FriarTed
Charter Member Join Date: Nov 1999
Posts: 4,855
Location: SE Indiana USA
Quote:
Originally Posted by badchad
So basically, you don’t think we should take Jesus’ word for it.
If this were true, you’d be threatening us all with hell then, wouldn’t you. Christ did live as that, did he not?
I find anyone that worships such an selfish, anti-social, genocidal god a bit reprehensible, so I guess that makes us even.
You know, there comes a time when even Hopeful Universalist C’tians such as myself who hope & believe that the Lake of Fire is the Purifying Presence of God
do relish the thought that some hate-filled unbelievers will be peeing all over themselves & crying like little girls with skinned knees as they stand before Yahweh/Jesus for their Judgement.
See, I actually think I have met the second & the third…just not in a way that can be outwardly manifested. BUT…I give up. I BELIEVE God exists, even though He has sent me no sign that I can post a photo of on this message board as proof.
I guess I just don’t understand what is the big deal about that word. If anyone else wants to say they “know” God doesn’t exist, it wouldn’t bother me in the least. If PRR wants to say that he “knows” the Red Sox are going to win the world series next year, that wouldn’t bother me, either. My attitude towards this kind of thing is, “well, he can ‘know’ anything he wants, but we will see next summer what the Red Sox will do.” Same thing with God. I guess we will all know eventually whether God exists or not, but it sure isn’t going to be solved on the SDMB. I don’t know why this particular semantic is so bothersome, but since it is, I will try to remember not to use it.
Incidentally, the context I used it in in the first place was to say that it didn’t matter to me what anyone else says about God, I know in my heart that He exists. As I have said, it wasn’t about trying to convince anyone, it was just about trying to express my level of personal conviction on the matter, as a way of letting people know where I am coming from. I see that as totally different from using in in the context of trying to convince someone of it. But I will try to remember that it seems to irritate people, even for such a purpose.
You know that really is as hateful as anything I have seen badchad post. If you consider him a troll, I would have to put you in the same category. **PRR ** proabably rightfully sees that as a remark that can only anger atheist and ratchet debate up into insults, name-calling or choosing to ignore a poster that posts like that.
Maybe you could keep that in mind as you post in the future.
You’re right. But I notice you had the sense to form your statement as a general wish, not as a direct claim that you wished it on a named poster. That let it fall into the same category as several of badchad’s generic statements for which he has not been admonished.
I’m not happy with such expressions, but GD has always been a bit rough and tumble with the rules rather narrowly interpreted to eliminate personal attacks.
Your thread boiled down to “the Bible has errors and contradictions, therefore there is no God.” It was a weak argument. Therefore I (and several others in that thread) attacked it.
For someone who loves to claim that the weakness of a liberal Christian’s argument gives you reason to act like an asshole, I find it highly ironic that you accuse me of “jumping all over your ass” for attacking your unsound, poorly thought out excuse for a GD OP.
I’m sort of wondering about this rule in general, because it seems like, under it, I couldn’t say, “tomndebb is a jerk and his mom dresses him funny.”, but I can say, “People who pick user names that start with ‘t’ and end with ‘omndebb’ are jerks whose moms dress them funny.”
That’s not the intent of the rule, I don’t think, but nevertheless it still seems to fit under the rule.
On the other hand, with the Friar’s construction, since his statements really do not apply to a number of outspoken atheists on the board, (Kalhoun, Princhester), then badchad has the opportunity to say, “Well, I am not one of the people you are describing.” whereas, I would have a very difficult time claiming that my username does not begin with “t” and end “omndebb.”
True, and the other thing that seems wrong to me is that in the case of bible man is I am apparently unable to call into question his personal morals based on beliefs that he clearly stated. However, it is ok for me to call into question the morals of a group of people, who may or may not have stated their beliefs clearly. The latter type questioning of morals seems to use a much broader and potentially less accurate brush.
Clearly. But to use a more general and less silly example than I used, let’s look at two more general statements, such as “Christianity is an evil religion and its beliefs are evil” and “It’s impossible for someone to be moral without believing in God”.
Neither of these are direct insults, of course, and they are statements that can be debated, but at the same time, they are insults. If I say “Christianity’s beliefs are evil”, I’m still saying, “You, Tomndebb, who are Christian, hold evil beliefs”, and if you say, “Atheists can’t be moral”, you’re still saying, “You, Captain Amazing, who are an atheist, are immoral.” Neither of us are saying it directly, though.
Now, maybe that’s something unavoidable. It’s important to not allow direct insults in GD, of course, and you don’t want to stifle debate by being oversensitive in what are insults and what are not, and I don’t really have a problem with the way the rules are now. But I still think it’s important to realize there is a pretty big grey area there.
I wasn’t bragging. I was actually confessing. Tomndebb noted that I’d made the infamous statement in The Pit. I admitted that I had done it in GD, after the badchad Christ/c*** post but actually in response to another badchad post.
Beaucarnea- My statement was vulgar & snarky, but not full-on vengeful. Heck, while my fellow churchgoers might chastise me for vulgarity, they’d me more concerned about my Hopeful Universalism.
I regret how I phrased it. I’m still contemplating an apology that won’t also include a self-justification.
For the record, I think it’s inevitable that sooner or later we’re going to have an another obnoxious Christian (or Muslim or Zoroastrian or whatever) such as His4Ever come onto the boards, and when that happens I hope we have badchad, pseudotriton** and Der Trihs around.
But most of all I hope that the abovementioned 3 have been left with the sense that on the Dope, unlike most other venues, people listened to them and engaged with them and didn’t just try to shout them down, and, furthermore, that the board moderators did not pin their ears back. That when all is said and done, it’s been a pretty darn fair environment for all relevant perspectives.
I feel that if such a wish had come from an atheistic poster, you would have been much quicker to assert your lack of stupidity and conclude that **Friar Ted ** was insulting your intelligence by disguising his wish as one directed at atheists in general and not specific posters.
But, in fact, he was not addressing it to atheists, in general, but to a specific subset that was described in such a way that his targets could easily simply declare that his shot had missed them. (It should also be noted that he only wished them to suffer humiliation, not eternal damnation–we get lots of calls for humiliation on the SDMB.)
Given that I have probably rebuked more theists than atheists for various acts of mudslinging (to the point where I have collected any number of comments from theists mirroring your whining–complaining that I demonstrate prejudice against theists and toward atheists), I suspect that you simply have your knickers in a twist over the events of the last week and really have not been paying attention to the actual events in GD. In fact, as far as I know, badchad is the only atheist I have cautioned and I have done so on exactly two occasions, in both of which he directly attacked another poster.
Is there some special section of Hell you and the Friar know about in which people experience mortal terror, but it only lasts five minutes and then everything is peachy again?
Sorry–hit “reply” when I meant to hit the bolding on “Friar”
You’re right that I am responding to your recent actions out of context of your general moderating tendencies, of which I’m normally a fan. But at the least it’s a gray area ( I see it as very dark gray indeed) where **Friar Ted ** posted his obnoxious comments in GD (and to his credit, he seems to see it that way, too) and I wouldn’t have made this point if you had decided to rebuke badchad AND Friar Ted twice apiece for over-the-top comments in GD, but you didn’t. You insist (somewhat weakly, considering the wording of the codicil I quoted about how mods can easily tell when someone is disguising his personal attacks as a generalized attack) that technically Friar Ted didn’t violate GD protocol. That technicality, and the strict application of GD protocol to badchad, is exactly what I’m pointing out, and your defensiveness might seem to you to be mitigating your impropriety, but to me it’s just providing more evidence that you’re viewing this from a personally biased perspective.
Maybe I’m being over-sensitive on this point, and maybe you’re not being sensitive enough. If you’d like to point out again how you’re quite sure that the problem is wholly due to my over-sensitivity, feel free to do so. I’m afraid all I’ll get out of that is the assurance that you’re determined not to hear what I’m trying to say.
Well, according to the Universalist Christian beliefs, (which Friar Ted has mentioned holding in numerous religion threads and which he explicitly mentions in the post under question), “hell” has little in common with the notion held by Fundamentalist Christians and is merely a purifying event following which all people are united with God.
So, any vague knowledge of who he is (sneakily provided by him in his own post), lets us know, immediately, that he is not wishing either eternal damnation or extinction upon the person to whom he is directing his ire.
I express no opinion on the topic, but when I have to judge his words, I judge them in the context of his person and his earlier comments on the same topic.