Ahhhhhh now there’s an interesting and valid take on it.
Whenever I try to have a discussion I try to determine whether the other person is really interested in listening and understanding or just in venting and/or winning. If I think they aren’t really interested in listening to what I have to say then I lose interest in listening to them. No discussion there.
Clearly Kalhoun’s protest will end some discussions before they’ve begun but I think folks who enter a discussion with someone who disagrees with them shouldn’t be too thin skinned.
It can be difficult at times to express one’s true feelings without being perceived as rude but I think you’ve raised an interesting point.
I gave up on them when the exchanges descended to the childish level of “am not! are too!”
Sure, in Latin or Greek. But since the convention in modern English is not to simply stick on a title like a surname (i.e. it is “President George Bush” or “George Bush, President of the United States”, not “Bush President”) then I figure there’s no point complaining that the convention (and the deity) is being disrespected if it adheres to one linguistic convention while ignoring another.
Besides, I’d rather refer to the guy by the name he used and responded to during his lifetime. It’s only polite, after all, since the Christian convention is that he’s still listening and responding to it, noting it in prayers, making check-marks when it’s used in vain, etc. So insofar as it matters at all to me, the guy’s name was Joshua. People who never met him refer to him as Jesus.
No, “Constipated, Mr Holmes?” is a riff on “No shit, Sherlock”.
Really? Other than that which you claim for your non-capitalization of certain names, which I take to mean to lend them less reverence than, say, Vlad the Impaler or Kim-Il Sung, could you give me an example of a significant difference?
Well, I suppose in discussions I’ll have to fall back on the widely-used but incorrect convention, lest people not know who I’m correctly but unconventionally referencing.
Hi Sarahfeena. I didn’t actually say that getting rid of religion will make all the bad stuff go away. The point we were making is that if someone says he’s doing something bad in the name of religion, that bad act is being based on scripture or some other supportive driver associated with that person’s religion. If he didn’t have scripture or what have you to base his actions on (presumably because he believes in those words or interpretations so deeply), or a large group of like believers to reinforce that belief, you would take away the majority of his motivation. Would some people find another reason to be Bad Guys? Sure. But absent the inerrant word of god or the possibility of misinterpretation due to vagueness, contradiction, and the general “cobbled together” nature of holy books, a lot of this stuff would lose momentum. I don’t think anyone suggested that bad stuff would suddenly go away altogether, but it would definitely lose some of the intensity.
It seems for most people this is the only place they can disrespect others without risking life or limb.
It makes me a little sad to know that the people I see on the street live in such fear. That’s why I always smile real big and give them a greeting like “Howdy!” or “How’s it going?” I hope it puts their little hearts at ease.
I think some people have lost sight of the fact that this IS the Pit, and while the exchange was decidedly civil for this venue, I think the fact the OP opened it here gives somewhat of a green light to say things purposely to annoy.
Well, yes. Now if only I’d thought to mention that you persist in this habit in GD and every other forum where you post about religion… as I remarked earlier, the only Pit-specific thing about this behaviour is that you’ve chosen this Pit thread to admit you only do it to annoy.
And I think you may have lost sight of that signal fact.
OK, but I don’t get how that’s different from the good stuff. Interchange the word “good” for “bad” in what you wrote here, and there’s no evidence that it would not be equally true.
My personal opinion is that the ability/propensity to believe is an evolved human trait, and like any other, some have it and some don’t. Some folks have it to a stronger degree than others…it’s part of their personality. (Whether or not a god/higher power/etc. actually exists is a separate issue. It either does, or it doesn’t, but that doesn’t seem to affect the reality of belief or non-belief.)
Given both of my paragraphs above, I don’t think it matters if there is “religion” or there isn’t. Bad and good would still exist, and some/many/most people would still have a need to “believe.” So, the best we can do is try to all get along.
You ADMITTED you do it to annoy here. Do you or do you not do it elsewhere, as well?
And tell me this: you seem to think that because you do it to BOTH annoy and protest, that someone makes the annoying part okay. Why? Why does this little personal protest of yours make it okay to deliberately irk people you might be debating with? Can you not see that doing so would make you a douchebag? If you just did it to annoy, would you see it then?
Actually, his name was Yehoshua, a name commonly shortrened to Yeshua or Yeshu in the 2nd Temple period. Both “Jesus” and “Joshua” are Anglicized versions of the same Hebrew/Aramaic name. Jesus takes a trip through Greek and Latin first, though
(Hb) Yehoshua --> (Ar) Yeshua --> Gr) Iesous. --> (Lt) Iesus --> (Eng) Jesus
My minister (a self professed agnostic - as I said upthread, Unitarian) gave a sermon on belief. She said people often come to her with “I hear this is the church where you can believe anything you want” and her thoughts were “well, if that works for you, great, but I’ve never seen anyone yet who really gets to choose what they believe.”
This same principle applies to all sorts of things. Prejudice against gender and race persisted because it was a meme accepted by the majority. It’s just people and societies growing up.
What I’ve noticed is that whether we talk about belief or non belief the same internal processes go on within people. One person finds a path through religion that leads to being a kinder more compassionate human being. Another finds an outlet for their judgmental personality and the need to feel superior. The same happens with non believers. One path is not superior to the other because people are different. The person that emerges from the experience has a lot to do with what the person going in wanted and needed.
Well Fuck You and the horse you rode in on!!
See! I didn’t forget.
I thought we were talking about the way you regularly choose to discuss religion in any forum and we just happened to be in the pit. Otherwise what’s the point of the discussion at all? Obviously outlandish rude behavior is allowed in the pit. The subject only becomes relevant if we’re talking abut discussions in general held elsewhere right?
You’re correct in that I only intended it as an expletive without deliberate intent to offend Christians (please note the capital ‘C’). I still think that people are waaaaay too freaking touchy about taking offense (especially in the Pit).
When you consider things like dunking a crucifix in urine or smearing dung on an image of the Blessed Mary, a lack of capitalization is a pretty pissant offense.
