okay...you did offer some sources. couple of them reliable and one wouldn't line the cat box with.

did read the surgery was in '88, and webmd article basically said no worries.

so what was the point? what was at the end of that labyrinth?

dirty shame about the world hating americans.

damn.

odd, that...just got through a piece that questioned the stereotype of 'ugly americans' in europe. many europeans found other europeans more objectionable (russians came up often).

have met with a LOT of people from around the world. some here and some on travels...most seemed okay w/my presence. going to put that alongside the daily news source. [might be right about those saudis that threw rocks at us...but that was a misunderstanding]

...and traveling along w/mom...spent more time in strangers' homes than museums.

*ahem* maybe it's more the person than the people. [found that everywhere]

Tell me what the objectionable?

You know, I'd love to hear from one of the people who shut down these events.

'cos in general, I'm pretty much on their side. I consider myself a feminist, I think most people arguing against "PC" are just looking for an excuse to be racist or sexist and I fully support their right to protest against speakers they find objectionable.

But shutting down debate is completely counter to the point of a university. "Safe spaces" are fine, but you learn NOTHING until you step outside your comfort zone.

So please, if there's anyone reading this who participated in these events, I genuinely want to hear your side.

What you're describing isn't censorship, it's commerce.

If some company wants to make a game that people find objectionable, then that's their business. If they decide not to make that game because of bad publicity, that is also their business.

If someone calls for a game to be banned, they had better have a damn good reason for it (child porn, etc). 99% of the time, I'll be against it, and defend the creators right to make their game.

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about people who criticise games. You may disagree with their reasons, but they absolutely have the right to voice those opinions.

So sorry that flatly pointing out the statistical proof from your video that your video is (repeatedly proven) ridiculous BS insanity garners your downvote.

Comment down-voting is reserved for inappropriate comments as described above or comments you honestly find morally objectionable or insulting, and must only be used for a comment that contains truly offensive content.

Exactly what part do you find insulting...or are you just kneejerkingly downvoting someone who disagrees with you...again?
(I expect you'll also downvote this one, but it may be insulting... to the video and the repeatedly consistently thoroughly proven wrong theory it supports, not a person, but hey, don't let that stop ya).

Seriously Bob, I say this not as someone who dislikes you, not as someone who opposes you politically. I say this as one human being to another:

Learn how to fucking spell and the difference between its and it's

Details matter. Presentation matters

Your post was actually one of the least objectionable things I've heard you say in a while, but it was completely undermined by your poor spelling and grammar. It made you look like a complete idiot

Do better and take pride in yourself.

Both true, but that's not always the root purpose.

Viewpoints and particularly very strong opinions and beliefs spread through communication. Some people are saying something that others find objectionable and they don't want it to go unchallenged.

I'm more concerned here about a famous reporter from a first world superpower asking such a question in the first place. What kind of crazy twisted media engine would allow pushing this point the way he did?

In the event of something going wrong, I want the girl who's trained with a firearm on my team. It does require training, including moving while you're firing, which seems to be the part that some viewers find objectionable.

You can read liberals' reasons for owning a firearm in this article and its excellent comments: Liberal Explains Why He Owns Guns.


The best way for liberals to reduce desire for guns would be for them to make good on their promises.

For example, in the city where I live, San Francisco, liberals have absolute political hegemony, so they should be able to fix problems, right?

But street crime, particularly against women, is out of control, often simply with knives or punches. And inequality is unfortunately increasing, not decreasing.

There's something really objectionable about her singing voice, and yet I love it.

@ChaosEngine I mean a person wanting to change a law, and making that happen, compared to her just up and moving. You're assuming some authority is already engaged off a single complaint. Did the glittery cost-fairy take care of getting that whole process under way?

There are more groups with objectionable views on a federal level than on a state level. You can't stop legislators from making stupid laws, but you can mitigate the damage by having them legislate over less citizens and territory, so less citizens are affected, and those who are can still move outside their reach. Despite those obvious benefits, I guess bashing on states rights is quite popular these days.

I know it feels unfathomable to you right now that your political views might be wrong, or that you might be the one with a "backward world view", but realizing that isn't moral relativism, it's admitting that you're human, fallible. Politics is a complex subject, I'm not saying there are no right answers, just that you should be wary of those who claim to have them.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Well, the central argument of the video is that life without God is meaningless. You've already agreed with that point, so the argument now seems to be is whether someone can be happy and fulfilled with a meaningless life. I'm sure there are plenty of people who weren't believers who died happily in ignorance of the truth, but the question is, did they understand that their life was meaningless? I doubt it. It is not something that many people are able to face, and even if they could, they certainly don't live that way. In some way or another, they are deluding themselves and living as if their life does have meaning.

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

Hope is what keeps people going. Without hope, you are just going through the motions. When you have hope and lose it, it is emotionally devastating. A person without any hope is a person most likely clinically depressed.

You can call depression a kind of mental disorder, and some people may be born without the right chemical receptors for instance, but most people are depressed because of a lack of hope. A person, for instance, who worked their whole life and lost their retirement in an afternoon, or a mom whose kids abandoned her to live in a nursing home. They are not mentally ill, they are simply facing the cold, stark reality of their situation.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

The point being, that if there is no God then no one is in the drivers seat here on planet Earth. I would be surprised if the extreme fragility of our civilization escaped you. If you look at history, and you contrast it to what is going on today, you will find that the new is simply the old in different packaging. We're watching the exact same game show, simply on a grander and more dangerous scale. Humanity has never been closer to utterly destroying itself anytime in its history than it is today. I'm sure, like everything else in creation, you will attribute that to dumb luck. However, if you think everything is a numbers game, then sooner or later the odds say that cooler heads will not prevail and there will be a civilization annihilating calamity. The truth is, it is only the sovereign hand of God that is restraining this from happening.

The reason I made that comment about God is because of your comment about your depression. The reason you have that feeling that if you believed in God you wouldn't be depressed is because you know there is hope in God.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/29/half-german-teens-dont-know-hitler-dictator_n_163659 3.html

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Thanks for the elaboration. I am familiar with the philosophy of Sam Harris, and I figured you were borrowing from him, but it is good to know where you stand. My original point, however, still stands. You say you can't imagine someone finding bliss in hurting people. Well, have you ever heard of psychopaths? They do indeed find their bliss in acquiring power and control and making other people miserable, and they feel absolutely no remorse for doing so.

You also say that you feel the best state of a human being is to be blissfully happy. I'm sure everyone will agree with you that feeling blissfully happy is good. However, why should we believe this is actually what good is?. Yes, it feels good to feel good, but this doesn't tell us why we *ought* to do anything. Maybe this is just incredibly selfish and the opposite of good, or somewhere in the middle is true, or maybe none of it. You give no actual reason (beyond arbitrary statements like that which makes the world better or worse) to equate feeling good with moral goodness. In a meaningless Universe, neither is there any basis for thinking that you have any moral duties. This leads me to some questions that you didn't actually address in the last post. Let me ask them again because they are central to this discussion:

In a meaningless Universe there is no actual right and wrong, so why shouldn't you just do whatever you want? Why waste your time trying to navigate some moral landscape that you don't even believe really exists? Why not just take what you can, when you can, before you lose the opportunity?

I'll also address some of your comments:

In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion

People do evil because they get carried away by their lusts and become enticed. You view this as some sort of ignorance, or automatic function. Not so. When a person is doing wrong, they are almost always entirely aware of this, but simply override their moral restraints with their desire to fulfill their lusts. People are responsible for the evil that they do, not society, environmental factors, their parents, or anything else.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

I've already agreed with you that we all have a God given conscience that tells us right from wrong. Therefore, we don't need to read the bible to know that it is wrong to murder or steal. However, what God has commanded is that we all repent and believe in the gospel. This is something you aren't going to intuitively understand without being told.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

I am familiar with his system, to which I reiterate the point; what is the ground for associating moral evil with misery and moral good with "moving people away from misery". Where do you get moral duties in a meaningless Universe?

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too.

The morality that God gives can be summed up in two commandments: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind and all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself. As Jesus told us:

Matthew 22:40

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments

That's a very simple system. When you love God and other people everything else follows naturally.

Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

On the contrary, it's all arbitrary, because "what makes things better for people" or what "makes the world worse" is something determined by consensus. If everyone in the world agreed that torturing babies for fun made things better for people, it would be good in your view. If your moral system allows for this possibility, I think that's a sign its time to throw it away.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

If this were true, there would be no need for courts, judges, prisons, or police officers. There are also laws which may make some people miserable but are necessary for the greater good.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

It doesn't suffice, though. Yes, we can both agree there is a universal morality among human beings. How is that fact supposed to serve as grounds to invent an arbitrary system of good and evil based on people following their bliss and avoiding misery? I could just easily reverse the two and say the existence of universal morality justifies that too. I could say that the existence of a universal morality justifies that we should all love eggplants and hate rutabagas. There is no logical connection here between the system you've created and universal morality.

If there is no objective morality, then nothing is really wrong. Any system you create in the end is a human invention, based on human interpretation, and agreed upon by human consensus. You still cannot get an ought from an is. Good could be defined as a world of people who love each other, or a world of people who love to eat children. What is wrong then is simply based on your personal preferences.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

I understand that this wasn't meant to be perfect. It has, however, raised more concerns than it answered.

>> ^messenger

@shinyblurry

Of what you said above in the first two paragraphs about the consequences of accepting meaninglessness as reality, just about all of it I fully agree with. For clarity, I’ll mark the exceptions:

the closer you are to death the less happy and hopeful you will become
and
Eventually, when enough tragedy happens to you, you will break down and the future will become more and more like a millstone around your neck.

I found these to be presumptuous. They do happen to some people, maybe even most people, but they don’t happen to all. Many people of no religion, and despite immense tragedies, live happy and fulfilling lives, and feel happy and fulfilled on their death beds. I’d further argue that people with religious faith also get depressed. I suspect you’d counter that anyone who is depressed has insincere faith. That seems tautological to me, but either way, it’s moot, for now.

Further, you comment that, "people become depressed because of a lack of hope."

Some people do, at least in part. It’s a lot more complex than just a lack of hope though. For some people it’s due to a tragedy, or overwhelming cognitive dissonance, or it’s simply chemical, and has no correlation with anything in their lives at all. Maybe I’m nitpicking. I just want to make clear that depression is a mental disorder and is not a synonym for, "lack of hope because I don’t have God in my life."

For all of our so-called progress, humanity is just as sick and depraved as it always has been. Evil is increasing, not decreasing, and mankinds destructive appetites will never be satiated. There is no hope in man, but there is in God. I think you know that.

Here you slipped into metaphysical talk that means nothing to me, full of judgemental words ("sick and depraved") and terms that I had just told you I don’t accept as objective concepts ("evil"). You also know that I don’t think there’s any hope in your Yahweh God since he’s a mythological character, so I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

(Also, not that it’s critical to the discussion, but I’d like a reference for your poll about young people not knowing who Hitler was.)

All that is to say I pretty much agree with your view of what meaninglessness implies, and if there’s any bits that you want to explore more, I’m all for it.

Now, about "bliss". I didn’t define what I meant by that, so you didn’t understand it. I’ll make up for that now. By “bliss”, I don’t mean immediate pleasure, or instant gratification, or fulfillment of a goal, or basically anything you mentioned. I do mean a great powerful feeling of being centred, being in tune, achieving self-fulfillment, overflowing joy, love, inner peace, elation, connection, lightness, "harmony", "rapture" or a feeling that many describe as "doing what I was born to do/meant to be doing" or "transcendent". It’s the kind of happy that boosts your immune system and makes people around you feel good about themselves as well. (The words in quotes aren’t words I tend to use myself—I’m employing them to help clarify the concept I’m talking about.)

If you understand now what I mean by "bliss" (as opposed to instant gratification, etc.), you’ll understand that people don’t follow their bliss and rape people, nor find inner peace by beating their wives, and so there’s no need to append any rules about not hurting. I can’t imagine how anybody’s bliss could ever include causing harm to other people, but I’ll even address that hypothetical, towards the end of this comment.

Lots of people do bad things to others and themselves, and later on, some may consider what they did was bad, or they might not. If they still think it was OK, it’s because they’ve used some kind of justification, like, "She did it to me first," "She was teasing me. What did she think would happen?" or, "He had it coming," or "I had no choice," And so forth. These are all rationalizations after the fact, justifications that allow them to still consider themselves as good people rather than change their behaviour or take responsibility for having done something wrong. These don’t address the real reason these people did these things. In all cases, whatever they did, it was because they were feeling bad about something, weren’t centred, and reacted from "lizard brain" instincts of individual survival rather than from human compassion.

I believe that the natural and best state for a human being to be is happy (and here again, I mean blissfully happy). Every bit of programming we have nudges us towards certain actions by rewarding us with feelings of happiness, or reduced misery. We only live once, so I would modify your description only slightly to, “taking what bliss you can when you can”.

Divine morality isn’t necessary. Having any collective understanding of what is good and what is bad is enough. For most of humanity’s existence, even up to now, there hasn’t been a clear standard. In patches of geography where there was one, it only applied well to that time and culture. Just as ordinary people supplanted kings and emperors as absolute leaders without society collapsing, and just as ordinary people supplanted religions are sole arbiters of the law without society collapsing, ordinary people can supplant religion as arbiter of what is good and what is bad as well, and society will continue not to collapse.

And better than a list of what’s good and what’s bad is a system that determines for us what’s good and what’s bad. I’ve seen one model that I like, delivered by Sam Harris. The most salient bit starts at about 10:00 and runs to around 27:30. If you don’t want to watch it now, I’ll summarise the most important ideas: For a moral code to have meaning, it has to apply to some form of consciousness – it cannot apply to rocks and dust. Then there’s the central point which requires you to imagine "the worst possible misery for everyone", and assume that this situation is "bad". "Good" is then defined in terms of moving people away from this "worst possible misery for everyone". That’s it. I recommend hearing it from Harris himself.

The three advantages that occur to me of this system over Yahweh’s morality are that it’s a simple system rather than a long intricate list, so it’s quick to teach, easy to absorb, understand and reference, hard to corrupt, and all-inclusive; there’s absolutely nothing random about it, so odd details like not being allowed to wear garments made from two different thread types won’t make it in and there’s nothing objectionable about it from the standpoint of people who just want to do the right thing; and it’s truly universal in that it applies equally well now as it would have in 4000 BC China, in 30 AD Mesopotamia, or will in 12 000 AD Mars, so it’s broadly acceptable too. Every act that is good makes things better for people. If an act makes the world worse, then it’s bad. Simple. Lots of generalities can be derived from it, like killing people is bad, respecting other people’s property is good, and there’d be no arbitrary crap about touching pig skin being bad or extra-marital sex being bad.

Even more generally, we clearly don’t require any god to tell us what’s good and what isn’t. We already have a conscience inside us that tells us what’s good and what isn’t regardless of laws. I know you believe that Yahweh made our conscience for us. Even if that were so, it doesn’t change the fact that if properly relied upon, a conscience precludes the need for an external set of laws. Any law that echoes what everyone naturally feels already is superfluous. Any law that contributes to human misery is morally wrong and deserves to be disregarded.

You state that without a divine moral standard that exists outside our consciousness, there is no objective justice. This is true by definition. Without a true objective moral code, you further argue that nobody can condemn any action as bad without being hypocritical, so in effect, everything is permissible. This is not the case, however. Although the moral code I advocate isn’t "objective" in the sense that it exists beyond our consciousness, it is universal among humans. And if we’re only attempting to determine moral behaviour for humans, then a universally accepted standard among humans suffices, regardless of where we think it came from.

The arguments I make here don’t describe a perfect system. That’s wasn’t my intention. I believe they do, however, answer your concerns about non-objective morality being insufficient to guide humans.

Thank you for your response, it has made your initial comment much clearer. What you need to understand about the video and why my response was so harsh is that the song, while being directly inspired by Akin's comment, is not only about him, but about society's distrust and often denigration of women when it comes to sexual abuse. While you may have a point about Akin (I doubt it), his "slip-up" does not come from out of the blue, but stems from a sadly widespread misconception of sexual abuse, mostly held by religious conservatives who tend to blame the (female) victim, for being "lose", "asking for it", etc etc (when it pertains to homosexual rape/abuse they chalk it up as part of homosexuality's evils; viz the response to abuse in the RCC).

The reason your comment elicited such a drastic, gut-born response is that it echoes every misogynistic table-turning that crops up when sexual abuse of women is being discussed, i.e. the accusation of "man-hating", "fear-mongering" feminazis (as well as the whole "men get raped too!" trope, which no one is denying). Rare are the feminists who hate men (and those who do are wrong to do so, and generally called out for it); what we hate is patriarchy and everything it entails. The tactic of misrepresenting feminist arguments seemed to me what your sarcastic comment was about, hence my reaction.

So the strawman I copiously insulted was the MRA-hole whose misogynistic intent I read into your comment, and to be quite honest, it was (and still is) very hard to read anything else into it. But you have my apologies for insulting you if that was not what the comment was about. And since you and I are not alone in this exchange, I propose posting our discussion on the thread in question, that way people can see what you meant by your comment and see why I reacted how I did. What think you?
In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Where your guessing I'm white comes from, or how my skin color or gender would matter in the least, I don't know. You clearly seem to have some kind of history with MRA people and believe them all to be misogynists, and perhaps they might all be. I don't know, I'm not affiliated with them. But you equating my criticism of the video with being in cahoots with MRA convinced you I had to be pushing some agenda and blinded you not only to the intent of the sarcasm tag but also to any other possible meaning of the post, instead reading a simplistic turning-of-the-tables jab into what you seem to have perceived to be my sexist manifesto. That's the problem with reading a sarcastic post seriously and afterwards taking the sarcasm tag as disingenuous.
What I found objectionable with this video was that the artist misconstrued Todd Akin's incredibly stupid attempt at connecting pregnancy due to rape with his pro-life stance to say so much more than he did, that he considers any of those in lyrics mentioned scenarios of rape to be illegitimate. He didn't say that, though, so with all the things that he could be criticized for, there's no need for the artist to manufacture an outrage that he actually didn't put into words. Maybe you know something about him and his stances on rape that wasn't widely brought up in public during all this, but I only read his public statement linked in the description bar as well as reading about him on wiki and didn't see anything in it even hinting at him thinking all rape is illegitimate. So, what I did was basically the same thing I disliked about the sifted video, taking one aspect of the song that I reacted to; all mentioning of gender as pertaining to rape like: him taking her out, husband's privilege, he didn't have consent, short skirts. As such it's misrepresenting the artist's intended message (as I understand it), that Todd Akin thinks women can't be legitimately raped, to instead say that she thinks only men rape only women, hence the sarcasm tag. It's very easy to put words into other people's mouths.

It's really easy to jump on someone who's already being jumped on, and that is what I thought this video did. I didn't think it brought anything to any discussion, I didn't think it was funny and I thought it was unfunny because I perceived it (and still do, since nobody has divulged any further information) as hate fuel and character attacks based on misrepresentation. This isn't the first time I've reacted to this, as you can see me defending another borderline reprehensible person from what I though was unjust and unwarranted avenue of criticism: http://videosift.com/video/Bill-OReilly-amazed-that-Black-res
taurant-is-civilized

You are free to challenge any post all you like, but telling me to go fuck myself, that I disgust you and that I'm sexist and somehow pushing some misogynistic agenda, which has no basis in anything in the post, is not challenging anything. That's antagonism at best, slander at worst. You don't know anything about me, neither how I act, how I have acted nor how I think and feel, so making all kinds of value judgments on my character and verbally abuse me is completely unwarranted. I didn't discriminate against women in that post, I didn't imply women were less than men, nor do I think that. Both actions and words have consequences, even in internet communities, and any and all rash language and inflammatory rhetoric will still linger on long afterwards.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
I will concede this much: my response was emotionally laden and insulting. But attacking what very clearer appears to be MRA misogynistic BS is not "white knighting", despite my perhaps overly heavy-handed manner. Or does one have to follow specific guidelines in order for their challenge of your comment's apparent ideas to be taken seriously? If you had a valid point to make with that comment, I think it's fair to say you failed miserably at getting it across. So instead of accusing me of "comment noise" because you don't like what I say, why don't you come and clarify what you meant? It's unfair and rather shameful of you to call my response petty and wildly assuming; your comment does not allow many other interpretations than the one I made. The only mere assumptions I made were to your gender and ethnicity, based on the fact that the MRA movement is almost entirely the resort of white males.

Come back to the thread and provide in clear language what you meant by your sarcastic lyrics, and if I was wrong in my interpretation thereof I will be quick to apologise publicly for getting you wrong.

(I am taking this off "private" setting because as a continuation of an open sift discussion I believe it should be available to anyone involved. I stand by my words, and I am sure you do to.)
In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Look, I don't know what emotional baggage you're carrying or what possesses you to go so overboard with white knighting, but you're behaving childishly and if you can't talk to someone you disagree with, or you think you disagree with, without starting to infer your preconceived notions onto them and insult and cuss them out, you are no better than any of the other comment noise that plagues youtube. If you want to rise above such pettyness, apologize for drawing wild conclusions, insulting and accusing me on the basis of those wild conclusions and maybe we can have a discussion about what my post was actually saying about that person's video.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
>> ^Kreegath:

How do you know if you're suffering from man hating and fear? ♫
I'll tell you how to spot, man hating and fear ♪
You're not sure you've got, man hating and fear ♬
Well here's a little lesson for you,
Tell me if the following things are true:
I think all rapists are men - man hating and fear
I think all victims are women - man hating and fear
I rub out all grey areas to prove a moot point - man hating and fear
Men should have no rights to defense against allegations of rape - man hating and fear ♬


Oh, looks like we've got an MRA-hole in the house. Let me guess: you're a white male with malignant priviligitis, amirite? Did any one line of the song suggest falsely accusing someone of rape? Or calling all men rapists? Or hating men?? Oh wait, you ticked the sarcasm tag, that makes it all an a-okay bit of humour right? Wrong.

Your kind disgusts me. And by that I don't mean "men"; no, real men (and women, and anyone in between) know to respect another person's consent and their choice to retract it at any given moment. No, by "your kind" I mean the slimy, any-one-who-points-out-the-sexism-in-our-society-is-a-man-hating-feminazi-and-fear-mongerer kind.

I won't stoop to the MRA-low of wishing rape on you, because I would not wish it on anyone. Instead, I'll kindly suggest you go fuck yourself, because anyone in their right mind, male female or otherwise, would not consent to it with you if they knew your sexist stance. /angry rant

*quality song btw

Where your guessing I'm white comes from, or how my skin color or gender would matter in the least, I don't know. You clearly seem to have some kind of history with MRA people and believe them all to be misogynists, and perhaps they might all be. I don't know, I'm not affiliated with them. But you equating my criticism of the video with being in cahoots with MRA convinced you I had to be pushing some agenda and blinded you not only to the intent of the sarcasm tag but also to any other possible meaning of the post, instead reading a simplistic turning-of-the-tables jab into what you seem to have perceived to be my sexist manifesto. That's the problem with reading a sarcastic post seriously and afterwards taking the sarcasm tag as disingenuous.
What I found objectionable with this video was that the artist misconstrued Todd Akin's incredibly stupid attempt at connecting pregnancy due to rape with his pro-life stance to say so much more than he did, that he considers any of those in lyrics mentioned scenarios of rape to be illegitimate. He didn't say that, though, so with all the things that he could be criticized for, there's no need for the artist to manufacture an outrage that he actually didn't put into words. Maybe you know something about him and his stances on rape that wasn't widely brought up in public during all this, but I only read his public statement linked in the description bar as well as reading about him on wiki and didn't see anything in it even hinting at him thinking all rape is illegitimate. So, what I did was basically the same thing I disliked about the sifted video, taking one aspect of the song that I reacted to; all mentioning of gender as pertaining to rape like: him taking her out, husband's privilege, he didn't have consent, short skirts. As such it's misrepresenting the artist's intended message (as I understand it), that Todd Akin thinks women can't be legitimately raped, to instead say that she thinks only men rape only women, hence the sarcasm tag. It's very easy to put words into other people's mouths.

It's really easy to jump on someone who's already being jumped on, and that is what I thought this video did. I didn't think it brought anything to any discussion, I didn't think it was funny and I thought it was unfunny because I perceived it (and still do, since nobody has divulged any further information) as hate fuel and character attacks based on misrepresentation. This isn't the first time I've reacted to this, as you can see me defending another borderline reprehensible person from what I though was unjust and unwarranted avenue of criticism: http://videosift.com/video/Bill-OReilly-amazed-that-Black-restaurant-is-civilized

You are free to challenge any post all you like, but telling me to go fuck myself, that I disgust you and that I'm sexist and somehow pushing some misogynistic agenda, which has no basis in anything in the post, is not challenging anything. That's antagonism at best, slander at worst. You don't know anything about me, neither how I act, how I have acted nor how I think and feel, so making all kinds of value judgments on my character and verbally abuse me is completely unwarranted. I didn't discriminate against women in that post, I didn't imply women were less than men, nor do I think that. Both actions and words have consequences, even in internet communities, and any and all rash language and inflammatory rhetoric will still linger on long afterwards.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
I will concede this much: my response was emotionally laden and insulting. But attacking what very clearer appears to be MRA misogynistic BS is not "white knighting", despite my perhaps overly heavy-handed manner. Or does one have to follow specific guidelines in order for their challenge of your comment's apparent ideas to be taken seriously? If you had a valid point to make with that comment, I think it's fair to say you failed miserably at getting it across. So instead of accusing me of "comment noise" because you don't like what I say, why don't you come and clarify what you meant? It's unfair and rather shameful of you to call my response petty and wildly assuming; your comment does not allow many other interpretations than the one I made. The only mere assumptions I made were to your gender and ethnicity, based on the fact that the MRA movement is almost entirely the resort of white males.

Come back to the thread and provide in clear language what you meant by your sarcastic lyrics, and if I was wrong in my interpretation thereof I will be quick to apologise publicly for getting you wrong.

(I am taking this off "private" setting because as a continuation of an open sift discussion I believe it should be available to anyone involved. I stand by my words, and I am sure you do to.)
In reply to this comment by Kreegath:
Look, I don't know what emotional baggage you're carrying or what possesses you to go so overboard with white knighting, but you're behaving childishly and if you can't talk to someone you disagree with, or you think you disagree with, without starting to infer your preconceived notions onto them and insult and cuss them out, you are no better than any of the other comment noise that plagues youtube. If you want to rise above such pettyness, apologize for drawing wild conclusions, insulting and accusing me on the basis of those wild conclusions and maybe we can have a discussion about what my post was actually saying about that person's video.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
>> ^Kreegath:

How do you know if you're suffering from man hating and fear? ♫
I'll tell you how to spot, man hating and fear ♪
You're not sure you've got, man hating and fear ♬
Well here's a little lesson for you,
Tell me if the following things are true:
I think all rapists are men - man hating and fear
I think all victims are women - man hating and fear
I rub out all grey areas to prove a moot point - man hating and fear
Men should have no rights to defense against allegations of rape - man hating and fear ♬


Oh, looks like we've got an MRA-hole in the house. Let me guess: you're a white male with malignant priviligitis, amirite? Did any one line of the song suggest falsely accusing someone of rape? Or calling all men rapists? Or hating men?? Oh wait, you ticked the sarcasm tag, that makes it all an a-okay bit of humour right? Wrong.

Your kind disgusts me. And by that I don't mean "men"; no, real men (and women, and anyone in between) know to respect another person's consent and their choice to retract it at any given moment. No, by "your kind" I mean the slimy, any-one-who-points-out-the-sexism-in-our-society-is-a-man-hating-feminazi-and-fear-mongerer kind.

I won't stoop to the MRA-low of wishing rape on you, because I would not wish it on anyone. Instead, I'll kindly suggest you go fuck yourself, because anyone in their right mind, male female or otherwise, would not consent to it with you if they knew your sexist stance. /angry rant

*quality song btw

>> ^gwiz665:

It's like saying warmongering peace.
>> ^hpqp:
quality breakdown of what secularism means, and why it's ridiculous to whine about supposedly "militant secularism".

I beg to differ on the semantics.


Militant: "vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause"
A "militant secularist" might be someone who actively seeks out examples of theism (such a prayer, acknowledgment of a divine power, or symbols of theist holidays in government settings) in order to protest, or one that continues their opposition despite broad support for theist behavior in the affected community. You can determine for yourself if this type of action is objectionable or laudable, but I think it's entirely possible to be a "militant secularist".