“Jesus never existed, and if he did he certainly wasn’t the son of god” isn’t an attack on the internal state of the believer, their identity, it’s an attack on historic claims.
Correct. And I don’t get offended when people deny the existence of Jesus, or God, or anything about my faith. It’s fine.
Now, I’ve been offended and gotten into some nasty fights in the Pit when people have characterized “all Christians are like this” and called them out. There’s a visceral difference that I can attest to as a member of that group.
If you said, “All Christians are liars and don’t believe in a deity, it’s just an excuse to be a pedophile, just look at the Catholics.” Now you’re getting into what I’d consider hate speech.
It is absolutely an attack on their internal state. It’s saying that their feelings of religious ecstasy, or numinousness, or feeling that Jesus is looking over them and cares about them, is just a delusion. It isn’t calling them liars for having those feelings, but it does say that they aren’t based on reality.
I can tell you as a Christian it’s absolutely not. I can tell you authoritatively that it’s not. Saying I should be offended by this is no different than saying I shouldn’t be offended by a slur.
There is a huge difference between what I believe and what I am. When you deny a person’s gender, you’re not attacking their belief in their own gender, you’re denying their core of what they are.
If they were based on reality then
“Jesus never existed, and if he did he certainly wasn’t the son of god”
would be received the same way
“George Washington never existed, and if he did he certainly wasn’t the President of The United States”
is.
It’s not up to you. It’s up to me–I’m the one that said it. In another context, where I wasn’t speaking hypothetically, it would absolutely be meant as an attack. Whether you receive it as such is irrelevant.
Just to be clear, you recognize the distinction between saying someone is lying about their feelings vs. saying their feelings are based on a delusion, right?
I also recognize the irrelevance.
Well ok, I guess there is no possible meeting of minds on this topic then.
If a bunch of people had a really strong, core part of their identity tied up in whether George Washington was real, then I’d agree there was some similarity.
I don’t get it. There are probably hundreds of other message boards where you can say transgender people are lying just so they can win sports or molest children. There are hundreds where you can say Black people don’t have the brain capacity to be a safe airline pilot. You just can’t here. I am sure there are things on those boards you couldn’t say that you can here.
Just post where you feel comfortable that you can.
I don’t think there is to be honest.
And I don’t mean that to disparage you at all. I just don’t think there’s any way to find common ground here.
I genuinely don’t think that’s how that works.
American’s don’t count I guess…
Some people think we should judge a message based on how it was received. Others think it should be judged based on intent. I tend to favor the latter, but tastes differ.
Which is the problem; the Right will not tolerate the existence of anything but the Right. The fact that people here are allowed to disagree with the Right is intolerable to it.
Likewise, which is why I phrased that as neutrally as I could. Sometimes common ground is impossible.
I appreciate that.
So, if you say “Jesus never existed, and if he did he certainly wasn’t the son of god,” that’s an attack on a Christian’s identity, because that’s how you mean it.
But If I say “Jesus never existed, and if he did he certainly wasn’t the son of god,” that’s not an attack on a Christian’s identity, because that’s not how I mean it?
I don’t understand how this could be. Can’t you simply refer to the people in question as “transgender women”? Then, if you want to argue that society, as a general rule or WRT to some specific scenario, should treat transgender women differently than cisgender women, you can do so.
If you feel you simply can’t discuss these issues without using terms that others find insulting, then it’s reasonable that others won’t want to have discussions with such a boorish person.
If you say that’s not what you meant, then sure. I’m not sure what you do mean in that case, because for me the attack is a direct logical consequence of the claim, but if it came up in a discussion we could probably figure out where the actual difference lies.