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[Deleted member 276317]

Thoughtful, it's not your message that gets played out, it's your method. Uncompromising, stubborn, and confrontational are fun traits for fictional characters like Gregory House, but not so much for real people.

Pretty much this. Even people who agree with your sentiments tend to downvote your posts and ask you to stop, because you've made it clear that your opposition to the kind of irrational magical thinking involved in religion leads you to an extreme irrational state of your own, where it is literally impossible to get you to make any concessions or acknowledge any faults in your thinking.

Show me. I'd like to see (preferably from this thread, if possible; if not you're free to dig as deep as needed) where I've entered an "irrational state" and "refused any concessions or acknowledge any faults in [my] thinking."

I continue to be amazed at the broad "pass" that's generally given to religious thinking around here. Look at any thread covering pseudo-science or magical claims and, aside from the nuts that somehow get summoned, the community (I definitely include myself) here shuts down those absurd claims with no less passion than you accuse me of when confronting absurd religious claims.

Nobody wants to be associated with the abrasively stupid nonsense you tend to start spewing...

Abrasive? Surely.

...once these discussions have gone on long enough, and everyone is tired of you taking threads miles off track at the mere mention of a religion.

I'm glad to hear that you speak for "everyone." And I'm sorry that it bothers you how much magical thinking (and religious belief specifically) bothers me.

Go watch Jesus Camp and tell me again about "abrasively stupid nonsense."

Justify the Roman Catholic Church's collusion in the Rwandan genocide while I make sure not to derail the thread on page 10 of the comments on a story that was published a week ago.

 

[rabish12]

Thoughtful, it's not your message that gets played out, it's your method. Uncompromising, stubborn, and confrontational are fun traits for fictional characters like Gregory House, but not so much for real people.

Pretty much this. Even people who agree with your sentiments tend to downvote your posts and ask you to stop, because you've made it clear that your opposition to the kind of irrational magical thinking involved in religion leads you to an extreme irrational state of your own, where it is literally impossible to get you to make any concessions or acknowledge any faults in your thinking.

Show me. I'd like to see (preferably from this thread, if possible; if not you're free to dig as deep as needed) where I've entered an "irrational state" and "refused any concessions or acknowledge any faults in [my] thinking."

I continue to be amazed at the broad "pass" that's generally given to religious thinking around here. Look at any thread covering pseudo-science or magical claims and, aside from the nuts that somehow get summoned, the community (I definitely include myself) here shuts down those absurd claims with no less passion than you accuse me of when confronting absurd religious claims.

Nobody wants to be associated with the abrasively stupid nonsense you tend to start spewing...

Abrasive? Surely.

...once these discussions have gone on long enough, and everyone is tired of you taking threads miles off track at the mere mention of a religion.

I'm glad to hear that you speak for "everyone." And I'm sorry that it bothers you how much magical thinking (and religious belief specifically) bothers me.

Go watch Jesus Camp and tell me again about "abrasively stupid nonsense."

Justify the Roman Catholic Church's collusion in the Rwandan genocide while I make sure not to derail the thread on page 10 of the comments on a story that was published a week ago.

You haven't done it (much) in this thread, because people have been refusing to engage with you. The last time that they actually bothered, we had an entire thread (up to and including Timmer, as I recall) trying to pound it into you that some of the things you were saying were nonsensical and absurd, telling you where you were pushing the boundaries of logic and rational thought, and after several pages of this your reply was... to declare that no, everyone else is just giving religion a pass and trying to be "polite", because you literally cannot conceive of the possibility that some aspect of your thinking here is wrong.

As for giving you examples? Fuck no. I've gone down that road and it is a waste of time - you'll refuse to accept them no matter what they are and no matter how many ways it's explained to you why they're fallacious or irrational. Even if I point you to specific examples where you are doing things that you regularly chastise people over when the subject is different, you'll declare without justification that it's totally okay here. This is what you do, it is frustrating beyond belief, and trying to reason with you on this subject is pointless.

That's probably not satisfying to you. You probably don't feel that it's fair for me to declare these things without giving you specific examples that you can use to feed your rants. Too bad. That's what you've earned, that's what you get. If you want to start this bullshit again then find someone else to do it, because I refuse to feed you here.

Don't expect another reply from me on this.

EDIT: One other thing: the fact that you don't think everyone is tired of your bullshit when every one of your posts on this is getting near-universal downvotes and every reply is telling you to shut the fuck up about it is a sign that you are delusional to the point that you don't even realize how much everybody else is sick of this crap. Take note of it.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

"Yes: you're the bad guy."

I definitely hear you.

You might not think so but so be it.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

It feels like being berated for being such a confrontational prick about the Ku Klux Klan...

I'm definitely struggling.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

I continue to be amazed at the broad "pass" that's generally given to religious thinking around here. Look at any thread covering pseudo-science or magical claims and, aside from the nuts that somehow get summoned, the community (I definitely include myself) here shuts down those absurd claims with no less passion than you accuse me of when confronting absurd religious claims.

Where such beliefs intersect with policy or science they DO get argued around here.

Where they don't, many of us don't give a shit. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, "Catholicism" may as well be the name of a football team.

Is it worth the time repeatedly pointing out that picking and defending a football team based on where you were born, or how they played ten years ago is really fucking stupid?

No.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

I continue to be amazed at the broad "pass" that's generally given to religious thinking around here. Look at any thread covering pseudo-science or magical claims and, aside from the nuts that somehow get summoned, the community (I definitely include myself) here shuts down those absurd claims with no less passion than you accuse me of when confronting absurd religious claims.

Where such beliefs intersect with policy or science they DO get argued around here.

Where they don't, many of us don't give a shit. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, "Catholicism" may as well be the name of a football team.

Is it worth the time repeatedly pointing out that picking and defending a football team based on where you were born, or how they played ten years ago is really fucking stupid?

No.

I generally agree (if I'm properly reading what you've written). Different Abrahamic Religions are all just different football teams. Except the damage done by sporting fans tends to be more limited and, as I've written elsewhere, there's something different about claiming to be a fanatic versus claiming to be GOD's fanatic

That's one of the reasons I get so frustrated to read when posters hop in to defend how science-y their particular religion is on the grounds that it doesn't directly deny some basic scientific understanding like the age of the universe or whether or not evolution has occurred.

It's a bullshit accommodation to reality. Jehovah's Witnesses only concede the age of the universe by insisting that "day" can mean any amount of time in Genesis. The Roman Catholic Church only teaches evolution as a reality insofar as Yahweh guided the process to create man in His image.

Yet those we're-so-science-y claims generally do not get challenged. They get up-voted!

Operative Me can straight-facedly state that while homeopathy does not appear to work when examined scientifically, nevertheless, for those that do have a healing experience, it's actually an intercessory miracle from Yahweh!

Sadly, "[w]here they don't [intersect with policy or science]," is practically non-existent in my experience.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

Sadly, "[w]here they don't [intersect with policy or science]," is practically non-existent in my experience.

You just gave two examples, though you called them "a bullshit accommodation to reality".

 

[Deleted member 276317]

Sadly, "[w]here they don't [intersect with policy or science]," is practically non-existent in my experience.

You just gave two examples, though you called them "a bullshit accommodation to reality".

"This is a tree" is not the same as "This is a tree because Yahweh."

That, among a thousand other reasons, is why it's bullshit. We have no need of that hypothesis yet billions(?) of people add it for no reason except that it sort of used to serve as a semi-functional explanation for things (and it made people feel good).

I suspect rabish12 might argue that I'm simply (irrationally) refusing to recognize a flaw in my thinking by trying to show a difference where none exists.

All of which is rather philosophical in the face of the historical and ongoing actions of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. But this Grand Dragon seems so nice!

 

[Baron von Robber]

I continue to be amazed at the broad "pass" that's generally given to religious thinking around here. Look at any thread covering pseudo-science or magical claims and, aside from the nuts that somehow get summoned, the community (I definitely include myself) here shuts down those absurd claims with no less passion than you accuse me of when confronting absurd religious claims.

Where such beliefs intersect with policy or science they DO get argued around here.

Where they don't, many of us don't give a shit. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, "Catholicism" may as well be the name of a football team.

Is it worth the time repeatedly pointing out that picking and defending a football team based on where you were born, or how they played ten years ago is really fucking stupid?

No.

Operative Me can straight-facedly state that while homeopathy does not appear to work when examined scientifically, nevertheless, for those that do have a healing experience, it's actually an intercessory miracle from Yahweh!

You've made a common mistake. It was the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It's ok, you are blessed by His Noodley Appendage just the same.

 

[rabish12]

Sadly, "[w]here they don't [intersect with policy or science]," is practically non-existent in my experience.

You just gave two examples, though you called them "a bullshit accommodation to reality".

"This is a tree" is not the same as "This is a tree because Yahweh."

That, among a thousand other reasons, is why it's bullshit. We have no need of that hypothesis yet billions(?) of people add it for no reason except that it sort of used to serve as a semi-functional explanation for things (and it made people feel good).

I suspect rabish12 might argue that I'm simply (irrationally) refusing to recognize a flaw in my thinking by trying to show a difference where none exists.

All of which is rather philosophical in the face of the historical and ongoing actions of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. But this Grand Dragon seems so nice!

I know I said I wasn't going to reply, but this subject makes you so utterly clueless and your sheer inability to understand something this plain and basic frustrates me so much that I'm going to reply once again, just this once.

No, I'm not talking about there being a difference where none exists. Of course there's a difference there. People who say "but God made it happen" are adding a completely unnecessary, infinitely complicated extra step for no reason are engaging in magical thinking, and magical thinking is something that I always have a problem with. The fact that they almost never stop at an invisible force that doesn't have a direct influence and typically adopt some arbitrary set of beliefs vaguely (but not actually) based on some ancient book written to keep shepherds in line makes that a serious problem. That is not my issue with you.

I don't think you're a "bad guy" because you're anti-religion. I'm anti-religion. See previous paragraph. I think it's a major issue, and I think it's worth challenging people on. That's not what you do. What you do is broad-brush to the point of utterly destroying any credibility that you have. What you do is demand explanations for non-sequiturs the Catholic church's collusion in Rwandan genocide when we're not even talking about a Catholic denomination. What you do is express such a pure and unfaltering ignorance about anything relating to modern religion beyond the most basic aspects of organized Catholicism that it is embarrassing.

All of that? That doesn't challenge religious people. That doesn't make them think "wow, maybe all those biblical predictions weren't predictions!" It doesn't make them question their faith. What it makes them do is assume that you don't really know what you're talking about, and they make that assumption because that is exactly the case. It also makes people like me less willing to take them to task when you're around, because I don't want the sheer embarrassment of being associated with the stupidity that comes out of your posts.

You want to convince someone that their most deeply-held beliefs are wrong? You need to understand what those beliefs are first. You need to criticize and target those beliefs, the ones that they actually have. You need to not engage in stupid bullshit like implying that they're responsible for the crusades because they think God made the universe so that it could grow some trees.

EDIT: It doesn't matter if you're right about the broader subject here, because you are so ignorant of even the most basic specifics that you end up flailing every single time and that flailing makes your posts an embarrassment.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

Here's Timmer's post that rabish12 referenced.

 

[Cat Killer]

Since I think it was me that first called you out in this thread, I'll chime in briefly. If you had said nothing at all, we'd have had maybe a post or two that mentioned religion. The JW guy posted because he felt that something he very important to him had been misrepresented. You and I would probably have done exactly the same in his position. Because of your interjection we had a page or two specifically discussing religion, plus however much off-topic noise you and I generated after my suggestion that you could use some self control in this instance. And now the next installment of the OpMe & Thoughtful show. This wasn't even a science thread!

 

[Deleted member 276317]

[SNIP]
What you do is express such a pure and unfaltering ignorance about anything relating to modern religion beyond the most basic aspects of organized Catholicism that it is embarrassing.

Bullshit.

All of that? That doesn't challenge religious people. That doesn't make them think "wow, maybe all those biblical predictions weren't predictions!" It doesn't make them question their faith. What it makes them do is assume that you don't really know what you're talking about, and they make that assumption because that is exactly the case.

Roman Catholicism gets extra attention from me because it has such a well-documented history and plainly available dogma AND because Operative Me looked around and decided that was the right organization for him (presumption of honesty on his part). Again, to me, that's like choosing to join the Ku Klux Klan. Others (maybe even you) have argued regarding those marching under a Nazi flag that, at minimum, they can be held accountable for choosing that association. Operative Me called my comments "bilous preaching" and he's right. It literally makes me feel like vomiting to know that he's marching under the particular banner he's chosen (CHOSEN!).

If he were LDS, this would be different only in the details of the silliness of the magical beliefs and the depths of institutional crime.

Why would anyone join an organization with the kind of history it has? Aren't GamerGaters rebuked for pretending they can actually turn the movement into something about Game Journalism Ethics?

It also makes people like me less willing to take them to task when you're around, because I don't want the sheer embarrassment of being associated with the stupidity that comes out of your posts.

What is that? Argumentum ad populum? It's actually kind of a tough point. See below about holding moderates responsible.

I suppose I can understand your sentiment. I'm not sure what to suggest. "I think Thoughtful's an ass about this topic but..." I don't suppose that's very satisfactory.

You want to convince someone that their most deeply-held beliefs are wrong? You need to understand what those beliefs are first. You need to criticize and target those beliefs, the ones that they actually have. You need to not engage in stupid bullshit like implying that they're responsible for the crusades because they think God made the universe so that it could grow some trees.

If religious believers are going to announce the particular cult to which they belong, is it not reasonable for me to take the statement of allegiance as a starting point? Why would I say "I'm a Catholic" if I didn't expect you to gain some kind of information about that.

And frankly, I gave Operative Me the opportunity to deny that he believes in magical healing. He hasn't. Nor has he denied giving money to the Roman Catholic Church despite it bothering the shit out of him when I ask about it. It's not unreasonable to hold him (or whomever volunteers to join an organization) responsible for that choice. Nor is it unreasonable to hold "moderate" believers responsible for maintaining the myths that give extremists the cover for their abominable acts (whether exploding one's self in a crowd or causing people to sicken and die from preventable disease).

 

[Andara]

Nobody wants to be associated with the abrasively stupid nonsense you tend to start spewing once these discussions have gone on long enough, and everyone is tired of you taking threads miles off track at the mere mention of a religion.

Fanatics are terrible regardless of their ideology.

I definitely hear you.

You hear, but you don't listen.

 

[Snarky Robot]

Of course you're "bored" with it. I'd be "bored" too if someone kept challenging my decision to voluntarily join a group with such golden oldies as 'The Inquisition' and 'Nazi Collusion' and that continues to pump out hits like, 'Abstinence in School Sex Education,' 'Condoms are Evil,' 'Homosexuality is a Sin,' and 'Authority is for Men.'

Oh, believe me, you schtick doesn't "challenge" anything about my faith. Your inability to grasp my personal beliefs has simply long since passed the point of even being remotely interesting. You're so wholly irrational on this subject that I simply have no interest in discussing it with you. At least not in a way that clutters up threads. As I said before, you're welcome to PM me with whatever you want. I've found you are far more cordial in that format, and it doesn't get in anyone else's way.

The really funny thing is to see how little respect you allow your fellow magic-believers. Is homeopathy legitimate? Are divining rods? Astrology? The list of ridiculous beliefs that you're perfectly happy to repudiate, for some reason, does not include the Yahweh myth.

And I've explained the specific delineation I use, multiple times. That you seem to require a refresher course every time you get into one of your moods is part of the reason I find this boring.

It's literally the greatest feat of compartmentalization I've ever seen. Congratulations, I guess.

At this point, I'd say my respect for you, which stems from your rationality on many topics, but merely survives your diatribes on religion, should be considered even more impressive compartmentalizing.

Put me on ignore or expect to continue to be "bored" by me when you decide to insert your magical worldview into the conversation, or when you decide to "joke" with me about my objections to superstitious, disproven, nonsense about magic healing.

Well, I didn't insert my religion, you did, and as I explained, my joke had nothing to do with your objections, but our long history of such discussions. By your own standards, I shouldn't expect a diatribe, but here we are, multiple pages later, because you couldn't take a freaking joke.

As I said a while ago, I apparently made the mistake of thinking you and I were on terms cordial enough to get past this same tired nonsense. I won't make the same mistake again, I assure you.

 

[ApplePaladin]

Spoiler

[SNIP]
What you do is express such a pure and unfaltering ignorance about anything relating to modern religion beyond the most basic aspects of organized Catholicism that it is embarrassing.

Bullshit.

All of that? That doesn't challenge religious people. That doesn't make them think "wow, maybe all those biblical predictions weren't predictions!" It doesn't make them question their faith. What it makes them do is assume that you don't really know what you're talking about, and they make that assumption because that is exactly the case.

Roman Catholicism gets extra attention from me because it has such a well-documented history and plainly available dogma AND because Operative Me looked around and decided that was the right organization for him (presumption of honesty on his part). Again, to me, that's like choosing to join the Ku Klux Klan. Others (maybe even you) have argued regarding those marching under a Nazi flag that, at minimum, they can be held accountable for choosing that association. Operative Me called my comments "bilous preaching" and he's right. It literally makes me feel like vomiting to know that he's marching under the particular banner he's chosen (CHOSEN!).

If he were LDS, this would be different only in the details of the silliness of the magical beliefs and the depths of institutional crime.

Why would anyone join an organization with the kind of history it has? Aren't GamerGaters rebuked for pretending they can actually turn the movement into something about Game Journalism Ethics?

It also makes people like me less willing to take them to task when you're around, because I don't want the sheer embarrassment of being associated with the stupidity that comes out of your posts.

What is that? Argumentum ad populum? It's actually kind of a tough point. See below about holding moderates responsible.

I suppose I can understand your sentiment. I'm not sure what to suggest. "I think Thoughtful's an ass about this topic but..." I don't suppose that's very satisfactory.

You want to convince someone that their most deeply-held beliefs are wrong? You need to understand what those beliefs are first. You need to criticize and target those beliefs, the ones that they actually have. You need to not engage in stupid bullshit like implying that they're responsible for the crusades because they think God made the universe so that it could grow some trees.

If religious believers are going to announce the particular cult to which they belong, is it not reasonable for me to take the statement of allegiance as a starting point? Why would I say "I'm a Catholic" if I didn't expect you to gain some kind of information about that.

And frankly, I gave Operative Me the opportunity to deny that he believes in magical healing. He hasn't. Nor has he denied giving money to the Roman Catholic Church despite it bothering the shit out of him when I ask about it. It's not unreasonable to hold him (or whomever volunteers to join an organization) responsible for that choice. Nor is it unreasonable to hold "moderate" believers responsible for maintaining the myths that give extremists the cover for their abominable acts (whether exploding one's self in a crowd or causing people to sicken and die from preventable disease).

Okay, remember that bit I mentioned before about message versus method?

Your message - "magical thinking is bad" - has pretty popular support among the Ars community. (Note: when I say Ars community I mean people like the lot of us who have either been lurking or posting for years, and taking part in discussions on various topics. I do not mean all the drive-by trolls.)

But your method needs work. You're uncompromising and belligerent, to the point that it makes it really hard to sympathize with you even when overall you're making a point that most of us almost certainly agree with. Do you realize that if Ken Ham were to start posting in the comment thread on one of the evolution-related articles on this site, most of us would be thinking something akin to "please don't let Thoughtful come in and make us all look like assholes, and thereby make Ham look sympathetic."

I've tried to talk to you before about being able to make compromises and cooperate with people where possible. I still maintain that's true. I understand there are things you don't like about the Catholic Church. I get it. We all get it. But for shit's sake, man, when it comes to defending science education in the classroom I can put those issues aside to create a coalition specifically for that purpose. That doesn't mean I won't take them to task for what I see as their untenable stances on contraception, abortion, and gay marriage. I absolutely will. After I secure their help in protecting science classes from creationism.

I assume that most of us in the Ars community live in one democratic nation or another. Things in democracies get done when groups who may very well be at odds with each other on some issues opportunistically work together to accomplish things. If we stubbornly castigate every single religious person for every single religious view that's going to put us at odds with people who could be helping us accomplish goals vis-à-vis science education, literacy, communication, funding, etc.

 

[graylshaped]

I think I can understand your choice to attempt, through humor, to marginalize my concern about a specific form of broadly implemented (in the U.S.) magical thinking about healing.

If that's what you think it was, then you didn't understand it in the slightest. It was an attempt at friendly ribbing. We know each other's positions, and while we disagree on this aspect, there is much we do agree on. I had presumed that you would be able to understand it for what it was -- an in-joke that was relevant, given our history. You took it as some attempt at...marginalizing? Because I joked that I saw your response coming? Yeesh.

You'd probably prefer a pony but I actually respect your mind too much for that.

Actually, all I really want is for you to lighten up, Francis. But since I do respect you, despite this outburst, I'll just refrain from making jokes about this. Sound fair?

You're the one that voluntarily joined an organization with a history more vile than the KKK's. If you want to joke about it, go right ahead.

Friendly Arsian tip: Focus on the interest, not the position. Operative Me is only your enemy when you're stupid.

I speak from experience.

 

[graylshaped]

[SNIP]
What you do is express such a pure and unfaltering ignorance about anything relating to modern religion beyond the most basic aspects of organized Catholicism that it is embarrassing.

Bullshit.

All of that? That doesn't challenge religious people. That doesn't make them think "wow, maybe all those biblical predictions weren't predictions!" It doesn't make them question their faith. What it makes them do is assume that you don't really know what you're talking about, and they make that assumption because that is exactly the case.

Roman Catholicism gets extra attention from me because it has such a well-documented history and plainly available dogma AND because Operative Me looked around and decided that was the right organization for him (presumption of honesty on his part). Again, to me, that's like choosing to join the Ku Klux Klan. Others (maybe even you) have argued regarding those marching under a Nazi flag that, at minimum, they can be held accountable for choosing that association. Operative Me called my comments "bilous preaching" and he's right. It literally makes me feel like vomiting to know that he's marching under the particular banner he's chosen (CHOSEN!).

If he were LDS, this would be different only in the details of the silliness of the magical beliefs and the depths of institutional crime.

Why would anyone join an organization with the kind of history it has? Aren't GamerGaters rebuked for pretending they can actually turn the movement into something about Game Journalism Ethics?

It also makes people like me less willing to take them to task when you're around, because I don't want the sheer embarrassment of being associated with the stupidity that comes out of your posts.

What is that? Argumentum ad populum? It's actually kind of a tough point. See below about holding moderates responsible.

I suppose I can understand your sentiment. I'm not sure what to suggest. "I think Thoughtful's an ass about this topic but..." I don't suppose that's very satisfactory.

You want to convince someone that their most deeply-held beliefs are wrong? You need to understand what those beliefs are first. You need to criticize and target those beliefs, the ones that they actually have. You need to not engage in stupid bullshit like implying that they're responsible for the crusades because they think God made the universe so that it could grow some trees.

If religious believers are going to announce the particular cult to which they belong, is it not reasonable for me to take the statement of allegiance as a starting point? Why would I say "I'm a Catholic" if I didn't expect you to gain some kind of information about that.

And frankly, I gave Operative Me the opportunity to deny that he believes in magical healing. He hasn't. Nor has he denied giving money to the Roman Catholic Church despite it bothering the shit out of him when I ask about it. It's not unreasonable to hold him (or whomever volunteers to join an organization) responsible for that choice. Nor is it unreasonable to hold "moderate" believers responsible for maintaining the myths that give extremists the cover for their abominable acts (whether exploding one's self in a crowd or causing people to sicken and die from preventable disease).

Historical mistakes should be noted. The US allowed slavery and still has racial tension as a result. The Dutch, the French, and English, the Spanish, the German,s Russians, Chinese, Cambodians, Ugandans, Venezuelans, Mexicans, North Koreans, South Africans, Saudis... aw, geez, at this point I'm feeling I'm going to leave someone out and get yelled at.

I'd suggest the mythical country of Canada is the only country to be free from dip-shittery, but legend holds the Quebecois would take issue at that assertion.

I give the Church under Francis more of a chance to right the ship than most nation-states under social-media sway right now, and even that is in doubt given the uprising among the archbishops.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

Sadly, "[w]here they don't [intersect with policy or science]," is practically non-existent in my experience.

You just gave two examples, though you called them "a bullshit accommodation to reality".

"This is a tree" is not the same as "This is a tree because Yahweh."

So what?

That, among a thousand other reasons, is why it's bullshit. We have no need of that hypothesis yet billions(?) of people add it for no reason except that it sort of used to serve as a semi-functional explanation for things (and it made people feel good).

People cheer on football teams because it makes them feel good.
They drink alcohol because it makes them feel good.

So long as they aren't trying to influence policy based on it, what do I care?

I may think it's delusional to think that grandma is in heaven, but I also think it's delusional to think that Nickelback is an awesome band... and I don't go around debating that in every thread.

All of which is rather philosophical in the face of the historical and ongoing actions of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. But this Grand Dragon seems so nice!

I am of the opinion that the historical actions are largely irrelevant, except where they represent the current goals (e.g. Neo-Nazi's).

The Republicans that freed the slaves are not the Republicans of today.

Feel free to complain about current actions, and theology when it's driving those actions... but in general... why bother?

 

[Goatous]

[SNIP]
What you do is express such a pure and unfaltering ignorance about anything relating to modern religion beyond the most basic aspects of organized Catholicism that it is embarrassing.

Bullshit.

All of that? That doesn't challenge religious people. That doesn't make them think "wow, maybe all those biblical predictions weren't predictions!" It doesn't make them question their faith. What it makes them do is assume that you don't really know what you're talking about, and they make that assumption because that is exactly the case.

Roman Catholicism gets extra attention from me because it has such a well-documented history and plainly available dogma AND because Operative Me looked around and decided that was the right organization for him (presumption of honesty on his part). Again, to me, that's like choosing to join the Ku Klux Klan. Others (maybe even you) have argued regarding those marching under a Nazi flag that, at minimum, they can be held accountable for choosing that association. Operative Me called my comments "bilous preaching" and he's right. It literally makes me feel like vomiting to know that he's marching under the particular banner he's chosen (CHOSEN!).

If he were LDS, this would be different only in the details of the silliness of the magical beliefs and the depths of institutional crime.

Why would anyone join an organization with the kind of history it has? Aren't GamerGaters rebuked for pretending they can actually turn the movement into something about Game Journalism Ethics?

It also makes people like me less willing to take them to task when you're around, because I don't want the sheer embarrassment of being associated with the stupidity that comes out of your posts.

What is that? Argumentum ad populum? It's actually kind of a tough point. See below about holding moderates responsible.

I suppose I can understand your sentiment. I'm not sure what to suggest. "I think Thoughtful's an ass about this topic but..." I don't suppose that's very satisfactory.

You want to convince someone that their most deeply-held beliefs are wrong? You need to understand what those beliefs are first. You need to criticize and target those beliefs, the ones that they actually have. You need to not engage in stupid bullshit like implying that they're responsible for the crusades because they think God made the universe so that it could grow some trees.

If religious believers are going to announce the particular cult to which they belong, is it not reasonable for me to take the statement of allegiance as a starting point? Why would I say "I'm a Catholic" if I didn't expect you to gain some kind of information about that.

And frankly, I gave Operative Me the opportunity to deny that he believes in magical healing. He hasn't. Nor has he denied giving money to the Roman Catholic Church despite it bothering the shit out of him when I ask about it. It's not unreasonable to hold him (or whomever volunteers to join an organization) responsible for that choice. Nor is it unreasonable to hold "moderate" believers responsible for maintaining the myths that give extremists the cover for their abominable acts (whether exploding one's self in a crowd or causing people to sicken and die from preventable disease).

You know how annoying it is to get caught by true believer that won't shut up about their faith? This is the same thing. I hate to bring up the tired trope, but it's true here: Atheism is your religion, and you are more frighteningly dedicated to it than many of the scary religious types.

I agree with you quite a bit. Religion has been the the flimsy excuse for greed and violence across history. It's still going on today. To use Christianity as an example as I know the most about it, that's not what religion is supposed to be about. The Biblical version of Christ preached turning the other cheek, to not judge, to make sure that nobody is left wanting. That's not what our Christian leaders practice, though. But the Bible also points out that there will be more false followers than dedicated ones. It can also inspire feats of kindness, of generosity.

This goes into your point about Nazis: the original idea behind Christianity was to support one another through love and kindness. It got perverted. The original idea behind Nazis was to take power and blame the Jewish race for all of society's problems. That belief system has stayed on track.

Religion can provide a sense of comfort to those who need to put their faith in something, even if it might not be real. Prayer is a form of meditation. Helping others can release endorphin. Self denial builds self discipline. Heck, just have a place to go on Sundays to sing can be therapeutic. There are actual personal benefits to following a religion. When followed correctly, and not used as a bludgeon, religion can benefit society as a whole.

I'm agnostic, for the record. Science obviously explains so much in the world and our universe, but I cannot dismiss the possibility that there wasn't some guiding force beyond random chance that I cannot perceive. It does sound fantastical, but "even technology would seem like magic" blah blah blah.