This is just one small example of what I was trying to point out by saying that badchad is simply being rude in a context of rudeness. Just because you’re conditioned not to see how fucking unforgivably rude it is to offer to pray for someone who plainly doesn’t give a constipated mouse’s turd for your prayers or your God doesn’t mean you can pass it off as “not rude at all” while making an obfuscatory federal case about badchad’s reference to the female genitalia.
When you finish wiping the spittle from your monoitor, could you perhaps let us know which poster or posters “you” refers to in your little rant?
Just to be clear:
Do you mean in any context, or just the context in which it was used in this thread?
You’ll do for starters. You tell people you’re praying for them when YOU decide that they’re in distress?
Am I in distress? If you’re answer is “yes,” then kindly do me a favor and shove your fucking prayers up your fucking God’s ass for me, would you? Thanks.
“you’re answer” = “your answer,” in case someone finds it enlightening to point out a typo as a major debating point for your side.
No, I tell people that I’ll pray for them when they have told me about their distress. Like when my neighbor lost his job, or when a friend’s son killed himself.
Are you in distress? You appear to be. Relax.
So in your opinion “I’ll pray for you” is right up there with “Your mother’s a whore”?
Strangest thing, I do not believe prayers work, I have seen thorough scientific studies that disprove that damn “power of prayer” thing that has circulated the web for years, but when someone says something like “I’ll pray for you”, I respond with “Thank You”. It is easy to say and painless and I understand that their heart is in the right place and they are not intending to be insulting, nor do I perceive it as being insulting. How very strange to take offense to that. If someone tells me, that I will burn in hell, I laugh at them and usually joke that if Heaven is for people like him, I will take my chances on any of the infinitely as likely afterlifes or lack there of. Why get upset by someone praying for you? Either consider them well meaning and misguided, or just consider that they are being nice.
I sympathize with BadChad and Der Trihs and you Psuedo as I do not believe in establish, brick and mortar churches, they all have inherit flaws and contradictions that I cannot accept. However, the passionate hatred and heated vitriol use against the mildly religious seems unwarranted and does nothing to promote your own position. Of course, this has been said in dozens of different ways throughout this thread.
Jim
Yeah, but unless you take offense, you have no reason to stab them in the hand.
But of course, there are times when prayer in the service of a certain goal can be insulting.
“I’ll pray for you, so that your cancer goes away” - silly and irrational, but sweet and thoughtful.
“I’ll pray for you, so that you can get past your secular doubt/ other religion, and finally accept Jesus as your personal savior.” -insulting, condescending, arrogant, and deserving of a rhetoric punch in the mouth.
This observer believes your “I’ll pray for you” is a sincere statement of concern.
However, it could be another version of that old Southern “Bless his heart.” Which might be related to the antiquated “touched by God.” That is, a more charitable way of referring to the village idiot.
I’m not the praying sort, but my bitter & cynical interpretation seems valid in this context.
A better way of expressing it, say when someone talks of a personal trial or problem, is to say, “I’m so sorry to hear that-I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers.”
Understandable, FinnAgain, but put yourself in the Christian’s shoes. Who, having (as he is firmly convinced) booked his ticket to salvation, should not desire the same for others - indeed, for all, if possible? If you observe a fellow pedestrian stepping heedlessly into the path of an oncoming 'bus, should you respect his roadcraft or yank him out of there p.d.q.? You’d think that anything less than ceaseless proselytising would be unconscionable apathy on the Christian’s part.
Now you may argue that the Christian is mistaken as to facts, and I’m in no position to gainsay you; but I’m sure you’ll see that the level of malice aforethought isn’t on a par with my spouting a vile insult to someone you hold dear.
What he said. Specifically, it’s the second kind I most often hear whenever discussing relgion w/the faithful.
Well, yes that would be incredibly insulting.
Has anyone actually done that to you accept the Crazy Ladies that ring the doorbells on weekend mornings? I am usually unforgivably rude to such people.
I think we are in agreement and I am not sure I saw anyone in this thread use “praying for you” in such an odious way.
I believe we are in complete agreement.
Malacandra: I cannot agree with you. Someone saying, “I’ll pray for you, so that you can get past your secular doubt/ other religion, and finally accept Jesus as your personal savior.” is insulting in so many ways. This is a very deep divide
of why even many Christians hate evangelicals and people who proselytize. There are few things ruder. I would rather you call me an asshole and tell me to fuck off than make a statement like that. Now obviously you have not done so and this is strictly a strong difference of opinion on proper behavior. But proselytizing is one of the worst things a person can do that does not cause physical harm.
Jim
Zoe:
Hi, Zoe! Your replies in the various theology & religion threads I’ve participated in over the years have been a very pleasant reassurance to me that I really can communicate, and that some of my thinking, even if unorthodox, might make sense to someone other than just me. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned how much I appreciate that, but believe me, I do.
::waves to Guinastasia::
Indeed we have disagreed, quite vehemently at times, but I have never gotten the impression from you that you were only trying to “win”, or that you didn’t approach debates as a place to seek shared understanding and dispel ignorance, and as such I’ve always respected you highly even when you felt that the ignorance most in need of being dispelled was mine. Maybe especially so then, as you don’t seem to relish adversarial argument for its own sake.
badchad, were he to conduct himself likewise, would IMO be more admired and more listened to and respected; as it is, his content and perspective and his skills have earned him the accolades of some, but mostly I think his admirers already sang in the choir he best <ahem> preaches to, and even that choral body is evenly split between those who cheer him and those who agree with his assertions but find him embarrassing to all atheists.
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Malacandra: I cannot agree with you. Someone saying, “I’ll pray for you, so that you can get past your secular doubt/ other religion, and finally accept Jesus as your personal savior.” is insulting in so many ways.**
Please enlighten me as to why. How is it insulting in many ways? And of course, from the Christian’s point of view, fear of insulting you ought not to hold him back from a course of action that might lead to your eternal happiness! (A fear that the perceived insult itself might be the very cause of rejecting the message is another matter.)
While you’re enlightening me, please enlarge on that last sentence.
Of your posts, perspective, and posting style I’ve said virtually nothing. I get the impression that you are sufficiently enamored of the viewpoints that badchad delineates that you really enjoy both his substance and his skills at argument on behalf of that substance; but as his adversarial/combative approach has polarized the board, you’ve been drawn, likewise, into seeing the whole thing in terms of “your side” versus “our side”.
Marshal McLuhan: The medium is the message
Carol Hanisch: The personal is political
Embedded in your assertions — in anyone’s assertions in any context — as experienced and received by anyone who is audience to them is the tone, the politics if you will, of how that audience has received those assertions. Words do not have objective meaning, and for that matter the subjects described in words do not have objective meaning, in a fashion separable from the experiencing of them. That is what meaning is — the intersection of subjective and objective.
If communication is your goal (or even as a route towards your goal of establishing a stronger board-consensus around the superiority of atheism to lib chris or other theological constructs; or, for that matter, of the propriety of badchad’s participation and vileness of those who disparage him for it), if any of these things are your goal, then how you communicate with us is very much part of what you communicate to us.
And you, too, are doing the wrestling-hold adversarial cagematch thing, and, if I may speak bluntly, are coming across as one abrasive angry arrogant bile-spewing fellow in these threads, despite a better reputation from other subjects on which you’ve posted over the years.
I agree completely. It’s very much akin to “Now, now, you are deluded and sick in the head and do not know what is best for you, and you make no sense…we don’t ‘disagree’ with you, we feel sorry for you”, or “Aww, Miss Uptight Panties, I’m really sorry your puritanical repressions are preventing you from participating in the joyous liberating celebration of sexuality that I’m offering, and I recognize your hostility as defensiveness”… its smug, it’s hostile with an external layer of cloyingly-sweet honey, and when the people who speak so sincerely believe it, it’s often an earnestly-clung-to excuse for truly inhuman violence, so it’s also rather scary.
Give me a Bible-thumper telling me I’m going to hell rather than the We’ll Pray For You folks any day.