Don't Ask ----- Don't Answer

The BBQ Pit
61

[QUOTE= Der Trihs]
And hearing religious people call me an evil would be mass murderer because I argue with them on a message board is amusing. And if you are right, why haven’t I killed anyone ? I am not powerless; I could buy a gun and kill some random religious people tomorrow. I don’t, because that would be wrong, and reduce me to the level of the religous people I despise.
[/QUOTE]

You know, I didn’t think it POSSIBLE for someone to not get it on such a scale as you do.

But I was incorrect; you raise “not getting it” to an art form.

62

[QUOTE=Nancarrow]
Er, where do you think he gets his name from? :stuck_out_tongue:
[/QUOTE]

Oh, man! Backward masking is real!!

63

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
You know, I didn’t think it POSSIBLE for someone to not get it on such a scale as you do.

But I was incorrect; you raise “not getting it” to an art form.
[/QUOTE]
Pot, kettle.

64

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And hearing religious people call me an evil would be mass murderer because I argue with them on a message board is amusing. And if you are right, why haven’t I killed anyone? I am not powerless; I could buy a gun and kill some random religious people tomorrow. I don’t, because that would be wrong, and reduce me to the level of the religous people I despise.
[/QUOTE]

You have, unsurprisingly, missed the point. Yes, you could go out and kill some believers tomorrow. And you’d get arrested, imprisoned, and probably executed for it. With that penalty before you, coupled with your general disconnection with society and it’s attitudes, it’s very easy for you to take the position that you refrain from violence out of moral pureness, and not convenience. But if things were different in this country, if you could commit murder and not only get away with it, but be commended for it? If you were surrounded by people who parroted your exact brand of hatred and intolerance, who re-enforced your prejudices at every turn? I think it would take very, very little to tip you over into murder.

Oh, and it’s not just religious people who are calling you evil. This atheist isn’t much impressed by your self-professed moral superiority, either.

65

[QUOTE=Miller]
From here, actually, although the ultimate derivation is the same.
[/QUOTE]

Heh, I chose the right one from this list, even though some were even more amusing.

66

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And hearing religious people call me an evil would be mass murderer because I argue with them on a message board is amusing.
[/QUOTE]
I would be amused too — if I’d seen it. You’re not a would-be mass murderer because you argue with us; you’re a would-be mass murderer because you dehumanize us in the manner I described.

67

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
I haven’t been around the church proper in a while, but like I said, I’ve heard from several priests that denying the existance of god is blasphemy. Do you have any church proclamations or something on this? One priest in particular was quite angry that I would dare say that I was an athiest, and raised his voice in loud judgement. Now, before anyone says anything, this was not in the middle of Easter Sunday mass, it was at a large college event, and I was pressed on the matter or I would not have said anything at all.
[/QUOTE]
Let’s go back to the point I was making:
You mentioned a friend who had left the church, then returned to it.
You said the friend was still troubled, fearing that s/he had brought down the doom of the verse in Mark based on his or her actions being an “unforgivable sin.”

My point was that in the context of that verse from Mark, the RCC, as a whole, does not interpret generalized blasphemy to be “the sin against the Holy Ghost,” and that your friend should get in touch with someone from the church who could set his or her mind at ease.

Blasphemy has a few meanings, but the specific phrase “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” has a very distinct meaning in RCC theology, that of dying in sin and choosing to die in sin. (This is the connection to depair I mentioned earlier. Generally, the church figures that a person who deliberately chooses to die in sin has despaired of the possibility of forgiveness and that is what causes them to choose to die in sin.)

In the theology of the church, (individual cranky priests, notwithstanding), blasphemy in the context of hurling imprecations at God–even in the person of the Holy Spirit–is not considered to fullfill the conditions of the special phrase “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.” I am not challenging your ability to blaspheme or even the ability of you or your friend to use the person of the Holy Spirit as the target of your blasphemy. I am simply pointing out that the phrase “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit” has a particular meaning in RCC theology and that a person who has chosen to return to the church after apostasy has not, in the theology of the church, committed that unpardonable sin.

The early 20th century Catholic Encyclopedia does not even address the issue of “unpardonable sin” in the context of Blasphemy.
If you wish (and can stand ) to wade through it, here is the section from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica on Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It is only impenitence that he holds cannot be forgiven.

Again: I am not challenging that you have been taught or chastised with any particular belief. My only original point was that if you knew of a person troubled by a misunderstanding (or bad teaching) you might assuage their troubles by pointing out that what they had been told was not in accord with church teaching.

68

[QUOTE=Liberal]
It could be that Nancarrow is right. I think it’s a fair comparison insofar as Hitler dehumanized the people he despised. He described Jews as a stupid race of people incapable of reason, all the while fancying that he himself was the very arbiter of reason — as in this gem: “The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind” — Mein Kampf, Vol 1, Ch. 10

With Der Trihs, same same. We are nothing to him but delusional idiots and intellectual defectives. All of us. He makes no differentiation between worshiping a god of fire and God as Love. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Pagans, Hindus — we’re all beneath him as he sees it. When a man perverts reason to dehumanize other men, he has taken Hitler’s first step. Fortunately for us, Der Trihs is impotent. God only knows what he might do with power behind his bigotry.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
Yeah, Liberal, but I think Nancarrow was comparing ME to Hitler.

And I didn’t see where he was coming from with that, since I was castigating one particular person, not an entire class of people, as I (and others) pointed out.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think either of you get it. Nancarrow was making fun of Happy Scrappy Hero Pup’s overblown comparison of Der Trihs to a crusader, if only he had the power.

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]

You know, I didn’t think it POSSIBLE for someone to not get it on such a scale as you do.

But I was incorrect; you raise “not getting it” to an art form.

[/QUOTE]

I confess. I LOL’d.

69

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
He accused me of wanting to kill thousands or millions of people, but that I didn’t have the power. THAT is accusing me of being evil.

First, that’s the core problem of religon; it is stupid, and crazy. And as I point out above, THEY call me evil. I see no reason to be polite to people who more often than not think I’m a monster on the order of Hitler, just because I’m an atheist. Especially in the Pit.

I have no desire to play punching bag under the standard “Atheists be nice, theists lie, threaten and insult” rules".
[/QUOTE]

Hitler painted the most beautiful picture of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus I have ever seen.

You aren’t even in his league.

You’re not evil, just stupid.

Before you make this about atheists, I’ll tell you that I came back to this forum partially to see what Voyager and SentientMeat are up to. SentientMeat sent me on a quest to learn more about Cognitive Science, and I told myself I wouldn’t come back here until I’d read the books he recommended. I bought them all, haven’t read them, but I am studying neurology now. The long and short of it is, I came back here because I talked to two atheists who made a good impression on me. You are still the same fucking idiot you were a few years ago, and it’s not because you’re an atheist. I was sort of amazed to find that your argumentation had not improved at all in my absence.

You are no Hitler, you are the equivalent of a member of Westboro Baptist church. Same level of rationality and everything.

I like that a pitting of Don’t Ask became a pitting of Der Trihs, at least when Don’t Ask is being a bigot, he makes me giggle.

70

Hotflungwok Blasphemy is like a Black Mass, not the same as a crisis of faith I don’t think.

71

[QUOTE=Miller]
You have, unsurprisingly, missed the point. Yes, you could go out and kill some believers tomorrow. And you’d get arrested, imprisoned, and probably executed for it. With that penalty before you, coupled with your general disconnection with society and it’s attitudes, it’s very easy for you to take the position that you refrain from violence out of moral pureness, and not convenience. But if things were different in this country, if you could commit murder and not only get away with it, but be commended for it? If you were surrounded by people who parroted your exact brand of hatred and intolerance, who re-enforced your prejudices at every turn? I think it would take very, very little to tip you over into murder.

Oh, and it’s not just religious people who are calling you evil. This atheist isn’t much impressed by your self-professed moral superiority, either.
[/QUOTE]

What impresses me is how he argues the atheist side from a totally emotional standpoint like the religious people he despises. His claim of moral purity is precisely where those religious people believe that their superiority derives, but he does not want to ‘sink’ to their moral level. His arguments have NOTHING to do with reason as they are mostly ad hominems and appeals to emotion. What’s so perplexing about Der Trihs is that his attitude is precisely that of the side he reviles. The content is different but the presentation is exact.

Maybe Der Trihs is practicing Dissimulation. He’s playing the stereotype atheist that every Christian bigot wishes atheists to be in order to confirm people’s bias against atheists.

It’s a rare man who chooses their path in life to become the perfect resemblance of a reviled stereotype.

72

[QUOTE=mswas]
Maybe Der Trihs is practicing Dissimulation. He’s playing the stereotype atheist that every Christian bigot wishes atheists to be in order to confirm people’s bias against atheists.
[/QUOTE]

You’re not the first person to suggest this.

73

[QUOTE=mswas]
Hotflungwok Blasphemy is like a Black Mass, not the same as a crisis of faith I don’t think.
[/QUOTE]

Didn’t you read the definition? Black Mass is just one extreme example. Like I said, I’ve been told by Catholic priests, as well as other people of the Christian faith, that denying the existance of god is blasphemy.

74

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
Didn’t you read the definition? Black Mass is just one extreme example. Like I said, I’ve been told by Catholic priests, as well as other people of the Christian faith, that denying the existance of god is blasphemy.
[/QUOTE]

I read the definition. It seemed to be sort of vague as to whether expressions of doubt counted as blasphemy. I cannot imagine that any religion would be benefitted by not allowing people to pursue their doubt.

I guess it depends on how you define, ‘Impious’. I don’t know, it seems weird to me.

75

[QUOTE=mswas]
I read the definition. It seemed to be sort of vague as to whether expressions of doubt counted as blasphemy.
[/QUOtE]

Shrug, that was just something I pulled out of a dictionary. The priests who said it, now that’s something else.

:confused:
You’re not very familiar with how religion operates are you?

76

[QUOTE= hotflungwok]
I haven’t been around the church proper in a while, but like I said, I’ve heard from several priests that denying the existance of god is blasphemy.

Like I said, I’ve been told by Catholic priests, as well as other people of the Christian faith, that denying the existance of god is blasphemy.

**Shrug, that was just something I pulled out of a dictionary. The priests who said it, **now that’s something else.
[/QUOTE]

You post all those things, and then you post this?

[QUOTE= hotflungwok]
You’re not very familiar with how religion operates are you?
[/QUOTE]

77

[QUOTE=hotflungwok]
You’re not very familiar with how religion operates are you?
[/QUOTE]

Religion in general would benefit greatly, but those in positions of power in those religions likely would not.

78

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
You post all those things, and then you post this?
[/QUOTE]

Not sure what your point is here.

[QUOTE=Lord Ashtar]
Religion in general would benefit greatly, but those in positions of power in those religions likely would not.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not so sure. From what I’ve seen, close rational examination of religious tenets without preconceptions or assumptions, especially those held up as indisputable fact, tends to end with even more doubt about the tenet, and the religion itself. People trying to tell me that the Noah’s Ark story was real and factual was a big reason for my investigation into Catholic dogma, and my subsequent dismissal of it.

79

My point is that you obviously didn’t investigate very far into Catholic dogma if you base your arguments on “shrug,” and “Priests told me.”

80

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
My point is that you obviously didn’t investigate very far into Catholic dogma if you base your arguments on “shrug,” and “Priests told me.”
[/QUOTE]

Um, I was raised Catholic. Last I checked, priests were an acknowledged source of info for the religion they devote their lives to. So when I hear a Catholic priest say something about the Catholic church, I’m going to assign it more weight than I would someone else.

And how do you get that I based my argument on ‘shrug’? I said that when mswas tried to argue about the definition with me. I said that because the definition was general, and I just used it to show Liberal that blasphemy was a bit more than what he was trying to say it was.