Quote from: JimBobOzHe'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.

It is his thread JimBob, he started it, I can't really blame him too much for continuing to post to it.

That said, I struggle to see what benefit he's gaining, but that's his problem, not mine.

It's not that he keeps posting to the thread he started, it's the tone and style of his posting, which pops up in other threads, too.

Combine annoying posting style with not talking much about rpgs, and the guy will get shit. Well, on any place other than rpg.net, anyway.

You can think that's fair or not, but you said you couldn't understand why he was getting shit, and I answered that question for you. It's like,

   "Oh my God that guy got shot at. I don't understand why people are shootng at him!"
"Well, while people were walking around with guns, he fired in the air, then stood up out of cover. So he got shot at."
"That's not fair! He didn't mean any harm!"
"It may be fair, or not fair. I'm just answering your implied question about why he got shot at."  

All of that just sounds like the normal self-serving rubbish that bullies use to justify themselves.

Quote from: JimBobOzIt's not that he keeps posting to the thread he started, it's the tone and style of his posting, which pops up in other threads, too.

Combine annoying posting style with not talking much about rpgs, and the guy will get shit. Well, on any place other than rpg.net, anyway.

You can think that's fair or not, but you said you couldn't understand why he was getting shit, and I answered that question for you. It's like,

   "Oh my God that guy got shot at. I don't understand why people are shootng at him!"
"Well, while people were walking around with guns, he fired in the air, then stood up out of cover. So he got shot at."
"That's not fair! He didn't mean any harm!"
"It may be fair, or not fair. I'm just answering your implied question about why he got shot at."

A common meaning of the phrase "I don't understand x" is not literally "I do not understand why x is happening" but rather "I do not understand why people think x is justifiable".

Basically, he's being attacked for expressing his ideas.  Given he is expressing them within his own thread in the off-topic forum, I think that's not ok.

I also don't particularly agree with your assessment of his conduct in that thread, but that's a tangent.  

Frankly, it smacks to me of people gunning for him because he expresses an unpopular viewpoint.  After all, unless one chooses to enter clearly labelled threads one has no exposure at all to his arguments, good or bad.

Quote from: Dominus NoxIn the 20th century people may have been more likely to be killed for political rather than religious reasons by a small margin, but for the 1900 years preceeding that religion was the number one motivator for homicide.

Exactly 1900 years?  So something else motivated homicide before Jesus was born?  And maybe that could have a little something to do with the fact that religion, culture, ethnicity, and politics weren't sharply distinct as they are now.  In other words, a lot of what you are calling "religious reasons" were really cultural, ethnic, or political reasons masquerading as religious reasons, and often still are.

Quote from: Dominus NoxAlso remember thar most of the trouble in the mideast is religious based, or at least attributed to religion.

One of the biggest problems in the Middle East is the Kurds, which has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with ethnicity.  The same with much of the inter-tribal conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  And if you look at most of the other conflicts, you'll see that there is an ethnic and cultural divide, if not a political divide, that goes along with religious divide.    Yes, it's often "attributed to religion" but that doesn't mean that it's caused by religion.  Correlation does not equal causation.

Quote from: Dominus NoxAnd the catholic church still fights against birth control, causing countless infants to be born only to starve, and opposes condoms, causing aids to continue to scythe thru africa.

Which countries in Africa are predominantly Catholic and what percentage of the Catholics in Africa follow the Church's official policy on birth control?

If you want to blame religion for the spread of AIDS in Africa, you might want to turn our attention to the belief that the spirits of dead people will haunt their spouses unless they are returned to their family, which means that some cultures in Africa not only have a custom of a man marrying the widow(s) of his dead brother (who may have died of AIDS, and they may have it, too) but those widows demand to consummate the marriage in order to give the spirit back to the brother.  Yeah, that happens in parts of Africa.

Of course maybe long-distance truck drivers frequenting prostitutes and the spread of AIDS among African prostitutes played a much bigger role than all of that.  Or do you want to blame the Catholic Church for prostitution, too?

Quote from: Dominus NoxIf you took all the deaths caused by babies being born in famine areas due to the vatican's opposition of birth control and all the aids victims created by the vatican's opposition to condoms you'd probably have a pile of bodies higher than the highest steeple in the vatican.

Most of the recent famines in Africa have been artificial, to the extent that food is often available but the government withholds it for political reasons (e.g., Ethiopia) or the lack of food is caused by government mismanagement of farming (e.g., Zimbabwe).  Why not blame the people causing the famines, who are generally motivated for political and ethnic reasons?

As for opposition to condoms causing AIDS, do you believe that the reason why gay men continue to have a well-above-average AIDS infection rate in the United States is because of the widespread Catholicism in the American gay community and their adherence to Catholic policy on condoms?  Do you think the American gay community is more religious than the rest of American society?  Or maybe just throwing condoms at people and educating them just isn't enough to control the spread of AIDS?

Quote from: GRIMSooooo tired of this one.

Yes, I'm sure you are.

Quote from: GRIMLets take Stalin as case in point. Seminary educated, and apparently took his lessons very well indeed, he converted 'communism' (the USSR really wan't communist) into a faith and installed himself at the head of a personality cult.

So one can create a "faith" and use that "faith" to support a personality cult without having to bring the supernatural into the picture at all, right?

Quote from: GRIMThe purges etc were nothing to do with any atheistic beliefs he may or may not have held - because atheism HAS no motivational dogma - but instead to do with his own paranoia and desire to eliminate groups that could threaten his position.

Accepting that interpretation, for the sake of argument, the point is that Stalin's purges were not caused by religion and his atheism didn't stop him.  As you point out, "atheism HAS no motivational dogma".  That cuts both ways.  While that means it may not have motivated Stalin to kill, it certainly didn't give him any pause about killing, either.

Quote from: GRIMCompare that to religions, which DO contain dogma - depending on the religion - to convert others, to destroy unbelievers, to treat them as inhuman and so forth.

"Motivational dogma", as you put it, can cut either way.  It depends on what the motivation is.  Sure, it  can motivate people to destroy unbelievers and treat them as inhuman but it can also motivate people to help the poor and outlaw slavery.  And absence of "motivational dogma" also cuts both ways.  Sure, it won't motivate a person to destroy the unbelievers or treat them as inhuman, but it also won't motivate them to help the poor or outlaw slavery.

Let's not pretend that humans haven't been treating each other horribly, long before formal religions and formal dogma was used to justify it.  What Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot show is that while people can use God as a justification for their inhumanity toward others, they have little difficulty finding or creating other justifications in the absence of any belief in God.  The abuse of religion to justify horrible things is not the problem.  It's simply a symptom of the real problem.

Quote from: John Morrow"Motivational dogma", as you put it, can cut either way.  It depends on what the motivation is.  Sure, it  can motivate people to destroy unbelievers and treat them as inhuman but it can also motivate people to help the poor and outlaw slavery.  And absence of "motivational dogma" also cuts both ways.  Sure, it won't motivate a person to destroy the unbelievers or treat them as inhuman, but it also won't motivate them to help the poor or outlaw slavery.

Let's not pretend that humans haven't been treating each other horribly, long before formal religions and formal dogma was used to justify it.  What Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot show is that while people can use God as a justification for their inhumanity toward others, they have little difficulty finding or creating other justifications in the absence of any belief in God.  The abuse of religion to justify horrible things is not the problem.  It's simply a symptom of the real problem.

It's important also not to confuse motivation with justification, the justification for a particular slaughter might be religious, but it doesn't follow the motivation is.

I'll return to this shortly, the Albigensian crusade is a great example which I want to post about.  The justification was religious, the motivation primarily economic.

Since we're posting lyrics, here's one man's answer to the original question:

Quote from: Bob DylanOh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

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.

You get that when people write movies with plausible characters on both sides rather than plausible characters on one side and straw men for them to knock down on the other.  That's why shows and movies with a political or religious axe to grind are often one-dimensional and why I consider writers like J. Michael Straczynski who, as a liberal athiest, can write plausible conservatives and religious characters (Karl Rove told Bruce Boxleitner that he and President Bush are fans of the show) to be so good.

Were I a Calvinist, I could answer this thread by simply noting that atheists have no choice in the matter.

Karl Rove is an atheist himself, though admittedly no liberal.

I honestly don't believe why people care. If Christians  believe you must accept Christ to gain salvation, then why do they care about people who reject Christ? It is not the Christian's lot in life to judge others, nor does it matter... only God decides who gains salvation.

To the athiests I ask a similar question. If you reject God, if you believe God does not exist, then why do you care about arguing with those who do? It's not like anyone is likely to ever be swayed by your argument. The whole thing (from both sides) seems absolutely pointless to me.

Quote from: BalbinusA common meaning of the phrase "I don't understand x" is not literally "I do not understand why x is happening" but rather "I do not understand why people think x is justifiable".

Speaking for Americans, anyway, many seem to have a strong belief that if two people can just understand each other, they will naturally agree with each other, thus you see people implying agreement when they talk about understanding.  You can see this idea at work in the people who think that all problems can be solved by two parties sitting down at a table and talking because they have a belief that if they could just understand each other, they could find agreement.  Other cultures don't look at it the same way.

For example, when a Japanese person tells you "wakarimasu", they are saying "I understand" but it doesn't necessarily mean that they agree with you.  It's sort of an, "I've heard what you have to say and you can stop talking now." rather than "I agree with you." and this has caused American businessmen no end of grief when they leave a meeting in which the Japanese side says "wakarimasu" and they interpret that to mean that there has been an agreement.  The truth is, as the Japanese understand, you can understand another person or the points they are making without agreeing with them.

Quote from: CalithenaKarl Rove is an atheist himself, though admittedly no liberal.

And Bush is no atheist and arguably not a conservative.

Quote from: John MorrowSpeaking for Americans, anyway, many seem to have a strong belief that if two people can just understand each other, they will naturally agree with each other, thus you see people implying agreement when they talk about understanding.  You can see this idea at work in the people who think that all problems can be solved by two parties sitting down at a table and talking because they have a belief that if they could just understand each other, they could find agreement.  Other cultures don't look at it the same way.

I've encountered that, the world would be a nicer place were it true, but it ain't.

After all, to take an extreme example, it's not like Hitler didn't understand the Allies or we him, we just didn't agree.  We understood each other pretty well though.

Equally, if I want your land because of minerals on it, understanding that you don't want to give it to me may not be sufficient to persuade me to desist.

Now, understanding is a good place to start, because you might find agreement or you might find a compromise which works for everyone, but it's a start rather than a solution.

Good example with the Japanese by the way.