…Which, as stated above, makes me wonder - at what points do the mods declare that “threadshitting” and step in?
It’s unfortunate that he killed what could have been an interesting debate. We could have talked about creches on public property and the harm that allowing them or not causes both sides. We could have talked about how disallowing prayers in public schools has or hasn’t harmed Christians. Instead, we get page after page of discussions of the definition of the word “persecution”. He successfully killed what could have been an interesting conversation and maybe that gives him a woodie when he does it, but it’s too bad that the debate had to die to satisfy his need to dominate the conversation.
I find myself opening BG Pit threads just to see how lame and short they are. Title, post, short sentence. The Linda Richman of the Pit. He never disappoints.
He’s intellectually dishonest to the core. It’s a deep and fundamental character flaw. I wonder what Jesus will think of him when Bricker finally shuffles off this mortal coil. If I was him, I’d secretly be hoping the atheists are right.
Essentially, you get the same problem you had with Diogenes. When you build a precedent by having a long history of borderline shitty behavior, the mods have a hard time stepping in one day and saying “oh, you know, this stuff you’ve been doing for the last few years? All along it turns out you were an asshole and against the rules, stop it”
Which ultimately poisons the board - essentially, the key to being shitty and getting away with it is having a long history of being shitty.
But they ultimately, against my expectation, solved the previous case I mentioned as an example, so who knows.
Well, FWIW…
Yeah. In my opinion, Bricker saved that thread. Without torturous lawyerly word-wanking it would have lasted as long as as if it had asked if 2+2=5.
I strongly suspect that many if not most people have some level of persecution complex. There seems to be a deep desire in many to claim persecution against all common sense and logic. It might be a desire to be pitied, or to excuse failures, or just to get attention, or what else I don’t know. But people seize on the idea like a terrier on a pork sausage.
Bricker is more consistently logical and interesting than 95% of his critics. But based on reading the first page of the linked thread, this pitting is understandable.
Logic can go either way. You can make a logical argument that’s a tangent to the actual discussion, or a logical argument without merit. Interesting? Not terribly. You can pretty much predict exactly what his schtick will be whenever he enters the thread. It rarely adds anything meaningful to the discussion, anything that may enlighten. It’s really just a matter of trying to create arbitrary hoops to make other people jump through, to distract them from whatever topic he’s being an apologist for. If you’re looking for an enlightening discussion, it’s not interesting at all.
“Why do Christians feel persecuted?”
“Because some people treat them badly.”
“That’s not persecution!”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - I forgot to mention that atheists feel morally entitled to a monopoly on whining about how much they are disliked in America.
You know what I like about you, Shodan? Unlike Bricker, nobody is likely to look at you and think, “man, what a well-spoken, intelligent person, it’s a shame they’re such a douche”.
…Well, okay, two out of three ain’t bad.
Wow. I didn’t know that words have only one meaning now. When did that happen? You cite dictionary.com, but disregard definition #2 which seems pretty applicable to this MB:
It wouldn’t be my descriptor of choice, but I certainly wouldn’t Pit someone for using it. Sheesh!
No, but using it for 6 pages in a thread where it is blatantly obvious that nobody else considers that definition reasonable and are instead ascribing to a different definition altogether? Fuck that shit.
By all means, let’s derail the pitting of someone who derailed a debate to nipick over the definition of “persecute” with another hijack over the definition of “persecute”.
Nobody else? You mean no body else who agrees with you.
I’m not sure he intended to do what he actually did, which is to make it a bit more likely that any actual cases of anti-Christian animus will be shrugged off as “Wolf!” cry #573 (collect the whole set!).
Whatever one thinks of Bricker’s arguments, it’s amusing that the guy who says “this is why I think there’s persecution” gets Pitted for doing so.
I’ve scraped nicer and smarter and better things than you off my shoe, Oak.
Hasn’t Michael Lind published a treatise on this subject? Or maybe we can divide the “persecuted Christians” into 9 socio-political groups to explain their sense of persecution better.
I am reminded of the lawyer in one issue of Astro City who got an obviously guilty client acquitted by raising all sorts of bizarre comic-book-universe possibilities (the deceased isn’t really dead, the killer was an evil twin from an alternate universe, etc). Since such things were known to be not completely impossible in their world, the jury was swayed to accept this argument as a basis for reasonable doubt.