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Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I will repeat the warning I gave txpiper at the end of the last thread:
By the way, txpiper, this thread is not completely unmoderated, and we do have a prohibition against godbotting. If you can’t make an argument without relying on the pseudo-authority of that piece of shit book, the bible, you’ve got nothing intelligent to say and can just leave now.
Because I utterly despise you bible thumpers. Got it?
Txpiper has nothing more than his bible PZ. That’s why they’re so tiresome. Also since I seem to be comment number 2 again I’d like to reiterate my support for Emperor PZ Nero Myers
Yet another feature of the natural world
http://nautil.us/blog/the-problematic-newfangled-hack-that-is-the-human-leg?utm_source=feedly
that makes perfect sense and is completely consistent with arising through an unguided process based upon replication errors.
Which makes zero sense whatsoever in the context of a creator, and which the texpip’s poor, pathetic, useless creationism utterly cannot explain.
WHY OH MIGHTY MAKER, WHY????
E pur si evolves, texpip.
I, for one, welcome the notion of a Thunderdome iteration without txpiper’s religiously-based tediousness.
–
txpiper
Given PZ’s warning
Do you really believe that the Bible that you hold in your hands is an exact, faithful reproduction of that which was written 1950 years ago?
Really?
So it is okay if we are killing 49 people ourselves for every terrorist, because the terrorists might kill more than the number of people we are killing in our attempts to stop that terrorist from killing? Riiiiiight. So, if I were to be a cop, and I see a bad guy taking out his gun, and I mow down six civilians with a machine gun to take that evil diabolical fellow down, do I get promoted because they estimate that the bad guy was going to kill like 10 or 20 people? Or is that putting too much faith in estimation and putting too little concern in noting how I am behaving like a violent, reckless asshole with no regard for “collateral damage” to the human lives that I claim to be defending?
Yes, because this is totally the right subject to defer to expert opinions. The U.S. is capturing people abroad for the crime of having the U.S. suspect them of Things, torturing people because they fucking dare anyone to stop them, spying on people near and far. They’ve started wars for ill-conceived and outright fradulent reasons, and now they are attacking people on foreign soil with drones. And your response to those attacks is for us to just Have Faith. Because, obviously, the U.S. is one of the Good Guys. We just don’t know the super secret information that makes everything all right. So just let the U.S. tuck everyone in, read us a good bed time story, and go off to being a pure virtuous superhero, valiantly fighting all the evil-doers in the closet and under the bed.
But let’s go back a bit. You also said:
It is bad to kill innocents. Except when the Good Guys are doing it. “Martyrdom” is disgusting! Though I am sure you would never say regarding a coalition soldier who sacrificed themselves in battle. You seem to only hate violence that isn’t coming from someone you identify with. You seem to accept the kind of glorification of violence that you are used to and look down on (or express outright disgust with!) any different glorification of violence. And you won’t admit it. Because part of you doesn’t notice that you do it and the other part of you actively resists our attempts to bring your fucking attention to it. Because you love ignorance and hate the possibility of actually growing as a fucking human being.
That’s what it always is with you. You repeat this shit over and over and never learn. You never even adjust the script. Same biases, same preconceptions, same arguments, same idiocy, same bigotry. Over and fucking over. Learn, apologize, or shut the fuck up.
The fucking irony.
“Reluctantly”, adv.
1. Frequently, repetitively, provoked at the most unlikely opportunities.
Ex. “I reluctantly asked all of my friends for some cash several times a day for a few weeks.”
2. At length, with great detail and passion.
Ex. “He reluctantly told me about the superiority of libertarianism over the course of a few hours”
3. Angrily and fearfully, as a reflex.
Ex. “The gun-toting survivalist reluctantly shot the home invader on sight”
4. Based on a combination of paranoia and bullshit.
Ex. “I reluctantly nailed boards over my windows to stop the hordes of zombies from breaking into my house when The Inevitable finally happens.”
You are a child.
When it comes to drone strikes, I’m really glad they’re really just video games. Because I mean, what’s the best way to win a war? Win nobody thinks they’re fighting one.
Yeah. I learned my morality from Ender’s Game.
*wakes up at end of Bible Study Time*
Errors selected for since they were beneficial. Which is consistent with evidence that our brain works, but that it sure doesn’t work perfectly! How do you fundies explain that? Original sin? Because if there’s anything that proves that God is Good and Just, it is that he intentionally fucked up our brains and then demanded us to either behave perfectly or to magically happen upon the One True Religion with our flawed but functional cognition.
I mean, really, how is your scenario better? Or even more consistent with what we actually know? It isn’t, and it is clear that you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Just swiping around blindly in the dark, hoping that you hit something.
Does anyone ever bring up the problem that the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which relate the story of the virgin birth, also provide genealogies which show that Jesus was in the male line of descent from King David via his father Joseph?
There should be a word for morality that isn’t moral.
Potential nominee: Scottcard
Who is txpiper?
anteprepro:
With a unit of 1 Sc = “total annihilation of group you don’t agree with”.
I could get behind that.
txpiper:
No, it’d just require some knowledge of the old writings, and a modicum of dishonesty. Both of which are standard for preachers. (You’ve built a straw standard, there.)
National pride, groupies, money, tithes, religious power, respect, trolling.
Asking for motive is a standard technique of the religious, having to ask is a sign of stupidity … and religion.
No detail needed, your question isn’t that good. Most of your “conspirators” didn’t do much better than ignorant goat-herders would have—the shrewd is all your imagination, the dedication isn’t a problem for bored religious fanatics.
There would be no need for a coordinated conspiracy—the less people who realize you are altering the books, the better. All it’d take would be one guy who believed he was doing God’s work. There are many places where we can see that people copied and pasted.
No, I didn’t know that, nor do I care. Four and five are common numbers. The Bible was collected by people, with decisions as to waht to put in and leave out—they could easily read Exodus and decided on 4 and 5—they could also have diddled with Exodus.
When you say, ” … of Moses”, do you mean that he wrote the books that include his death and burial?
Why haven’t they? Is this just something only you can see?
…. I’m skipping some ….
No, Txpiper, it isn’t “believing”. If you believe that it is believing, that there is nothing in the world but faith, you might as well believe that winged monkeys live in your brain, because nothing is ever going to be real to you. Nor will you ever realize that some things are scientific facts, not matters of belief.
Again, replication errors aren’t all that is going on in evolution. Gene mixing is what sex is all about, and natural selection winnows out all the “errors”—the bad differences from the originals—and leaves the good differences—the random variations that benefit the gene pool. “Error” isn’t the term, at least not the way you believe it is meant.
What you believe that we believe is wrong, but the wrong is between your ears. We don’t believe, we accept evidence. You are hating a straw man that you set up—-it really isn’t what you think it is.
Again, if you believe your version of what you think that we “believe” is happening, you will never understand the world. You will keep imagining your conspiracies, and believing in your god, and you will keep babbling your hatred to the world. The reason that you believe that we are crazy and stupid is because you believe.
Protip, Tex: If you have to believe it, it probably isn’t true.
Anyone have an opinion on what happened to r/atheism?
nigelTheBold #12
So, yer, like, channeling StevoR, now?
—
cyprinidae#11
Excellent question.
txpiper:
Bwah?
You realize the gospels are essentially based on a common source, right? They’re like fan-fiction. There’s no conspiracy needed. Some folks wrote down their own fan-fiction. Later folks selected them out because they fit into a story-line. No conspiracy needed.
It’s like you’re claiming Star Wars is true because all the posts in alt.fan.movies.starwars corroborate the actual existence of Darth Vader.
chigau:
*gasp*
Them’s fighin’ words.
I was just trying to establish a standard unit of measure. I’m sure I’m not deserving of such abuse.
However, the “morality” of Ender’s Game is quite thoroughly repudiated in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind.
By the way, I hit _Submit Comment_ and got portcullised. Fortunately, I’ve taken to writing long comments in a text window, and copy/pasting. But on this one, I’d done some revising in the comment box (and spell-correcting (my text program doesn’t have spell-check, my browser does)), so the portcullis was a heart-thumper.
What I did was hit the back-arrow, and in Firefox, at least, it took me back to the page with my precious comment box and my scintillating text, where I again copy/pasted int another text file for safe-keeping. Then clicked around to find the new thread, and went at it from there.
Protip: If your comment gets portcullised, try the back arrow.
Amphiox, #18:
OSC redeemed Ender’s Game in the epilogue, where Ender realized what he’d done, and worked to fix it. I was pleasantly surprised with Speaker for the Dead, both as a stand-alone novel, and additional repudiation of the horror of morality of Ender’s Game.
While I don’t like OSC as a person, he did follow through with Ender’s Game in a moral way, in the epilogue, and the books that followed.
nigelTheBold
I apologise.
I didn’t realise you were talking gamerspeak.
(fighin’ words is gamerspeak, right?)
Another category error by the texpip. There is nothing stopping the ignorant from being shrewd or dedicated conspirators. Those are two entirely separate modes of thought, so no transition of any kind is really necessary.
In fact the texpip’s own bible is festooned with such ignorant but also shrewd characters, so we can see that in the making of the above statement, the texpip is once more exposing itself as a pathetic, lying, hypocrite.
chigau:
I hope so, since I used them.
I’m conserving ‘t’s right now. They’re in short supply.
I am reminded of the Republican spokesman who scoffed at the idea that gas prices were dropped to aid George W. Bush’s re-election. He said something like, “You all always say George Bush is an ignorant doofus, now you think he is masterminding a nation-wide conspiracy.”
Yeah, George had people for that kind of thing. He didn’t even have to think of starting the conspiracy, the oil people could have thought of it for themselves. If Bush’s folks had thought of it, they might not even have told him, and hell, yes, they could have arranged it, probably with just a few words over cigars and brandy.
As for Txpiper, the priesthood of any religion is pretty much a conspiracy, already.
cyprinidae:
A creationist clod who likes to infest half-dead threads and prattle on with arguments that we have already refuted and explained to him several times before. I believe that the pipster has been around for a few years now, actually. He followed us over from the Scienceblogs days.
nigel: Sounds good, but I was also hoping to work the whole homophobia thing into the scale as well.
Menyambal: It works for Chrome as well.
Amphiox:
Well doesn’t that just put a wrench in my Cheerios.
anteprepro:
I was trying to hide his homophobia into “people you don’t agree with.” Like, equating homosexuals with the buggers (GET IT? HE CALLED THEM BUGGERS!)
Of course in real life you can’t actually fix errs such as Genocide.
Everything that God had to say to mankind has been said.
It’s in the Bible. From Creation to End Times.
God has not said anything new since the book of Revelation.
@ txpiper [previous iteration]
In the case of Homer, the story lines themselves are very much older. Essentially he (or she) collated oral tales and made of them a very well co-ordinated and coherent narrative. The story had developed to a very high standard prior to being written out. This was, at one point, later to be embroidered upon by others, but in a highly sympathetic fashion.
The motive was to record these stories with the goal of having a canonical basis to extend a religious agenda. And perhaps also, in no small measure, an aesthetic impulse to create a work of godlike quality.
In the case of the babble, the priests of Exodus likely had a similar motive. And, 250 years after Homer, finally caught up with the newfangledtechmology, ie They wrote that shit down.
They might have been infeasibly ignorant, but hell, they sure could spin a yarn.
I highly doubt that. The certification system is run rigorously. Methinks rather that you are a highly credulous individual. (And I have a bridge to sell you.)
Philosophy, psychology … what’s the difference? My God, but you are wilfully obtuse.
txpiper, the point of my comments regarding the psychology of religion (and not only religion – many human endeavours are fraught with the same broken thinking), is that people are naturally inclined to subscribe to the coherency of a narrative rather than its truthfulness. Humans are more disposed to confabulation than to understanding the nature of reality. We are predisposed more to religious fantasy than to scientific fact. This is not philosophical speculation, but verifiable science.
Nor has anyone worked miracles, apparently.
I wrote a college paper for a religion class, on George Fox, founder of the Quakers (I think it was him I wrote on). I wrapped it up by saying that he was the last person to hear the voice of God. The professor asked me if I meant Jehovah, the Christian/Jewish god, I said yes, and he gave me an A+ for the paper.
That unchanging Bible is claimed to be a feature.
Not necessarily dishonest, as in the willful intent to deceive.
I’ve seen confabulation happen. Human brains do weird things, like get some idea from nowhere, or from a dream, or from hearing or seeing something at just the right moment, or from a hallucination. But the seeking justification for that idea in other places, well, that’s just the brain seeking consistency.
Of course, I’ve also seen those with the willfil intent to deceive using confabulation to support their claims.
Come to think of it, you have confabulated. You don’t know anything about biology, but are confident enough in your deep ignorance to pretend that there are “adaptive reactions” rather than mutation and selection, and that bacteria have “lost” resistance, rather than rare individuals having mutations whereby they become resistant, and so on. I have no idea why you are so confident in making such ludicrous assertions out of total ignorance of biology, but there it is: You confabulate; you bullshit; you make up nonsense because you’ve decided that evolution cannot possibly happen, so therefore magic must be happening.
Commitment, certainly. Each writer was no doubt deeply commited to their ideas. But they couldn’t even coordinate or collude enough to get Jesus’s family line straight, or his date of birth. Each writer used the picked verses that they liked, and ignored what they didn’t.
So?
What is the motive for all those who confabulate nonsense that you don’t believe? All the Muslims; all the Jews; all the Hindus; all the pagans; all the animists; all the Christians of sects that you reject?
I obviously don’t know it, and neither do you. You know that someone confabulated such a structure, and you liked it enough to believe it — without even checking to see if the confabulation matched what the text of Exodus says.
I checked, the last time you posted this nonsense in April of this year, and it doesn’t match. Your confabulator fucked up.
Or rather, endured. Since the writer was not Jesus, and was not writing about the future.
You mean, an incorrect translation of the word.
Nonsense.
No, it’s speaking about whoever the writer had in mind, and later readers confabulated to be Jesus.
Obviously not. Why would the writer speak of the “clans of Judah” in the future when they no longer exist? Why would he write of “Hadad Rimmon” in the future when it is now meaningless?
The writer was writing for his own time and place, and later readers confabulated that with Jesus.
It’s not like there have been a dearth of Jews who suffered and wrote about it.
This is just silly. Of course Jews were preoccupied with Jerusalem, and perceived it as being really important to the rest of the world.
Kinda like this:
http://i.imgur.com/D7VW0.jpg
Your God is between your ears because there’s no room in there for anything else — and because there’s no immediate penalty for believing that the God between your ears is real.
Of course it went right back the other way in the Ender’s Shadow series.
But at this point I don’t think anyone can really say, based on anything in the novels, what Card’s personal position on that issue actually is. He’s pretty much had some character iterate an opinion on it from every imaginable direction.
Notice the casual racism inherent in that comment.
Disgusting.
I can’t defend txpiper, and I don’t, because I hate bible-thumpers too, BUT following up PZ’s warning to txpiper with a bunch of commentary directed at txpiper is weak. Show some decorum. He hasn’t said anything. If you failed to take him on in the last forum before, go back to that forum! This forum is a time to let it go.
PZ’s warning wasn’t out of place; all the other comments directed at txpiper are. By allowing his earlier trolling to dominate the conversation now, the whole fucking not-too-brilliant lot of you have handed him a giant victory – and HE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO SHOW UP.
As trolls go, he is a goddamned good one, isn’t he?
Notice how the level of quality of evidence and internal consistency that the texpip will accept for his bible is exponentially lower than the level of quality of evidence supporting evolution and abiogenesis that he outright rejects when that evidence is presented to him?
Notice for example how he blithely states that cherry picking is fine for his bible, but at multiple times in the past he rejected evidence given to him that supported evolution by claiming it was cherry picked? (When actually it was not, incidentally)
Or how having four gospel writers vaguely agree on the foggiest outlines of details is supposedly rock solid support for the veracity of the claim, while 98% of all climate scientists agreeing, in fine detail, or 20 separate lines of evidence all converging exactly on the predictions from evolution theory, is somehow not enough?
Intellectual dishonesty all the way down.
Decorum?! THIS. IS. THUNDERDOME.
You clearly don’t know how Thunderdome works. This IS THE SAME FORUM. All threads of Thunderdome are continuous. The separation of threads is made solely for convenience. The last thread was closed the moment this one opened. The explicit purpose of the new thread is to allow continued discussion of the old thread.
No, it is NEVER appropriate, EVER, to let intellectual dishonesty on the level of the texpip’s go unchallenged.
timanthony:
To what do you imagine decorum refers, O kibitzing whiner?
You have no idea whereof you speak, do ya?
(You never played with a Weeble, I take it)
<snicker>
(So, you’ve been meta-trolled, then!)
Better than you, but then, that’s faint praise indeed.
Yes, they do. Usually, 1) the contradiction is glossed over, 2) ignored or 3) what’s the other one? “Oops!” [Maybe Rick Perry knows?]
@ John Morales
Oooooh… Shiny!
*SNATCH*
{skedaddles}
@ bluentx
4) The homunculus of Jesus was kept safe and warm in the scrotums (scrotii ?) of an unbroken line of scrotum-havers from King David through to Joseph. Like a divine relay race, the homunculus would be transferred from scrotum to scrotum via small incisions in the skin of the scrotums of both transferrer and transferee respectively.
(Though the babble has not commented in this regard, it patches up the narrative quite elegantly.)
…
How to lie.
Huh? My browser title bar says [Thunderdome].
PZ warned txpiper about using the bible as an authority.
txpiper is still free to comment here.
@ chigau (meh)
meh? MEH???
You are now proudly: chigau (666) !
Second declension, thus: scrota.
But Luke and Matthew give two completely different lineages of scrota . . . !!
Hey, maybe the two sets of descendants from David timeshared the homunculus of Jesus . . . !!!
That would explain so much . . . !!!!
If txpiper heard that from a bible thumper, he would not only believe in Dandelion, but that there was a whole herd of ponies, horses and even zebras in the stables, and had been for thousands of years.
If txpiper heard that from an evolutionary biologist, he would sneer and doubt the existence of ponies, stables, chemical companies, and dandelions.
Another fanwank has it that Matthew is giving Joseph’s pedigree, and Luke is giving Mary’s. This demonstrates not the slightest understanding of the severely patriarchal society of first-century Judea. Mary’s lineage would be of no interest to any of the synoptic gospel authors.
On that note, is there any reason why specifically Matthew is said to give Joseph’s ancestry and Luke Mary’s? Why not the other way around? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that explained.
@ Owlmirror
I dunno. That sounds a little bit far fetched.
How about this option:
5) Gabriel took a sperm sample from King David and had this cryogenically frozen for several centuries, and finally impregnating Mary through IVF and ovarian transplant. This ticks all the boxes, from YHWH’s promise to David, through his curse on Solomon and so on down to Mary’s virgin pregnancy. (Especially once it has been established that YHWH was the ovary donor!)
It all makes sense now.
But would sperm be viable after a thousand years on ice? Wouldn’t it be better if it came fresh and hot from David’s scrotum? Of course, that could only happen with time travel . . .
“Mary, if you see an angel, don’t close your eyes. Don’t look away, not even for a moment. And DON’T BLINK.”
Chigau, Amelia’s up again at Rattitude.
Caine
I’ll be right there.
“This demonstrates not the slightest understanding of the severely patriarchal society of first-century Judea. Mary’s lineage would be of no interest to any of the synoptic gospel authors.”
“There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.”
Which actually completely undermines the bogus exegesis of Luke’s genealogy of Jesus somehow being of Mary’s lineage: When the lineage of a woman is actually important enough, he specifies it explicitly along with that of her husband. Since the genealogy of Jesus that Luke wrote down does not refer to Mary at all, that genealogy has nothing to do with Mary.
The contradiction stands.
You lose again!
For the purpose of establishing that Jesus was the Davidic Messiah, Mary’s ancestry is entirely irrelevant. Unless you’re going to claim that Elizabeth was postulated as mother of the Messiah, this example simply doesn’t matter.
The idea of this verse clearly is to establish Zacharias and his wife as beyond reproach (and, possibly, place them as priestly; he’s a priest and she’s of the lineage of Aaron, the original priest), so as to place their son, John, beyond reproach (and, possibly, of a priestly type – as Aaron to Jesus’ Moses (I’m speculating)).
Note, incidentally, how this completely underminesthe idea that either genealogy could possibly be that of Mary. Both genealogies expressly say that they’re the ancenstry of Joseph, not Mary. A common apologetic is that, for some reason, people would mention the name of the husband, in place of the wife.
However, here we clearly see that this is not the case: If the gospels mention the ancestry of a woman, they explicitly say so. Since neither the Matthew or Luke genealogies mention Mary, we can conclude that neither is Mary’s. They both mention Joseph, ergo they’re in contradiction.
Thought I’d reiterate this here, the discussion seems a bit more lively here.
I am making some predictions.
Five Predictions for the next five yrs
(2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018.)
First: Obamacare will roll out and be generally accepted by the masses but will see several major changes in the first 2 or 3 yrs, most as a result of the Health Industry lobby.
Second: We will suffer thru at least one major economic crisis. (yeah I know that one is a pretty safe bet.)
Third:
3.1 there will be a major breakthru in computer tech
3.2 we will see a semi-major paradigm shift in how compters are used in our daily lives
(these two are so closely related I had to count them as “one”.)
Fourth: at least two more states will have legalized MJ and a dozen or more will be considering it.
Five: Streaming video, set top boxes, and entertainment/televison thru game consoles and the like will become a major competitor with cable and satellite service.
SO…. what do you all think? Lets see your Five for Five ideas.
Yawn, any babble quote, unsupported by third party evidence, is bullshit until the babble is proven inerrant. Gee, hasn’t txpiper failed to demonstrate his babble is inerrant, with the noachian flud, exodus, and other “historical facts” supported from the geological and archeological literature????
In Judaism, descent is reckoned through the female parent.
re #50;
Once more we see the kind of incomplete, vague, self-contradictory, sappy crap that the texpip accepts without question from his useless bible, while simultaneously dismissing evidence of far superior quality in support of anything contrary to his own preconceived prejudices.
Intellectual dishonesty all the way down.
But it certainly begs the question, given the Christian claim of Jesus’ ancestry, why should the genealogy of Joseph be relevant in any way at all? Why should it even be included in any of the gospels by any of the writers, at all?
Joseph quite literally has nothing to do with Jesus whatsoever. He wasn’t even married to Mary at the time when Jesus was, according to the Christian bible, conceived.
Yet more insipid sappiness that the texpip never questions about his useless worldview.
sandiseattle:
I think that 3 digit IQ of yours still isn’t worth much.
Oh Caine u soooo funny.
Clearly you’ve forgotten that nonsense was over lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng ago.
Reset
see especially the second clause, second sentence
Back at y’all tomorrow, my times up.
Sez who?
Look at the top of this thread, second sentence.
Being a Jew (or rather, one of the children of Israel) derives from the mother (in Rabbinical tradition — among Karaites, it’s the father).
The tribal lineage derives from the father.
So Jesus was a Jew because his mom was, but, if he were actually the son of Joseph, and Joseph’s lineage (regardless of which lineage it is) is not completely bogus (why should either lineage be real? Why would the son of David’s line be an unknown craftsman?), Jesus would indeed be of the tribe of Judah (as almost all Jews are anyway), and, putatively, of the line of David.
John the Baptist was in because his mom Elisabeth was, but since his father Zacharias was a priest, John was of the tribe of Levi (and of the line of Aaron — as all priests are)(yes, Zacharias married a relative).
thesandiseattle:
Your cluelessness is impressive.
(The reset rule is for other threads, and it says so explicitly in that to which you linked)
—
Of course, the rules refer to a mythical place called the Dungeon, which does not exist.
I thought Mary was of the tribe of Benjamin? I can’t remember the source right now, but the story goes that Mary was sealed to the temple at age three and her job title was temple virgin. I see nothing miraculous in a temple virgin getting pregnant and blaming it on a holy ghost considering her other option would have been being stoned to death.
*runs off to look at cute ratties*
I’m afraid not. You’re still the village idiot and you’re still a troll.
Thinking about the whole thing, it’s surprising Christianity maintained its Jewish heritage. You’d think that once it became a powerful religion in the Roman Empire it would have been heavily Romanised, with the characters being reworked as Romans, nstead of those troublesome non-Roman barbarians.
strikedelhmmm
The latter part sounds like it’s from the Infancy Gospel of James, but there’s nothing in there about her tribe being Benjamin.
I like chigau (666) better than chigau (meh).
****
I must say, I find txpipier’s mythology much more interesting on the small screen when it was an arc on Supernatural, or when Buffy came back to life, or when Jasmine sought to bring peace to the world by enslaving humanity (on Angel).
I think that systems of religion and supernatural elements are much more palatable, and even enjoyable when they are explored in the world of fiction.
I like chigau (666) better than chigau (meh).
****
I must say, I find txpiper’s mythology (and others) much more interesting on the small screen when it was explored on an arc in Supernatural, or when Buffy came back to life, or when Jasmine sought to bring peace to the world by enslaving humanity (on Angel).
I feel that systems of religion and supernatural elements are palatable, and even enjoyable when explored in the world of fiction rather than treated as if they are anything more than unevidenced, inaccurate, deceitful, and harmful attempts to understand reality.
re: 666
There can be only one.
danielhaven
The birth of The Zombie Thread, Noble Ancestor to our present Thunderdome.
Police investigate possibility that Satanic cult killed and mutilated pony on Dartmoor
Aha! I think I can explain the genealogy discrepancy. See, the early gospel writers were cribbing from older documents, some of which would have contained genealogies. Now, one of these genealogies happened to have a coffee stain on it, so it was titled as the “Genealogy of J***s”. The writer of that stained copy concluded it was for Jesus and put it in his version.
But he was wrong, it was actually the “Genealogy of James“. As in James, brother of Jesus, one of the 12 apostles, political rival of Paul and ally of Peter within the early church, and biological son of Joseph.
The other Gospel writer had an unsullied copy of the document, and he was on the “Paul” side of the political divide (the one that wanted to preach to the Gentiles, while the James faction was more conservative and wanted to keep the faith among Jews), so he didn’t care what James’ genealogy was, and so left it out.
”You realize the gospels are essentially based on a common source, right?”
They are? Are you referring to the Q Gospel? I always enjoy common ancestor stories. What do you know about this one?
===
”No, I didn’t know that, nor do I care. Four and five are common numbers. The Bible was collected by people, with decisions as to waht to put in and leave out—they could easily read Exodus and decided on 4 and 5—they could also have diddled with Exodus.”
The meanings of the materials involved are very profound. Bronze, silver, gold and acacia wood all stand for something.
===
”You don’t know anything about biology, but are confident enough in your deep ignorance to pretend that there are “adaptive reactions” rather than mutation and selection, and that bacteria have “lost” resistance, rather than rare individuals having mutations whereby they become resistant, and so on. I have no idea why you are so confident in making such ludicrous assertions out of total ignorance of biology…”
But this is why we have more than one discussion about troglobites. You think that species isolated in darkness all over the world predictably lose their pigment and sight because random mutations occur in specific genes, and that the resulting alterations are beneficial and selected for. More power to you and your fanatical, ideology-driven devotion to the Weismann barrier, but I think that is a dull belief. I don’t know why you don’t just write it off to phenotypic plasticity and call it a day. What would be the difference between adaptive reactions and plasticity anyway?
#37 John Morales: You’ve helped bolster my point by illustrating that a) you can’t tell a troll from an anti-troll, and b) you can’t resist replying to a troll, since that’s what you think I am.
Richard Dawkins said it without much subtlety: “The best possible outcome of arguing with an idiot is that you win an argument with an idiot.” Who the hell wants to go around winning arguments with idiots? That’s what I meant by “weak” in my first post. Let WikiPedia do the arguing for you and provide only a link to the counterpoint, if you really, really can’t stop yourself from replying. It keeps trolls out and makes the job of moderators easier. That would be PZ himself, I think, amongst others. Do him a favor and stop attracting trolls to the threads here. Everybody’s boat will float higher.
BTW, worth pointing out: if this forum is wide open for subject matter AND style, then how exactly could anyone here be a troll? Don’t answer that!
txpiper:
I know that literary and historic research indicates the gospels are based on two earlier sources, one of which is the Q gospel. This is apparent in even a casual reading of the King James version of the Bible, in which the later gospels (Matthew and Luke) share literary markers that indicate not a separate remembrance, but a literary cloning of a common source. Further, the standard progression of myth in the gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, John) indicate each subsequent gospel built on the tradition of the previous, with possible outside sources (The Q gospel).
Whether or not the Q gospel existed as a separate text is irrelevant. The mythical progression (in which the later gospels embellished on the earlier) is striking. They weren’t written concurrently. They were written sequentially, with the myth-building inherent in any cult. In the earlier works, the body of Jesus was moved, as you would expect if he were interred temporarily in a tomb and later moved to a criminal’s mass grave. In later, Jesus is resurrected, along with a ton of other zombies. The mythos grows in a time-dependent manner. And this isn’t surprising. I mean, fuck. Have you looked at the Cult of Elvis? Imagine that, interpreted 2000 years later.
Not that I accept the historicity of the crucifixion. I’m not convinced the history of the New Testament presents enough evidence that Jesus actually existed (that is, a character who performed the acts presented in the New Testament — there may have been an initial Elvis, but that Elvis doesn’t match up with the testaments of Elvis cultists).
So, yeah. The agreements of the gospels are no more than you’d expect from a sequence of fan-fictions based on earlier writings.
Do you have evidence otherwise?
While we’re still doing Bible lessons, I thought I’d mention the devil. He’s pretty much absent from the Jewish bible, but he’s all over the gospels, and not in any consistent way. It’s pretty hard to make sense of it.
I had occasion recently to review the Lord’s Prayer, and was struck by the line “Lead us not into temptation.” Normally Christians are instructed that the devil is to be feared as the tempter, but Jesus is saying that God is the problem.
The gospels are clearly an assortment of folktales collected without much concern for consistency. The devil as popularly conceived probably has more to do with Greek and Persian folklore than the Old Testament. What puzzles and amuses me is that the devil is a beloved character. Fighter squadrons and high school teams are often named devils or demons. This may not be a bad thing.
On Thunderdome, we feed trolls until they explode, and we consider the “don’t feed the trolls because that’s what they want” thing to be irrelevant pap.
If you do not like it, you do not have to stay here.
“In the earlier works, the body of Jesus was moved, as you would expect if he were interred temporarily in a tomb and later moved to a criminal’s mass grave.”
What earlier works?
No, we do not think. We know. See, that part about random mutations occurring in specific genes? That part is FACT. We’ve actually identified both the genes and the mutations, and we’ve even determined when some of them occurred.
And the part about the resulting alterations being beneficial and selected for? That too is FACT. We have, in some of the cases, demonstrated the genetic signature that shows they were selected for. And in some other cases we have DIRECTLY OBSERVED that the changes were beneficial, and in some cases, CALCULATED THE MAGNITUDE OF THE BENEFIT.
You trying to deny that these things are FACT, texpip, is equivalent to me trying to deny that your useless bible is a book.
E pur si evolves, texpip.
That you think it dull, texpip, is irrelevant, as it happens to be true.
Sometimes reality is boring. And sometimes some people have intellects so stunted that they find wondrous things to be dull.
Too bad. Live with it, texpip.
E pur si evolves.
“Sometimes reality is boring. And sometimes some people have intellects so stunted that they find wondrous things to be dull.
Too bad. Live with it, texpip.”
I can live with it. You live here, where you are safe.
The loss of eyes in some blind cavefish is adaptive and beneficial, and the result of CONSTRUCTIVE (you know, the kind the texpip thinks cannot occur), not destructive mutational changes:
http://www.life.umd.edu/labs/jeffery/Publications/PDF/Jeffery%20-%20J.Hered.2005.pdf
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/pz_myers_on_how_the_cavefish_lost_its_eyes/
Why these cavefish still have useless eye sockets, and can still grow fully functional eyes if the expression of a single gene is experimentally changed, is yet another fact of real world biology that the texpip’s poor, useless creationism, utterly fails to explain.
In fact, the texpip’s poor, useless bible is so dull on this subject that it didn’t even know that cavefish of this kind even existed. Duller than the bricks that Hebrews, who were never slaves in Egypt, did not ever bake for any Pharaoh, who did not, ever, build any cities with them.
Still no evidence for txpipers imaginary deity, and there never will be. He is too stubborn to admit it doesn’t exist. Likewise, no evidence his babble is anything other than a book of mythology/fiction. His opinion is irrelevant if not backed with good solid, scientific evidence. Which it never is, and can’t be. Why he thinks we want to be as delusional and stupid as he shows himself to be is the question of the century. Rational folks know better.
A man can do many things that he, however, shouldn’t.
E pur si evolves, texpip.
Remember, it was GOD who deliberately “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart, or else Pharaoh would have let the Israelites go after the first plague, or perhaps even before. (Remember that the ONLY reason Pharaoh’s father enslaved the Israelites in the first place was because he was afraid their numbers had grown too large and they would be a threat to his regime if they ever sided with a foreign rival of Egypt’s in some future conflict. What easier and cheaper way of solving that problem than to simply let them all leave and go far, far away, when they ask you to?)
I guess God really, really, really wanted an excuse to slaughter all the Egyptian first-born. Can’t let an honorable, negotiated peace settlement get in the way of a smashing good narrative for his book, you see.
txpiper:
See here for more info. But I remembered incorrectly — it was actually a later gospel, John, in which the women claim that Jesus was moved.
But you have not answered the question I asked — what evidence do you have that the gospels were not written sequentially, based on earlier works? What evidence do you have that they’re not just an early form of fan-fiction? That’s the real question.
Fixed.
Bronze stands for a strong, less expensive alloy useful for structure, stability, and support.
Silver and gold stand for weaker and more expensive metals that are used for decoration.
Acacia wood stands for wood from a tree that grows all over Africa and the Middle East.
And you think that . . . what, that organisms magically genetically engineer themselves?
Because you have non-fanatical, non-ideology-driven evidence that organisms magically genetically engineer themselves?
Or because because you have a fanatical, ideology-driven devotion to believing in magical organisms that magically genetically engineer themselves using magic?
timanthony:
You dont like the style here, or how people respond to each other, the door is ——>
Surely you know “don’t feed the trolls” does not work and is not only NOT followed at Pharyngula, but rather, the opposite is…? Feed them til they burst. Here is where we can argue with idiots for the fun of it (some people DO like to argue for the sake of it and here you can because it is not offtopic), or as a way to practice (hey, I can argue with txpiper, so maybe I can do it in real life with other moronic bible thumpers who think magic is real), or maybe people dont like being ‘churched’ here and hope txpiper will wake up and smell reality for the first time, or as lessons to lurkers. You do not get to set the tone here. Perhaps you mistake the Dome for the Lounge.
And yes, I am being condescending, because you are being an ass.
Amphiox:
Except it isn’t a smashing good narrative. The mish mash which makes up the bible is terrible writing. The narrative is dull and repetitive. What stands out the most in reading the OT is the consistent sadistic, cruel and utterly pointless behaviour by El Shaddai / Yahweh / Jehovah / Whatthefuckever. Every so many chapters, he’s decided his chosen people are all kinds of awful and does terrible things to them, the rest of the time, he’s getting them to do horrible things to other peoples. Once the shock fades, it’s like getting hit repeatedly over the head with a severed limb. It’s incredibly ugly, immoral, and vile, all wrapped up in an incredibly bad and inconsistent narrative.
@ Owlmirror
From Pfffffftft:
[all emphasis mine]
What if there were two homuncula?
Surely time travel is far harder to pull off than cryogenic freezing…? Consider Occam’s Liquid Nitrogen Razor!
@ Amphiox
Unless Joseph adopted Jesus as his own son.
…
6) David was a priest-king. The line of descent would refer then to that priesthood. Likely passed on down within the family (like the Kohen/Cohens) in hereditary fashion. Adoption would be a straightforward way to ensure (male) continuity. Joseph, as a (at least spiritual) descendant of David, by adopting Jesus, completes the prophesy and provides the direct link (Priest-) King David.
(We shall see another priest-king in our time with Prince Charles. He is to be male regent AND divinely inspired head of the church of England.)
Not to us, of course, but too God it was. This is a deity with the mentality of a prepubescent bully, after all.
Caine, you’re reading it wrong. Considering the Bible to be the story of God gets everything backwards. The human characters are contending with an arbitrary and difficult god in exactly the same way they’re struggling with their human antagonists. There’s no more sense to be extracted from it than the average action movie.
Agreed. I’ve never been able to parse why some think there are ‘beautiful’ passages in the bible. A few acceptable phrases here and there* DO NOT make for all the awful garbage which is the vast majority of the content.
*Even Pete Seeger and The Byrds can’t save it!
Remember that the human protagonists of the bible are mostly the Israelites.
And the word “Israel” means “He who contends with God”.
..make up for…
@ Caine
While I can agree on some of the issues you raise ( terrible writing, dull and repetitive), there are some wonderful narrative elements. The Serpent¹ in Genesis is uber-cool. The story of the great flood² is simply wonderful story. Hero Jesus³ continues this wonderful genre. The story-lines are great⁴…
…
¹ Even if predated by the Egyptian Apep, sworn enemy of the sun-god Ra, Bringer of Light. Ra’s cat killed the serpent. Sadly the babble skipped over this part. Such delightful tales of animal heroics are perennial favourites.
² Ok, a cheap knockoff of a better story: The Epic of Gilgamesh.
³ Not very well, he is rather milquetoast, even if he falls quite easily under the standard hero trope.
⁴ Well, at least in the original stories. The whole fairly-tale pastiche idea was not a bad concept, IMO. It is really a pity the babble made such a terrible hash of it all.
God could complain that the entire book was written to make Him look bad. Blaming Him for making Abraham think he needed to sacrifice Isaac was particularly egregious, but the rest of their claims about His involvement are preposterous as well. Humans behaving badly is the historical norm, no need to invoke divine interference. He had nothing to do with any of that shit.
In particular, He would say He isn’t like this. But then, He would, wouldn’t He?
@ bad Jim
XDDDDDD
txpiper:
Hey. Hopefully you’ll be able to answer some day — what evidence do you have that the gospels aren’t some kind of fan-fiction?
I’ve got Elvis on my side. Who’s on yours?
@ nigelTheBold
My take on it:
The Jewish priestly class was just doing what all the other exploitative priestly classes about them were doing.ie: Adapting to the newfangled techmology of writing down their oral religious traditions/fairytales. Obviously the evolutionary process of fairytale creation – that had been enhanced by the fact it was oral and therefore highly amorphous – was essentially
frozen in liquid nitrogenset in stone from that time onward. This, of course, suited the priestly classes all the better. They would get to have the final word.Teh Truth ™ foreBer and eBer!
@timanthony
Of course, that assumes we’re engaging idiots to “win arguments”.
Also, anybody who handwaves the discrepancies in the two genealogies by saying ‘one is Mary, one is Joseph’?
Nope. Actually write them out side by side and compare. There are people missing from one side or the other. There are name differences. They only diverge after a certain point, and then you can kind of cross your eyes at that point and see similarities.
Plus, Matthew kind of skips a bunch of generations from the records we have in the OT. Just to keep you on your toes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus#Matthew.E2.80.99s_genealogy
Just reading Wiki’s article and going over the different Christian apologetics is exhausting. And no two sets of apologetics agree; starting in the Third Century, they couldn’t figure out how to make this make sense.
howard:
In-breeding. Mystery solved.
/me dramatically wipes hands and moves on
That is, in fact, the canon explanation that folks are using when they say one is maternal; they separate only for a few generations, right at the end. Of course, one shared great-great-grandfather isn’t terribly bad, as far as incest goes.
But remember how we just found out that Elizabeth was from the line of Aaron?
If Elizabeth is from the line of Aaron
And Mary is the near kinswoman of Aaron
Well, we’re well and truly down the rabbit hole now.
Ah well I tried. It was a good idea but it fell flat. Maybe another time.
@ Caine
ya’no if ya don’t wanna be part of the conversation, that’s cool. I’m sure you’ve heard “ignorance is bliss.” well ignore my comments and you’ll be happier. God knows I’ll go ahead and ignore your negitivity and be happier. (I’ll stick to appreciating your photography.) TTFN
RE: the main convo here (kinna)
Just started reading Jesus, Interupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them) By Ehrman, Bart D.
only to page 30 or some, but interesting so far.
been reading alot of philosophy lately.
Won’t somebody, please, make a killfile that works with safari?
Fuck you.
I had an amusing dream about Jesus. I was watching a documentary about some sort of art or political thing in Spain. The voiceover explained that they had decided to do some sort of promotion/art happening with Jesus at a party. They showed a long carnival float thing, covered with green grass/astroturf, with Jesus and the apostles and Mary Magdalene all dressed in contemporary white clothing. “Jesus” looked very modern, with a short haircut. All-in-all, it was pretty staid; maybe even dull. But the voiceover said that even though most Spaniards didn’t care much about religion, they still got complaints about Jesus being portrayed as a party-goer.
So for their next piece, they decided to have Jesus at this party unwillingly; the party would be something he was being tempted with. There was a line that was something like “Jesus would not go to an orgy, so he would be brought to the orgy”. For their next piece/happening, they dressed a very dour Jesus in severe, black, monk’s robes, on a dark stage, being physically carried off by two strong men dressed all in white (for a strong contrast).
And that’s all I remember.
Anyway, I thought it was funny.
=====================
That is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!
(homunculi, actually — us→i ; um→a ; is→ es)
Once you have two Jesi in play, you can have all sorts of interesting scenarios that result. Including having one be born ten years after the other.
1) Easier is not always better
2) Cryogenic freezing is a type of time travel.
3) The principle of facetimony says that speculation should be as silly as possible, but no sillier.
Given that being a priest was hereditary, not really.
I don’t think adoption confers tribal identity. Although . . . I’m not really sure.
Adoptionism, incidentally, is one of the various heresies that was quashed once the Church got up and running in Rome: The thesis that Jesus was God’s adopted son, rather than a begotten son.
It was as good as any other interpretation, if you go by only the gospels of Mark and/or John. I suspect that the virgin birth narratives were created to specifically counter Adoptionism.
All this mention of Elvis cultists just reminds me of The Kings in Fallout: New Vegas. They basically walked into an Elvis Impersonator store in the post apocalypse, watched the videos, and assumed this person was a God, and try to imitate him to the best of their ability. They’re fuckin’ hilarious.
Golly.
Two (2) threads about evo-psych.
Isn’t that … special.
nigel,
“what evidence do you have that the gospels were not written sequentially, based on earlier works?”
The burden of proof that this happened should belong to you. Do you know anything about any earlier works? Also, I don’t really understand what you mean by sequentially.
Nigel has provided evidence Txpiper. Post 75 talks about the source theory explaining the roots of the various gospels that were canonized. Post 86 includes a link to an essay talking about the stories of the empty tomb. Said essay talks about the history and legacy of Jesus’ grave including stories about it before and after the gospels were penned.
Nigel has presented evidence, GOOD evidence. Can you do the same? Can you find GOOD evidence that disproves or contradicts what nigel has put forth? I’m not holding my breath. The fact that you don’t understand what “Sequentially” means when it is explained across the link at post 86 suggests you didn’t bother to examine that link which also reinforces you are not arguing in good faith. As though we needed more evidence of that. Frankly if you were banned txpiper the only loss would be a lack of a pithy headstone in the dungeon.
Oooh! I got to a Dedmore fish!
I’m gonna leave it like that since it’s about as much effort to get to the fish as it is to turn the fish into the borg.
/theressahundredandfourdaysofsummervacations….
Geez! Enough of this booklernin, readin stuff! I want me some miracles.
I don’t mean what passes for miracles these days – spontaneous remissions just don’t cut the mustard – I mean miracles like the old-timely ones. Talking snakes, parting oceans – heck, the Pope levitating around Notre Dame would be a good start…
All this fussin over a single book to support the case of an invisible super being just seems a bit… lame.
My favorite faction in the whole thing. Wish there was an ending where they get to rule Vegas and spread their cult.
Sorry fuckwit, due to your lies and bullshit, THE BURDEN OF EVIDENCE IS ALWAYS UPON YOU. AND YOU FAIL EVERY TIME….
“Nigel has provided evidence Txpiper. Post 75 talks about the source theory explaining the roots of the various gospels that were canonized.”
I’m not quarreling with him on the idea of multiple written accounts from eyewitnesses (at least prior to Luke). That is a given. It is a single supposed Q gospel I don’t see the need for.
Who gives a shit what a liar and bullshitter like you thinks? Reality is not the friend of delusional fools, who believe in imaginary deities and mythical/fictional holy books.
txpiper:
The gospels themselves provide the proof. They contradict each other. Later gospels build on the myths of the earlier gospels. A basic literary deconstruction of the gospels pretty much demonstrates myth-building in action.
Also, anything that makes extraordinary claims (like the gospels do, and therefore anyone who claims the gospels are literally true) requires extraordinary evidence.
The gospel of Mark appears to be the earliest version of the gospel. Most evidence points to Matthew and Luke as derivatives of Mark. Mark has very little in the way of the supernatural. The earliest versions of Mark don’t include 16:9-20 — those versions end with the empty tomb, and with a young man telling them Jesus had “risen.”
So, yes. There are earlier versions of the very books included in the Bible — versions of the books included in the Bible. Right now, the earliest versions we have are from a couple of hundred years after the time Jesus supposedly lived. (I’ve not seen any confirmation of the Wallace fragments.)
And in any event, any student of history knows that a single document doesn’t present compelling evidence, especially in something as potentially fictional as the gospels (as opposed to ledgers, for instance). The history presented in the gospels doesn’t often line up with known facts (such as the obviously-fictional requirement of the census that results in Joseph to return to Bethlehem, as a simple example). The details of the document need to line up with other known facts.
Consider this: Beowulf was written 1000-1300 years ago. It’s much more recent than the events of the Bible. But would we consider it to be fact, just because it appeared in a book?
There are written accounts of Elvis sightings from just a few years after his death (much less than the 30 years that most likely separated the supposed death of Jesus and the writing of Mark). Do I believe that Elvis was still alive many years after his well-documented death?
There are people who swear they have had encounters with aliens. Am I to believe UFOs exist, merely because there are books that document their stories?
You see the problem here. The evidence indicates that Matthew and Luke were based on Mark. John was written as much as 30-40 years after Mark, and as much as 70 years after the purported crucifixion, and so was derived from then-well-known sources — Mark, Matthew, Luke, and potentially Q.
Considering there is little-to-no corroborating evidence to support the events of the gospels, I ask again — what evidence do you have that the gospels accurately report even a single historically-documented event?
txpiper:
Actually, it’s not a given that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. In fact, it’s pretty much assumed the actual authors were not eyewitnesses.
Ah! Actually, I lean to the two-source hypothesis. it appears Mark is the original source of the gospel narrative of Jesus’ life. Q appears to be a document of quotes and sayings of Jesus that are the source of many of the quotes of Jesus that appear in Matthew and Luke. From a strictly literary deconstruction, this makes the most sense.
The gospel of Mark is independent of the Q source. Both of these together provide the source material for the following gospels (Matthew and Luke, which provide the basis for John; John is, of course, so bizarrely different from the others that only the bare skeleton of the story remains).
Reminds me of one of the best weird movies ever, Six String Samurai. Set in an alternate past where Russians attacked the US with nuclear weapons, and King Elvis rules from Lost Vegas to California, a young upstart samurai guitar-picker seeks to succeed the throne after The King’s death. Music by The Red Elvises.
Well if a bunch of people dedicate time to learning to look like someone, talk like them, move like them, and dress like them; if that isn’t worship it’s clearly the next best thing right?
It’s one of the newer bullshit fantasies of the Christians that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, but of course they obviously weren’t. If they were they would be full of, you know, eyewitness testimony: “I saw Jesus do this” “I heard Jesus say this”, of which there is none. There are also gospel stories (the annunciation, the temptation in the desert etc. etc.) for which no eyewitness could have been present.
Only one man can kill this many Russians. BRING HIS GUITAR TO ME. Starring Buddy Holly, and with Slash as the main antagonist. Yes, it’s fantastic.
I’m not sure about newer, but yeah.
@ Owlmirror
Jeez, I wish I had such sophisticated Jeebus-dreams.
That is interesting. I understand the whole Roman approach to adoption, which is why I raised it as an idea. But yea, it also makes sense that the xtians rejected these outright. Their notions of cause-and-effect would probably require that real sperm (or homuncula) was involved. The Abrahamic religions are really into that shit.
The whole (unbroken) chain of authority is called “isnad” in islamic tradition. There was a whole industry based just around manufacturing isnads. The historian Charles Allen describes how these manufactured isnads could be used to scam land off of religious and credulous peasants in the north west of India. Perhaps the creators Jeebus lineage had a scam of some similar sort going. We keep expecting religious motivations, but they could as easily have been petty criminals.
(In Hong Kong, many of the big, “highly respected” corporations had their start in the opium trade.)
theophontes
A few Canadian businesses started (or prospered) as rum-runners during the USoA Prohibition.
And they couldn’t be. Some events in the Gospel preclude any eyewitnesses et al. Who witnessed the discussion between Judas and the chief priests, or between Pilate and Jesus in Matthew 27 (the latter repeated in all four gospels)? Could it have been the same eyewitness that was there when fetal Jesus stirred in his mother’s womb (Luke 1)? Why were the authors of the Gospels (at least the authors of Luke and Matthew) so interested in Mary before Jesus was even born, or even knew himself that he was to usher in the KoG?
I’m always blown away when people insist that the authors of the Gospels witnessed any of this at all.
“IF I WERE YOU, I’D RUN!”
“If you were me, you’d be good-looking.
Pedantic Esteleth is pedantic:
NO. WRONG.
“Jesus” is a Greek derivation (Ιησούς) of the Hebrew Yeshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ). Ergo, to pluralize it, one must use the Greek grammar rules, not the Latin.
“Ιησούς” should be pluralized as “Ιησούδες.”
That is, “Jesudes.” Not “Jesi.”
Unless, of course, you’re going to pluralize it following the Hebrew pattern and then re-Hellenize (and then re-Anglicize) it, of course.
I always liked the bit where an angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to accept his fiancee’s story about being pregnant by God, and to not cast her off, and just be the dad in the situation in general.
In the first place, it was a dream. Why’d he decide it was an angel? Who’d he tell it to? Why’d they write it down?
So we have a non-earwitness recounting of a dream a some guy had. Not said that he told somebody that he had, just that he had a dream.
Ex Urbe:
“The Borgias” vs. “Borgia: Faith and Fear” (accuracy in historical fiction)
Fascinating (and funny, if somewhat shocking) read.
cm, huh. It makes for funny but depressing reading, for me.
(The writer is too tolerant)
”Actually, it’s not a given that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. In fact, it’s pretty much assumed the actual authors were not eyewitnesses.”
Yes, as you say, it is pretty much assumed.
”Q appears to be a document of quotes and sayings of Jesus that are the source of many of the quotes of Jesus that appear in Matthew and Luke.”
In my view, Q can’t appear to be anything since there is no extant Q to refer to.
”The gospel of Mark is independent of the Q source. Both of these together provide the source material for the following gospels (Matthew and Luke…”
There were more than two sources for Luke. As he noted in the first three verses of his account:
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us,
2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,
3 it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus;
4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.
Luke is acknowledged, usually even by the most goggle-eyed liberals, as a careful and meticulous writer. The best argument against the supposed errors in his work is that he would have been publishing information that would have been immediately recognized as wrong by his contemporaries, like Mary’s lineage when he had access to Matthew.
”which provide the basis for John; John is, of course, so bizarrely different from the others that only the bare skeleton of the story remains).”
The bare skeleton of what story? John just dealt with or emphasized different events.
====
”Who witnessed the discussion between Judas and the chief priests”
Probably Nicodemus, because he was one of the Pharisees.
”or between Pilate and Jesus in Matthew 27
Probably John, who had some kind of special status.
txpiper:
[…] “this is all hearsay, sucker!”
(Also, the term Theophilus is not a name, it’s a synonymic for “goddist”)
—
Yup; I sure do.
Actually, it’s highly likely that Luke plagiarized from Josephus.
August 6 is the 1st anniversary of The [Thunderdome].
What say we wrap-up this whole txpiper thing?
Just to celebrate.
Not assumed; demonstrated by a pile of evidence high enough to give you a crick in the neck.
Fine, if you want to be pedantic to the point of idiocy. However, there are strong indications that Matthew and Luke got their shared, non-Mark, content from some common source. Q is simply a handy way of referring to that.
You don’t have to accept the Q hypothesis, but you do have to address the evidence. Simply going “nuh-uh” isn’t going to cut it.
Sure. Just don’t confuse “careful and meticulous” with “accurate”. They’re different words, you know.
You should watch this talk by Richard Carrier, where he, among other things, talks about the structure of Mark. Clearly, Mark is a very carefully written text. It’s expert stuff.
It’s just not historically accurate.
My point here is that I have no problem with the gospel writers being very good at what they do, all the while saying that they were talking crap. Those two facts simply aren’t connected in any way. They were expert writers; they just weren’t writing history.
The Zombie Thread is spinning in its grave.
metaphorically, of course
Btw, this is a handy source/ for comparing the gospels.
E.g. if you look at the second column, the Gospel of Mark, see the heading “John Preaches a Messiah” and then click the two little books to the left, it will skip to the relevant sections in Matthew and Luke, for easy comparison.
In this case, we notice that both Matthew and Luke have Mark’s material, but also have a longer section added. Comparing those two, we see that they have almost identical wording.
Part of the problem with the gospels is that they differ on points that people should be expected to remember, but they line up on points that eye witnesses notoriously get wrong; such as exact phrasing. This doesn’t look like eye-witness accounts. This looks like scribal copying.
Let’s just cut to the chase. Txpiper, do you have any actual evidence suggesting that these are eye-witness accounts, that they are independently sourced or that they are historically accurate? Aside from your faith, what have you got?
Looks like I screwed up and end tag, there :/
Be fair now. Deny that strategem from the texpip, and he’ll have nothing left to say.
So was Tolkien.
Take note once more of how sappily credulous the texpip is regarding the claims of his poor, useless bible, and contrast that to his hyperskepticism when presented with evidence that contradicts any of his various preconceived views.
Intellectual dishonesty all the way down.
And you know who else was an even more careful and meticulous writer than Luke?
Charles Darwin.
Shall we be seeing the texpip soon accepting the Origin of Species as rote Truth(tm)?
Of course he’d still be wrong if he did, but at least the number of years he will be out of date with demonstrated reality will change from a 4 digit number to a 3 digit one.
buggrit
I wash my hands…
chigau:
Great.
(Yet another Biblical reference!)
jeez* John Morales, way to explain the joke, eh.
—
*ditto
Sheesh, chigau — way to make me feel dumb!
<mutter>
From over at Wikipedia:
“The fact that no manuscripts of Q exist today does not necessarily argue against its having existed. Many texts of early Christianity are no longer extant, and we only know they did exist due to their citation or their mention in texts which have survived.”
–
@ John Morales
Au contraire, young human. Theophilus is my tardigrade nemesis. I am sharpening my claws even as I type. When it rehydrates there shall be great battles.
…
{*cough*} sheesh = Jeebus
@ chigau
The whole thread has been taken over by discussion of one overhyped zombie. IYAM, Teh Zombie Thread ™ would be most proud of its progeny.
theophontes:
No! Really?!
Pop-Eye the Sailor Man!
(toot-toot)
Ooooo… Thanks, LykeX, for the link @ 141!
@ John Morales
Good Golly … Yes!
Well not as lively as I thot. Surprised to see religion the biggest subject here for now. (Disturbing a little really.)
@howard – not happening. I will politely let u kno – im straight.
Chigau:
Don’t forget to shake the dust off your sandals.
♥
Caine
Good idea.
I’m also considering girding my loins but I’m not sure that would help.
Caine!
I got your card. It is adorbs! ♥
Isn’t it funny how the texpip insists the Q document can’t exist, when there is more solid evidence supporting its existence, or something much like it, than there is supporting the evidence for the exist of Jesus himself? (Something which the texpip happily accepts without question?)
Why is it disturbing to find people discussing religion in an open thread on a blog about-among other things-atheism? Add to that-creationists like txpiper grace us with their presence from time to time. It should hardly be any surprise and I am baffled by the idea of it being “disturbing”
Tony, you’re probably baffled because you’re not aware that the sandi one is a goddist type.
Wingnuts have a very arbitrary, selective, inconsistent, and, dare I say, convenient way of applying skepticism. Because who cares about consistency, intellectual honesty, or finding reliable minds of determining the truth when you can instead rely entirely on post hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, and straight-up Truthiness to deny things you don’t want to be true and confirm things you do?
PS Hey sandi, have you yet worked out why your #59 was wrong? :)
Should be “reliable methods “. (Also, that last sentence is quite the fucking ramble)
I really don’t know how I fuck up my posts so bizarrely sometimes.
Can’t keep up with the Thunder
f00tInMouthDrome… just finished reading up on it at 2 AM…thanks cm @133: loved that article and have bookmarked the blog!
Esteleth:
Glad it got there and that you like it! ♥
=8)-DX, you’re welcome.
The bizarre irony is that since I don’t watch much TV¹, I’ll probably never see either series.
But it’s interesting to read someone smart talking about historical representation therein. And the real-life (really, real-death) precursor to “No, Mr Bond, I expect you die”. :-)
Also, Viking clown trousers …
—
¹ The third test sparks up on the work TVs
tomorrowlater today. I’m eyes on that for the duration.FFS! “you to …”
A: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you die”.
B: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die”.
.
A is better.
“Because who cares about consistency, intellectual honesty, or finding reliable minds of determining the truth when you can instead rely entirely on post hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, and straight-up Truthiness to deny things you don’t want to be true and confirm things you do?”
Interesting analysis. So to find out where you’re coming from, what’s your take on Detroit?
txpiper, way to ignore the import of the comment.
(Your cowardice is evident)
—
As for Detroit, it’s narrow.
Txpiper, where is your evidence you aren’t wrong. Your OPINION isn’t and never will be that evidence. Until you cite something other than presuppositional fuckwittery, YOU ARE WRONG AS USUAL….
A damn fine hockey organization. Though it looks like tough times for the next few seasons.
Now answer the question, texpip.
Or are you too scared to?
Wouldn’t be surprised to find out that txpiper is quite literally scared out of his mind. It’s a common condition among fundamentalists.
P. S.: Tyre. We still know where it is.
I know somebody from there….and they aren’t dead for centuries….
I don’t.
Some Tyres aren’t retreads.
“Early in the sixth century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, laid siege to the walled city for thirteen years. Tyre stood firm, but it is probable that at this time the residents of the mainland city abandoned it for the safety of the island.
In 332 B.C. Alexander the Great set out to conquer this strategic coastal base in the war between the Greeks and the Persians. Unable to storm the city, he blockaded Tyre for seven months. Again Tyre held on. But the conqueror used the debris of the abandoned mainland city to build a causeway and once within reach of the city walls, Alexander used his siege engines to batter and finally breach the fortifications. It is said that Alexander was so enraged at the Tyrian’s defense and the loss of his men that he destroyed half the city. The town’s 30,000 residents were massacred or sold into slavery.”
http://www.tourisminlebanon.com/tyre.asp
But let’s just call it “found”, and you guys are blue ribbon champions.
What about Detroit? How did a once impressive city become bankrupt? Do you think this is just an anomaly, or just the first of many? How do you feel about muni bonds right now?
Actually, in all the discussion about religion, a very important point has been dropped on the floor (as per usual with txpiper, of course).
Discussion of the texts of the bible is all very well (and I have a few thoughts I might add on that topic; there’s no reason not to have more than one topic in a Thunderdome thread), but it’s ultimately in support of a trivial point . . .
However, the point I want to return to that txpiper has desperately avoided is his purported revolutionary theory of biology: Organisms magically genetically engineer themselves by magic. So, txpiper, please expand and elaborate on how you imagine this even works. Be fulsome and detailed. Also, explain why this magical genetic engineering does not work for bacteria, so that only loss of function can occur (and, if that’s not what you meant, explain what you meant by claiming that “bacteria lost resistance”). Extra points if you can suggest experiments or make predictions of what geneticists will find.
Clutching at straws.
“Wouldn’t be surprised to find out that txpiper is quite literally scared out of his mind.”
You bet your socks David. Crying with a snot bubble in my nose ever since I saw PZ’s resonating commentary on the subject of complexity. Maybe not quite enough to make the theory unfalsifiable, but close enough that it doesn’t matter, as if any of you would notice anyway. You guys don’t exactly perform at the evidence level. And when it is there, it can be easily fixed with owlmirror’s handy method.
So how about Detroit? Is that big news where you live?
The End Is Near!
And they paid off Nebuchadnezzar, and were left alone.
So, even if this was what was being prophesied, Yahweh let off the original population that enraged him, and then punished their . . . great-great-great-great (± a “great” or two) grandchildren? Because Yahweh is a grudge-holding incompetent?
. . . he says, linking to a website on Tyre. That he found. Heh. Which even goes on to give its later history. Because it can be found, of course.
I’m glad that you agree that the prophecy did not come true, and that the bible must be false.
“Clutching at straws.”
No, just changing the subject. I have to exercise restraint, as you know. Too much pressing on complexity, and your out of bounds in the science threads. Too much Bible here, and unmoderated becomes something else.
What are you even talking about?
You’ve really given up, haven’t you ?
You haven’t convinced anyone, despite years of preaching and you have lost faith.
tsk
txpiper:
Trying to clutch at straws by changing the subject.
(What, you hold that your babble-book prophesied Detroit’s bankruptcy, too?)
By which you mean too much triteness in your appeal to incredulity when it comes to science, in manifest contrast to your appeal to credulity when it comes to mythos.
I’ll let PZ address this directly:
“As for the Bible, it’s a book of self-serving legends and stories that an ancient people used to identify themselves. I wouldn’t consider it a book of lies if people accepted it for what it is: a collection of myths, poetry, metaphor, and garbled history. It’s when they try to promote it as something more, a detailed and perfectly accurate history of the world, in defiance of all of the evidence, that it becomes a tool for spreading lies.”
Because complexity is secretly magical? And you know how to prove that it’s magical, because you know the secret?
But you can’t tell us, because then it wouldn’t be secret anymore?
Yep, cowardice. You can’t stand to for your fuckwittery to be refuted ad nauseum, so you change your fuckwittery. Nothing cogent is ever said by you.
timanthony:
If by troll you mean pitiful punching-bag, then I suppose so; if you mean someone who disrupts conversations and causes internecine disputation, then not one whit.
(If you weren’t so worried about decorousness and what Dawkins might think, you too could have a piece of it! ;) )
“Because complexity is secretly magical?”
Are you kidding? Only mutations, holding hands with natural selection can me magical. Together, they can do absolutely anything. No limits. None.
“I’ll let PZ address this directly:”
He already did at the top of this thread:
“If you can’t make an argument without relying on the pseudo-authority of that piece of shit book, the bible, you’ve got nothing intelligent to say and can just leave now.”
Don’t you just love consistency and confidence? And the fabulous clarity of “Say what you want, how you want” and “Status: UNMODERATED”?
There isn’t much room for talking about the antichrist is there? So let’s leave all my swollen cowardice and Bible thumping, and your protection behind, and wrestle with something momentarily safe to talk about, like Detroit.
Some analysts are saying to rush to municipal bonds anticipating that Obama will force a bailout and the investors will be first in line to win. Others think that this is a benchmark that the Fed is squirming over because there are so many similar carnivals. What do you think?
@ txpiper
I think that your god, YHWH, can do sweet fuckall about the situation in Detroit. No matter how many prayers are offered up to Him (a male, penis-having god). Same rate of return as when praying to any, and all, other made-up deities.
Why do you call upon human agency (Obama, et al) to resolve the problems in Detroit? Is your god not powerful enough? How are your prayers working out?
Do you not understand that you have failed?
Does your failure cause more pain for your Lord and Saviour?
(I think you can answer this. PZ’s admonition seems to be about using the bible to answer non-religious questions. My question is about your faith (or lack thereof).)
@6. anteprepro :
Sarcasm aside, yes that is right.
Interesting and thought provoking analogy. there thanks.
Firstly, okay, to be logically consistent yes. Maybe you *should* be promoted (or at least not punished) in that situation if you weren’t actually being “reckless” and the collateral damage was unavoidable – i.e. you made sure you aimed right and took as much care as possible. I agree that would suck for the families of the innocent victims but it makes logical sense if not so much emotionally.
Secondly, I’m not sure that analogy is comparable or holds up. Yours is an unlikely scenario not applying historically, as far as I know. Most cops are far more careful and better trained than to act as you suggest making it implausible in reality whereas terrorists are real and do have a long history of killing innocents. With terrorists the fact that they are out to kill and on average will be involved in X number of attacks claiming X number of lives is clearer and the decision is, so I gather, a collaborative one carefully considered and repeatedly checked by a number of people rather than any one individuals snap decision. There are precautions taken and a lot of factors weighed up. It’s not a “reckless” measure taken by “assholes” unless you want to defame the troops and their commanding officers. Who are, let’s never forget, keeping us all safe. I have a friend fighting over there currently and I doubt I’m the only one.
Finally, ultimately let’s also not forget that a big part of the reason why so many civilians are killed is because the terrorists gutlessly use them as human shields and try to hide among them like the disgusting cowards they are. The blame for civilian casualties falls on the Jihadists due to their own tactics and refusal to fight openly and in uniform like conventional, real warriors.
An ideal solution to the whole war on Jihadism would be for the Jihadists, if they truly thought they had Allah on their side to come out into the open, in uniform, on a battlefield and challenge the US to deploy their airpower or other means against them and them alone –no civilians, no innocents, just those Jihadist militants and especially their leaders seeking their beloved “martyrdom” (& its mythical reward of 72 virgins or is that really raisins?) in the Islamic cause. They could beg Allah to demonstrate his power by protecting them from the full military might of the West and smiting us while they all just looked on and prayed to him. I’m pretty sure we all know how that would end. Not well for them but great for the rest of the planet!
Sadly for everyone, the Jihadists just don’t have enough faith or guts or humanity to behave like that and resort to sneak attacks, hiding behind their own families and thus ultimately every casualty in this latest global war is down to them. As well, of course, as the Jihadists being responsible for the whole conflict in the first place.
bugger
Racist asshat:
You are the weakest link. Begone douchebag.
(P.S. yes you are racist. Though you suck at self awareness and suffer from an inability to read what you write, many of us can. Which is why you are a racist. The words you write, which are easy to go back and read. No, being drunk does not excuse you because you have said the same racist shit many other times.).
@ Previous tdome’s # 432. PZ Myers (& everyone else here too.) 21st July 2013 at 11:51 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/12/thunderdome-27/comment-page-1/#comment-653447
I agree its getting old, it is for me too. I’m not the one causing this situation – sure wish people wouldn’t keep attacking me with abusive crap I’ve answered so many times before.
I also wish they wouldn’t diminish the power of words like ‘racist’ and ‘bigot’ and ‘warmonger’ by using them so inappropriately and depriving them of their real specific meanings which is NOT “someone who happens to disagree with me or see another perspective clashing with mine on controversial issues” as some here seem to think.
A racist is someone who thinks race exists and matters – I do NOT think that nor do or would I ever treat anyone differently based on their skin colour or superficial physical traits. I find racism repugnant and strongly oppose it.
A bigot is someone who is bigoted towards others without genuine reason – who is bigoted against people solely because of their gender, sexual orientation, skin colour etc .. and again that simply does NOT apply to me.
A warmonger is someone who seeks and advocates for war. I do NOT do this, I dislike war and wish we could avoid it. I hope we can end the current war against Jihadist Terror ASAP and go on to get that peace dividend we missed out on post Cold War. It isn’t “war-mongering” to recognise reality when we are at war against Jihadist groups and have been since even before 9-11. There are Jihadist groups out there like Al Quaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, JI, the Taliban, etc .. who are constantly planning and committing war crimes – terrorist attacks on innocent civilians. Is anyone seriously going to deny that reality? The current war and all the loss of lives on all sides (innocent and guilty alike) ultimately are the responsibility of these Jihadist groups for launching a fighting a war that hurts all of us. When we’re already at war, discussing the best strategies to win fastest and with least loss of life on our side is NOT war mongering and more its opposite – war ending. I want the war to end soon with a Western triumph over the Jihadists that is thorough and settles the conflict for good.
The whole notion that there is even such a thing as an “Islamophobe” is contentious at best* and even if it was right, I’m not that because I don’t hate individual Muslims. I’ve had Muslim lecturers at university in the past and got along with them just fine. I’ve no objections to having Muslim neighbours and I don’t want Muslims to suffer – I do wish they’d abandon their hate-filled religion but that’s up to them as long as they live in peace with the rest of us. It’s only the Jihadists who are trying to murder people and impose their fantasy of a global Sharia Law caliphate I’ve got a problem with.
(Well, really we all have a problem with, just some of us know it and some of us seemingly want to deny this reality.)
Accusations that I’m something I’m not are hurtful, bullying, othering and factually inaccurate.
So how am I to respond to them? What am I supposed to do?
1) Am I supposed to be bullied off this blog by this abuse? No, sod that. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it here again – I’m not going to be bullied and abused off this blog so those who are doing it might as well stop trying.
2) Am I supposed to just cop the wrongful abuse I’m getting here in silence and ignore it letting it stand un-debunked? Sod that.
3) Am I supposed to make a false confession to being someone and something I’m not? Own up to being a caricature straw-monster other people have painted of me through their own lack of reading ability and listening to peer pressure piling on? If someone points at a badly sketched picture of a prickly pear cacti with a villain’s moustache and horns pencilled over it and tells me I’m supposed to admit that painted prickly pear is really a true-to-life portrait of me should I agree? Sod that.
No, my choice is to respond with rational non-abusive argument, debunking the lies and abuse directed at me here as calmly, logically and patiently as I can.
Y’know, I agree with the general consensus of the commentariat (the horde) here about eight times out of ten. I agree with them on feminism, gender & sexuality issues, Global Overheating, abortion, creationism, equal marriage rights and non-discrimination for the non-heteronormative, environmentalism and so much more. I don’t fully adopt the ideological Leftwing line (I’m not an ideologue but someone who decides for myself based on reasonable thought and experience) when it comes to just a handful of issues – foreign policy and crime and punishment the main two. I see things a different way have an independent perspective on a few areas – and I get this sort of intolerance and abusive treatment. Does my 20% disagreement merit such a reception? I think that says a lot more about my critics than it does me.
I’ll make a deal – I’ll very happily stop defending myself from the abuse and false claims made here if those here who have been abusing and demonising me stop doing that and discuss things in a reasonable, non-abusive manner instead.
* FWIW. My spellchecker agrees with me here saying there’s no such thing in underlined wavy red.
So . . . because you don’t know anything about mutations, you think that biologists think that they’re magical — when they obviously don’t — and that they think that mutations have “no limits” — when every work on biology takes into account the limits of mutations.
Ha ha!
OK, now talk about magical organisms magically genetically engineering themselves (and which look like magical mutations?). I won’t say that you think that there are no limits to magical self-genetic engineering, because you haven’t provided the least shred of anything to say what is involved with magical self-directed genetic engineering, or whether there are any limits.
Go on. Give a coherent thesis. Expand on the details.
StevoR
10 GOTO 10
@prev. t-dome ‘s 456. anteprepro :
Innocent on the charges of bigotry, paranoia, genocidal tendencies and denial*. Perhaps guilty of rambling though not aware that’s such a crime. Ditto “defensiveness” – it’s surely not a crime to defend oneself against unfair attacks. Excuse making and lack of self awareness? Well, possibly I ‘spose though not sure what you refer to or why I’m considered exceptional in either of those areas. Inanity is subjective and in the eye of the beholder.
Counter-sues with charges against some commenters here of slander /libel, making false accusations and bullying.
* Denial of what exactly? Also there’s denial and denial –sometimes it’s accurate to deny something that’s been said because it isn’t true other time sits wrong to do so because it is true – so it all depends on context.
****
@prev. tdomes 414. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought :
They may not have read that way to you but that doesn’t mean your reading is correct. You don’t understand me or know me and are biased against me and as such your “reading” interpretation must be considered flawed. I know what I meant by that and you don’t. That simple really.
Also I’ve subsequently said that I won’t make such comments even in grim humour anymore and I’ve stuck to that.
Also regarding your comment # 409. I’ve NEVER once advocated “murder” and can only conclude you are confused about what that word actually means.
(Hint : it’s not warfare or other lawful killings.)
@ prev. tdomes 455. throwaway, feels safe and welcome at FTBConscience! – 21st July 2013 at 7:34 pm
Not just drunk but also tired and emotional after hearing about Jihadists attacks on innocent civilians. Also I’ve already apologised & clarified multiple times for going OTT in some previous comments and not distinguishing clearly enough between Jihadists (a sub-set of Muslims) and all Muslims. I was talking about wiping out Jihadists NOT Muslims. Those Muslims who are willing to live in peace and aren’t doing or seeing to do extreme harm to others in the world – I’m fine with them.
@prev. thunderdome # 453. Nerd of Redhead :
Who the fuck are you* to tell anyone else on this blog to fuck off? Go fuck yourself!
* Oh that’s right you are the commenter whose main opinion is to constantly dismiss the opinions of anyone who disagrees with your opinion. With no real argument just abuse. What a hypocritical douchebag you are.
txpiper:
<snicker>
IOW, without that babble, you’ve got a big fat nothing upon which to make an argument.
As for consistency and confidence, perhaps PZ works in mysterious ways.
(You respect that, no?)
In other ways, you seek to protect yourself by not further irritating PZ, and to salve your ego you try to phrase your compliance with his dicta as my protection.
Heh.
I think they should start taxing the churches of Detroit, like they do other businesses and property-owners.
(Hey, it would be a start!)
No, really, I’d be just as safe without anyone getting murdered. But thanks so much for thinking of “us all”. Except the people in the line of fire, but , you know, tough luck, collateral damage, their deaths are keeping “us all” free, blah, blah, that kind of shit.
I should probably be used to this by now, but you actually upset me.
(The sentence I quoted is not the only part of the comment I object to, but commenting on everything would take too much time and I don’t have the patience either.)
Txpiper:
You really have conceded the whole thing.
You cannot make an argument without using your magic book.
And even with it, you do not have an argument because you assume the book is historically accurate.
No one has ever proven that.
No one has proven your Flavor of Deity exists.
Yet still you believe.
What else do you believe in that lacks evidence?
Ymir?
Dionysus?
Quetzalcoatl?
Osiris?
Elves?
Dragons?
@ StevoR
No StevoR, No! That is called terrorism, that thing that you are so keen to support. You may kindly fuck off now, as you have nothing new to add.
@ txpiper
I presume you have heard the tale from Diagoras:
Prayer is an utterly useless waste of time. You will pray to your imaginary god on behalf of Detroit. Others will do all the hard work and, I am fairly sure of this, turn the city around. You will then take the credit. Yawn.
StevoR, how to put this delicately?
…
Ah: If you ever need to defend yourself in a court of law, do yourself a huge favour and do not under any circumstances represent yourself.
Fieldmark of a Narcissist. The shitstorms they always find themselves at the center of are never, ever their fault.
Does God not know how to resolve the problems of Detroit? Then he is ignorant.
Is God unable to resolve the problems of Detroit? Then he is weak.
Is God unwilling to resolve the problems of Detroit? Then he is evil.
If God knows how to resolve the problems of Detroit, and is able and willing to do so, whence the problems of Detroit?
Racist Asshat:
Oh, lets pick one…
Paranoia.
You Are Fucking guilty.
The US and Australia face no danger from Islamic terrorists, yet you still think preemptively attacking them is a good idea.
Someone else’s turn.
Tell that to Fred Hampton.
Fire breathing dragons are probably beyond the limits.
But all the biology so far observed on earth? Well within.
E PUR SI EVOLVES, texpip.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-surprising-origins-of-evolutionary-complexity
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/25/the-power-of-hidden-mutations-or-why-i-wish-i-bought-a-fan/
Chris:
Golly Gee, we must have missed the gun at StevoR’s head making him support efforts that would murder innocents (as one example).
____
Does the prosecution feel up to ONCE AGAIN linking to the many crimes he is guilty of?
It’s not as if a lot of people are not now, and have not been, praying on Detroit’s behalf. I’m betting that most of them were even sincere (especially those actually living and working there), with added desperation, and ranging all across the denominations spectrum—heck, even outside the Xian spectrum—with no discernible Divine Intervention. And yet, prayer is alleged to get results. But “sometimes the answer is “no””. So, clearly the deity in question 1) doesn’t exist, 2) is not responsive as alleged, or 3) gives no single fuck about Detroit.
–
Do you still not see the utter sappy inanity of trying to explain complexity by positing design by an even more complex creator?
And the more complex something is, the more sappily useless design hypothesis becomes.
Your pitiful creationism cannot explain complexity. All it does hide your ignorance behind fancy-sounding, but ultimately empty, useless, labels, so you can pretend that you cannot notice that you have explained nothing at all, like a pathetic coward.
Goddamn you dumbass racist shitstain.
Racism exists.
It is displayed by people regardless of their opinion on its existence.
EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. TIME.
You dismiss racism you throw a middle finger to everyone who has suffered from it. Every person dead or alive who has been on the receiving end of racism and the shit the comes with it, you diminish their experiences. You ignore the causes of their oppression. You minimize the extent of the harm done.
Goddamn but I despise you.
I… FUUUUUUUUUUCK. Now I’m not going to sleep, I’m just going to fume.
Yeah, it’s like people are being all unfair towards you by not forgetting you’re a genocide-supporting, racist asshat.
And you can double fuck yourself for pretending it means anything but “supports the marginalization of people on the basis of race”.
Yes, you are, you pathetic piece of lying, self-deluded excrement.
StevoR, your comment #203 was the only one of yours I have read in a long time. It was stupid, naturally.
Nerd is a long-timer here, and knows the rules. It is alright for him to to tell anyone to fuck off, really.
Would you kindly fuck off, by the way? Nobody is going to accept or learn from anything you say. Just go away, and stop wasting everyone’s time..
—–
Txpiper, you really don’t read for shit, do you?
We can argue theology and the Bible all night long, here. It is okay. What PZ was objecting to was people who think that saying, “But the Bible says …” is the best argument. And even they will just get snarled at—it isn’t an instant ban.Yet.
You don’t do exactly that, Tex, so you would be safe anyhow. You just fail to make any argument that isn’t based on the biblical worldview (whatever the hell that is).
Your concern about being banned really comes off as a shitty excuse to avoid admitting you haven’t a prayer. You’ve had your ass kicked so many ways that even you must be losing faith.
Hey, that crap about mutations with natural selection being magical, that was stupid. You really don’t know the science, there, do you? You are running off something you picked up at a creationist source, and you need to realize that those people are lying for money.
If you think that scientists believe that together, mutations with natural selection can do absolutely anything, with no limits, you really don’t know what’s going on.
@ chigau
Fortran?
I am feeling old.
@ Owlmirror
Methinks this whole Detroit topic is just to detract from the 800-pound gorilla taking a dump on the lounge floor. (The 800-pound gorilla that is called by, but doesn’t answer to, the name “YHWH”.)
@ Tony
No need to linky. StevoR in this very thread:
Any excuse he gets to rationalise his hatefapping…
theophontes
Basic
ca.1980
Hmmm…
Thunderdome Battle of the Century:
1- Annejones vs txpiper
2- StevoR vs joey
Winners from each bout battle each other.
The champion gets the All time Shithead Award.
(TBH, my exposure to txpiper is limited to the stupidity here. Same as joey. Their presuppositional idiocy is inane and stupid. StevoR and annejones are quite a bit worse. They are horrible human beings.)
Theophontes:
I missed that.
I simply do not understand why someone would write something like that and then whine about how mean people are to criticize him for it.
You haven’t experienced the texpip commented on social threads not related to science or religion. I can assure you that the texpip is just as bad. Misogyny, bigotry, racism, all there. He just doesn’t fixate on it the way StevoR does. Even his attempt to change the subject to Detroit is likely a veiled insinuation that Detroit’s problems are the result of its large African American population.
In fact, the texpip is probably worse than StevoR, because as far as I have seen he has displayed a far worse streak of misogyny.
Even if it was magical, it is orders of magnitude less magical than some omnipotent deity-entity creating it all ex nihilo, fully formed.
So no matter how you slice it, mutations and natural selection resorts to less magic than the texpip’s creationism, and is therefore more likely, more believable, more plausible, more rational, and more scientific.
There is simply no metric of comparison by which evolution does not come out vastly superior to creationism as an explanatory idea. The texpip can try as many arguments as his dishonest brain can fap out to try to appear to weaken evolution, but all he ever does is weaken creationism even more in comparison, leaving evolution still the preferred alternative between the two.
Okay, here’s the crux of my problem with gay people, and while the video is short I’ll still summarise it’s contents: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5Zw4PIcjVNg
A lot of people tout studies that apparently show that gay couples in a lot of cases make better parents.
His whole point in the video is that those studies don’t compare homosexual babysitters to actual parents, head to head with everything being equal. Would any child, that was raised by homosexuals, have been better served by having been raised by his biological parents?? You can’t answer that question with your studies because all your studies show is that those kids didn’t grow up to be bat-sh!t crazy axe murderers. They don’t show how that child would have done had he been raised by his actual biological parents. Your studies compare one child to another, which means they tell us absolutely nothing about whether that particular child would have fared better, had he been raised in a loving home by loving biological parents, instead of the homosexual nannies.
Secondly, since your studies always involve a child being taken away from his/her biological parents, or some semblance of that structure, they don’t tell us how much of the child’s life was spent in a normal situation. IOW, did any of those kids spend their most formative time in a normal situation, before being adopted?? How much of an influence did opposite sex role models have in their life, prior to the adoption?? How much of an effect did opposite sex role models have on their well being after the adoption?? How many of those kids were actually being raised by one biological parent, while also spending visitation time with the other?? You see, once again, your studies can’t answer those kinds of questions which are crucial to making an informed decision on which set of parents would have been best for a particular child.
Third, Corolla was also making fun of the way you guys set up the comparisons between the biological parents and the homosexual nannies. Look at how close a typical “gay parents superior to straight biological parents” argument is to his scenario, which was obviously exaggerated for humorous effect.
Corolla: “Trailer trash parents who are meth addicts from the Ozarks, growing marijuana in a root cellar, drinking moonshine for breakfast, burning the kids with cigarette butts and cutting them with exacto knives v. Two homosexual men dressed in suits, well groomed, working, upscale, and loving.”
In my discussions of gay parent supporters, at least one person has said this: “Secretly evil fuckwits that may not have the resources to care for the child, who will physically and mentally abuse the child, and may even murder it v. Two homosexual nannies who will obviously have the resources needed, are truly caring, and will help the child survive and excel in life.”
I’d say Corolla nailed it, and added some humour in with the truth as well. He set up the same stupid argument and comparison that you guys do, the sad part is that a good bunch of you guys tend to be serious. How did he know in advance that people like you would make that argument?? He knew because he’d heard it before. Every person arguing for homosexual parenting tells the exact same lie. There is no comparison between these two situations, when everything is equal and the child is being raised by one parental figure of each sex. Your studies are totally useless in providing us with any information about whether a particular child will be better served by being raised by homosexual parents. You can’t compare the outcome of one child with the outcome for another, and assume that both kids being compared are exactly the same, and would have responded exactly the same way in both situations. That’s just plain stupid, and useless.
Another interesting point about Corolla, he’s an atheist who supports homosexual contracts. So you can’t say that he’s a homophobic religious zealot, he’s a parent who knows kids and knows that male and female are not interchangeable in a parenting situation.
@ annejones
Here is the crux of my problem with you. Bigot.
@StevoR #199
Could you please just read the wiki article on Colour blindness (race)? Read the criticisms section and perhaps you’ll understand why people here are considering your odd definitions of racism, themselves racist. Just like your denials of racist predjudice – not being aware of one’s predjudicies (just as with privilege) and biases is no proof that these do not exist. Most honest people will admit they have a whole host of systemic and subconscious biases due to their culture/language/upbringing, including racist ones. An honest person would expect there to be racist bias in ones’ own evaluations, especially when discussing foreign policy issues and the killing of foreign civilians.
@annejones #227
Yes, there is a comparison. The situation is equal – this is our best knowledge of the situation from the current data.
What other methodology than comparative statistical analysis of outcomes and contributing factors do you think would be better?
If you wish to be taken seriously annejones, please don’t stoop to insults of homosexual parents. We call couples who adopt children parents as well, and many homosexual couples are raising their own biological children (albeit only of one spouse) – they are the parents. Does a closetted gay father, 10 years into a marriage with small children suddenly become a “nanny” if his spouse dies and his new male partner moves in to help raise the children? Are step-fathers and step-mothers also “nannies”?
Yes, there’s the crux of your problem with gay people – you take your information about gays from homophobic sensationalist nutjobs who think dressing Hitler in pink is making a point.
I’ll summarise its contents better than you could:
Adam Corolla is a homophobic asshole who has an opinion that “children need a mommy and a daddy!” Why we should care is a mystery to me.
And to answer the main contention in the video: Adam Corolla is attacking a strawman: no one says children should be taken away from heterosexual biological parents and handed over to gays. Everyone is saying that gays who have children themselves should be able to bring them up with their same-sex partners in the same legal framework as heterosexuals and that gay couples are just as good non-biological-parent candidates for adoption of otherwise parentless/destitute children.
Shorter annejones: “My problem with gay people is that someone made a video claiming studies about gay parents adduced cannot show what they purport to show, and therefore they should be ignored, and therefore I stand by my bigotry”.
(Eerily like the problem Creationists have with evolutionary theory, no?)
Psst, =8)-DX: the term is ‘prejudice’ (literally: prior judgement, semantically: preconceived opinion).
annejones would make a truly terrible parent.
Grrr, darn my internal spellchecker which loves to insert (and assert the validity of) letters in places they never were… thanks! Prejudice, prejudice, prejudice..
StevoR: Still a clueless gobshite I see. You don’t get to define racism to suit yourself, you know.
I don’t like people who think its OK to kill large numbers of innocent people to get one terrorist dead. That makes you a monster in my eyes, just like your American superheroes who press the buttons.
Fuck off and go infest a different forum pretty please.
.
Annejones, what has a gay person ever done to you? Has one tried to tear a child out of your loving embrace? Why do you fear the differently attracted? Are you that insecure in yourself?
But she might make a great nanny!
@ =8)-DX
I would never let her within a hundred miles of Spawnphontes.
(Imagine what a social, and intellectual, handicap one would suffer for having been raised by such a bigot. annejones‘s foisting her ideas on a child would constitute abuse.)
Oh, look, another of the nasty bigots has shown up again to drop a load of offal on the thread and think it will change our minds. annejones, you are a nasty horrible individual. You are evil, and this is typified by the way you spread hate and suffering. I wish there was a way to make you experience all the pain and suffering that you and the people like you have done to LGBT individuals. Maybe then you would wake up and stop being such a nasty deluded bigot.
I repeat for annejones benefit: You. Are. Evil. You are not a good person. Any supposed god that would except you into any supposed wonderful afterlife is a god to oppose. So Fuck You annejones. Fuck You.
Also how do you get spaces between paragraphs?
Preview is weird and buggy, didn’t show my paragraph spaces. Oh well. Now I know that they work work at least.
Adam Carolla wouldn’t know a pro-gay parenting argument if it beat him upside the head, much like he wouldn’t know a good joke. I could have sworn you weren’t trying to link to that failed funny man and loser, because even you could not be stupid enough to think this was a good way to make your point. And the empirical evidence suggests that all things being equal, gay parents are marginally better – now, don’t get me wrong, I suspect that’s BECAUSE gay parents know on some level that they have to represent all gay parents, and not just themselves, while a straight couple doesn’t, but the results don’t really speak well to “OMG BAN THE GAYS FROM PARENTHOOD”.
Oh, and for how much you claim that it’s unfair to compare two well-to-do gay parents to two ‘pot farmer’ straight ones… y’all are theo nes who want to grant the latter the right to raise their children, not the former. Then assholes like you and Carolla misunderstand that we’re saying YOU’RE saying this as us saying this is the optimal comparison? Fuck, you are a special brand of evil.
Also, comparing the gays to hitler? You know we were on the list of people whom were targeted in the holocaust, right? Course not, assholes like you love to forget. Every single one of you jackasses who uses shit like ‘gaystapo’ should have to suffer some horrible, poetically appropriate revenge that I’m simply not creative enough ot think of. Fuck off, and die, you pathetic homophobic twit. not that you engage a single god damn thing.
@ Arawhon
Yep. Still a lot of bugs. My pet peeve is the grey box that gets drawn about my gravitar. From time to time the Squiddly oBerlawd allows us to complain about the conditions here, but it has been a while since the last suggestion-box thread.
@Annejones #227
… Did you just refer to gay parents as “homosexual babysitters”? I presume this is because a gay male couple would have to adopt. Do you extend that logic to straight couples that adopt? Are they merely “babysitters”, rather than parents, too?
I don’t even need to read the rest of that post; I already know what you’re going to say. People like you are what is wrong with the world. Fuck off, you detestable bigot.
@ annejones
Joseph was “merely” Jesus’s babysitter.
(What was all that crap in the bible then?)
ANNEJONES:
FUCK OFF YOU EVIL STAIN UPON HUMANITY.
You and your vile religion with your bigotry need to go. You are not welcome. Go live on a desert island where you cannot hurt anyone anymore.
@ Thunderdome-27 –previous one’s # 608. Rutee Katreya – 26th July 2013 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/12/thunderdome-27/comment-page-2/#comment-655984
Its “shit” to memorialise murdered Jews?
That sort of line is anti-Semitic Rutee Katreya and so are you.
Let us see indeed. I see the nasty anti-Semitic undercurrent here – present whenever the subject of Israel and its want to be slaughterers comes up exposed.
I see the “pro-palestinian / pro-islamic side” mob showing their true Judaeophobic colours.
I see someone who really, *really* needs to check xer “not-being Jewish or Israeli, not coming under anti-Semitic slurs or Hamas & Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad rocketfire and homicide-suicide bomber attacks” privilege.
I see someone whose comments deserved to be condemned by every decent person here.
What you said in Thunderdome -27 about the Shoah memorial and your downplaying and minimising of the actual historical genocide of over six million Jewish individuals really is disgusting.
@ Annejones : You really are a homophobic bigot. Go away and rethink your life.
@ 234. Lofty :
You areentitled to your erroneous opinion but not your own facts or definitions. The definition I used for racism is accurate and not one I just dreamt up to suit myself. To be aracist is judge peopel by their supposed race I don’t do that or even accept the premise that such a thing as “race” is anything but an unscientific, socially held myth.
There is no reasonable or actual definition of racism by which I am a racist -that is fact whether you have the decency to acknowledge it or not.
Terrorists need to be stopped before they murder others. A dead terrorist isn’t going to committ atrocities which massacre many innocent people.
I support taking out Jihadist killers before they kill. (In most cases that’s kill again.)
Your alternative to this idea would be what? Letting Jihadists kill innocent people?
Your way would result in more innocent civilians dying than mine I’m sure.
What Batman? Superman? Wonder Woman? Huh?
Or do you refer to the fact that I support and trust our Western Coalition military forces as generally well-intentioned, well-trained, good people doing the best they can?
If you don’t like how the military are fighting to protect us all (including the populations in the nations they’re located) maybe you should go join up and show them how you can do better eh?
Well, since you put it so nicely – no!
@ TD-27 (prev. thread) – #457 & 458. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls – 21st July 2013 at 8:01 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/12/thunderdome-27/comment-page-1/#comment-653567
You’re suggesting using voodoo – black magic to harm me or worse?
You realise in some parts of the world and to some people that would be seen as a serious death threat. Its a really fucking nasty thing to propose. What a fucken evil piece of shit you are Nerd of Redhead.
Note folks comments like that constitute cyber bullying. yes I’m sure you’ll claim you are joking. Because its okay for *you*to make jokey death threats and imply you belief in superstitious rituals.Or is it?
Arawhon:
Please no.
Supporting LGBT persons is great, but wishing/hoping bigots could suffer is not cool. We want less pain and suffering in the world. Not more.
Unless you are StevoR.
annejones
You have a blog.
Go post there.
antiIsrael≠antisemitic
StevoR:
You cannot read for shit, neither your own words nor Rutee’s. Ze said “if the Holocaust memorial ONLY memorializes…”
Bullshit. Rutee quite clearly said if it only memorialises Jews then it’s shit (you quoted it yourself, for fuck sake!). As in, it should also be memorialising Roma, gays, the disabled and the myriad other groups persecuted during the holocaust, who are so often forgotten. At no point did she say people shouldn’t memorialise Jewish holocaust victims. Also, being angry at Israel is not the same as hating Jews. Learn the difference. Dishonest bullshit and projection like that is why people don’t like you.
@Theophontes #232
What scares me is that she may be a parent (the fact she is/would be terrible at it is evident from her posts).
WTF? (this is about the 6 people shot by the cop who guns down one gunman analogy)
Most cops are far more careful, you say?
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/24/13455394-empire-state-shooting-bystanders-hit-by-police-rounds?lite
One gunman taken down. Nine bystanders shot by police.
There’s more. Lot’s more.
Your knee-jerk respect for “law and order” are disturbing.
I’m glad I missed last nights infestation of the delusional homophobic bigot annejones, and from the responses, I also missed the genocidal bigot and racist StevoR who should shut the fuck up as nobody is listening except to laugh at them and their bigotry.
Since this is Thunderdome, I’ll assume that quoting someone from another thread is OK. If not, let me know.
StevoR:
Anyone trying to pass on this sleazy, tired old chestnut has lost any claim to be taken seriously.
StevoR would probably score off the charts on the authoritarian scale.
You’re not even trying to leave room for doubt that you’re a piece of shit, are you?
You can see whatever you want, that’s not going to make it so. It’s like not immediately assuming black people are intentionally being shills for white people when they support republicans or libertarians though – and I consider that a basic courtesy to grant. And I don’t worry about Jews. I worry about Israel, and then only proportionately. Unlike you, who thinks I should exist in fear of terrerists. Well, I do, but not Islamic ones – Christian terrorists of various stripes are a more real threat to me.
A Palestinian is more likely to be murdered by an Israeli government agent is than a ‘proper’ Israeli citizen is to be attacked by Hamas or Hezbollah. For someone trying this shit, you’re not too eager to check off your “Isn’t oppressed by the state of Israel, doesn’t rely on Hamas’ charitable aid to eat.” privilege. But really, knock it the fuck off: Not only do you not know what the fuck you’re talking about in general, Racist Whitey McStraighterson trying to appropriate this sorta language is fucking laughable.
12 million Slavs. That’s not even getting to the groups that are actually really well documented, and typically ignored (The Slav estimates are based on new data that’s relatively recently come to light). Fuck off and Die.
@Thumper
Speaking as a pacifist, who would not want any more harm in the world, ‘be the change you want’. This shit is disproportionately wielded at the marginalized, and I’m pretty sure you know it.
Sorry, that’s @Tony, not @Thumper.
FFS, for a guy whining about how everyone who doesn’t suck Israel’s cock is anti-semitic, do you have any idea how many pro-peace and left wing Jews there are? In Israel? They’re a very substantial minority – one that is forgotten about because assholes like you do exactly what the party in power in Israel wants: You conflate the party that’s in charge with the heart and soul of all Jewish people. It’s fucking nonsense. For fuck’s sake, if Egypt had been starving its Copts, and boats full of food and supplies for aid had been sent, and Egypt boarded those boats, imprisoned the aid workers, and kept the aid supplies, you would call for Egypt’s extermination – when Israel does this to aid for the PAlestinians, you consider it Good and Necessary (I consider it abhorrent to regardless of who’s doing it, since you think this is about Everyone But You)
@Rutee Katreya
Do you have a good source for this? I’d never have thought there could have been that many, but I’m willing to get some edumacation on the topic =).
Snyder’s Bloodlands, which I’m not super confident in without the sources in hand, to be fair. I don’t exactly speak German, or any Slavic Language, though. He’d have to be off by a huge margin for it to not at least meet the threshold to match the Jewish deaths in the holocaust though – and people tend to justify deleting non-Jews from the holocaust because the Jews were the biggest.
wiki source
wiki source
That’s more than 5.5 millions already.
More from wikipedia
Soviet civilian casualties 1941-45.
Deaths caused by the result of direct, intentional actions of violence 7,420,379
Deaths of forced laborers in Germany 2,164,313
Deaths due to famine and disease in the occupied regions 4,100,000
Polio hasn’t been eradicated. It’s just been renamed.
I am completely dumbfucked. I just don’t even have the words.
that site is very good at inducing anger
SteveoR you’re doing a bang-up job of showing what a not-racist not-asshat you are.
Rutee @255:
I do not understand your point here.
From nigel’s link:
Such lack of transparency is certainly disconcerting, but I do note something odd: Despite the fact that these documents apparently were released almost two years ago, presumably enough time for them to be read and analyzed, this article doesn’t actually mention what they say. It just hurries on to discuss another case.
There’s a link, but it doesn’t explain anything either. It only assures us that the writer personally finds the evidence inadequate to assure safety.
I don’t know if this is because they’re dishonestly hiding the information or if they’re just that incompetent. Either way, it’s ironic that people who are so concerned with “getting the information to the people” are so reluctant to actually present any hard facts or sources.
nigel,
It looks like an anti-vax site, so maybe a grain of salt to go with the info?
Beatrice — I’m aghast at the site. I certainly don’t believe they’ve eradicated polio by renaming it. It’s the bizarre and absurd conspiracy theories they’ve constructed. I’m just … well, I don’t know what I am. Amused, but in a way that leaves me vaguely angry, and somewhat stupefied.
Ooooh, sorry, I thought you took it seriously and was a bit baffled!
Totes understandable. I re-read the comment in which I posted the link, and it’s completely ambiguous. I’d aimed for snark. I hit confusing.
Okay, I’ll bite: what has polio been renamed to?
From my quick look in that bed of bullshit, viral meningitis.
Anne Jones,
You can go far, far away, now. You’re a repulsive, hateful, ignorant bigot. Adoptive parents are merely babysitters, huh? You know something? The only people I’ve ever heard say such things were bioparents who had their children removed by the state for continued cases of abuse and gross neglect. They tend to say all kinds of hateful things though, mostly to make certain that their biokids never feel loved or part of a family. Abusers really hate giving up the target of their abuse. I assume that’s why you have such a hate-on for gay people. You like having a class of people to shit on and now that the world is moving on and most people regard folks like you as disgusting reminders of a shameful past, you has a sad. You’re losing your target and you won’t ever get it back. Boo-hoo, hater. Cry us a river.
I met a gay kid who was abused, homeless and suicidal because of the abuse he received at the hands of people like you, recently. Because I lost my cousin to suicide due to him being gay and terrified of people like you, it struck me close to home.
Just to eat your cookies I want you to know what I did with him:
I took him to the movies with my whole fam damily. I took him apple-picking and showed him how to make pies. I left copies of Out and The Advocate laying around the living room with Handyman and Parenting. I watched him play cards with my kids and play around with the dogs and cats like kids do. I took him to meet a happy gay family. I hugged him and made him feel welcome. I lit up every time he smiled and he smiled ALOT. When kids like him leave, they leave knowing they aren’t sick, you are. You’ve tried to make this world inhospitable to them. You failed. You’re a monster with no god to love or save you. Your myths are a sorry substitute for love and human friendship. You’re stuck with your hate and as desperate as you are to poison someone else with it, it’s doing the most damage to you. I’d say I pity you, but I don’t. You are toxic and you devour children like a storybook ogre. I only wish you turned to stone in the sunlight like one too.
Dafuq?
Yeah. It’s kinda difficult to respond to their claim because it’s pretty much just blank assertions with nothing to back it up.
Chris Clarke is leaving?
Fuck!
This sucks, y’all.
Jackie, yeah, it does. :(
Well, that was a royal fuckup. I’m sorry, Chris. Everyone else, sorry.
I was angry and I lashed out. I’ m sorry.
Jackie:
You had me in tears reading about your kindness to that young man.
I’m very sorry Chris is leaving, but I certainly understand his reasons why.
Yes it does. Do you think he meant for good? I was watching that thread happen- and it happened fast.
I hope Chris meant that he was shutting down the thread completely, rather than leaving the horde forever.
It got closed before I could post a comment which included the guidelines for recognizing potential suicides and rendering appropriate first aid.
Chris Clark
((hugs)) Anniversarys are hard for me too.
Pacificists disproportionately wield demands for non-violence on the marginalized more, at least as far as my experience goes – we are more apt to demand that women, or hispanics, or whatnot, not threaten or wish for violence. Nominally, it’s done for everyone, but in practice, marginalized groups deal with more enforcement, even if they have more cause for it (For instance, little rational hope of change coming from the system). That kind of disproportionate response strikes me as racist, even in serving a decent cause. So what I’m saying is, try to change that, at least amongst the marginalized, by example.
I remember Fortran….
–
annejones: What if the same child had been raised by polar bears?
We just don’t know!!!
For that matter, by the standard you’re setting, you can’t compare the outcome of different sets of children being raised by their respective heterosexual birth-parents, either. Doesn’t count unless you can re-run the experiment with the same child, heterosexual parents vs. homosexual parents.
I guess we will have no genuine data until we can batch-run some cloned identical babies, and place them in a variety of different family situations. Then run it again, and again, and again, with different batches of identical babies.
Yes, I’m mocking what you said.
It was stupid.
–
With an & followed by nbsp followed by ; with no spaces between.
–
I think it’s because most any heterosexual couple can just squirt one out, without regulation of any sort; whereas any gay couple is going to have to jump through many layers of regulated hoops. It is a non-trivial effort even to become parents.
–
Huh?
–
“Misogyny, bigotry, racism, all there.”
Right, just like getting ripped off buying phony jade make me what? Chinaphobic?
“Even his attempt to change the subject to Detroit is likely a veiled insinuation that Detroit’s problems are the result of its large African American population.”
Behavior. It is about bad behavior, and bad public policy that encourages bad behavior.
Cicely:
See here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/01/on-using-suicide-as-a-rhetorical-strategy/comment-page-1/#comment-658671
Uhm, yeah. Huh?
Caine:
Once, when I was quite young, I was driving up Snoqualmie Pass. Some guy zipped passed me (zipped passed us all) in a red convertible. I thought, “I’ll see you on the side of the road, buddy.” I mean, thinking about the police, and speeding, and whatnot.
Almost immediately after, I pulled off into a rest area, and, well, did stuff you do when you pull off into rest areas. Maybe 20 minutes later, I was on the road. Not five miles later, there was a traffic slowdown, with blue flashing lights and other vehicles pulled off the side of the road. On the meridian was a red convertible, all crinkly and upside-down. The ambulance folks were carrying a stretcher to a ball of red-and-black-leather something that was a bit farther down the meridian. I was moving slowly enough to see tears on the faces of the bystanders.
I thought to myself, “That’s not what I meant!” As if I were the one to cause this, saying I’d see him on the side of the road.
Yeah. I kinda thought reading Chris’s post originally, “This won’t end well.”
And now I’m thinking, “That’s not what I meant!”
I really hope he doesn’t mean he’s leaving for good.
txpiper:
This is an ambiguous statement. How do you define bad public policy? How do you judge which policies are bad? And in whom are bad behaviors encouraged by these bad policies?
Here’s the deal: I completely agree with your statement, as general and amorphous as it is. Bad policies do lead to bad behavior.
I’m just suspecting we’re thinking of different policies, and different behaviors.
And here we have it. The standard racist rightwing code words for “blacks are criminals”, “blacks are lazy moochers”, “black single mothers are sluts”, etc.
If the texpip is one thing, it is predictable.
Since it so aptly plays into the “Chinese are purveyors of cheap fakes” stereotype, and since you have provided ZERO evidence that you were actually “ripped off”, or that the jade you bought was “phony”, that is exactly what it makes you.
And given how several commenters immediately informed you after you made that original claim of the reality of how stringent the Chinese government actually is in enforcing and regulating the sale of jade in their country, the fact that you had the nerve to repeat that pathetic lie here and ignore those statements is just another example of your pathetic pattern of gross intellectual dishonesty, of which we are all quite familiar with.
Rutee:
Ok, but as a gay male PoC, I dont believe I was doing that, but you have given me pause.
I see that txpiper is still being a coward about his magic self-directed genetic engineering “theory”. Oh, well.
All I know about jade I learned from Wikipedia just now, and from here, which explains which substitutes are used for jade:
http://asianart.com/articles/hoffman/index.html
So, what mineral did you get instead of jade, and how do you know that it’s that mineral?
We interrupt the regular broadcast to take a moment to ponder something of incredible beauty: Linky.
theophontes #295
Indeed.
The SO pointed out that image this morning.
The Revolution proceeds.
StevoR, just go. Leave and never come back you fucking nazi piece of shit.
theophontes, that is one seriously high-res and awesome tardigrade!
–
theophontes, that is amazing. Thanks.
I’m somewhat skeptical, but let’s take it as a given for a moment – do you really think every other pacifist has? The environment, in total, is what matters, no?
But then he would let the terrerists win.
Jackie, Ms. Paper if ya nasty @273:
That was awesome. Thank you for posting it, and for being you.
Jackie, Ms Paper if ya nasty, that was a beautiful post. I wish every kid who’s suffered that kind of treatment at the hands of vile, repulsive bigots like annejones could encounter someone as wonderful and awesome as you are (and mainly I wish there were no people with the vicious, destructive, hate-filled attitudes annejones has displayed here in the first place).
“So, what mineral did you get instead of jade, and how do you know that it’s that mineral?
I have no idea. The piece just got a surface chip in it and whatever mineral it is, is white. I would still highly recommend a visit to the shop. You can spend hours there and enjoy every minute.
“Since it so aptly plays into the “Chinese are purveyors of cheap fakes” stereotype”
Well, stereotypes always have some basis in fact, and they aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But deceipt, often self-deceipt is one of the operating principles of the world.
By the way, fakes are not always cheap. They have a large multi-story market building in Beijing where you can buy all kings of knockoff merchandise. One of the vendors there told me they have three levels of Rolex watches. The lowest are just junk, but the second is a pretty good copy. He said the best ones are so good that factory technicians won’t be able to detect the fake. Of course he could have been lying…ha ha
Your liberturd racism and paranoia is showing.
*cough, cough* bullshit *cough, cough*
I’m not a racist, but let me tell you about them
MuslimsArabs…For Jackie @273
Any hat I shall ever wear in the future shall come off in respect to you. You are an amazing person. And you make other people’s lives amazing. ♥
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I figured I’d just ask:
Am I still welcome here after what happened yesterday with Chris?
[crossposted Lounge/Thunderdome]
[X-posted from the Lounge]
I’ve just read Chris Clarke’s piece on Suicide as a Rhetorical Tool. I am annoyed for several reasons; so, in order of annoyance:
1- I was in a relationship when I was 17 which I have recently come to realise was an emotionally abusive one. I developed severe committophobia as a result of that relationship, and almost six years later I’m just starting to fix myself. One of the ways she kept me in that relationship was by threatening suicide when I tried to break up with her. Chris broached an important, if difficult, topic and instead of actually discussing the topic, a lot of commenters merely attacked Chris for daring to write about it. Some of what Chris said was poorly phrased and I could see why some commenters had concerns. Some commenters (Esteleth springs to mind) very reasonably pointed out these concerns. Others simply misinterpreted the post and indulged in quote mining and brow beating until comments were shut down. That was a conversation I really needed to have, and I’m dissapointed that a place that is usually very good at tackling difficult issues allowed discussion on this one to be shut down.
2- There was a lot of bullshit about how suicidal people are selfish, notably from unclefrogy. That pissed me off. This trope is ridiculous and stupid and harmful, and I am fucking sick of hearing it. To say it in a thread where you know full well there are commenters who suffer from depression, suicidal tendencies and some who have attempted suicide makes it even worse.
3- As I said, it’s a difficult topic, and an important one. It must be very difficult to write about, especially for Chris, since Chris suffers from depression and suicidal tendencies, something he has mentioned before. And yet despite this some commenters chose to take the uncharitable position that Chris was attempting to shame any depressed people from talking about it in public; a position I don’t understand since it didn’t come across like that to me at all, let alone that it would be entirely nonsensical for someone who suffers from depression and suicidal tendencies to discourage discussion of it in public. There were several commenters suffering from depression on that thread who said the same thing. It must have been a delicate and difficult subject for Chris to write about, and I imagine one very important to him, and some people’s reaction was to descend in righteous anger and indulge in gratuitous misinterpretation, strawmanning, brow beating and minimalising of Chris’ experiences; effectively bullying a depressed man off of his own thread. This annoyed me more than any of the others.
P.S.
Since I’ve finally broached the subject; I owe a thank you to anyone on here who has discussed their own abuse at any time. Not just emotional abuse, but any kind, because this forced me to realise that the definition of abuse I was working to was incomplete. This in turn made me do some research, which made me realise what it was that happened to me and forced me to admit it to myself. Now I’ve admitted it, I find I can start to fix myself and it’s happening a lot quicker than I thought. So thank you.
Tons more welcome than a whole barrage of trolls.
@txpiper
Cheap fakes are made in China because they have a massive workforce and no employment rights, so the fakes can be made very cheaply. The Chinese do not flog cheap fakes, the Chinese labour force is taken advantage of by the purveyors of cheap fakes.
Thumper, you read that thread, yet failed to note unclefrogy was one of the people in question?
(Check out comment 57)
—
You seriously don’t think that it was a good thing this place allowed Chris to shut it down when it became stressful for him?
I’d give up all *my* cookies if there were more people who did things like what you did, Jackie. Thanks from humanity and you get a shiny spanking-new internets!
Thumper, I sympathize. When I first read the blog post, I was hoping there could be some good, serious discussion about how threatening self-harm to control others can be abuse and how this form of abuse often goes unnoticed. It had literally just been days before I cut the emotionally abusive friend out of my life (and she actually went and emailed me during that thread, begging me to speak to her, because she needed my support before a job interview or else she was sure she’d never get the job -_- ) and so getting some outside feedback that YES, THIS IS ABUSE was sorely needed.
And unfortunately, that’s not the conversation that took place. People who haven’t been in that abusive relationship probably don’t realize the absolute terror of it. The fact that this abuse parasitically attaches itself to a social justice issue is something that does need to be discussed. That the impulse to go “oh, you poor dear” and try to support someone is the impulse that the abuser takes advantage of. Insisting you need to give the benefit of the doubt is how the abuser can keep you hostage for over a decade of your life.
But people do need multiple outlets to talk about their depression. Chris made some missteps in how he wrote things, but he was approaching a topic that sorely needs approaching and I am grateful to him for that. I don’t begrudge him his need to walk away from that at all and I hope he’s emotionally okay.
I had intended to post this on the suicides thread.
http://turningpoint.areavoices.com/2012/09/25/suicide-and-domestic-violence/
I didn’t comment on the suicide threats thread because I didn’t know what I wanted to say before it closed, but just in case it’s useful…
1. I’m very sorry Chris Clarke is leaving. I like his writing very much and don’t want him to leave. Especially not this way. I’d like to think that there was a way he could come back and feel comfortable doing so. Don’t know what it might be.
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of depression and suicidality below.
2. I’ve been, directly or indirectly, on both sides of this issue. Several relatives, who I won’t identify in more detail because they haven’t given me permission and my nym isn’t very anonoymish, have been in abusive relationships where their partners expressed suicidal ideation when they tried to leave. I consider those expressions to be largely manipulative, although they (the abusive partners) may also have felt genuinely depressed and at least vaguely suicidal.
3. I’ve been severely depressed and suicidal. And when I am, one part of my mind is always saying, “You’re not REALLY suicidal. You just want attention. If you really wanted to die you’d go jump off a cliff not sit here and whine about it.” I expect others have had similar experiences and don’t want to give their depression gnomes more fuel.
Sorry! I tried to put more space between the trigger warning and discussion in the post above but it didn’t come out right. Monitors, can this be fixed or the post removed? Really don’t want to trigger anyone.
John:
I did not interpret Thumpers comment that way. It was more about the people who contributed to the atmosphere which led to closing down the thread.
@John Morales
Not at all; I’m annoyed that it ever became stressful for him in the first place.
@The Mellow Monkey
Exactly. I think it’s a conversation that needs to take place, particularly for me, and I’m annoyed that people’s first reaction was to disregard the fact that Chris himself suffers from depression and assume he was having a pop at other people who suffer from it. He certainly wrote a few things which could be interpreted negatively, but he clarified those things and people simply ignored his clarifications, ignored the fact he himself suffers from depression, and kept on at him until he felt unable to continue. That is simply unconscionable.
@Dianne
2 and 3 are precisely what make it a difficult issue to talk about. How do you tell which category they fall into? I doubt anyone ever goes through such a rational thought process as “Aha, if I say this they will stay with me!”. I imagine it’s far more complex and less logical than that. The whole issue is complex and a potential minefield, but that is precisely why I think it’s a conversation that needs to happen. It may very well help a few people.
@Tony
Yes, exactly that.
@John Morales
Sorry; didn’t address your first point. Yes, I remember unclefrogy saying towards the later half of the thread that he had depression himself; his was simply the first ‘nym I recalled when thinking of examples of people expressing the notion that suicidees are selfish.
I guess I’ll note this here. I feel really bad about Chris feeling done because of how the suicide page worked out, I guess, especially since I felt a bit triggered by it, which doesn’t make logical sense and was just my brain trying to fuck with me with self-obsessed bullshit.
But I also note the issue he was trying to talk about.
TRIGGER WARNINGS from here on out for descriptions of abuse and rape:
My partner’s rapist ex used threats of suicide as a tactic to get her to go back to him after he had already attempted to rape her, had been extremely emotionally abusive to her for years, and had turned out to be statutory raping another girl while they had been going out. This became a nasty cage and it really fucked her up with guilt when she finally was able to extricate herself from him.
Another rapist ex of hers deliberately used an indirect threat relating to an earlier suicide attempt of his immediately after he was done raping her in order to get her to not pursue any rape charges against him or acknowledge his crimes with any of their mutual friends. And then used the time that bought him to smear her name around so that he could claim it was a “he said, she said’ thing if she decided to legally pursue. This not only fucked her up royally, but directly lead to her staying way longer than she should have with the rapist ex from paragraph 1 out of guilt.
So yeah, it can be used as a very malicious tactic, just as it can be an earnest problem. And it sucks because one needs to be able to talk about those tactics for those trapped in those abusive relationships. But at the same time, for those struggling with ideation, there is a lot of shame and heavy social and internal pressure to keep things a secret. When I’m having… problems, I know I am psychologically incapable of talking about it with my partner or my girlfriend because of my partner’s history of abusive exes using that as a social pressure on the relationship. Which in turn, but anyways I feel bad that things have turned out the way they did and I’m sorry that I felt triggered by the topic and I hope Chris decides to come back after letting his head clear.
Also, for those who are also struggling with that… space, I know this site has helped ground me before. Just to throw out a resource.
Does the asshat really think voodoo is real? Or that it constitutes a real death threat? For all that the idiot has responded to Nerds comments over the years, he clearly does not remember how often Nerd calls for evidence to support supernatural beliefs…like voodoo (hat tip to StevoWARMONGER-voodoo aint real. You cant threaten anyone with it and it is not a death threat. Fucking moronic racist scum).
Chris,
I apologize for my comments. I should have stopped and considered your further comments instead of just raging.
———-
Everyone,
I’m sorry for ruining the discussion you wanted to have.
Cerberus:
So sorry you and your partner have had so much to deal with.
****
Re-Chris Clarke:
I too will be sad to see him go, but if he feels the need to do so for his well-being, I support him.
I think that the suicide thread was the last straw, but not the only incident contributing to his decision.
@Beatrice: I really don’t want to see you shouted down and silenced any more than I want to see Chris silenced.
I think he had an important point in there, one that needed a lot of fine-tuned argumentation to avoid being what you saw it as being.
Beatrice, I understand the anger you were expressing and I don’t blame you for “ruining” the discussion. I’m sad that it went the way that it did, but I don’t hold any individual responsible for that. It was a combination of multiple factors and people.
The vitriol in that thread is a good example of what I was afraid of and what kept me from walking away from my abusive friend.
Trigger warning for emotional abuse
–
–
–
This was someone who tried to isolate me from all other relationships, who got her family members to harass and threaten me, who accused me of changing my orientation and abandoning women for the “privilege of the penis” when my partner began transition, who made jokes about raping me, and I was terrified of cutting off contact. I thought she might kill herself, or at the very least other people would attack and abandon me for my lack of sympathy for a psychologically anguished person.
This is why I really hope that people keep harm in mind when discussing these things, instead of focusing on whether or not someone is actually suicidal. Being in pain is not a license to hurt and abuse and threaten. Crying out for help and asking for support are good things, but holding people emotionally hostage is not. Abuse is usually a pattern of behavior and one that the vast majority of people suffering from depression don’t exhibit. And yet that doesn’t mean that just because someone really is depressed that they can’t also be an abuser: a pattern of abuse and the harm it causes needs to be recognized, as something separate–and not the responsibility of the abuse victim–from suicidal ideation.
Just as there’s a difference between loving someone and stalking them, there’s an important difference between reaching out for help while suffering from depression and using threats of self-harm to control people.
So last night I ill-advisedly watched Ariel Castro’s closing statements after sentencing. It was awful and I don’t recommend it. However, there was a strong theme throughout the 16 minutes of wretchedness of him talking about god. About how he took Amanda Berry’s daughter to church, how god would judge him, how he hoped god would help his victims forgive him. I can’t help wonder if his belief in god helped him rationalize away the evil that he was doing.
–
Did anyone else watch? Any thoughts?
@mellow Monkey
That’s one of the things I’m having an issue with. My ex wasn’t out to hurt me, she wasn’t being deliberately malicious. Her behaviour was a result of her own issues and insecurities (and she had many). I imagine this is the case for most abusers, including those who are genuinely suicidal and may use that as an abuse tactic. However, that doesn’t change the fact she damaged my ability to have a loving relationship for half a decade. I find myself swinging between anger and sympathy. How much blame can I assign to her?
@Beatrice
I don’t hold you personally responsible; that thread was all fucked up. Still, you did contribute, but you’ve had the decency to apologise when no one else who contributed to that atmosphere did. That’s a point in your favour, and I for one appreciate it.
Also, seconding Howard at #327. I don’t think you should avoid voicing any concerns you may have. I just think a number of people were overly hasty and overzealous in this incidence.
Thumper:
I suffer from an overabundance of empathy, so I understand this swing well. I’ve had to largely abandon assigning blame in my situation with this friend, because it’s just not that cut and dry. Instead, I fall back on an old saying from my grandmother: it might not be the skunk’s fault that it stinks, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it in your house. :/
Relevance? The answer is most likely relevant to how Detroit was a “once impressive city” due to the automotive industry, and due to the fact that America no longer dominates that particular industry.
Terrorists “are real” and “out to kill” so therefore The Good Guys are justified in killing innocent people in order to take them out. You are a disgusting clown. I never know whether to laugh or vomit when I see the naive and childish ways you continue to justify your idiocy.
Support our Troops! America, love it or leave it! You’re either with us, or with the terrorists!
Seriously StevoR, go fuck yourself for the insinuation. And go fuck yourself even harder for ignoring the fact that, yes, some of these people are fucking reckless and fucking assholes, because they are causing the deaths of just as many (or more!) innocent civilians as those evil fucking “terrorists” under your bed.
Citation fucking needed, you fucking asshole. And even if it were true, that means that The Good Guys are killing civilians that terrorists kidnap or hide behind! How does that make things BETTER!?
StevoR, like many Certified Not-Trolls, is Just Disagreeing ™.
I assume one could also say they aren’t homophobic because they think sexual orientation exists, and then commence with the talking points about traditional definitions of marriage and about how only sex that could potentially make babies is True Sex and about Nature and all that shit. Oh, no, I don’t hate gay people because I don’t think there is even such a thing as a gay or straight person! Just make sure you pair up one woman to one man, though!
So aren’t bigoted because you have a genuine reason to want brown people dead. I’m afraid just as when a KKK member says that he isn’t a bigot because black people Really Truly are just as violent and unintelligent as he believes them to be, I don’t think you can exempt yourself from accusations of bigotry because you think you have a good justification for your bigotry. That’s exactly the problem here. You don’t . Your hatred colors your perception and distorts it so thoroughly that you can’t even see that you don’t have a genuine reason. That your alleged genuine reasons are based entirely on spin and bullshit. That you have been presented with the evidence and sound argumentation showing that but have simply ignored it. That is why it is clear that you are a bigot: Because your “genuine reason” is not based on evidence or logic and is impervious to information counter to that reason. Your “genuine reason” does not justify your bigotry. It is a post-hoc rationalization constructed and shaped by your bigotry.
It is not warmongering to only see a continuation of war as the only strategy? It is not warmongering to desire complete annihilation of the enemy? It is not warmongering to completely ignore evidence that diminishes the severity of the threat being faced and dismiss arguments that our side is behaving atrociously and should not be doing so? It is not warmongering to
I’m sure you’ve even let them use your bathroom.
Yes, we are bullying and othering you . Just like the entire Middle East is the aggressor in a conflict where the United States invaded them . I hope you are going to bottle up all your crocodile tears, StevoR. There’s a booming market for them among Teh Menz right now.
Absolutely precious.
I think StevoR is going to eventually devolve to the point where he is exclusively playing word games. An increasingly large amount of his whining screeds have been limiting the definitions of words to one simple idea, saying that that specific version doesn’t technically apply, and then patting himself on the back.
Oh the fucking irony. I kind of wish annejones would reply by stomping her feet, denying that homophobia is a thing, claiming that she isn’t a bigot because she has “genuine reasons”, obstinately asking what gives StevoR the right to tell her to leave, and then start whining about how StevoR is bullying her. If only annejones were that clever.
Just going to repost this, because
txpiper said it and well, he said it.
and also because
this
Beatrice:
You’re fine with me. It’s not my place to speak for Chris, but his decision wasn’t centered on you or any one person. It’s the result of a cumulative effect.
Thumper #330
I empathize strongly with this, although do to different circumstances it’s not had as bad an effect on me as it did on you.
Shoot…I misspelled deceit.
Nigel,
“And in whom are bad behaviors encouraged by these bad policies?”
Inner city communities all over the US are pretty much clones of each other. At this point, American blacks have been targeted for so long by abysmally misguided government efforts that it looks like things can only get worse, especially now that we’re in what appears to a terminally ill economy. About the only glimmer of hope is a growing contingency of black conservatives who recognize what happened, and who is responsible for it.
txpiper:
You’re funny.
(Shoot… you mustered a malapropism)
And thus the texpip admits his racism and deliberate use of racist code words.
Pathetic.
And thus the texpip admits his anti-chinese bigotry too.
Disgusting.
You DON’T HAVE a genuine reason, StevoR. You just deluded yourself into thinking you did.
That alone did not make you a bigot nly made you an idiot.
But when others pointed out to you that your reasons WERE NOT VALID, and you refused to acknowledge it and continued in your asshattery, THAT is what made you a BIGOT.
Oh, I should’ve known that The Problem ™ was Big Gubmint (oogity boogity boogity) and all that there welfare and civil rights and other such nanny state reverse racist handout-giving socialist communism! And obviously Detroit finally declaring bankruptcy after years (decades) of problems means that every community with a large number of African Americans in it is going to similarly go down the crapper, because every black community is basically the same! Of course!
Is txpiper actively trying to out-bigot StevoR and annejones? Is this what happens when you take a Bible away from a creationist wingnut?
The latest being a regthuglican appointed by the state “administrator” (read crook).
Link to my #342
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/14-7
Rethuglicans aren’t very good with government, are they?
I don’t think it’s active, I think he really believes that he’s not a bigot, just like the Dome’s other two (current) resident bigots.
You have data, or just assertions?
–
Calling it now. If the texpip drops a quote, that quote will turn out, on closer analysis, to demonstrate the exact opposite of what the texpip will claim that it does.
Oh, Republicans. They think Big Gubmint is diabolical and incompetent and will prove it you by leading by example.
Yes, I was really just hoping that we didn’t have our resident gibbering creationist idiot transform into yet another mindless self-absorbed handwringing bigot. Because grappling with creationist stupidities and inanities is nearly pleasant in comparison to tackling the steaming turds dropped by the assorted hatemongers that we constantly have to deal with.
(An Aside: Seriously, there used to be a point where Sophisticated Theology wankery and undying anti-factual creationist talking points used to frustrate me. Infuriate me. The outright lies, the smugness, the denial and inability to actually learn. It was borderline offensive to me. It seemed so serious. But it’s nothing compared to homophobes, MRAs, racists, and other assorted bigots. They have all of that in spades, in addition to actually using their dishonest rhetorical tricks to demonize people and “logically” strip others of rights, rather than simply propping up a nonsensical anti-scientific premise.)
It’s txpiper. If it turned out that it wasn’t ultimately “just assertions” I think heads would explode.
I predict that txpiper will not accept that you are a prophet when this event does come to pass. In addition, I predict that txpiper will not accept me as a prophet if I accurately predict the rejection of Amphiox The Prophet.
<blockquote(An Aside: Seriously, there used to be a point where Sophisticated Theology wankery and undying anti-factual creationist talking points used to frustrate me. Infuriate me. The outright lies, the smugness, the denial and inability to actually learn. It was borderline offensive to me. It seemed so serious. But it’s nothing compared to homophobes, MRAs, racists, and other assorted bigots. They have all of that in spades, in addition to actually using their dishonest rhetorical tricks to demonize people and “logically” strip others of rights, rather than simply propping up a nonsensical anti-scientific premise.)
IME, creationists almost invariably fall into at least one and often all of the other categories listed too.
True. Most of those are Authoritarian things, and fundies are the biggest, baddest Authoritarians around.
”You have data, or just assertions?”
Data? Where did that come from? Stereotypes are about postjudice perceptions. If I say game show host, who comes to mind, and what about him is typical?
===
”I predict that txpiper will not accept that you are a prophet when this event does come to pass. In addition, I predict that txpiper will not accept me as a prophet if I accurately predict the rejection of Amphiox The Prophet.”
I predict that when economic trouble degenerates into starvation and unthinkable violence, you won’t be able to figure out what went wrong. Dots as big as Dallas and you can’t connect them.
Tell us what went wrong.
What the shit? Are you trying to take lessons from Orwell here? The whole point of stereotypes is that they are confirmation bias-laced bits of prejudice that are primarily generated to slam entire peoples. The whole point of asking for data was to make you actually back up that stereotypes were based in fact, and not fiction – spoiler alert, the closest it comes is Stereotype Threat, where if you remind people of a stereotype, it can affect their performance in measurable ways.
Well, not the way you will, no. We already have a plethora of examples demonstrating your shitty thinking, I doubt this’ll be the one that redeems you.
A transparent and pathetic attempt to try to weasel out of having to provide data when he has been exposed as having none.
Pitiful.
Unsurprising.
[emphasis added]
Very sweeping claim. Requires something more than just an “everyone knows that!”-level assertion.
–
Doubtless the texpip is secretly hoping for this to come to pass, and fantasizing about it even as we speak.
Disgusting.
Unsurprising.
txpiper:
They’re neither postjudice (sic) nor perceptions*; they are inculcated prosopopoeiae.
—
* Not even based on perceptions.
—
Repent, for the end is near!
John Morales
You stumped google with “prosopopoeiae”.
Spelling?
and I already said that thing about The End.
;)
txpiper, you are not fooling anyone. We can see what you are saying, clear as day. You sneered and squirmed, but you gave your answer as a loud but mumbled “Just assertions” .
What do you think went wrong? You seem to think there is some profound, obvious, sole factor responsible here. You casually disregard the fact that this was not a sudden event and that Detroit has been in decline for quite a long time. As always, you seem to have no actual data supporting your stance, and just want to do some economic doomsaying based entirely on winks and nudges.
What are you actually trying to say? What is the problem that you are alluding to? Was it because Jesus was mad about something or another? Is it all because we heathens are eating too much shellfish? Is that the vague yet catastrophic detail that we are ignoring by not being sufficiently wingnutty for you?
Seriously, it is like txpiper can’t even get his own time-honored “Just Assertions” formula right.
Am I the only one who imagines annejones counts coup whenever she can gather the courage to take a little dump here? :)
Doesn’t someone else need to notice the coup-counting?
He’s just echoing the tired old rabid right-wing lunacy that Detroit’s (and all other inner-city poverty) problems are somehow the result of imaginary “progressive” policies, and that all it will take to fix it is reversion to (invariably mean-spirited) “conservative” policies instead, when most the existing evidence is already pointing to the opposite being considerably closer to the far more complicated truth.
It’s not even an original idea. Just mindlessly echoing delusional right-wing talking points and other assorted lies.
chigau, Jebus notices.
;)
Apropos of nothing, a musical interlude: Simon & Garfunkel – Mrs. Robinson.
John Morales
Ah, yes. That Jebus is kind of a busy-body, ain’t he?
—
S&G just what the doctor ordered.
—
I think I’ll run away from the meat discussion.
good night
If so, then her trophy feathers would have to be painted red.
Very, very red.
More paint than feather, really.
This scares me a little. Homeopathic vaccinations:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-03/queensland-health-raises-alarm-over-homeopath27s-alleged-immun/4863170
Is this BS widespread? It is the first I have heard about it.
I do, however, remember a coworker discussing his ‘homeopathic first aid kit’. I can’t get my head around the levels of fail in that.
I have the main homeopathic medicines in my large first aid kit. Two gallons of distilled sterile water. Three liters of normal saline soulition. Yeaaaa! I am a homeopath!!!!!
I wanted to ask him if it was carbonated or flat…
…but workplace and all that…
From the link @ #366:
Sooo …what’s the point of getting ‘the treatment’ then?
“including a compulsory consent form stating the treatment is not
an immunisationa treatment”Fixed that for them…
Homeopathic immunisation, now with extra weewoo.
.
.
Combined with regular immunisation, this treatment makes your patient more resistanthomeopathic practitioner richer.
Bugger strikethroughs are different on the firefox toolbar.
.
weewoo.
patient more resistanthomeopathic practitioner richer.First of all you have to realize that the entire argument for homosexual parenting relies on being able to convince people that male and female are interchangeable in parental roles, while at the same time arguing that gender is all-important in sexual partners. It’s ok to demand rights based on the importance of the gender of their sex partners but it’s bigoted to say that kids need both a mother and a father figure. That’s hypocritical, and it shows that homosexuals place a higher priority on their own perverted sexual desires than they do on the needs of children to be raised in a stable environment.
Secondly, the studies you’re looking at are NOT “comparative”. They don’t tell you that those kids fared better than they would have if raised by normal parents, in spite of how you guys try to portray the information. All it tells you is that the kids survived the experience without being turned into bat shit crazy serial killers.
Being taken seriously is overrated. It’s virtually impossible for me to be taken seriously by a group of people who are fundamentally opposed to my view, and will argue against it no matter what information I provide in support. Is there really anything at all that I could provide you with that you, as a supporter of homosexuality and an opponent of anything even remotely religious or objectively moral, would allow to change your mind on the issue of parenting?? If you just simply shrug off the importance of biological relationship in a child’s life as unimportant, then what could I provide you with that will be acceptable to you?? That doesn’t make your argument effective, it just gives you an out to reject anything that is provided to you, as legitimate. For what it’s worth, I don’t take people like that seriously either so I guess the feelings are mutual, and my not being taken seriously by you and others like you is not problematic for me.
I’m not insulting those who are the actual parents of children that they are raising.
That’s because they are filling the natural role of mother and father that the biological parents, for whatever reason, have been terminated.
No, if a homosexual is the actual biological parent of the child then I respect that relationship, just as I would any other biological parent. I smell hypocrisy in your argument, though. Why is it suddenly important to recognize the biological connection between this homosexual and his child, when you say that it isn’t important in other situations where it goes against your position??
Sounds like a nanny to me. That partner is in no way filling the role of any missing parent. A man can’t be a mother, step-mother, or any similar role, and the child’s father is already there. No child has two fathers, so how is he filling any natural parental role?? He isn’t, he’s just playing house with daddy.
No, they are the married partner of the biological parent, who is fulfilling the role of the non-custodial parent, in the child’s daily life.
Of course you’re not going to SAY that, but it is a natural fallout of the position that you’re taking. See the case of Lisa Miller who had to leave the country because a judge ordered that her biological daughter be given over to an ex-lesbian partner who isn’t even related to the child, even though there were no allegations against Miller, of neglect or abuse.
I realize that you guys may not even agree that such a thing should happen, but when you separate the biological relationship and give equal standing as a parent, to an unrelated individual, those kinds of situations are going to arise.
No one is contesting that those biological parents should have the same parental rights to their child as other biological parents. That parental right exists for all biological parents, including those who decide to begin living a homosexual lifestyle, but that parental right doesn’t extend to also give them a right to totally redefine everything about marriage and family. It is their choice to live as a homosexual and include their child in that lifestyle, so they made their own bed.
As for adoption, the only kids that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt are those who are old enough to have already decided that they too are homosexual. If a teen says they are homosexual, and has been evaluated by a mental health professional, then I can see why being adopted by other homosexuals might be helpful. Aside from that situation, no homosexual pair should be allowed to adopt children.
Sure. send children off to abusive hetero couples instead, hey? No good letting children growing up in a loving household that doesn’t conform to your bigoted standard.
Something for the Peez: one of the many uses for a dead cat.
You don’t call denying visitation to a second parent abuse?
No, of course you and your ilk wouldn’t. Because she’s not really a parent in your book.
You don’t call deliberately circumventing the law (court order) a bad thing? Being selective in abiding by the rules is okay– when it’s a rule you don’t like. Got it.
What the…?
Gee unsupported assertion, dismissed without evidence.
Unsupported assertion, dismissed without evidence. Your word, annejones, is that of lying and bullshitting delusional religious bigot. Either cite some literature to back up your claims, or shut the fuck up. Your word is worthless drivel.
To refute your drivel that kids will be taken forcibly from their parents and given to homosexual couples. Pure paranoid drivel from you.
Your unevidenced OPINION is dismissed without evidence.
Gee, I guess nobody can adopt kids then when their biological parents give them up.
Pure bigotry from a homophobic bigot. Dismissed as drivel.
Homosexuality is something one is born with, not a disease or mental disorder. What a loudmouthed hateful homophobic bigot you are loser.
Your evienceless and bigoted OPINION is worthless to change any minds here.
Unfortunately yes, and my impression is that it is getting worse.
ew, ew, ew, ew ew, WTF did I just read? *frantically trying to wipe the annejones filth from my eyes*
Scrolling backwards through comments can be hazardous to the insufficiently caffienated morning brain.
Which is why I always start where I left off and work down. Then I am prepared for the inane bigotry from the usual suspects.
Some children have been murdered by their biological parents.
Quite a few through faith-healing.
annejones
Excluding gestation and lactation, what are male and female parental roles?
What a stellar argument against single parent households. You are a real winner.
(And it is not at all hypocritical of you to oppose same-sex couples adopting on the basis that you think biological parents are better parents, meaning that you think ANY adoption is inferior?)
I’m calling projection.
I would answer, but I’m too busy laughing at the attempted conflation of “religious” and “objectively moral”.
Yeah, annejones just really doesn’t care for adoption. Though it is interesting that she is willing to apparently tolerate it and see it as acceptable when it is necessary. But those children with no biological parents better get both a mother and a father out of the deal, or else they are better off being thrown in an orphanage!
You are a fucking idiot. It only “sounds like a nanny” because you are baldly asserting that a child is incapable of having two father figures and because you just assume that a man cannot take on a maternal role. You haven’t bothered to actually argue the point. You just say that it is Natural and assume that mother and father are biological roles, set in stone, and don’t bother to specify what these roles are and why only a woman and man respectively can fill them.
Yes, redefining marriage and family.
Because every family is one mother, one father, and 2.5 children. Fuck single mothers, fuck single fathers, fuck children with two households because of divorce, fuck extended families, fuck adoptive families.
Because every marriage throughout all time has been one adult man and one adult woman who love each other. Just look at history! Oh, but don’t look too closely! Please ignore polygamy, please ignore marriage being used as way to join two families, please ignore women being sold off to a suitable groom by the bride’s father, please ignore the young age at which people got married sometimes. And please, above all, ignore that our current institution of marriage is no longer religious in nature!
The myriad of things that are inconsistent with your myopic worldview are what make it clear to us that you are a bigot, anne.
lolfuckingwut? After all your arguing (read: asserting) about how necessary it is to have both a mother and father, you say that gay kids are exempt? It is pretty fucking transparent that you just fucking hate gay people. Gay people are too horrible and awful to raise kids. But gay kids are too horrible and awful for you to care about, so let that gay couple have them, who cares!
Fuck you, annejones. You are sleazy, you are narrow-minded, and you are a bigot. You don’t actually care about children, you just want an excuse, however flimsy, to hate on gay people. Go fuck yourself.
@ txpiper
Yeah, another goddist that completely fucked up what John B. Calhoun was actually trying to say: Link to The Behavioral Sink
…
Apropos of nothing in particular: Suede – The Beautiful Ones
If that’s the definition you’re going with, then a comparative study is impossible. It literally can’t be done, not on this subject, nor on any other… which is why the entire rest of the world doesn’t go by this definition.
What does annejones hope to accomplish here? Seriously, I think it is a safe bet that xe will not find anyone here that is sympathetic to hir religious crusade against gays and lesbians. Xe has no argument and has no evidence to support hir claims. Every point xe has made has been refuted many times and hir morally repugnant opinions and not at all welcome.
Perhaps annejones is some sort of advance herald of the westboro Baptist Church.
Whatever the reason, THIS GAY MAN is very glad that society is becoming more compassionate and understanding of gays and lesbians. I long for the day when Hate-Mongers like annejones will be pushed to the fringes of society and their hateful rhetoric loudly and proudly condemned.
Rather like the reception the delusional godbotter receives here.
Btw, annejones: there are no gods.
I am sure that it will astonish you to learn this, but, by and large, parents do not use their genitals to raise their children.
Well, yes. It is. It’s bigoted against homosexual parents, and against those who are single parents by accident or by design.
It’s particularly bigoted against rape victims.
No, it’s your hypocritical desire to give rapists their victims, and their victim’s child, that places higher priority on perverted sexual desire.
Why are you even here? Why don’t you post on a forum where your bigotry is accepted?
You can’t provides information in support of bigotry, because bigotry is ultimately an emotional response, not an intellectual one.
And I repeat: Why are you even here? You cannot make us hate what you hate, because your hatred has no intellectual component.
Actually, one of the things being worked on in biology is transforming male cells into eggs, and female cells into sperm, so that it would technically be possible for a child to have two biological fathers or two biological mothers.
Would that shut you up?
By helping to take care of the children, like any natural parent?
Just as a same-sex parent would.
Or rather, giving rapists their victims’ children is a natural fallout of the position that you are taking.
After years of Miller denying Jenkins her court-ordered visitation rights. I see that Miller’s contempt for the law and for her former partner arose from her growing religious fanaticism.
I also note that Miller remains unmarried. So much for a child having a right to a mother and a father.
So legal parents have no rights, in your universe?
There are no such allegations against Jenkins, either. And technically, Miller is in contempt of the law.
And if you insist that biological relationship is all that matters, you end up with situations where rapists get their victims’ children.
Actually, I see from the Wikipedia page on Miller v. Jenkins that Bryan Fischer is saying that children should be kidnapped from gay parents and given to straight parents.
They’re defining their own marriage and family. Who the hell are you to deny them that definition?
Any reasonably competent homosexual pair should be allowed to adopt any children they can support and raise to adulthood.
John:
I expect you’re the only one here who thinks it’s somehow clever to make annejones out to be an incompetent Plains Indian. I guess stupidity and bigotry is just dandy for some people.
Amphiox:
And another player. You should be ashamed, both of you.
I’m having a surprisingly strong reaction to the hunting thread.
I think I’ll go kill some weeds.
Tony @ 162: sorry to confuse you. Things have changed some since I first came here. It used to be smack down the troll and be done with it. I guess you could call the new way “evolution.” ;-)
John @ 165: yeah, I went back and checked. The sentiment remains the same however. Give a guy a chance to grow and change.
The above taken care of:
Halfway thru Jesus, Interupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them). Liking it.
Jackie how is that a dust storm just blew through the Thunderdome just as I was reading your comment at 273? Can I reiterate how awesome a person I think are, even though I’ve never met you?
Sorry Caine, I did not realize the phrase could be interpreted in that way.
dontpanic:
Helluva duststorm, eh?
I have read Jackie’s #273 a few times now, and each time it brings me to tears. Basic compassion towards others, especially those facing hardships is commendable. To open one’s home and treat a child to such experiences goes well beyond awesome.
(The comment also has the added benefit of being the perfect counter to the feces annejones is spraying).
Actually, thinking about it … I have probably met Jackie to a much further degree then 99% of the people I interact w/ in meatspace. And even if it weren’t against a background of annejones shittyness I think Jackie is exceptional on the positive side! Gawd knows we see plenty of examples of people being exceptional in their wrongheadedness and bigotry; it’s sad that exceptionalism works on such a tilted playing field.
Polar bears.
But you don’t offer “information”—all you offer is opinion. While declaring invalid the information that is presented to you, on the grounds that we don’t have access to parallel dimensions in which to conduct accurate studies on whether child A would/would-have been better off with 1) their birth parents, 2) a mixed-gendered set of adoptive parents, 3) a like-gendered set of adoptive parents, 4) a like-gendered set of parents one of whom is also their biological parent, or 5) polar bears.
Or, again, batches of identical clone kids. Order ’em up the way you would zebrafish…or mice.
All of which is meant to be taken semi-seriously.
By which I mean, “I continue to find your opinions wrt this issue to be stupid, and infinitely mockable”.
–
Nonono! Cloned kids, or multiple parallel time-tracks! Totes do-able!
–
annejones is a martyr, come to Witness Unto The Heathen.
She (and I’m assuming that annejones is female, since she seems dead-set on the Traditional Gender Rules thing) gets brownie points for that, in her own mind, if not in her nonexistent Happy Hereafter.
–
And if they do, they are doing it wrong.
–
Ha!
Perhaps annejones fears that if she had been raised by a gay couple, she would have caught the gay!!11!1!
–
Caine:
What? It’s an idiom which is well-suited to expressing a concept.
(You imagine if I characterise someone as being gung-ho it means I’m making them out to be Chinese?)
Wouldn’t want to bury the hatchet and smoke a peace pipe rather than be on the war path, would you?
John Morales could you find something else to pick on?
Look around the recent threads, there’s lots to choose from.
chigau, it takes two to tango, and it’s not I who is the lead.
John:
You may have been unaware of the offensive nature of that idiom before, but now that you are aware this would be a great time to simply say “I’m sorry” without any further justification.
Amphiox:
Thank you, Amphiox. Unless anyone has a good reason to believe that annejones is one of a member of certain tribes of Plains Indian, there’s no good way to interpret John’s comparison. At least not from where I sit, being Indian myself.
John Morales look at #359.
but since I participated, you just do whatever turns your crank.
You can justify it in the end.
Tony:
That would be nice, but I won’t hold my breath. Annejones is an ugly, nasty piece of work, so…let’s compare her to an Indian performing a specific war ritual! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Why in the fuck should an Indian mind?
Jesus Christ. I’m out.
*sigh*
In an effort to bring something pleasant to thunderdome , I wish to share my cousins latest videography and music video.
North Dakota footage shot at and near the family farm, grain elevators, and a lovely tune that captures the mood of the wind on the prairie.
Dakota Wind
JM: annejones is doing the equivalent of marking her (putative) kills on the side of her God-powered Spitfire.
cm: But they really did paint stuff on the fuselage after each (successful) engagement.
If it’s upsetting, I’d contend that it at least seems to be fairly universal. *puzzled*
It didn’t occur to me that the phrase could be offensive, but when you put it like that…
theophontes: Apropos of nothing in particular: Suede – The Beautiful Ones
That’s Trash — You and Me, We’re the Litter on the Breeze
(The line “left Seven Sisters for a room in a sea-side shack” sticks with me, too.)
Holy fuck you are an incredible fucking asshole sometimes, John.
I didn’t either, but good ol’ John has to double down on that fucking shit. Because, you see, that route leads to Word Games. And he can never resist the opportunity the deny that he is wrong so that he has the opportunity to beat us with his superior skill at Word Games!
“He’s just echoing the tired old rabid right-wing lunacy that Detroit’s (and all other inner-city poverty) problems are somehow the result of imaginary “progressive” policies”
Yeah, the libs pretty much own this one. Schools, cops, budgets…all of it.
Liberals are responsible for the automobile market, and the population demographics of “People who aren’t dirt poor move when the jobs leave”? Because those are the actual roots of most of Detroit’s problems.
Ah, so the reason Detroit went down the crapper was because something something something schools and something something something police force. Got it. Now we have a crystal clear vision so we can avoid this in the future. Thanks Captain Insight!
An interesting thing to notice is that Detroit filed for bankruptcy with every man, woman and child wearing about $28,000 worth of public debt. But at the federal level, every citizen, infant to aged, is now on the hook to the tune of almost twice that amount.
These are really exciting times.
anteprepro, Blackjack ain’t a word game — it’s a card game.
Gee, you mean actually providing a pension based upon real work? Gasp, what a novel concept. Maybe SSA should do the same thing, and provide a real retirement based on work ethic…..Then the Redhead and my self won’t have to pare our spending drastically when I finally retire…who would know Txpipier is a closet progressive…..
Man, you’re one of those fuckbrained Christians who gets off on the idea of the end times, aren’t you? Not that this is, and not that the US debt is going to lead to violence perpetrated against Meriken, but it’s still pretty sick.
txpiper
Are you right with Jesus?
txpiper, you imagine municipal (public) debt is the same as personal debt?
(heh)
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States
(That’s over $50k per capita!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Fgs6Jsm2I
The 90s were so much fun.
John:
This is a game to you?
Your continued responses remind me of a [white] guest I had years ago who called me his ‘nigga’. After informing him I did not like that term and found it offensive, he did the same fucking thing you are doing–justifying his use of it, rather than apologize for offending me.
Of course the story diverges there because he called me that twice more and I cut him off and kicked him out.
In your case, you continue to play games with words, or justifying yourself, instead of owning your transgression and apologizing.
Dammit, there are times you are incredibly thoughtful, all the while continuing your penchant for wordplay.
This is not one of those times.
I can only conclude that you do not care that you offended Caine.
Tonight is just not your night, John. No, txpiper does not believe that personal debt is the same thing as municipal debt. He was comparing Detroit’s debt per capita to the U.S. national debt per capita. You linked to the very thing that txpiper was referring to (the “federal debt” that was double Detroit’s $28 thousand per person, or “over $50k per capita!”) with the implication that you were actually refuting txpiper, instead of just repeating him. Whoops!
Seriously John, just admit that you were wrong. Admit that the initial comment that Caine brought up did have inappropriate connotations and the way that you dealt with Caine bringing up that issue was even more inappropriate. Just fucking apologize, for fuck’s sake.
Having consulted my copy of Municipal Debt Monthly, I’d say that Detroit is somewhat exceptional in terms of demographics (although you might want to keep an eye on Cleveland, OH) but the graph you really want to watch is this:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=72994&category_id=0
Tony:
Bah. I didn’t offend Caine; Caine took offence.
—
anteprepro:
Heh. Detroits’ inhabitants’ per capita public debt is simultaneously X in terms of their municipality and Y in terms of their nation’s — they’re not the same thing!
(And neither is their personal debt!)
<snicker>
Needless kowtowing is not my style, even if it would call off the dogs.
(How exactly do you imagine I was wrong?)
Morales
What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?
Do try to keep your pants on.
No fucking duh. That would be how refute txpiper, not scoffing about personal debt and then pointing to the very same per capita national debt figure that txpiper was alluding to themselves.
Go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole. Congratulations on becoming the Fourth Bigot of this thread. You’ve worked hard and finally earned that one!
Goddammit, what if your fucking problem, Morales? Would it really hurt you that much to just admit that you thoughtlessly used a phrase you shouldn’t have used? Would it really?
There are times when refusing to back down means that you’re taking a principled stance. THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.
I wonder, has anyone yet thought of using the excuse “I didn’t threaten you, you just felt threatened”?
Working hypothesis: He’s a Weredouchebag. Bitten by a radioactive douchebag, he transforms into a Douchebag on every night when the Douchebag constellation stars are aligned properly. But every other night, he is just the nice, mild-mannered, smug pedant that we all know and love!
History Repeating
Spybreak, Matrix edition
I love that album.
anteprepro:
That’s exactly what I did. :)
—
LykeX: threat? What threat?
myeck: Back down? From what?
anteprepro: Bigotry? What bigotry?
chigau: Wrong? What wrongness?
Stop digging, Morales.
Start here
And you misused it.
John’s logic circuits seem to malfunction when dealing with self-reflection. Quite fascinating.
(His humor drive, however, was always non-functional)
“Gee, you mean actually providing a pension based upon real work? Gasp, what a novel concept.”
No, that is a corrupt concept because it is municipal, county, state or federal governments making future committments on behalf of the citizens they are supposed to be serving. They could have, should have, but will never do it right…..some percentile of matching contribution based on actual excess in the budget, so no debt is incurred. But that is not progressive enough, is it?
chigau, misused it as per your #360?
(I thought the problem people now have with it was its purported offensiveness to Caine, not its misapplication)
John:
You have been around long enough to know about the digging of holes.
Fucking quit the word games and reboot your empathy. It is in there somewhere.
You are actually trying to minimize your insult-however unintentional it initially was-by saying you did not intend to offend Caine? You put this all on her shoulders and take no responsibility for the fact that YOUR words caused offense.
You are actively dismissing the effect your words have on others. No thought for how your words might affect someone who is part of a marginalized group. That would be excusable or forgivable (theoretically…I will not speak for Caine) if you owned up to your screw up, but you add to it with each response-related to this-that does not contain an unequivocal apology.
I don’t know if you genuinely do not understand what you have done wrong (and subsequently defended with levels of denial reminiscent of the house bigot* upthread) or if you know and are being obstinate or if you just cannot bring yourself to say “I’m sorry”
*referring to StevoR’s constant denial. Come to think of it, casting yourself as the one who did nothing wrong is *also* reminiscent of StevoR..
anteprepro:
It doesn’t matter. John thinks I’m fair game, and hey, it’s not being racist scum when it’s Indians, who the fuck cares about them? (Bitter sarcasm, in case anyone misses it.)
My thanks to you, Chigau, and others who are not letting this bigotry slide because it’s being spewed by a regular, and thanks to Amphiox for the apology.
I just can’t hang out here anymore. Now John and Chas can have a fuckin’ party.
I guess Amphiox was needlessly kowtowing…
****
Several months ago, while joking around at work, I called a black coworker ‘boy’. I thought my context was clear, but he pulled me to the side and asked me never to call him that again. Clearly he was offended.
So of course I dug in and talked about how I meant the word differently and how he got offended, rather than me causing the offense.
OH WAIT, THATS NOT IT.
I SAID “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
I felt bad because something I said had the effect of offending someone else. It was worse given the history of black men being called ‘boys’.
Gee, you think pensions aren’t worth honoring, being an unfeeling liberturd fuckwitted idjit. Who cares what such an idjit thinks, since they don’t. Nothing bu tslogans and dishonesty all the way down, just like your inane complaints about evolution. Not thinking applied, which requires effort.
Uh-huh. Because both those names are in this thread. /sarc
The fuck?!
(Gotta love the use of the word “purported” there. John just can’t quit being a smug, dismissive asshole)
Please, dear readers, before John tries to make this into a nitpicky debate about the merits of one particular “idiom”, please keep in mind that John said this in his first and only response to Caine in this thread:
Oh, yes, “counting coup” was just a harmless idiom that had nothing to do with stereotyping Native Americans! And John proves that by mockingly spitting out as many other similar idioms as he can! Because why not!
John, you should be fucking ashamed of yourself.
Caine:
I’m sorry that you even feel like you need to say that, since this shit shouldn’t be tolerated no matter who is spewing it.
That’s a curious way to finally enter this conversation.
“I felt bad because something I said had the effect of offending someone else.”
That is a decent sentiment Tony. But on the other hand, if you let people know that your happiness depends on what people around you don’t say, then you are weak. The strong position is not give a red rat’s what anyone else thinks, says or does.
Caine:
FFS.
Look: “I expect you’re the only one here who thinks it’s somehow clever to make annejones out to be an incompetent Plains Indian.”
That’s like saying that someone doubling down is making someone out to be a casino gambler.
(Idioms are not literal expressions!)
And people wonder what’s wrong with me!
—
You’d better hope no Han Chinese people are offended by your making Amphiox to be aping them, eh?
<snark>
I strongly recommend that you back down, Morales.
Caine:
I’m sorry to see you go.
****
Fuck it.
Thats it.
I tried to be fairly nice, even giving John some benefit of the doubt, and alluding to his ability to be compassionate…fuck that shit.
Fuck John Morales.
As I am on my phone, and do not know how to killfile, I can only not respond to that asswipe in the future. I was able to overlook the downright insulting comments he made toward me earlier this year, though I did have my feelings hurt.
But his refusal to see anything outside of his world. His inability or refusal to acknowledge the impact of his words. His repeated denial of bigoted comments that he made.
I’m done with him.
He may not be as horrible as StevoR, but he is on the same continuum.
I hereby back down.
Does anyone know if John Morales actually agrees with the community’s case against gendered and genital based insults? Because otherwise John is being quite the fucking hypocrite here.
Txpiper:
Perhaps it is not clear to you:
I do not give a fuck about your god laced opinions.
My compassion and empathy is a strength for me, not a weakness.
I do not care what a little shit like you has to say about how I choose to conduct myself and interact with others.
Over the years, the magic incantation “Chas” (it used to be “Sven”, for what it’s worth) has entranced me. Maybe too much this time.
No.
“Gee, you think pensions aren’t worth honoring”
No, I don’t. The people burdened with the obligation didn’t make the promises. Granted, they consistently voted for charlatan pimps, and will continue to do so, but no.
What part of “society” do you not get? This isn’t about your own happiness as much as not actively making other people around you miserable. It is about getting along with other people and trying your best to not hurt people. It isn’t strong to be indifferent to others’ feelings. It isn’t strong to not care if you hurt people, or to completely ignore and disregard what others say about you. That is weakness. An inability to cooperate, no desire to learn or accept criticism, complete lack of empathy, no teamwork skills, no relationship skills, no conflict resolution skills. It is a recipe to become an unemotional lump indifferent to outside input and uncaring about whether they are hurting others. It is the route to become hollow, to become abusive, to become a sociopath. Your conception of strength is based on toxic masculinity, or some warrior ideal. Some vague belief that, yes, in fact, some men can in fact become an island. But, just like belief in Space Ghosts and Zombie Jesus, it is a belief that has little basis in reality. We are social animals. We survive and thrive because we work fucking well together. A human that detaches themselves from other humans, from society, is quite the opposite of “strong” given that.
The irony is that I am of Han Chinese descent.
what the fuck?
If by “strong” one means “sociopathic”.
But coming from the texpip, utterly unsurprising.
Amphiox:
My apologies.
No, as a matter of fact, they do not. Because absolutely NONE of those policies actually count as “liberal” or “progressive”. Notwithstanding the fact that few if any of those policies is in any way directly related to Detroit’s current problems, all of those policies are centralist compromises between right and left wing positions.
Now it is true that they are all more left-wing and progressive than the texpip, but 99.9% of EVERYTHING is more progressive than the texpip, so that is a low, low bar.
But of course the texpip specializes on low bars.
I apologize, for I was unaware of the ancient arcana at work.
Reading txpiper on politics is a weird experience. It’s so vague that I don’t know whether he is demonizing all politicians, all Democratic politicians, a specific subset of Democrats, or a specific set of politicians that may include Republicans. All I can get is that there are an unspecified number of possibly liberal politicians who txpiper also doesn’t like for reasons that txpiper will only vaguely allude to. I don’t know if txpiper is trying to be vague intentionally to avoid being pinned down on specifics, or if txpiper is just too incompetent to actually know anything more detailed than vague whines and insults. I’m betting on “both of the above”.
chigau:
Sigh…
I should have waited until I was less pissed off before I wrote that.
You are right.
The issues I have with John, substantial though they are, do not include warmongering and supporting genocide.
****
John:
I apologize for that.
Fuck, you are an asshole. You knew what the fuck you were saying – you were TRYING to be a racist jackass.
You’re… also a jackass, but more likely an ignoramus. Not hat it makes a difference to the presence of jackassery.
Pimp: Person who doesn’t do what TXPiper says.
Contract: An agreement that is only binding when TXPiper agrees with it ideologically.
Also, I note that this asinine logic isn’t only something that can be applied to government. “Sure, the corporation has a contract to provide you with X for the next five years, but that was the LAST CEO…” Pensions for public employees is providing something to which all workers are entitled to. That public ones are one of the few nominally receiving them speaks to the private sector’s greed, not to the public sector being too ‘generous’. And if you actually look at the financial reports out of the city of detroit, the problem is not the pensions, the problem was the auto industry collapsed. It was exacerbated by state laws that demolished methods Detroit used to control cost or help the citizenry (such as guaranteeing that public sector jobs with the City of Detroit went to… detroit residents).
None required for me, but I cannot speak for others of Chinese descent.
As my family immigrated to North America before I was born, I grew up with the kowtowing tradition being little more than something of historical intellectual interest, so I take no personal offence at people using it in jokes. It may not be the same for others.
This was what I assumed the counting coup thing was as well, a historical factoid no longer of cultural importance that living peoples would not find offence in any more. Making that assumption was my mistake.
Every decent human being who agrees to participate in the social contract of democracy makes the explicit promise that he or she accepts the burden of obligations made in the past by previous iterations of their democratic society, as well as those made in the present by their elected governments in their name, even if they did not make those promises themselves or even approve of those promises at all.
Without that promise democracy doesn’t work at all, and those who, like the texpip, refuse to accept the responsibility of said obligations are enemies of democracy.
John Morales
You really are an unmitigated asshole, aren’t you? This site would be greatly improved if you were no longer on it. I beg of you to fuck off with alacrity, and not return. Perhaps you and StevOR can go somewhere and commiserate somewhere about how no one appreciates your deep thoughts on race issues.
texpip
It is unsurprising that you consider strength to be synonymous with sociopathy. This outlook makes you an entire parasite upon society, as you contribute nothing to anyone unless compelled by force, and spend all your effort railing against the society which is the sole reason you are alive; without society, human life is extremely short, as babies abandoned in the wilderness have rapidly discovered historically.
No government can function properly if it does not have the ability and authority to make future commitments on behalf of their citizens.
By calling this “corrupt”, the texpip exposes that either he does not understand the very first thing about practical governance at all, or he is an anarchist who wants to see all government fail.
I wonder if the texpip reserves the same degree of condemnation for church authorities making future commitments on behalf of their parishioners. (Said authorities rarely being even elected at all).
Query?
The likely answer to the likely question is thus: John is defending his comment on the basis that “idioms are not literal expressions”. He claims that saying that someone is “counting coup” is not implying that the person doing so is Native American. Given that argument, I wonder how he could also agree with the arguments that, for example, “bitch” is a gendered insult. We’ve seen the argument go down before: “bitch” has multiple definitions and not all of them explicitly refer to women, therefore it isn’t gendered when you use those Other definitions. I’m pretty sure JT actually used a similar argument while he was at FTB to defend using “bitch” as a verb. Basically: I don’t see how John could logically agree with the latter while having the complete opposite position on the former. (Though I don’t suspect that he does actually disagree with the latter, if you thought that that was what I was implying).
(Now that I’ve actually said it more clearly, I realize that my logic is a tad more convoluted and strained than it seemed in my head, so your WTF was probably warranted! I might need sleep. And yet I still type. Goddammit.)
It is not really that different from the vague, superficial, erroneous and incompetent manner in which he comments on science.
He is basically a dishonest and incompetent character in all spheres.
Trying to think through txpiper’s “philosophy on strength” (which I take to mean ‘character’) I am struck by how unworkable it would be to not care what anyone else says, thinks or does. Where does that begin and end?
Do you care about anyone else’s thoughts, deeds or words? Mother, father, aunt, cousin, best friend, grandfather? If so, why? If not, why?
Or does that “philosophy” apply only to acquaintances or strangers?
How do you even date, let alone sustain a relationship when you have this “strength”?
Yeah, the Bible ban has really made that incredibly clear about him in just this thread! He truly is a Jackass of All Trades.
http://xkcd.com/1216/
Y’know, if you’re a Stoic rather than a Christian, maybe you shouldn’t bother with your silly, strained, cherry-picked defenses of Christianity.
Is that why you hang out here? Because atheists don’t care about what Christians think, say, or do, and you envy that strength? And because you can show off by not caring what atheists think, say, or do?
My guess is either by having just enough “weakness” so that you can actually function, by attracting other people who have the same antisocial view of “strength”, or just through outright coercion from start to finish.
So, two sickening options and one option that is just a technical loophole. It’s like religious apologetics without religion!
:( :( :(
and
*hugs*
–
John…I’m just not understanding how you’re missing the point re your offensive comments.
:(
I can not make it make sense.
–
Caine
You will be missed.
Cicely
It’s about par for the course for John. I can’t see why anyone’s surprised; he has a long history of being an asshole in exactly this fashion, and being called on it, and doubling down, and then doing it again. This is why I’d like for him to fuck off and stop polluting the conversation.
Caine
You will be missed! ♥
+++
annejones
I cannot change whom I am attracted to.
I can, however, change my behaviour towards my children.
And my behaviour towards my children has
littlenothing to do with whom I am attracted to.Big difference.
Oh and Tony
I hope that one day the law changes in your favour and allows you to adopt children, because you would be one of the awesomest parental figures ever.
Amphiox:
I am not Caine, but when I perused the thread yesterday I definitely went “wtf?” when I saw it used in that context. I’m not sure when the last time I heard it used as an idiom was, but seeing it divorced of its cultural roots doesn’t come automatically to my eyes, at the very least.
And I’m also so burned out on racist microaggressions and this kind of bullshit that I just couldn’t add anything to the thread then. I’m sorry, Caine.
@ John Morales
Oy Vey! You have a problem with other minds sometimes? Or cultural differences? Or … what? [Obviously no need to answer immediately, but sometime you may want to consider that there are non-Aussies out there too. What may seem trivial in your neck of the woods may be quite contentious in another.]
…
@ cm
I may be reading to much into it, but Suede do very much (to myself at least) seem to grasp the issues at stake with the behavioural sink (embrace it almost!). Check out the video you posted, also their “Animal Nitrate” video. The city is a rats nest, red in tooth and claw, with endless corridors and passageways, stair and lift shafts. Architectural brutalism defines an environment much like Utopia 25. Therein one can find little boxed out spaces, softened by silk and suede, in which the Beautiful Ones ™ preen.
@ Caine
Can we draw you back here with a discussion of rats? We have your back.
Jose
Sudden? You’ve been hiding under a rock since 1988?
I don’t know where the hell you live, but everyone I know or see uses the terms black or African-American when referring to issues that affect/target/involve black people specifically, but many problems relating to racism have effects which are not limited to black people.
Yes, no, and you really are a disingenuous asshole, aren’t you, respectively.
MM:
It’s okay, I’m suffering a burnout as well, it’s getting harder and harder to respond to such shit.
Theophontes:
That made me smile. I’ll consider it. Thank you, Theophontes.
I guess what I wanted to say last night—but couldn’t brain enough to Do The Words—was, John, it all comes down to the fact that you don’t get to choose what racial/cultural stereotypes/misappropriations a member of that race/culture finds offensive.
You have no skin in that game.
Arguably, if you were a member of that race/culture, the two of you could then duke it out for our
amusementeducation—but I suspect that this is not the case here.–
QFT!
–
Theophontes:
QFT! Also a discussion of rats would be wonderful.
”Pensions for public employees is providing something to which all workers are entitled to.”
That’s a nice little axiom, but don’t be surprised if a generation should come along that doesn’t feel compelled to keep promises they had nothing to do with making.
“I am struck by how unworkable it would be to not care what anyone else says, thinks or does.”
It works quite well if you are managing your own life and happiness complex. Yes, words and insults can hurt, but a person who collapses in indignation every time they hear someone use words they don’t like is simply giving up control.
Speaking of weakness and twisted reactions:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2383814/Bureaucrats-ban-list-phrases-including-citizen-avoid-insulting-immigrants-brown-bag-considered-racist.html
Caine bait
Keeep well.
And this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what you said originally, you pitiful liar.
Gee, txpiper acutally keeping his lies a bullshit short leash? Swoon…..(making sure the extra heavy duty fainting coach is availalbe.
Have txpiper and peterooke met?
But if you undermine people’s trust in the promise of future pensions, you’ll have to increase their pay with the corresponding amount to get them to work, since they’ll now have to pay into private pension plans. You don’t actually save any money that way.
Either you pay higher taxes to cover the pensions of past employees or you pay higher taxes to pay for the pay increase of current employees.
Moreover, it’s a principle that goes far beyond simply public pensions. The idea that promises will be honored is essential. For one, our entire economic system relies on it. The very concept of money relies on a promise to pay. It’s the promise of future payment that makes it money, rather than just little pieces of paper… and notably, the promise of a different person than the one who’s actually handing you the money.
If future generations don’t honor the agreements of the past, the past has no reason to make them and the continuity of society is impossible. Honestly, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through.
teehee
…In addition to the welfare payments to cover those past employees who didn’t pay into private pensions (and who accepted artificially lowered wages because of that promise) because they were expecting to be covered by the, now non-existent, public pension plan.
Canceling public pensions retroactively would actually cost you more money during the transition period: pay hikes equaling the pensions + welfare payments.
If you eliminate the welfare, you’re condemning people who’ve worked hard all their lives to death by starvation. That doesn’t seem quite fair either, does it?
Because that is totally an accurate description of when a black man takes offense, due to historically racist and demeaning connotations, to being called “boy”! And a completely accurate description of the “weakness” inherent about caring that offense was taken!
Go fuck yourself, you dishonest shit-bag.
Aww, I didn’t even notice that little txpiper decided to prove they are a Jackass of All Trades by citing The Daily Fail! Precious! Pro-tip: No, it isn’t a ban. And though The Daily Fail does mention it just to scoff at it, because they are wingnuts just like you, there is actually (I was surprised myself!) good reasons to try to avoid the term “brown bag” if possible.
Though I am not sure why any of that would matter for someone with so little regard for both facts and other people’s feelings. Really, is there anything at all that you actually value, txpiper? Or do you really care just about yourself and nothing else? Is everything else that you argue just an extension of that selfishness? Just a simple desire to thrust your opinions on everyone else, without actual concern for the common good, for justice, or even for truth?
http://m.xkcd.com/1216/
The link is to a site that provides the alt.text for the alt.impared.
(like me and my ipad)
OK, if you check the timestamps and figure that I’m 5 hours ahead of the Americas, well, yes, that was posted at 3:26am, and I was a bit, um, tired (and possibly emotional).
Let me try again.
While there have been massive arguments involving various characters of the Pharyngula commentariat, taking offense at one person and then dragging a completely-uninvolved other person into it seemed … uncharitable.
I don’t know. *shrug*
Eh, the problem with Detroit is that the city’s liabilities aren’t covered by the state, and even if they were, the state’s liabilities wouldn’t be covered by some larger economic entity.
If only there were some larger economic entity, some sort of federation of states to cover these necessities. What might we call it?
I may be mistaken, but I believe that in conservative circles at least, the term for that is “The Boogeyman”.
Hah! Worse than that, though.
World Government.
:-)
The day that this happens is the day that democracy fails as a political system, and gets replaced by something else.
From his words, this appears to be something the texpip is hoping for.
Previous posts have shown extreme liberturidan tendencies from Txpip…
txpiper:
You love being vague.
I gave you examples that would have allowed you to illustrate how effective your philosophy is. You chose not to engage any of them or explain yourself. All you did was reassert your opinion which you have shown no evidence of being reasonable or workable.
Come on, this is your opportunity to talk about something non religious so no fear of bannination (although, I believe stupidity is bannable sometimes), yet rather than give details on how this philosophy works, you choose to repackage your earlier assertion/insult as if anyone forgot??
Here, let me help you out-
If you do not care what other people think, say or do:
— you do not care if a coworker tells you your breath stinks and you should not speak to anyone up close
— that accident you were in that totalled your car? You dont care because you dont care what people do
— your boss thinks you are lazy and frequently late for work, so he fires you. You, of course, dont cate
— a family member is hurt in an accident and requests your presence in the hospital. you decline bc you do not care what they say or think.
— you’re shopping on Black Friday for Xmas presents just as you are about to pick up the last XBox Live, someone comes along and grabs it first. But hey, you dont care.
— a coworker tells you she feels harassed by the boss. She wants to report him, but asks your opinion. Seeing as how you do not care what she thinks, says or does…
— you are the manager of a company and you sexually harass an employee. When she confronts you about it, asking you to stop , you refuse bc you dont care what she thinks or does. Nor do you care when she goes to HR and you get terminated.
— you go on a first date with someone and your date mentions wanting Italian food. You drive to an oyster restaurant instead bc you dont care what your date thinks
— you leave a club one nightand walk past a gay couple being attacked. Rather than offering assistance or calling for help, you continue walking, bc you dont care what others do.
— you have a younger sibling in middle school who is bullied everday. His lunch money is stolen. He is shoved downstairs and he’s called ‘faggott’ even though he is heterosexual. He thinks he should work up the courage to punch the bully, but wants to know what your advice is. You offer none, since you do not care what your brother thinks, says or does.
— your brother does punch the bully, which only pisses him off more and results in a cracked tooth, mild concussion and facial lacerations. And suspension bc of the schools no tolerance policy. But you are indifferent bc you dont care what the bully did
These are just a small number of situations where , for empathetic people, the thoughts, opinions, needs and desires of others are recognized. Moreoever, the empathetic person often makes the attempt to understand the other persons perspective in an effort to be compassionate or understanding.
For those not in the know:
” Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another sentient or fictional being. One may need to have a certain amount of empathy before being able to experience accurate sympathy or compassion.”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy
Why should we care about the feelings, opinions or beliefs of others?
For me, the answer is simple. If I were in trouble, or sick, or allergic to peanuts, or fearing my safety, or being sexually harassed, I would want assistance.
If I were being mugged, I would want an observer to do _something_.
If I expressed a dinner preference to my date, I would want my opinion to be considered.
Combined with the above is the realization that others have hopes, dreams and desires. Are mine more important than someone else’s? Subjectively, perhaps. Objectively, hell no. The same holds true of everyone else. To achieve my needs, wants and desires I often require the assistance of others, which means we have to work together. We must cooperate.
In the course of cooperating with others I come to find that some segments of the population (queer people, people of color, women, persons with mental disabilities, gay men, people with physical disabilities for example) are mistreated. They are denied housing, marriage equality, job opportunities, or the right to vote. Some are denied basic human rights. Some are treated as second class citizens. Some are disproportionately targeted and imprisoned at alarming rates. Some are told from an early age, repeatedly that they should be subservient to men. Some are taunted and teased due to a mental or physical disability.
Now, there are some options I have.
I could apply your philosophy and simply not care about anyone or what problems they have. Then I remember that I have been and likely will be in need of assistance in the future. I also remember that achieving my goals is often dependent on cooperation.
Is greater success in cooperative efforts better achieved by promoting a friendly atmosphere where all parties can get along reasonably well or by cold, sterile, ambivalence.
While I believe there are some situations #2 might apply, I am certain that #1 is the answer in this case.
Again, I have dreams and goals that I want to bring to life.
So does the Hispanic lesbian I work with.
The next time we work together, she is pissed off.
She explains that not only was she denied hospital visitation rights to her partner of 12 years, she is told to go back to “her country”.
Since I chose Option #1, I decide to listen, attentively to her as she explains what happened. Plus, she listened to me when I related my story. I can do no less for her.
When she finishes, I realize what a horribly unfair situation she is in. I think how awful it would be to not be able to see my loved one in the hospital or experience the added racist insult. Then it hits me:
I have never experienced what she is going through, but I understand enough to know it is horrible and unjust. I also imagine how much worse the element of racism makes her situation. I come to understand and empathize with her because she is being discriminated against and I would not want to go through the same situation. Thus, I offer her my support and well wishes. She gains a compassionate, understanding friend who will listen to her thought, needs, and desires.
You know what? So did I?
Yes, that scenario was make believe, but I have had variations of it happen so many times.
When I found my best friend dead, I had friends support me in so many ways. One couple cleaned the house. One friend cooked me manicotti–her recipe. Two others brought copious amounts of food bc the last thing I was going to do was cook. In the wake of tragedy, people often express sorrow. But here, I had coworkers show up at my house to offer aid. To asdist in the tadks that I could not because I was a mess. The compassion they showefd me wad tremendous. It was greatly needed and much appreciated.
It turns out, over and over and over that being a caring, compassionate person who listens to people and takes their feelings, thoughts and emotions into account has resulted in people doing the same thing.
The strength my friends showed me…
The support and encouragement many here have shown me…
…it’s reciprocal.
THATS THE KIND OF WORLD I WANT EVERYONE TO LIVE IN.
say, the next time me and Morales are having a party, could someone let me know? Thanks.
(I hope I had fun.)