Apparently we are both having major coding problems.
In FinnAgain’s example the speaker is using prayer to change you in a way that might not be to your liking, that is a hostile act. If the person follows another religion it is a huge religious insult. As Others have mentioned it could be considered as demeaning to your intelligence as the phrase effectively questions your intelligence or wisdom. It is just plain rude as it violates basic social conduct that would prevent a polite person from discussing such things in the first place.
Here and there… I onced had a manager when I was in college who was some sort or religious official (pastor? preacher? I can never keep the terms straight) who would tend to lecture me. But what brought it to mind was this post here in the pit. I responded to it with the ‘rhetorical punch in the mouth’ that I was talkin’ about.
Much more likley than not.
Well, I mean, I can see it from their point of view. But I still believe that point of view is “insulting, condescending, arrogant, and deserving of a rhetoric punch in the mouth”
I don’t think it’s malicious, I think it’s obnoxious. You are certainly free to believe in whatever unprovable, unrefutable, untestable things you’d like. Doesn’t make a spot of difference in my life. Believe, worship, pray, etc… however and whenever you wish.
But when you take your particular bit of faith, and try to club me over the head with it ‘for my own good’? When you condescend to me with the assumption that your truth, based not on evidence but on faith, is the only possible one? That my life, which brings me joy, will actually send me to some imaginary lake of fire? And that you know better than I do how I should be leading my one and only go-round on this planet… then, yeah, I get a bit miffed.
It’s as insulting as people like der trihs who want to make people stop being religious. And for exactly the same reason. I don’t believe someone should get a pass on such obnoxious behavior simply because they’ve got religion as their trump card.
Would you be appreciative of an evangelical atheist who kept telling you that he would “work for your mind, so that you might be free of the delusion of religion?” Why, then, should I be happy with some religious person who tells me that he will “work for my soul, so that I might be free of the delusion of secularism?”
Religion does not get a pass simply because it’s religion.
And, although you didn’t place much weight on it in your response, the situation of Evangelical Christians being ‘mistaken in their facts’ is not a trivial one. Having someone save my real, actual life from real, actual speeding traffic is something that I can appreciate and thank someone for. Having someone use their personal mythology to ‘save’ me from a mythological danger doesn’t earn any thanks for me. Especially not if it’s done from a position of smug superioty. I’d react exactly the same to a Christian telling me what Christ wanted me to do as a Neo-Pagan telling me what Wotan wanted me to do.
There’s also the fact that, as a Jew, my people have more than a little bit of history where ‘well meaning’ Christians have hounded, tortured, and murdered us in order to ‘save our souls.’ I see nothing benign about someone using their personal mythology as a justification to look down on anybody else.
Fair enough. I view it as a situation where he is rabidly anti-religion qua rabidly debating against religion. I think it’d be safe to say that you view him as someone who wants to piss people off qua rabidly debating against religion.
Yes?
All in all I’m just not sure, for instance, where to draw the line between “knock-down drag-out no holds barred debate that will tend to piss people off, for the sake of that kind of debate” and “fighting for the sake of fighting.”
I suppose that the distinction may be academic.
So I propose a solution. I’ll agree that chad is a troll if you’ll ban bibleman.. Deal? No…? Ah well… sleep on it.
I interrupt this prayer meeting to remind everyone that tomndebb is a hypocritical pussy, or a hypercritical hussy, or a was it a hysterical scuzzbucket? No matter. What is important is that it has been over 24 hours since **badchad, **masterdebater extraordinaire (And in this corner, with a professional record of 56,879 and 0, the undisputed heavyweight champeen, laser citer of all things relevant and general all around Defender of the Faithless) has been challenged to provide cites or evidence or folk tales or rumors or anything, really, to support his statements that lots of evidence for psychic powers exists.
Perhaps he is too busy IRL what with all those atheists being burned at the stake and all. C’mon chad, have your people call my people and let’s get this show on the road.
A Christian saying “I’ll pray for you” on hearing a person is an Atheist
is equivalent to a Muslim saying to a Christian"I pray that Allah will open your eyes and you will become a follower of Islam. For if you don’t you will surely be confined to hell everlasting after your death."
If a Christian would be upset being told that by a Muslim, then you should understand that to tell someone “I pray for you” is like telling someone “I give money to charity” the telling is egotistical. By all means pray for anyone you want, but don’t tell them that you are doing it unless you know they hold similar beliefs.
Oh, and, a question tom. You added a valid moderation point in the thread that Bible Man is currently trolling (and I am still stupid enough to respond to). I just wanted to ask for clarification here so as not to disrupt the thread further:
I can understand how pointing out that he has no handle, at all, on logical implications or epistemlogy in general might be a personal insult… but why is pointing out that he is, evidently, a schitzophrenic who hears voices that he thinks are God, and actually cites those voices out of bounds?
I’m not mocking him for his insanity, nor do I think that is funny or an insult. My maternal grandmother went a bit unhinged after events during Ha’Shoah, and I wouldn’t ever use someone’s mental illness as a weapon against them. But to have someone constantly and deliberately lie (troll) about a topic in order to piss people off, and then refuse to defend his positions with anything other than schitzophrenia (either out of pure insanity or again just trying to piss people off)? Why isn’t that fair game, purely on epistemological and logical grounds?
Personally I’d prefer that he was banned for his obvious trolling, or removed from the community because he’s insane and crazy people aren’t conducive to good debate… but if neither is going to be done, then why can’t I touch on the fact that his ‘proof’ often is based on the voices he hears in his head?
I’m honestly curious, and trying to ask respectfully.
(Regardless, I am trying to keep that mess from getting any worse through personal comments and even if we had a doctor’s certified statement that he was mentally ill, commenting on that (rather than simply ignoring the outbursts prompted by his illness) would still tend to drag the thread into a personal shouting match.)
A Christian saying “I’ll pray for you” on hearing a person is an Atheist is equivalent to a Muslim saying to a Christian “I’ll pray for you”.
A Christian saying “I pray that Jesus will open your eyes and you will become a follower of Christ. For if you don’t you will surely be confined to hell everlasting after your death” on hearing a person is an Atheist is equivalent to a Muslim saying to a Christian"I pray that Allah will open your eyes and you will become a follower of Islam. For if you don’t you will surely be confined to hell everlasting after your death."
See, there are SOME christians who are convinced that unless you Accept Jesus Christ As Your Personal Savior, you’re going straight to Hell. But most christians I know believe that while everyone should AJCAYPS, they don’t presume to know the fate of any soul, leaving such judgements up to God. So I disagree that offers of prayer invariably include an unspoken threat of hellfire. Some do, others don’t.
Now, personally, I think he’s lying through his teeth and simply trolling. But perhaps he is not, and he is honest in his claim that he is hearing voices who tell him things.
Ah, here’s another where he reiterates that disembodied voices are telling him to say things.
There are probably other allusions, mentions, and syllogisms I’ve not caught. He’s either a troll, a lunatic, or both.
Just my pair of pennies.
But I will certainly abide by your rules. I do think it’s valid to point out that his worldview is based either on unsupported and unsupportable claims that he resorts to lying in order to support, or he’s really out of his freakin’ gourd and thinks that Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit tells him things.
I’ll do my best to simply read the trainwreck in GD and not point any of this out, though.
But why, under any circumstances, would a Christian offer to pray for someone? Is it not an offer to request that God grant some sort of grace upon the person for whom they are praying? And if this is the point of the prayer, isn’t it logical to assume that the grace being sought is the AJCAYPS because the offer was given in response to the comment of being atheist?
If prayer isn’t for the purpose of seeking grace from God, what is the purpose? And why would it be given in response to the comment about being atheist?
Well, as has been said earlier, perhaps the prayee does not pray in order to convince God to accomplish some goal, but rather prays in order to help reconcile themselves to the will of God?
I’m an atheist, and I really don’t understand the argument that a Christian saying they hope I’ll AJCAMPS is equivalent to saying they hope I fall into an open sewer and die.
Sorry, Finn, but as obnoxious as his behvior is, the one claim you bolded was pretty clearly sarcastic and the rest of the quotations you cited are pretty much bolierplate expressions of the sort by those who believe that when they read something, they have a special talent for recognizing what God “really” meant. I do not see that as the same sort of thing that is displayed by people who hear voices.
I have no problem with anyone responding to Bible man that he is clearly making up his interpretations to match his personal beliefs. He has certainly presented no evidence that anyone else in the world got the same “message” from God that he claims to have. His cite is his post, as it were, and he has provided no evidence that he is not a false prophet.
I do have a problem with people making the claim that his odd view of the world is the result of mental illness, simply because he couches his beliefs in the language of his little denomination or sect.
But blabbing about giving to charity is egotistical. That’s not any one religion’s view, that’s common sense. Why are you donating to charity? To get a gold medal? Or to help people? Why should people have to know that you help people? To brag is by definition egotistical. End-of-story.
Maybe not a vile insult, but transparently smug and condescending, and certainly not the kindness you are pretending to offer.
I would suspect that most Christians have a passing familiarity with the Sermon on the Mount: *“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” * Matthew 7:6
Jesus warned that wasting valuable Christian energy on the unworthy is an ineffective use of time. So you are either ignoring Christ’s advice, making up rules as you go, or you have found a conniving way to wrap a patronizing insult in the Cloak of Good Intentions. (I’ll take number 3 for the win, Bob)
I personally don’t think that the drive by “I’ll pray for you” is particularly evil as far as insults go, and if your worst sin is occasionally lashing out with the verbal hammer of God, you are a shoe- in for Heaven. But speaking for those of us who have taken ourselves out of the Race for Eternity: we are not impressed that you have discovered a loop hole that allows you to behave in a condescending manner and still be considered a Christian.
Save your prayers for those who need them. And if you want to call badchad an asshole, call him an asshole. There isn’t any need to disguise your disdain with a backhanded sentiment. Christians can use invectives when they are angered just like everyone else. And if asshole is incongruous with Christian etiquette, then by all means, lighten it up a bit and say “**badchad ** is a doo-doo head”, and no one will misinterpret your intent.
You know what, maybe I am wrong about your motivations. Maybe you have penciled in “Pray for the Straight Dope atheists” somewhere between “Dear God, please let us find peace in the Middle East” and “Dear God, please allow Real Madrid to beat the Romanians”. If this is true, then you are the owner of a truly generous heart as well as a remarkably leisurely schedule.
But on the off chance that you do have some inside information that leads you to believe that prayer might be effective in deterring catastrophic meteorological events, then please turn your prayers towards those who are physically suffering. You will find that we atheists have a boundless empathy for the plight of our fellow human beings and will generously give up our allotted prayers in exchange for more stable and predictable weather and the end to war.
It’s “psychiatrizing”. It’s a form of argument ad hominem, and a nasty form of it.
I’ve been diagnosed schizophrenic, I claim to have received direct revelations from God on occasion, and yet I still expect you to deal with the contents of my posts and not to attempt to dismiss them on the grounds that I’m “mentally ill”. (Admittedly, I think I make more lucid good sense than Bible Man even on a really bad off-day, but that’s neither here nor there. The courtesy of dealing with my content and not diseased-brain me who is authoring it should not be dependent on that).
It’s got the same problem with it that “I shall pray for you, o misguided atheist brother” has.
FWIW, I do not believe for a moment it was simple sarcasm, not when his next words were claiming that cosmodan was being led astray by some form of demon. Perhaps I am simply ignorant of his cultish beliefs, and I can accept that… but I don’t think that’s the case. I do belive that he means what he says, that when he claims to be ‘influenced’ or ‘directed’ by various spirits, that he’s not lying.
Nor would I see such a lie as sarcasm, but out and out trolling. If, instead of saying “I disagree with your interpretation” he says “Jesus told me that you’re wrong, and you’re being influenced by a demon” then that goes well beyond the pale and clear into couching his claims is the most inflammatory manner possible, whether or not he believes that he’s got any actual ground to stand on, simply in order to piss people off.
I cannot believe it to be sarcasm as it is repeatedly his defense, that “the Holy Spirit” told him. It seems that if you accept that it is just a conceit that he is couching his beliefs in to avoid actually debating them, then he is trolling.
It is clear we disagree.
Again, FWIW, I disagree with that. If he actually believes that he is being given messages from a being that he calls the Holy Spirit, then he’s insane. If he simply uses that language because he can’t actually debate anything on its merits, he’s a troll. Especially since, as you point out with chad, bible’s points are almost all directed against the person and not the idea; that people are influenced by false spirits where he has the Holy Spirit to guide him. Etc…
But I’ve said my piece, and what’ll happen, will happen.
“Your only proof is that you claim the Holy Spirit talks to you, and that’s not valid proof.” is not an ad hominem fallacy, as it directly addresses the only evidence provided.
As long as the contents of your argument aren’t “I know because the Holy Spirit told me.” then I have no reason to bring up the sanity of your arguments.
What content have I ignored? He has made unsupported and cherrypicked claims, and said that anybody who disagrees, does so in the teeth of the “spirit” the guides his own words. Wherein lies the content?
More than that, folks. I was, as I said before, raised entirely without religion. (But, as my mom is jewish, with a good amount of culture.) The entire sphere of religion is ‘the other’. And thus, with some exceptions, like just after a direct expression of personal pain of the highest degree (My grandfather just had his fourth heart attack this month. He’s not long for the world, I don’t think.), any mention of someone ‘praying for me’ makes me very uncomfortable. Then again, so do churches or synagogues. Being in one of those is like having one of those ‘naked at work’ dreams, only for several hours of real time.
I understand there’s at least a 70 percent chance the person means well, but at best, it’s like your grandmother giving you a bow tie, and expecting to see you wear it. At worst, it’s an expression of superiority and a command for you to go to hell. Even if they don’t know your religious beliefs.
Oh, and I hear the ‘pray for you’ comment fairly frequently from followers of charismatic faiths. There’s four or five different ones at work, and they have fun doctrinal squabbles now and again. (They all think I’m Jewish, which is close enough for government work. One tried to convert me, and another calls me a satanist.)
