You said "Deeply held beliefs that affect all aspects of your life?" as if it is supposed to be a problem (you didn't make a full sentence so I tried to guess). I take "deeply held" to signify high confidence, regardless of the justification, so I was trying to say that having such a belief is not necessarily a problem, especially if said belief is well justified.Sparhafoc said:Aren't semantic word games fun?
Do you also pop down the river every time you want to draw money from the bank?
Of course, a 'belief' in gravity is not like a religious belief in the slightest. The English language's lack of specificity here does seem to lend itself to obfuscation, but really I think everyone knows the difference.
The author of the article chose to use religion as a reference to talk about veganism. He chose to include input from "the think tank Theos, which stimulates debate about religion in society". The "related topics" at the end are "Veganism", "Employment tribunals", "Employment", "Religion". It is the author of the article who is implying a connection between veganism and religion. He didn't have to do that, although maybe it was expressed by Casamitjana or his lawyer. Since I don't know, I am open to the possibility that they could have brought it up themselves (which is why I made these comments about religious vegans).Sparhafoc said:And....? Sorry, struggling to see what relevance your opinion has with respect to this story.
The BBC article is constructed to suggest a connection between veganism and religion. And the law that they reference (the "Equality Act 2010") contains wording for both religion and belief as separate items (the link I gave you goes to a government website about the law in question, which is linked in the BBC article).Sparhafoc said:There are all manner of definitions of religious belief, but I am not sure what that has to do with a BBC article.
The point is, in this context, "religion or belief" is a legal category, which is the extent to which veganism would be "akin to a religion".
I don't understand this. Are you claiming that vegans don't exist? Or that veganism is impossible?Sparhafoc said:The scientific evidence for veganism?
I assume the methodology goes something like this...
Are you vegan?
Yes.
Therefore veganism scientifically exists.
This is logically flawed, and completely ignores the context of the article (I explain more below).Sparhafoc said:Either you would not take a job that required you to engage in practices contrary to your deeply held beliefs, or no one at your job would know you are a vegan because it's not like vegans have to wear conspicuous garb or symbolic attire in accordance with their vegan beliefs, so no one would even know you were a vegan.
Unless, of course, you repeatedly shoved your beliefs down peoples' throats. At that point, I think, they might well become aware of those beliefs, and then 'discrimination' could occur. Of course, the difficulty then might be in determining whether the discrimination is focused on the behavior rather than the belief in question.
You said "Well, this sounds like a wanker's wet dream." What is the purpose of this sentence if not to insult the people to whom you attribute an opinion you disagree with?Sparhafoc said:Also, please do cite very specifically which class of people I termed 'wankers', where I used it to refer to any group, or even used it in the plural form.
I don't understand how you can read my text and interpret that as imperious sneering (which is not my intent) while you keep using language such as "shoved your beliefs down peoples' throats": do you think you are not sneering imperiously?Sparhafoc said:your need to sneer imperiously at me
You have consistently displayed a pattern of sneering at others in this thread (although you are not alone, and even I made a few pokes) even when you were factually wrong. You decided to re-open this conversation apparently to mock people, and you used a cartoon where someone is insulting someone else and subsequently demanding respect. Maybe it's because I'm biased, but I see irony in that (and also you sneering and then complaining that I "sneer imperiously" when I point out that you are projecting).
You asked "How would anyone know he's a vegan if he didn't shove his beliefs down people's throats?". The answer to this question is that he was working in an organization of animal rights activists: you should expect these people to talk about veganism at least internally, no shoving is necessary to explain how his coworkers would know about his veganism.Sparhafoc said:Grand. Please do remark further on how little there is to remark about here.
I was going with my experience, but I guess I could be wrong on that in general.Sparhafoc said:It's actually not a very common question
Does everything have to be one extreme or the other with you? Do you honestly not see the possibility of some kind of middle ground?Sparhafoc said:assuming, of course, the vegetarian or vegan doesn't have the habit of announcing it to everyone, expounding on its purported benefits, or loudly castigating the vices of meat-murderers.
A claim has been made in this thread earlier that I come from an echo chamber (I think it was SD). The point that I am trying to make in my reply to you is that your position seems to create a dichotomy were vegans should only talk about veganism among themselves because any outside discussion is labeled "shoving down the throat". In other words, some non-vegans accuse us of being in echo chambers and others (like you) accuse us of being authoritarian. Somehow you don't seem to consider that learning about someone's veganism could come from normal conversations, small talk or gossip (and in the context of the article, organized animal rights activism).Sparhafoc said:Sorry, your red herring is a little hard to follow here. Are you trying to introduce the notion that an argument has been made that vegans spend all their time in echo-chambers, and that this is supposed to have something to do with the article cited?
Am I accusing you of literally doing that (apart from the berating)? Are vegans literally doing that to you? Am I literally doing that to you? Do you genuinely not understand what I am trying to convey here?Sparhafoc said:How powerful I am - I literally control vegans on a daily basis forcing them to conform to my meat-based diet, bullying, beating and berating them to eat more meat.
I don't understand what you mean here (is this about the cartoon or the article?). My opinion wrt "societal dominance" is that the fact that most people are non-vegan creates a very strong anti-vegan cultural/peer pressure (it is everywhere: colleagues, friends, family, ads, movies, books, laws, schools, restaurants, holidays, ...). You probably can't feel it because you are not on the receiving end of it. To be clear: some vegans do tend to go too far (being obnoxious and violent), but overall the pressure is completely asymmetric.Sparhafoc said:In your haste to muddy the waters here, you seem to have missed noticing that your attempt to reframe the analogy requires that Christians be in a position of societal dominance when factually, they're not.
And do you think it doesn't apply to you? Do you believe that all vegans are "aggressive evangelizing"? Is this how you see me? Would that invalidate my claims?Sparhafoc said:That's kind of the point of the parody. It's also why it works so well metaphorically for aggressive evangelizing vegans.
My impression (partially subjective) is that there is increasing cultural tolerance for veganism, although I don't know how widespread it is. It could be that the vast majority of people actually tolerate our beliefs, and even recognize them as potentially valid (example from a non-vegan commenting on Casamitjana 's case and who finds vegans preachy, angry and annoying: "My beef with vegans says more about me than them"). But I don't think that you are speaking for the vast majority.Sparhafoc said:The vast majority of people would tolerate your deeply held beliefs, if you just didn't think you could castigate others into conforming.