I’ve never dealt with jodih so I don’t know if I’m allowed to post here but anytime that ANYONE claims to be a representative of a group- whether it’s Islamic, Christian, people who listen to goth music, et. al.- and others are not familiar with that group, those others will ASCRIBE qualities to that group based on what (little) they know. Stereotyping is a shortcut that many people take, and many times its not justifiable.
Nowadays you don’t hear much about the religious leaders that preach tolerance, only the ones that don’t.
Enthusiasm is not now, nor has it ever been analogous to hot.
Plus, I’ve dated young ladies in Catholic high school. Their hotness is highly overrated, based upon my experience. Although, I did find out what in hell those beads were all about.
You know, I don’t think I agree with Jodih on more than one or two religious points, but I have to say, the more I read of the GD thread and this one, the more I have to say “wait a minute, guys, you don’t really mean that, do you?”
If one person says something on behalf of a huge group – one-third of the world’s population, according to thread a few weeks ago that made reference to a mailbag article on religion – and based on that comment all of the members of that group suddenly appear to be zealots in your eyes, well, I’d say you’re the fool, not the guy making the comment in the first place. Ignorant at the very least.
And rightly so. It should turn you right off to the guy making the comment, and it should make you question the organization that he purportedly represents. But if you suddenly believe that all members of the organization that he purportedly represents are loonies, or even if they suddenly “appear” to you to be loonies, well, again, you’re the fool, not the speaker.
That’s healthy. But “worrying and wondering” is different than “suddenly believing they’re unstable,” or “having them suddenly appear to be unstable.”
There are some valid points. However, when a member of a group (i.e. Falwell, Glidden) makes intolerant statements and claims to speak for all christians, you would think that christians who don’t agree with them would mount vocal opposition to their statements. Finding a “I’m a christian and this guy is a moron” thread on this board is pretty rare.
So I’m to assume that, if Glidden and his ilk make these statements that other christians disagree even though I have no proof of it other than “gee, its a pretty big religion?”
Part of the confusion here is the application of an expression. If a good electrician sees a terrible wiring job, he grunts irritably, “The numbskull that did this job makes my profession look bad.” Does the profession look bad to the good electrician? No - otherwize he wouldn’t be surprised to see bad wiring. The good electrician is just sore because he knows eventually electricians are going to get a bad name if aforementioned numbskull is allowed to stay in the union.
It’s not a great analogy because Christians aren’t unionized.
My personal theory, is that as a moderate Christian, jodih is embarrassed by the fundamentalists. So when some diabolical poster comes along and points out the fundamentalists, it’s not always going to be taken very well. I think there is a lot of misdirected anger here … sort of like when you’ve been walking around all day with a big booger hangin out of your nose and somebody with horns and a tail and a pitchfork points out aforementioned boogger, and you get all annoyed. “Hey, just cause I’ve got a huge hunk of dried snot hangin out of my nose doesn’t mean I’m a bad person and quit threatening me with that pitchfork!”
You’re joking, right? Didn’t you read any of the threads that ARG220 was in? Lots of people – who openly professed their Christianity – chimed in with statements in opposition to ARG220 and his views.
Veg, I would hug you if I could reach you because you apparently understand what I’m trying to say. If they’re too mad to even listen to my explanation, maybe they’ll listen to yours.
ANDROS – You’re kidding me, right? The very reason I took issue with the over-generalization in Satan’s post in the first place was because people on this Board keep asking: If people keep misrepresenting your religion, why don’t you say something? Well, guess what – I did, and Satan took it as a personal attack, which it wasn’t.
Now you say:
How the hell am I supposed to convince people? By “sitting on my ass” while someone says “This single moron makes you all look like a bunch of morons”? Yeah, that would help a lot. I’m not saying that people should know anything “automatically,” but Satan does know that reasonable Christians exist – he’s said as much himself. So why would he say that one idiot makes us all look like idiots to him? That’s the point I didn’t get.
That was my point- that no one (except Snarkberry) who professed to be a christian started a thread denouncing demagougery, they only chimed in. (I’m really not trying to weasel, I would’ve used “posts” as opposed to “thread” otherwise).
Exhibit A. 7,287 posts later, the idiot is STILL spouting nonsense.
If after all of this, you can still say and honestly believe that the words “to him” belong in the above statement, I will pray to my namesake today and forever that he takes you and puts you in a hell where you are deafened by the screams of illogical, non-listening souls for all eternity.
Yeah, you DON’T get the point. You’re a fucking moron!
Oh, and when I am accused of something that I am not, I consider that a personal attack, since you are attacking the very essense of my being.
Call me ugly and I won’t care. Say that I think a way I clearly do not, and I’ll attack back as long as it takes, because that’s the very definition of a personal attack.
You know, I can hear the ding-bat’s reply already:
jodih sez: “Well, of course you believe that all Christians appear that way. Why else would you have put it in your OP?”
Spare me, Phil. If I say “Jerry Falwell appears to be a world-class idiot,” can I then reasonably say “I didn’t say he appeared that way *to me[/'i].”? C’mon; any reasonable person would impute the opinion to the person stating the opinion, and to try to deny it means (a) you weren’t clear enough in the first place; or (b) you’re back-pedalling. That hardly makes me a “liar,” a word I’ve noted in the past you seem to be inordinately fond of throwing around and which – as I’ve also told you – would mean more to me if you didn’t throw it around quite so freely.
Satan, for you to say “this makes all Christians seem like mind-melding zealots” and try to say that you didn’t mean to imply they look like mind-melding zealots to you is laughable. Hey, you posted it; I didn’t. If you want to clarify what you said (or if you have clarified what you said), fine, but that hardly makes my interpretation upon first reading it unreasonable. I suggest you rinse and repeat until you grasp that.
(sorry about the big quote, all, but I didn’t want to get anything too far out of context)
You’re right, Veg. If one person says something, I don’t necessarily find it representative of a group. If one person in South Boston pulls a gun on someone, I won’t freak. But enough people have that I believe South Boston to be comprised of a disproportionate number of people with guns. Are there good people there? Assuredly. Will I ever move there? Hell no.
One wacko saying that I’m going to hell doesn’t mean much to me. But when most of what we see on the news are religious fruitcakes, we develop a stereotype.
Yes, stereotyping can be bad. But we do it. If you claim you don’t, you’re lying.
I was raised christian. My father recently became a preacher-man. I know that not all christians are arch-conservative or fundamentalist. But because of what I’ve seen and heard, I imagine I have a skewed idea of the number of moderate and liberal christians. And for most of the unthinking sheep out there in northamericaland, that number is skewed close to zero. IOW, the christian right, and christianity as a whole, appears to many people to be heavily loaded with the religiously deranged. (is that how Satan should have phrased it?)
That’s because the screwy ones get most of the press. Again, it’s up to the moderates to change that view, or not.
Jodi, Satan:
Satan said “It is absolute ‘truths’ like this that turn people off from Christianity, and make ALL of it’s followers look like mind-melded zealots.”
Would all of this have been avoided if Satan had tagged on “to others” at the end of that sentence? Especially since his next sentence in the post indicated pretty strongly to me that he was not one of the “others.”
You posted this at 5:45, 12 minutes after my most recent post in the other Pit thread devoted to this whole mess, in which I gave my views on stereotyping. I’ll assume you hadn’t read it when you posted, given the time spent typing, as well as the time it takes for the board to reload, etc. In that post I gave my views on stereotyping, which I’ll re-iterate now: yes, we all do it, myself included.
Nevertheless, surely you agree that the statement, “my experience with Christians leads me to believe that they are, by and large, incapable of forming logical conclusions,” is a far cry from, “Fred Phelps makes ALL Christians look like loonies.” One is a generalization, supported (as much as it can be, which isn’t actually very much, but that’s a different discussion) by the speaker’s experiences, the other is unprovable nonsense.
That depends on his intent. Given what he has posted since the OP in question, I’d guess that this accurately portrays his feelings, and it is certainly clearer than what was originally posted.
Yes, I did read your posts in the other thread just after I posted. My apologies.
So what this boils down to (barring the fact of Jodi’s being offline until tuesday) is that some of us interpreted Satan’s OP one way (as he intended it) and some of us interpreted it another way (as he did not)?
Buddha in a bidet, what a cockup. This whole issues was nothing more than semantics.