Bradleigh
Veteran
Joined: 25 May 2008
Age: 33
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 6,669
Location: Brisbane, Australia
04 Aug 2008, 7:56 am
04 Aug 2008, 8:00 am
I don't know. I really don't. 
Bradleigh
Veteran
Joined: 25 May 2008
Age: 33
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 6,669
Location: Brisbane, Australia
04 Aug 2008, 8:11 am
04 Aug 2008, 9:14 am
Bradleigh
Veteran
Joined: 25 May 2008
Age: 33
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 6,669
Location: Brisbane, Australia
04 Aug 2008, 10:18 am
04 Aug 2008, 10:22 am
Bradleigh wrote:
I have read a bit but I lose interest, I am not going to base my idea of god on a book that I am not sure exactley its origins and could have been altered by anyone.
I didn't realize that the Bible was a Wikipedia article.
04 Aug 2008, 10:52 am
04 Aug 2008, 10:53 am
04 Aug 2008, 10:56 am
04 Aug 2008, 11:45 am
04 Aug 2008, 9:43 pm
05 Aug 2008, 12:13 am
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I think quibbling over what does or doesn't count as a group, ignoring what the word group normally means, is silly.
Of course it would be, were the very definition of the term bigot not to hang on a qualified use of the term; the alternative is to use "group" to describe "more than one", in which case someone who was intolerant of mass murderers would be a bigot, too.
I still see no reason not to use the ordinary meaning of group.
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The country of Germany was destroyed, not to be restored, somewhat intact, until 45 years after Hitler's death. The majority suffered horribly, as intellectual, political, and social freedoms were rolled over in service to a war that left a nation relatively devoid of young males for the second time in as many generations. How Hitler's bigotry plays into the discussion of killing bigots is beyond me, unless all Jews were bigoted against non-Jews, which they weren't and aren't.
So it was. But you couldn't predict that with certainty. What if Germany had pursued its nuclear weapons project more vigorously? Would Britain have resisted after being nuked any longer than Japan did? What if the American carriers were inport during Pearl Harbor? Would the Americans have been any help to the British while fighting to retake Hawaii and defend California? Or if the Germans hadn't foolishly turned on the Russians and opened up one front too many? My original point is that just *categorizing* into 'good' groups and 'bad' groups is insufficient. How do you know your groups are the right ones?
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No, the being shot is a social judgment. The mandate to being open-minded is from morality: being close-minded leads to immorality. Never suggested that close-mindedness was sufficient cause for execution, anyway. If a counter-example is available, where being close-minded leads to moral behavior, would be delighted to hear it.
President Lincoln closed-mindedly insisted that the slaves should go free, despite significant opposition. Mother Theresa wanted to devote herself to helping people, so she did. She wasn't wishy-washy about it either. Martin Luther King faced opposition from both those of his own people who wished to be more violent, and those who simply wished he'd go away. He closed his mind to the death threats and temptations of violence, and stuck by his guns. Quote:
The definition of the word "bigot" includes those to whom it applies. Certainly those who espouse hatred, incite violence, and teach intolerance rise to that level; as previously stated, one's thoughts are one's own, inviolable.
You still haven't answered the question -- what is enough to earn a bullet to the head? Saying the N-word? Saying it with feeling? Giving someone of a protected class a funny look? A glare? What if you squint because the sun's in your eyes and it gets taken the wrong way? What about playing gangster rap? What about gangster rap that refers to white people as 'cracker'? What about watching the movie Undercover Brother, and laughing at the scene where white people are made fun of for liking excessive quantities of mayonaise? (Mayonaise? Seriously, where the heck did they get the idea for that anyway?) The scene where Denise Richards is referred to as 'black kryptonite'? What about movies with obviously racist titles, like "White Men Can't Jump"?
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Don't have an opinion; best evidence suggests that opinions are between held by most, with effects ranging from worthless to counter-productive. Explanation of a positive value to opinion is in order, and beseeched.
Given all the examples I gave in the last post, I'm pretty sure we're having definitional problems again. What is your concept of an 'opinion'? Quote:
It is not plausible, and cannot be rationally argued; this is why opinion is to be avoided whenever possible. Africans are homo sapiens sapiens, genetically speaking, and no more related to cro-magnon than any other human. To take it as fact, or article of faith, is an act of bigotry. To teach this, at least doubly so.
It is plausible. I did some research to refresh my memory -- it appears that scholars prefer AMH(anatomically modern human) or EMH(early modern human) to cro-magnon these days, unless they want to distinguish them from neanderthals. Cro-magnons, it turns out, cannot be said to be a different species from us. In other words, africans are quite close indeed to cro-magnons. As are all other humans. 
The conclusion, from these premises, is not so plausible. Nevertheless, alternate possibilities abound for possible racist theories. There is so much we don't know about our origins, and the ancient hominid fossil record is sparse.
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Of course not. How absurdist. It isn't a bias, and it isn't an opinion, Africans are not less or substantially different than non-Africans. Further, being unwilling to adopt the false over the demonstrably true is not, and can never be, close-minded. Open-mindedness only applies to things that can actually be; one cannot be open-minded about resisting gravity by will alone.
Do you really think that it's impossible for a close relative of humans, similar in most respects, but lesser in mental stature to exist? Because that's what the Neanderthals were. How is that impossible, like violating physical law with the will alone? Quote:
Science is not the beginning and end of reasoning, is it? Science deals with that which is demonstrably true -- testable in reproducible situations. One can accept the weight of science as is, without adding personal opinion to the mix, and not be sexist, racist, etcetera. None of the proposals lead to the sexist conclusion that women are less fully human, unless a series of erroneous and indefensible assumptions are tagged on.
You don't need to think women are less than fully human to be sexist. There's an ebook on the Project Gutenberg website that reproduces a debate on women's suffrage in the U.S. Senate. It has more than you ever wanted to know about both sides of the debate. The most fascinating thing about it, other than the fact that the majority of women were actually against it at the time, was the way the anti-suffrage rationalization was set up. It basically referred to women like delicate, beautiful flowers, angels in human form, who should not be sullied by gruff, vulgar, distasteful activities, such as voting, war, and jury duty. Quite the opposite of "less than human". Quote:
Sure, sounds like God to me.
I thought you were the one advocating against pre-judgement of religion here. Quote:
Jesus lived in the Roman Empire, but most of his criticism was also of Jews.
Have you ever read it? He criticized the Jewish religious establishment for being overly rule-bound and under-compassionate, laying down rule after rule, but giving no help in obeying them, following their interpretation of the law while rejecting its spirit, being hypocrites and full of themselves. Quote:
What it is based on is irrelevant, more or less. This all drives home the concept that being open-minded excludes one from being a bigot, as well as from being close-minded. Presenting an open-minded assessment of reasons for intolerance, the conclusion was in favor of tolerance; this is not about prejudice or opinion, but the nature of the facts.
No, I was closed-minded about it. My inclination, upon reading up on it, was to categorize it as not merely false, but violent and evil as well. My friendship checked this impulse. I didn't go read anti-Islam propaganda, I went and read a number of websites, for and against, downloaded the Quran and read pieces of it, and lurked in the soc.religion.islam newsgroup for awhile. I don't know if my reading was correct, and perhaps it was not thorough enough. But if I had not closed my mind to the flaws of it, simply and solely because of my friend, I would have become what you would call an Islamophobe (perhaps I shouldn't use that word exactly, since we are having so many definitional disagreements). Because of my friend, I weighed the flaws lightly and the virtues heavily. This was also all pre-9/11 -- what do you think I would have thought if that event had prompted my research?
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For the record, presenting one's stated view with a shortage of facts does not make one's argument irrational, it is a straw man. Had the argument included all the factual details of friendship with a Muslim, including conversations, it is dubious that the flimsy recollections of Muslim anti-Jewish rhetoric would be similarly compelling to a rational mind.
Our deeper and/or more combative conversations were not specifically religious. Religion came up, but we were looking specifically for common ground. We were not trying to argue over it or convert each other. He didn't argue me out of anything. I looked into it, by myself, for myself. I tried to balance rhetoric on both sides. I read parts of the Quran, and took that to be authoratative -- since it is. I don't remember all of the details now, it has been a decade, after all, so perhaps I might have come to a different conclusion now. What I would have thought then was only stopped by the emotional reaction of friendship -- logic was opposed to emotion. I decided as I did because I was closed-minded and biased in favor of my friend.
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Again, the demerits of opinionation. The coherence of the arguments is rationally conclusive. It is little wonder that the well-settled nature of the subject would be mystifying, IFF one to had not looked at any of the solid, scientific evidence. The subject is past the point of reasonable doubt, but not religious dogma! Homosexuality is a latent genetic characteristic brought on by acute competition for heterosexual mates, and is present in most mammals.
No, you don't understand. I *specifically* avoided thinking it through, in even a loose and undisciplined manner. Having heard some arguments, not recently either, I *felt*, rather than thought, that the one side was more probably right than the other. On this question, *the only thing I've got* is an opinion. Maybe you looked into it and came to a rational conclusion -- I haven't.
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The assertion that society has a prerogative to allow discrimination against that choice seems offensive on a yet more basic level than the religion issue, as sexual reproduction is part and parcel to human biology, whereas church is not.
This makes no sense at all. Quote:
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What do you do to make sure the conversion is genuine? Torture them a bit? What if there's the slightest doubt in your mind that they may not be telling the truth? More torture? Or execution?
What sort of medieval quackery have we here? These suggestions put you much more in doubt than all prior responses, a little scary, to be honest.
More recently, you've come out against a number of things -- torture, lynching, etc.; this is encouraging, but I still think your idea is deeply flawed and more similar to the things you are trying to get rid of than you think it is.
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Never said conversion, just repentance, statement of the iniquity in one's bigotry, the injustice of spreading hatred for the "other", and acceptance that these views must not be acted upon or even shared. Absolutely in the camp of take their word for it, unless some crime was commited -- arson, murder, even discriminatory hiring are all punishable under existing laws. Would not dream of torturing someone, unless that individual personally tortured me, and even then would probably grant mercy in a swift death.
If they're willing to lie (and who wouldn't to avoid a bullet to the brain?), how is this different from what we have now? Quote:
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What if a wife shows up and begs for mercy?
If she is not a bigot, and her husband will not cease to act the bigot, who cares? Wouldn't say squat.
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It is about the fuel to feed a fire of violence against the target of the bigotry, like clearing dead timber and dry brush from a forest. This is purely in the mind of putting a preventatice end to human on human violence, except in crimes of passion, which is a category of violence still quite insolvent to my mind.
"Clearing dead timber"? I would not be surprised if this was among the many euphemisms used by the Nazis. What happens if, as both religious people and psychologists suggest, the tendency towards evil is part of the human heart? What if we're all capable of great evil? What if, after "clearing the dead wood", it isn't all gone? Keep killing? What if we all have this flaw? What if we're *all* dead wood?
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It is the individual trial of perhaps millions, possibly even ten or more million, certainly not over a hundred million, based on openly bigoted action and speech against a recognized group.
Given other statements here, especially those on believing the potential victim about changes of heart, I doubt now that there would be anyone who would qualify for these new measures. Unless your legalization of everybody shooting everybody means what I think it means. But if you had this many, you would need to set up internment camps for logistical reasons. Either they would rot in the camps for the rest of their lives waiting for a trial, or they would get shot without one (or a kangaroo court would be set up, which is essentially an abscence of a trial).
And what about unrecognized groups?
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We are talking about active bigots: those that preach, teach, spread, and act on irrational and inflexible prejudice against a particular group.
This is a pretty good definition. It still doesn't identify what level is enough to get shot for. Quote:
As stated, those who think and say such things alone, or exclusively in the company of like-minded individuals, have virtually nothing to fear, just as people who rape and kill in private have virtually nothing to fear.
"people who rape and kill in private have virtually nothing to fear. " 
Please tell me this is a typo...Quote:
Far as the prisons go, never suggested housing them any longer than a speedy trial would dictate. Having seen what intolerance can do -- the Holocaust, a plethora of African genocides, racial slavery, repression in Tibet, bombing of gay night clubs, the attacks of 09/11/01, what merit is there in preserving the life of those who would do it next if allowed? Far better to regret having killed the next Hitler than to regret having not killed the next Hitler.
Performing these acts is already illegal, and unless I'm mistaken, prejudice is an aggravating factor, too. You could definitely get the "next Hitler" by launching every single nuclear warhead simultaneously, killing everything on the planet. But that kind of mass murder kind of defeats the purpose of defeating mass murder, doesn't it? The cure is worse than the disease. Quote:
No. Individual right being the right of self-defense, e.g. a Jew shooting someone painting a swastika and "Die Jew Scum" on his home. Societal being the "social contract" model, that by living in our society one agrees not to attempt its destruction with hate speech and crimes. Ability to misinterpret this growing to legendary status...
I've heard it said that the most important thing in coming up with a law is not to think about how it will be used, but how it will be misused. How do you stop them from planting a swastika on someone, and saying they said something nasty? So if two gangs that hate each other in a racial sense, they can do drive-bys then it's okay? Legal?
What about people who don't consent to the social contract?
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As long as they tell people that it was only bigots that they were viciously murdering in their orgy of hate?
This "question" is so loaded as to not merit a response. Not murder, not vicious, not motivated by hate, and certainly not "tell people". As long as it is only bigots? That is my standard, and my criticism of the Israeli Defense Force's actions in Palestine.
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So ethnic cleansing isn't okay, but ideological cleansing is?
Only if tolerance is mistakenly considered to be an ideology and not a virtue, and intolerance considered an ideology and not a vice. Talk about using a word in a sense other than the normal one...
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If cleansing society of those who would see ethnic or religious cleansing, or the subjugation of women to the status of property, is not a good thing, than it must be a good thing to allow more of it to occur.
This is a non-sequitur. Quote:
If one cannot differentiate between Hitler and execution of his ilk, one has a near absolutist view against the death penalty.
I am not against the death penalty -- in appropriate circumstances. I still don't have an absolutely clear picture of what you propose, so I don't know if it corresponds more closely to the trial and execution of war criminals, or of the very acts for which they stand condemned. The Nazis used all sorts of insults and allegations against their victims, but I don't think they used 'war criminals'. Probably because they hadn't heard of it, or just didn't think of it.
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*Agreed that original statement is wrong for most values X. Would also exempt values: "murderer", "serial rapist/molester", and "slaver". Want to defend those three, too? Eagerly awaiting a response... haven't had an earnest debate in years.
Defend? Their actions? No. The right of even such as they to justice? Yes.
05 Aug 2008, 12:40 am
05 Aug 2008, 12:41 am
05 Aug 2008, 12:49 am
slowmutant wrote:
Fnord, do you hate everything? Your bitterness and anger really repulses me. If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.
You're being both dogmatic AND naively idealistic. Its interesting to see Aspies decide to adopt a religion or some kind ideology like socialist feminism(see StuartM's musings on Aspies For Freedom)and spew propaganda and then start getting frustated when such propaganda is rebutted with reason.
05 Aug 2008, 12:53 am
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