Comment by bulldada

I am an Atheist myself. However I do not associate or mingle with others of my ilk, simply because they are as self righteous and condescending as the stereotypes they despise.

Being “right” about shit don’t count for shit. Doing “right” on the other hand, is what separates humans from assholes.

I am an Atheist. Although not proud.

December 1st, 2008 at 10:49 PM
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Comment by Interpretive Clog Dancer

It’s a sticky issue; on the one hand, whatever that tree is referred to as, it is most definitely a Christmas tree. Following that course of logic, it seems legitimate that each belief system that wishes to be included in the display should be.

On the other hand though, as an atheist (more or less), I’d say why bother with it in the first place. If people want to believe something else, why get involved? I think that eventually people will come around to our way of thinking anyway and stuff like this will only cause divisions.

In conclusion, I’d say that the atheists were correct in their choice to place a sign in the display, but incorrect in their word choice. In the original post the first three lines of the sign were nor included; they read “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.” In my opinion that could be quite inflammatory. Atheist does not have to mean anti-religion; I still go to synagogue, and if people actually followed the tenets of their religions we might have a legitimate peaceful world and society.

December 1st, 2008 at 11:13 PM
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Comment by LC madtom : Main Propulsion Assistant

Interpretive Clog Dancer @:

Wanna bet?

December 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 AM
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Comment by mayim

I take a position of ‘hard agnosticism’: ‘I don’t know, and you don’t either.’

Frankly, if I could put up a symbol for the holidays, it would be a big question mark. Maybe an Interrobang.

These guys weren’t exactly throwing a “temper tantrum”; they were, rather, flinging mud at all the other groups. Terrible PR move, in any case.

LC SleepTech: SandMan of the Empire sez:

Are you and you’re family going to be exchanging gifts on Christmas Day??????

If you are, you are HYPOCRITES!!!!!!!!

If you exchange gifts on THAT day, you are acknowledging that Christ IS King!!!!

….What? No, you’re acknowledging that you like exchanging gifts on Christmas. Way to jump to conclusions.

December 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 AM
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Comment by LC madtom : Main Propulsion Assistant

mayim @:

So what would be soft agnosticism? Eh?

December 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 AM
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Comment by Alan K. Henderson

Hmm…Christians put up a holiday display to celebrate something. Atheists put up a holiday display to vent anger. What kind of miserable pointless holiday festivity is that?

We have a secular reason to celebrate Christmas, too - Jesus also happens to be the founder of Western civilization. Maybe some atheists could come up with a display to commemorate that.

December 2nd, 2008 at 2:06 AM
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Comment by LC BrainFromArous, God-Fearing Atheist

Jon the Imperial Hunter sez:

None so self righteous as they who so boldly assert that they “know” for a fact that nothing exists greater than their little minds and necessarily finite “knowledge.”

Well…

There is a difference between a negative claim

“There is no X”

and declining to accept another’s positive claim

“I have not seen sufficient evidence to accept X.”

To take the first position vis-a-vis theism is silliness, given the limits of human perception and understanding. I take the second for lack of confirming evidence of any god(s).

What bothers me about their display is that rather than say something like “Merry Humanist Christmas, from those who don’t believe in gods” the tone is more “Merry Christmas, you benighted superstitious fools, from those who know better. Now stop wrecking the world with your fairy tales.”

December 2nd, 2008 at 4:22 AM
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Comment by kermitthetoad

“Christmas-style holiday tree”…
Wow. Coulda just been easier to say Christmas tree, eh? :em98:

December 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 AM
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Comment by LC SkyeChild G.L.O.R., Imperial Grammar Hun

An atheist is simply a person who says, “I don’t believe in God, thank God!”

Mayim, re: your “hard agnosticism.” That’s one area where you are dead wrong. I DO know.

December 2nd, 2008 at 7:52 AM
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Comment by ban sidhe

“Religion…hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

I think my irony meter just pegged…

:em01:

December 2nd, 2008 at 8:19 AM
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Comment by lclizglor

Interpretive Clog Dancer @:
the History Channel mentioned he was born sometime in October if i recall correctly.

December 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 AM
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Comment by bobdog

Funny, never hear from these assholes during Ramadan, do we? Notice how it’s just Christianity they whine about?

December 2nd, 2008 at 11:37 AM
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Comment by Alan K. Henderson

Correction: Jesus was the primary founder of Western civilization.

The Greeks gave us arts, architecture, and some philosophical influence, and its theater influenced the framework of the church sermon. The Athenians tinkered with representative government, an experiment ended by Alexander the Great. Plato pioneered totalitarianism in his opus The Republic.

The Romans revived the experiment, providing the basic model for modern legislatures. They improved architecture, and I believe they also had some influence on the way commerce is run.

With Jesus comes the greatest hallmark of Western civ: the elevation of the individual. To Jesus, all humans were equally valuable, even those at the bottom of the social order, and even those who were his declared enemies. This is the cornerstone of all future human rights efforts.

Jesus also brought to the foreground a philosophy pioneered by Moses on Sinai (or by God on Sinai, from a Judeo-Christian perspective) - rule of law, the idea that all are equally protected and equally subject to the law. Monotheism was a necessary component for the emergence of rule of law; most people cannot comprehend the notion of a transcendent law if there is no transcendent lawmaker to appeal to. We see such appeals in the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence.

The very idea of constitutional law had its genesis in Exodus. :em93:

Jesus also introduced the idea of the universal church. European nations certainly fought with each other as nations of any other continent did (covetousness is such a powerful temptation), but there was a certain degree of unity that didn’t exist where each nation had its own gods.

(That unity was enhanced by geography, of which Emperor Misha’s Denmark was a beneficiary - ports and navigable rivers that allowed trade to flourish where they existed.)

Jesus is the only person of ancient times outside of India and possibly Persia (my knowledge of Zoroastrians is scant) who conceived the notion of a private-sector church. This idea was lost for many centuries, but it was there in writing all along, and it was eventually revived.

Paul of Tarsus, drawing on several of these principles, introduced the first private-sector international humanitarian aid, the Jerusalem famine relief mission.

These influences didn’t stay solely within the Church, just as the Greek theater didn’t remain an exclusively Greek artifact.

December 2nd, 2008 at 12:03 PM
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Comment by LCgahayz

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December 2nd, 2008 at 1:24 PM
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Comment by DJ Allyn, ITW

This is truly the anti-theists of Olympia’s “Proposition 8″ moment, in which they manage to utterly squander every scintilla of sympathy that they might have previously enjoyed by acting out in a childish and insulting temper tantrum.

Really? You read all of that into this?

A couple of things…

First, just because a person is “atheist” doesn’t mean he or she is “gay”, or vice versa. I know a lot of atheists who are against gay marriage, and a lot of gays who believe in God.

Oh, I know, you will throw that tired out “it’s a sin” crap, and tell me how the Bible is explicit against homosexual acts, and I will invariably throw back that the Bible is explicit about a LOT of things that most people totally ignore now. You want to pick and choose, but you don’t want anyone else to.

But I digress.

I personally don’t care about Nativity Scenes, Christmas Trees (hardly a “Christmas” origin) or a giant Spongebob Squarepants statue for people to worship. If you are going to have one, you have to expect everyone to want to get in on the fun. To me, it is ALL silly, and a colossal waste of time and energy. But that is just me. I am certainly not going to drive down to Olympia to erect a shrine to a black hole or something. I already try to stay out of stores this time of year because I can’t stand to hear the endless loop of cheesy Christmas music. I get positively violent hearing Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “Please Christmas Don’t Beeeee Laaaaate”.

YGBSM sez:

While it is quite true the majority of Americans are of Christian faith, that doesn’t allow the US Constitution to be interpreted and enforced on a percentage basis - you are either violating it’s meaning and intent, or you are not.

What a lot of people here don’t understand is that the Bill of Rights were written to protect the minority view in this country. It is why they purposely made it hard to amend the Constitution by a simple majority. They should be thankful that IF the time comes that the majority of people in this country wants to do away with the only real Amendment they recognize — the Second Amendment — it would take a Super majority to accomplish that.

December 2nd, 2008 at 3:05 PM
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Comment by YGBSM

DJ Allyn, ITW sez:

What a lot of people here don’t understand is that the Bill of Rights were written to protect the minority view in this country

Actually, The Bill of Rights expressed intent was a limit to the powers of the federal government and guarantor of the civil liberties for all persons. Obviously this includes those with so-called minority views, but they were certainly not the intended sole beneficiaries of civil liberties. They are simply protected as well.

December 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 PM
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Comment by MegaTroopX

LC SleepTech: SandMan of the Empire @:

People in Japan regularly exchange gifts at Christmas, just for an example. You gonna rip on a whole country for it? “You can’t do that! It’s my holiday! Mine mine mine!!”

If you’re not Spurwing Plover, you do a very good imitation.

mayim sez:

End of year (or New Year, in some cases) exchanges of gifts are as old as the hills across multiple societies. Christmas is when all the sales are. :em93:

December 2nd, 2008 at 4:33 PM
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Comment by mayim

But why would I want to worship a God who throws most of his children into a torture chamber when they die?

December 2nd, 2008 at 6:07 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

Mayim, I’m going to answer that in part at this point. Not fully, because there is more to it, but in part. There is a difference between making something and being its parent. In reality (and remember when I say we, I’m not talking about Jews, but gentiles) we are not His children until we are adopted by Him. Jews are the natural children and gentiles may be saved and adopted. As Jesus said pretty clearly, those who don’t follow God and worship Him are children of THEIR father, the Devil. I only point that out because it’s pretty strong language that He used there. As to how horrible and mean and cruel He is for that - #1, everyone is going to have a very clear choice in their lives here, with regard to God - I do not know at what point in their lives they will make it, many might not make it until the very end of their lives, and they are not there yet; so I don’t sit here telling them they’ll go to hell because I don’t know, I’m not their judge, and they can read the bible for themselves pretty much. And #2, where were YOU (general-you) when I laid the foundations of the earth, and caused the eagle to soar and all that stuff? Please. I’m not God, and neither are you

December 2nd, 2008 at 6:39 PM
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Comment by LC HJ Caveman82952

I could not help but notice while the atheists attacked all religions, none of them found it necessary to attack atheism. That alone speaks volumes. Let them display their bad taste and lack of class, they remain an insult to the atheists I know and call friend. Then again, they have absolutely nothing to promote.

December 2nd, 2008 at 7:57 PM
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Comment by Jon the Imperial Hunter

Alan K. Henderson @:

I tried to say this in a comment to Mayim in another thread recently. Compared to yours it simply doesn’t.

Beautiful. Just almighty good.

You have conveyed precisely what I wanted to say, and you don’t have to be a Christian to understand the tremendous historical importance of the teaching and ‘philosophy’ of Jesus. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution are the the secular fruit of the evolution of western civilization as set in motion by Jesus, whether one accepts Him as Christ or not.

Thank you for stating it so well.

Jon

December 2nd, 2008 at 8:10 PM
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Comment by LC HJ Caveman82952

No belief? What they did advocates a belief. Not being a faith, or so it is claimed, belies their very behavors. I find that at best a tenuous, specious defense. And very old. And again, they attacked, no one else. They sure could have been attacked, on many grounds, had it been chosen to do so. I’ve heard it from many god-haters. The true atheists I have known were simply apathetic agnostics. didn’t know and didn’t care. They left it alone.

December 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 PM
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Comment by mayim

LC Gonzman sez:

Mayim, first, as the “non-observant Jew” you claim to be - it’s pretty obvious why you are non-observant; you weren’t taught your own faith very well to begin with, as your reference is decidedly Christian in its outlook.

That’s because I wasn’t referring to the Jewish concept of God. I was speaking to a Christian, and I was referring to the Christian concept of God. You don’t need to tell me how different the concept of gehennom is to the Christian idea of ‘Hell’; I already know.

Trish sez:

Religion is the way that a human being relates to the universe.

I believe you are confusing “religion” with “philosophy”.

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:

And #2, where were YOU (general-you) when I laid the foundations of the earth, and caused the eagle to soar and all that stuff? Please. I’m not God, and neither are you

I certainly never claimed that either of us were a deity! But how can I respond to this? I wasn’t there when the universe first came into being, and neither were you. So who’s to say it wasn’t God who ignited the Big Bang, or maybe there was no deity involved at all? And that’s what agnosticism is about; we don’t know what lies beyond the laws of nature (i.e.: the supernatural), and we don’t claim to.

Alan K. Henderson sez:

Monotheism was a necessary component for the emergence of rule of law

I’m going to have to call you to task on that one too. Remember the Code of Hammurabi? Hammurabi ruled over a polytheistic culture.

Frankly, while you want to give credit for everything that is good in this world to your religion, it’s mostly a load of bosh. Judaism and Christianity were a major influence on the development of civilisation as we know it, but so were the evil, buttsex-having, polytheistic, hedonistic Greeks and the evil, excessive, polytheistic Babylonians. Not to mention the evil, Jew-hating, polytheistic Egyptians, the evil, arrogant, polytheistic Romans, and countless others…

December 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 PM
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Comment by apollo861

Mayim,

Atheism IS a religion. ~ It is an answer to the question of existence. It is a philosophy and religion, because once you are convinced of a set of beliefs regarding existence, it becomes religious. This is because both camps cannot outright prove it, but have convictions about it. You may try to rationalise it, hence it would be also philosophical, but since you can’t PROVE it, and hence rely on your faith, it is thus also a religion. Again, that applies only to the question of existence and how you should approach life and all that stuff.

Agnosticism, as you rightly pointed out, isn’t. ~ It is avoiding the question and stating a philosophy that you dont know. Just a philosophy, because it is an approach to the question itself, just the question and the nature of the answer, and not the answer (religious belief) itself.

December 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 PM
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Comment by Alan K. Henderson

mayim @:

I’m going to have to call you to task on that one too. Remember the Code of Hammurabi? Hammurabi ruled over a polytheistic culture.

“Rule of law” does not mean “a government with written laws.” Rome had that. Nazi Germany had that. The Union of Freakin’ Soviet Socialist Republics had that.

“Rule of law” means that the highest law in the land is a recorded law and not a human being. Hammurabi was a despot who wrote down his commands on a big chunk of basalt. I have read the code. It does not specify whether the king was subject to the criminal code just like everyone else. It appears that he was not, when one takes into account that Hammurabi was a conquering aggressor, and that the following is part of the code:

22. If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.

23. If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community, and … on whose ground and territory and in whose domain it was compensate him for the goods stolen.

Can you imagine some conquered nation filing a grievance against the king for violating Law 23?

December 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 AM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

mayim sez:

mayim:

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:
And #2, where were YOU (general-you) when I laid the foundations of the earth, and caused the eagle to soar and all that stuff? Please. I’m not God, and neither are you
I certainly never claimed that either of us were a deity!

I know you didn’t! The question was how could you worship such a God, why should you. The answer is in part, who the hell are you or I? In this equation we’re created beings, by a sovereign God who doesn’t have to answer to us; naturally you will choose whether or not to worship Him, but He has already answered that with pretty much the rant that I just quoted briefly.

But how can I respond to this? I wasn’t there when the universe first came into being, and neither were you. So who’s to say it wasn’t God who ignited the Big Bang, or maybe there was no deity involved at all? And that’s what agnosticism is about; we don’t know what lies beyond the laws of nature (i.e.: the supernatural), and we don’t claim to.

I really wasn’t addressing what started the universe except in the context of your question that implied you wouldn’t want to worship a God who threw half his creation into hell in the end. In the context of Christianity, which I have good reason to believe is objectively true, that is part of the answer.

Please try to understand something, and this is kind of hard to explain - I have a sort of global mind, and in general the things I say have to be taken in context (it was the big picture of the bible and God and so forth that sort of cemented everything for me, in fact) so when I put up two points, they really have to be taken in tandem. Sort of like what I was saying about the free market having to be in tandem with common law enforcement of rights. And I’m not saying you were taking it out of context, just explaining. Sometimes people end up simply saying, “I really don’t understand your way of communicating” and we go our ways in peace. Other times people really enjoy the discussion. Hopefully the latter in this case. Time will tell!

December 3rd, 2008 at 1:22 AM
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Comment by Xystus

…[Y]ou really don’t have a good clue on what the Christian Hell is…

Some of us might have some relevant ideas, but then some of us also might look askance at eschatological exegesis on the bloody Rottweiler. (Scatological arguments are something else! :em93:} At any rate the masses seem to derive much of their religious info neither from scripture nor tradition, but from cartoons–the most prominent of which is that caricature from Worstburrow Batpist, Phred Phuqqing Phelps & his phamily of phatuous phollowers. :em38:

41.

Atheists worship no God and have no canon (besides “There is no God”).

–”And Darwin is his prophet”–a parody of the Shahada I can’t take credit for, though I came up with something similar myself once upon a time. While the no-canon rule may be true for most garden-variety atheists, let’s not forget (despite the Left’s preferences) those influential cults which promoted their sacred books of Marx, Lenin & Mao. It wasn’t very long ago.

December 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 AM
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Comment by LCRedneckProgrammer

Hail Rotts!!

I have never understood the perpetually offended among us. It must be something emotional because I see
intolerance as neither rational or logical. If the offended parties used the energy spent whining and complaining on something productive, maybe some real problems could be solved. As to the issue of G-d,
I am not superstitious. I cannot “prove” the existence of G-d, but due to personal experience, I KNOW that
HE exist and I have a personal relationship with HIM that gives MEANING to my life and ORDER to my existence. I believe that without G_D, the Universe has no order or meaning. So did ALBERT EINSTEIN.

Would that also qualify Mr. Einstein as a superstitious mouth breathing Redneck?????

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!!!! :em04: :em04:

December 3rd, 2008 at 5:18 AM
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Comment by L C hilljohnny

LCRedneckProgrammer sez:

Would that also qualify Mr. Einstein as a superstitious mouth breathing Redneck?????

could be…

:em95:

December 3rd, 2008 at 5:47 AM
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Comment by LC Curmudgeon Imperial Bard

Of Hell and environs. All nonbelievers should be advised that upon arrival down Here you will be introduced to Sister Mary Bulldyke and Her stainless steel combat yardstick. Change your ways lest ye spend eternity in Catholic School.
Oh Tallulah, I love the fantod.

December 3rd, 2008 at 9:57 AM
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Comment by SoCalOilMan, LC

Interpretive Clog Dancer @ 21:

It’s believed that Jesus was actually born sometime in the summer. Christmas is a co-opt of pagan Winter Solstice celebrations.

One more thing about Christmas.

I’m sick and tired of hearing that Christmas Day isn’t really the day Jesus was born on. So what!!

It’s the day chosen to celebrate his birth. If more people were convinced to celebrate Christmas than the winter solstice…guess that message was more compelling.

Was MLK born on the third Tuesday of January (birth: January 15)? Does it demean him by using the wrong day? Don’t know, don’t care, it’s the day we chose to celebrate the man.

Now I need something to cleanse my soul and get me into the Christmas spirit (not easy any year).

An interlude.

December 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 PM
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Comment by LC SkyeChild G.L.O.R., Imperial Grammar Hun

Mayim further indicates, once again, that she knows diddly squat about the Christian’s God:

But why would I want to worship a God who throws most of his children into a torture chamber when they die?

Actually, God doesn’t send (or throw) anyone to hell; they go of their own volition. He gave us free will; what we do with it is up to us.

December 3rd, 2008 at 5:41 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

Then it’s probably a good thing you’re Jewish, mayim. God doesn’t say “agree with me” (that is SUCH a human, silly way of putting it when you think about it) He says I exist, and I am sovereign and I am God, and you are my creation - I have given my life on the cross to ease your suffering and make your burden light; you can not carry the weight of your own sin so I have taken it upon my own shoulders. Come to me and lift your burden, and I will share paradise with you. And people say to Him, “Oh $&%^ you, old man, I think you’re BAD neiner neiner and I will bite my own tongue off, cut my own head off, rather than share paradise with the likes of you.” That is why the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I made the eagle soar?

December 3rd, 2008 at 6:03 PM
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Comment by LC Gonzman

Apparently you also don’t understand eternity, either.

An illustration - God does not live FOR eternity, he lives IN eternity.

Your free will is freedom to accept God as sovereign. Or not.

If not, you reject God as God.

You are therefore cordially invited to go your own way. To depart from him, into …there. Elsewhere, elsewhen. The outer darkness.

Your rejection, in eternity, is eternal. Ergo, your banishment is in eternity, and is eternal.

If you accept God, accept his sovereignty, accept his authority, then it MUST follow that you accept his right to be the arbiter of right and wrong. Which means, yes, you may have to swallow your pride and bend the knee, and say of some strongly held opinions, “I was wrong, and you were right - forgive me, O Lord.”

Your “punishment” is not for finite misdeeds on earth. Far from it. It is for your insistence as a principle of your being - which you, yourself, chose from your own Free Will - that you know better than God and don’t need him in order to run your own life.

Well, then - “Hell” is getting exactly what you wish for.

There you go. Big eternity. Have fun with that. A world for your own? Have at it. But as the joke says - make your own damn dirt. You don’t need God, remember?

:em04:

December 3rd, 2008 at 7:17 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

mayim, that’s not my attempt at an apologetic (I haven’t done any apologetics) but rather God’s answer. However, Gonzman has really said it perfectly above. That’s really the answer there. Well said, Gonzman.

December 3rd, 2008 at 7:23 PM
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Comment by mayim

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:

As to showing Himself; done. Done and done (It Is Finished.)

Those are words in a book, backed by minimal evidence outside said book (and of what flimsy extraBiblical evidence there is, much of it has already been shown to be an after-the-fact forgery or alteration.). The Muslims have a book that tells them that Allah is God; why is the Bible telling an impossible tale of miracles and resurrection and other supernatural happenings any more believable?

I didn’t see Jesus rise from the dead; the Bible says it happened, and to me the Bible is a book of mythology just like the Koran.

The fact is, you’ve acknowledged that even if you accept the *existence* of the God who created the universe, that would not be cause to love or worship Him, because he’s holding a gun to your head and you think he’s bad. So showing Himself wouldn’t exactly help in that case anyway, would it?

No, it wouldn’t, but at least it would eliminate the unfairness of God expecting people to believe in him merely on faith, and hinging the decision of whether one spends eternity in paradise or hell on that faith.

See, I cannot worship a deity until I have accepted that said deity is morally perfect. And “I say I’m perfect; therefore, I’m perfect” doesn’t wash; God’s perfection has to be plausible. Committing acts of mass-murder, genocide, infanticide, and psychological torture are fairly good dealbreakers in this area.

If I can’t be convinced that God is a righteous, just, moral God, why would I want to worship him, even if I did accept his existence? And for me to accept that God is righteous, just, and moral, I would have to first accept the idea of a perfect, perfectly moral being committing acts of mass-murder, genocide, infanticide, and psychological torture.

Just in case you think I’m making this stuff up (”When did God commit infanticide?”), a few examples off the top of my head:

Mass-murder: Sodom, Gomorrah, the Flood.
Genocide: All those times in the Bible where God smote, or told his people to smite, or helped his people smite, various cultures/races.
Infanticide: The tenth and final Plague from the book of Exodus.
Psychological torture: Telling Abraham to slaughter his son, then saying “never mind, it was just a test” at the last minute; all the horrible things God did to Job.

Not to mention all the “kill people for [insert trivial offence here]….” bits…

December 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 PM
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Comment by mayim

I understand, Annie, and please understand that I was not trying to be blasphemous. I was just being frank and honest, that’s all. If I wanted to tick you off, I would have used much stronger words than I did, believe me.

In any case. it all boils down to ‘might does not make right’. The mere fact that a being can create something (even if ’something’ is an entire Universe) does not imply that they are moral. Of course, we operate on different definitions of morality; in your mind, morality is dictated by God, but in mine, it is dictated by philosophy, reason and empathy.

I’d love to talk to someone who could answer my questions and who would enjoy debating with me on the subject, off the Rott of course. Feel free to send anyone my way. You have my email address, I believe; if not, it’s mayimsilverberg at hotmail dot com.

December 3rd, 2008 at 7:59 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

For what it’s worth, I’m not ticked off. I just don’t think answers are going to make much difference and the questions are just - well, it’s like someone insulting your mother or your father, except worse. And different too. I can’t explain that part. And those questions aren’t going to change in nature - I can see that. Because the answers aren’t going to make a difference, you see what I’m saying? So…ok. That’s where it is for now. And all that from a partial answer

At any rate, isn’t it a rude and nasty thing for these atheists to say? What an empty basis for a life - a feeling of superiority over people who believe in something larger than themselves. Is that really sustaining? Do they find long-term sustenance in THAT? Can they seriously celebrate year after year that they are not like these dirty publicans (or religionists)? What kind of celebration would that be LOL - hey, “Merry we’re-better-than-those-idiots day! I bought you a harmonica!” Wow, that’s so…cheerful.

December 3rd, 2008 at 8:08 PM
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Comment by mayim

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:

Because the answers aren’t going to make a difference, you see what I’m saying?

Well, they would, if only someone could accomplish the feat of convincing me that the things that God did in the Bible were moral, and not merely by resorting to the pseudo-tautology of “God did them; therefore, they were good”.

I’m an agnostic, not an atheist. I am willing to consider the idea that a deity exists. My mind is not closed to the possibility. But I’d have to FIRST be convinced that they are good.

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:

At any rate, isn’t it a rude and nasty thing for these atheists to say?

Oh yes, most definitely.

What an empty basis for a life - a feeling of superiority over people who believe in something larger than themselves. Is that really sustaining? Do they find long-term sustenance in THAT? Can they seriously celebrate year after year that they are not like these dirty publicans (or religionists)?

Actually, I don’t believe that this is intended to suggest that the existence of theists is something to “celebrate” for atheists.

Allow me to provide you with a perspective from the atheist/agnostic perspective. See, from your POV, faith is a good and wonderful and positive thing, a belief in a wonderful and loving Father who watches over us. And for many other religious people (perhaps even most), it is the same way. But for others, their own faith is the source of great suffering.

There is the gay man who weeps at night, terrified that God will send him to Hell for his attractions. There is the teenager who feels terrible guilt and shame every time he masturbates, fearing that God is watching with a stern and condemning him, possibly even plotting sending him to Hell. There is the neurotic who is afraid that God will judge their faith not to be strong enough, perpetually terrified that they will be rejected by their Saviour for not living up to his expectations. There is the man who marries the first woman who’ll sleep with him because he’s just so desperate for sexual release (due to the aforementioned lack of masturbation, not to mention premarital sex, which is also a sin)– and then, when he finally gets married and gets his jollies off, he finds out that he married the wrong woman. Oooooops. (This happened to a friend of mine!)

There is the drunk who is terrified that God hates him for his drinking problem, or for the horrible things he says when he’s sloshed. There is the woman who wants nothing more but to teach in a church, but who cannot because of her interpretation of the verse saying “I suffer not a woman to teach”.

There is the woman married to the aforementioned man, whose relationship has gone sour, but who cannot and will not obtain a divorce because she believes that it is a sin.

There is the child of the aforementioned man and his wife– an unwanted child, who was brought into the world in spite of his parents using birth control and simply because the parents believe that God has condemned abortions, a child who will always be unwanted, who his parents will have to lie to every time he asks “Mommy, daddy, when did you know you wanted to have a child?”. (Again, this happened to a friend of mine.)

All of these people suffer very, very greatly for their faith. So I, for one, do not celebrate the fact that I am a nonbeliever; I weep for the fact that so many people are suffering because of their beliefs, and I resent the attempts by those who do believe to legislate my life (e.g.: bans on gay marriage, the recently-overturned anti-sodomy laws) based on their beliefs. I also fear those who want to kill me because of their beliefs (e.g. Islamic terrorists).

For those who are happy with religion, I say “more power to you!” But there are those who are very unhappy as a direct result of their faith, and there are others who are unhappy because of what third parties do to them because of their faith (e.g.: the victims of terrorist attacks by radical Muslims; gay people in California; anyone who was prosecuted under the old anti-sodomy laws).

December 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 PM
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Comment by L.C. Rowane

Personally, I’m sick of these poor deluded animals (since they don’t believe they have the spark of divinity in them) Not only are they going to be very sorry in the next life they must have horrible lives in this world. It seems they are doing everything the possible to destroy the country’s very foundation.

December 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 PM
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Comment by Jon the Imperial Hunter

L.C. Rowane @:

Where? Where? You mean this? :

Jon the Imperial Hunter sez:

None so self righteous as they who so (ed.) boldly assert that they “know” for a fact that nothing exists greater than their little minds and necessarily finite “knowledge.”

If so, thanks very much. I appreciate it.

Gave me a chance to edit out that redundant “so”.

December 3rd, 2008 at 11:51 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

Good point. I’d also like to thank the atheists who post here for not getting pissy with me. In the matter of earthly affairs, safeguarding our liberty is my focus - economics especially. The Constitution, the Declaration, free markets, justice, all that good stuff. And I appreciate that most of you are probably not the ones who are dead set on hanging signs like that up - not that I object to atheists being represented, but if all they want to say is “Look how superior we are to all these idiots” every time there’s a holiday, that’s pretty stupid and pointless.

December 4th, 2008 at 1:53 AM
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Comment by L C hilljohnny

mayim sez:

I’m an agnostic, not an atheist. I am willing to consider the idea that a deity exists. My mind is not closed to the possibility. But I’d have to FIRST be convinced that they are good.

i do not follow your reasoning here mayim. what would the behavior of a deity have to do with its existance? what would your opinion of said behavior have to do with its existance?

December 4th, 2008 at 9:48 AM
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Comment by Iacobus

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Christianity isn’t even close to as bad as Islam. (Congratulations! Would you like a gold medal?) But that hardly means that Christianity doesn’t cause plenty of suffering in its own, limited way. Christians don’t generally blow people up for their God, but they do wreak havoc on the minds of a great many people through their teachings.

Rather than respond to my post regarding the not-so-desirable side effects of Christianity, which was made in the spirit of sensitivity and compassion, you chose to rant at me and attempt to convince me that Christianity is not as evil as Islam. And of course it isn’t, but we both already knew that. I was just comparing one, very limited, aspect of Christian dogma with Muslim dogma; I certainly don’t believe the two faiths are morally equivalent.

That being said, that doesn’t mean that many people do not suffer for the existence of Christian dogma. They just don’t generally DIE because of it. Personally, I’d rather not suffer or die.

“Not-so-desirable side effects”? lolwut?

You’re confusing me (maybe it’s because of your lack of logic?). You say that Christian dogma isn’t morally equivalent to Islamic dogma, yet make a comparison anyway.

I would like examples of this Christofascism you speak of, by the way. I don’t see Christians taking passenger planes and using them as missiles as 19 Muslims did on a certain day, for example. (And that’s just ONE example in modern times.)

December 4th, 2008 at 12:19 PM
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Comment by anonymous hourly worker

LC Gonzman:

What you said! I’m officially opposed to namby-pamby Christianity. The Lucky Charms version of Christianity. I think Christians have bent over backwards to water down their true philosophy so everyone will approve of their message.

It’s all there in the Bible. Especially the New Testament. Read it. Live it. God never asked you to be perfect. If any being in this universe knows you’re a sinner, it’s him. He also doesn’t really give a tinker’s damn what you think about his rules. His rules were not set down in an atmosphere of Democracy. He just asks that you acknowledge him, trust him, and try your best to follow his rules.

God never asks anywhere in the Bible for your “understanding”. Here’s a perfect analogy. Do you love your dog? Do you take care of your dog, keep him healthy, feed him, walk him? Of course you do, because you love him. Do you own a car? Does the dog know how to drive the car? Can the dog understand the car? Will the dog ever understand the car, no matter how long you talk to him and show him how to drive the car? No. Does the car exist? Does the dog exist? Of course.

What if God decided to explain to you the workings of reality, the way the universe was made, how he created your body. Maybe it would be like trying to get your dog to change your spark plugs. Literally impossible because your dog just doesn’t have the mental capacity. Maybe trying to understand God is like teaching your dog to drive.

And why should he show himself to you? (Ignoring the fact that the Bible clearly states that you cannot see the face of God and live to tell about it.) Because you’re standing there like a three year old stomping their feet screaming “Give it to me now because I WAAAAANT it!”

I like old-timey churches. You know, the ones where they clearly preach the Gospel of Jesus and don’t dance around the stage telling everyone how WOOOONDERFUL they are. The few remaining ones that actually preach that yes, you ARE going to hell if you don’t follow the rules, and if you don’t like that, then don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Sorry, but we’ll all pray for you, and good luck.

December 4th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
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Comment by anonymous hourly worker

God loves everybody, mayim. The good, the bad, the ugly, the infirm, the retarded, the drunkard, the gays, the aborigines, the Canadians. He knows we’re all fuckups. He expects it. He also expects you to try your best to follow His examples as set forth in the Bible. I personally am uncomfortable with the idea of hell, but being a mere person, don’t really think it’s appropriate to argue with God over what apparently is His plan. It reminds me too much of a teenager saying, “My parents will never approve of this but fuck them, I feel like doing it. Give me another hit of acid.”

Do his parents approve? Of course not. Do they still love him after they peel him off the ceiling? Yes. Will they beat his ass later? Maybe. Doing what you know is wrong, because you feel like it or you don’t understand why you’re not supposed to is willful stupidity, and you don’t earn approval from either God or your parents that way. You just earn yourself a probable assbeating.

But certainly, do whatever you want. And earn the consequences.

December 4th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
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Comment by anonymous hourly worker

And as for the athiests, their sign doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t even accomplish it’s original purpose, which I suppose was to somehow make me reconsider my faith. It’s kind of like someone putting up a billboard advertising for converts to communism. Yawn. When I see things like the athiests’ sign, mostly I feel sorry for them, as in, “You poor sons-of-bitches. You’ll never know the comfort, the absolute comfort, that true faith brings.” Faith, as in, I don’t feel the need to see proof shoved in my face. Faith, as in, I’m pretty damn sure the sun is coming up again tomorrow, so I don’t need to stay up all night worrying about whether that’s going to happen.

December 4th, 2008 at 1:13 PM
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Comment by mayim

anonymous hourly worker sez:

Mayim, if you’re that worried about hell, why don’t you try a novel idea. Try and stay out of it.

Sure, as long as I don’t have to sell my soul to do so.

See, I am convinced that YHWH is immoral. Until I can be convinced that he is, in fact, moral, I certainly will never follow him.

From my perspective, YHWH and Satan are on the same side. They’re tag-teaming on us. YHWH builds the torture chamber (Hell), then Satan does his damndest (pun not intended) to tempt you into it. Then God throws you into the pit of fire and they both snicker and wait for the next victim to come along.

From my perspective, worshipping YHWH is just as immoral as worshipping Satan; together they maintain a system where countless people get sent to eternal torment SIMPLY FOR NOT BELIEVING A BOOK.

December 4th, 2008 at 1:21 PM
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Comment by mayim

I’m sorry it offends you, Annie. That was not my intent. Frankly, I would rather someone (be it you or someone else) attempt to explain to me how God is good. But as a person concerned with right and wrong, it is impossible for me to read of God’s many murders and acts of genocide in the Bible without being shocked, horrified, and repelled.

To me, it is not ridiculous. To me, what’s ridiculous is the idea that someone can deliberately kill so many people, a great many of them innocent (e.g.: What the hell did the newborn male children of Egypt do to hurt anyone?!), and still be not just Good, but Perfect.

December 4th, 2008 at 3:44 PM
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Comment by LC BrainFromArous, God-Fearing Atheist

Most agnostics are in fact atheists who, for various reasons, don’t want to identify as such.

Look, if I ask you whether you believe in God(s), and you answer “Yes,” then you are some variety of Theist.

If you answer “No,” then YOU ARE AN ATHEIST.

You might be other things as well. You might be a Buddhist, for example, and believe that reincarnation is real but NOT supernatural - just part of nature we don’t understand (yet) - but that there is no God.

You might be a philosophical naturalist and believe that the material realm is all there is, rejecting any and all kinds of spirituality or transcendence of the physical.

Whatever the case, welcome to Atheism.

You might go further and claim that you don’t know if you ever COULD know whether God(s) exist(s), or indeed declare that nobody could ever know for sure. That is Agnosticism.

YOU ARE STILL AN ATHEIST.

Oh, and gratz to this thread for 100 posts! HUZZAH!

December 4th, 2008 at 5:36 PM
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Trackback by The Nose On Your Face

Atheists Fight Their Way Through Brainwashed Well-wishers To Exercise Their Rights…

The atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation has made yet another bold statement by unveiling an anti-religion placard in Olympia, Washington. The sign reads in part, “Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves…

December 4th, 2008 at 5:45 PM
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Comment by mayim

Tyrmadris @:

I can see where this is going. You’re about to describe me as an “anti-theist”. I like how you managed to work in the bit about how “anti-theists” “tend not to be as bright as the atheists”. Incidentally, my SAT score was 1540 (in the days when the top score was 1600) and I was a National Merit Scholar, so it will be pretty bloody funny if you try to suggest that I am some sort of knuckle-dragging halfwit.

On a far more important topic than the figurative size of my brain, there are very good reasons why I evangelize against religion. It is because I have seen firsthand how religion causes people to suffer.

I have heard the heartbreaking tales of those who live in despair or fear that God is going to condemn them to Hell because they are gay or transgendered. I have listened to the stories of those who have been rejected, insulted, and disowned by their parents because of the same; one girl, upon “coming out” to her parents as transgendered, was told “Jesus will never forgive you”, and her parents did not even speak to her for years.

I have also watched the depressing life stories of several of my Christian friends unfold– people for whom religion brought them great suffering. I watched as my friend from High School threw away her incredible intellectual gifts (she was the Valedictorian of our school) to be a housewife, out of some insane idea of what a Christian woman “should” be. I watched from afar as she lost her first child due to her ridiculous religious belief that hospitals are somehow evil, culminating in her refusal to give birth in a hospital even as it became apparent that the baby was coming out “the wrong way” (breech birth).

I spent time talking to my friend from college, listening to his woes at being unable to get any sort of sexual release due to his religious views. The man was so incredibly pent up for so long, because he believed masturbation and premarital sex to be a sin, that he went off and married the first woman who’d sleep with him– and, of course, promptly discovered that she wasn’t the woman for him.

But it was too late. They were married, they both believed divorce was a sin against God, and– to make matters worse– despite using condoms, he got her pregnant. Oopsie. Abortion, of course, also being a “sin”, his wife had to carry the very much unwanted, unplanned-for child to term. Now the poor guy is living in his in-laws’ basement with a wife he doesn’t love, a son he did not want, and no sexual release except a woman who he’s grown sour on. He’s stuck in a bad marriage and there’s NO WAY OUT because of his religious beliefs.

These people are suffering. They are suffering because of their religion. If cautioning people against the dangers of religion as a result of my having witnessed these stories unfold makes me an “anti-theist”, then so be it; I am an “anti-theist”. If your religion gives you nothing but joy, and you don’t try to force it down other peoples’ throats, GREAT! But religion, all too often, causes as much sorrow and angst as joy, and I am very sympathetic to its many victims.

December 4th, 2008 at 6:09 PM
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Comment by mayim

anonymous hourly worker @:

I’m not talking about the people who are mocked because they’re Christian.

(For what it’s worth, I, as a child, was mocked BY Christians because I was not Christian. So there’s a lot of crap going both ways. I went to a school where the teachers talked openly to their students about their Personal Faith in Jesus, and where evangelical Christianity was the norm among the student body; I certainly did not see much Christian-bashing going on there.)

What I AM talking about is CHRISTIANITY ITSELF (as opposed to “other peoples’ reactions to Christianity”) causing suffering.

I am talking about my friend whose parents did not talk to her for several years because they believed “Jesus would never forgive” her for being transgendered.

I am talking about my friend who ended up with a wife he loathed and a child he never wanted because he and his wife believed that divorce and abortion are sins.

I am talking about my friend who threw away a genius-level IQ to become a housewife because that’s what she thinks her “Biblically correct” role is, and whose actions taken AS A DIRECT RESULT OF HER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS lead to the death of her newborn child– a child she wanted very much.

I’m talking about all my gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgendered friends who were disowned, shunned, disavowed, excommunicated, divorced, and even beaten by their relatives, friends, and churches who themselves were Christian, in the name of Jesus.

These people did not suffer at the hands of others because they are Christian so much as they suffered because of the nature of their Christian beliefs themselves.

December 4th, 2008 at 6:25 PM
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Comment by mayim

anonymous hourly worker sez:

I have relatives who have let my drug-addicted cousin have chance after chance after chance because they were Christian, when it really would have worked out much better if they had just stopped talking to him for years and let him hit bottom by himself.

I am aghast. Are you suggesting that it is for the better that my friend was shunned by her own parents? Are you comparing transsexualism to drug addiction?

My best friend was the class valedictorian and turned down college to become a housewife. She’s Christian, and wanted to become a mother. And now she has four kids and is happy as a pig in shit.

Bully for her (though it’s still a tremendous waste of potential). But my friend was not so lucky. Her religious beliefs not only convinced her to do nothing with her tremendous mental gifts, but they also LOST HER A CHILD. Had she given birth in a hospital like any sane human being, her first child would likely be very much alive today. Her religious opposition to doctors killed her kid. This isn’t like abortion; this was a child SHE WANTED, very badly. And now he’s in the grave, as a direct result of her ludicrous religious beliefs.

God knows, it would be hard to wrap my head around the fact that my kid was gay, but I believe I could. But lots of people can’t. Even Christians.

And lots of people can’t BECAUSE they are Christian. Or, at least, that’s the excuse they use.

December 4th, 2008 at 7:02 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

Mayim, this is the first time I have felt genuinely pissed off at what you’re saying. I’m sorry your friend was miserable that she became a mother when zomg she was so much SMARTER than all that. I was the smartest person I’d ever met (that’s not bragging, because bragging about how you were born is silly) up until after I left school, winning national honors without even trying and just generally soaking up knowledge like a sponge. Can we NOT imply that it’s somehow “throwing it all away” or “wasting potential” to SPEND one’s adulthood RAISING THE NEXT GENERATION for fuck’s sake??? I spent MY young adulthood raising my two children - from newborns through homeschooling to adulthood - and I don’t count a fucking MINUTE OF THAT TIME WASTED nor do I consider it WASTING MY POTENTIAL. In fact, I consider it the most useful thing I have ever done in my entire life.

PLEASE stop implying that raising children is a waste of fucking potential, because IT ISN’T. Yes, if someone doesn’t want children, they shouldn’t have them, and by all means they should pursue their fucking brainpans until they drop dead, but that does NOT make raising children a waste of ANYTHING.

See, that’s how you know I’m mad; I start writing like the above and cursing a lot. I let the first one go, but that second shot about someone who IS HAPPY doing what she’s doing was just too fucking much.

December 4th, 2008 at 7:25 PM
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Comment by mayim

(continued)

In a world that’s already overcrowded, her ultimate goal in life was to have ten children. Not one, or two, or three– any of which would have been a perfectly reasonable and logical number. Ten! That’s all she wanted out of life– to give birth to half a football team worth of children. She didn’t want to have a career. She didn’t want to put her incredible, incredible brain to use. She just wanted to singlehandedly bankrupt the local Babies ‘R’ Us. And the reason why she ended up becoming a “professional homemaker” instead of a scientific or engineering leader was because… wait for it… she was a Christian.

That’s what she thought God wanted her to do– have lots of babies. After all, the Bible talks an awful lot about “be fruitful and multiply”, right? So she took this to the extreme, and decided that would be the whole of her life experience– being fruitful, and multiplying, and very little else.

So sad. Such a waste of such an exquisite mind.

December 4th, 2008 at 7:40 PM
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Comment by LC Gunsniper

Just about anyone can raise a child.

No.

December 4th, 2008 at 8:02 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

LC Gunsniper sez:

Just about anyone can raise a child.
No.

I know; most people can babysit until they can throw the kid into government daycare (public school) full time and end up with a nice little goosestepper; that doesn’t mean everyone can raise a thoughtful and independent-thinking, hopefully self-sufficient adult of good character. (That isn’t intended to imply that if you put your kids in government schools you won’t raise them properly; some people just “babysit” their kids and others parent them, regardless of schooling.)

December 4th, 2008 at 8:14 PM
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Comment by LC SkyeChild G.L.O.R., Imperial Grammar Hun

I’m not upset because this woman had a lot of kids. I am upset that THAT’S ALL SHE DID WITH HER LIFE. There’s a huge difference.

So? So she didn’t live her life according to YOUR expectations/requirements. What business is it of YOURS? You beat us over the head with your bi-crap, and want us to be tolerant, but you cannot show the same compassion for a woman who CHOOSES the greatest calling a woman ever had?

Boortz linked to an article today which showed a “brood mare,” aged 29, with 10 children already. I doubt she’s a Christian, as there is no discernible baby-daddy. I trust you will be outraged over that too?

Hypocrite.

I’m done. These threads wear me out. We go around in circles, beating the same dead horse.

December 4th, 2008 at 8:31 PM
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Comment by apollo861

Incidentally, the school I went to was full of Christian teachers and Christian students. I really don’t understand the whole “public schools are liberal indoctrination camps” meme; mine was quite the opposite.

How old are you? Roughly?
Today, they are overwhelmingly to the 98% levels of liberal indoctrination.
But of course, being a liberal, you wouldn’t see any indoctrination, “ITS TEH TRUTH!”
PSsh.

And yeah, of course it was her choice. But what a WASTE!

Well, tough shit. The world does not revolve around your ideals.

December 4th, 2008 at 8:40 PM
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Comment by mayim

I’m in my late twenties. I don’t know what exactly you would consider “liberal indoctrination”, but in my day many of the most prominent teachers were Born-Again Christians who happily told the class about Jesus…

December 4th, 2008 at 8:48 PM
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Comment by Princess Natasha, Resident Crazy Cat-Lady and Alcohol Snob

mayim,

The story you told me about the woman who let her newborn child die, instead of taking him to the hospital was tragic. The woman was horribly mistaken in her beliefs. However, this kind of attitude toward health and medicine is quite rare, and is NOT the norm. The woman’s choice and actions are the anomaly. I don’t know what sect she belonged to, but it appears to be quite a distortion of Christianity. If such belief were the norm, we would have very few, if any, Christians left, and there would not be any Christian doctors, or all these Saint So-and-So hospitals!

As to choosing to become a full-time wife and mother being a waste of time and talent:

I disagree with you on this one. If a brilliant woman decides to be a mother, and raise many children, just think how much benefit her mind would give them! They will have an intelligent, educated adult right next to them, as they grow up, who will impart her knowledge to them, along with her intellectual curiosity. She will be right there, raising them, teaching them, rescuing them from the influence of assorted hacks who pretend to be “public educators”. Because of such a mother, these children have a very good chance of becoming the great scientists, doctors, engineers, composers…

But, most importantly, it is all about the pursuit of her own happiness. Only she knows what can make her genuinely happy. If she shuns a “normal” career in favor of motherhood, we have no right or reason to say she is wrong. A woman who neglects her children in favor of advancing her career is the one who deserves disapproval.

Sure, anyone can produce a child. Raising him or her takes work, responsibility and knowledge.

December 4th, 2008 at 8:55 PM
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Comment by Princess Natasha, Resident Crazy Cat-Lady and Alcohol Snob

People do suffer because of some of their choices, which they usually make (consciously or not) based on their value systems, which may or may not have roots in religious beliefs.

December 4th, 2008 at 9:10 PM
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Comment by Tyrmadris

Gah, about an eighth of that was destroyed in the transition from NotePad. Lack of a spell check didn’t help, either. Sorry about that, sire, if you’re reading.

December 4th, 2008 at 9:17 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

mayim sez:

Well, you make a good point, Natasha (as usual). Like I said, I’m sure my friend will do an EXCELLENT job raising her children. And honestly, the bit about her eschewing a career was the weakest of all of the points I made, and the least important (and of course it was the one that got the most people worked up!). It was more of an extended aside than the core of my point. Of course it’s her choice… I still would rather see her on the cover of “Scientific American” than “Motherhood Today”, you know what I mean? But like you said, it’s her choice to make.
Frankly, I kind of wish people would address the other examples I gave. This discussion got railroaded completely off of my core point, which is that “religion often makes people suffer”. This woman did not suffer because she wanted to have lots of kids, but she sure as hell did suffer because her beliefs led her to make a decision which cost her her firstborn child!

I call bullshit. You said that being just a mother was, for intelligent people, a WASTE of their lives and talents. You did NOT just say it disappointed you for your friend’s sake. Even though that’s what she WANTED to do.

And by the way, it’s absolutely ridiculous to make a lifelong claim about someone who is still in her fucking TWENTIES. You act as though her life is over. Childrearing, including homeschooling, is a PERIOD in someone’s life. A period, I might add, of GREAT LEARNING, when one is actually FREE to study unhampered. My greatest period of learning was the decade and a half that I spent homeschooling, because I had time to study to my heart’s content, and whatever I wanted to learn about. The life lessons are irreplaceable. And let me tell you something young person, those are just as valuable as every other lesson and absolutely integral to the process of employing your intelligence to ANY field. Your friend will emerge out the other side just as intelligent, more learned, and a fuller human being no matter what you believe now. It’s INSANE to say she’s done all she’s going to do with her life at this point - FFS, I spent 7 years in a wheelchair dying and yet I managed to continue learning, continue teaching my own kids, and let me tell you - I earn more money now than I ever did before I had children. And I’m not a spring chicken anymore, and spent plenty of time out of the workforce. If I wanted to I could pursue any avenue (it’s likely I have plenty of time, just as your TWENTY-SOMETHING friend does) and could pursue any kind of career I want - except that isn’t my interest and never has been. Oh the poor poor world will have to get along without one more doctor. Pfft.

December 4th, 2008 at 9:26 PM
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Comment by Tyrmadris

Three lines? Is that all you have? I hope that wasn’t directed at me, because if it was, you’ve demonstrated a pitiable attempt to respond, and you haven’t even tried to address the main points.

Which means you’re either unwilling or unable. Which is it?

Yes, changing your physical gender from one form to another is wrong. So is lusting (that old procreative urge) after the same gender is wrong. It goes against nature, it goes against the religion those people claimed to believe in, but clearly didn’t believe in enough.

What you should be asking is to what degree such things are wrong. To the secular, such things are ‘wrong’ in as much as many things we do are ‘wrong’, usually in a naturalistic sense or a legal one (developed humans with intelligence don’t do a lot of things that animals do; in a legal sense, some people do not turn on their blinkers at the proper distance before a turn… in neither case is the punishment necessarily severe, it merely depends on the magnitude of the ‘wrong’). To those who follow most monotheistic religions, such things are ‘wrong’ because it has been decreed that they are ‘wrong’. The fact that such dovetails with many laws of nature is just a coincidence (if you’re an atheist, anyway).

Knowing that you are doing something ‘wrong’ and feeling guilt over it is, in fact, a definition of conscience. What do you call it? Oh, right, you blame it on an abstract concept. Gotcha. Hey, since you’re of the ‘it must be proved to be moral for me to believe in it’, would you mind telling me how well blaming things on abstract concepts works in court? There’s a name for it, when you actually manage to get it to work.

Now that we’ve got the nitpicky bits out of the way, would you care to address the main points, or will you just find something else to pick at… and try to ignore them and hope they go away?

December 4th, 2008 at 9:37 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by mayim

Tyrmadris: I am about to head out from the office; I’ve been here late. I will respond to your post in more detail– later. Frankly, though, I have already derailed this discussion enough. I’d much rather respond in a private email than waste other peoples’ time even more than I already have.

December 4th, 2008 at 9:45 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

And who the hell are you to object to her choice of how to spend her life? What the hell are you talking about?

And again, mayim, saying someone is ONLY this or that in their twenties is stupid. And I think you’re an attention whore; at the least you have a real talent for derailment.

December 4th, 2008 at 9:52 PM
Using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Comment by Jon the Imperial Hunter

Tyrmadris @all the above:

A tour de force! Devastating logic, lucid explication. Just beautiful.

Writing like that is why I come to the Rott.

And you managed to do something few have ever been able to do.

Shut Mayim up! and shown her for what she is. That’s why she wants to carry on in private.

December 4th, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.18 on Windows XP

Comment by LC Ted

My 2 cents.

Mayim has had her beliefs exposed through this thread. She started out saying she is a strong agnostic but has admitted that her problem is that the Judaic-Christian God is not “Pure and Holy” according to her standards.

As the old put down goes, “who died and made YOU GOD?”

She, a created being thinks she knows more than the one who created everything.

I have stated elsewhere here that she is in an addiction so like any junkie she will rationalize her actions and world view according to her wants and desires.

She wants a God who will pat her on the head and say “Your perfect, just the way you are.”

She complains about gays being condemned, but what is the difference between

A. sex between unmarried teenagers of the opposite sex
B. a person having an extramarital affair
C. sex between consenting adults of the same sex.

According to the bible there is no difference, in truth all sex outside of marriage is offensive to God.

Because of Adam’s rebellion against God, its our nature to do things opposite of the will of God.

How can a perfect and holy God accept sin? He can’t because it would make him imperfect and unholy.

I am a sinner, I was born a sinner.

There is nothing I can do, of my own power, to justify myself to be acceptable in his sight. I realized I’m not all that.

But God has made a way for us. The Messiah as foretold by the prophets offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. And God raised him up to prove that he has power over death.

I accepted this gift. I turned away from my sin, I acknowledged that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. I say Jesus is LORD.

I ask you to do the same.

God took a mad, lustful young man and made me into more than I could ever do myself. He has transformed me into something beautiful.

Ted

December 5th, 2008 at 12:34 AM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.3 on Windows 2000

Comment by mayim

PREFACE: I APOLOGISE PROFUSELY for the length of the following. I would much rather have taken this line of conversation to a private discussion between myself and Tyrmadris, but he prefers to keep this public; I will honour his request. There are a few brief paragraphs here to AnnieMcPhee, but the rest of this post is for Tyrmadris.

If you’d rather not read a bunch of long-winded philosophical drivel, skip to the next post now…

LC AnnieMcPhee sez:

I didn’t see this before I made my last comment. Thank you.

I’m not too big to admit when I’m wrong, or to change my stance on an issue.

My stance on guns, for instance, has moderated SIGNIFICANTLY over the years. I used to be quite anti-gun; now I have no problem with gun rights, and actually would likely have a gun of my own if I didn’t live in NYC.

Anyways, on to the meat of the post, which is responding to Tyrmadris.

Tyrmadris sez:

No, Mayim I was not going to describe you as an anti-theist. This is the difference between intelligence and wisdom. The anti-theist may possess the former, but has little of the latter.

I never claimed to be wise. In fact, I’ll freely admit that I’m pretty incredibly naive about most things.

I did not classify you as an anti-theist. You have done so yourself, through no effort of my own.

I do not define myself as “anti-theist”. I am anti-Islam and I am anti-Christianity and I am anti-Orthodox-Judaism. I am neutral on most of the other major faiths; Hindus don’t bother me, nor do Buddhists, for example.

I do not object to the idea of there being a God. I also do not object to the idea of worshipping a God. What I do object to is the idea of worshipping a God who deliberately and repeatedly does awful things to his children (physical torture a la Hell, psychological torture a la Job or Abraham, genocide like the Flood or the tenth Plague… I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.).

However [...] the term ‘bright’ does not connotate simple intelligence.

I’m not sure I agree with you there. A precocious child is often described as “bright” (”a bright young man”, “a very bright girl”). Children generally are not terribly “wise”. But this is a semantics issue.

In all honesty, I had expected that you would qualify yourself as an atheist… which, had you not taken offense and merely said “that is your view” or “I disagree on -insert particular here-”, would have been confirmed.

I am not an atheist. I am also not an anti-theist. I am an agnostic; I am not certain if there is a God or not, and I believe that anyone who claims that they know for certain either way is deluded or foolish.

I am not an anti-theist; I do not object to the idea of worshipping a God. I do, however, object to Allah; I object to YHWH; I object to Christ. Those three SPECIFIC deities, I object to. So you can call me anti-Abrahamic-religion, but I am not “anti-theist”.

If you believe in a God who is a good god and loves us all, and does not set up arbitrary and ridiculous rules, command his followers to slaughter nonbelievers, or toss half of his children into a fiery inferno after they die, then I have no problem with you, your God, or your belief. I may think your belief a little silly, but at least it harms no one.

(PS: Brain size does not directly equate to cognitive ability.)

I know. If you’ll notice, I said “the figurative size of my brain”.

You have heard heartbreaking tales of people who live in despair or fear for something which is classified as wrong.

&

Yes, changing your physical gender from one form to another is wrong. So is lusting (that old procreative urge) after the same gender is wrong.

It would appear that, unsurprisingly, you and I are operating on utterly different definitions of what “wrong” is.

I am going to wager a guess that your concept of “wrong” is “that which God has declared to be sinful”.

To me, what is “wrong” is “that which deliberately harms another (who does not wish to be so harmed)”.

In other words, basic Golden Rule morality. Now, I suspect that at this moment you wish to say “But the Golden Rule is Christ’s rule”. Yes, it is– but it is also a basic moral precept that has been echoed over and over, ad infinitum, throughout history. The Golden Rule, in one form or another, was a moral precept long before Jesus’s time, and it will continue to be a moral precept long after Christ has been forgotten. It is a timeless moral/ethical concept, it works very well, and NO, the authors of the Christian Bible were not the first philosophers to stumble upon it.

So when you say that something is “wrong”, the first thing that I ask is “Who does it harm?”

Let’s address the ideas that “having a sex-change is wrong” and “having gay sex is wrong” one at a time.

Firstly, changing your sex. The first question is, again, “Who does it harm?” There are several possible answers which a “social conservative” (which is often just used as a euphemism for “anti-GLBT religious bigot”) would bring up, and I will address them in turn.

1) “It harms YOU.”

While it obviously cannot be denied that changing one’s sex removes one’s capability to reproduce, this is not always necessarily “harm”. Some people, for instance, change their sex after they have already had all the children they are capable of or wish to bear; some people who go through the operation never wanted children in the first place. Some transpeople are sterile to begin with!

But let’s assume for the moment that it is someone who has not yet had children and is not sterile.

Setting aside the obvious issue of personal sovereignty (i.e.: “It’s my body, and I can do with it whatever I please”), there is the simple issue of relativity: Not just “does it do harm”, but “does it do more harm or less harm than the alternative”! Is the harm that would be done by a person choosing to be sterilised greater, around the same, or less than the harm that would occur to them if they DID NOT go through with the operation?

The suicide rate in the transsexual community has been estimated, by several studies, at 50% to 60%. The rate is much lower among transpeople who actually go through with “the change” either wholly (i.e.: surgically) or partially (e.g. living full-time or part-time in a cross-gender role, intake of cross-gender hormones, etc.), and the majority of people who undergo the operation report being happier for it.

If somebody wishes to transition to the opposite sex, but does not, they will be MISERABLE. I have heard this story over and over (I used to be an Office Manager at a clinic that treats transpeople like myself, and I heard a lot of horror stories.): “I tried living as a man; I tried going into the Army, I tried marrying, I tried becoming a father… none of it worked. I WAS MISERABLE. But now, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, just to be able to be myself!” That, in a nutshell, is the story of J. Average Transsexual, and I have heard it over and over, in countless variations, from trannies rich and poor, young and old, liberal and conservative, smart and dumb. After a while, hearing this story over and over was like listening to a broken record; it was virtually always the same story– just a few variants would change. Maybe one particular patient had not entered the Army; maybe they had, instead, got a buzz-cut and joined a gang. Maybe they had, instead, taken a job in a masculine field. Maybe they had immersed themselves in a seminary and tried to “pray the gay away”. Maybe they hadn’t tried to be masculine at all; they had just been miserable due to being unable to live the way that they wanted to live.

So, in short, the transsexual faces a choice: “Do I change my body [and thus probably/definitely become sterile, depending upon how drastic the change is], or do I live the rest of my life miserable?” There is no third choice. In story after story, the therapists who care for transpeople hear their patients reciting the litany of what they tried to escape their identity: Psychotherapy, religion, prayer, radical lifestyle changes, escapism, drinking, drugging, even electroshock therapy. Nothing works. For every “ex-trans” person who claims to be “cured”, there are a thousand who have tried in vain to “cure” themselves for years, and failed miserably every time.

In a choice between “become sterile” or “be miserable for life”, I’d certainly say that the former does less harm than the latter. And that is the choice those like myself face. So “it harms you” fails as a reason why having a sex-change is “wrong”. Relative to the alternative, it helps.

Incidentally, in case you were thinking of invoking the “you could die in the operation” bit: The fatality rate for such operations is very, very low, orders of magnitude lower than the possibility that a patient who is denied such a surgery will simply off themselves.

2) “It harms God, by disobeying His will.”

Obviously, I do not believe in God, so this falls flat.

3) “It harms your family, your parents, your friends.”

Here’s where I’ll veer into the territory of “personal sovereignty”. There are all manners of things which I could do which might “hurt” my parents, for instance. I might wear a shirt that my mother finds ugly. I might dye my hair a colour that my father finds ridiculous. I might get a nose piercing, or some other weird kind of piercing, that they find offputting. I might vote Republican– that would hurt them a lot!

But in the end, I have sovereignty over my own life. So to argue that something should not be done simply because it would upset one’s family is an exceptionally weak argument.

4) “It harms society, by shrinking the gene pool.”

Simply not choosing to procreate does the same, yet nobody (I hope?) would argue that it is “wrong” to choose not to procreate.

5) “It harms women, by bringing a ‘man’ masquerading as a woman into their private spaces.”

Before the surgery, the LAST thing a transwoman wants is to be discovered, so she will be inclined to AVOID trouble– not get into trouble. After the surgery, a M2F is no more or less vulnerable than any other woman of her size and shape; she certainly cannot rape another woman, lacking a penis!

Additionally, most M2Fs, just like most women in general, are straight– they are not attracted to other women.

The old argument that the transwoman’s entry into “women’s spaces” like restrooms is somehow dangerous to women is pure bunk. I use the women’s room not to get some perverse thrill out of it– I use it to pee in.

Now let’s address the morality of gay sex. Again, the first question I ask is “Who does it harm?” So, again, I will address various possible answers in term:

1) “It harms YOU.”

While it can’t be denied that anal sex is riskier than vaginal sex when it comes to the transmission of STDs, in a monogamous relationship, STDs are a non-issue anyways. (And if you aren’t in a monogamous relationship, then THAT is your problem– not being gay, or straight, or bi.)

Additionally, not all gay men practice anal sex. Some practice oral sex, which is generally considered to be lower risk than vaginal sex.

And some gay men don’t have any kind of penetrative sex at all! So it’s hard to see how that is dangerous.

2) “It harms God.”

Same argument as before.

3) “It harms children.”

This is the old argument that having gay people around will lead to them “recruiting” children to gayness, or simply seducing and raping kids. Suffice it to say that the overwhelming majority of gay people are not paedophiles, and that nobody can “recruit” someone into a sexual orientation. Either you are attracted to a particular sex or you are not, but merely interacting with those who have a certain attraction will certainly not cause you to have the same attractions yourself. If I talked to someone who preferred blondes all day, would I begin to prefer blondes?

4) “It harms society, by shrinking the gene pool.”

Same argument as above.

It is worth noting here that one of the strangely more common arguments against people being gay is “if everyone was gay, then the human species would die out!” While this is certainly true, the argument itself is ridiculous. First of all, there will never come a point where “everyone” is gay. The majority of people are, were, and will be straight. Secondly, the unspoken subtext is that people can “choose” to have gay attractions, and furthermore, that one can be “recruited” into “becoming gay”– and both of these ideas are false.

Amusingly, the whole point that “if everyone was gay, the species would die out” is often used as “evidence” that being gay is a “choice”– presumably, a trait which removes someone from the gene pool would die off after the first few generations. Yet this claim betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanism of evolutionary pressure. The traits which persist in a species over generation after generation are not necessarily those which benefit the individual, but those which benefit the species on a whole. Gay people generally do not procreate– although sometimes they do (often prior to “coming out of the closet”)– but they do contribute to society. They pay taxes, they work jobs, they give quite a bit to the community, without having to take time out of doing these things to care for children. Gay people also tend to specialise in certain areas which other men shun, fields like nursing, hairdressing and the arts. Gay people, in effect, do the jobs that straight people won’t.

And again, we come back to basic issues of personal sovereignty. If someone wishes to have sex with a member of the same sex, as opposed to a member of the opposite sex, and both parties involved are adult, sane, and consenting, then who are you (or anyone!) to say that it they cannot do just that?

[Being gay] goes against nature…

This argument is not only patently untrue, but it is also a weak argument in general. Firstly, there is ample evidence of homosexual behaviour in non-human animals, including primates. I once lived in a house with two male cats who would frequently mount each other. So the old “it goes against nature” saw is ludicrous. Cats do it, monkeys do it, and humans do it. It is as “natural” as any other thing that animals do on their own.

Secondly, the reason why this is such a weak argument in the first place is that there is no inherent value, or lack thereof, imposed by being “natural” or “unnatural” . An artificial pacemaker is certainly “unnatural”, but it can save your life. A defibrillator is likewise “unnatural”, as is an artificial hip. There is at least one sort of “natural flavour” (as in the stuff that they put in foods when they want them to taste like something) which actually contains traces of cyanide– I believe it is peach or banana flavour– whereas its artificial counterpart, derived from a chemical reaction without using natural ingredients at all, is purer and safer.

To drink water from a potentially contaminated stream in the forest is “natural”. To drink highly purified water, which is guaranteed to be safe, from a sealed plastic bottle is “unnatural”; I’d definitely go with the latter over the former.

I could go on and on with this, but I think you see my point.

But what I am sure of is that if a person believes/knows that they are doing wrong and despairs over it, why do they not change their conditions and/or beliefs?

It isn’t that simple. Firstly, sometimes it is extremely difficult, or even impossible, to change a behaviour or a “condition”; certainly someone can’t simply wish to “stop being attracted to guys”. Secondly, and more importantly, it isn’t always quite as simple as someone “believing that what they are doing is wrong”. Quite often, it will be the case that someone will have been raised to believe that something is wrong or taught to believe that something is wrong, but they are not certain themselves that it is wrong. This leads to an internal conflict, and much angst.

The Bible says that Jesus and God can forgive all sins by those who truly repent, for instance, something the girl’s parents apparently did not factor in to their accusations).

Correct, and I knew this already. Incidentally, is there not one exception? Is it not written that he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit can never be forgiven? (And does this mean that someone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit can never be Saved?)

But then again, I do not think you truly understand what you obviously are against. You focus on the religion itself and concentrate very little on the people.

I do not understand what you mean here. Could you clarify?

I have seen the depressing stories of many friends as well. You are not alone in this, except perhaps in your definition of ‘friend’.

I’m not sure what you are saying/implying here (”except perhaps in your definition of ‘friend’”).

The religion itself brought them no suffering whatsoever. A religion is merely a concise set of beliefs and statements of faith. It can not act upon anyone. It is a passive, abstract concept, and can not do anything of its own volition, any more than a stone or gun can harm a human of its own volition.

I’d argue that the analogy between a religion and a stone or a gun is not an apt one. A stone cannot have the inherent property of being drawn to strike gay people by itself; a gun does not shoot people whenever they masturbate. But many variants of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism do inherently contain proclamations that being gay is wrong, masturbation is wrong, etc., and these proclamations themselves DO bring great suffering to those who are naturally inclined towards gay sex, masturbation, etc. These individuals are presented with two unpalatable choices: Resist their natural urges and suffer for the deprival, or give into their natural urges but be condemned by their God.

Your friend who was ‘pent up’ believed falsely about self-gratification, then committed what would be considered (by those whole follow Christianity, at any rate) an even greater sin by ‘becoming one flesh’ and entering the pact of marriage with another simply to gratify his own physical urges.

I’ve found it to be a fairly mainstream Christian belief that “Onanism”, as it is sometimes quaintly called, is a sin. If Onanism is a sin and premarital sex is a sin, then a Christian male has no sexual release at all until marriage. Logically, then, he will be perpetually pent up (aside from the occasional wet dream) until he is married.

It is well-known that men who are horny do stupid things– like sleep with the wrong woman, or– in the case of my friend– marry the wrong woman.

Nowhere in those examples did the religion manifest itself in corporeal form and force their hand. Nowhere in those examples did a deity become incarnate and tell those people that they must do this.

So what? An impetus does not have to be physical in nature to cause psychological trauma. If a parent never, ever physically beats their child, but constantly insults them and berates them, will the child not be harmed? I fail to see the relevance of a lack of a corporal antagonist here.

The man who does not want his own child is disgusting to me.

He wanted to have sex with his wife. He did not want a child. He wore a condom; it did not work.

He was not yet ready for a child, and he was attempting, via the use of birth control, NOT to have his wife conceive a child. She conceived anyways.

What exactly is disgusting about any of this?

Put it this way, if tomorrow he ceased to believe, would he somehow magically change to where would love his son?

Of course not. But you are missing the point. It’s not that religion makes him not want his son; it’s that if he was not religious, and his wife was not religious, they would simply have had an abortion.Therefore, there would BE no unwanted child for him to regret.

What you should be asking is to what degree such things are wrong.

I fail to understand why this is the more pertinent question than the more simple one of “WHY are these things wrong”!

To those who follow most monotheistic religions, such things are ‘wrong’ because it has been decreed that they are ‘wrong’.

Saying that something is ‘wrong’ does not make it wrong. I could say that eating feta cheese on a Thursday afternoon is a huge moral sin, but it would not make it so.

To demonstrate that something is wrong, you have to provide some logical reason why it is a “bad” thing– something it does that hurts something, someone, or both. You can’t simply make an ‘argument from authority’. And that’s what the majority of religion is anyways: “This guy created the Universe, so whatever he says is automatically right.” Again, I wish to remind you that there are faiths in which the Creator God is, in fact, malevolent. Merely creating the Universe does not imply goodness or a well-tuned moral compass.

Hey, since you’re of the ‘it must be proved to be moral for me to believe in it’…

I’ve already stated that I misphrased things to that end. What I meant (again) was “it must be proved to be moral for me to FOLLOW it.” Obviously, even if I find God to be immoral, I may still be convinced that he exists.

December 5th, 2008 at 1:24 AM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by mayim

Personally, Tiberius, I usually just wish someone “happy holidays” at this time of the year. Non-specific.

December 5th, 2008 at 2:59 AM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by mayim

One thing I forgot to point out, but this had me gobsmacked. The description of having children as “the greatest calling a woman ever had” is rather shocking. It is certainly the most necessary thing that women do for the survival of the species, but “the greatest calling”? This is like calling breathing “the greatest calling of humankind”, because without breathing, after all, we would all die out.

What about healing the sick, curing diseases, teaching the young, helping the war effort in WWII, running for President? Those are all things that plenty of women have worked towards; are they not “greater” than merely procreating?

December 5th, 2008 at 1:23 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by mayim

There is a very large difference between “the thing that one is most satisfied by” and “the greatest calling”. You could accomplish a lot more good (or bad!) as President than as the mother of two, or three, or ten, or even thirty children. You may be more proud of being a mother than of being a President, but the latter would have far, far, far more impact on the world.

If the greatest calling everyone has, by far, is raising children… then what exactly are they raising children FOR? What about the things those children might DO with their lives, other than “having more children”?

Surely there is more to life than merely reproducing. Surely there are larger things that one can accomplish in this life, larger legacies than “here lies [X]; s/he had [Y] children”!

December 5th, 2008 at 2:51 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

I will also go out on a limb here and say that, of all the fathers here, there won’t be one who was glad when he had to leave his babies behind and go off to work. I would suspect that there was nothing more satisfying than having the job of “dad.”

This is true. My husband had the first couple years with the baby, but throughout the years we were willing to live with little and not put emphasis on careers and advancement that required excessive hours, so we were poor but we were both there a lot. It’s given us a perspective on things; to this day when we see people who live for their work and don’t place that value on time spent with family, and we see them a lot, he will say “Yeah, no one is on their deathbed saying ‘Gee, I wish I’d spent more time at work’ and no one has a bumper sticker saying ‘I’d rather be working.” I mean really, most people are NOT Albert Schweitzer or Mother Theresa, let’s not kid ourselves that every smart person was going to be the next Isaac Newton out saving the world. Maybe that smart girl was going to claw her way to the top of the fucking ladder as a corporate raider, what about THAT instead? I mean honestly.

December 5th, 2008 at 3:08 PM
Using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

“Surely there is more to life than merely reproducing. Surely there are larger things that one can accomplish in this life, larger legacies than “here lies [X]; s/he had [Y] children”!

NO. There are OTHER legacies, there are OTHER accomplishments; it’s your use of words like “larger” or “greater” to qualify them that are objectionable, can we get this settled here? There are many different legacies, and your friend will likely have other accomplishments in her life; maybe even some that to others look like greater ones. She will decide of course which were her greatest and which meant the most to her.

December 5th, 2008 at 3:14 PM
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Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

No, you were using larger and greater as “better.” It’s ingrained in you to value it that way - but if I keep pointing it out, you might at least catch yourself when you do. As to whether it’s the greatest calling - well opinions vary; I’m not getting into that.

December 5th, 2008 at 3:38 PM
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Comment by mayim

You’re right. I was being unnecessarily judgmental. I truly apologise.

December 5th, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by Tyrmadris

OK, job’s done.
Time for some fun.

Do not feel the need to apologize, Mayim. Long detailed posts are a lot more interesting than quick little drive-bys. The way I see it, anyone who doesn’t want to read them can just Page Down to the next comment.

I do not define myself as “anti-theist”.

+

If cautioning people against the dangers of religion as a result of my having witnessed these stories unfold makes me an “anti-theist”, then so be it; I am an “anti-theist”.

Indeed?

I find it interesting that you have a grievance against the monothesitic ones, but not against the polytheistic ones or the rather nihilistic ones. Is there a certain reason for that?

Most anti-theists seem to be of the mind that a monotheistic god isn’t actually some higher-order being (which the adherents to the religion believe), but a sort of ‘giant human with super powers’, and they act accordingly. So far, you seem to fit this mold, as you attempt to pass judgment on something that, if it exists, is much greater and more complex than you can even imagine. But you seem to be content with making such a being fit your idea of how it should behave. Since this seems to be based on treating it as another human, is it any wonder your comparisons fail utterly?
Please, list all the grievances you have with the monotheistic deity of Christians and Jews. I’d like to see them.

A precocious child is intelligent? Hmm… (www.dictionary.com)
Precocious: Unusually advanced or mature in development, esp. mental development.
Maturity is a form of wisdom. I have never heard precocious used in a term equatable to intelligence. A child who learns hard data quickly or is good at math for their age rarely gets the title of precocious, but one who is clever or adapts well to situations tends to get such a moniker. Looks ‘bright’ to me.

You state that you are not an anti-theist. You are against the idea of any monotheistic higher-order being that seeks to establish rules upon its creation. You state that such may or may not exist, but if it did, you could not agree with or worship it. You blame the religion for the faults of individual humans who use it as an excuse. An anti-theist does not need to be against every single religion… mostly because they wouldn’t have the time to be against them ALL.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

The rules set up by the Christian and Jewish God are not arbitrary, nor are they ridiculous. They are stated clearly and concisely, they make logical sense, and they do not change on a whim. This is in contrast to the Islamic Allah, however, which is a capricious being. Just because you state the rules are arbitrary does not mean that they are, especially if they are clearly ordered. Even if they were not, it may appear arbitrary to you, but you may also not have all the information. This is no surprise, as most of the examples you gave were people ‘of faith’ who clearly had insufficient information.

Belief harms no one, period. People harm people, and people harm themselves when they do stupid things or are ignorant of their environment.

Yeah, the brain size comment was a bit of a weak retort, good job not getting worked up over it.

I agree it is no surprise we have different definition of wrong. I, however, did not live up to your guess. As I stated earlier, there were two easy ways to classify wrong, both a secular and religious approach (in my example, I used godly laws and human ones to show the point).

To me, what is “wrong” is “that which deliberately harms another (who does not wish to be so harmed)”.

Your definition is flawed. Wrong can also equate to ‘incorrect’. Your definition also fails to take into consideration accidental harm, which is also ‘wrong’. Furthermore, you accept that someone who harms another who desires that harm is not wrong, with which I disagree completely.

I wish to say nothing about the Golden Rule. I’m well aware of it, historically. It has been a meme which has existed for quite a considerable amount of time. Thanks for jumping to conclusions, however. I do find it amusing you assume Christ will be forgotten, despite the fact that two millenia have failed to do so, let alone the fact that the Jewish tradition has been going on for much longer. And now we are in the age of instant information… I think at this point, short of the entire eradication of our species and all of its artifacts, such a concept will never be forgotten.

We’ll go with your examples though.
—Sex Change—
1. Your definition of ‘harm’ is flawed. You assume that the only harm is that of reproductive capability. You are incorrect. Such operations result in permanent damage on a physical and biological level to an otherwise completely healthy, self-sustaining system. As well, many of them require a constant amount of hormones from outside the body to keep it in its altered state when it would otherwise attmpt to repair the damage to itself. Both of these I consider to be ‘wrong’. If such processes were necessary for the physical body to continue to stay alive, it would not be wrong, but such a choice to ‘change’ results in irreperable damage with no gain.
Once you slide around the track of relativity, all sorts of nasty things become possible. You don’t want to go there, honestly, because that’s a bigger can of worms than the issues we already have on the table. Relativity can excuse a LOT of gruesome and disgusting things, all for a supposed ‘greater good’.

Suicide is self-inflicted harm of the greatest order. I find it interesting you did not bring this point up. But then again, in your definition of ‘wrong’, you do not classify it as such. Here is one area where we certainly disagree. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Even without a religious aspect, it is still a ‘wrong’ because the person in question would rather self-terminate than deal with the issues in their life. Ethically and morally, this is wrong. Cases can be made for people whose physical or mental faculties are damaged to the point where they can not survive on their own or are in a permanent state of suffering (and by ‘mental’ here I mean CAPABILITY, not current condition… ie, someone who’s sufficiently brain damaged to be unable to think). But each individual case must be made, and it may be a cased of choosing a lesser wrong over a greater one.

However, two wrongs do not make a right.

As the person in your example is not in such a situation (they have perfect physical and mental capability), they are willingly inflicting harm on themselves in the misguided hope that it will be ‘better’. That constitutes ‘wrong’ in my book.

One’s personal happiness has nothing to do with whether or not something is wrong. All those people you listed, trying to cope with the situation, could have found alternatives that did not result in harm to themselves. They may end up being happier, but are still wrong. There are many criminals who are quite happy despite being wrong (usually they are the ones who didn’t get caught). There are many people who enjooy being complete and total ASSHOLES to other people, treating them like dirt just to get their jollies. Guess what? They’re wrong too. But happy about it. While your example is on the ‘nicest’ end of the scale, it does nothing to prove that happiness equates to being ‘right’ (as opposed to wrong).

The trans in your case faces a choice: “Do I wrongly harm my physical body continuously (irrelevant of sterility) so that I can feel better about my new perceptions, or do I instead makes choices and possibly changes to my lifestyle that result in no harm to anyone (I’m not saying convert, but act according to the desired gender identity)?”

What you still have escaped, however, is the scale and magnitude to which something is wrong. You object to me stating these facts, but that does not in any way change whether these people are wrong. Some are more wrong than others. Some wrongs barely ping the wrong-o-meter and are pretty much ignored by a majority of the population. Does that stop them from being wrong? No.

When it comes to religion, it’s a little easier. When the religious text says “A man shall not lie with another man as he would with a woman”, it’s fairly clear-cut. Does that being ‘wrong’ mean the person must be killed? No. But if an adherent of the religion does that, fully knowing it is against the precepts of what they believe, then they are wrong. Now, if the religious creed states that the person in question must be stoned to death… is that wrong? By my definitions of wrong, the former would be a minor wrong (purely theological, non physical) and the latter would be a hella-bad majorly twisted wrong (physical termination of the violator).

2. You do not believe in God. Aside from this further reinforcing your atheist/anti-theist classification, it brings me amusement to find that you don’t consider this line of thought worth pursuing. Clearly people who follow the tenants of a religion believe certain things to be wrong. If they believe it, and you don’t, does that mean it’s impossible for them to commit said wrongs, simply because you disagree?

3. You state this argument is weak, but nonetheless, it exists. I happen to agree with you, actually, on pretty much every bit in this category. No ‘harm’ is inflicted to any of those people, and thus, no direct wrong.

4. A case can be made for it being a minor wrong that tugs at the edges of the society as a whole, but I see it society as being a bit more reilient than that. Those of a more scientific bent find this no harm whatsoever, in fact, it’s actually a benefit to a society, from a Darwinist perspective, for a person to filter themselves out of the gene pool in this way. If done early, it prevents numerous offspring from doing so later, it frees up resources for everyone else, etc, etc. I find such a view to stretch practicality to the point of abhorrence, but it can be made as an argument either way.

5. What? I don’t see how this logically in any way fits into the rest of what you said. I can’t even see a logical reason for your example ‘argument’ to exist at all. Maybe it makes sense to you and others, but this is practically a non-issue from my perspective, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it untouched.

Cool. Now for your other example.

—Gay Relations—
1. I can attack this from so many directions, I’m practically paralyzed by the many choices available. You completely ignored WHY it’s easier to transmit STD’s this way, which incidentally demonstrates my point about wrongful harm even better. The reason it has a greater odds to do so is because the sphincter and colon are designed for one-way passage of something less sturdy than thick mud via a process similar to peristalsis (sp). When somethign is rammed up in there with a higher density, resilience, and force, it causes damage to a part of the body never intended for such abuse. Such damage includes, but is not limited to, ruptured flesh and blood vessels. As the organ in question (the colon) was designed to strain out substances useful to the body and pass them directly to the bloodstream, this should come as no surprise.
Such harm is wrong, even from a purely naturalistic or physical perspective. This should not be hard to figure out.

2. If God is an omniscient, omnipotent higher-order being, I fail to see how He could be harmed by such an act directly. His opinion of people, however, probably goes down quite a bit… good thing He is portrayed as good and loving.

3. Well, they aren’t physically harmed directly, but if they were, this would be a WHOLE new category. I can see the ‘recruiting’ as being a justified perception of wrong here, as a child in the formative stage might be convinced to do things they would not otherwise do, or to refrain from doing things they would otherwise do.
Someone can, in fact, be ‘recruited’. I know this personally from a friend of mine. It’s not the attractions themselves that are the problem, it’s when another convinces the example person that there is a certain way they should act or react to them, and such a thing is chosen and becomes a habit. And yes, you might actually become more interested at details you had previously overlooked, when it comes to blondes. Doesn’t mean you would start to prefer them right away, or even prefer them over time, but it would open a door that had previously remained unexplored.

4. Same, yes, as above. Again, a purely non-religious view would find this as beneficial, as it shrinks the less viable portion of the gene pool and insures that the more viable portions continue on.

Not worried about the ‘if everyone were gay the species would end’ bit. Aside from being impractical, it’s also silly. But arguing for or against it does not in anyway way stop such from being wrong.

Being ‘gay’ is as much a choice as anything else you do. Like it or not, we have the instincts and bodies of animals, but more developed brains and mental capbilities that set us above them. We are creative in ways they never are, able to understand greater concepts, and… most important of all… capable of choosing to act in a way that goes against our instincts. That’s the main thing that seperates us from animals. While the nature we are born with is strong, we can tame and modify it, by little pieces at first, but more and more as our cognitive abilities grow.
That’s why it’s hard to apply ‘wrong’ to the actions of an animal, except in its most basic definition of merely being ‘incorrect’… incorrect in the views of the vastly intellectually superior humans who wish to adjust the animal’s responses. Is the Lion wrong when it eats the foolish photographer who gets out of his car to get up close and take a picture? By human terms, if it was a thinking human, yes, it would be wrong for acting in such a fashion. It, however, does not have the ability to think the way that we do. The only ‘wrong’ in such a scenario is committed by the retarded human… who, honestly, gets what he deserved. Such definitions of ‘wrong’, by choice, can only be applied to humans.

Contributing to a society does not make someone incapable of doing any wrong. Your examples here are meaningless in this context. I’m glad those people found a way to contribute to their society, that is a good and welcome thing. Having said that, it still doesn’t stop other actions from being wrong.

I’ve worked at a dog track when I was young. Greyhound racing. After the race, the handlers (of which I was one), had to immediately seperate all the dogs. Why? Because in their adrenaline-pumped frenzy, they’d go crazy and would hump practically any other dog. Males preferred females, naturally, but if there weren’t enough or they had run full out, anything with legs would do. Some of the stronger ones would even attempt to mount their handler’s leg, which we considered to be a funny way to ‘break in’ the new guys. Were they ‘wrong’ in doing this? Well, they can only act on instinct. The only ‘wrong’ is in being incorrect, or causing harm… but causing harm being equated with wrong can only apply to those capable of making a choice. But not a single one favored another, whether it be male or female. All the males wanted to mate with the females… and, if they couldn’t get to one, any other dog in the way. Not a single damn one would search out specifically to find a male when a female was available. Interesting, that.

What’s more interesting is that, while there may be homosexual behavior in animals, it is not and never will be defined by choice. Creatures which act on primarily on instinct are incapable of such. Homosexual tendancies in primates are a direct result of the social pecking order and inherited methods of determining such. A form of dominance, not a free choice by two individuals capable of making such and deciding that they favor it over the ‘natural’ way. Habit ingrained by instinct, responses to chemical stimuli, and prior development of the species, nothing more. Even among the most sexually active of animal species, none specifically form mutual homosexual bonds even remotely close to that which humans do. They haven’t the ability. They can be TRAINED to do so, but only by something capable of conceiving such and forcing it upon them. Ergo, it is still not natural, no matter how you want to spin it. Even if it were, you are talking about creatures incapable of the higher-order brain functions of humans. If the best argument you can present for it being natural is ’sometimes animals are overcome by instinct and have homosexual behavior or tendancies’, you need to try a lot harder…. especially if you carry it through to its ‘natural’ conclusion. For instance, not kiling the previous offspring of your mate when you replace his/her previous mate is remarkably unnatural. So is every male not fighting (even if playfully) each other to establish dominance when they meet the first time. But which way do humans act?

With either approach, however, you’ve yet to demonstrate how such activities are not ‘wrong’. Better yet, try proving that they are ‘right’.

Since it’s such a ‘weak argument’, it was good for you to bring it up. Try mine on, however, and see what you think.

Apple seeds have trace amounts of cyanide. So what?

—

Adjusting one’s conditions or beliefs ARE that simple, assuming they have the ability to realize where the true source of their suffering comes from. If they don’t, however, such is not the fault of an abstract concept, but their own deficiencies or actions done to them by another free-willed, thinking human in an attempt to modify their responses. Someone CAN, in fact, wish to ’stop being attracted to guys’. It may not work, but they can wish it. But that is not the point. It’s how they act upon that attraction that defines them, and that is most definitely a choice. Those who bring up the weak argument that it is ‘impossible to choose to be gay or not’ seem to miss this point. There is no instinct or urge which you are incapable of suppressing. If there were, you would be purely an animal, not a human. Those urges may be ridiculously strong, and seem insurmountable, but they are not.. unless the person is afflicted with a very specific kind of brain damage or deformity. Some urges may be nearly impossible to overcome alone, but become manageable with the help of others. Recognizing such and acting on it is a form of suppression as well.

A person who is raised or taught that something is wrong and acts upon it without testing their belief against reality is one of the aforementioned ’strong but brittle’ faith types. The reason that they are stuck in the loop is because of the DIRECT actions of another human being, not the phantasmal hand of an abstract concept forcing them to be that way. The person may be on the receiving end of bullying or brainwashing from another, but that is the FAULT of the other, not in a non-corporeal thing such as ‘religion’. Continuing to blame it just facilitates your category error and reinforces the effectiveness of the scapegoat. It’s the best kind of scapegoat, really, one which others will convince is the fault of everything, and it seems you’ve been pulled in as well.

Exceptions to forgiveness? As far as I know, there are none that are beyond true repentance. I know that Saul was once a great hunter and slayer of Christians, and I have little doubt that he blasphemed everything in the religion. At least, until God knocked him off his high horse and he changes his name to Paul, becoming one of the more well known (and most prolific writer) of the disciples. Even if the two statements contradict, it’s listed in numerous locations about the power of true forgiveness, and if your example is accurate, such is listed only once. I’d err on the side of forgiveness, personally.

—

My definition of friend is probably a LOT more specific than yours. Most people have ‘friends’ that I would describe more as ‘good acquaintances’. My definition requires a bit more. As a result, I may have less ‘friends’, but the friends I do have, I value much more highly.
—

I’d argue that the analogy between religion and a stone or a gun is a perfectly apt one. A religion cannot have the inherent property of being wielded to harm gay people (or any people, for that matter) by itself. You literally can not flog someone to death with Islam, or Christianity, or Hinduism, or any of the other religions. It’s physically impossible. If you believe you can do it, please tape it and put it up on YouTube, I would earnestly like to see the attempt.

Proclamations that something is ‘wrong’ is not striking someone down. The words do not move off the page and choke the offender. In fact, they do not move at all. Does this stop them from being ‘wrong’ by such a definition? No.

Proclamations do not bring suffering on anyone. A person may bring suffering upon themselves by internalizing such philosophies and interpreting it in some way that they can use it against themselves, or for themselves, or what have you. The concept still does not cause them harm. Please give me an example of where God comes down and smites those who disobey the rules in modern times. I’d like to see it. Because, even if you can, I had thought you were arguing against the religion itself, not railing against the deity like an anti-theist.

You seem to know a bit about the religion, and you seem to possess enough sense to realize that some wrongs are greater than others. If you had read up on Christianity, you’d know that many ‘urges’ (instincts) are considered sins when acted upon, but that some sins are greater than others, and all sins can be forgiven (as has been pointed out about your example, the sin was more disobedience than the act). No one is expected to be utterly sinless, because no living human can be utterly sinless, at least according to the religion’s precepts (well, aside from ONE human, anyway, you can hazard a guess who that would be).

The man in your example did something stupid. He also did something wrong. Many things wrong. Being stupid does not prevent you from doing wrong. I’ll even be the example… Just the other day I accidentally connected about ten Amps of current coming from a machine I was working on to ground (in this case, the box it was in). I did something stupid (your heart can be easily overloaded to the point where it ceases functioning by much less than half an Amp). I did something wrong. I also managed to survive, which is good, because it’ll be a LOT longer before I do that wrong again. At least you admit your friend did something stupid. You seem to be unwilling to admit that HE, not an abstract concept, did something wrong.

You are correct that something does not have to be physical to cause trauma, but you missed the part about where there has to be some controlling force behind it all. Words don’t just suddenly ‘appear’ as sound in the air, born from nothing. There was a PERSON behind all those words. When a parent constantly insults and berates the child, it is not the insults that are the source of the damage, it is the person behind them that does it. As those who rightfully support our 2nd Amendment can clearly state: Guns don’t kill people, people do. Insults don’t traumatize children, PEOPLE do. Religions dont traumatize or brainwash children, PEOPLE DO. And the people who such things are WRONG. Quit using religion as a scapegoat for the actions of PEOPLE, it’s getting really tiring having to explain this over and over without you even addressing it directly.

He wanted to use his wife to satisfy his urges. He took precautions to prevent a child from being conceived, and so did she. They failed. She gave birth and now he does not want and will probably grow to resent his own child, an innocent human who through no fault of his own will be blamed for things beyond his control, all because his father is a douchebag who decides to take it out on him/her.
Go back to the paragraph I just wrote and read the bold words, then reply back and tell me what part of this you fail to find disgusting. Hint: It involves being cruel to the most innocent of people. Causing HARM, by your OWN definition. At least try to keep up.

I thought you had dug as deep into the pit of depravity as you could, but then you just reached for the shovel and found new lows to sink to…
If he and his wife were not religious, they would have killed an innocent human being so that they could ‘enjoy’ more of their lives together… except they dont. They would have killed an infant simply because the alternative, you know, raising the offspring to be loved and to find his own place in a life he would have, is so disgusting to you that you have to immediately resort to your time-honored scapegoat and blame it all on religion. I’ve already said I know atheists who are against abortion. How, then, can you possibly blame it on religion in this instance?

I have explained to you WHY things are wrong. Please now try to understand the degree. You assume that, without religion, people would be as pure as the virgin snow. Hate to break it to you, buddy, but back in the days when our genetic ancestors were just learning to wield bones and unshaped rocks, we already had all of the bad traits ingrained into our bodies and genes that we would inherit today. Religion hasn’t changed any of that. You need to start realizing that sometimes, all the choices are bad. Sometimes, all you can do is pick the lesser of the evils and hope that, in the future, you can make better choices that prevent you from being in such a situation again. Until you do… well, I think you’ll be holding tight to your scapegoat.

—

Saying that something is wrong does not make it wrong. But beings as what you quoted specifically said “to those who follow monotheistic religions, such things are wrong because it has been decreed that they are ‘wrong’” is, most certainly, a damn good reason for those believers. Why? Because a being with vastly greater intelligence and wisdom has ascertained that when people do such things, they invariably start sliding down the crapper and He has to start over again with another group.

No, you DON’T have to state WHY something is wrong for it to be wrong. Take the Abrahamic religions’ bans on pork products (well, Christianity dropped this, but still, there’s good reasons from multiple points of view)… The deity says ‘this is wrong, this is bad, do not eat it’. The believers, to whom such a decree makes perfect sense (you apparently missed how I said this example was a religious context), say “OK, yes Lord, as you will.” The deity does not explain itself. It does not need to. How can it possibly tell the people, in ways they will understand intimately, that pigs of the area at the time contained numerous intestinal worms and bacteria which would could be lethal or PERMANENTLY harmful (as in, living in your digestive tract for life) unless such an animal was prepared in a certain way and cooked to a certain temperature for a certain time.
There’d always be, you know, certain people out there who would nitpick it, and wonder how there could really be animals so tiny you couldn’t see them, and how they could live inside you without food and water and crops, and how the hell you could ‘prove’ all this to me to my satisfaction (even ignoring that it comes from God), etc, etc. While the deity in question COULD go through such a long and convoluted process as explaining what is, to it, a plainly, bluntly obvious concept to beings roughly comparable to the most retarded of slack-jawed drooling children, and then repeat it for absolutely every single damned person throughout all of the millenia of time, it’s much easier to just say “Dont eat the pigs, OK? It’s wrong, I say so.”
It’s really, remarkably, amazingly close to the point of being identical to what parents caution their kids NOT to do. When a kid wonders why he can’t stick the fork in the power outlet, the parent doesn’t go into long detailed explanations about right-and-left-handed electrical current, the differences between amperage and power and resistance and impedance and capacitance, nor detail where the power comes from or who thought of it or why batteries aren’t as dangerous, or exactly what physical damage it will inflict on every part of cellular tissue in the child’s body (or even what all those words MEAN), etc, etc, etc. The parent justs say “It’s bad for you, don’t do it,” and if feeling sufficiently pressured or generous decides to roughly outline enough concepts to sate the childs curiosity until it wanders over to that red-glowing piece of metal the food pot is sitting on…

Some people will always, ALWAYS have to get down to know every little nitpicky detail. Just like in math, it’s one of those repeating fractions that gets ever so infinitely closer to a whole, solid number, but can never actually touch it. The humor comes when those people who are obsessed with such look down upon other people who just go about their lives, as they poke and prod trying to find just the right way to shove that fork into the socket that all the rest of the brainwashed masses just can’t see as being absolutely VITAL and perfectly well within their capability to understand and control.
Guess what? If there’s a deity out there that lives up to the monotheistic concept of him, and I certainly believe there is, He, She, or It does not need to answer or prove itself to the likes of those who try and constrain it within their own limited perceptions. Religious people have no problem accepting that there are things they don’t understand to the Nth degree yet, that there’s some PURPOSE behind all those commandments, and move on, trying to live as best they can. Which is why, perhaps, you throw this perspective away as soon as you grasp it.

Faiths in which the creator is malevolent? OK, I’ll bite. List FIVE that still have worshippers today and constitute more than a thousand followers Or just five that exist today, that’ll be good.
PS: Those religious texts you deride give umpteen more reasons than just ‘He made all this’ as evidence of the deity being good. Read more.

I’ve already stated that I misphrased things to that end. What I meant (again) was “it must be proved to be moral for me to FOLLOW it.” Obviously, even if I find God to be immoral, I may still be convinced that he exists.

My apologies for hounding you on the first issue, then. As for the second, as I said earlier, please list all your grievances here, I would like to see them. All of them you care to type. Every one.

December 5th, 2008 at 6:46 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by Tyrmadris

OK, let’s see if I can cram this monster through here without the spam-bots swarming it to death…

— — —

Do not feel the need to apologize, Mayim. Long detailed posts are a lot more interesting than quick little drive-bys. The way I see it, anyone who doesn’t want to read them can just Page Down to the next comment.

I do not define myself as “anti-theist”.

+

If cautioning people against the dangers of religion as a result of my having witnessed these stories unfold makes me an “anti-theist”, then so be it; I am an “anti-theist”.

Indeed?

I find it interesting that you have a grievance against the monothesitic ones, but not against the polytheistic ones or the rather nihilistic ones. Is there a certain reason for that?

Most anti-theists seem to be of the mind that a monotheistic god isn’t actually some higher-order being (which the adherents to the religion believe), but a sort of ‘giant human with super powers’, and they act accordingly. So far, you seem to fit this mold, as you attempt to pass judgment on something that, if it exists, is much greater and more complex than you can even imagine. But you seem to be content with making such a being fit your idea of how it should behave. Since this seems to be based on treating it as another human, is it any wonder your comparisons fail utterly?
Please, list all the grievances you have with the monotheistic deity of Christians and Jews. I’d like to see them.

A precocious child is intelligent? Hmm… (www.dictionary.com)
Precocious: Unusually advanced or mature in development, esp. mental development.
Maturity is a form of wisdom. I have never heard precocious used in a term equatable to intelligence. A child who learns hard data quickly or is good at math for their age rarely gets the title of precocious, but one who is clever or adapts well to situations tends to get such a moniker. Looks ‘bright’ to me.

You state that you are not an anti-theist. You are against the idea of any monotheistic higher-order being that seeks to establish rules upon its creation. You state that such may or may not exist, but if it did, you could not agree with or worship it. You blame the religion for the faults of individual humans who use it as an excuse. An anti-theist does not need to be against every single religion… mostly because they wouldn’t have the time to be against them ALL.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

The rules set up by the Christian and Jewish God are not arbitrary, nor are they ridiculous. They are stated clearly and concisely, they make logical sense, and they do not change on a whim. This is in contrast to the Islamic Allah, however, which is a capricious being. Just because you state the rules are arbitrary does not mean that they are, especially if they are clearly ordered. Even if they were not, it may appear arbitrary to you, but you may also not have all the information. This is no surprise, as most of the examples you gave were people ‘of faith’ who clearly had insufficient information.

Belief harms no one, period. People harm people, and people harm themselves when they do stupid things or are ignorant of their environment.

Yeah, the brain size comment was a bit of a weak retort, good job not getting worked up over it.

I agree it is no surprise we have different definition of wrong. I, however, did not live up to your guess. As I stated earlier, there were two easy ways to classify wrong, both a secular and religious approach (in my example, I used godly laws and human ones to show the point).

To me, what is “wrong” is “that which deliberately harms another (who does not wish to be so harmed)”.

Your definition is flawed. Wrong can also equate to ‘incorrect’. Your definition also fails to take into consideration accidental harm, which is also ‘wrong’. Furthermore, you accept that someone who harms another who desires that harm is not wrong, with which I disagree completely.

I wish to say nothing about the Golden Rule. I’m well aware of it, historically. It has been a meme which has existed for quite a considerable amount of time. Thanks for jumping to conclusions, however. I do find it amusing you assume Christ will be forgotten, despite the fact that two millenia have failed to do so, let alone the fact that the Jewish tradition has been going on for much longer. And now we are in the age of instant information… I think at this point, short of the entire eradication of our species and all of its artifacts, such a concept will never be forgotten.

We’ll go with your examples though.

-Sex Change
1. Your definition of ‘harm’ is flawed. You assume that the only harm is that of reproductive capability. You are incorrect. Such operations result in permanent damage on a physical and biological level to an otherwise completely healthy, self-sustaining system. As well, many of them require a constant amount of hormones from outside the body to keep it in its altered state when it would otherwise attmpt to repair the damage to itself. Both of these I consider to be ‘wrong’. If such processes were necessary for the physical body to continue to stay alive, it would not be wrong, but such a choice to ‘change’ results in irreperable damage with no gain.
Once you slide around the track of relativity, all sorts of nasty things become possible. You don’t want to go there, honestly, because that’s a bigger can of worms than the issues we already have on the table. Relativity can excuse a LOT of gruesome and disgusting things, all for a supposed ‘greater good’.

Suicide is self-inflicted harm of the greatest order. I find it interesting you did not bring this point up. But then again, in your definition of ‘wrong’, you do not classify it as such. Here is one area where we certainly disagree. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Even without a religious aspect, it is still a ‘wrong’ because the person in question would rather self-terminate than deal with the issues in their life. Ethically and morally, this is wrong. Cases can be made for people whose physical or mental faculties are damaged to the point where they can not survive on their own or are in a permanent state of suffering (and by ‘mental’ here I mean CAPABILITY, not current condition… ie, someone who’s sufficiently brain damaged to be unable to think). But each individual case must be made, and it may be a cased of choosing a lesser wrong over a greater one.

However, two wrongs do not make a right.

As the person in your example is not in such a situation (they have perfect physical and mental capability), they are willingly inflicting harm on themselves in the misguided hope that it will be ‘better’. That constitutes ‘wrong’ in my book.

One’s personal happiness has nothing to do with whether or not something is wrong. All those people you listed, trying to cope with the situation, could have found alternatives that did not result in harm to themselves. They may end up being happier, but are still wrong. There are many criminals who are quite happy despite being wrong (usually they are the ones who didn’t get caught). There are many people who enjooy being complete and total ASSHOLES to other people, treating them like dirt just to get their jollies. Guess what? They’re wrong too. But happy about it. While your example is on the ‘nicest’ end of the scale, it does nothing to prove that happiness equates to being ‘right’ (as opposed to wrong).

The trans in your case faces a choice: “Do I wrongly harm my physical body continuously (irrelevant of sterility) so that I can feel better about my new perceptions, or do I instead makes choices and possibly changes to my lifestyle that result in no harm to anyone (I’m not saying convert, but act according to the desired gender identity)?”

What you still have escaped, however, is the scale and magnitude to which something is wrong. You object to me stating these facts, but that does not in any way change whether these people are wrong. Some are more wrong than others. Some wrongs barely ping the wrong-o-meter and are pretty much ignored by a majority of the population. Does that stop them from being wrong? No.

When it comes to religion, it’s a little easier. When the religious text says “A man shall not lie with another man as he would with a woman”, it’s fairly clear-cut. Does that being ‘wrong’ mean the person must be killed? No. But if an adherent of the religion does that, fully knowing it is against the precepts of what they believe, then they are wrong. Now, if the religious creed states that the person in question must be stoned to death… is that wrong? By my definitions of wrong, the former would be a minor wrong (purely theological, non physical) and the latter would be a hella-bad majorly twisted wrong (physical termination of the violator).

2. You do not believe in God. Aside from this further reinforcing your atheist/anti-theist classification, it brings me amusement to find that you don’t consider this line of thought worth pursuing. Clearly people who follow the tenants of a religion believe certain things to be wrong. If they believe it, and you don’t, does that mean it’s impossible for them to commit said wrongs, simply because you disagree?

3. You state this argument is weak, but nonetheless, it exists. I happen to agree with you, actually, on pretty much every bit in this category. No ‘harm’ is inflicted to any of those people, and thus, no direct wrong.

4. A case can be made for it being a minor wrong that tugs at the edges of the society as a whole, but I see it society as being a bit more reilient than that. Those of a more scientific bent find this no harm whatsoever, in fact, it’s actually a benefit to a society, from a Darwinist perspective, for a person to filter themselves out of the gene pool in this way. If done early, it prevents numerous offspring from doing so later, it frees up resources for everyone else, etc, etc. I find such a view to stretch practicality to the point of abhorrence, but it can be made as an argument either way.

5. What? I don’t see how this logically in any way fits into the rest of what you said. I can’t even see a logical reason for your example ‘argument’ to exist at all. Maybe it makes sense to you and others, but this is practically a non-issue from my perspective, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it untouched.

Cool. Now for your other example.

December 5th, 2008 at 6:49 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by Tyrmadris

-Sex Change
1. Your definition of ‘harm’ is flawed. You assume that the only harm is that of reproductive capability. You are incorrect. Such operations result in permanent damage on a physical and biological level to an otherwise completely healthy, self-sustaining system. As well, many of them require a constant amount of hormones from outside the body to keep it in its altered state when it would otherwise attmpt to repair the damage to itself. Both of these I consider to be ‘wrong’. If such processes were necessary for the physical body to continue to stay alive, it would not be wrong, but such a choice to ‘change’ results in irreperable damage with no gain.
Once you slide around the track of relativity, all sorts of nasty things become possible. You don’t want to go there, honestly, because that’s a bigger can of worms than the issues we already have on the table. Relativity can excuse a LOT of gruesome and disgusting things, all for a supposed ‘greater good’.

Suicide is self-inflicted harm of the greatest order. I find it interesting you did not bring this point up. But then again, in your definition of ‘wrong’, you do not classify it as such. Here is one area where we certainly disagree. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Even without a religious aspect, it is still a ‘wrong’ because the person in question would rather self-terminate than deal with the issues in their life. Ethically and morally, this is wrong. Cases can be made for people whose physical or mental faculties are damaged to the point where they can not survive on their own or are in a permanent state of suffering (and by ‘mental’ here I mean CAPABILITY, not current condition… ie, someone who’s sufficiently brain damaged to be unable to think). But each individual case must be made, and it may be a cased of choosing a lesser wrong over a greater one.

However, two wrongs do not make a right.

As the person in your example is not in such a situation (they have perfect physical and mental capability), they are willingly inflicting harm on themselves in the misguided hope that it will be ‘better’. That constitutes ‘wrong’ in my book. Your mileage may vary.

One’s personal happiness has nothing to do with whether or not something is wrong. All those people you listed, trying to cope with the situation, could have found alternatives that did not result in harm to themselves. They may end up being happier, but are still wrong. There are many criminals who are quite happy despite being wrong (usually they are the ones who didn’t get caught). There are many people who enjooy being complete and total ASSHOLES to other people, treating them like dirt just to get their jollies. Guess what? They’re wrong too. But happy about it. While your example is on the ‘nicest’ end of the scale, it does nothing to prove that happiness equates to being ‘right’ (as opposed to wrong).

The trans in your case faces a choice: “Do I wrongly harm my physical body continuously (irrelevant of sterility) so that I can feel better about my new perceptions, or do I instead makes choices and possibly changes to my lifestyle that result in no harm to anyone (I’m not saying convert, but act according to the desired gender identity)?”

What you still have escaped, however, is the scale and magnitude to which something is wrong. You object to me stating these facts, but that does not in any way change whether these people are wrong. Some are more wrong than others. Some wrongs barely ping the wrong-o-meter and are pretty much ignored by a majority of the population. Does that stop them from being wrong? No.

When it comes to religion, it’s a little easier. When the religious text says “A man shall not lie with another man as he would with a woman”, it’s fairly clear-cut. Does that being ‘wrong’ mean the person must be killed? No. But if an adherent of the religion does that, fully knowing it is against the precepts of what they believe, then they are wrong. Now, if the religious creed states that the person in question must be stoned to death… is that wrong? By my definitions of wrong, the former would be a minor wrong (purely theological, non physical) and the latter would be a hella-bad majorly twisted wrong (physical termination of the violator).

2. You do not believe in God. Aside from this further reinforcing your atheist/anti-theist classification, it brings me amusement to find that you don’t consider this line of thought worth pursuing. Clearly people who follow the tenants of a religion believe certain things to be wrong. If they believe it, and you don’t, does that mean it’s impossible for them to commit said wrongs, simply because you disagree?

3. You state this argument is weak, but nonetheless, it exists. I happen to agree with you, actually, on pretty much every bit in this category. No ‘harm’ is inflicted to any of those people, and thus, no direct wrong.

4. A case can be made for it being a minor wrong that tugs at the edges of the society as a whole, but I see it society as being a bit more reilient than that. Those of a more scientific bent find this no harm whatsoever, in fact, it’s actually a benefit to a society, from a Darwinist perspective, for a person to filter themselves out of the gene pool in this way. If done early, it prevents numerous offspring from doing so later, it frees up resources for everyone else, etc, etc. I find such a view to stretch practicality to the point of abhorrence, but it can be made as an argument either way.

5. What? I don’t see how this logically in any way fits into the rest of what you said. I can’t even see a logical reason for your example ‘argument’ to exist at all. Maybe it makes sense to you and others, but this is practically a non-issue from my perspective, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it untouched.

Cool. Now for your other example.

December 5th, 2008 at 7:12 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by Tyrmadris

1. Your definition of ‘harm’ is flawed. You assume that the only harm is that of reproductive capability. You are incorrect. Such operations result in permanent damage on a physical and biological level to an otherwise completely healthy, self-sustaining system. As well, many of them require a constant amount of hormones from outside the body to keep it in its altered state when it would otherwise attmpt to repair the damage to itself. Both of these I consider to be ‘wrong’. If such processes were necessary for the physical body to continue to stay alive, it would not be wrong, but such a choice to ‘change’ results in irreperable damage with no gain.
Once you slide around the track of relativity, all sorts of nasty things become possible. You don’t want to go there, honestly, because that’s a bigger can of worms than the issues we already have on the table. Relativity can excuse a LOT of gruesome and disgusting things, all for a supposed ‘greater good’.

Suicide is self-inflicted harm of the greatest order. I find it interesting you did not bring this point up. But then again, in your definition of ‘wrong’, you do not classify it as such. Here is one area where we certainly disagree. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Even without a religious aspect, it is still a ‘wrong’ because the person in question would rather self-terminate than deal with the issues in their life. Ethically and morally, this is wrong. Cases can be made for people whose physical or mental faculties are damaged to the point where they can not survive on their own or are in a permanent state of suffering (and by ‘mental’ here I mean CAPABILITY, not current condition… ie, someone who’s sufficiently brain damaged to be unable to think). But each individual case must be made, and it may be a cased of choosing a lesser wrong over a greater one.

However, two wrongs do not make a right.

As the person in your example is not in such a situation (they have perfect physical and mental capability), they are willingly inflicting harm on themselves in the misguided hope that it will be ‘better’. That constitutes ‘wrong’ in my book. Your mileage may vary.

One’s personal happiness has nothing to do with whether or not something is wrong. All those people you listed, trying to cope with the situation, could have found alternatives that did not result in harm to themselves. They may end up being happier, but are still wrong. There are many criminals who are quite happy despite being wrong (usually they are the ones who didn’t get caught). There are many people who enjooy being complete and total ASSHOLES to other people, treating them like dirt just to get their jollies. Guess what? They’re wrong too. But happy about it. While your example is on the ‘nicest’ end of the scale, it does nothing to prove that happiness equates to being ‘right’ (as opposed to wrong).

The trans in your case faces a choice: “Do I wrongly harm my physical body continuously (irrelevant of sterility) so that I can feel better about my new perceptions, or do I instead makes choices and possibly changes to my lifestyle that result in no harm to anyone (I’m not saying convert, but act according to the desired gender identity)?”

What you still have escaped, however, is the scale and magnitude to which something is wrong. You object to me stating these facts, but that does not in any way change whether these people are wrong. Some are more wrong than others. Some wrongs barely ping the wrong-o-meter and are pretty much ignored by a majority of the population. Does that stop them from being wrong? No.

When it comes to religion, it’s a little easier. When the religious text says “A man shall not lie with another man as he would with a woman”, it’s fairly clear-cut. Does that being ‘wrong’ mean the person must be killed? No. But if an adherent of the religion does that, fully knowing it is against the precepts of what they believe, then they are wrong. Now, if the religious creed states that the person in question must be stoned to death… is that wrong? By my definitions of wrong, the former would be a minor wrong (purely theological, non physical) and the latter would be a hella-bad majorly twisted wrong (physical termination of the violator).

2. You do not believe in God. Aside from this further reinforcing your atheist/anti-theist classification, it brings me amusement to find that you don’t consider this line of thought worth pursuing. Clearly people who follow the tenants of a religion believe certain things to be wrong. If they believe it, and you don’t, does that mean it’s impossible for them to commit said wrongs, simply because you disagree?

3. You state this argument is weak, but nonetheless, it exists. I happen to agree with you, actually, on pretty much every bit in this category. No ‘harm’ is inflicted to any of those people, and thus, no direct wrong.

4. A case can be made for it being a minor wrong that tugs at the edges of the society as a whole, but I see it society as being a bit more reilient than that. Those of a more scientific bent find this no harm whatsoever, in fact, it’s actually a benefit to a society, from a Darwinist perspective, for a person to filter themselves out of the gene pool in this way. If done early, it prevents numerous offspring from doing so later, it frees up resources for everyone else, etc, etc. I find such a view to stretch practicality to the point of abhorrence, but it can be made as an argument either way.

5. What? I don’t see how this logically in any way fits into the rest of what you said. I can’t even see a logical reason for your example ‘argument’ to exist at all. Maybe it makes sense to you and others, but this is practically a non-issue from my perspective, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it untouched.

Cool. Now for your other example.

December 5th, 2008 at 7:19 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by mayim

Oh, man. There’s so much rubbish in here that I could spend all weekend responding to it.

Keep it coming, Tyrmadris, I need SOMETHING to do this weekend…

December 5th, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

I thought you were going to read that book and introspect this weekend mayim. Just sayin’.

I hope it didn’t go unnoticed that I posted an update to the actual topic of the thread - a news story. As soon as I did I saw Tyrmadris’ post that he was going to make a bunch of long posts LOL. But anyway, hopefully anyone following will catch it, because it’s interesting and, I think, enlightening. (Er, the link, not my brilliant commentary.)

December 5th, 2008 at 7:36 PM
Using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Comment by mayim

LC Ted sez:

God took a mad, lustful young man and made me into more than I could ever do myself. He has transformed me into something beautiful.

A person who would equate a sexual preference to an addiction is a beautiful thing?l

I say Jesus is LORD.

I ask you to do the same.

Why on earth would I do that? I’m not even convinced he existed.

December 5th, 2008 at 7:37 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by Tyrmadris

Awww, how cute Mayim. You’re already resorting to such childish insults. It’s good to see you’ve failed to categorize me correctly. Your response should be interesting.

BTW, when I said “I don’t expect much”, I guess I should have said “I don’t expect you to write something so huge that you have to waste 30 minutes wrestling with the stupid size filter trying to chop it down into bite size chunks and waiting the obligatory 5 minutes each time before sending the next one.” Ah well, being specific helps. But it will be interesting to see what you come up with. I especially look forward to how you try to weasel out of unwarranted anger and resentment to an innocent child (you know, how such a thing is NOT disgusting, at least according to you), as well as your obviously massive laundry-list of grievances with YHWH, so if you have to cut something out, please don’t let it be those parts.

A person who would equate a sexual preference to an addiction is a beautiful thing

Of course, we all know that you’re so knowledgeable as to already know everything he would consider to be ‘good’ about his change, yet still somehow you decide to pick out something that was not even listed as being a ‘beautiful’ trait and tried to equate it with one. Good job, there.

— — — —

Yes, I saw the update, McPhee, thank you.

December 5th, 2008 at 7:50 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista

Comment by mayim

Tyrmadris sez:

Of course, we all know that you’re so knowledgeable as to already know everything he would consider to be ‘good’ about his change, yet still somehow you decide to pick out something that was not even listed as being a ‘beautiful’ trait and tried to equate it with one. Good job, there.

He said that God made him into something beautiful. I pointed out a very good reason why he is, in fact, something horrible.

December 5th, 2008 at 7:58 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

All the males wanted to mate with the females… and, if they couldn’t get to one, any other dog in the way. Not a single damn one would search out specifically to find a male when a female was available. Interesting, that.

Did you read about those “gay” penguins - the two males that sort of live together in that zoo? What was happening was that they would (since male penguins care for the eggs) during nesting time lay rocks at the feet of the penguins with eggs and steal the eggs. They had to segregate the male couple from the population during hatching time to prevent egg theft. Even more interesting is that when they introduced an available female to the equation, one of the males promptly left the other and set up a nest with her. Apparently when a female was available, they did what was - dare I say it? yes - natural.

I can’t say what the “lesbian” bonobos chimps are about of course.

December 5th, 2008 at 8:35 PM
Using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Comment by LC AnnieMcPhee

Whoah hold up there. Where do you come up with forcing oneself to sleep with someone? That isn’t part of any Abrahamic religion in the least. I don’t know why that got shoved in there but it doesn’t belong.

As to no one willing themselves to be attracted to the same sex - BZZZZT! Wrong answer. Political lesbians purposely, deliberately, reject heterosexual relations even if that has been their natural bent all along, and pursue lesbian relationships in the face of the “patriarchy.” Also, it most definitely occurs that someone who has never really felt any same-sex attraction can be “seduced” - that is not the best word - (often by an older, more experienced person - I’m not talking about pedophilia though sometimes ephebophilia - and end up developing a taste for it. Not that they “become gay” but in my experience they seem to spend several years confused and/or bisexual in their attractions and activities though they seem to mostly settle for one or the other eventually. Some who were boys overcompensated by being real womanizers, others confused and riding the fence for some years, others just gay - but we don’t know what would have happened if the ephebophile hadn’t intervened in formative years. Before you start objecting, don’t. I’m talking about two separate groups of VERY CLOSE FRIENDS that I knew for many years intimately, as well as 4 of the people who have been closest to me in the whole world in my life - immediate relatives and others. They were mostly boys/men but there were girls/women too. So whatever your objection is to this type of thing happening, I’m telling you that this occurred and it was FAR from an isolated incident in my adolescence and adulthood - it was so common that I thought it was practically universal. It could just be that I got lucky that way. So I don’t buy this thing that it’s all just inborn, that it doesn’t get influenced in any way - you’re attracted to who you’re attracted to with no other factors involved in shaping that. I don’t buy it because I happen to know that it isn’t true. I’m sure it CAN be true; but don’t UNIVERSALIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE. It isn’t true for OTHER PEOPLE so don’t say “no one”. You didn’t choose it, or so you say. (I am not sure what you mean considering you’ve already told me you’re an MTF who is bisexual which I am not even entirely sure what that means because it’s such a tangle of things all together. But at any rate being bi means you’re attracted to both and you couldn’t help that, but you were in the wrong gender and you couldn’t help that, and everything is just some tidal wave that all happens to us with no choice involved, and I’m telling you not everyone is ruled by their emotions that way, blowing every which way in the wind. I don’t know where you started or how you got there, and it doesn’t matter; but it’s odd to hear you making such universal, sweeping declarations when I can barely sort out the logistics of what being bi and trans are in combination.) Others choose and others end up with attractions that were not native to them due to a wide variety of factors. That is the reality.

December 5th, 2008 at 9:06 PM
Using Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP

Comment by mayim

It’s one example. It hardly refutes the claim that homosexuality occurs in non-human animals. Incidentally, the sexual behaviour of non-human primates is (for obvious reasons) a lot more relevant; look especially at what bonobos do. Bonobos are pretty bloody closely related to us humans, being a variety of chimpanzee (our closest cousins).

December 5th, 2008 at 9:13 PM
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 on Mac OS X

Comment by LC madtom : Main Propulsion Assistant

Whoa, peanut. Who cares about non-human ‘animals’? We’re talkin’humans here. So what if some mnonkeys like sodomy? Some humans do too. And?
Geez. F*ck what you want. Even canataloupe if’n ya wanna. Why should I care. (or anybody else, for that matter?)

December 5th, 2008 at 9:23 PM
Using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows Vista