Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

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...Deal with it. Or don't. But if it gets to be too much, sign off.

I'm going to guess that pretty much everyone has been trolled at one point or another. I've received hate emails/(empty) death threats and the like in the past...but, really, hasn't everyone with any even tiny internet presence had the same? Anyone ever posting any kind of comment in any kind political or religious "debate"...or heck, sports, I imagine, have received bizarre (again, obviously empty) threats of violence, slurs and insults.

"Words are wind."

To think that such things are representative of some large population and that they represent legitimate threats against her....really?
 
Why are atheist ex-muslims being discriminated against from discussing their experiences, in a way that atheist ex-christians are not? How exactly is it being determined that posters have no personal connection to islam?

Hopefully they're not, and they certainly shouldn't be. The goal is for people who are ex-muslims to lead the conversation. I believe the moderators are relying on self-reporting to define what a person's personal experiences are.

I was born in the heart of the Troubles, in Northern Ireland. How does that fit with your claim here? Because I grew up watching plenty of christians being discriminated against, kneecapped, murdered and vilified for their christian beliefs.

It reflects a blind spot based on the lack of Northern Irish experience at atheismplus. I'd like to think that if you called out someone at atheismplus for attacking groups in a way that you felt created an environment for discrimination and violence, you'd be taken seriously.

I lived in Iran for about 2 1/2 years. Does that mean I can talk about Iran, or does the fact that I lived in a privilaged part of Tehran mean I can't?

Stories about your personal experience would certainly be welcome.
 
I beg to differ, if you tilt your head slightly to the left, squint real hard and apply large helpings of special pleading, ad hoc rationalizing and ad hominem then it will look as if it makes perfect sense.

Basically, ...

 
Actually, I believe I learned in this thread that we Irish/Irish descent folks aren't actually white by A+ standards, since there's a hx of Irish discrimination. That can't happen to white people, so we're now POC, even though you'd never know it by our skin color. So we can criticize brown religions all we want, since we're now one of them. Score!!

 
Actually, I believe I learned in this thread that we Irish/Irish descent folks aren't actually white by A+ standards, since there's a hx of Irish discrimination. That can't happen to white people, so we're now POC, even though you'd never know it by our skin color. So we can criticize brown religions all we want, since we're now one of them. Score!!

Wait, the Irish count as "brown"? Despite being particularly noted for having pale skin?

This really is a nebulous concept to pin down. It's all about skin colour, but seems to be unrelated to the actual colour of a person's skin. Unless it's kind of a spectrum. If you're within a certain band of skin colour, then you're white, but if you're darker or paler, then you're brown.
 
I beg to differ, if you tilt your head slightly to the left, squint real hard and apply large helpings of special pleading, ad hoc rationalizing and ad hominem then it will look as if it makes perfect sense.

Basically, ...


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Nailed it. :D
 
[ETA] To clarify, I'm not arguing that all members who subscribe to the same faith generally have a share in the responsibility for an act done for that faith (though there are specific instances where I would), but that you can't secularize a person's actions just because others in their religion disagree. Each individual has a right to determine what their faith entails, and no one but that individual can tell them differently.
Erm, no. That can't be right, because then you can simply say that literally anything is an X-religion practice simply because some self-described adherent somewhere claims that it is. That leaves no way to differentiate between acts that are actual tenets of a particular religion, and acts which are cultural or personal, or which are the result of mental illness.

Murdering abortion doctors is not a Christian act, because it directly violates the tenets of Christianity as laid out in the accepted body of scripture, taken in context. It's no different from someone claiming to be a doctor, regardless of medical training or lack thereof, and going around cutting bits off of people to save them from cancer.

To claim it's a Christian act requires a tortured attempt at justification enabled by cherry-picking pieces out of context, redefining them to fit said justification. And often the proponents of such murder do not have even that, only bald assertions, or "personal revelation", without any real attempt at scriptural justification. Just as claiming FGM is an Islamic act requires similar cherry-picking and unsupported assertions. There are certainly many different "flavours" of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. depending on which aspects or interpretations of scripture are most emphasized; but there are always core tenets that unite all the disparate groups. Violation of those tenets must necessarily mean that the violator is outside that group, and not a true member of said group. (Remember, No True Scotsman is only a fallacy if the basis for judgement is not a defining criteria of belonging to the group.)

That is exactly the conflation that the APlussers are guilty of, conflating both positive or negative acts of individuals with the tenets or characteristic of a larger group and claiming that group is inherently good or bad because X. That there is an "X culture" that all right-minded people should be vehemently opposing, despite the complete lack of any evidence of a prevailing culture.

It's important when making any associations to differentiate between variations based on interpretation, and direct violation of criteria defining the group. Claiming a "rape culture" because some individuals of said culture commit rape is a fallacy, as there is no indication that the inherent characteristics of the group, in this case mainstream Anglo-American culture, condone rape, let alone create a "culture" of rape, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. But if you cherry pick comments and actions of a few aberrant individuals, and take the vagaries of difficult rape cases out of context, you can build a specious justification for claiming that such a rape culture exists despite an overwhelming cultural antipathy towards rape and rapists.
 
Actually, I believe I learned in this thread that we Irish/Irish descent folks aren't actually white by A+ standards, since there's a hx of Irish discrimination. That can't happen to white people, so we're now POC, even though you'd never know it by our skin color. So we can criticize brown religions all we want, since we're now one of them. Score!!
My head hurts now.
 
Murdering abortion doctors is not a Christian act, because it directly violates the tenets of Christianity as laid out in the accepted body of scripture, taken in context.

Which tenet of Christianity does it violate, and body of scripture accepted by whom?

If you're going to say Exodus 20:13, then there are plenty of examples from the history of mainstream Christianity murdering people. Northern Ireland has been mentioned on this very page. Perhaps you can say that that wasn't mainstream, but that just begs the question of how large a sect or group has to be to count as mainstream?

And those who do blow up abortion doctors would say that it's the doctors who are the murderers and they who are carrying out God's will by putting them to death. Execution is not murder, so they are not breaking any tenets of their faith. Besides, there are more instances in the Bible of words to the effect of "he who murders must be put to death" than there are of "thou shalt not murder".
 
Which does, of course, question why Christianity isn't a "brown person"'s religion. Jesus was Middle-Eastern. Discounting Vatican City and the Picturn Islands (which have only 48 inhabitants), the country with the highest percentage of Christian population is Armenia. There are half a billion Christians in Africa. How is Christianity not a "religion of brown people"?

Not to mention that one of the largest and fastest growing populations of Christians is in South Korea; which is a far more "Christian nation" than the US, UK, or the vast majority of western Europe.

White Christians, though numerous, are definitely in the minority, worldwide.
 
I don't think Armenians count as brown people. So you'd be told something along the lines of 'brown people believe in Christianity, but it's not a religion of brown people'.
Christianity originated among Middle Eastern Jewish communities, and quickly spread to North Africa and Eastern Africa (as far south as Ethiopia) and the Mediterranean long before it ever made it to Europe. So it was a "religion of brown people" long before it was ever a "religion of white people".

In any case, the Armenians originated from the confluence of several ancient Middle-Eastern peoples, and are far more closely related to the Persian and Turkish peoples than they are to Europeans. Hard to get much more "brown" than that without heading down in to sub-Saharan Africa. They're certainly every bit as "brown" as the Arabic and North African Muslims that we're not allowed to criticize.

By A+ standards, Christianity is a "brown peoples'" religion that was appropriated by white Europeans; so if there was any logical consistency to their philosophy, they wouldn't be allowed to criticize Christianity, only the Europeans who appropriated it.
 
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Which tenet of Christianity does it violate, and body of scripture accepted by whom?

If you're going to say Exodus 20:13, then there are plenty of examples from the history of mainstream Christianity murdering people. Northern Ireland has been mentioned on this very page. Perhaps you can say that that wasn't mainstream, but that just begs the question of how large a sect or group has to be to count as mainstream?

And those who do blow up abortion doctors would say that it's the doctors who are the murderers and they who are carrying out God's will by putting them to death. Execution is not murder, so they are not breaking any tenets of their faith. Besides, there are more instances in the Bible of words to the effect of "he who murders must be put to death" than there are of "thou shalt not murder".

Which is precisely what I meant by cherry-picking things out of context. It has nothing to do with being "mainstream", but with violating the tenets of the religion, in the context they are presented.
 
I was born in the heart of the Troubles, in Northern Ireland. How does that fit with your claim here? Because I grew up watching plenty of christians being discriminated against, kneecapped, murdered and vilified for their christian beliefs.
It doesn't count because in North America that never happened. Why should this make a difference? Because the A+ rules don't make sense.

Actually, during the founding and early days of the US, many nominally Christian sects were discriminated against and persecuted. Admittedly it was primarily by other nominally Christian sects, but still, who gets to decide what and what form of persecution qualifies?
 
Actually, during the founding and early days of the US, many nominally Christian sects were discriminated against and persecuted. Admittedly it was primarily by other nominally Christian sects, but still, who gets to decide what and what form of persecution qualifies?

ceepolk and Setar, I think. The rest of us are inherently part of the rape-culture patriarchy.
 
Which is precisely what I meant by cherry-picking things out of context. It has nothing to do with being "mainstream", but with violating the tenets of the religion, in the context they are presented.

Which tenets of the religion, in what context?
 
Which is precisely what I meant by cherry-picking things out of context. It has nothing to do with being "mainstream", but with violating the tenets of the religion, in the context they are presented.

But the tenets of Christianity, barring the ones about the supremacy of Yahweh are contradictory. Who can say that murder violates a basic tenet when other tenets argue for the killing of unbelievers?
 
Wait, the Irish count as "brown"? Despite being particularly noted for having pale skin?

This really is a nebulous concept to pin down. It's all about skin colour, but seems to be unrelated to the actual colour of a person's skin. Unless it's kind of a spectrum. If you're within a certain band of skin colour, then you're white, but if you're darker or paler, then you're brown.

It's very simple actually. White people have always oppressed non-whites and cannot be oppressed themselves. This is an absolute truth. Therefore in cases that a normal person would see as a counter example the oppressed person magically becomes "coloured" due to the transitive property of white people are always evil.
 
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