Starboy

Ca'mon Brighid, cut it out. If the practice requires advocating then it means that adherents are required to advocate it. The more intelligent may stop after they realize just how thoughtless such a practice is but that still doesn't let a religion like Christianity off the hook. It openly and actively requires advocating its religion.

Starboy

livius drusus

That's the point. We're not talking about Christianity. We're talking about Christians, any one of whom may interpret the (quite vague) Biblical exortations to prosyletize in a manner that would be inoffensive even to you.

Clutch

1) It's easy to overlook that there are very different ways of being insulting.

Billy MacTheist shows up here and gives his version of some long-debunked argument for his god's existence. Say it's the bible's phenomenal prophetic accuracy. Now, suppose the first ten people to respond are all more or less polite in citing long lists of failed prophecies, arguing at length about the fraught nature of the very concept of prophecy, and providing links to other essays and threads in which the issue has been discussed. Billy replies with one or more of the following:

-- The bible explains that atheists won't be able to understand it

-- Atheists find it convenient to use such arguments, since it justifies their sinning

-- I used to find all those arguments convincing too, before Jesus opened my eyes

-- But the bible had to come from something else, and that thing had to come from something else, and sooner or later you have to admit there's a god who created the universe

...or some other more or less familiar string of letters.

Now, Billy would not describe himself as setting out to impugn the motives, denigrate the judgement, ignore the efforts, or waste the time of his interlocutors. But that's what he does, variously, with responses like these. From his perspective, it's just a mystery when the replies to his reply are angry or contemptuous. While none of the above are plausible candidates for moderation, it is not unlikely that they will elicit responses that are.

2) I agree that aggressive posting probably never deconverted a fundamentalist. But it's unclear whether that's the only reasonable goal of debate. If deconversion is rare and difficult, it is at least worth considering the more modest goal of putting fundamentalists back in their boxes. Is someone aware of having been made to look a dunce less likely to stand up at that next PTA meeting and proudly proclaim that Jesus wants evolution out of schools? Honestly, I do not know. But if so, then accomplishing such a thing is at least a distant second to the holy grail of deconversion.

In short, there are two things that frighten me about fundamentalists: (i) the weirdness they believe, and (ii) the fact that they have an influential public voice. Observations to the effect that aggressive posting might not diminish (i) do not necessarily show that aggressive posting doesn't in some degree mitigate the effects of (ii).

Having said all that, let me say that I am certainly not defending displays of hatred or viciousness. I'm saying there may well be a defensible role of Blunt Hardass even if that role makes some theists feel put upon. (This conclusion should be considered independently of the prospect that my own displays of ill-temper amount to nothing more than a personal failing!)

Majestyk

See how easy it is to slip. I'm gonna edit the correction into my post.

Starboy

I suppose it could be made only if you were a Christian. However, I do not advocate bullying, but I do advocate standing up to bullies. Even the passive agresive ones.

Starboy

Starboy

Gee do you think? Naaaaa, you give me too much credit. I'm just a bullying agressive intolerant atheist. If that is the way you want to paint me then have at it.

Starboy

livius drusus

I agree wholeheartedly.

What puzzles me about the deluge of fury some of these idiotic posts engender is that it's just so yawningly played out. Don't people get bored unleashing the same old furious triteness in response to the same old dense and ignorant triteness? God knows I get bored reading it, never mind editing it.

It's not a goal of mine at all. Calzaer was speculating that the sledgehammer approach cracks the fundamentalist mental armour. I don't think it does and even if it did I don't consider other people's deconversion my business.

Now that I'll buy for a dollar. I don't see that the sledgehammer makes fundies look like dunces, however. Most of the stilletto through the eyeball posters are sharp, accurate, knowledgeable and frequently courteous to a fault. They crush with the weight of fact, not vitriolic rhetoric.

Interesting choice of words, Clutch. Deconversion has always struck me as a singularly un-atheist goal. It just reeks of I know what's good for you better than you do. I consider a violation of privacy, an invasive procedure best left to those who discount the value of human agency than those who claim to embody it.

As I said above, there is a difference between aggressive content and aggressive style. Among other advantages (providing compelling reading material being the dearest to my heart) I believe the former is far more effective at mitigating (ii) than the latter.

It's all in the definitions. You can be blunt with an ass so hard diamond upholstery becomes a necessity and never once indulge in generalized rants or personal attacks.

Finally, all of this applies only to fundy Christians. Powerful or not, they don't speak for all Christendom. We should hardly be the ones to bestow the title of Speaker on them while perfectly reasonable Christians resist it.

Hackers. That's the only explanation. Believe me I know.

livius drusus

You are the one who has been unable to make his position clear. One minute all Christians are unreasonable, the next minute you except 2 of them because they don't mind you hating their religion, then you're back to Christianity is a disease and all who believe in it are carriers because their doctrine tells them they have to be.

Why not simply clarify your position instead of erecting strawmen or claiming persecution?

seebs

I'm not sure which of the people involved has to be Christian for this to work.

We have no fewer than three parties:

1. The person practicing something. (A.)
2. The person making the case that A is, by practicing something, also advocating it. (B.)
3. The person to whom the case is being made by B. (C.)

I don't think any of them have to be Christian, and I think the case is a good one.

By your actions, you advocate the bullying of people you think are similar to someone you're pretty sure is a bully.

Starboy

Which actions are you referring to?

Starboy