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Empress said:
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!!
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Irish people count as People of Colour on account of their often ruddy cheeks.

luchog said:
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?
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Empress said:
ceepolk and Setar, I think. The rest of us are inherently part of the rape-culture patriarchy.
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:D nailed it!
 
MarkCorrigan said:
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?
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This is starting to get a bit off topic, and should probably be taken to the religion forum for further discussion.
 
Professor Yaffle said:
I only found that myself because I went looking for a photo of a "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" sign to post. Turns out there is only one such photo that looks possibly authentic in the whole of t'internet: http://jasonomahony.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/no_irish.jpg
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Saw a fascinating documentary on Irish history a while ago. Interesting that the vast majority of discrimination against the Irish Catholic immigrants in the USA was by an already-established, earlier wave of Irish Protestant immigrants.
 
luchog said:
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.
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You can simply say that literally anything is an X-religion practice because an adherent claims that it is. No, you can't differentiate between acts that are actual religious tenets and those that are cultural, personal, or the result of mental illness. Consider that the vast majority of religious belief centers around invisible beings who watch your every move and who will punish you if you don't do what they want. Sometimes they even talk to you, make you hallucinate, or burn your bosom. That's mentally freakin' ill.

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.
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Doctors have the AMA, and the government pointing to it saying "if these guys say you aren't a doctor, you aren't a doctor." Personally, in the case of chiropractors, faith healers and other such "I'm not saying I'm a doctor, but I'm a doctor" woo, I wish the gov't would point a good deal harder than it currently does.

Religion has quite a lot of different groups who would love to put themselves forward as the AMA, but without any god at all to point to them and say "this is the one. These guys, they're my bros," every opinion is exactly as valid as every other. There is no accepted body. There are no tenets. Religion does not run on consensus.

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.)
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Being Christian requires a tortured act of justification. It doesn't matter how convoluted a person's beliefs have gotten to get them where they are, they're still their beliefs. That person has a right to them and neither your nor I can order them otherwise, and versa vice. Remember, Argumentum Ad Populum is still a fallacy even if you and everyone else wants it not to apply.

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.
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Why do you keep accusing me of this? Didn't I just get through saying I'm not intending for this to be a vector by which others of the same faith could be impugned?

Would it help if I pointed out the opposite was also true: that if someone says something is not an element of their faith, it isn't, even if other adherents disagree?

To give an example, an American Muslim can say that suicide attacks are not an Islamic practice, and be perfectly correct. Meanwhile, an Iranian Muslim can say that suicide attacks are an Islamic practice, and also be correct. What isn't correct is to say that the Iranian Muslim's suicide attack isn't an Islamic practice because the American Muslim said so.
 
Trigger Warning: Inane anecdote follows. Those triggered by the self-serving snarky ramblings of cynical members, please put on your A+ TW Filter Glasses.


So I was setting up our coffee house this morning. For those of you not following the story, I'm running a barista style shop in Pattaya and our decorating scheme is a very dramatic Black and White. Everything - walls, tiles, trim, tables, chairs, plates, etc... is either black or white.

We normally mix the black chairs and white chairs in some sort of alternating scheme but my wife decided yesterday that making one of the two rows of tables all black chairs and the other all white chairs would be good luck. Or something like that - who am I to question the woo of a brown lady? A brown lady who trains in Muay Thai, to be more specific.

So as I'm setting up the outdoor cafe, I grabbed the first chair from a stack and put it on the left side (stage left) and then got the next one down and realized that while my back was turned, I didn't remember which color chair I had put out and thus didn't know where to place the next one (which was one of the white ones). Having pretty good eyesight, though, when I faced the outdoor patio, I noticed that the chair in place on the left was black, so rather than putting the white one next to it, I put it on the right column, to keep with the "theme". And on turning my back again to get another chair, I repeated to myself. "Black on the left, white on the right. Black left, white right. Black left, white right." Just so's I'd remember, as walking a couple of steps too many in 37 degree heat, carrying a iron/wicker chair is not desirable.

So grabbing the next chair (don't even remember what color) and repeating my little patter, "Black left, white right...." I was hit by APLS (Atheism Plus Lurker Syndrome) and realized it was probably my cis-privilege that had me put the chairs where they wound up because I subconsciously believe that "White is Right".

I banned myself.
 
luchog said:
This is starting to get a bit off topic, and should probably be taken to the religion forum for further discussion.
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I'm sure the moderators are perfectly capable of determining this and of splitting the thread if necessary. In the mean time, could you please answer my questions? If you feel that you absolutely must do so in a new thread, then please link to that thread in your next post.
 
qwints said:
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.
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And if no one self reports, they seem to make the assumption that they are white, american and not knowledgeable about other cultures. You said yourself that you expect the thread to be closed quickly - that's not welcoming people to join in.

qwints said:
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.
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Uh huh. I've seen how that's worked out for others - no thanks.
The whole forum is a place for discrimination, and violent attitudes - for example, the disgusting way ceepolk chooses to swear at people.
It feels to me like you avoided my question, really.
 
No, just a bit of a tangent sparked by the Irish as people of color discussion. I was googling for images of "no blacks, no Irish" signs and came across that link which I thought might interest people.
 
I remember years ago Lenny Henry did a bit about "No Irish". He said that when he was growing up it was commonplace to see bed and breakfasts and the like with signs up saying "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs". Which, according to him, was particularly unfair on black Irish wolfhounds.
 
qwints said:
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.
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I'd like to think that too, in much the same way I'd like to think magnets can cure cancer, ESP is real, and there's a benevolent god waiting for us in a joyous afterlife. Sadly, evidence suggests the contrary in all cases.
 
Aye, interesting times over on A+. It would appear that skepticism and critical thinking are trying to rear their heads but are being beat back mercilessly by the A+ inner sanctum.

First up is the GMO thread where, after taking on a biochem major on the topic, poster EllieMurasaki realizes that she's outclassed and slams down the sexism card by confusing the word irrational with the word hysterical and claiming she's being silenced because she's a woman. EllieMurasaki is coming of the rails quite nicely, moderator potential in this one I do sense.

Next is their False facts thread where a poster CliveStaples challenges one of the chemgeeks generalizations about how "everybody" thinks and is met with a mod pile on and a free day off to read the basket o' links.

Then we have the IRS vs conservative groups thread where global moderator ceepolk demonstrates that she hasn't actually read the article linked to in the OP and starts with and instant derail featuring a healthy dose of profiling.

We are the priests of the temples of Syrinx....
 
Stout said:
Aye, interesting times over on A+. It would appear that skepticism and critical thinking are trying to rear their heads but are being beat back mercilessly by the A+ inner sanctum.

First up is the GMO thread where, after taking on a biochem major on the topic, poster EllieMurasaki realizes that she's outclassed and slams down the sexism card by confusing the word irrational with the word hysterical and claiming she's being silenced because she's a woman. EllieMurasaki is coming of the rails quite nicely, moderator potential in this one I do sense.

Next is their False facts thread where a poster CliveStaples challenges one of the chemgeeks generalizations about how "everybody" thinks and is met with a mod pile on and a free day off to read the basket o' links.

Then we have the IRS vs conservative groups thread where global moderator ceepolk demonstrates that she hasn't actually read the article linked to in the OP and starts with and instant derail featuring a healthy dose of profiling.

We are the priests of the temples of Syrinx....
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The links give:

500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@atheismplus.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
 
The first link about GMO worked fine for me, but the thread, which could have been an interesting discussion, was such a ****-up that I didn't even bother with the other two. What a complete mess that place is.
 
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