Religion, Respect and being a dick

[Andiferous]

Thank you.

I think of it as something like peeing on a war memorial. No-one and nothing is physically hurt, and maybe you're making a statement. You might not agree with war, but it's just not a respectful thing to do. And it's often just about as effective as that, in the end.

It's a terrible analogy unless it was your personal war memorial. Please avoid using it. If you urinated on a copy of said war memorial or an effigy of one, that would be a better analogy...

If you are referring to burn a Quran day... the point of the protest is not the thing itself, or the copy of the thing, but the idea that thing represents. So I don't think it's much different, no.

 

[Jotto999]

I think you can do whatever the hell you want if it doesn't step on the rights of someone else. But certain actions might make people think of you as an asshole and/or idiot though, and your actions might be counterproductive or unhelpful for making progress toward what your goals should be if you are against superstition.

 

[DeathofSpeech]

I think it's important to respect anyone's views and beliefs and their rights to have them while of course disagreeing with them if you so wish. However a person that has or believes in a religion (I'm a liberal Jew myself) shouldn't have any extra or special "rights" over and above those with no faith. Religion can and should be debated along with everything else and those who get offended by the mere discussion of religion are often those that give the rest of us a bad name.

Here here!!!

If one actually wishes to influence, one must abide within a boundary were influence is possible. A discussion of issues should be pursued rather than seeing just how offensive one can be. It is extremely valuable when this is done in a public venue because it can result in various outcomes. It can result in a "win" for either side, or it could result in an agreement in principle in which neither agrees but both are satisfied that some middle ground is appropriate.

In a debate in which an atheist, well versed in a religious doctrine confronts a fundamentalist/legalist of that religion, if the fundamentalist is at all honest, his argument will break down.

However, in the same discussion between a secular believer and an atheist, the secular believer has a great deal of flexibility. He can simply acknowledge that such and such portion of scripture is indeed inapplicable to contemporary reality, and that its preservation in scripture is traditional rather than an advocacy of whatever the issue might be. "Yes, it's in the book, but rather than rewrite the book we agree that his just isn't right, we aren't bronze age nomads any longer, but we still have a need to embrace some portion of the doctrine, because parts have a nice message... Utilitarian cherry picking rather than the apologist variety. "I like the part where it says to be nice to other people."

What can anyone find wrong with a message like "Be Nice to People." Who cares really what that person attributes it to?

Renounce the bits about chopping children up or killing them by drowning... or simply saying "this is something traditional, a story of something that may have happened, civil law however is that which we agree in contemporary society as acceptable and I can observe my tradition comfortably within the confines of socially acceptable behavior." That results in a stalemate, largely acceptable to each.

The religious person is not perceived as a potential threat by the atheist, and the atheist is perceived differently by the theist as well.
Nice things can happen in a disagreement when something like this occurs. Respect for one.
It's hard to build a witch pyre for someone you can respect.
So long as I don't see a danger of a witch pyre being built, I can be cool with that.


I'll make an exception for the extremely thick rabid theist.
When it becomes completely apparent that a theist is entirely irrational, spends each reply being an apologist for whatever hideous event can be found in their scripture and defends them as being moral for god to do, where the act itself is obviously born of human political maneuvering rather than divine command, then it's time to forget polite discourse.
A poster of that type usually embodies a set of values which can excuse anything, irrationally compartmentalizing bizarre behavior and attitudes which if practiced today in western society would probably result in criminal charges.
These are the least likely to become rational during a discussion where they obviously didn't start out rational. There are notable exceptions.
It can require a great deal of patience to sort out which fundamentalists can be reasonable if given the correct response, and which are just batshit crazy and unreachable.

If a discussion of this type begins to break down to the point that it becomes a circular waste of time, I will be a dick.
I'll deliberately bait that individual into making as many patently absurd revelations about his ideology as I can.
I'll taunt him into remaining in the thread for as long as possible.
My reasoning is this.

If the potentially violent irrational people are made into a vulgar entertainment, a sort of shaddenfreud follies of epic failure, they are portrayed individually by their own lack of reason, lack of moral compass, and disrespect for humanity.
A lot of them turn out to be marginally more civil than Nazis only because they aren't in political power.
I believe that in cases such as this when no mutual respect is possible that this confrontation is actually more important than a civil debate between secular people.
My reason for giving this more importance is that if no conversation between rational secular people occurs, there still will be no witch pyre built today, but this may not be true of the rabid fundy theist.
People embracing values of this type ought to be as abused as possible, and be made as unpopular as possible, they should be made to look as silly as possible...
Society has taken away the social tolerance for slurs based upon race, religion, gender... and we're working on sexual orientation. Why not toss in prejudices based upon the assertion that some particular religion or other (or sect thereof) as the only truly moral people on earth. Why not make that as unacceptable as parading around claiming to be "pure."

Yes... it's a cheap trick. It's also effective.
Who in their right mind aspires to be publicly beaten with the Clue Stick for embracing deliberate ignorance and hubris.
Who reading such an exchange would say "yeah, I want to be just like the guy getting his ass kicked in the YT comments?"

 

[Pennies for Thoughts]

Randy Olson, a marine biologist turned filmmaker turned writer, has some thoughts about the right way to frame the message in his book "Don't Be Such a Scientist." Think of the possibilities if all who sought to defend naturalism accepted the communications "law" voiced at 1:13 as, well, gospel.

 

[Giliell]

Gosh, I think you misinterpreted the cracker bit... and I hope no one is doing what you describe. I remember the "kidnap a cracker" craze that was going on, but I remember the prominent atheists talking about it advocating getting the cracker only if you could do so without disturbing or otherwise interfering with the church service. I hope nobody was going out of their way to offend churchgoers in their own church during services.

Still not better in my eyes. It's peeing against the war memorial at night when nobody can see it.
Sure, it's a cracker-stuff and not even all christians pay it special attention. Roman Lutherans just see it as a symbol and I know that what's left over in the church where my friend is a sexton gets fed to her daughter's chickens. It doesn't matter. To those who believe in it, it matters. and they usually don't go around in the shopping mall and hand them out. You have to enter their building, attend their service and actively ask for it to get it. And you get it under a condition. To go there to get it so you can show them "na-na-na-naaa-na it's only a cracer" is lying, is disrespectful to the people there (not to the cracker, the cracker doesn't care) and to me, simply inacceptable. Point out to them that their cult includes ritualised canibalism, someweher else, you might still be a dick, it might be that you're making an argument, might be that you all get a laugh.

There's a difference between doing something benign that other people find offensive, and going out of your way to offend in order to provoke a negative response. You can't poke someone with a stick until they smack you, and then use that as proof that they have anger management issues.

This.
The simple question is: Why am I offending those people? Is there a good reason for doing so, is there something important at stake?

 

[Resident Dead Man]

Gunboat has a good point. Religious people do not own their religious text. They may own their own copy, but the scripture itself is not their property and can be used by anyone.

It's why I can blaspheme anyone in any book I want and even publish books with blasphemy in them without getting nailed with copyright infringement.

I'm all for Terry Jones burning the Koran personally.

Muslims vs Christians... it's a win/win situation for me.

I don't agree with him burning, not that I care one way or the other. Its his reason for it that makes me sick. Jesus told him to do it! What the hell! I want what this pulpit pimp is on! It must be hell being a legend in your own mind with some mythological being speaking to you from beyond some whacked out ,mythological book thats nothing more than bad literature!

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Haha, yes I appreciate that he would have bought his own copy, but the ideas within book itself could be reasonably called "theirs", and the destruction of it clearly representative of the destruction of their beliefs and knowledge.

Why would americans be so angry that a muslim burnt an american flag that the muslim had bought or made? Because it is representative. (Forgive my cliche example but I hope you get my gist.)

I'm going to ignore, for the moment, the issue of whether anyone can own ideas and point out that representing the destruction of "beliefs and knowledge" is not the same thing as actually destroying it!

I think my publicly criticizing Islam (or any other religion, for that matter) as being harmful and irrational is more representative of my desire for its eradication than any book burning. That's obviously not what we're talking about. Just look at what you wrote:

So I would say it is fine to mock someone's belief as much as you like, but destroying something of theirs is probably crossing a line. I think that holds true outside of religion too, words are fine, actions tend to have consequences.

The emphasis is mine...

You're not destroying something of theirs. No knowledge is being destroyed. You're destroying something of yours: a book. Yes, it represents something. That's called communication. These words represent something too!

Your analogy would be better if you took someone else's copy of the Qur'an and burned that except, of course, that no one is doing that...

I don't know why you bring up flag burning. Just because a lot of morons think a piece of cloth is a living being is not a defense for anything!

I disagree, I think the analogy is reasonable. The point is that it is a physical representation of an idea. If you think it matters that the representation is a one off, or a copy, that is for you to decide. Any analogy falls apart given enough scrutiny, I think this was appropriate enough to communicate a clear idea!

I disagree with your claim that "any analogy falls apart given enough scrutiny." There are some things I like to call "perfect analogies." Really, they're just identical scenarios with differing irrelevancies...

Regardless, your analogy fell apart with hardly any scrutiny at all. Your attempt at communication wasn't clear, it was specious! You took a worse scenario and compared it to this one hoping that the dire impression of the former would rub off on the latter...

Honestly and without exaggeration, your overall argument seems to be "yeah, criticizing is offensive but burning in effigy is really offsensive!" Yes, that may very well be (offense is in the eye of the beholder) but that's not the same as destroying one's property! My objection was to that flawed analogy...

 

[Andiferous]

Ahem.

 

[KnowingLaughter]

Regardless, your analogy fell apart with hardly any scrutiny at all. Your attempt at communication wasn't clear, it was specious! You took a worse scenario and compared it to this one hoping that the dire impression of the former would rub off on the latter...

Face+Palm=D'oh

It was not my analogy, and I still think you have missed the point. My group of friends all understood the point of the analogy as it was put.

I have never heard an analogy that stood up to real scrutiny, I apologise if they exist, but I have never known one.

I don't know why you bring up flag burning. Just because a lot of morons think a piece of cloth is a living being is not a defense for anything!

I think people who worship flags, crosses, books, people are misguided. That is my opinion and I will tell them that if they ask. I would not burn a representative item of their worship as it would make me look like an arsehole with no point but to want to cause offence.

The point of the OP was to know where we each draw the line, and why we do so.

Personally, I don't see any sense in offending people just for the sake of demonstrating that you're allowed to. Being allowed to do something doesn't mean you should do it. And I don't think it's any helpful if your goal is to reason with people and maybe even change their point of view.

Of course, the seriously religious will be offended at our mere existence. So what do I think is acceptable and what not?
Well, I didn't think it a good idea because I thought it would do more harm than good, but I could see that people had some important reason why they did it, freedom of speech.
And I therefore think "burn a qu'ran day" not acceptable, because it is solely done to offend, and hurt as much as they can.

I think if your aim is to reason with these people then you are foolish to aim to offend. Of course that is not to say that my words do not offend, but that when they do so it was not my intent.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

Face+Palm=D'oh

It was not my analogy, and I still think you have missed the point. My group of friends all understood the point of the analogy as it was put.

I have never heard an analogy that stood up to real scrutiny, I apologise if they exist, but I have never known one.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you came up with the analogy. You were adopting and defending the analogy so, in the context of the discussion, I thought of it as yours...

I'm not sure understanding "the point of the analogy" is really the point. I could analogize the construction of Park51 as the display of your son's corpse where I killed him and you'll understand "the point of the analogy" but that doesn't make the analogy any less specious...

The analogy that you called "really good" is taking a significantly different scenario (which, not coincidentally, happens to be much worse) and pretending that it's analogous, presumably in order to show that the subject scenario is just as bad. A better analogy is if I made an effigy of your war memorial and then desecrated that. Unfortunately, that's just not offensive, hence why you choose and defend the analogy in question...

I think people who worship flags, crosses, books, people are misguided. That is my opinion and I will tell them that if they ask. I would not burn a representative item of their worship as it would make me look like an arsehole with no point but to want to cause offence.

The point of the OP was to know where we each draw the line, and why we do so.

So far, where you draw the line seems to be the extent of the offense...

 

[KnowingLaughter]

A better analogy is if I made an effigy of your war memorial and then desecrated that.

I feel if I was the type of person to worship a memorial, I would probably be offended at you burning a representative copy of it too, It not being the thing itself that was idolised but the symbol of what it represented. Personally I still think the analogy communicates this.

I think the above is ridiculous myself, but it seems to be how the devout feel about symbolism.

I could analogize the construction of Park51 as the display of your son's corpse where I killed him and you'll understand "the point of the analogy" but that doesn't make the analogy any less specious...

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.

So far, where you draw the line seems to be the extent of the offense...

That is not my view at all. Where I draw the line is:

If you intend to have an open discourse with them, and in the process offend them - that is entirely their problem. As the OP mentioned some religious types seem offended that our opinions merely exist. There is little we can or should do about that as it is "offence taken".

If you intend to cause offence, whether by burning, shouting or whatever - then I think that is the wrong side of the line as it it "offence given".

So to me it's all about the intentions, not the level of offence. I hope that clarifies my position.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

A better analogy is if I made an effigy of your war memorial and then desecrated that.

I feel if I was the type of person to worship a memorial, I would probably be offended at you burning a representative copy of it too, It not being the thing itself that was idolised but the symbol of what it represented. Personally I still think the analogy communicates this.

I think the above is ridiculous myself, but it seems to be how the devout feel about symbolism.

But the point isn't what they would think or how they'd feel. This tangent started out with my responding to two posts:

So I would say it is fine to mock someone's belief as much as you like, but destroying something of theirs is probably crossing a line. I think that holds true outside of religion too, words are fine, actions tend to have consequences.

I think of it as something like peeing on a war memorial. No-one and nothing is physically hurt, and maybe you're making a statement. You might not agree with war, but it's just not a respectful thing to do. And it's often just about as effective as that, in the end.

As you can see, in both cases, you think the thing being desecrated as something of theirs. It is not. It is something of yours: your own personal copy of the Qur'an (if you were Terry, of course). My objection was to the idea that you're desecrating something of theirs, which is what the both of you seem to think...

I appreciate that Muslims may not make this distinction. However, my concern was whether you made this distinction because, given your posts, you may very well not have...

You say that your friends understand your analogy but do they really? From your explanations, your analogy seems to be about how Muslims feel rather than the facts of the case. Tell me, when you told your friends this analogy, did they understand this distinction? If not then your analogy is specious and misleading. I would call that a poor analogy except that I suspect that was your goal...

I could analogize the construction of Park51 as the display of your son's corpse where I killed him and you'll understand "the point of the analogy" but that doesn't make the analogy any less specious...

I'm sorry but I don't understand that.

What don't you understand? Help me out here... they're English words strung together in a grammatically correct sequence. What specifically didn't you understand?

So far, where you draw the line seems to be the extent of the offense...

That is not my view at all. Where I draw the line is:

If you intend to have an open discourse with them, and in the process offend them - that is entirely their problem. As the OP mentioned some religious types seem offended that our opinions merely exist. There is little we can or should do about that as it is "offence taken".

If you intend to cause offence, whether by burning, shouting or whatever - then I think that is the wrong side of the line as it it "offence given".

So to me it's all about the intentions, not the level of offence. I hope that clarifies my position.

Okay, I'd like to think this but you say things like this:

To me the balance point is that DMD or even just standing up and saying "you all believe in a pile of crap" is simply exercising your own rights to say and think as you please. Burning something is a visual act of destruction and highly representative.

Burning something is also "simply exercising your own rights to say and think as you please." Communication is an action. Your objection seems to be that it's "visual" and "highly representative." In other words, that your attempts at communication are really offensive...

Besides, Terry's probably trying to do more than just piss off Muslims. He's trying to rally people together against Muslims so they can do things like pass French-like anti-Muslim laws...

 

[Laurens]

My rules are simple. Respect me and I'll respect you. Disrespect me and I'll disrespect you.

I would never be a dick from the offset, but if someone is a dick to me, I think its fair game to be a dick back at them.

 

[nasher168]

In most instances I try to come across in a non-dickish manner. At least initially. Unless they've already spouted something offensive towards someone else, in which case I might sort of intervene from a less-dickish-than-them manner, but still leave room for dickishness at the start.

 

[Independent Vision]

To me these holy texts are just another work of fiction. I will compare it here to the Twilight series. I would love to burn those books. But I don't.
It's bad for the environment, it's wasteful, and I am sure it would make good emergency toilet paper.
Regardless of if I would burn it or not or disrespect it or not, I wouldn't stage a mass burning of the books. Because it's stupid. It will put me in danger and bring out haters and lovers of the book alike.

Being regarded as a dick isn't something I am horribly concerned with. Being stupid, however, is not especially good when the very thing you are trying to combat is stupidity.
Being rude, or disrespectful, is sometimes inevitable for me. Some people find me rude because I sometimes correct misuse of the English language and the misuse of various of the English words. Apparently it's really rude and indicates arrogance and a superiority complex. :lol:
(However, sometimes debates about things requires a clear definition, and sometimes it takes hours to explain to people that the words atheist and materialist, or atheist and nihilist are not interchangeable and "exactly the same thing".)

Burning a book might be extreme, but burning your own copy of a book is vastly different from staging a mass burning that will, most likely, induce hatred and violence from all kinds of directions.