Why I, and Others, Constantly Rail Against Religion

Meta I believe is a transformation

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Or, it could be a higher state of development. Which one did you mean dlowan?

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justa_babbling_brooke wrote:

Forgive me if my post on here has sent this thread into directions it wasn't meant to go.

I truely only wanted to make my own belief known. I did not mind ...nor will I ever mind someone wanting to debate my beliefs. I expected as much when I made that post.

If ILZ wanted to engage me in a debate he shut the door when his first post to me was telling me that I should not vote or have children. He does not know me....yet he has judged me simply on my beliefs. And that's ok. That is his choice. But it is also my choice to not want to get into a debate with someone of his mindset.

No one can say with absolute certainty how we were created. And someday I may find out I am wrong. But in the meantime....I have to follow what my heart and mind leads me to believe. I'm sorry if that offends you ILZ.

I may not agree with his beliefs....but I totally respect them. I respect them because they are "his." And he is a human being, the same as I am.
And has the same rights I do. And even though I may not agree with him....that does not make his beliefs any less important than mine.

That's all I have to say in this thread. End of convo for me

~Brooke

Fine. However:

Taking one side or the other is not merely a choice. The question is whether or not one "side" has a fundamentally flawed approach to the search for truth. And because faith reserves the right to treat fiat beliefs as superior to observation, I have argued that the faith approach is, in fact, fundamentally flawed.

To the extent that "I have faith because I can feel god working in me" or somesuch, you're acknowledging that your faith is "naked," because it is inspired by nothing beyond your own internal psychology. Hard to corroborate. And the written word gets ripped to shreds regularly.

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A few things, in particular, I feel compelled to respond to:

Setanta wrote:

That arises from a growing conviction that you are posting fewer and fewer things worth reading, and this thread is a fine example thereof. You can write congently and to the point, but this entire concept is flawed. You didn't decide on a critique of organized religion, nor even a complaint, rather, you decided to "constantly rail against" it.

There are, in fact, several important points to this thread, most of which are laid out in the initial post. I don't know if you consciously choose to ignore them or are incapable of seeing them. Railing is not the point itself, but is merely a colorful way of stating how the point is put forward - vociferously. But, I'm pretty sure you knew that.

Onward:

Setanta wrote:

I have no reason to withdraw the characterization of ILZ getting nasty with those who have a different point of view, and consider this thread to be an example, virtually an ambush thread. And, you repeat the fallacy which ILZ voiced above--the enumeration of favorable circumstances.

You went beyond claiming I was being "nasty" when you described me as having a rigidly "locked....closed-mind" and being "ignorant" and "convinced of my own superior excellence." Unlike my jab at JBB, you were dead serious with your accusations. Let's be clear on that.

I've already admitted to playfull condescension on my part. But closed minded ignorance? Hardly. That condescension is just the trimming to my arguments. You can get around it to the substance of my posts easily enough.

Further, your talk of fallacies is ironic, considering much of your "young and callow" argument is premised on a fallacy of its own - appeal to authority - in this case, based on your older age.

Setanta wrote:

Once again, you are attempting to construct a pattern from an incident. In fact, the first post of ILZ's which i read was of a "some of my best friends are Arabs" character, and a subsequent post lead me to question whether he were Jewish with a prejudice against Arabs. He denied this, and i haven't brought it up again since then. Your assumption of why i raised that issue is based upon pure speculation on your part, which characterizes much of what you've written about me here.

I'm calling outright bullshit on this one.

I'll let history speak for itself in this case:

Here, you called me a racist, a Jew, claimed that my posts "sickened" you, claimed that I was "afraid of a Muslim democracy," that I lied about the Quran, and that I wasn't American. All charges were built on a series of retarded assumptions, all of which you failed to back up. Instead, you protested briefly, then resorted to silence.

Your accusations of racism were largely based on this thread. Nobody has even tried to respond to the arguments I put forth in my own defense. Again, I'll interpret the silence as capitulation.

My impression of you was greatly soured by this little exchange. You could have simply admitted your error, but instead chose to pugnaciously extend the debacle. Since then, my opinion of you has improved, as I've noted you are highly informed and have much to offer.

You are right in at least one respect:

Quote:

.... [I have a] growing conviction that you are posting fewer and fewer things worth reading...

That is probably true. It is due more to laziness on my part than anything else. Also partly due to the fact that my more astute, comprehensive posts end up largely ignored.

See: Medicare.

I appreciate what you - in the depths of the Vanguard of Truth complex that constitutes your mind - are trying to do. But that doesn't make your efforts laudable, or your posts in this thread anything more than the tired, pedantic pseudo-rants they are. I'll leave the last word to you.

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Ossobucco wrote:

Yeah. (edit, to say this yeah was to Craven..)

Trying to remember back...

It is odd, I am one of the only people who speaks up as an atheist on a2k who didn't doubt early on. I finally left it all when I was about 22. And I had your classic irish catholic in america '50's experience, which I claim is quite particular in the details, and the fears. So... I am trying to remember if I actually really thought people who didn't believe would burn in hell. I can't even picture it now. Isn't the brain wonderful?

I think now that I never really thought that, accepting it conceptually as that I should accept it. Conceptually. But my doubts, such as they were zeroed in on the eucharist, I always had to make giant leaps there.

I had difficulty when I was urged, since I wanted to be a doctor, to join the Maryknoll nuns, unusual in that they did train women as doctors. Damn, I didn't want to do that, and not just because I was afraid of jungles and spiders. Or that I didn't have a sense of celibacy that wasn't frightening.
I didn't want to do sales...
I am still not a sales person (check my art gallery sales.)

When I was religious, I really did wish others well in a certain probably condescending way from my point of view now, not meant at the time.

So there is where I separate from ILZ's point of view (and I often agree with him). I did think loving mankind was good, and thought love meant wishing well for people. And I had no personal proselytizing zeal, none. So, while I disagree with my old self on matters of belief, I don't think I was evil then, or that my church mentors were. Beknighted, perhaps, but not evil.

You probably have heard my tale of a great crowd pleaser being a friend of my family - the priest who lead the rosary crusade. He was a good person.
edit to add - that Father Peyton was essentially a peacemaker. I know that if I just heard about him now I would twirl my finger around my ear to indicate craziness, but the man at our dining table was a person who loved and worked for peace.

I have another atheist friend, one of my Smart Ass Group of girlfriends (SAG). She told me a bunch of years ago that she didn't hate religion anymore. (She has a similar background to me.) That it helps many people, comforts many, in good ways, that it isn't all bad. And I agree with her.

And see that this sounds condescending too, to someone who believes, just as my old views would have, to someone who didn't.

dlowan wrote:

Hmm - I think most churches have got rid of the burn in hell thing, haven't they?

I am not sure that the fierce debating becessarily means egos in the forefront, does it? I kept reading that as eggs, by the way!

I think that is a rather dismissive way of characterizing robust debate!

Not that I deny the presence of the egos.......I have far too much of one myself to deny that!
stirred some of this up, so I will say that, in commenting to JBB that I believed she was unwise to try te eschew debate in a debate forum I was reacting only to her post in which she said that - not to the context in which she said it.

Of course we can develop and exchange ideas in a gentler way - but, as Craven says, our ideas will certainly be open to challenge - and there is little profit in complaining about it - especially in the "polemic' areas, as CDK also said.

I am a chimaera - since I enjoy both styles - so I guess I react to a particular learning/exchange manner being dismissed as ego with annoyance.

I think both are great - but I know I learn more, in the end, from the rough and tumble - especially with a doughty opponent.

I guess bruises are ineviatble - and duels where the foil becomes unfoiled - but I enjoy the sharpening of my wits and beliefs.

Any time there's a discussion that consists entirely of a belief on one side and a related and competing (i.e. the two beliefs are tied together in opposition, like faith and not faith), that discussion necessarily will consist of one side attacking the other's belief.

What varies is the nuance and worth of the attack. I'd argue that there are plenty of nuanced critiques of Christianity, and belief in general, evident in many of my posts (and others) that some people dismiss as trash, for no other reason than the fact that they are presented in a condescending tone.

Christianity is, as far as the facts go, an unintelligent faith. That's a claim I'll continue to make until a Biblical interpretation evolves to the point of explaining the mountain of inconsistencies, half-answers, and flat out contradictions which now far overshadow the paltry salvageable truths of either testament.

As someone once told me: Thats debate - the bridge of progress in the scaffold of constructive animosity.

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Osso etc:

meta- or met-
pref.
Later in time: metestrus.
At a later stage of development: metanephros.
Situated behind: metacarpus.
Change; transformation: metachromatism.
Alternation: metagenesis.
Beyond; transcending; more comprehensive: metalinguistics.
At a higher state of development: metazoan.
Having undergone metamorphosis: metasomatic.
Derivative or related chemical substance: metaprotein.
Of or relating to one of three possible isomers of a benzene ring with two attached chemical groups, in which the carbon atoms with attached groups are separated by one unsubstituted carbon atom: meta-dibromobenzene.

This is the meaning in which I used it:

Beyond; transcending; more comprehensive:

(PS: I can be VERY rude!!!!!)

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My last word is that i specified two threads, and two threads only. And that i thereafter remained mute on the subject. Understanding that i was wrong and commenting no further, if that constitutes "capitulation" in your mind, that's find with me. What did you get out of this "surrender?" Territorial concessions, political concessions--do you not see that your very language is adversarial? Note that in the last linked post (last chronologically), i was responding several months ago, and that, as i stated above, i felt that my comments were justified on the basis of a previous post of yours. What you have linked does not refute my statement that after exchanges in two threads, i have not returned to the subject--and i have not; that was more than four months ago.

You are the one who judges your posts in other threads to have been astute--equally an appeal to authority, your own. Then you claimed they have been ignored. Were people to have run up and patted you on the back? How exactly to you determine that they have been ignored? I read hundreds of posts for every few which i write myself. Are we all obliged to stop by to drop of comments on the excellence of your thoughts, so that you will know you are appreciated.

ILZ wrote:

There are, in fact, several important points to this thread, most of which are laid out in the initial post. I don't know if you consciously choose to ignore them or are incapable of seeing them. Railing is not the point itself, but is merely a colorful way of stating how the point is put forward - vociferously. But, I'm pretty sure you knew that.

Nonsense, i know nothing of the kind. I know that you can be reasonable when you choose to do so, and i've already acknowledged here more than once your obvious intelligence and education. My objection is to how you use it to bludgeon those who might so foolish as to express a belief you hold in contempt.

ILZ wrote:

I've already admitted to playfull condescension on my part. But closed minded ignorance? Hardly. That condescension is just the trimming to my arguments. You can get around it to the substance of my posts easily enough.

Further, your talk of fallacies is ironic, considering much of your "young and callow" argument is premised on a fallacy of its own - appeal to authority - in this case, based on your older age.

Playful condescension? Whenever is "condescending" to the expressed beliefs of others to be considered anything other than the arrogance which it by definition is. You are condemned by your own choice of terms. As for the "fallacy" to which you allude, it is precisely your seeming inability to understand that your "playfulness" and your "trimmings" have a far different character to the mind and the feelings of others which leads to my remarks about your callow disregard, and has little to do with age, other than to speculate that you have learned little from experience about the feelings of others, and a compassionate response to them. My age has nothing to do with it, if i have not learned such lessons myself. The "appeal to authority" to which you object is in fact, an observation of the careless way in which you wound others with a sneer, while continually touting yourself for the excellence of your comprehension. You may understand ideas well, but i continue to assert that you have little understanding of people and their feelings.

ILZ wrote:

I appreciate what you - in the depths of the Vanguard of Truth complex that constitutes your mind - are trying to do. But that doesn't make your efforts laudable, or your posts in this thread anything more than the tired, pedantic pseudo-rants they are. I'll leave the last word to you.

This of course constitutes evidence of the excellence of your mind, n'est-ce pas? When the sneer is never very far from your keyboard, and your conceit and condescension are ever in evidence, i can have little reasonable response but contempt for wisdom that might have been, but fails from self-importance.

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Just to clarify myself on one thing:

Setanta wrote:

You are the one who judges your posts in other threads to have been astute--equally an appeal to authority, your own. Then you claimed they have been ignored. Were people to have run up and patted you on the back? How exactly to you determine that they have been ignored? I read hundreds of posts for every few which i write myself. Are we all obliged to stop by to drop of comments on the excellence of your thoughts, so that you will know you are appreciated.

I qualified the word "astute" with "my more" - as in my more astute - by which I meant more astute in comparison to my other posts. I don't judge my posts astute in comparison to others. I wouldn't pretend to be the arbiter of such a thing.

I don't expect people to pat me on the back, respond to all my posts, or save my every fart in a jar to be savoured at a later date. I was merely noting that blitzkrieg style posts tend to lead to more interaction than long, well thought out posts. Thus, it is easy to fall into a pattern of posting "low quality" posts, rather than wasting time typing out something which will likely sink to the bottom of the page. After all, exposing your arguments to the input of others is half the reason for coming here, no?

I suspect this phemonenon holds true as much for you and everybody else as it does for me. I just failed to get my point accross effectively.

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And i understand that. There is always the problem in such a venue that we might seem to be speaking into the void, when in fact, we may well have made a profound impression upon others, upon which they simply have written no commentary. Your point about "my more astute posts" is well taken, please consider my remark retracted.

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As the sun rises over the Colisseum, two bloodied but unbowed gladiators stumble back to their handlers. All that remains of the crowd is a few bleary-eyed revelers packing up their belongings. A hush hangs over them like the low flying black clouds and a new day dawns in A2K.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

It is, indeed, people such as her who keep people such as Bush in business.

For the record.....I did not vote for Bush. Neither did alot of other Christians. The majority, yes.

But if you want to make such a statement that people of religious faith are the reason that Mr. Bush is in office....perhaps you should look at the facts.

Barna Research Online
Barna Research Group shows that Vice President Al Gore had growing momentum among the born again segment, winning more than 80% of the born again votes that were decided between Labor Day and Election Day

Barna Research data, based on nationwide surveys conducted throughout the campaign, including interviews conducted both the week before and the week after the election, showed that 59% of born again adults voted, compared to a 46% turnout among adults who are not born again.
This suggests that if a higher percentage of non-religious voters had bothered to vote at all...Mr Bush would not be president today

Despite the higher turnout figures among born agains, there were more non-born again voters who cast a ballot (just over 55 million) than there were born again adults who voted (slightly less than 50 million), because the born again constituency is a minority of the adult population.
Please don't finger point at the Christians and blame them for Bush being in office. When 5 million MORE voters were NON Christian and yet Bush was still elected

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JBB,

Before I answer, is this another one of those things you do not wish to debate and do not wish to have refuted? You've implied that I don't look at the facts, which is a patently false accusation.

Quite frankly your earlier stated position of not wishing to debate seems like a convenient stage for you to criticise others and then complain when they respond.

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Craven de Kere wrote:

JBB,

Quite frankly your earlier stated position of not wishing to debate seems like a convenient stage for you to criticise others and then complain when they respond.

Craven,

No where did I say I was against debate. I said that ILZ closed the door to me debating him when he said I should not vote or have children. I said that I would not debate someone with his mindset.

And my previous post was in reference to something you said. I simply responded

~Brooke

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justa_babbling_brooke wrote:

Craven,

No where did I say I was against debate. I said that ILZ closed the door to me debating him when he said I should not vote or have children. I said that I would not debate someone with his mindset.

This is a misleading statement, you voiced an adversion to debate before (not after) ILZ addressed you.

You went on to say:

justa_babbling_brooke wrote:

I am just as free to say what I want to say without making it into a debate.

So your statement that you simply did not wish to debate ILZ, as opposed to declaring that you can say what you wish without debate in return (which is, indeed, your right, if perhaps untoward) seems like a falsehood to me.

justa_babbling_brooke wrote:

And my previous post was in reference to something you said. I simply responded

~Brooke

Brooke, yes, everyone is "simply responding". ILZ can say he was "simply responding" to you. It's a meaningless description.

Well, let's start with "simply responding" to what you said.

First of all, you imply that I do not know the facts, this, as I stated earlier, is a patently false claim and you employed deception with your use of statistics to make your point.

You didn't do this particularly well, because truth to tell there's not a whole lot you could have done with stats anyway.

The bottom line is that Christians are more likely to support Bush than non-Christians. No amount of deception with stats is going to change that.

You selectively quoted the "facts" and left out what did not suit your point. Here's an example of what you left out from the very page that you copied the above:

Quote:

Bush Seen as the Morality Candidate
When voters were asked why they chose one candidate or the other, the dominant reasons behind Bush's support were his character, his political philosophy, and his position on abortion. Character was clearly the most compelling factor: it was listed as a major motivation for choosing the Texan by twice as many supporters as chose any other reason. The positions on issues that attracted the greatest number of born again voters to Bush were those related to abortion and taxes.

Now nowhere did I say I blame Christians for Bush being the president, but what I did say is that Christians help keep people like Bush in business.

You disputed this through a distortion of statistics and an implication that I do not know the facts. If you wish to challenge the statement I conveniently made red above, then I welcome your attempt to do so. The facts are not on your side, despite your implication that they are.

To use your own words: "perhaps you should look at the facts".

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More stats Brooke.

This is from polling data breaking down the votes based on how often the person goes to Church. It clearly shows that the more Christian the individual, the more likely they are to have voted for Bush.

More than once a week - Gore 37% Bush 63%

Once a week - Gore 40% Bush 57%

Once a month - Gore 52% Bush 47%

Seldom attend - Gore 54% Bush 43%

Never - Gore 61% Bush 33%

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Good stats CDK. Where did you get them?

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Jbb and CdK what sites do you get these facts from?

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I don't remember where I originally got them, I was quoting from memory and looked it up to get the numbers right, but you can find them here:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/2000_USA_election.htm

What that page neglects to say is that the information comes from Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

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husker wrote:

Jbb and CdK what sites do you get these facts from?

In my post above to JBB I posted her link for her. It too states what we all know, that Christians tend to vote for Bush more than non-Christians.

My stats are sourced above.

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My misunderstanding Craven. It looked as though you were implying that Christians were more at fault for Bush being president then NON Christians.

I do not disagree with you saying that the majority of Christians help keep him in office. But in that context it is also safe to say that the NON Christians also help keep him in office when they do not take the time to get out and vote. (Beside the fact that many of them did indeed vote for him also)

Let's hope they get out in much bigger numbers come November or this country will never survive another 4 years of Bush.

~Brooke

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Why I, and Others, Constantly Rail Against Religion

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