What other totally laughable, poorly executed performances, and completly fucked-up bullshit (yeah, redundant) from self-prolaimed “True Christians” have you found lately to toss into the Pit?
I find it a touch uncomfortable to be defending Ray Comfort, but I can’t help but wonder why Python included that particular screed. Ray has said a lot of crazy and stupid things, but this time he is actually making sense. Hate speech is speech that targets a group based on race, creed, sex, sexual orientation, or religion. The atheists held a blatant anti-Christian rally (c’mon, how is a sexual cartoon of Jesus anything but an attack on Christianity?), and then claimed they were just exercising free speech. That’s what the Klan always says about their rallies. Sure, the atheists can have their “blasphemy day”, just as the Klan can have their events, but perhaps it shouldn’t be on campus. Again, Ray has said a lot of stupid shit, but he has a point here. Would the University have allowed anti-muslim students to chalk pornographic pictures of Mohamed on the sidewalk?
As to Pat Robertson and CBN, chuckle, I can’t shake the image of the three witches from Macbeth chanting incantations over a cauldron of fun sized snickers bars. “double, double, toil and trouble. Chocolate, nougat, peanuts rumble”
**A Monkey With a Gun ** - This was just his lastest post (11-2-09) and he also has added a post script:
Ray produces heaps of inflamatory hate-speech, fabricated lies and generalizations about “typical” actions taken by labeled groups such as atheists, ‘Moslems’(his spelling), homosexuals, and ‘darwinists’. Just don’t direct it back to Christians!! They are soooo innocent and oppressed by everyone and haven’t done anything wrong! Ever!
It’s a free country, I respect your right to defend this scrawny-assed, peabrained, motherfuc…er, bananna molesting, Kirk-squicking, hypocritical, napoleonistic, homophobic, Dawkins-bashing, PZphobic, misogynistic, [insert insult or fruit of choice], lying, peewee Kiwi.
So why didn’t you quote from some of that? There’s oceans of that shit. I don’t want to defend the asshole, but you picked the one quote from the guy I have a hard time disagreeing with. As much as it pains me to say, he is actually right about the University of Northern Iowa. You just should have picked something better.
“the University’s policy is hypocritical” is not even in the same galaxy of crazy as CBN’s satanic candy and “time released” curses.
Except for the little detail that they are complaining about the race people are born as, which is not something you choose. You do choose to be religious. And race has nothing to do with behavior or belief; religion does. Race and religion are not similar at all.
Would you complain about people holding an anti-fascist rally and drawing insulting pictures of Hitler? Would you compare them to the Klan? Since when has condemning or mocking a belief system been “hate speech?”
It’s very convenient for the believers that they get to label criticism or mockery of their pet delusion “hate speech”. Especially since EVERY day is bash-the-unbelievers day. Somehow it’s not hate speech when you insult or threaten atheists and agnostics.
France sees to think it is. We are not as draconion here in the U.S. but our anti-discrimination laws do equate race and religion as things you can’t discriminate against. In addition, Judaism is a religion and some Jews made the choice to convert to it. Does that make antisemitism O.K., red shirt?
It’s really the only safe way to do it. Some people grind up and snort their time release curses all at once, and end up with a cursing monkey on their backs.
Define antisemitism. Is criticizing aspects of the Jewish belief system anti-Semitic? Criticism of Israel? If I say that belief in God is stupid, am I being anti-Semitic? That’s insulting their religion, after all. What about someone who opposes circumcision as immoral? Are they anti-Semitic? That is also a criticism of them. How about a Jew who says that Judaism is silly and becomes an atheist? Is he antisemitic?
Judaism the belief system and Jews the ethnic group/culture aren’t the same thing.
Are you going to call people who criticise the Aztecs for torture and human sacrifice bigots too? How about people who bash Scientology? Or is it only popular, powerful religions we aren’t allowed to criticize?
Look, just because atheists are, in some cases, a persecuted minority in America doesn’t make it right for atheists to attack believers. Rather than approach this from an eye-for-an-eye point of view, why can’t BOTH sides just live and let live? Your demand that it be acceptable for atheists to attack Christians, but wrong for Christians to attack atheists is just as bigoted as the Christians you’re opposing.
Oh, and Pat Robertson’s always good for a laugh. What’s a “revel night”?
And besides, you said you’d oppose an anti-black Klan rally. Would you likewise oppose an anti-Jewish Klan rally?
Because that is not how Christians think. They’ve never been willing to live and let live; that is exactly why they are such a powerful and widespread religion.
That presupposes that the two sides have equal arguments for their positions, which is untrue. The truth isn’t hate speech; and there are a great many insulting truths about Christianity.
Considering why they’d be holding such a rally, yes. How much of what people like that believe about Jews even has a basis in reality? Truths, even insulting truths may not be hate speech; but insulting lies are.
That I feel is one of the most important distinctions between speech which is hate speech, and that which is not: is it true? Whether it is hateful is secondary, because there are many things that deserve hatred. It is not hate speech to condemn the Aztec as murderous for engaging in human sacrifice, because they really did; it IS hate speech to accuse the Jews of using the blood of unbaptized infants in their ceremonies, because they don’t.
“Hate Speech” is a legal term. You can’t just ignore the meaning of the phrase when it has already been defined. You asked "Since when has condemning or mocking a belief system been “hate speech?” I answered the question, and yet you continue to ignore the facts in front of you, because doing otherwise would conflict with your own hatred.
No matter what the UNHRC or the Canadian government thinks, religion is not more worthy of protection than other beliefs and ideas. Religion should be treated just like any other incorrect belief.
