Who called me in here?
Um yeah his comments look pretty :smack:
Question for Rex:
Are you actually as stupid as your posting above shows you to be or is it merely an act? There is a world of difference beetween “could” and “is.” Monty2_2001 didn’t say jack about “could,” he said “is.”
Monty, you’re wrong. Monty2_2001 said “I have to say yes to the topic title”. The topic title was “could Allah be Satan?”
Also, because you seem to be overreacting a bit, I suggest re-reading RexDart’s final paragraph, specifically: “I don’t write this as a defense for monty2, rather mostly to amuse myself”.
Incorrect, Dryga. Had he said “I have to say yes to the topic title” and left it at that, then you’d be right. He ALSO (please avail yourself of any hand dictionary of the English language for definition and usage of the word in all caps immediately preceding this parenthetical instruction) said “islam [sic] is an evil religion.”
? what’s this about Presbyterians?
Hey, I gotta know. My mother’s a Presbyterian. Does this explain my freakishness?
BTW, I think the guy’s a :wally:, too.
I didn’t overreact. You underread.
That’s called “trolling” in some places.
by your definition of “trolling” this:
Is also “trolling!” Now cut it out before i get a Mod!! 
If one were to remove all posters of all irrelavent statements from this message board, there’d be no one left!
First off, I’d like to restate Monty’s warning that we should use the entire name of "monty2_2001 rather than shortening it to avoid possible confusion with MONTY2, who is a different poster entirely. Don’t forget the “2001”.
Oh, really?
“Presbyterians. Presbyterians. Presbyterians”
See? Nothing Hap…OH MY GOD! IT’S THE GHOST OF THE REVEREND JOHN WITHERSPOON! … So, um, Rev. That John Hancock guy. The big signature was just overcompensation wasn’t it? thought so.
No, Tars; mine’s not trolling. More in the neighbourhood of a pitiful, desp…nah, never mind. 
BTW, feel free to correct “hand dictionary” in my posting above to “handy dictionary.”
Don’t blame me - I voted for Cthulu.
(“The lesser of two evils!”)
Esprix
Correct. Monty2_2001 made two statements in that post. Both were addressed in separate paragraphs. In your post when you jumped down RexDart’s throat, you wrote "There is a world of difference beetween ‘could’ and ‘is’. " The whole could/is thing was part of the first paragraph, and only in response to his first statement.
Regarding the second sentence, “islam is an evil religion”, RexDart said this:
You still need to re-read his post, and possibly yours as well.
–
And I wouldn’t call his post ‘trolling’ considering that he even typed out at the bottom that it wasn’t serious.
Most pointless hijack ever? YOU decide!
I’m done with you, Dryg. It’s incredibly irritating to attempt to communicate with someoone who refuse to understand language.
Rexdart is a ham-fisted cunt.
Pretty offensive, right?
Well, without defining what, exactly, a “ham-fisted cunt” is, I think we can all pretty much agree that the above sentence is really a non-statement.
See? No harm, no foul.
You’re right grim spectre of red death, it is quite an excellent example of a non-statement. Of course, we have a pretty good idea on the word “cunt”, since it has a rather common usage most people would agree on. Much unlike the word “evil” which has no meaning I can yet discern after years of reading and studying philosophy. Still, “ham-fisted” is pretty vague, so the adjective is nonsensical. So I agree, no foul other than calling me a cunt, which is an easily refutable statement as I do not generally conform with the biological characteristics of what people call a cunt. So naturally, I take no offense.
I’d like to point out that clearly nobody read to the end of my post to understand my actual opinion on monty2. Naturally, this is the fault of having made a lengthy post, people just gloss over it and pick out the parts they want to flame. So, nobody except Dryga having actually read the post, I don’t care a hoot-n-hinanny what anybody else has to say if they’re being serious about their response. It was my point to have a little fun with semantics and the logical interpretation of statements, so anybody putting that back on me is all in good fun as well.
As for monty - the original monty - and Dryga’s interpretation debate, I think monty has failed to understand punctuation. Monty2’s first post is an agreement with the title thread, followed by a period, much like the one that will end this sentence. Thus separated by periods, monty2 conveys two separate thoughts. The first is that Allah could be Satan. The second, following the period denoting separation of statements, is that Islam is evil. One is a “could be” statement, the other is an “is” statement, and any Latin teacher worth his salt would slap my wrists for confusing the two. In his unenlightening brevity, monty2 fails to use any conjunction to relate the two thoughts. Perhaps he meant to say “Because Allah could be Satan, Islam is an evil religion.” Or could he have meant “Allah could be Satan, but Islam is an evil religion.” He didn’t, he made two separate statements. Even had he conjoined the sentences, that wouldn’t magically transform a subjunctive tense verb form into a present tense form.
I will repeat, it is probably the case that monty2 is a hateful, resentful Christian fundamentalist who despises Islam and the LDS church…but you can’t tell that for sure from his statements analyzed on their face. All I wanted to do was have a little fun pointing out to people how they really arrive at opinions of others. After months of hearing things like “Islam is an evil religion” from Christian fundamentalists expressing hatred, it is presumed that anyone following suit is of the same archetype. I wanted to open people to the idea that sometimes words mean only what they say, without the excess baggage that we attach to them in the form of connotations. I doubt that is the case here, but I found it interesting to examine nonetheless.
[ HIJACK!]
There are a few technical points to be addressed here:
First, there is no indication in the linked article that the Vatican “refused” anything. It only mentions that the petition was unsuccessful.
As noted in this rather more in-depth article from this Google-cached page, the discussion has rather more layers than the ABC reference would indicate. The calls for the picture’s destruction are not unanimous within the Italian Muslim community. The same group calling for the destruction of this fresco is also calling for the elimination of Dante from Italian literature courses (because he included Mohammed among the popes, bishops, and nobility that he fictionally damned in his work). And
I do note that the idiot bishop who got their hackles up would feel right at home swapping lies with Pat Buchanan, but that does not immediately bestow righteousness on their specific calls.
[ /HIJACK ]
[ HIJACK!]
There are a few technical points to be addressed here:
First, there is no indication in the linked article that the Vatican “refused” anything. It only mentions that the petition was unsuccessful.
As noted in this rather more in-depth article from this Google-cached page, the discussion has rather more layers than the ABC reference would indicate. The calls for the picture’s destruction are not unanimous within the Italian Muslim community. The same group calling for the destruction of this fresco is also calling for the elimination of Dante from Italian literature courses (because he included Mohammed among the popes, bishops, and nobility that he fictionally damned in his work). And
I do note that the idiot bishop who got their hackles up would feel right at home swapping lies with Pat Buchanan, but that does not immediately bestow righteousness on their specific calls.
[ /HIJACK ]
Unlike the word evil, which is rarely, if ever, used by anyone. Certainly not by sitting Presidents as the centerpiece to major foreign policy speeches. After all, wouldn’t the use of such a confusing and ill-defined word render the President’s statements into non-statements in a puff of logic? I also note, sir, that you chose to define “cunt” based on the common usage which most people agree on, when, if fact, I made clear that the sentence in question (“Rexdart is a ham-fisted cunt”) was a non-statement only if you never defined any of the words being used. Your decision to disregard the most basic instruction points to the possible drunkenness of any person or machine that failed to flunk you on any reading comprehension test you have ever taken, up to and including the SATs.
Which is proof positive of the Tao belief that attempting to study something to death is one step forward, two steps back. Your years of study about the definition of “evil” confuse, rather than clarify, the situation. A first grader with access to a dictionary can tell you that “evil,” when used as an adjective means something “morally wrong”. Yet your decades of philosophical readings prevent you from doing the same. You, sir, don’t even believe in evil! I may have to concede a point, because the way you used the word certainly confused me. Are you saying that you don’t believe in actions which are “morally wrong”? I must advise you that unlike monsters under the bed, morally wrong actions do not disappear simply because you cease believing in them.
Your defense of monty2_2001 is incorrect in a few ways. The first thing that jumps out at me is your strange belief that this statement
exists in a vacuum. Sir, it does not. It was written in a thread titled "Is the Qur’an a hoax or not?, and one can only assume that it was written in reply to said title. It is not someone “speaking on the value of religious texts,” but rather a non sequitar slamming the topic being discussed. The relevence of the koran to the modern world was not the issue at hand. Your failure to consider the context in which this statement appeared seems a significant oversight.
This is quickly going way off-topic, but it’s interesting so I’ll continue. I don’t think anyone will mind on this particular forum, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong since I’m still relatively new here.
I think the President’s usage of the word “evil” is a wonderful example of how vague the word’s definition is. He ought to have stuck with specific examples of specific behaviour types, thus demonstrating his point, rather than using a sweeping ill-defined ethical term like “evil.”
Well, as to the last point, my verbal SAT was a 740. Since 800 is the top of the scale, IMHO that’s pretty good. Plus, I reckon my 167 LSAT score says something pretty good about my logic, reasoning, and reading comprehension skills. I’m not the type of person who throws out test scores, but since you brought it up…
Admittedly, we were drawing different points from your example. I was pointing out that when context is lacking, a well-defined word with a referent existing in the natural world is conducive to a presumption of meaning. I contrasted this with something like “ham-fisted” or “evil.”
This is waaaaaaaaay OT now, but continuing…defining “evil” as a “moral wrong” does no good either. It’s like looking up a puzzling word in the dictionary and getting an equally puzzling synonym. Neither of those words has a referent in the natural world. I can say “rock”, point to a “rock”, and the word now has a meaning estabished to everyone who was present, at least in a general sense. “Moral wrong” is hard to point to and define. You can give examples all day long, but that doesn’t define it. After centuries of thought, there is still a disagreement as to whether an action is wrong because of its inherent nature or wrong because of its consequences, and if the latter then consequences to/for whom? To answer you, I believe murder occurs, and that I disapprove of it for a variety of practical reasons related to the way I’d prefer the world to be, but I don’t label it at all in moral terms. “Evil” then is a word that has no meaning at all, because like “moral wrong”, it’s a word that means almost as many different things as there are people. I don’t even know what you mean by it, because I have no information about your beliefs in the field of ethics.
With a grand total of three short sentences to his credit, monty2_2001 didn’t provide any of the contextual clues that we would need to discern what he means by “evil” when he uses it. The sentence can only be understood if we presume something about his meaning that we have no logical right to presume. We have absolutely no reason to know what definition of “evil” he’s using to come to arrive at his classification of Islam as “evil.” Therefore, it’s a non-sensical statement.
In my original post discussing this, I clearly stated that I was not defending him. I was enjoying an exercise in language analysis, and concluding to myself that the only reason we actually have to condemn him is what we are inferring from his posts. Infer away. The thread title in which he makes his second post does lead to the inference you make, but it’s still only an inference. If I were asked my opinion as to monty2’s character, I would conclude just as you have, but I could not support that conclusion with great confidence based solely on the words he wrote. It’s our experience with religious hatred in people we’ve previously encountered that suggests the inference.
Basically, the words don’t say anything much themselves, they say something about the person writing them that we can use our experience to infer. We’ve heard people use the word “evil” to describe religions before, and from our experience we know something about the people who use the word that way. That doesn’t define the word, just the person.
All very interesting. Well, sorta. I guess ;).
Anyway, here is monty2_2001’s third post on this message board in its entirety:
Are we getting closer to a consensus :)?
- Tamerlane
LOL, hey tamerlane, here’s a quote from my original post in this thread:
What’s that old saying, it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt? Not that there was really much doubt, still I find this somewhat amusing. I still don’t know if I could hang the literal meaning of his statements on him, but it looks like he’s well on the way to hanging himself with a nice long piece of binary rope.
Rest in peace, monty2_2001, I’ve probably spent more hours of my life analyzing your idiotic statements than anyone else’s idiotic statements throughout the ages of history.