And I have no problem with that. I think double-standards are sometimes justified. My point is that religious belief does not fall into that kind of protected category. Religious beliefs are only opinions, not inherent physical traits like race, ethnicity or gender, an it’s ludicrous to suggest that only people who hold specific opinions should be able to criticize them. By that standard, we could never hold a Presidential debate. A religion is analogous to a political party, not to a skin color.
OK.
Ok, well as long as you’re being reasonable, I also want to clarify (in case there’s any doubt), that I’m not trying to justify any kind of harrasment or discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs – only verbal criticism.
No, not all the time. To many people, religion is as much an externally-imposed construct as our modern liberal conception of race is. I’m sure there are more examples but I can think of several cases off the top of my head where people were conceptualized as belonging to a religion they themselves did not consider themselves in.
That nixes the idea that you can choose what you are being made fun of for, religion-wise.
I don’t understand what you mean about people being “conceptualized as belonging to a religion they themselves did not consider themselves in,” but it’s not particularly relevant. If a person is mocked for an opinion he doesn’t hold, that still doesn’t make it illegitimate to critize the opinion.
Bill Maher hasn’t apolgized for his anti-Catholic remarks. The story predicts he will apologize, presumably on tonight’s show.
Kind of interesting they’re pressing him to apologize for calling the Pope a Nazi, but apparently all his comments about child-fucking priests are less offensive.
Well… only one of the two assertions is false…
That is one position on religion.
Do Jews choose to be Jewish by being born to a Jewish mother?
Honkies?
The analogous claim to “blacks don’t exist” is “Catholics don’t exist”, which I’m pretty sure no one has tried to prove.
I still haven’t seen a good argument for the notion that a person chooses his beliefs. They remind me of arguments that people can choose their sexual orientation. Diogenes, for example, might be hard pressed if I challenged him to believe that Jesus Christ is his savior. Can he choose to believe that? I don’t think so, any more than I can choose not to. I wouldn’t even know how to go about making such a choice. Do I squint and grunt real hard until the choice has been made? Do I just declare it like some imprimatur? But then what happens when I feel like I’m lying — that the declaration contradicts what I actually believe? Am I choosing anything that way? I don’t think so. I believe what I do because of what I’ve experienced, and I reckon **Diogenes ** does too. I suppose the argument could be made that I chose my experiences, or at least some aspects of them. But anti-gays argue that gays can make choices in their “lifestyle”, like the choice of celibacy. Now, it’s true that I cannot possibly choose to be Caucasian, since I can’t change my DNA. But I would hope that if science ever progresses to the point where we can choose our race, people will not argue that the choice of one over another will have any bearing on how honest or hypocritical the person choosing is. I don’t think there is any way to make any sort of value judgment about anyone else simply because of the fact that we can’t live any life other than our own.
Donohue is basically someone who would say “No” when asked if the Pope were Catholic. At least, not Catholic enough for Donohue.
Diogenes, I wanted to quote you, but I don’t seem to be very good at using that function…THANK YOU. I’m not alone in the world.
I permanently pissed off my oh-so-liberal-hypocrite stepmother when I told her that I have every right in the world to be prejudiced towards religious folks, because it was their choice to be a member of a cult. As children - mm…you believe what you’re told. As an adult?
Then she tried the whole racism/gender orientation thing. I said nobody plans their own birth.
still has steam coming out of his ears, even though it was years ago
Actually, I may be being presumptuous. Diogenes may well not want me as an allie. 
There is no way to define religion as genetic or innate.
There are two definitions of “Jewish.” One is ethnic, the other is religious. It is possible to be one or the other without being both.
I recently came across a comedian named Doug Stanhope, who has a hilarious bit about that. He figured that saying the Pope was a Nazi wouldn’t be nearly as bad as saying a Nazi was once Pope. Nazis- a dozen or so years in power, lots of atrocities packed into a short time, but still, compared to hundreds of years of Roman Catholic mayhem, the Nazis look like pikers…
If you mean “no sane way”, then you’er right. But the same thing goes for race. This does not mean that people cannot be discriminated against, either casually as this thread is about, or with more severe consequences, due to their inclusion in a category not rigorously defined by those who do so.
Well, Maher didn’t really apologize. He acknowledged that it wasn’t really accurate to say the Pope used to be a Nazi, but that was about it. He didn’t really say he was sorry.
Can race be defined as genetic or innate? How?
Race is a sociological categorization, not technically a biological one, however, that social categorization is a result of superficial, genetic characteristics. You already know this, so why are you asking?
AKA, the thing that you don’t care about is fair game.
I’m sorry, what? What is the “thing that I don’t care about?”