confusion about the delusional condition and, instead, many of us suddenly feel this overwhelming urge to find and use all kinds of rationalized ways to try to accommodate crazy and make it seem common, innocuous, and perfectly reasonable.
Well, surprise! It’s NOT!
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When it comes to spirituality, which is at the core of religion, scientific theories can aid us in attempting to identify the probable cause, but it can’t give a definitive answer. I think the only thing that rational thinking can tell us definitively is that all the religions can’t be Right, therefore creating structures with rules that are essentially laws around them, isn’t the most productive way to go about feeling spirituality. To express this, I don’t need to use the confrontational and inaccurate words like ‘poison’, ‘delusion’ or ‘lie’, but I can use less confrontational and more accurate terms like ‘problematic’, ‘improbable’ and ‘natural’.
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Yes you can. And I have no problem with that. I don’t think it’s effective sowing doubt because it’s apologetic from the get go.
But that’s not the point here; the point is trying to respect what’s the case more than respect for what people want to believe is the opposite case and going along with the contrary belief is somehow enabling doubt is I think a really strange approach. It is identical in intent to religious apologetics. to make the unreasonable seem reasonable.
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I don’t think it’s ‘going along with contrary belief’ to refuse to be totalitarian about what people can believe. It’s kind of amusing you accuse me of doing this simply because I raise concerns about your attitude. The old “with me against me” once more, as if the only thing someone who disagrees with you can be is a Christian apologist.
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None of these links the action of helping to religion as the cause. Like always, the benefit is presumed to be due to the religious sensibilities rather than look at what ACTUALLY motivates people to help people.
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Are you referring to the church being involved with the elderly and refugees etc?
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Umm… two things: Arb is a man and there is no middle ground between belief and non belief nor is there a middle ground between contrary claims about reality. That’s why religion and science produce incompatible results.
I mean, it’s a nice thought to imagine a reasonable middle ground but’s not true. And I respect what’;s true (and how we can know) much more than pretending it’s more important that I’m nice. Nice is overrated.
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Yes, and in an argument purely about belief, I’m on the non-belief side. That doesn’t extend to every conversation I have in Blogland. I’m not in a football team based on religion, politics or any other issue. I take each topic as it comes, as I’m sure do you.
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Again, VW, that sounds reasonable but that’s not what you do in fact; you go along with the bullshit claims as if they are equivalent to what’s true… hence the idea of this nice middle ground where you think it’s fine to agree to disagree. That serves only one master, and it’s not what’s true; it serves the religious to have their batshit crazy ideas accepted as if reasonable, as if it is deduced from reality, as if it’s an equivalent ‘way of knowing’ another ‘kind’ of knowledge.
None of that is true.
So the question of being ‘nice’ to those who are ready, able, and willing to prevaricate on what’s true and go along with a charade as if that’s the right tone to take is actually an abdication of respecting what’s knowable and what’s true.
So here’s the thing: are you the kind of person who is willing to stand up and align yourself, your intellectual integrity, in the name of being nice?
If so, you are placing more importance on being an accomplice with lies and deceit in order to be considered ‘nice’ than you are the principle of speaking truth to power.
You believe being nice is more effective than being true to what’s the case when talking with those who are comfortable being deluded and think that this approach does more to further respect for reality than confrontation. You then act on this assumption and write the way you do castigating those of us who do not. Your defense is that people feel they are hated if you were to speak truthfully, if you were to respect knowledge, if you demonstrated why faith-based belief is always pernicious.
Well, I think you’re wrong. I don’t think anyone ever left religious belief because an atheist was willing to go along in order to be nice. I could be wrong, but I’ve read thousands of deconversion stories that indicate confrontation started the seed of doubt. I think the truth has power greater than the delusions so many people wish to maintain and I trust that staying true to the principle of espousing respect for reality will hold greater sway than any amount of equivocating niceness can ever hope to achieve. The Hitch taught me that. .
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“So here’s the thing: are you the kind of person who is willing to stand up and align yourself, your intellectual integrity, in the name of being nice?”
Wow, what a dangerous dictator and authoritarian you could be! I’m either with you or against you because you’re right and you ARE intellectual integrity. Honestly, look in the mirror!
I’m talking about having conversations with people and not giving them the impression (whether you mean to or not) that you hate everything about them because they are religious and it is the core of their identity. You can boil that down to the blandness of ‘nice’ to belittle it if you want.
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“you go along with the bullshit claims as if they are equivalent to what’s true… ”
Also, I’d be very interested to see where I do that.
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I think a distinction needs to be made between Tildeb and the Arbourist.
Criticising religion as a method used to ask questions and arrive at answers doesn’t incite hatred.
Accusing a whole group of people of being rapists is, on the other hand, is hate speech. It’s also a call to action because it implies imminent danger. The obvious problem being that imminent danger is even justification in the law in cases as serious as homicide.
The underlying matter is people should be paying close attention to the implications of what people like the Arbourist and other members of his cult think and say. By removing the right of an individual to make choices and define themselves, they recreate the world of imposition and oppression activists have been fighting for a very long time. When he arrogantly claims the right to define a fellow citizen he repeats the exact model that allowed many to say for a very long time that “A real woman is one who marries and has children.”- “A real woman is one who doesn’t work.”- “A real woman obeys her husband.” The only difference is the TERFs want to be the ones dictating the definitions.
Make no mistake, they stand against the very cornerstones of the Enlightenment. They stand against personal and civil liberties and they stand against the values of respect and empathy for fellow citizens. I’ve spent my life combating the opportunists of the Christian Right who use precisely the same methods and have the same mindset. I can spot them a mile away.
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I did distinguish between them in the post. I left it as an open question about how Tildeb and others (including me) can deal with our opposition to religion without making it personal or seemingly hateful. I’m still not entirely sure, and I think it’s something we should all take seriously.
All three cases were similar charges but I felt very different in terms of how I ‘offended’ them.
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VW, you say, “I left it as an open question about how Tildeb and others (including me) can deal with our opposition to religion without making it personal or seemingly hateful.”
Well, this is just it. For those who will make synonymous ‘criticism’ as ‘hatred’ then I’m afraid we’re doomed to making any comment ‘seemingly’ hateful. And it certainly doesn’t help to be accused of being hateful from those who should know better.
You conclude by saying, “… I think it’s something we should all take seriously.”
Well, I take the accusation of being hateful very seriously… seriously enough to correct it every time you write it. But I don’t take seriously this Regressive Left notion that to offend is far worse a crime than criticizing some crime itself. That’s where we part company because speaking truth to power will always offend those who think they are entitled to be protected from the truth.
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Again, just because you say there is no hate, doesn’t mean that’s not what others are reading. Please get over yourself and think about this objectively. We can confront the harm that some religions promote with a different voice, less confrontational, less dismissive, maybe even just in a neutral tone. John manages it (usually) and even Pink is improving. 🙂 Won’t mention Ark because he’s a special pantomime case.
Think of it as a personal tip, I think you could put your case forward much more productively without the sweeping statements and without the accusations of total delusion.
Interesting that we’ve come back full circle to this discussion about your Regressive Left. Another place where I suggested to you that you listen to other people and you never did. Listen, Tildeb, digest, and relax. 😀
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Endorsing the discrimination promoted by the Arbourist and Roughseas isn’t exactly a victimless crime. Your first justification to me yesterday on the issue was a list which is for all intents and purposes misleading if not outright fraudulent on material grounds.
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MM, I don;t see it as discrimination because the dividing line for Arb and RS is by sex and not gender identity.
As for the bathroom risks and assaults, I said I didn’t pay the list much attention but was concerned for all parties – including transgendered – who simply wanted safe spaces where sex does differentiate people. That’s why I mentioned the need for a third solution and commented about the solution found at then local high school for transgendered students that seemed to solve this issue without vilifying anyone.
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Interesting. The number one reason you cited to me to justify segregation/discrimination was:
“Specifically, RSOTM sent me a depressingly long list of sexual assaults by men in women’s bathrooms and changing rooms using the transgendered defense of ‘identity’.”
If one is to base public policy on this misleading information spread by the Arbourist’s sect, the implication is there’s a causal link between being transgender and being a sexual predator. Now you can adopt the Arbourist’s word games and say you don’t mean transgender people, but men “in general”. But then we have to go down the Orthodox Monotheistic road where people are segregated according to their genitalia. No more unisex facilities. There’s no way an argument can be made to bar an entire class of people from something without there being a direct (causal) correlation between their identity and whatever unacceptable behaviour they’re alleged to commit. Pedophiles can’t live near schools or parks. Shoplifters can’t go into certain shops. And if transgender people are barred from bathrooms that implies they’re too dangerous a class of people to be permitted anywhere near “normal human beings”.
Not discriminatory? Really?
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MM, Perhaps you missed the interchange I had with RoughSeas about transgendered identity and assault. I articulated my doubts quite strongly, I thought, but heard the concern she had about removing sex-differentiated policies on things like sleeping compartments on trains. I heard that she felt unsafe if the sex differences were removed. I also talked at length about favouring unisex policies for non-sexual shared facilities. What I was demonstrating was the principle that taking into account the potential for sexual attraction/assault in shared facilities should have nothing to do with establishing shared access to public facilities.
So that’s my thing: public access to public facilities. I don’t think it’s smart to design discrimination on the basis of sex into public access and services any more than I think it’s smart to design discrimination into accommodating religious sensibilities. The change in my opinion has to do with accommodating real safety concerns over sexual assault to a vulnerable population who tells us in no uncertain terms that this is not an imaginary concern. Men do sexually assault women all the time. Making room using gender identity to increase male access to females through unisex policies for public access to public facilities directly affects this security just as much as forcing transgendered people to have to share accommodations in the name of equality with one sex or the other. That’s why I keep talking about a third option rather than simply either sex segregation or no segregation.
Clear as mud, right?
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Your comment illustrates, yet again, that Roughseas is operating in bad faith. Do you know when was the last time there were sexually segregated compartments for women on trains in Europe?
The last to run were in the UK, and that was in the 70’s- the year *before* I was born. Or is she worried about India where the law provides no protections whatsoever for transgender people?
This is a smokescreen designed to hide the fact that what they propose is old fashioned bigotry. The same kind that suggested there couldn’t be gay soldiers or women soldiers.
There’s no verifiable evidence anywhere that supports separate facilities for trans people. Not water fountains and not bathrooms. The feelings or whims of extremists don’t qualify as evidence.
Just ask yourself why they need misleading assault lists and stories about train compartments that haven’t actually existed for 40 years?
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MM, you say, “There’s no verifiable evidence anywhere that supports separate facilities for trans people. Not water fountains and not bathrooms. The feelings or whims of extremists don’t qualify as evidence.”
I’m operating here on a very limited exposure: to transgendered high school students specifically. The third bathroom/change room solution seemed to work for all parties including the transgendered students. Of course, I could just be naive but the issues then seem to me to be the issues now and this appeared to be a solution that worked for many years while I was there. When the issues were forefront, the environment was very divisive; when the third room was made available and used, the environment returned to ‘normal’ in that no cared if a student identified as this or that or the other thing, which is the same desire I think I’m hearing from you.
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I’d go along with that except it ignores an essential factor in the equation. Comments by anti-trans people state in no uncertain terms “the risk” of girls/young women being exposed to a penis. This ignores the very nature of gender dysphoria.
The primordial concern of people with the condition is to feel at home and at ease with their mental gender- as well as to be identified as said gender. Can anyone really make a good faith argument that people who dedicate much of their time and effort to adapting their appearance will throw all that away? What for? It just doesn’t pan out logically.
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The problem as I see it is this idea that men identifying as women are deserving of and therefore advocating for a place in the feminist movement. This is highly problematic and I think deserving of principled intransigence on the matter. I do not see this standing firm against the inclusion as ‘trans-haters’.
Feminism is about females, after all, and I think this clarity is undermined when it is usurped by claims that it should be about gender identity as the core principle rather than female disenfranchisement. And the reason why this is so important to differentiate is because empowering gender itself is a necessary platform for enabling patriarchy. To dismantle patriarchy requires us to disempower gender, yet this is EXACTLY what is driving the attack to advance transgendered issues by undermining the very core and legitimacy of feminism.
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That’s a very narrow reading, to say the least. Why would transgender people want to limit feminism to a single factor? Feminism encompasses a whole range of issues, many of which are profoundly understood by male to female transgender people who are often discriminated precisely for having certain characteristics which are labelled as feminine.
The idea radical feminists disempower the concept of gender is wholly disingenuous. What they do is claim the right to reassign gender identity according to their world view. If they were feminine clothing they’re empowering women. If they wear masculine clothing they’re breaking gender stereotypes- when anyone who’s not part of their group does either of those things, said people are reinforcing patriarchal notions. They don’t want to dismantle patriarchy, they want to be a new version of patriarchy. Just as arbitrary, just as totalitarian and just as oppressive.
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That’s exactly it – a new version which is just as oppressive. I find the whole thing utterly bizarre and too like religion to be true. Did you see that’s Carmen supporting Arb’s position now? All these people ‘freed’ from religion, getting sucked into a wonky ideology and thinking it’s scientific in some way. I find it interesting the lines we fall down on some of these issues – the ones that support Arb are all fans of criticising this ‘regressive left’ concept I think, so they’re using this excuse that we can’t pander to everyone (or whatever it is). The problem might be that there are too many competing oppressed groups, and when their interests collide people get confused. Instead of considering that everyone might have a point and looking for a way for everyone’s needs to be met, or at least respect each other, there is a protectionist attitude to the chosen oppressed group. And you agree if I remember rightly about the ‘regressive left’ but it’s only personal experience of similar campaigns, or maybe trans friends, that help you see beyond it. Anyway, ponder out loud.
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The “regressive left” war is just as artificial as the trans-bathroom issue.
A small group of right-wing atheists decided they could capitalize on controversy by attacking people who believe in things like social justice. They even managed to make wanting social justice into an insult: SJW. The obvious stupidity being that being a “Social Justice Warrior” is actually something we should be praising. People fighting for equality and civil liberties aren’t harming society. Even the annoying college students who want safe-rooms aren’t really harming society. Sometimes they may go too far, but that’s much better than those actively fighting to be able to exclude and marginalize.
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Ah ok, i thought you were on ‘the other side’ of that discussion, like Tildeb. I understand the frustration sometimes but not the blanket hostility – it undermines important points.
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At MM
This and this and this and especially this indicate that what is being talked about is a way of thinking coming from people historically aligned with the principles of liberalism… ie the Left. I have been writing about this growing danger and rising popularity and public acceptance in public institutions undermining the core principles of liberalism for over a decade… where pointing out a crime (so to speak) is seen by these ‘liberals’ to be the far greater crime, one full of nefarious discriminatory motives, biases, and of course the mandatory charge of hatred aimed directly at anyone who dares to raise a criticism of some pet illiberal preference or illiberal apologetic position in flavour this month by these anti-conservatives. These articles are but a mere taste of just how pernicious and ubiquitous are the effects of this movement within classical liberalism because these are actually antliberal positions, antiliberal attitudes, and antiliberal opinions pretending to be based on what they are not, namely liberal principles.
Yes, the term is Regressive Left (coined by the huge backlash against Nawaz’s call for reforming Islam by these supposed ‘liberals’, and right now the ‘celebration’ for the hijab-that-represents-female-emancipation in fashions) but it indicates a group of misguided individuals who have forgotten (and are ignoring) the core principles upon which their rights and freedoms to support such anti-liberal positions are in fact based.
The Regressive Left does not describe an imaginary movement but one that is currently and seriously damaging our Western secular liberal democracies at a fundamental level, a movement that is entirely regressive to the Enlightenment principles upon which they are based.
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That’s a rather extreme exaggeration. In the grand scheme of things how does a safe space score in comparison to an immigration ban based on nationality?
And since when has a culture of outrage ever silenced Charlie Hebdo? It’s hyperbole after hyperbole, and often by the same little set. Nawaz, Hirsi Ali, Harris and Coyne. The first three being expert attention seekers. The first two who have made careers on causing controversy- and have checkered histories, to say the least.
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I suspect your drive by smear kind of criticism of these people is actually a case of you not wanting to hear what they have to say rather than having a merit-based argument against their positions.
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That’s hilarious! Their positions are widely held. If anyone wants to hear things against Migrants or Islam, all they need to do is listen to Trump, Fox News, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage- or seek out the many outlets, radio, television and print which carry those messages. Most British tabloids, in fact, are in great peddling the same messages.
The idea they’re being “silenced” is the ultimate in deception. Nawaz and Hirsi have regular columns in various publications. Harris is often on television. That means their alleged victimhood doesn’t really hold water. Nor does much of what they say which is why, little by little, more and more people are dismissing them all together.
Hirsi Ali has completely changed her tone in the past couple of months. Now she masks her propaganda much more carefully, and doesn’t fail to mention she wants to unite not divide. Not unlike Mr. Trump said in his victory speech.
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I never said they were being silenced, MM, although de-platforming and dis-inviting and disrupting public appearances by members of the Regressive Left is becoming an-too-familiar tactic to try to accomplish by bullying what cannot be defeated by merit.
Of particular interest to me is identifying the Regressive Left in action by a peculiar style of thinking: arguing that up is another kind of down, that left is actually right relatively speaking, that white is really black when viewed properly through the lends of tolerance and respect for people. I notice you equate these authors – all of whom have vociferously criticized Trump and what his election win demonstrates contrary to liberal values – to be speaking the same discrimination and bigotry as Trump. That’s a red flag… or, at least, it should be a red flag if you were thinking clearly rather than being so heavily invested in defending your previous position at the expense of jettisoning your intellectual integrity in this matter.
Each of these authors do indeed criticize Islam and brook no tolerance of politicized Islam as being miraculously compatible with liberal values when they are not. In fact, then values of political Islam are antithetical with liberal values. And the merit of their position is unassailable by fact. That’s why their critics as you so ably demonstrate have to rely on exactly the same kind of vilification of personality, of motivation, of secret intentions, and, of course, the mandatory accusation of hatred – a la Ben Affleck – against people who are Muslims
None of this is true. But it is trotted out for yet another go-around as if it were. That’s what you’ve done, MM. This is troubling.
You seem determined to fall into the same intellectual cesspool in order to maintain an artificial ‘side’ concerning the avoidance of their on-point arguments (which, I’ll grant, is a different comment thread altogether). Step back, drop any notion of sides, and reevaluate your assumptions under the question: Does politicized Islam require criticism in order to reform? I suspect you think so but I find it disturbing that you would throw this principled agreement under the Regressive bus headed towards its destination of practical vilification-at-all-costs. And that does not serve what’s true but only those who wish to obscure what’s true in the name of tolerance and respect… even if it costs us all. This is very concerning to me that such a sharp mind as yours could be misled this way without seeing the signs of danger so clearly posted where it naturally leads: to fascism.
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Tildeb, we’ve been down this road.
Just as in this post, you presented highly flawed evidence. In this case it was mythical bathroom assaults. In the case of Muslim Migrants it was a racial theory that implied people born in Islamic cultures were incapable of living or adapting to secular societies. Then as now, I say there’s ample evidence to dismiss those positions. In fact I cited Turkey, Egypt and the French colonies in that case and ZERO evidence of bathroom assaults in this case.
Now even though the evidence dismisses your bathroom danger claim, you refuse to let go of it because…?
So you see, it’s not me who’s married to a theory. I’m perfectly open to being shown evidence that isn’t biased by rather simplistic heuristics.
Show me actual evidence that bathroom usage by transgender people is likely to cause harm, and I’ll happily join support an alternative to shared bathrooms.
Likewise, demonstrate how Muslim cultural identity rather than adherence to the religion is a precursor to violence and I’ll support that position as well.
That’s certainly not what Nawaz or Hirsi Ali do. her last article was about how feminists in the West are guilty because they don’t (sufficiently) condemn Sharia Law. That’s one of those false proof scenarios. What exactly would sufficiently condemning Sharia Law look like? T-shirts? Protests by Pussy Riot in Saudi Arabia? Articles in European newspapers criticizing Sharia Law because that’s an effective way to convince the Middle Eastern clerics?
I’m hardly the one being misled if you think her positioning is honest rather than a media ploy.
Just as an exercise, read her latest article, and tell me hand on heart if you genuinely believe what she’s saying: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/08/on-this-day-without-a-woman-don-t-leave-women-oppressed-by-sharia-law-behind.html
Is there really a growing trend of feminists embracing Sharia Law? Really?
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Two things: the first about shared bathrooms and change rooms and sleeping accommodations is about eliminating sex differences with gender identity. That’s the issue and not whether transgendered people are indeed assaulting others. My concern in reality is, was, and remains the safety of all… including the transgendered who at my high school faced significant danger trying to use either bathroom. This fact matters not at all to you.
The second is about whether you think politicized Islam needs reform. If not, then that’s one thing. If so, then that’s another. If so, then you are attacking the natural allies of liberal Muslims, which serves the enemies of liberal Muslims. This fact matters not at all to you..
What you keep doing is elevating an interpretation of the specific you choose to then be representative of the conflict with the principle… as if this is evidence against supporting the principle (in this case liberalism). You keep doing this and miss the incongruity you create by pretending they are equivalent (pretending sex and gender are really the same in the name of liberalism) and so you think yourself able to demonstrate the incorrectness of the Other (that these authors are equivalently bigoted towards Muslims, that Arb and RS are bigoted towards the transgendered in the name of liberalism).
This is a tactic of misrepresentation you use that does not serve what’s true but maintains a fiction in the name of liberalism. It’s not liberalism; it’s the opposite. It is a tactic used by the Regressive Left that undermines liberal principled values like the twinned tolerance and respect by invoking their twins intolerance and disrespect to be the representing the same principle. Up, meet down. See? Synonyms.
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1. I believe transgendered people are capable of deciding for themselves the safest option. As they don’t represent a risk to anyone else, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Any sort of segregation carries the implication they pose a risk to their fellow citizens.
2. The first time I read Hirsi Ali talking about her effort to “reform Islam”, I literally laughed out loud. Reforming Sunni Islam or Shiite? Wahabism perhaps? Reforming the political Islam of the Iranian regime? Or the neo-political variety that Erdogan has been nurturing? Or the odd Egyptian kind which uses Islam to oppress gays and women, but has many secular attributes?
Talking about reforming Islam is like saying Let’s Make America Great Again. The concept is a non-starter because of the complexity. Can you imagine an atheist coming along and saying: I’m going to reform Protestantism!
It’s a nonsensical idea, no matter how much theocracies should be reformed if not abolished. And as it’s a nonsensical idea, we have to ask why anyone would propose it as a plausible possibility- and further, with themselves as the people capable of taking on the endeavour.
And just so we’re clear, liberalism is civil liberties, political freedom- all on the shoulders of the concept of equality.
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Here’s an interesting post for the roundabout: https://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/the-difference-between-thought-control-and-being-considerate/
Read the comments, we have an interesting discussion about bathroom access. I didn’t realise I’m so repetitive, I keep thinking I have new thoughts. 🙂
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And as usual, no one has to take my word for it. They’re welcomed to look into Nawaz and Hirsi Ali’s histories and credibility for themselves. Including their listings by the SPLC as vehicles of hate speech.
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And isn’t that a travesty of a once principled organization. That shows you the power and influence of the Regressive Left.
Maybe you just conveniently forget that these people you so disreputably malign have to hire body guards to protect them for the ever-so-tolerant and ever-so-respectful lovers of free speech who threaten them with death. Up, meet down. See? You are convinced they really are synonyms!.
Again, your reasoning here is deeply broken. And it shows.
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Disreputably malign? Is asking people to look into their history to check on their credibility maligning them?
And what exactly does the bodyguard thing prove? Do you know how many US abortion doctors have needed bodyguards?
See, the variable isn’t *which* religion, but extremist adherence to the religion.
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I’d never even heard of this Regressive Left until this thread.
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That’s because you’ve probably encountered it under the older term ‘political correctness’.
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Ah, now that I have heard of.
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I’ve been looking through old posts Tildeb on this regressive left stuff, and I’m reminded that you only political correctness when someone ‘patiently explains’ something through post after post so you’re exposed to loads of examples (like Roughseas and Arb have done) or if you know someone, like your friend in a wheelchair. Like you have to feel innately familiar with the situation to give it credence, and that’s why you can so easily brush off the rest as ‘politcal correctness’. But I think the fact that you recognise other people’s needs and varieties of oppression and marginalisation in so many other ways shows you’re just stuck on how to apply to areas you’re not overly personally familiar with. Do you think that could be a fair assessment?
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@John – proof positive of your skim reading abilities. I had a whole series of posts arguing with tildeb about it. Here’s one you didn’t understand: https://violetwisp.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/introducing-the-victims-of-pc/
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@Tildeb
I cannot, in good conscience, let such a warped view of what radical feminism is go unchallenged.
There is but one factor in feminism, and that would be for the liberation of females from the misogyny, sexism, and oppression they face in our society.
For the very same reason why men are looked at with suspicion when they ‘identify’ as feminists is that men have not gone through the deleterious process of female socialization. The same reason why white people cannot speak directly to the experiences of black people, their reality is not informed by the socialization process that underlies much of the oppression in our society. This process is precisely what Simon de Beuvoir, a prominent second wave radical feminist describes in her quotation:
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine”
1.To Beauvoir, “woman” is a harmful social construct forced on females, so this word doubly doesn’t apply to transwomen, who a) are not female and b) are not forced into womanhood.
2. The point of “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” was not that male humans can also become women despite being born male, it was that female humans should not be forced to become a “woman” as defined by our patriarchal world. But trust our modern-day “feminists” to take a quote about female oppression and make it about male fantasies instead.
3.See the rest of the analysis here.
Mr.M’s assertion is pure bullshite.
First a summary of the rad fem position on Gender (with related post for pictures).
A. “So in human society behavioral expectations are imposed on girls and women, boys and men. This is called gender. And it’s bad because it tends to keep girls and women, the humans born female, in an inferior social position.
Beyond the expectations of behaviour are social roles assigned to the sexes, these are gender roles.
Adopting the gender roles of the opposite sex and saying that makes one the equivalent of the opposite sex only serves to reinforce the idea that those gender roles are an inherent part of being that sex. All it does is continue to perpetuate them, and the oppression of girls and women, the humans born female, especially.
The solution then is to do away with gender, not further codify it. Then no one has to feel their sex is wrong because they don’t meet society’s behavioral expectations.” (This right here is the “totalitarian solution” Mr.M so often references in his misrepresentations, pretty scary eh?)
B. Shulamith Firestone (1970) from the Dialectic of Sex: (link to the full article of historical rad fem interpretations)
“just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be… not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”
C. Christine Delphy:
“We do not know what the values, individual personality traits or culture of a non-hierarchical society would be like, and we have great difficulty imagining it. ….perhaps we will only be able to think about gender on the day when we can imagine non-gender.”
“All the writers I have just quoted are women who ‘can (and do) imagine non-gender’. This willingness to think seriously about what for most people, including many feminists, is the unthinkable—that a truly feminist world would not just operate without gender inequalities but actually without gender distinctions—is, we would argue, one of the hallmarks of radical feminism, one of the ways it stands out as ‘radical’.”
Radical feminists seek to abolish gender because it is so harmful to all those involved. Others, who view it through the lens of identity politics, as Mr.M does has demonstrated, overtly ignore and seek to obfuscate what radical feminists actually propose.
Demonstrably wrong. Radical feminists seek to dismantle gender and the harmful gender roles associated with it.
Yes, because radical feminists want to establish another patriarchal society. *shakes head*. The radical program for dismantling of the structures of male power and privilege threatens men so much that they have to resort to ludicrous claims such as this.
The projection here is massive. Trans-ideology imposes its own labels, as well as gender on women. The made up prefix “cis” illustrates this perfectly.
Transactivists will claim women have “cis-privilege” – It goes something like this :“Cis girls and women in general – experience the privilege of being seen, accepted and respected in the gender from birth.”
Let’s see how ‘cis-privileged’ females actually have (or what it is to be female in the world): It’s a long list, after the trans definition it includes – Being the target of Acid throwing, Breast Ironing, Bride Burning, Dating abuse, Domestic Violence, Dowry Death, Eve teasing, Honour Killing (Sororocide), Female Genital Mutilation, Female infanticide, Femicide, Foot binding, Force-feeding, Forced Abortion, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Forced Prostitution, Human Trafficking, Murder of Pregnant Women, Raptio, Sati, Violence Against Prostitutes
Let’s not forget the Sexual Assault and rape category: Sexual Violence, Sexual Assault (Campus sexual assault, Mass Sexual Assault), Rape (and pregnancy laws). Types of rape (by deception, corrective, date, gang, genocidal, in war, marital, prison, statutory). Sexual Slavery.
—–
Women do not willingly identify with any of the above conditions. This is precisely why the term “cis” resides in the realm of fatuous, patriarchally-approved bullshit. If women (adult human females) actually had the choice to identify their way out of their oppression we wouldn’t have any women left on the planet. It’s almost like there is some sort of material reality that women’s oppression is largely based on.
Judie Bindel on the sexist and authoritarian use of “cis”:
“Forcing women to use the prefix ‘cis’ suggests that we are happy with and accepting of our oppression that is imposed upon us by the male ruling class. I will neither identify with, accept, or apologize for my oppression as woman. Gender is a punishment, not innate
So, unsurprisingly the id-pol trans-ideology is quite terrible for women. This, among many other reasons, is why radical feminists so fervently oppose it. It is sexist and misogynistic by its very definition and thus antithetical to the goals feminism and female liberation.
——-
Anyhow, to get an idea of what current radical feminism stands for, not distorted though the lens of liberal identity politics I would recommend reading the following:
Female Erasure – edited by Ruth Barrett.
Femininity’ and ‘Against our Will’ by Susan Brownmiller are not directly related, but I highly recommend them.
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@tildeb
It also works very well in the schools that I teach in as well. It’s almost like it is a reasonable accommodation. And as mentioned earlier, it is an option I support as the boundaries for everyone involved are respected.
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Ah yes, that certainly explains your efforts to remove from individuals the right to shape and define their own identities.
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Including 500 quotes doesn’t prove anything you say.
Fact 1: You don’t get to define feminism.
Fact 2: You don’t get to define gender.
Fact 3: You don’t get to label a fellow citizen because they’re free to define themselves.
That’s why your pseudo-variety of feminism is dead in the water. It’s why no one has or will take what you say seriously. That of course alongside the fact that one of your goals is to impose authoritarian views.
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@Mr.M
1. Neither do you. Furthermore, when you actively misrepresent and ignore stated theory, it illustrates your dedication to your faux-liberal standards.
2. Actually I do – Like the second wave feminists I quoted, a toxic feature of society that needs to be deconstructed and done away with; and most definitely not conserved or reinforced.
3. Fellow citizens can label the themselves however they see fit. Fellow citizen do not get to force me to accept their labels. Or does free speech just occur when it happens to benefit you and your causes? As it certainly seems to be so.
Lol. Second wave feminism is in revival, as more and more women hit peak-trans and peak-identity politics, seeing them for what they are.
More women every day are waking up and seeing the ineffectiveness and denuded nature of the man-pleasing feminism you espouse.
Populations have grown, and continue to grow in gender critical, radical, and woman centered forums.
Fabricate away, my good man. Rad-fem theory speaks for itself, and most certainly doesn’t need your approval. 🙂
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Do you worship the stated theory or simply take it so seriously that you don’t care who gets stomped on? It’s a theory, we tend to update those when they’re wonky.
I think it’s great people aren’t feeling the need to conform to gender roles like we used, as long as you’re not insisting they conform to your version instead.
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1. Exactly, genius. Neither of us gets to define feminism. It’s a grand concept with different schools of thought. None less valid than the other. I’m not trying to co-opt, appropriate and exclude- you are.
2. ” Fellow citizen do not get to force me to accept their labels” – true as well. The Christian Right says that about gay marriage. Fortunately the law doesn’t have to be submitted to their “acceptance”.
3. I’ve had quite enough of your garbage- and that’s precisely what it is. This “defending” of women from attacks that never happened on trains that haven’t existed in 40 years. All the while demonizing an innocent group of people. All the time you’ve spent promoting this trash could have been used for something materially productive in promoting the citizen’s rights of women and their place in society. What a shame.
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@MR.M
Most sexual predators are men. Transwomen are men, and offend at the same rate. Thus, a causal link *clearly* exists.
Women have had to fight for access to bathrooms in the public sphere. They have also fought for them to be sex segregated because they are an oppressed population and need a safer space away from their oppressors.
Then it behooves the trans-community to define exactly was ‘trans-ness’ is and what qualities that need to be exhibited. Because, depending on who you ask – again because the trans community can’t define itself – it can be almost anything – from post-ops to men who declare they are women. And coyly playing no-true Trans-Scotsman, while females continue to be assaulted is simply unacceptable.
So, if the safety of women is priority, and it is for radical feminists, then until the trans-community sorts itself out, polices the predators within its community and makes a commitment to respect the boundaries of the oppressed class (females) sex segregation with regards to changing spaces, and washrooms should continue.
Making new gender neutral facilities available is also quite acceptable, as it allows those are comfortable with trans-people to interact as they see fit, while also preserving the boundaries of those who are not comfortable with mixed-sex facilities.
Men should not be allowed in female bathrooms, as noted earlier, men whether they identify as trans or not, sexually offend at the same rate. Thus, if we wish to prioritize female safety in society, then the current sex segregated standard should be honoured.
The choice is quite simple here – Do you prioritize female safety or male feelings? As a feminist ally, I unabashedly choose to prioritize female safety.
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Now you’ve crossed the line of imbecility.
Do you not even know what a causal link is? Either look it up or ask, but don’t play the fool. A causal link is when a particular thing/characteristic is the motivating factor in an occurrence. A person’s genitalia is not determinative of whether they are or are not rapists. That means gender is incidental or co-incidental in rape, but not causal. At least things are becoming more clear to me, because if you don’t know how to organize basic logical equations that explains your “reasoning.”
Women have fought for many things. There’s no evidence they want or even support anything you say. Radical feminism isn’t even representative of the majority mainstream feminist thought. In fact the only people embracing radical “feminist” calls to discrimination are those part of the Christian Right. The idea you can step in and proclaim what “Women Want” is beyond laughable. You and Kate/Roughseas the self-appointed voice and soul of all feminism, all women and all safety. Hilarious indeed.
And there you go again requiring definitions of other people’s gender or sexuality. Who the hell do you think you are? Mind your own business, live your own life. This pathological fixation on other people’s sex and sexuality was pathetic when it came from the Christian Right and it’s even more pathetic from anyone who purports to be interested in civil rights.
And finally don’t think anyone is falling for your word games. You can’t in the same breath say you’re happy with special facilities for transgender people while attacking their very right to exist, to be free citizens and to define *themselves*. That’s what a free and civilized society is all about. Not your misleading numbers or Roughseas’ faux-fears about train compartments that haven’t even existed in 40 years. Prioritizing females is first and foremost listening to females at large, not a subset of extremists.
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@Mr.M
Precisely. People who inhabit the class of men are also the class the tends to assault, harass, and sexually violate women. Transwomen are a part of the class of men, and thus offend at the same rate as men do.
Provided you a list, from such a small population that, that gives specific instances of male violence against women.
When asked about male-to-trans pressuring lesbians to have a sex with them, list also provided.
So really, you should listen to what woman are saying, or more likely just continue to make excuses and justifications for the male violence in our society. (Your feminist credentials are just shining right now, so proud of you.)
Women want to be free of patriarchy and male violence that comes along with it.
Hardly controversial.
Done and done, as soon Men who identify as women stop appropriating womanhood and feminism.
Civil rights do not include the right to make others accept your ideology or ignore material reality.
Yeah… wow..just watching a man dictate what a woman should and should not be afraid of.
Damn Son, never go full MRA, at least not in public.
Ah, because dissent is heresy, especially when it comes to male definitions of the world being challenged.
You speak well about many things, just not feminism and females on this topic, because what you advocate does not advance the liberation of females from patriarchy – quite the opposite really.
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The idiocy continues. A tall brown skinned female illegal immigrant commits a crime. Is the causal factor her skin colour, her immigration status, her height- or is THE MOTIVATION for the crime a factor unrelated to her identity?
Get it now? That’s causality. The motivation.
I’m very aware that male violence against women exists. Every single day. The primordial perpetrators are cisgendered heterosexual men, like you. Your class is responsible for rape and even marital rape. For domestic violence at alarming rates, even in developed countries like Sweden. In Spain one woman per day dies as a victim of mortal domestic violence. In Africa there’s a rape epidemic.
Solutions to any of those issues DO NOT involve fabricated insignificant issues invented by bored and not particularly intelligent people in the developed world. No transgendered person has been arrested for bathroom rape in the past 30 years and no amount of misleading lists you come up with proves the contrary.
Are you actually defending Roughseas’ concern about segregated trains that don’t exist and haven’t existed in 40 years? Is it “dictating” to her that she shouldn’t be afraid of something that does not exist? I call *that* a material reality. SEGREGATED COMPARTMENTS HAVEN’T EXISTED IN EUROPE FOR 40 YEARS. She’s afraid they’ll stop existing a second time around?
That takes demagoguery to a whole new level.
And just so we’re clear your definitions and positions aren’t the standard. Not the standard for women, not the standard for feminism, certainly not the standard for educated people who believe in civil liberties and citizen’s rights. And your time isn’t focused on doing anything to help women or make them actually safer because you’re expending your energy on an entirely artificial issue fabricated by extremists who came up with it to draw attention to themselves.
Every single one of your “arguments” can be repurposed and serve as an attack on a particular race. You know what that means? Specious. Specious every time.
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“No transgendered person has been arrested for bathroom rape in the past 30 years” – well that just shows that in spite of it all, I’m falling for their propaganda. I imagined this was based on at least a handful of incidents.
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Have a look at this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/04/more-gop-lawmakers-arrested-for-sexual-misconduct-in-bathrooms-than-trans-people/
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I think your feminist theory has got lost in its own terminology. We all agree there are many imbalances in society that we need to work together to redress. You make yourself sound like knight in shining armour freeing the women. It’s not that old fashioned or sexist. We all need to work together to ensure we don’t discriminate against traditionally oppressed groups, while showing respect to every individual where they are. Your theory seems to work towards a fictitious goal – we have no way of know what choices people will make in a genuinely equal society – whereas your holy text/theory gives you answers.
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@VW
So is having no theory and related praxis a better way to approach views on how society should be structured?
Are you advancing a notion similar to that of libertarian thought/theory?
A more apt image is taking a teaspoon and trying to drain the ocean.
The patriarchy rolls on, whether there is fragmented opposition to it or not.
Only when the people who are oppressed by it – women – organize, work together in solidarity, and raise enough hell to change the status quo, then will things change.
Agreed. Addressing, deconstructing and dismantling patriarchal structures – like gender – would be a great place to start.
So working toward getting women out of the subservient oppressed class is a fools errand?
Should every female child be forced into the toxic mold of femininity because we’re “not sure what will happen” if we get rid of (some/all of) the oppressive features of society?
You kinda got me in a box here, as I’m not sure how to respond to what seems to be – “well, maybe the status-quo, just isn’t so bad…”.
*sigh* – If not bending to the unreasonable demands made by men, and demanding systemic change (for the betterment of women) in society is so unpalatable,and such a noxious concept…
I dunno, I think it is worth fighting for. And thus, will continue to do so until we don’t have to worry about toxic conceptions like gender harming anyone anymore.
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The problem with your theory is that it doesn’t have real life application. Of course we can fight for equality of opportunity, for equal representation and for men to be less violent. Of course we can fight for families and wider structures so stop making assumptions about children because of their biological sex. But that can never involve telling people how they must behave or dress, or what characteristics they should identify with or erase. Can you not see how totalitarian that is? Surely you can. When you break down gender roles, you don’t get to say what’s wrong and right, that would defeat the purpose.
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Ah violet–
You have been given a rare gift by your ‘regular’ customers here who cannot see up from down, or lelt from right. Read the words carefully ‘behind the words,’ in the comments on THIS thread by such as the littlestonegod, you know, the guy with the funny cement hat, who hides behind religion to trash ALL religion.
And the other, you know, the one who always speaks of sexual perversion and justifies his prurience, by displaying everlasting ignorance of believers who are actually decent people.
They speak of COMMON SENSE………. yet say this:
“As it is, these delightfully delusional individuals should bloody well consider themselves damned lucky that they are allowed to practice the crap they do.”
Really now?
Ask yourself violet, in the furnace of honesty, where you ALONE can decide truthfully, do Christians COMMAND others to strap bombs to themselves…….and kill others in the process?
Remember the word is ‘common sense.’ Did Christ Himself or any New ‘Testament writer even suggest to end the life of someone not like them????????
Common sense? And yet, these regular patrons make no distinction between bastards of a lousy father, with children who have a good Father. I post this to you, because these things were said on your blog, but I have no interest in a dialog with two of the three stooges who have proven they are unable to be judicious, accurate, and without bias.
And btw, believers who understand scripture would no more preach hell to children than they would teach them thermodynamics. Its called COMMON SENSE. On this point alone, the
ignorance purely resides in the garden of deceit and is a false flower, but doted upon by people who actually do not have common sense. More proof?
So I ask you to consider who exactly is delusional…………..as for me? Sure, I believe it takes a carpenter to make a fine wood table…….but the tree…………..Hmmm, there is a discussion about the maker also, and common sense wins the day.
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While you were being homeschooled, were successive dots (…………) the only form of punctuation you were taught to use consistently?
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Certain Christian groups actively follow some of the more insidious methodology of child rearing recommended in the bible, such as beating kids with rods and lying to them about Hell … even as far as producing terrifying video and books to demonstrate their vile erroneous point.
Several Christian cults beleive solely in prayer as a means of medical care and actively withhold medicine intervention. There are recorded incidents of death as a result of such bizarre behaviour.
In days of yore we had the Children’s’ Crusade, you may recall, and goodness knows how many of them died on this pathetic endeavor.
Anyone who is a creationist, as you are, should be prevented from educating children in any form.
I might go as far as to suggest you should have minimum contact with kids full stop.
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Ark,
You are a living example of why homeschooling is critical for the survival of Christian Western Civilization.
The lack of religion in England and elsewhere in Europe isn’t being filled by atheists.
It is being filled by the Islamic Jihad.
What is happening in Europe is an exercise in the obvious (that means it is beyond the understanding of atheists).
That is, civilization depends on religion and when the religion goes, so too, the civilization.
Such has played out time and again with EVERY civilization in human history.
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Yes, that’s why the Incas held onto their god until the Jesuits arrived and fucked that up, replacing one form of madness with another.
A similar thing happened to the Native Americans up north after the Mayflower arrived, until eventually the Christians were directly and indirectly responsible for one of the largest genocides in the human history.
You are an absolute disgrace to insane people.
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Ark,
That’s right!
The Aztecs too. They were so weak that all it took was 30 kickass Spaniards to trash their whole empire.
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And then the Jesuits arrived all it took was enforced Jesus belief and disease and Christianity managed to obliterate another culture.
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Ark,
You are brain desperately searching for at least one coherent thought.
You issue for with one provably stupid statement after the next.
You are the poster boy for what atheism does to the human brain.
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Sadly you are the clown prince of deflection and the theological two step.
The epitome of why religion has the ability to corrupt ordinary people and denigrate them mercilessly.
This is you.
There is no love lost between us,, Som, if what you write is a true reflection of who you are, but I do pity you.
We can only be grateful that your and your kind will eventually die out and become extinct.
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Thanks for your input ColorStorm. In terms of killing other people, I don’t think there’s much in it between Islam and Christianity. Granted, in our current times Christians tend to be less aggressive in the past, but the fact remains that the Christian faith has at times been used to justify horrific crimes. But then, as I pointed out before, I don’t think societies devoid of religion would be immune to such actions – as recent examples have shown us.
I’m sure we’ll all ‘delusional’ to a certain extent. We take certain ideas and run with them whatever. As long as we’re open to thinking about our assumptions and our beliefs and discussing them, I think we’re doing okay.
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@VW
Arb: This isn’t about hating a particular subset of people because they are a certain way, this is about disagreeing with the bullshit they spew and the demands they make.
Literally this. Jebus, the answer is right there. But let’s continue since you do. 🙂
Okay, is biological sex a valid method of describing our species? It is how biologist, our medical profession, and most people define the two portions of our species.
1. Should male to trans be screened for cervical cancer?
2. Should female to trans be screened for prostate cancer?
3. Should medical professionals check for symptoms of a heart attack based on gender identity or biological sex?
This can be a long list, but would you agree that biological sex is a) real and b) a fairly important distinction?
The transgressions of the various trans-communities are under reported in the media. Listening to their victims, women both gay and straight, and reporting the incidences, even on a microscopic media platform such as a wordpress blog – is a service in defence of women, and as a radical feminist ally, what I do.
Women are scared to speak out against the trans-cult and their currently popular ideology. There are many a private blog out there, that women have set up to speak about their lives and their feminism without male interference. It is because of the hate and threats one receives for daring to oppose an ideology that is rooted in misogyny, and thus harmful to woman, that I use my male privilege and the standing that goes with that to speak out publicly.
Privileged males have been telling people what to do for centuries, it’s not a mantle I particularly want. But since you asked –
1. Feel free to express yourself in whichever arbitrary gender category you’d like, but realize that in a free society, you cannot and should not be able to control my opinion or reasonable reactions when it comes to your personal identity or set of beliefs.
2. Organize and agitate for (new) gender neutral facilities in all public locations. (A proposition I endorse and have lent support to)
3. Respect the boundaries of women and realize that women are oppressed because of their sex, and not an identity they have chosen. They cannot opt out of this oppression and it should be recognized as such.
4. Rigorously define what being Trans is before attempting to get legal protection for the category, because ‘my personal feelings’ is not descriptive enough for legislative interpretation. Also this opens the door for any man or woman to merely state they feel like the opposite sex, to have access to sex segregated facilities.
5. With regards to definitional rigour, what are the standards to be followed? Only post-operative people? Pre-operative people? Only on hormones? Happen to be wearing a dress or suit? On their word? Only those with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (as per DSM V)? The category of trans has not been defined, even within the trans community, thus a common standard should be reached before proceeding further.
6. Make claims based on scientific and observable evidence, for instance – transwomen are transwomen is congruent with reality, and thus can be categorized as fact.
7. Awareness that all gender non conforming behaviour does not immediately require a prescription of being trans.
A start, it would go far toward successfully integrating trans people into society.
We separate toxic religious beliefs from religious people and correctly understand that it is the religious teachings and practices that are problematic. The same can apply to the trans question, as it is the ideology and certain practices that are problematic, but not the majority of the people.
Again, do we have to accept christ as your saviour because someone has a heartfelt, character defining belief that he does?
My acceptance of your beliefs is not a right. If it is, we should be welcoming christ into our lives sooner or later.
The policing of trans behaviour should start in the trans community. For instance, if protesting and vandalizing a Woman’s Library, as it happened in Vancouver (Canada), then members of the Trans community should have made a statement disagreeing with the violence used by the trans people in question, ostensibly in the defence of the trans agenda.
As of this date, no such statement has been issued.
Transwomen, particularly transwomen of colour involved with prostitution are assaulted and murdered at a terrible rate. Society should act, and is acting where the Nordic Model (supported wholeheartedly by most rad fems) is in place to help women and trans-women exit prostitution and the associated lifestyle.
In Canada, our charter protects the human rights and freedoms of all if its citizens, and I fully endorse that charter.
Oh, the radical feminist shadow conspiracy? I’ve never heard of it. The thing is, that women, even liberal feminists are beginning to see the paradoxes and inconsistencies with trans-ideology. The number of people posting and speaking out against the points in the trans-platform is growing every day – it has grown significantly since the Woman’s march and will continue to do so.
Criticizing trans-ideology is necessary and does not equate to hating or wanting to erase transpeople any more than critiquing religious ideology and practices is equivalent to wanting to erase religious people.
Naming the problem and addressing the root causes of the problem are integral to all of radical feminist theory, analysis and practice.
Gender and gender roles (and of course the societal patriarchal construct that upholds them) are the problem. Without them, we’d simply have the accurate biological descriptions of male and female and then people could identify, dress, act, however they would like, without the toxic patriarchally-prescriptive gender roles informing their actions.
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Let’s play a game:
Okay, is race a valid method of describing our species? It is how biologist, our medical profession, and most people define the different portions of our species.
1. Should whites screened for sickle cell anemia?
2. Should blacks be screened for Tay Sachs?
3. Should medical professionals check for symptoms of a hereditary hemochromatosis based on the person’s apparent colour or the race they checked on their forms?
This can be a long list, but would you agree that race sex is a) real and b) a fairly important distinction?
This is a textbook example of a specious argument. We could insert sexual orientation, nationality, even class, and on the surface it would look plausible. But only on the surface. Proper scrutiny and plain old mathematics demonstrates how these constructs are nothing but constructs.
More importantly the case the Arbourist makes here is for the right to “criticize trans ideology”- which is of course, like gay or Jewish ideology, first and foremost, the right to exist. The right to be, to function as a free citizen without being attacked, labelled a pedophile, labelled a rapist, and marginalized. Aaah these radical feminists should really pat themselves on the back for their endeavours.
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The interesting thing is that he’s learning to tone down his rhetoric. I hope that’s a sign of stepping back, but I’m worried he’s just trying to find more sly ways to make it sound respectable. Do you notice how many people are silent on this? If you weren’t here I’d be on my own with Clare. And the fact that Tildeb sees something in his argument shows Arb is expressing it in a way that appeals to those thinkers who believe they are logical and scientific. Scary stuff that people can’t see the call for discrimination screaming out and won’t confront it.
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A number of people are also ready and willing to endorse discrimination against people born in Muslim countries- even though there’s no evidence to justify the generalization.
The Arbourist’s “softening” is just one more of his scams. If you look closely at the structure of his comments, the word games and the incredible amount of deceptive tactics he uses, you know we’re dealing with an extremist.
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“This isn’t about hating a particular subset of people because they are a certain way, this is about disagreeing with the bullshit they spew and the demands they make.”
False comparison Arb. Tildeb is talking about belief – a distinct category with 100% shared characteristic. You’re talking about some individuals who are trans. Not exactly, or even anything like the same.
Biological sex is an indicator for medical professions about what to expect from each body, and about what their likelihood of developing specific illness are. It’s not definitive, just as biological sex isn’t definitive.
“Women are scared to speak out against the trans-cult and their currently popular ideology.” There’s no cult, stop being absurd and offensive. And ‘a popular ideology’, with hate crimes on the rise and increasing amounts of press coverage questioning them? Once again, absurd. Maybe it’s different in Canada. But still no ‘cult’ or ‘ideology’. If you want to be taken seriously, stop using inaccurate and negative labels that show you have a twisted agenda.
Thanks for the numbered list, it’s helpful to the conversation and shows in more detail what you’ve previously not shared.
1. Looks like you want to leave it open to be rude to people, like Greer’s comments about trans women. Is that a ‘reasonable reaction’? Can’t argue with her right to her opinion, but don’t make such nastiness look neutral.
2. Seems like a good idea. In the meantime, use whatever toilet you’ve always been using.
3. This is not specific to trans people – surely this would be what we want from everyone?
4. The difficulties of definitions – is this to join the cult? Do they need a tick box list? I’m not sure about this one.
5. Or this one. Why do you want to know?
6. Transwomen are transwomen is fine. If they want to identify as a woman it doesn’t bother me, if you want to identify as a doctor I won’t ask for paperwork or proof – unless you’re treating me. I’m happy to take people’s word for what they are or how they feel and usually it’s not something I need verified.
7. Completely agree with this one but for everyone, again not specific to trans people.
“A start, it would go far toward successfully integrating trans people into society.”
I think what you meant to say there is that you, personally, might stop your online attacks.
“We separate toxic religious beliefs from religious people and correctly understand that it is the religious teachings and practices that are problematic. The same can apply to the trans question, as it is the ideology and certain practices that are problematic, but not the majority of the people.”
Nonsense! Show me where you can find this ‘ideology’ – you make it sound so sinister and organised, and then concede it’s not the majority of the people. If that’s the case, it’s not a ‘trans question’ it’s a ‘minority subset trans question’ – and this is the only time I’ve ever seen you bother to mention that fact.
“As of this date, no such statement has been issued.” Probably because it’s not an organised religion, or anything like that. It’s a group of people with a shared characteristic.
“Criticizing trans-ideology is necessary and does not equate to hating or wanting to erase transpeople any more than critiquing religious ideology and practices is equivalent to wanting to erase religious people.”
Really want to do a comparison? We want to erase religion from people’s lives as an indoctrinated norm because we think it’s harmful. Do you want to erase the possibility of self-identifying as trans from people’s lives because you think it’s harmful? Yes, I think you do. You think it doesn’t exist, don’t you? And yet you are never upfront enough to state this, because you know it’s foul. But do correct me if I’m wrong, I’d love to be wrong about this (but I expect you’ll conveniently ignore this part of the comment).
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@VW
Actually quite the same. Feelings of religiosity, feelings about gender same thing.
Or, shall we classify it as a psychiatric disorder, as the DSM-V does?
Religious identity, gender identity fall under the same heading as both are intensely personal subjective-beliefs that don’t jive with material reality.
Tell that to the feminists who are regularly deplatformed, threatened and harassed by the trans-cult and their allies.
Only by your standard VW. There is nothing obscure or twisted about defending a radical feminist point of view.
Gender identity and the trans position on gender are extremely harmful to women, as both conserve and propagate negative gender stereotypes that hurt women.
Quite frankly, if people want to identify as a block of cheese, that indeed is there prerogative. In fact, more power to them and ‘cheese-gender’.
When they demand however, that I accept them as Cheese, and require me to bring them wine and crackers, lest their subjective personal identity is offended, that is where it becomes problematic – especially if their deeply held beliefs do not concur with material, objective reality.
You can think whatever you’d like about my motivations, or…just read them here on your blogas to why I believe they are valid and the reasoning I use to get to my conclusions.
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“Actually quite the same. Feelings of religiosity, feelings about gender same thing.”
So you are talking about all trans people? Please try and be consistent – either you are criticising the actions and attitudes of a minority of trans women, or you are talking about all trans people. For someone who demands clarification of what trans is, you don’t seem awfully clear what group you are even criticising. I suspect it just suits you to pretend it’s the minority who behave unacceptably, while you’re really aiming at trans as entire concept – am I right?
“Gender identity and the trans position on gender are extremely harmful to women, as both conserve and propagate negative gender stereotypes that hurt women.”
Absolute nonsense! And if you are silly enough to believe this, then you have to start attacking all men and women who conform to traditional gender stereotypes just as much as you attack trans people. Because we are all equal victims in this patriarchal theory (it’s a theory remember, that describes a general experience, it’s not a law or science).
I’ve read your reasoning on numerous occasions. It all always boils down to the frightening, yes frightening, sense that trans people are inconvenient to your gender theories and therefore are to be vilified at every opportunity. I don’t doubt that some trans people behave atrociously (as with any individuals with a shared characteristic), and I fully support that any kind of harassment or bullying (by anyone) should be dealt with exactly as that. I don’t think it should be isolated as special from any angle – either in terms of accepting/excusing it or in terms of confronting it with additional force.
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“Should I suggest that your obvious cattiness and blatant intransigence was hormonal and must be due to you having a period?”
Oh ouch,Violet. How you can even bear the evident sexism and outright misogyny of atheism is beyond me.
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Not to worry, if you read the thread you’ll see I brought it up by questioning their behaviour based on their sex. He was making a sarcastic sexist point back at me. Besides, I have no issues with discussing my cycle and the effects it has on me, although I made it clear that you can’t generalise about women based on this.
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“Besides, I have no issues with discussing my cycle and the effects it has on me…”
Hope you don’t offend any transwomen by doing that. Sounds very cisgendered to me.
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You should chat to Arb about your feelings there. I’m sure you’ll get on like a house on fire. But shows his myth spreading is doing its job where it counts. 🙂
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Which illustrates that you neither read properly or bother with context; cherry picking so’s you can return with just the right amount of insincere bleeding heart womanly support (sic) & feigned, self-righteous indignation. Much like the way you approach your version of Christianity, in fact.
There seems little point in mentioning your ignorance … that shines like a beacon.
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You’ll so love this!
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/templeton-gives-200k-to-religion-news-service-for-reporting-on-the-intersection-of-science-and-religion/
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violet wisp,
Been following the conversation and the vilification of both Tildeb and Arb’s viewpoints. I just happened to read the following today and it applies to Arb’s viewpoint. I thought it raised a very valuable and thought-provoking ‘imaginative’ exercise.
Choices Not Taken
Imagine how differently things could have gone between males who gender identify as women and the 51% of the world’s female population if . . .
IF the vocal trans majority had not chosen to focus their energy on re-defining women in their image, and instead proudly proclaimed themselves to be gender non-conforming men, a no less sacred experience of humanity.
IF they had not insisted on erasing our biology or their own in order to validate their gender identity, and instead acknowledged themselves as males who simply chose to adopt and express a gender stereotypical feminine appearance.
IF they had not bullied themselves into female spaces and worked to make illegal our private spaces, and instead showed themselves to be true allies of women by respecting and protecting our needs.
IF they allowed themselves to feel even a fraction of empathy that they fully expect from women and girls toward THEIR needs.
IF they had not focused their anger at women for the actual violence they experienced at the hands of other males.
We ARE our choices.
Male sexual and physical violence is of mutual concern for the trans community, women, lesbians, gay men, and children of both sexes.
Imagine IF all these oppressed groups united to name the real problem.
Imagine.
– Ruth Barrett
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Imagine IF people would just let trans people work out what they want, what is tearing them apart (because it obviously does) and tried to help them find a way to be comfortable in society, rather than waving made-up theories in their faces and telling them they are WRONG about how they feel and they have to do it differently to be accepted.
Imagine IF gay people were told they can’t redefine sexuality because it’s always been man and woman, that they are attempting to erase human biological norms, and that their aggressive pride marches and angry rants about acceptance simply aren’t welcome.
Imagine IF the conservative majority had been disgusted by gay people and told them to focus their anger on violence against women at the hands of males.
Imagine IF every other oppressed group on the planet went against radical feminist theory and we had to attack them too. Wouldn’t that be fun?
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Violetwisp, you wrote: “If religion always “impairs in the mind” how could we ever take any religious people seriously?” I have been strugling with this for as long as I can remember. Ever since my childhood when I realized that these supernatural things were percieved as real by actual otherwise seemingly rational adults, my answer to the question has been, that this is just one thing that they have been mistaken about. Why not? I have been mistaken about a lot of things as a child as much as an adult. Making mistakes is just fine. Repeating mistakes you have realized to be mistakes is idiotic. Religious people are not idiots as such, as they have not repeated their mistake on this one issue, they have simply not had good enough reasons to realize it was a mistake in the first place. How do we treat people we care for, who have made a mistake? Do we not tell it to them? What if they refuse our help? Should we start calling them idiots? What good would that achieve? Are they idiots if they do not see their error? How should we approach their mistake if it has become a part of their identity? I try to take people seriously even when they present the most fancifull ideas about homeopathy, gods, fairies, racism and what ever nonsense people have come up with. If it is a serious issue for the individual it is a serious issue for the society and the other individual. That does not mean it is true, and as with racism and religion it may have very serious effects on everybody.
As for the misrepresentation of others, I think it is most often due to a misunderstanding between the two people. Even the most abnoxious individuals rather rarely deliberately try to misrepresent the other, but it happens. Intelligent and empathetic people often do not even assume they have been purposefully or deliberately misrepresented, but it happens and sometimes they are right to call it out. If you are been misrepresented you are right to call it out wether if it was deliberate or not. Just to make your position clear. Since if it was a case of mistaken misrepresentation, there is the danger, that someone else read you wrong. Is there not? People also end up to misrepresent others because they subconsciously would rather see the other person representing themselves in a slightly nother way to provide better justification for them to be wrong. I know adults should not do that, but it happens. The more complex the issues are the easier such misunderstandings are to occur.
If someone accused me of misrepresenting them, I would like to think, that my reaction would be – wether I thought I ever did misrepresent them, or not – to take their word for it, and restart the conversation from how they did represent themselves on the issue when they tried to correct me on how they saw the issue then. It is not so important what people have believed as it is what they currently think. It might also be, that I would be terrible at this, despite all my high hopes of myself.
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“I would like to think, that my reaction would be – wether I thought I ever did misrepresent them, or not – to take their word for it, and restart the conversation from how they did represent themselves on the issue when they tried to correct me on how they saw the issue then.”
That’s what I’ve tried to do with Tildeb, over several comments and on this post. I understand now how he feels I’ve misrepresented him but I’m still not clear on the difference between things like showing religion no respect, calling people deluded, and not coming across as hating them. Perhaps I define ‘hate’ slightly differently to him.
I also apologised to the two Christians who I’m aware I cherry-picked comments from to make a point.
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VW, I don’t think any of the quotes in your post demonstrate any hated from Tildeb toward religious people (or anyone else).
You said:
You respect other people’s supernatural beliefs which you don’t share? Even when you can see demonstrable harm that it does? What does it mean to respect a belief as such? Why do you think it is a good thing?
I’m not quite sure what you mean here, either. Take them seriously with regard to what? Anything ever?
Write them *all* off as a lost cause? Assume that none of them can ever think logically or reasonably about anything – nor to learn to do so?
You’ve not yet demonstrated that your conclusion is logical. I don’t think it is.
That’s a big part of the problem with religion – how it latches on to people’s identities. But even hating a harmful falsehood doesn’t mean I hate the people who mistakenly believe it. Why would it?
It’s good if we can all understand that challenging even our deeply-held beliefs doesn’t mean challenging our worth as people, but ultimately if someone takes personal offense to facts or reasonable discussion or questioning, the problem is with the person taking the offense.
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Thanks, some good points there, and useful to read someone answering the questions from their perspective. I know where you’re coming from, but I just think it’s not quite true.
The truth is that atheism poisons everything it touches, the harm is ubiquitous, think of Mao and Stalin and millions that have died at the hands of atheists. You’re completely deluded because your world view has impaired your mind, and your point of view shouldn’t be respected at all.
I’m not being hateful, and all this isn’t counter-productive to us getting along and having a useful conversation. 🙂
The facts there are that the two named atheist regimes have been responsible for untold horror. The rest is simply opinion. I wouldn’t think much of a Christian who used the paragraph above in a discussion, so why we should expect that Christians will take discussions seriously with atheists expressing views like that?
I don’t want to fall into the traps that humans so often fall into – I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m moving my mind to open, because I think these kind of statements are the basis of any totalitarian regime.
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That is a good point Violetwisp. But a poor example. We do not think it was the fact that Pinochet was a Christian that motivated him to do horrid things. Do we? Therefore making the claim, that Stalin or Mao did horrid things because they were motivated to do so by their atheism is equally false. However, when Christianity as a religion held true political power it motivated people to actually torture and burn people alive. The problem here is not wether that was “true Christianity”, or wether there is something in the Bible to justify their sincere actions, any more than wether Stalin or Mao were “true communists” or wether there is something in the teachings of – let us say Karl Marx, that justified their actions. The problem is, that unlike atheism, communism, or the teachings of Karl Marx, Christianity is portrayed and believed by it’s followers to be derived from a benevolent and maximally powerfull entity, that did nothing to correct the actions of the, propably quite sincere, Christians who did torture and burn people alive – often enough other Christians even.
By the way, Christians use this false logic of jumping to conclusions about atheistic “regimes”, based on Stalin and/or Mao (or even Hitler who was a Christian) all the time and fail to see the benefits they themselves enjoy from secular governments under wich they live and prosper. This is not about opinions, but about facts and I think it is fruitfull to have the discussion about that with them, because many of them have been deluded by this sort of simplistic nonsense, that makes them think like simpletons in yet a nother issue. That is, if they ever are able to recognize the facts and do not simply retort to claim that such facts are just opinions. But if they do, what then?
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I don’t agree it’s a poor example in the context of the discussion. A Christian could easily counter that it’s the lack of religious underpinning inherent to atheism which caused these. Obviously the fact is that totalitarian regimes cause these kind of horrors, regardless of whether religion is involved or not, and what I’m trying to do is avoid that kind of totalitarian, black and white, thinking. It’s not useful even on an individual basis.
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But VW, when it comes to ascertaining if facts are true or false, there is no middle ground that you imagine should be available, so claiming that examples that indicate one or the other is ‘black and white thinking’ is an indication of fundamentalism is completely whacked. It’s ludicrous. It’s asinine. It’s the kind of ridiculousness that the Regressive Left embraces wholeheartedly to vilify others who disagree with factually incorrect claims. Nor is this ‘black and white thinking’ regarding the veracity of facts a means to incite ‘hatred’ against those who choose to believe factually incorrect claims as the Regressive Left is so quick to accuse.
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What facts are you talking about? There are lots of facts we can apply to lots of different situations, and lots of ways we can interpret these facts. That’s why I’m saying you can’t ever claim Right and Wrong. When it comes to something that is in the very roots of human identity at this point in time, I don’t think it’s productive to approach conversation in this manner. Lots of people who ‘should’ be atheists, in terms of education, in terms of experience, don’t think it’s an accurate world view – so it’s not simply a matter of ignorance. You choose to conveniently disregard this, because it suits your world view to see everything that comes from religious point of view to be steeped in ignorance. The psychological hook is something we speculate about, but if that is indeed the cause, it doesn’t look like it’s going away in a hurry.
And there you go again, labelling another enemy – the Others, the Wrong. Not only religion, but the fictitious ‘Regressive Left’ – a negative label to attach to true liberals so that those of you of an older generation with conservative leanings can malign progress. It’s a familiar cycle, but I’m surprised you fall into it so easily. That’s why it takes years of posts from a similarly toxic masculinity presentation (Arb) for you to finally accept some aspects of radical feminism, which the rest of the ‘Regressive Left opposers’ (modern day liberal conservatives) are still criticising. See what I mean?
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I keep asking for any evidence at all that beneficial cause is linked to religion and not something else. None has been forthcoming. Zero evidence in favour of the claim. Therefore, the claim can be considered empty of evidence. There are NO facts to support it. Zero.
So to believe the claim that religion produces benefit is without factual basis. No fact to support the claim yet still making the claim means the claim is contrary to the facts! Either/or. Not some middle ground you imagine. Counter factual. Not factual. This is an either/or claim, a true or false claim. There would be middle ground IF – and that’s a huge IF – compelling evidence warranted it. But we’re dealing with NO evidence for it. That – and some ‘worldview’ atheistic bullshit – is what determines and fully justifies the ‘black and white thinking’ for this claim Zero evidence.
Once again, you promote a premise and assume it is true when you say “When it comes to something that is in the very roots of human identity…”: and mean this to be ‘religion’
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
This is actually even if unintentionally a deceitful word game because you are presenting a singular noun – religion – as if it were one singular thing that is at the root of human identity. But that’s not true.
When humans encounter patterns in nature, they effortlessly assign it agency in order to put ourselves into that agency to guess at motivation. That is not equivalent to ‘religion’ but it is at the root of human identity… people who share a similar pattern (like language, culture, and yes, even specific religions).
Religion requires a superstitious element for that agency. Assuming there’s a tiger in the rustling grass is not an expression of superstitious belief but a projection of agency that may or may not be the case but has evolutionary benefit to assume it is. That’s what people do. Assign agency and NOT express any kind of natural inclination to religious thinking. That’s why you yell at your car when it doesn’t work. That’s not religion!
So the problem remains fixed that is then utilized by people arguing for religious benefit when it’s absent. The assigning of agency – which IS common to all people – is NOT equivalent to the assigning of SUPERSTITIOUS agency that underlies religious belief. And this directly affects the assumed truthfulness of your premise that RELIGION is common to all people. It’s not. It is piggybacked on our assigning of agency and then re.labeled as if it were ‘natural’ and ubiquitous.
Once you remove that premise, the false conclusion is exposed, that religious belief in its most generic sense has an evolutionary benefit. That’s the word game substitution that slips delusional thinking called ‘religion’ into the benefit column called ‘biology’. It’s a sham.
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I disagree with you but I also feel like we’re talking at cross purposes. You seem to think a benefit is only useful if it’s uniquely linked to one thing. And you don’t want to consider the possiblity that because religious structures and thinking have been in human societies forever, that we might lose something we can’t predict that is linked to them. You also don’t want to consider that the psychological need for spiritual thinking, which is fulfilled for many people by organised religions, isn’t likely to disappear, so we will be ‘stuck’ with people who are religious/superstitious and whose opinions on a variety of things are valid, but who you want to smear with the notion they are delusional. But I understand why we don’t get each, I don’t talk formulaic argumentation, and you don’t think outside boxes.
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Someday soon (I hope) your first impulse when thinking about someone else’s opinion or position you disagree with will be to clarify rather than condemn. I know I have to work at this all the time but this is an instance where it has caused unnecessary problems of comprehension. You’re still going with what you believe rather than what is.
You say, “You seem to think a benefit is only useful if it’s uniquely linked to one thing” and frame this as if I live in this box. You then respond as if this is true, and so I’m left with having to go back and clarify YOUR misunderstanding for YOUR false premise in order to then address YOUR false conclusion. This is a repeating pattern in our exchanges.
Look at that sentence again:
“You seem to think a benefit is only useful if it’s uniquely linked to one thing.”
Can you try to see why this statement is not true regarding our entire exchange on this subject?
I have iterated repeatedly that EVIDENCE is only evidence for CAUSAL claim when it can directly linked to the effect. In order for the claim you make that religion CAUSES benefit, the burden of proof lies with you to provide this EVIDENCE. No, granted, you brought all kinds of stuff to this little party that does NOT link directly between whichever benefit you’ve selected to religion. Now, you’ve altered this burden to mean that I am demanding (from my little box) something is of benefit only if it is uniquely linked to one thing.
Do you see the difference here? This is a comprehension error. In order for some benefit to be considered EVIDENCE for a casual connection, (notice that tildeb – my motivations, hatreds, biases, what have you) it has to be directly linked so that its removal stops the effect completely. That’s what causal evidence – and not some other worldview or opinion – means.
You have worked very hard and spent a lot of time avoiding the burden you claim is plentiful and reasonable and available to support the original claim that religion qua religion causes benefit and so to call it poisonous or toxic or delusional has no merit. But without evidence, you claim is a faith-based claim, meaning it possesses no knowledge and is equivalent to ignorance. You state the claim and present it as if true without support from reality to do so. So those of us who DO respect reality’s arbitration of claims made about it are not Bad People for doing so. We are simply staying true to the principle that what’s true matters more than what people believe is true yet is incompatible with reality. And since when was respecting what’s true a vice? Oh riiigght… when one is engagin with religious apologetics!
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I think I understand you. Let me check:
1. when Peter said he stopped giving as much to charities when he stopped believing, you dismissed that EVIDENCE because you didn’t like his motives?
2. When I linked to impartial statistics on ” figures published as part of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) “well-being” research programme people, people who say they have no religious affiliation report lower levels of happiness, life satisfaction and self-worth than those who do.” you dismiss that EVIDENCE because what?
3. What about if we can’t say if religion is a force for good or evil because the discussion is too nuanced and there’s not enough EVIDENCE? Is that a possibility you’d accept? Like suggested here: ” In short, in discussing whether religion is a force for good we must be very clear what we mean by religion and what we mean by good. This rather nuanced conclusion may disappoint the polemicists, but – at least until this research field matures – a measure of restraint before we jump to conclusions about whether religion is inherently good or bad may not be such a bad thing.” https://theconversation.com/is-religion-a-force-for-good-35061
And besides, speaking of misrepresentation, my argument from that start (that I’ve repeated over and over) is that religion causes no more harm than non-religion. If you want to claim the it does, perhaps the burden of proof is on you? I’d hate to think your claim is faith-based, rather than evidence based, especially after what I’ve just read in number 3 above, who seem eminently more versed with where scientific research is on the subject than your are.
Finally, regarding the labels “poisonous”, “toxic” and “delusional”, my main point is that the attitude that comes with these accusations is counter-productive to productive conversation. Perhaps for me to take you seriously, you’d have to provide EVIDENCE to the contrary.
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Are religions viruses of the mind? I would have replied with an unequivocal “yes” until a few days ago when some shocking data suggested I am wrong.
And at the conference, Ryan McKay presented experimental data showing that religious people can be more generous, cheat less and co-operate more in games such as the prisoner’s dilemma, and that priming with religious concepts and belief in a “supernatural watcher” increase the effects.
So it seems I was wrong and the idea of religions as “viruses of the mind” may have had its day. Religions still provide a superb example of memeplexes at work, with different religions using their horrible threats, promises and tricks to out-compete other religions, and popular versions of religions outperforming the more subtle teachings of the mystical traditions. But unless we twist the concept of a “virus” to include something helpful and adaptive to its host as well as something harmful, it simply does not apply. Bacteria can be helpful as well as harmful; they can be symbiotic as well as parasitic, but somehow the phrase “bacterium of the mind” or “symbiont of the mind” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/16/why-no-longer-believe-religion-virus-mind
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According to figures published as part of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) “well-being” research programme people, people who say they have no religious affiliation report lower levels of happiness, life satisfaction and self-worth than those who do.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/12136531/Religion-can-make-you-happier-official-figures-suggest.html
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” Within every religion there is outer imperfection. But, there are also teachings and a culture which can help lift up man to live a better, more fulfilling and more selfless life.
It is true that man has often misused the ideals of religion for their own selfish ends. Religion has become a source of pride and conflict because man has acted badly in the name of religion. But, there are many saints and religious figures who, inspired by religion have made a significant contribution to the world.
This is not to say that religion is indispensable. One may live a deeply spiritual life, without being attached to a particular organised religion. But, religion may be the inspiration for someone to lead a better life. But, like many other things – religion is what we make of it.”
http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/articles/benefits-religion.html
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Sorry for the spam, just sending a few snippets of other people’s thoughts, in case they are of interest to the discussion. I suspect you’ll say none of these are ‘unique’ benefits, but they are effects nonetheless of religions, and effects which might not have the same level of impact without it.
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Speaking as one who could propably be labled as one from the “Regressive Left” The problem is indeed about facts. You Violetwisp yourself can point out the factual misconception in your example. Should not the religious person become aware of this mistake, they may have made? It might hurt them, and they might shut their mind, but if their actual reason to believe gods (one of many I am guessing according to my experience) is actually, that atheism causes dictatorships, then this is a claim about facts, that they can easily check and double check, once it has been presented to them.
In my line of study about the medieval culture, one runs all the time into quite brilliant researchers, who have made silly mistakes, because they had these notions based on something they thought factual and based on the idea of “well everyone knows this about the medieval times” wich, I am sorry to say was a mere myth often invented centuries after the medieval period was over. It is, quite natural that sometimes these researchers, if they ever are pointed the error, go into all sorts of defensive positions. But since most such research of cultural history is done by people who do want to know the truth, they are able and eventually willing to check and doublecheck wether they did make a mistake and correct their views. The published research paper may not be as much tied to the identity of the researcher as a religious view is to a devoted Theist, but most people in the world who belong to this or that denomination of a religion are not fundamentalists, nor are they so tied to it, though it represents their cultural identity, wich is personal enough. So even if the fundie goes onto sailing on De Nile (wich is a river in Egypt, I am told), for facing the facts, the passer by, who has held religious beliefs based on some “everyone knows” level of information on the issue, might come to their senses from overhearing the discussion between an atheist and a Theist. Sadly, even in this case, people are far more likelier to accomodate for their preconceptions, than to even try to check out the facts.
One well meaning Theist once asked me wether I thought socialism made people more charitable. I think that this Theist at least was getting it all upside down. He thought that the world was some sort of testground and school for becoming more charitable. It is not. There is no evidence at all that this would be the case. Religious people may show up in tests to be more charitable or generous, or cheat less, but if their motivation is to “worship the eye” of the divine they think is watching them, it is a bad motive to do good things. If the motive to do good is not tied to reality, the same motive can be applied equally to doing bad things. There are only some (often ancient) arbitrary rules that make a person behave better. But those same sets of arbitrary rules also often contain the most vile demands for bad stuff, beginning from segragation, to thinking that the outgroup is not really even human. Such may not make people really better at all, it may make them worse. It is like a mechanism to make the psychopats among us be more charitable, when the rest of us could do it on better motivation. But if we are all subjected to the rules set to influence the psychopath, then there is a danger that we all start to act like we were not able to be empathetic. The culture turns into unempathetic motivation, and it surely affects the non-believer as much as it affects the believer. The Stalins and Maos of this world have come from the culture of religious rationale for right and wrong and when they realized there are no gods, they thought this logically, as is the logic of the religious, gave them the right to do anything at all. It did not, but they did it anyway, and no gods appeared to punish them. The purpose of socialism is not to make people more charitable, but to provide for people who have a hard time to cope. Now, it may have been the purpose of many a religion also, yet indipendend or private charity hardly ever provides for other than some random individuals and most often it is not divided in any reasonable way between the needy. In addition it has a tendency of creating a class of beggars as some people in need are turned into service providers by the markets for the people who want to appear charitable for their particular brand of gods and even possibly feel that for themselves.
As for such researches, that tell us, that there is a correlation between happiness and religious affiliation and a correlation between unhappiness and having no religion, all that has been established is a correlation. Then we come to the research methodology, of what makes us think there even might be a causation between them? Is it how the questionnare was arranged? Did the research group have a bias towards this sort of results? Is this something that seems to appear, simply because the non-believers feel more free to admit to the realities of life, like being unhappy? Is the reason a form of anxiety caused by leaving a religion behind, and admitting to yourself that the sense of security you previously had, was false? Personally I prefer even the nastiest of truths over comforting lies. Do we think Heroine users are happier than the rest of us. Because they sure are when they are under the influence, but a lot of good it has done them otherwise.
I am propably the last person to be evaluating what is spiritual, because I have no experience at all of this. I do not know wether it is any better when it is organized, like in religious movements, churches and what not, or when it has the hippier sense of free superstitious crystal healing brand on it. I hear the organized religious people making the claim, mostly to each other, all the time, that their superstition is somehow far better than the one that leads people to all sorts of alternative cures, but from where I am standing I see very little difference. From my perspective one bulshit is as much bulshit as the next one. Or to put it in other words, it seems very much like a case of, “everybody knows” that organized religion is somehow less superstitious, than when people do it on their own. What have we lost if there is no “spirituality” left in the world is unknown to me at least. I do not crave any, but perhaps it is just because I have never even tasted it. What I do know, is that it has led and leads today people to believe all sorts of wonky things about the reality around them. To me it seems, it is also a case of mislabling. Becaus spirituality seems to mean totally different things to different people. At most positive it seems like a method of self study, or a philosophical attitude and at worst it is an excuse for taking the subjective world view as more valuable, than any objective information people have access to.
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Good points Raut, I still don’t agree with you. 🙂 I’m planting seeds of doubt (that appear to be dying on everyone) because I don’t think such vehement opposition to religion from atheism is useful. I could be wrong, and I’m not writing that off. But I still don’t want to treat otherwise perfectly rational people in a foul way (calling something they hold so dear to be poison, or telling them I think they are delusional and their beliefs deserve no respect) simply because I’ve formed the opinion they are wrong, and I live in an echo chamber of evangelical atheism where every horrible thing about religion is mindlessly cheered on. It sometimes seems like jumping straight from one vehemently held truth to the opposite one and with equal certainty. Yes, religion can be harmful and yes, people have every right to be angry about specific religions have done to them, but surely we have to question everything once we’ve been duped and not jump headlong into yet another absolutist belief system.
And of course, none of that applies to you. Perhaps that’s why you always manage to have perfectly civil and productive conversations with religious people.
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Do I? Well, at least I never try to insult the Theists, though I am painfully aware, that by telling them what I think is true, seems to be taken by them often as an insult. Like I said you have a good point, but it is a difficult position, in that though reality never is black and white, like the Theists so often seem to be “deluded” to think (and by no means only them) truth is not found by taking the middle road in every issue either. To any issue one can point at, at least, two extreme positions. These positions being extreme is not the measuring tape for either of them to be true or false. Such is evaluated by other means.
Like I have said I have plenty of reasonable Theist friends with whom I disagree about only that one thing about gods or plenty of other things, yet because we can have a discussion about such things we remain friends, and hopefully we are able to learn something from each other. I also have plenty of atheist friends with whom I vehemently disagree about a number of other things than wether any particular gods exist. It is not an all or nothing issue. When someone is wrong, especially a friend of mine, or someone I am in regular contact with, I would try to explain them why this is. In the process I might learn, that it was me all along who was wrong. It happens, to me at least.
Your blog has never been a bubble of evangelical atheism, but rather it seems to attract all “extremes” of the positions about gods. But people hold a lot of views and atheism is just one perspective to a particular claim. Atheism does not go further than that, but the Theistic beliefs hold a good amount of other sort of baggage. From atheism alone one can not draw on to conlusions like we have no moral obligations to each other any more than that we do. However, no Theist supports just the idea of a god to exist. They always have additional attributes they percieve their particular notion of a god/gods to have and those often enough are something that they very much feel affect and should affect the reality we live in. On the other hand most people in the world do belong to this or that denomination of a religion, while at the same time majority of them are not interrested in their gods in the slightest manner, untill some crisis or other happens. That is also where the risks involved in religion take place, or not.
I percieve myself as an agnostic positive atheist. I am also a bit anti-religion, because I think we should act on the realities and most likely truths, not on possible truths, or widely held beliefs.
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Evangelical atheism? That’s beneath you, Rautakyy.
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Evangelical: Zealous in advocating or supporting a particular cause.
Perhaps it’s a usage difference across the oceans, but here it’s commonly used without reference to Christianity.
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Questioning the validity of a causal claim and holding firm to not accepting a widespread religious assertion that has no basis in fact is now zealousness, is it? I guess to avoid the charge, one should, what, mitigate one’s respect for what’s true in order to go along to get along?
Would that do the job?
Whatever happened to being accused of doing the same thing yet being labeled as a hater? We’re now what – evangelical haters for not believing in claims meant to paint Oogity Boogity is a more ‘reasonable’ light by using falsehoods?
Are you good with that? Apparently so.
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It doesn’t offend me at all, I’m not sure what the problem is. I think of myself as an evangelical atheist on this blog – I hope to make religious people question their beliefs and see things from my point of view. Why are you offended? What other term distinguishes us from most atheists living their lives with no reference to religion at all?
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