Ooh, I hope he doesn’t take it. I’m gettin’ a bit weary of identifying myself in terms of my ten-year-old, and this looks like it just might fill that empty space in my psyche.
And kaylasmom can only be pleased that I chose this method of expressing my midlife crisis, rather than something impractical such as a Maserati, that she can’t even fit her guide dog in. She’ll get used to being “Mrs. Korg, the implacable sodomizer of chocolate bunnies” soon enough, I’m sure.
Yeah, except he doesn’t confront Christians; he confronts a Christian. And he doesn’t just confront him; he follows the Christian in his crosshairs from place to place, pasting saved lists that are stripped of context and demanding point-by-point responses to them. He knows, for each item, that Poly could give an hour long sermon, and his hope (and realization) was that Poly would tire of the wasted effort and be consumed by nothing but his stalker. We can say that Poly takes some of the blame for engaging him at all, except that his engagement was genuine and well intentioned, unlike the solicitation thereof.
There really was no way to know, until it was too late, just what Badchad was up to. By that time, his stated goal had succeeded. He had robbed a Christian — just one — of the joy his community had brought him. That was Badchad’s only goal. He said so himself. He’s tying it to ignorance fighting now in the most bizarre back-pedal ever seen, bizarre because his ignorance fighting method is to fight fire with fire. He’s as ignorant as the day is long about the passages he pastes. I tore one of his lists to shreds, and his only response was neener-neener. The only reason I succeeded when Poly didn’t is because I’m not always nice the way Poly is. I just called him on his errors without explaining the whole church’s history or the nuances of Nicean scholarship.
Badchad then immediately declared he was closing that turret, and told me plainly that I’d never get another word from him. In other words, I’m not his target. Siege is not his target. No other Christian or person on this board is his target, except for Polycarp. The only problem he has with Tom is that Tom is an obstacle for his GD trolling. It’s just one more aspect to his fixation on Poly, and has nothing to do with Tom per se. He just wants Tom to get out of his way, so he can draw a bead on Poly. It’s truly sick. That’s how it all looks to me, anyway.
Perhaps you were just using my post as a jumping-off point, which is fine, but for the record, I did go on to state that I think he should be banned for stalking Poly and that stalking should be officially against the rules.
Yes, you did. My apologies for seeming to imply otherwise. I only wanted to make the point that I agree with you — a person shouldn’t be banned for confronting Christians — and then to drive home the point that that isn’t what Badchad has done. He would need to stalk at least two of them for that phrase to apply.
Why wuld you assume that religious people don’t feel all that strongly about God? Isn’t that part of what makes them “religious”? Or are we now redefining what “religious” means?
How do you know what various religious people do or don’t do? If you are going to grant that they are “religious,” even if only by self-proclamation, then ISTM a safe bet they would not appreciate gross insults to their diety. You seem to be arguing that such gross insults should not be offensive because people are not religious enough. But that’s not your call.
Oh, I don’t know. What does that have to do with the legitimacy of grossly insulting a diety when “discussing” religion with believers? ISTM such an action can be nothing more than a transparent attempt to end the discussion. And as a tactic it works. But if badchad’s intend is to shut down rather than foster discussion, to provoke and to offend rather than to debate, then he has no business in the debate forums of a message board. Mtgman has accurately noted that what he really seeks is a soapbox, but the SDMB has never been in the business of providing soapboxes; one-trick-ponies are actively discouraged. I see no reason to make an exception in this case.
I did not claim to know what individual religious people do or don’t do. I said “most don’t”, which has been my personal experience. Gallup says 41% Americans go to church regularly, religioustolerance.org says 21%. Whatever. The point is I have trouble taking this deep devotion to God any more seriously than a devout patriotism, ie not very seriously, and I’m afraid that IS my call.
I think pretty much everybody, not just the faithful, bristle when they hear someone trash the thing they value most. A deep devotion to God is no different from a deep devotion to science in that regard. Quite a few people, in my experience, explode with incredulity when their beloved science is criticized in any regard whatsoever. Just tell them that science can’t prove 1+1=2, which is a fact, and the response is like a fundamentalist screaming, “Blasphemy!”
People hold in their hearts what they treasure most, and insulting it insults them. In fact, that’s what button pushing is all about, isn’t it? Finding the one thing that means more to someone than anything else in the world, and deliberately targetting it?
Attendance at church hardly corrolates to incidence of prayer or to belief in god. If you are in a discussion with people who profess a belief in God, are you going to disregard that on the basis of Gallup polls? You can discount the sincerity of people’s beliefs if you like – you are correct that that is entirely your call – but if you insult their beliefs based on your own presumption and assumption that those beliefs are not genuine, it will be hard for you to argue that you are not being a jerk by doing so.
Most of my experience with the legal process comes from reading briefs, response briefs, and judgements. I’ve not seen much coarse language, but portraying the opposing party as a villan, deserving of dismissal or punishment is pretty much the raison d’etere for these documents. As Tolkien said, fair language can mask foul intent.
But the SDMB gets far more traffic than most blogs and requires no work on his part to build an audience or manage the site.
The silence of your opponents. A television channel may broadcast drivel, but if it’s the only channel broadcasting, they’ll have the audience and their executives will love it. This is, IIRC, the reason tomndebb gave for why he doesn’t let nonsense pass unchallenged, even if it means speaking past the font of said nonsense to reach the silent ones.
The final thought in my first post was more lyrical than literal. It’s a failing I have, as the evening wanes my lyrical tendancies wax. I was riffing on Shakespere, both with the allusion to the “peanut gallery” and casting us all as playing to the audience. After all, the whole world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
Why be obtuse? I said it was my personal experience as well that most people don’t seem to put much thought or effort into their religion. Regardless, I have no idea whether badchad feels the feelings are genuine, so I don’t know if that’s what motivates his provocative language. Personally, I generally don’t blatantly insult what people even claim as important to them since it just hands them a big stick made out of righteous indignation.
I’m curious on another running element of this thread: are we really [post=6211800]allowed to run “ban him” campaigns[/post] like this now? Or is OK when it’s a big meanie?
Did that ease up at the same time as the troll-calling rule was updated?
It seems to me that, if trolls are always banned, and we’re allowed to call people trolls, then by extension, we’re allowed to run “ban him” campaigns. If everyone is allowed to line up and call Poster X a troll, aren’t they implicitly saying he should be banned, as well?
Which is another reason I thought lifting the ban on calling people trolls was a bad idea.
No, that is a misunderstanding of how that rule was loosened up. IIRC, “Troll” can be used as a general insult but the mods specifically said they didn’t want “serious” troll hunting, like hunting down inconsistencies and stuff.
True, but that doesn’t really apply to this situation. It’s not like you have to be Sherlock Holmes to find evidence on badchad. He’s pretty blatant about it, enough that the majority of posters (judging by this thread, at least, which admittedly may be a skewed sample) who come into contact with him come to the conclusion that he’s a troll. If we’re allowed to call him such, and the mods are refusing to pull the trigger for whatever reason, how can you avoid a “ban him” bandwagon? Put a cap on how many people are allowed to voice their opinion of him in one thread?
Just another reason it was a bad idea to repeal the “no trolling accusation” rule, I guess.
Yes, but I discounted your own personal experience since I fail to see how you could possibly know what many other people think in regards to their own religious beliefs. Maybe I’m wrong to discount your experience in this way, but I can’t help it seeing that I’m so gosh darn obtuse.
It doesn’t matter if he thinks they’re genuine or not; again, that’s not his call. Looking behind someone’s professed beliefs to sit in judgment on the legitimacy of those beliefs = being a big honkin’ jerk.
True 'dat. It also gives them a valid excuse to stop talking to you, leaving the strength of your argument unproven. Of course, it also leaves the weakness of your argument unproven as well, whihc IMO is precisely why badchad does it.
