Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275711No, it's you editing my post.

You didn't say anything relevant to the topic. You just demonstrated that you hate the Catholic church with an irrational passion.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275711If you want to discuss what I said, not reducing it to the word 'blurp' would be the place to start.

Why discuss it? You have a hate-on for the Catholic church. Anything that is said will be twisted to show how much you hate the Catholic church. Therefore it won't be a discussion as much as a way for you to broadcast your hate about the Catholic church. The End.

Quote from: jeff37923;275716You didn't say anything relevant to the topic. You just demonstrated that you hate the Catholic church with an irrational passion.



Why discuss it? You have a hate-on for the Catholic church. Anything that is said will be twisted to show how much you hate the Catholic church. Therefore it won't be a discussion as much as a way for you to broadcast your hate about the Catholic church. The End.

Indeed I do hate the Catholic Church; they make it so easy to hate them too!

Nothing irrational about it, unless you happen to share their appalling prejudices and ignorance. People like that shouldn't be allowed to teach.

Why discuss it? Well you are responding to me, so why don't you tell me. If you don't want to discuss it then don't respond ffs.

Please show me where I have twisted what you have said (or anyone else for that matter, including that twisted old Nazi in the Vatican).

Well, in fairness, you didn't so much twist what he said, as ignore it entirely for a non-sequitur, and then when pressed, dismiss it with a one-liner.

THat's hardly a "discussion", so I don't see where the fuck you get off claiming any sort of high ground.

Quote from: J Arcane;275882Well, in fairness, you didn't so much twist what he said, as ignore it entirely for a non-sequitur, and then when pressed, dismiss it with a one-liner.

THat's hardly a "discussion", so I don't see where the fuck you get off claiming any sort of high ground.

The same fuck place you do, I imagine.

I haven't dismissed anything anyone has said, I've responded to them directly as I always do.

And this is a discussion; you can either choose to participate or not.

Quote from: Koltar;275345Small point of fact: When Jeff likely went to Catholic School the Pope was NOT the current one.  The pope then was likely John Paul II , or the one or two that just preceded him.

Jeff, was it late '70s or early '80s?


-Ed C.

Indeed, but I don't recall the doctrines of the Church being less tolerant then - no matter how cool Johnny boy looked in Bono's shades.

This new guy might have a more harsh exterior, but the beliefs were always the same.

Can't recall the last time a 'militant atheist' incited people to hatred the way the Pope has just done.

Funny how, in recent times, much has been done to stem the outpourings of fundamentalists from the middle east, yet right in our own back yard we have something just as nasty.

Funny also how conversations and discussions change and evolve on different tangents and lines. But I don't for one minute buy into the myth of militant atheism, and to assert that Dawkins himself is somehow 'not smart' or educated is bonkers.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275894Funny also how conversations and discussions change and evolve on different tangents and lines. But I don't for one minute buy into the myth of militant atheism, and to assert that Dawkins himself is somehow 'not smart' or educated is bonkers.

Good thing that, as far as I can see, no one here has asserted that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275894Can't recall the last time a 'militant atheist' incited people to hatred the way the Pope has just done.

Crap, did I miss a massive Catholic uprising committing violence?

Quote from: RPGPundit;275900Good thing that, as far as I can see, no one here has asserted that.

RPGPundit

Didi you not write: I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship.

And if you think that Dawkins' work is little more than anti-religious you really don't know the guy or his writing at all.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275916Didi you not write: I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship.

And if you think that Dawkins' work is little more than anti-religious you really don't know the guy or his writing at all.

No, I didn't write that.

RPGPundit

Come on now people, lets not confuse Ghost Whistler with either facts or common sense.

Quote from: RPGPundit;275937No, I didn't write that.

RPGPundit

But you think Dawkins' work is little more than anti religious; thereby reducing what he's actually saying and the point of the works in question to something stupidly simplistic.

Yes, I do pretty much think that the primary motivation of Dawkins, Hitchens, et. al. is a frustration with religious and superstitious nonsense that they see coming from society at large, and how that religious nonsense becomes anti-science and anti-reason.

So they are lashing back with anti-religious tracts.  Can you honestly try to say that books called "The God Delusion" or "God is NOT Great" could really be considered something other than anti-religious tracts?

RPGPundit

Depends what you actually mean by an anti-religious tract? It's a rather emotive term that seems to imply nothing more than a published rant.

Stray thought here: If a thread was started by someone who is now banned and the original intent of the thread seems to have been to stir up things - should the tread then continue to exist?


...just wondering....


- Ed C.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;275995Depends what you actually mean by an anti-religious tract? It's a rather emotive term that seems to imply nothing more than a published rant.

I mean I can write a detailed and meaningful analysis about aliens and UFOs, debunking the idea that UFOs have been to earth and theories about aliens building the pyramids, etc, and it wouldn't necessarily be an Anti-UFO-believer tract.

However, if I wrote a book called "The UFO Delusion", or "UFOs are for losers", with all the same arguments but a slightly different tone, it could be no less scholarly while still ending up being an anti-UFO-believer tract.

Its the same with this. It doesn't matter how well-written or how erudite Dawkin's points are; you can argue that he had a bias and an agenda in writing something without it automatically making any judgment about what he was actually writing about.

And I think its just stupid to suggest that Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. are being neutral, or really anything other than intentionally inflammatory here. And shit, there's nothing wrong with that! I love intentionally inflammatory! I'm a big fan of Bill Maher, too, and share many of the same criticisms of organized religion and superstitious stupidity, and even of the dangers of "magical thinking" and its effects on politics, society, etc.

My only point in this was that the SUCCESS of these books means that now you will have hordes of people joining into the atheist "movement" suffering from the same kind of magical thinking and me-tooism and blind-following that guys like Dawkins are criticizing; people that the Atheist movement never had to deal with before by virtue of atheism having never really been popular enough before to get this kind of basest sort of philosophical fad-follower.  And there are some atheists who take offense, thinking that somehow the magic-word "ATHEISM!" is a ward against stupidity, and that obviously the philosophy itself will somehow just protect you from idiots claiming to belong to your movement; and that, too, is a sort of magical-thinking that has to be defeated, the idea that atheism is somehow immune from the possiblity of blind followers using it (in fact, atheism has had a royal shitload of assholes using it in just that way, with most people from communist countries being "atheists by default" in the same stupid, thinking-less way that people in the U.S. might be "baptists by default"; leading, in turn, to people in Russia or the Ukraine being very easy victims of all sorts of ridiculous new-age fadism and extremist movements of all sorts).

The point shouldn't be to teach people to proclaim atheism the way people today proclaim christianity, or to adopt the atheist darwin fish in the place of the cross, or to recite the Scientific Creed instead of the Apostle's Creed. That's just replacing one idiocy with another, and will give truth to the notion that christians sometimes push, that atheism is just some other belief.

Surely the point must be to instruct in critical thinking, even when that means being critical of people who claim to "follow" atheism.

RPGPundit