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Delusional psychopaths vs Religous belief


PaulS

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31 minutes ago, thormas said:

Well, you're more clear but I disagree. I'm a white male and I see some white males in a negative context but not all of us - as presented by the white men and others on shows. 

 

If you interpret everything that is said in the most benign light possible, and assume that they would never imply such a thing, then maybe so. Note that one could interpret Trump's speeches the same way. In his famous opening speech, he spoke against some Mexicans not all Mexicans. That is the truth of what he said. Does it mean that there was absolutely no anti-Mexican tone?

What I hear on MSNBC is that white males are the bad guys of every story and white males should be sorry.

As an argument for anything, the presence of white men on MSNBC is irrelevant. There were also women marching against women's voting rights 100 years ago. In hindsight, these women were simply comfortable with being discriminated against, and their presence in the movement was an expression of their poor self-esteem.

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1 hour ago, Jack of Spades said:

As an argument for anything, the presence of white men on MSNBC is irrelevant. There were also women marching against women's voting rights 100 years ago. In hindsight, these women were simply comfortable with being discriminated against, and their presence in the movement was an expression of their poor self-esteem.

Again I disagree as to relevance. OMG, so now you're saying that all white men who don't agree with you on your view of MSNBC want to be discriminated against or are comfortable with it?  I do like your sense of humor ......

Hold it...........okay had to check but my self-esteem is in a very healthy range, actually to the high, normal end.

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10 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

 

You are right. I wasn't sensitive enough in bringing the adjacent topic of atheist bigotry up in this context. I should have been more sensitive, considering everything you just said in the quote. Sorry. I find atheist bigotry generally to be a legitimate topic to discuss but I should have done so after having put some time and space between the earlier accusation I made about your comments.

Thanks. I'm glad we've sorted that.

10 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

FYI. The reason why I said that paragraph about Dawkins, was that I wanted to demonstrate that this "equating religion to mental illness" - problem is alive and well, and it's not just a product of my imagination. So I was looking for some practical example to bring up. It was a choice between the Soviet Union, state atheist China and Dawkins. Soviet Union is history (and I was reluctant to get accused of playing the Stalin-card) and China is geographically and culturally far away so I end up with Dawkins. That was the way how my thought process in this case went.

This goes to my case in point - the fact that you would even consider the Soviet Union & China's deadly oppression of religion and Richard Dawkins as comparible bigotry indicates to me that you are using a far too precious interpretation of the word bigot.  Bigotry involves hate and I don't think Dawkins is hating even though he vehemently disagrees with religious belief.

10 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

I vehemently disagree that a person who tells his young supporters in a prepared public speech to publicly mock and ridicule the people whom he disagrees with, is not an intolerant bigot.

We are gong to have to agree to disagree I think.  I base this on my overall viewing of Dawkins and how I have seen him act and talk.

10 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

....Every time, in any context, when one claims "intolerance","discrimination" or "bigotry" by a group, there is another, somewhat innocent group of people who feels it's an accusation against them, their ideas, their way of life etc.....

Hence why I argue that we need to very carefully choose and use our words and the definitions of those words - of which I have no doubt I am often an offender myself!  But as others should call me out, so too will I (without bigotry though I would suggest).

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10 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

How much do you know about the history of atheism? It appears you are not familiar with the other side of the story. The Soviet Union. China. Cambodia. Vietnam. Albania. To name a few highlights. During the 20th century, the first century when state atheism has been practiced, the amount of persecution against Christians and other religions was worse than all the crusades put together were if measured by the amount of victims. The same state atheism - fun continues today in China and possibly in Vietnam (I'm not actually sure about that one, so I say possibly). 

The centuries of Christian state religion were bad, but at times they were pretty easy-going in comparison. And yes, there were horrible periods, particularly those of the glory days of the Inquisition and the Crusades.

Historically speaking, atheism has one of the worst track records, if not the worst, when it comes to religious tolerance. Far worse than Christianity.

We're going off topic a bit but if I were to consider the history of atheism (which existed long before Christianity) and the best examples of persecution by atheist dates as recently as early 20th century, I'm going to go with Christianity being the bigger offender.  I think if you were to consider the 'settlement' of other countries and continents and the total displacement of the indigenous inhabitants by Christians, the impact of those persecutions far outweighs what you cite against atheism.  But again. maybe we should just agree to disagree.

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9 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

I strongly disagree. I think it's the other way around.

In real life these things exist on a scale of 0 to 100. If we keep treating insensitivity, bigotry or intolerance as absolutely unacceptable, unforgivable tabboo, we keep providing the dangerous 100 point bigots cover by condemning the 5, 10 or 15 points bigots the same as them. If you say that the 5/100 bigots are as bad as the 100/100 are, what you end up doing in practice is communicating the opposite; you end up sounding like the 100/100 bigots are just as harmless as the 5/100s are. That's what has gone wrong recently.

You disagree with me, but your example agrees with me.  I am saying that when we start calling people bigots because they strongly, even vehemently, disagree with other beliefs, then we are lowering the bar to what should rightly be called bigotry i.e. where bigots are not just 'intolerant' because they don't accept another's beliefs (or even refute it), but where that intolerance is associated with hate and desire to harm the other side.  That is what a bigot is.  We start calling people who disagree as 5% bigots then you are indeed scaling down the seriousness of the word bigot.

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4 hours ago, thormas said:

I'm a white male and I see some white males in a negative context but not all of us - as presented by the white men and others on shows. 

Now you're just being an intolerant bigot! :)

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6 hours ago, thormas said:

Again I disagree as to relevance. OMG, so now you're saying that all white men who don't agree with you on your view of MSNBC want to be discriminated against or are comfortable with it?

 

Not so fast conclusions. You brought up "being told by white males" implying that the channel can't be against white males, because there are white males. Right? So, I followed by demonstrating why the presence of white males is irrelevant for the argument, one way or the other.

I have said what I wanted to say, I won't repeat it.

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4 hours ago, PaulS said:

This goes to my case in point - the fact that you would even consider the Soviet Union & China's deadly oppression of religion and Richard Dawkins as comparible bigotry indicates to me that you are using a far too precious interpretation of the word bigot.  Bigotry involves hate and I don't think Dawkins is hating even though he vehemently disagrees with religious belief.

 

Do you think the religious persecution of the state atheists started as death squads out of nowhere? It didn't. It started as "strong rebutals" of religion, as you would put it. I recommend reading the communist atheist propaganda from the time period before there were any killings to demonstrate what kind of ideas led to the horrible killings.What defines an ideology is it's nature, not the amount of power it has. That nature will determine how the future power will be used.

Dawkins and his peers have never had the power to execute anyone, so we don't know whether they would use it or not. Dawkins has said repeatedly that religious people's privacy should not be respected, because their ideas (even the ideas of nice religious people, who don't push their beliefs) are dangerous. The only thing we know for certain is that Dawkins has had the power of a big microphone, and he has used that microphone to encourage his followers to publicly mock and ridicule religious people. To put it another way, he has encouraged open, public bullying. Hardly a definitive proof that he would go Stalin if given power, but I don't think that's a good omen either.

 

4 hours ago, PaulS said:

We're going off topic a bit but if I were to consider the history of atheism (which existed long before Christianity) and the best examples of persecution by atheist dates as recently as early 20th century, I'm going to go with Christianity being the bigger offender.  I think if you were to consider the 'settlement' of other countries and continents and the total displacement of the indigenous inhabitants by Christians, the impact of those persecutions far outweighs what you cite against atheism.  But again. maybe we should just agree to disagree.

 

First, I am well aware how arbitrary all these measures are. But, your earlier claim of religion having been "so much worse" is hardly historical.

I can see the point that atheism has existed before but it has never been popular enough to become the dominant world view in any country, until the 20th century state atheist countries. Atheists have had roughly 100 years time "in office", those were the first times their ideology was dominant enough to get to define state policy. If we compare the first 100 years of state Christianity (in the late Roman Empire) to the first 100 years of state atheism (20th century), atheism is hands down the one with much worse record. It took a few centuries before Christian state religion turned really dark, for state atheism, it took less than a decade.

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4 hours ago, PaulS said:

You disagree with me, but your example agrees with me.  I am saying that when we start calling people bigots because they strongly, even vehemently, disagree with other beliefs, then we are lowering the bar to what should rightly be called bigotry i.e. where bigots are not just 'intolerant' because they don't accept another's beliefs (or even refute it), but where that intolerance is associated with hate and desire to harm the other side.  That is what a bigot is.  We start calling people who disagree as 5% bigots then you are indeed scaling down the seriousness of the word bigot.

 

Bigotry is not limited to violent intentions. We already have a word for that, it's called "violent". 

 

Let's try what Dawkins said some other ways. Maybe you see what I see better when it's not directed at a group you happen to like to criticize:

"Mock homosexuals, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing with homosexuals ideas about sexuality?

"Mock immigrants, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing about immigrants ideas about where they should live?

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4 hours ago, PaulS said:

Now you're just being an intolerant bigot! :)

 

I get it that this is your new running joke that everybody who disagrees with someone is a bigot. It's a very funny joke. Or actually it's not. It's just an annoying intentional misinterpretation of what I've been saying, but I guess that is your point, to try take cheap shots at what I've been saying.

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3 hours ago, thormas said:

Or simply a wise man with a keen sense of the obvious :+}

 

See my earlier comment for you. You assume that people can't work against their own interest. Which is not some obvious truth. It's untrue historically, people, and groups of people, do work against their own interest all the time.

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5 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

See my earlier comment for you. You assume that people can't work against their own interest. Which is not some obvious truth. It's untrue historically, people, and groups of people, do work against their own interest all the time.

You should be able to recognize humor and you assume too much about what I assume...............

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5 hours ago, thormas said:

You should be able to recognize humor...

 

Making better jokes would help.

Seriously though, I am here talking to people over the internet whom I have never met, in a language that is not my native language, in the midst of a contentious topic, and we also probably all have plenty of cultural and age differences, so I think what you're asking would pass as a pretty good joke!

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16 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

 

Bigotry is not limited to violent intentions. We already have a word for that, it's called "violent". 

 

Let's try what Dawkins said some other ways. Maybe you see what I see better when it's not directed at a group you happen to like to criticize:

"Mock homosexuals, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing with homosexuals ideas about sexuality?

"Mock immigrants, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing about immigrants ideas about where they should live?

I don’t agree with what Dawkins said and I find it detracts from his message because people then focus on a couple of sentences from an entire rational speech (and kazillions of other rational, thoughtful, non-bigoted speeches and debates he participates in).  

As I agreed with Thormas, his comments lean toward intolerance in those instances.  But I cannot label him a bigot because he sometimes says those things.  You seem to.  Your choice.  I think you are lowering the bar as to when we do and when we don’t label somebody a bigot.  You don’t.  Oh well then.

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16 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

 

I get it that this is your new running joke that everybody who disagrees with someone is a bigot. It's a very funny joke. Or actually it's not. It's just an annoying intentional misinterpretation of what I've been saying, but I guess that is your point, to try take cheap shots at what I've been saying.

I try not to take myself, or others, too seriously.  Sorry my joke annoyed you.  I do think you commenced this thread too strongly defining bigot (and continue to do so), but obviously we disagree.

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17 hours ago, PaulS said:

I don’t agree with what Dawkins said and I find it detracts from his message because people then focus on a couple of sentences from an entire rational speech (and kazillions of other rational, thoughtful, non-bigoted speeches and debates he participates in).  

As I agreed with Thormas, his comments lean toward intolerance in those instances.  But I cannot label him a bigot because he sometimes says those things.  You seem to.  Your choice.  I think you are lowering the bar as to when we do and when we don’t label somebody a bigot.  You don’t.  Oh well then.


Everyone is a great guy if we judge people based on their better moments and overlook their dark side. If someone beats their wife, they shouldn't get any credit for all the women they didn't beat.

It's how far we go in our worse moments that defines how bad people we are. Someone who murders one person and doesn't murder 5 million others, is a murderer.

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2 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

 

Sorry can't do that. Chris Cuomo of CNN has never disappointed me. Until that happens, I remain a militant moderate and keep the faith in high quality journalism!

Do you get good coverage of events in Europe without any editorializing from CNN in Finland?  

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6 minutes ago, Burl said:

Do you get good coverage of events in Europe without any editorializing from CNN in Finland?  

 

I don't buy into the anti-journalistic "they brainwash us with editorializing" - paranoia, sorry. That's way overblown and part of the conspiracy theory - world view I hate. I'm fine with mainstream media. It's the best alternative we have available. Anti-journalism throws out the baby with the bathwater.

If I want to watch European or Finnish news, I read Finnish or British newspapers for that. I always prefer local news channels to follow the events in some other country, if I know the language. That's why I get my US news from US news channels. CNN is my favorite, but I watch few others too occasionally. Honestly, I'd love to watch a center-right US channel for balance, but there isn't one.

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17 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:

Everyone is a great guy if we judge people based on their better moments and overlook their dark side. If someone beats their wife, they shouldn't get any credit for all the women they didn't beat.

It's how far we go in our worse moments that defines how bad people we are. Someone who murders one person and doesn't murder 5 million others, is a murderer.

Still too dramatic a description of somebody for me, personally.

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20 hours ago, Jack of Spades said:


Everyone is a great guy if we judge people based on their better moments and overlook their dark side. If someone beats their wife, they shouldn't get any credit for all the women they didn't beat.

It's how far we go in our worse moments that defines how bad people we are. Someone who murders one person and doesn't murder 5 million others, is a murderer.

Disagree with this judgmental attitude.   We choose between good and evil in the moment.  A violent person who repents in old age may be forgiven and their worst moments nullified.

 

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