Yes, obviously. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that is always what people mean when they say you shouldn’t say something, unless they specifically say otherwise.
When your mom told you “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” was she limiting your freedom of speech? When the SDMB tells you that you can’t insult people or be a jerk, are they limiting your freedom of speech?
By your logic, you are against freedom of speech since you are telling the Pope he shouldn’t have said that. And I am attacking your freedom of speech for telling you that you are wrong.
Freedom of speech is not a moral issue. It a legal right. And I do in fact have the right to use my speech in order to try to get you to stop saying things I don’t want you to say. If the Pope wants to say that you shouldn’t do X, he has that right, and people have the right to either listen to them or not listen to them.
Plus, what the Pope is saying is pretty much a tenet of liberalism: religious tolerance. While objecting to someone’s beliefs and explaining why they are wrong is not intolerance, insulting someone for their religion definitely is.
Please stop using “freedom of speech” as “freedom to be a jerk without consequences.” That’s troll logic.
Did you actually read the story? The kid has been disclaiming the story for quite a while. It’s just that the publisher is just now listening to him.
If anyone looks like a snit, it’s the father, who kept all the money and refused to listen to his kid when the kid told him he lied. It honestly seems more like a story of a father exploiting his son’s story than something that was the kids’ fault.
Plus who hasn’t told stories or known someone who told stories as a young kid, and had the story get away from you? I bet there are quite a lot of “snits” by that standard on this board.
The article said he wrote that to the Website on Tuesday. His mom has been blogging that it isn’t real for a while either.
And I agree with you on the Christian therapist father being the “encouragement” for the publication. It’s hard to hold a paralyzed kid formerly in a coma being entirely responsible for writing and publishing a story.
According to the version I read somewhere, it was actually a bit worse than this. Chavez wasn’t even the one conducting the service.
Chavez is the pastor of the New Hope congregation, where the service was being held. The family had hired his chapel to hold the funeral there, but brought in their own pastor to perform the services. So Chavez wasn’t objecting to performing the service. He was objecting to having the service take place in his facility. According to the story, he knew in advance that they had been a lesbian couple, but he didn’t know that they would be overtly displaying the fact during the service. He only learned that when he saw the pictures they were showing, as it was happening (or perhaps just shortly before), and that’s when he stepped in and shut them down.
He finally found a way to get back at Dave Allen.
Stupid and religion. Would you quit being so fucking repetitive?
Watch me, pal.
Seriously, why do so many people think that the ideas in religion should be exempt from mocking? Is it because they’re some of the most ridiculous ideas around? (A talking snake, two naked people in a garden, and a forbidden apple?) Or is it because mocking (satire) indicates thought, and thought is anathema to so many religious leaders?
As the Pope explained, it is because the mocking is provocation, that it hurts someone’s feelings and could lead to more violence and bad feelings in the world.
I’m not sure I necessarily disagree with him. Had he advocated making his feelings the law, enforceable by arrest and punishment, we would disagree. But making fun of someone’s faith can be a dick move.
Not that that will stop anyone on this board.
Frank, your San Petronio Basilica in Bologna has a painting of Lucifer dragging Mohammed down to Hell. Just saying, dude.
Because what you consider mocking other people consider insulting, and insulting people isn’t a particularly good way to bring about peace and harmony in the world. Do you really want the hatred between certain sects of Islam and the “Western World” to continue indefinitely? All of those drones, stealth aircraft, and high-tech weapons cost A LOT of money.
Who was mocking them when the first WTC center occurred?
How about the second?
How about all of the times people have been attacked for no reason other than going about their business? Expressing an opinion?
Look, I’m not a fan of antagonizing people needlessly, but these nutburgers consider *everything not like them *to be an insult to the prophet. Wearing a miniskirt – insult to the prophet. Writing a blog – insult to the prophet. Drawing any picture of Mohammed – insult! Drinking in a bar – insult.
From the Freedom from Religion Foundation:
And to that I say, fuck them. They are attacking and insulting MY beliefs of basically letting people alone when they attack and insult people who don’t act as they do. So fuck them.
Well, we could end the hatred overnight by all converting to Islam. But that would be silly. Just as silly as ditching freedom of speech for fear of giving offense to religious types. You do realize that there’s a whole swathe of things that Muslims and Christians find offensive? You will never content these people until all criticism and mockery of their strange beliefs are made illegal.
As Mencken said, “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” Muslims are quite welcome to oppress their own people in their own countries. If we allow them to cow and oppress those of us who live in free and secular states then we’re in a whole lot of trouble.
You, and GumpyBunny, are painting all people of religion with one of the broadest brushes alive. There is, believe it or not, an entire world of things between bowing down to the wishes of dangerous extremists and having a modicum of respect for another’s religious beliefs.
How many muslims does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Ka-BOOM!
There are points to be made on either side of that debate.
One example, I’m not a Hindu. I find the Hindu religion to be particularly unnecessary- any polytheistic faith looks the same to me. It’s an amalgamation of a bunch of unrelated myths, then combined together and told as one mythology, one pantheon. Nothing to be revered, nothing to be taken as infallible truth. But where is the hatred, the insults, the warfare between folks like me, and folks that are Hindu? There really isn’t any.
Why is Hinduism, something I find patently ridiculous, not high on my list of grievances with religion?
Well, there aren’t a bunch of Hindus running around demanding that everyone else convert to Hinduism, or die, or suffer for eternity in hellfire. There aren’t a bunch of Hindus in my country who are demanding their silly beliefs become laws.
So, if every religion acted in a similar fashion, that is, assimilate and respect the culture you’re in, don’t demand your beliefs are followed by everyone, and quit fearmongering with the idea that everyone must be like you to be a good person, or to live well, or to live at all, then religion would be like astrology to me. More or less harmless, but also pointless nonsense.
It becomes a real, major problem when religions insist.
They insist, and impose, and decree, and contradict, and legislate, and restrict, and threaten, and bully, and accuse.
They insist you follow their ways, or else. They decree what morality is for everyone. They impose their views in the workplace, in the private home, in the public square. They contradict themselves whenever it is convenient. They legislate out secular ideas and impose religious ones. They bully those who don’t fit into their paradigm. They accuse others of being sinful, dangerous. It is they who are dangerous.
Hinduism isn’t sinless, it has its own problems, within its own society, and it too needs to grow out of its infancy. But I don’t have Hindu suicide bombers in my nation. I don’t have fundamentalist Hindus demanding I follow their codes and beliefs. I don’t have a majority of Hindus imposing their views on a secular nation. So, I don’t insult Hindus, generally speaking, my views in this post nonwithstanding.
They don’t deserve it- their ideas, however wacky to me, don’t harm me or my society.
When it comes to some sects of Christianity or Islam, they are quite harmful. Very supremacist ideologies- you’re inferior to me unless you are like me. Our moral superiority gives us a pass to legislate your private morality, to impose it upon you without your consent. It’s fascist and xenophobic and condescending and hateful and snide.
Not everyone who is a Christian or a Muslim is like that, but enough of them are, and enough of them make enough of a bloody mess, sometimes literally, that it deserves to be called out.
Such ridiculousness deserves to be deeply insulted, because mockery is a far more gentle weapon than a pipe bomb.
It deserves to be ridiculed in the public square, day in, and day out. It doesn’t deserve any special respect. And if the day should come that Hindus and astrologers and palm readers and lucky-rabbits-foot wearers try to blow up churches or schools or other buildings, they will experience the same level of mockery.
Until then, it’s just a difference in personal views, something I couldn’t care less about.
What makes an idea particularly stupid?
There’s an entire universe of terrible ideas. I’ve had my fair share of them. Everyone has had really bad ideas before. Sometimes you recognize them right away, like the impulse to punch someone in the face when you don’t like the way their voice sounds. Other ideas, you consider to be a good idea, for a long while, until you realize it’s not all its cracked up to be.
Some people are duped into thinking the Flat Tax would be a great idea. Hell, I was one of those guys. Seemed to be a great way to make the tax structure a lot less complicated, and if every class paid the same percentage, boy, that would be very fair. And then you actually sit and think about it for a while, and realize you’ve just fallen for good marketing, of a very bad idea.
Some ideas are really bad ideas, but they become part of our “little believies” as Louis CK puts it. That’s when your idea is precious to you, like a child. Your little believy could be something as simple as saying “Bless You” when someone sneezes. Your believy is that saying that when someone sneezes is Good, and people who don’t say it are Bad or neutral. And you insist people say it, and consider it rude when people don’t say it.
Well, that’s a fucking stupid belief.
It’s a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb tradition that has existed for many years. It might be based on the antiquated notion that there are evil spirits trying to escape from your body when you sneeze. Just another throwback to a time when people’s understanding of the universe was pretty piss poor. Yet we cling to it like it matters today, because it’s part of our little believies. And your little believies matter to you.
It just fuckin’ bugs me when people not only do that, but they insist others conform to doing that.
No, fuck you, and your little belief. I don’t say it.
I don’t give this little speech every time people say it, I leave well enough alone. But it’s a perfect example of people trying to enforce conformity for no goddamned fucking reason. And it pisses me off a little.
But I let it go. Why? Because you saying “Bless you” or “God Bless You” doesn’t affect me, or the person you’re saying it to, and it just doesn’t matter in general. It’s not worth a clash of ideas. Your idea is dumb, but I leave it alone.
If you insist *I’m rude *for not saying Bless You With Fairy Dust And Chocolate Sprinkles every time someone has a tickle in their nose, then you’re a prick. And that’s when I’ll tell you that you’re a prick, and tell you where to shove it. Because that’s when your little belief has crossed the line into up its own ass-ville.
I get along quite fine with people who disagree with me on everything, from the major stuff to the not-major stuff.
Hell, at work, I’ve got a guy who is a flaming right-wing Obama hating Republican who thinks I am the shit. I’m like his main guy. We hardly agree on a damned thing politics wise. But I get along with him because when he says his thing, I nod, and I say my thing, and he nods, and any disagreement we have doesn’t have to be resolved then and there, because we’re not at war, and it doesn’t make either one of us a prick to have a different opinion, even when it comes to Major Stuff like how we pay for people to get medicine when they’re poor, which is a major fucking big fucking deal to a lot of people, and it matters in this world WAY WAY MORE than whether or not people pray for shit. Which is an empirical fact at this point.
So when people say bless you or that they are a Sagittarius or that they believe what’s in their fortune cookie is for reals, or if they have actual lucky numbers or that they wish upon a star or that they cross their fingers when they tell a lie, or if they think that prayer is useful or they worship a pantheon of gods or just one or none, I just nod.
Because none of it is worth arguing about.
And when people tell me to my face that Obama is teh ebul communist set on destroying Real Merica, I also nod. Sometimes I laugh, but I just nod. Because sure, why not. That’s what you believe. I don’t respect it, but I don’t care. You’ll actually do something about it, which is vote however which way pleases you, and it still doesn’t bother me, because nothing I say is going to change your mind anyway, so go for it. I’ve got to live in the nation you want to build, but, live and let live. If you want to actually debate with me about it, I’ll tear you a new asshole and gift-wrap it for you, and then shake hands afterward, but otherwise, live and let live.
Any belief, no matter how stupid, becomes a Very Stupid Idea when someone decides that this idea is so genius that everyone else has to agree with me about it.
I’m not talking science questions. Science allows for people to be skeptical of the science itself. But when the evidence leans one way to a very obvious degree, and it’s not acknowledged, then you’re probably being foolish. But I’ll exempt science deniers from this argument, because some of them *have to deny science because it interferes with their little believies. *They want to walk around with a bag over their eyes, it’s their life. I’ll just go with what the vast majority of scientists who are actually in that field think because I understand some of them might have smarter ideas than my own little believies.
But for your religious ideas, your political ideas, your how-to-live-your-life ideas, ideas about what is socially acceptable, what is polite, what is rude, what is funny… these are all opinions and everyone has them. And some ideas are bad ideas, that we can just shrug off because who gives a shit.
But other ideas start off as bad ideas, and then they become Very Stupid Ideas.
Very Stupid Ideas are ones where I’m absolutely sure everyone else in my country or on Earth needs to agree with, or accept the authority of, my opinion.
And I’m not talking about obvious stuff, like I think Rape Is Bad.
I’m talking about not-obvious, debateable stuff, like “I am pretty sure that embryos have a soul, and we’re destroying that soul when we do an abortion”. Okay, show me a soul, and we’ll talk. Until then, it’s just your little believy and I don’t care about your little believy. I care about the life and livelihood of the actual grown woman who I can quite clearly see, and the effects to her life this decision holds, which I can also quite clearly see. That’s what interests me.
I’m talking about things like It’s Super Important That Woman Are Fully Covered At All Times. Really? Society seems to go along just fine without that rule. And the women seem pretty happy. I’m pretty sure that’s just your little believy and I don’t care about your little believy. And I think it’s something you cannot and should not impose on people.
That’s a Very Stupid Idea.
But it becomes exponentially dumber when you suggest everyone must live by this rule or they should be punished, or they should die, or we’re going to blow people up until you live by the rule.
Then it becomes The Dumbest Idea Ever Thought.
And then the ridicule, oh, the ridicule, is never ever ever ever more deserved.
You might want to take a look at the Snopes.com article. Theories like this are labeled “Undetermined.”
Personally, I don’t see anything dumber in saying “Bless you” (or “Gesundheit” or “God bless you”) when someone sneezes than in saying “Goodbye” when someone leaves, or “Good luck” when they have a test or a job interview.
ETA: But I do agree that people shouldn’t insist that others say it.
That’s an awful lot of typing for a Saturday afternoon, pizzaguy. Don’t you have some pizzas to make then throw out? 