You aren’t factoring in the amount of driving vs. the amount of inappropriate use of electrical appliances. Driving kills what, 30k people a year? How many people does driving save? How many people are alive because driving allows unprecedented improvements in quality of life and infrastructure? How many people of those 30k are killed by drunks or texters, that we actively punish?
Your attempt at throwing up your hands and demanding that everything is equal isn’t persuasive in the least.
No, because driving isn’t nearly as stupid as leaving a hotplate unattended. You’re muddying the situation because they aren’t equivalent.
It’s seldom fun seeing an atheist apologize for stupid, destructive beliefs because they think respecting shitty ideas is necessary or laudable.
Neither are you. Electrical appliances are used incorrectly a lot, and the vast majority of that misuse doesn’t end up killing or injuring anyone.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
It’s seldom fun seeing an atheist apologize for stupid, destructive beliefs because they think respecting shitty ideas is necessary or laudable.
[/QUOTE]
Heh. You’re the one giving a pass to the “stupid, destructive beliefs” that ended up getting a family killed on an otherwise completely unnecessary car ride, just because you’re uncomfortable with thinking of driving as an inherently dangerous activity.
I have no interest in “apologizing” for any irrational beliefs of any sort. I just think it’s funny to see so many of my fellow atheists assuming that the mere fact of not believing in a deity somehow makes them more rational or better thinkers than people who do believe in a deity, especially when their arguments so conclusively disprove that assumption.
People aren’t irrational because they’re religious: they’re irrational because they’re human. Trying to lay the blame for manifestations of natural human irrationality on a specific set of irrational beliefs about religion is one of the sillier and more irrational things that evangelical religion-bashing atheists do.
Yes. You know, Jarts or the lawn darts game we had in the '70s. It was sold until plenty of the general population of adherents showed what they’d be likely to do when they play the game. They took that game away… I see no difference between religion and playing games, so could we, you know, maybe…?
I agree but given such a sad set of circumstances I’d probably try to be nicer about the way I phrased it, or, not bring it up at all. It’s kind of obvious that it was tragic and unnecessary.
I get some of the points being made by people like Senor Beef. His point of view makes sense. At the same time I have to say that I hope he understand the perspective of people who have directly been part of such rituals and observed the culture in question directly.
I’m one of them. I’m Jewish but not of a religious family and I was sent to an Orthodox Hebrew school that I hated. I was on scholarship and bullied mercilessly. I do not have very many fine memories of my time at yeshiva. But I had one friend. Her name was Miriam and she was also Orthodox. She invited me to her house one weekend for shabbos. I was prepared to hate every single moment there. And yet . . . I didn’t. Instead I was warmly welcomed into her home with grace and kindness. The brachot weren’t just mindlessly recited. It wasn’t just ritual without any meaning. It was something a lot lovelier. There was a real sense of peace and love and kindness in her house that weekend. It wasn’t about an empty ritual or some kind of stupid and pointless system that made no sense. It was about a family at peace with themselves and joyfully celebrating something that was full of love. The food was excellent. The prayers were comforting. There was a kind of inner light inside of them on that weekend that was something that I found I ached if for only a little bit afterwards.
It wasn’t my home. It still isn’t even if my grandparents lived there. But to pretend that it is all bad is, I think, just as silly as pretending that it is all good.
The man wasn’t driving drunk for religious reasons, nor is the family required to attend midnight mass through catholic tradition.
Not cooking on the sabbath IS tradition and requirement, though as some have pointed out, there are some exceptions to the rule, and some are unware of exceptions.
She wasn’t heating up food for religious reasons, nor is the family required to eat hot food. She chose to feed her family hot food and she chose a method of heating it that was dangerous. If she had fed her family sandwiches and left a lamp on overnight and it had shorted out and caused a fire would you be so eager to condemn an entire religion? Have you ever left a lamp on overnight?
She plugged in the hot plate early and left it on due to religious reasons. Period. You say “she chose”. Yes, she did. She chose a religion and a way to fulfill it without being aware of the exception of the *rule and burned down the house. And why did no one else in the house question this? Read my first sentence.
Your lamp example is atrocious. A 25 watt bulb is not what we’re discussing.
*rules don’t come from storybooks with “borrowed” stories based on nothing but imagination, unless you really, really like dungeons and dragons. Hey, at least it’s original stories.
I notice you ignored the part of my post that addresses your position in detail. Please read it again and ask some questions if you can’t follow any of it.
Driving isn’t as inherently dangerous as leaving hot plates on. And even if it were, driving serves a purpose. It allows our civilization to exist. And millions of people would die without it.
Leaving a hotplate on all night, serves no purpose, other than making a poor woman who was brainwashed since childhood feel comfortable about keeping to the law, and giving the children she loved a nice warm meal.
Plenty of religious people are rational and/or intelligent, about many topics. But when it comes to their religion none is. Because believing affirmatively in a religion is always a bald choice with no evidence behind it.
If religion didn’t exist, or was a marginal force in society, there would still be war, anger, ignorance, prejudice, and magical thinking. There would just be less of it.
Please show a cite that hotplates cause more fires than lamps. Plenty of people use hotplates to keep food warm without anything to do with religion. The cause of the fire was the woman’s carelessness; she could have been just as careless if she was an atheist.
After all, if you look at this link it is clear that playing jazz causes terrible fires as the apartment owner was a jazz player who had a halogen light on obviously because that was the way he chose to see to play his jazz, Therefore, the need to play jazz caused him to leave a dangerous light on and to cause a severe fire. It’s such a shame that these idiots feel the need to play jazz when they could play other types of music and not need to use these dangerous lamps. If jazz didn’t exist, or was a marginal force in society, there would still be war, anger, ignorance, prejudice, and magical thinking.
And again, there is no “rule” that says you need to heat food on the Sabbath, although there is a rule that you need to attend Mass on Christmas even though you are statistically more likely to encounter a drunk driver on that day than on a different day.
It wasn’t carelessness. She left it on, on purpose. So as to keep the law. She probably didn’t think it was dangerous, because she’d done it before, and so did people she knew.
Also, what is it with people on the other side of this issue not being able to visualize statistics. Hotplates don’t have to cause more fires than lamps. Because lamps are in every home in the US, and hotplates probably aren’t in 10% of them (and are probably not used regularly on top of that. And most people don’t leave them on). That’s not even the issue, but this is the same sort of mushy thinking that is shown above on the driving tangent.
You’re trying to be clever, but you’re ending up sounding dim.
There rule is that you can’t turn stuff on or off. So she turned it on before the rule went into effect.
Again, this is victim blaming. The lady is the victim of the shitty religion she was unfortunate enough to be born into. She was trying to do the right thing. And from the wiki page on the, “Eat bacon if you’re starving” provision, it isn’t as cut-and-dried as you lot are suggesting.
Lady’s Goal: She loves her children and her religion. She wants hot food for them over the weekend, and she also wants to obey the law, if possible.
Christmas Mass Driver’s Goal: He loves him some Jesus. He wants to go to the midnight birthday party for his ever-lovin’ savior, and he wants to share that experience with his children.
Lady’s Attempt to Achieve that Goal: She flips a switch on a hotplate before sundown, intending to keep it on until sunrise on Sunday. She’ll be careful, and as long as there is nothing around the plate, it’s probably alright. And hey, two birds, one stone!
Christmas Mass Driver’s Attempt to Achieve that Goal: Get in car, put kids in car seats. Drive to location of mass.
Lady’s Unexpected Shittiness: The hotplate melts something, a fire starts they all die.
Christmas Mass Driver’s Shittiness: A drunk slams into the car and they all die.
Okay, both are doing things for their religion. Both have good (accepting their belief structures) motives for what they are doing.
But the lady is trying to out-clever a rule, and in the process taking a needless risk, and the driver is trying to drive somewhere, something he does every day, and is, in general not crazy.
Both religions have a hand in both instances. But I’m gonna stick with sundown flippyswitches prohibition as being more stupid, and more at fault.
Thank you for breaking it down so clearly and demonstrating that the two situations are equivalent. I hope you are condemning all Christians who go to midnight Mass on Christmas eve for their foolish adherence to a religion that requires them to put their children at such a risk.
Finally, the fact that you would say that this woman would leave a hotplate on until sunrise on Sunday shows your ignorance of even the most basic tenets of Jewish observance as well as your Christian-centric viewpoint.
Oh dear, really? I mean, I’m fast coming to view Lobohan as the embodiment of spittle-flecked hand-stabbing atheism, and I doubt I’d ever enjoy a cup of tea and a biscuit with him, but you’re going to run around crowing over a brainfart like that? Lobohan appears to have indicated a few moments earlier that he knows the Sabbath begins at sunset so what leads you to view his statement about sunrise as “ignorance of the most basic tenets of Jewish observance as well as your Christian-centric viewpoint” rather than accidentally taking his eye off the ball for a moment?
I can’t make you think. I can only show others that you refuse to. <3
A fair cop. I should have said sundown, right? Now that that factual quibble is out of the way, can we discuss your glaring inability to reason or make sensible arguments?
Because I think that’s more important, wouldn’t you say?
Oh for fucks sake. Does anyone understand that the danger to you an unsafe practice is per use or per hour? Cars kill a lot more people a year than climbing Mount Everest or base jumping or even fist fighting a fucking bear. I guess driving a car is more dangerous than all of those.
She didn’t forget to turn it off. She deliberately left it on, unattended, in compliance with religious dogma. The idea that this was just totally a random accident and could’ve happened to anyone is so pathetically fucking stupid I have no idea how people are still trying to make such a case.
We are going to have to agree to disagree. You will never convince me that this accident was caused by anything other than a woman either ignorantly or carelessly leaving a hotplate on because she wanted to keep food warm for her family-even though her religion
-does NOT mandate that you serve hot food
-does NOT indicate that you should use a hotplate rather than another potentially safer method of keeping food warm
-does NOT forbid the use of smoke detectors
She chose to follow the requirements of her religion in a way that was unsafe while many others choose to follow the same religion without putting their children at risk.
In my mind, the woman, not the religion is to blame. But go ahead and blame the religion if it makes you feel better or superior.
Isn’t it interesting that everyone is repeatedly throwing the word “spittle” at the atheists in this thread to indicate that they’re all just typing with constant rage? There are posts in this thread that attack atheists that are far more personal and more vile than the atheists have posted in this thread, and yet somehow it’s only the atheists who are in a constant rage “screaming” with “spittle” in their mouths.
It’s like you’re all on the same script.
And indeed you probably are. Every single outspoken atheist, no matter how civil or polite - even soft spoken - gets the “screaming spittle” accusation thrown their way. Now I’m not saying that my behavior in this thread is the model of civility. However, I have taken care to attack ideas rather than people (except if I’m responding to a particularly stupid personal attack against me). Is it because I dared try to make long posts to make my case? Is putting some effort into communicating ideas a sure sign that I’m a raving madman? Have I maintained this irrational fury for several days now, or does it come and go only when I post?
It’s sadly amusing to me that I pointed all of this out in the first couple of pages, using Richard Dawkins as the prime example of a soft spoken, polite atheist who has civil discussions, doesn’t generally make personal attacks, and generally is the epitome of a reasoned, calm debater. And all you hear about him from religious people is “militant” and “screaming” and “spittle”
Religion can’t hold up to scrutiny. So instead you attempt to discredit those who bring that scrutiny in many ways, not the least of which is to insist that religion is such a sacred topic - any religion, in any context - that anyone who dares scrutinize it must be a raving asshole who’s blinded by their rage. You could have an atheist that was the model of politeness, never raised their voice or made a personal attack in their whole life, and only argued with the highest standards of debate, and undoubtedly “spittle” “screaming” and “enraged” would be some of the words that came to mind from his religious opponents.