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[Duke 2.0]

 I'll just back out before I'm tempted to bring out the bullshit proxy race card again.

 And yeah, lots of unintentional hostilities and heated emotions and deep nerves to be had on these grounds. We just gotta keep in mind to be chill to all our brothers and sisters here.

[Vector]

Thank you for doing the only thing you could have possibly done that is going to shut down his desire to see you as someone who isn't attacking him based on his affiliations. Thank you for beating him in the head because of the moniker he wears. Thank you for taking the high road. He is not a person, he is the enemy.

Do I need to put "no more fucking passive-aggressive bullcrap" in as a rule in the OP?

Equating a pair of questions, fairly reasonably posed with treating someone as the enemy and depersonalizing them and beating him in the head because of the moniker he wears is fucking absurd.  They did not brow-beat him.  They may have been aggressive, but they didn't treat him badly, and I sure as hell would not call their questions bigoted or dehumanizing.

You need to curb yourself, because I am running out of energy for herding kittens.


This is what I'd like to see people doing more of:

I do not align myself with organizations that I substantially disagree with. Why do you?

I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of Americans do this. There's only two parties with a shot at winning anything, and unless one is a total sheep nodding in agreement to whatever their chosen party says, no one completely agrees with either side.

I'll just back out before I'm tempted to bring out the bullshit proxy race card again.

You do that, because it's a false equivalence.  One decides to be Republican.  One does not decide to be black.

[Virex]

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

[SalmonGod]

The very idea that evidence is to be heard at all times is, in itself, elitist, because it assumes the behavior of self-proclaimed "logical people" to be superior to the behaviour of "irrational people".

And I'm aware of this and pointed it out on my first post on the subject. 

It's about reaching the limits of what can be tolerated in differences of values.  ...  Yes, as an issue of values, they can't necessarily be "wrong" in a literal sense of the word... just like a person can't be "wrong" who makes their own major life decisions with a game of russian roulette.  But when they start trying to include others in their game, you better believe they're going to be called crazy and stupid.

When it's their business, I don't care.  When they make it everyone's business, debate has to occur on some level.  The nature of this situation, is that debate cannot occur on any level when one side of it openly embraces logical contradictions and BSODs when it's pointed out to them that those are not constructive for generating compromise.

[Virex]

That again makes a priory assumptions about what style of debate is superior. There are many who would have no problem with debates that are primarily centered around feelings as opposed to stone-cold logical reasoning. There's even something to be said for that, as facts are the enemy of the truth all too often.

[Aqizzar]

It's all fine and dandy to say something like that, but when talking about the management and policy of a nation, I want facts.  Wait...

There's even something to be said for that, as facts are the enemy of the truth all too often.

That is... No, I'm not even going to touch it.  It can stand right there on its own.

The very idea that evidence is to be heard at all times is, in itself, elitist, because it assumes the behavior of self-proclaimed "logical people" to be superior to the behavior of "irrational people".


In addition to that, anti-intelectualism is an important and popular political view. Decrying it as uneducated and unworthy is basically anti-democratic.

If that's the definition of "elitist", then I'm proud to be such and think the world needs more elitism.  It's fine to hold rationally contradictory beliefs, I just feel you have to recognize them as such and provide a reason for the contradiction if you want to be taken seriously.

And calling anti-intellectualism (I applaud misspelling it) uneducated is hardly anti-democratic, since that's exactly what it is.  If you find a logical definition of a belief to be insulting, perhaps that belief should examine itself.

[Jackrabbit]

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

Well, anti-religious violence just begets violence. Frankly, you should look to the long history of pro-religious violence to see how anything-religious violence turns out.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you and you're not claiming to be for violence directed at religious people, which I probably totally am.

[Duke 2.0]

I'll just back out before I'm tempted to bring out the bullshit proxy race card again.

You do that, because it's a false equivalence.  One decides to be Republican.  One does not decide to be black.

 In the context of this discussion, it actually works pretty well when you make connections between low-income racial neighborhoods and politically aligned neighborhoods and their cultural influences on somebody.

 Although using the term Race Card is pretty misleading to what I was alluding to.

 

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

Shit son, this is not the chill direction to go here. I'm already elaborating on what point I was trying to make here. Problem fixed.

[Virex]

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

Well, anti-religious violence just begets violence. Frankly, you should look to the long history of pro-religious violence to see how anything-religious violence turns out.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you and you're not claiming to be for violence directed at religious people, which I probably totally am.

In the interest of the health of the thread I'll just respond with "I don't really care about the consequences" and leave it at that.

It's all fine and dandy to say something like that, but when talking about the management and policy of a nation, I want facts.

The very idea that evidence is to be heard at all times is, in itself, elitist, because it assumes the behavior of self-proclaimed "logical people" to be superior to the behavior of "irrational people".


In addition to that, anti-intelectualism is an important and popular political view. Decrying it as uneducated and unworthy is basically anti-democratic.

If that's the definition of "elitist", then I'm proud to be such and think the world needs more elitism.  It's fine to hold rationally contradictory beliefs, I just feel you have to recognize them as such and provide a reason for the contradiction if you want to be taken seriously.

And calling anti-intellectualism (I applaud misspelling it) uneducated is hardly anti-democratic, since that's exactly what it is.  If you find a logical definition of a belief to be insulting, perhaps that belief should examine itself.

You cannot demand a belief to alter itself just because you don't like it though.

[Willfor]

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

I'm out.

[Aqizzar]

You cannot demand a belief to alter itself just because you don't like it though.

I'm not demanding a belief to change.  I'm saying that if the literal description of a belief offends you, maybe it is the belief itself that is the problem.

[Jackrabbit]

One does however decide to be religious, as well as what religion one precisely belongs to. Now, I am all for anti-religious violence but something tells me that that position isn't really favored by the more moderate people here.

Well, anti-religious violence just begets violence. Frankly, you should look to the long history of pro-religious violence to see how anything-religious violence turns out.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you and you're not claiming to be for violence directed at religious people, which I probably totally am.

In the interest of the health of the thread I'll just respond with "I don't really care about the consequences" and leave it at that.

SHIT SON x2 GOBSMACKED COMBO

Okay yeah, you're right, even if we did argue about that it'd be as useful as any internet argument about incredibly polarized opinions could possibly be, I won't pursue it.

[SalmonGod]

That again makes a priory assumptions about what style of debate is superior. There are many who would have no problem with debates that are primarily centered around feelings as opposed to stone-cold logical reasoning. There's even something to be said for that, as facts are the enemy of the truth all too often.

And some people make that work for them on small scales.  Plenty of people are perfectly ok with working out disagreements through head-butting, which is the only thing that can possibly be meant by debating via feelings (i.e. whoever proves themselves to be most passionate about their belief by raising the stakes until the other side backs down).  But this is simply not workable on a larger scale.  Unless we're ok with massive never-ending civil war, civilization needs to construct itself on compromise, which absolutely requires sound comparisons of reasoning between opposing parties.

[Virex]

I'm not following you? Why would you absolutely need reasoning to come to a conclusion? There's no reasoning involved in the conclusion that gays need to be tossed of a roof and yet nearly everyone in Iran holds that belief.

You cannot demand a belief to alter itself just because you don't like it though.

I'm not demanding a belief to change.  I'm saying that if the literal description of a belief offends you, maybe it is the belief itself that is the problem.

My first hunch would be to assume that I am wrong, for it's me alone versus a large group and I'm not the one to assume I'm more likely to be right than many others. But if you want to go around telling other people to "further examine their believes" just because you don't like it, then be my guest.

[G-Flex]

I'm not following you? Why would you absolutely need reasoning to come to a conclusion? There's no reasoning involved in the conclusion that gays need to be tossed of a roof and yet nearly everyone in Iran holds that belief.

Yes, literally everyone in the entire nation believes that gays need a bit of murderin' done to them. Try painting with narrower strokes.


Regarding "anti-religious violence": If you're going to state your support for something as vague-yet-controversial as that, you might want to clarify a bit so people know exactly how to take it. Do you mean violence against the religious in general, or only in certain circumstances, or what? There's a big difference between "we shouldn't feel bad resorting to violence in order to stop theocracies from persecuting gays/atheists/christians/muslims and tossing them out of windows" (although I wouldn't even call that "anti-religious") and "I'm okay with smacking people of X religion around simply because they follow X religion".