Quote from: fonkaygarryNow isn't this a damn sight better than philosophy majors sucking each other off?

Milo: You think you are so fucking cool, don't you? You think you are so fucking cool. But just once, I would like to hear you scream in pain...
Joe Hallenbeck: Play some rap music.

Quote from: GRIMPlay some rap music

Y CERTAINLY BUT FIRST A REMINDER!

Goodnight, everybody!

Quote from: SpikeMr. A, you and GRIM (or was it Grimgent? Or both Grim and Grimgent?) were quite vocally proseletizing on this very site not all that long ago.

  I've said that I think religious people are wrong and I've made it clear that I don't have a whole lot of respect for them qua religious people but I've never proselytised in my life.  I simply don't give a shit what other people believe.

  The use of the word "proselytise" to mean "argue" or "disagree" is clearly meant only to insult and inflame atheists.  It's textbook trolling, up there with comparing the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis.  It's taking the vocabulary through which a minority tried to protect themselves from repression and using it to repress them.

  It's utterly beneath contempt and your continued usage of such terminology does no credit either to the position you hold or your worth as a person.

Arguing in favour of theism or atheism is not proselytising in the context of a thread specifically about that issue.

For example, the thread that will not die here in which Akrasia argues with a variety of theists about the PoE and existence of god and all.  Nothing in that is really proselytisation, the thread is clearly labelled and people enter it in order to discuss those issues.

Proselytisation begins when you raise it outside the parameters of an agreed debate on the topic.

For example, if at work you were to ask me if I were religious and I replied that I was an atheist, and if you then asked me to explain why and I did so, I haven't proselytised.  I've discussed my views in context.  Similarly, my mate Simon who tried to enter the priesthood has spoken to me of his beliefs a few times, but only when it's come up naturally, that isn't proselytisation either.

Proselytisation is when you bring it up when nobody asked you to.  If at work you asked me what I was doing this Sunday, and I used that as an excuse to speak of why the theist hypothesis was in my view incorrect, that's proselytisation.

You can tell proselytisation by the fact it tends to be rude.

So, posting militantly about atheism, Islam, the Catholic faith in a thread about those topics and their truth is fair enough, that's the debate.  Posting militantly about those things in a thread about whether the d4 is a creation of Satan thus proving the manichean's correct is being a dick.

Being an atheist does not prevent you from also being a dick.  If it did, then I really would proselytise for it.

Oh, there's also different types of proselytisation.

1.  Sometimes people view the person with another opinion as essentially being fuckwitted, as if they were not fuckwitted they would see the rightness of the thing being proselytised.  That's kind of annoying.  Many theists and atheists sadly fall into this trap, though the majority of both happily avoid it.

2.  Sometimes people just like arguing, so when it comes up they just keep going after they should have stopped.  That's just being human.

3.  Sometimes people proselytise for entirely selfish reasons, this is tied to certain faiths really, if a guy tells me about Jesus because he has to for his own salvation, that's an essentially selfish act on his part.  Jehovah's Witnesses are the classic example, it's not that they necessarily give a fuck about my soul, it's that if they don't proselytise they lose heaven for themselves.  No direct atheist equivalent here.

4.  Sometimes people proselytise though for altruistic reasons, they think that genuinely you are putting yourself at risk by not accepting god or that you are leading a less fulfilling life than you could be.  Atheists sometimes fall into this camp, but it's mostly religious guys, as atheists have more to lose by being wrong than the religious do as a rule.  This may sometimes be annoying, but it is well meant.  It's someone trying to help you out, it's the theist equivalent of telling a man walking next to a cliff to step carefully, they do it for the benefit of the person addressed rather than for their own.

There are probably other reasons too, personally I'm tolerant within reason of 2 and 4 as long as people don't push it indefinitely, 1 and 3 not so much.

Quote from: HinterWeltYeah, sounds like a "well-duh" kind of question but bear with me.

I know a few atheists and consider them friends. Two of them have what I would consider a healthy attitude. They do not believe in gods but do not feel the need to campaign against those that do. Other atheists I know are hard core witnesses of the One True Enlightened Right Way. They will hound my friends of faith relentlessly until I tell them to lighten up. Usually they will take the hint.

In answer to this specific question, Tony got it right in the second post.  I've found more than once that particular friends were religious or atheists without it ever having come up over several years of friendship.  The vocal of any persuasion are inevitably more evident.

As a case in point about religious types proselytising, in the last 24 hours, i've had 2 such persons knock on my door. Last night at 6.30 whilst i was eating my dinner, 2 young guys from 'The Ministry of Christ', whatever that is, turned up. They were aggressive from the get-go and i simply said, "i'm not interested thanks" to which the incredulous reply was, "you're not interested in the bible!" Thanks, but no thanks.

This morning at 10.30 an old duffer turned up and was generally sweet, so i just said that it wasn't for me thanks. He tried in a round about way to get me to stay talking, but i had to get back to work. I didn't have the heart to tell him that this work involved writing up rituals and rites for a nasty cult that will be appearing in a roleplaying game. He didn't deserve that...

Nox posting thread titles about haloheads is by the way militant atheism, Akrasia posting in a clearly labelled thread about his beliefs within the off-topic forum, I struggle to see how that is.

I mean, if I go into my local church and sit down next to the priest it's a bit rich for me then to complain if he talks to me about god.  Nox though is like the guy in Piccadilly who shouts at passers-by with a megaphone about accepting Jesus.

Quote from: BalbinusI mean, if I go into my local church and sit down next to the priest it's a bit rich for me then to complain if he talks to me about god.  Nox though is like the guy in Piccadilly who shouts at passers-by with a megaphone about accepting Jesus.

  Yeah but Nox doesn't want to convert anyone.  For him religious people are just another group he can shit on.  I suspect that he posted that thread in order to be seen to pick a fight with people that have traditionally been hostile to RPGers thereby making us want to clutch poor Nox to our collective bosom.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYeah but Nox doesn't want to convert anyone.  For him religious people are just another group he can shit on.  I suspect that he posted that thread in order to be seen to pick a fight with people that have traditionally been hostile to RPGers thereby making us want to clutch poor Nox to our collective bosom.

True enough.

I do think people are being a bit unfair to Akrasia though, he posts in the off-topic forum in threads clearly labelled as being about atheism and gets quite a lot of shit for it, and I'm not really sure why.  It's not like he pops up in threads about fantasy gaming talking about atheism or something like that (and I have seen people do that in the old days on rpg.net).

Actually, I miss those guys, on the militant atheist front it's quite funny to see someone in a D&D thread criticising the game for its sympathetic portrayal of religion and arguing that it lends credence to a philosophy that has led to the death of millions and so on.  Truly fucktardtastic.  We don't seem to get that quality of loon here, and if not here then where would we find them?

Quote from: BalbinusI do think people are being a bit unfair to Akrasia though, he posts in the off-topic forum in threads clearly labelled as being about atheism and gets quite a lot of shit for it, and I'm not really sure why.

  This is one of the reasons why I got sniffy about the tone last night.  If Grim and Akrasia were essentially going from thread to thread picking fights with theists then I think it would be justifiable for the forum to develop language and tone commensurate with low-level hostility to atheists, but all they're doing is discussing the issue and they're being called zealots and bigots and are being accused of proselytising.

  It's needlessly antagonistic groupthink with no justification for it.

  Oh Christ... the D&D thing sounds like the kind of thing I might have said in the past when I was in a bad mood.  I know I've taken issue with the objective morality of the alignment system but I think that's more to do with a dislike of vanilla fantasy tropes.  I don't think I've actually accused D&D of being sympathetic to the Albigensian crusade though... I don't think I've ever quite plumbed that particular depth.

  I remember Lancelot du Lac who would call Christians pagans and claimed to worship Wotan before asking people what their favourite SS division was.

It is a source of great amusement to me that you're having to read a Tad Williams novel currently, it fits with my general view that the essence of comedy is terrible things happening to someone else.

There was another great loon on rpg.net who defended the pagans in The Wicker Man on the basis that theirs was a reasonable expression of their faith.  He saw the film as sympathetic to paganism, which I'm not sure it was.

Interestingly, I have seen both hardcore atheists argue that the Wicker Man is about the absurdity of Christianity and devoted Christians argue that it is about the power of and need for Christianity to provide hope in the face of hopelessness.  Good film.

Quote from: BalbinusI do think people are being a bit unfair to Akrasia though, he posts in the off-topic forum in threads clearly labelled as being about atheism and gets quite a lot of shit for it, and I'm not really sure why.  

He's largely resonsible for turning that one into a 500+ post thread, or close enough, plus posting similarly annoying stuff in other threads. He's done this by being repetitive, obtuse, and focusing on small and tangential parts of people's arguments. He's not there to respond to what people have said, but has a few things he wants to talk about, and does his best to draw those topics out of whatever the person's said.

And we've barely seen him in the roleplaying section. That's the nature of a roleplaying site. Apart from rpg.net, if you go to a rolepaying site, so long as you talk interestingly about roleplaying, you can get away with pissing people off in other ways, they'll forgive it.

That's why he gets shit here. Repetitive, obtuse, focusing on irrelevant bollocks, and doesn't talk about rpgs much.

Quote from: BalbinusInterestingly, I have seen both hardcore atheists argue that the Wicker Man is about the absurdity of Christianity and devoted Christians argue that it is about the power of and need for Christianity to provide hope in the face of hopelessness.  Good film.

  Great film.  I've always taken it as a vaguely anti-religious film.  It was made at a time when more and more alternative religions were becoming popular and many people were seeing them as politically correct spiritual alternatives to the church.  The Wicker man argues that the problem isn't really with the substance of any particular belief but the way in which it is practiced and the power it has over its worshippers.  So the policeman is not only a representative of the British government, he's also a devout Christian but neither are enough to protect him from the Pagans.  Similarly, the Pagans who were long oppressed by the Christians find themselves in a position of power and what do they do? practice human sacrifice.

I think the Pagans and the Christians come in for an equal amount of kicking.