Gay persecution vs. "Anti-religion bigotry" thread

[MrMastodonFarm]

I'm trying to help, dammit!

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by peter12

This statement is so plainly antithetical to the spirit of liberalism. Quite repulsive.

Please explain why you feel this is the case.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Please explain why you feel this is the case.

Impugning an opponent's beliefs with the stain of mental illness is a proto-totalitarian tactic..

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Can you explain how he "impugned beliefs with the stain of mental illness"? I'm not following you.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Can you explain how he "impugned beliefs with the stain of mental illness"? I'm not following you.

Come on, man. It wasn't by accident that he lumped Christians in with flat-earthers or moon-landing denialists. This is subtle rhetorical manipulation that automatically dismisses Christian ideas as crazy or maybe just for stupid people. It has been a running theme throughout this entire thread.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Wasn't the point that beliefs can be discarded or modified - regardless of whether they're religious beliefs, political beliefs, or conspiracy theories - but inherent characteristics cannot?

[Bandwagon In Flames]

It's pretty telling when we've noticed a very definite shift between intelligence rising and religion dropping as society progresses.

I can say was the case for me throughout my childhood. Spent grade 1-12 in Catholic schools and my religious faith went from believing in God to Agnostic to Atheist by grade 7-8. I think the tipping point for me was watching the 10 Commandments. Just seemed so obvious to me that religion was created by Kings to keep their peasants from destroying society in a time of chaos. To give hope for a better afterlife when the only option was to suffer through the real one.

We're entering a time in the western world where people don't need the fear of God to live a moral and high quality of life.

Religion does a lot of good things and it gives meaning to millions of people. But it's also one thing in this world that divides humanity even more than skin colour ever could. It's the biggest entity in this world that people are willing to die for and persecute people for. That's not cool.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

The difference is choice.

A person cannot choose to be white, black, gay, etc.

A person can choose to be a Christian, flat earther, moon landing denialist, etc.

What about liberals, conservatives, socialists, labour unionists, proto-fascists, Red Tories, pro-SSM queer positives, anti-SSM queer positives, etc...

This is like proto-Rousseauian romanticism mixed with soft despotism.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Wasn't the point that beliefs can be discarded or modified - regardless of whether they're religious beliefs, political beliefs, or conspiracy theories - but inherent characteristics cannot?

Perhaps, but in an extraordinarily simplistic manner, which as I said, was most likely pernicious. One only has to look at the sequence, and choice of examples used.

It is also a gross simplification of human reason, and its utilization by rational individuals engaged in self-governance.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

What about liberals, conservatives, socialists, labour unionists, proto-fascists, Red Tories, pro-SSM queer positives, anti-SSM queer positives, etc...

Yes, pretty much all of those identities come about as a matter of personal choice. What exactly is totalitarian or despotic about that?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by peter12

Perhaps, but in an extraordinarily simplistic manner, which as I said, was most likely pernicious. One only has to look at the sequence, and choice of examples used.

Ok, I understand - you're not saying that the substance of the post was antithetical to liberalism, just the tone?

It is also a gross simplification of human reason, and its utilization by rational individuals engaged in self-governance.

Also interested to hear what you mean by this. You're full of teasers today.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Yes, pretty much all of those identities come about as a matter of personal choice. What exactly is totalitarian or despotic about that?

Well, I'd have to ask the OP to elaborate.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

A person's religion is most commonly determined by culture and upbringing, and NOT by conscious choice. Huge numbers of people are simply never presented with options in the same way that we make other choices.

Some people, though, are raised within a religion and reject it. I can respect that far more than someone who continues to believe but has no real idea what "believing" actually entails, like many of my relatives and friends who are call themselves staunch Catholics but are fuzzy on the actual details of what Catholicism is, what the Bible really says, and even what the sacraments are, and other basics that should have been beaten into their skulls by nuns.

I also respect people that believe and actually know what their beliefs mean, where they were derived from, and how they compare to other religions. The idea that your religion can be supposedly central to your life, and yet you don't understand it, is baffling to me - it is intellectual laziness of an unacceptable order. I don't see any issue with judging someone who is an uncritical and simple believer, any more than it's wrong to judge someone who is a liar, or greedy, or cruel. Sloth is, after all, one of the seven deadly sins.

[PepsiFree]

Corsi and Peter hashing it out.

This is what dreams are made of.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

With respect to religion being something ingrained in someone by means of their upbringing, is the same not also true of other beliefs? For example, don't most people end up mirroring their parents' politics to a significant extent?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Ok, I understand - you're not saying that the substance of the post was antithetical to liberalism, just the tone?

Also interested to hear what you mean by this. You're full of teasers today.

When liberals talk about nature and society (where we display our chosen beliefs freely), what they really mean is that the exit out of nature into society involved certain sacrifices, and certain gains - that is rights. Particular to liberals is the right to have our choices represented in the public realm. Right?

The problem is that, for the most part, the ends or purposes of other ideas are opaque to use - based as they are on complex experiences, desires, and goals. So we created the free society - a more or less open marketplace where ideas are exchanged and discussed rationally on their own merit. This has, for the most part, been pretty beneficial, but I guess since liberalism - being mostly atheistic in its founding - has kind of struggled historically to find a common standard by which ideas can be judged, discarded, and accepted. Mere choice is actually a bad standard, so we have kind of settled on utility or rather to what end does a political ideology maximize a society's rational and industrious means for private ends.

The private ends - or the household - are where we let the crazy ideas to settle, and we let individuals deal with the consequences of holding those ideas. Flat-earthers don't hold down a lot of high-paying jobs in the sciences, for example.

But what about private religious ideas which explicitly inform conscience, and also provide important buttresses to the functioning of not only particular individual self-governance, but community cohesion? Well, these tend to have effects larger than just the sum of private individual beliefs, and can either make a civil society devolve into pure factionalism or can help contribute to the idea of a comprehensive type of liberal republicanism where individual rationality meets a group altruism.

When you denigrate religion as just a choice, or worse, compare it - without any decent context or understanding to mental illness - you tend to cause more of the former than the latter.

This, as a caveat, is what I believe has caused the ground-swell of support in favour of Trump. His supporters are more or less atheists. They don't go to church, and they don't read the Bible, but kind of espouse belief in a christian god without following the Christian God's guidance for a virtuous Christian life.

Anyways, brain dump.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

When you denigrate religion as just a choice, or worse, compare it - without any decent context or understanding to mental illness - you tend to cause more of the former than the latter.

Wait, what does being a flat-Earther have to do with being mentally ill?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Wait, what does being a flat-Earther have to do with being mentally ill?

Don't be daft.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

Don't be daft.

Solid explanation. Would read again.

[rubecube]

And then there's this wretched piece of human garbage.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2763554/or.../?sf28750058=1

“People say, like: ‘Well, aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died?’ Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: ‘Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today,'” said Pastor Roger Jimenez during a sermon at Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento Sunday.