Look, it is two thousand freaking fifteen. This is an article from some site called "Techie News" being re-reported at Slashdot. Can we please get a little ridicule of this supposed binary concept of "statistical significance" ? It would take us one or two sentences to tell us the actual numbers involved--the expected value, expected deviation, margin of error, confidence level, etc.
And then when all's said and done, if indeed the level of significance was too low (e.g. p too high), maybe we could get a Bayesian or two in here to criticize the traditional 5% value is being arbitrary and tell us all a little about the Frequentist vs. Bayesian rivalry in statistics that persists to this day? (Obligatory XKCDs: https://xkcd.com/1132/ , https://xkcd.com/882/)
Maybe I'm old, and maybe you kids really should get the fuck off my lawn, but young adults DO whine incessantly.
Old people do it too (arguably moreso), but it's not called "whining"--it's called "grouching" or "grumbling" or "ranting" or "bitching" something. I mean hell, just look at the "get off my lawn!" meme we have here. This phrase is always, ALWAYS attached to a rant that would, if uttered by a kid, be considered "whining".
(Disclaimer: I am on balance anti-systemd although I freely admit I'm not familiar enough with the specifics to be confident in my appraisal.)
Just take a look at the systemd fiasco for a great example of this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be against it (even vehemently against it, from what I've seen so far), but the average post I see arguing against it is a pile of self-centered, self-entitled whining I've ever seen. It introduces a new standard for "no reason", boo fucking hoo. It's not at all uncommon to hear you greybeards explicitly say that you don't want to learn a new standard, period. Just complain and complain and complain that you can't do X any more... oh wait... there's a new tool that does everything the old tool did and more? Who the hell cares--why should *you* ever have to learn anything new!? Goddamn kids fixing things that aren't broken! I'm not whining; I'm righteously indignant!
You're too wrapped up in your "real work" to even notice that half of the claims you make against systemd are FUD-fabricated bullshit (again, my disclaimer: the other half of the criticisms seem valid. And on a big picture level, of course it's terribly anti-UNIX and Pottering's rambling justifications for this shit is terrifying.) But just stop and think--how arrogant would this attitude seem if it was coming from a recent grad? And as the experienced ones, you guys are supposed to know better.
Let's face it...the term "helicopter parent" is a very new term.
Not a new concept or phenomenon. You should've seen how the Victorians did things.
I played with the other kids in the neighborhood. I often left the house (unescorted) during the summer in the morning and showed back up at home in time for dinner. I rode my bike and skateboard for miles away from home.
Yeah, kids still do that all the damn time. Just because in some isolated cases & areas the cops have gotten uppity and called CPS doesn't mean it's the norm. If you live within a couple miles of the schools near where I live, you are REQUIRED to walk/bike/skateboard to school--no buses are provided.
this latest generation has been more coddled and has more of an entitlement attitude than previous generations. They seem to feel "owed" by society a job, and to be treated nicely and fairly. They are the generation of everyone getting a trophy just for showing up.
The headline-grabbing liberals in a handful of upper-middle / upper class towns are not even remotely representative of the country as a whole. For every hyper-egalitarian anti-competitive nutjob teacher (or parent) out there, there are fifty burned out and working to get by just as their parents did. Harder, even--average weekly hours worked by Americans have been steadily increasing, not decreasing. This is not a country of millionaires. Most parents do not have the luxury of behaving like whatever punching bag O'Reilly is roasting this week.
Ironically enough, the overprotective parents and cops are falling prey to the same trap you've apparently fallen into--believing the bullshit the infotainment media sells you. The scaremongers still seem to believe that crime is rising, well over 20 years into a major decline. And you seem to believe that most people are overreacting, despite the fact that most parents don't have the time, money or energy to bother overreacting, because they are in fact working harder (or at least longer) than their parents ever did and (adjusting for inflation) earning less for it.
One more major detail you failed to mention: my parents didn't need a degree to get a reasonable job. My grandparents' generation didn't need a degree to get a GREAT job. The jobs themselves haven't changed very much; only the requirements have. This is a result of increased prosperity combined with an enabling government and horribly (if understandably) cynical universities that realize that fleecing millions of undergrads is the only way they are going to be able to fund their grad students' and postdocs' research. So if there is a tiny bit of increase in the so-called "entitlement attitude", well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that our society has just recently begun demanding indentured servitude for anything more complicated than flipping burgers.
One set of simpering, drooling morons is the same as another.
They aren't. Overall, the Amish have a pretty horrendous view of how we should live but when it comes to figuring out how we can coexist with them, I would hope you can see that the situation is not at all the same.
You should note that the belief you say is crap is the belief of not worshipping idols - one which you probably share
Incorrect. The belief that I say is crap is the belief that it is wrong to draw Muhammad. My opinions on idol worship[1] are irrelevant. I do not accept the logic of these religious homicidal maniacs, nor the logic of the men who authored the relevant hadith.
As for muddying the waters, well, the simple approach has already been tried: attacking and/or flouting bad beliefs is an inherently good act. But I admit there could be exceptions to this principle, hence the wider discussion
1.It depends on what that involves. If there's supernatural nonsense then no, I probably don't hold a high opinion of it
There seems to be a large amount of people who failed to grasp your point, then. Would you like to try to clarify it while you are still able to post here?
Sorry, but I believe in a definition of civility that rests on the ideals of Socrates, not the offended religious maniacs who forced him to drink poison.
So it was uncomfortable, sure. And perhaps it should have been stopped or prevented. You could even (though I personally disagree) make an argument that the awkward giggling should be proactively prevented by not using the image.
I'm just asking for a little honesty in language. I expect this kind of behavior from the Right, but as I get older I am noticing more and more newspeak tendencies from the Left as well. "Hostile" is an actual English word with actual English meanings, none of which are a synonym for "awkward", "embarrassing", "uncomfortable", "distracting", "prurient" or any of the other fine English words we have at our disposal to characterize the events you have described.
In case you think I'm making a mountain over a molehill here, "hostile" is a word that dovetails nicely into the ridiculous MRA vs. SJW nonsense that is wasting time and distracting from very real issues of gender inequality in the world (the large majority of which are of course anti-female, at least on a global scale.)
It does not follow that it's morally right to go out of your way to break the taboo.
It's not MY taboo; it's theirs. Since I was specifically excluding negative portrayals on that point, please note that banning a depiction is neither is it a common / 'universal' taboo.
It is morally right to break the taboo based on the I am Spartacus principle alone combined with even the tiniest bit of respect for the principle of free speech. I'm sorry if you believe that free speech isn't worth fighting for, but I hope you can at least understand where we are coming from.
I was familiar with Charlie Hebdo years ago precisely because after the South Park censorship debacle I had, out of curiosity, researched and made a list of everyone who was willing to produce depictions Muhammad. It was an extremely short list and Charlie Hebdo was prominent on it. The presence of such a very short list gives encouragement to would-be assassins by 1. Indicating that their intimidation IS working and 2. Showing that just a little bit of murderous effort would be required to kill off every single significantly prominent producer in the world.
But there is something else as well: The single biggest flaw in your argument is the implied isolation of liberal Muslims. Presumably you would not argue that a liberal Muslim like Maajid Nawaz or some Shia Muslims (who have a rich tradition of artwork showing Muhammad) is morally bound to obey conservative Muslim taboos? And yet, by asking the entire non-Muslim world to obey conservative Muslim taboos, you are kicking the chair out from under them; you are discrediting their beliefs and propping up the beliefs of extremists. You are hanging a big red target around their necks, whether you realize it or not. Maajid Nawaz received death threats for re-posting a neutral illustration of Muhammad. I believe that implicitly telling him he is wrong and lending support to the conservative forces in Islam is extremely immoral. If you don't want to get involved in the war of moderate vs. extremist Islam that's your prerogative, but by deliberately choosing to obey the taboos of one side you are NOT remaining neutral.
The vast majority of the people who would feel uneasy about it are not the people whom I want to feel uneasy.
If they feel uneasy about other people violating the laws of their religion, then I feel rather uneasy about them.
"I think your cultural taboo is pointless and stupid" is not a good reason.
What about "I think I should not be bound by YOUR cultural taboo" ? There's a big long discussion we could have about multiculturalism vs. assimilation and whatall, but the minimum standard is being (reasonably) comfortable being around other people who do not follow your religion. A simple analogy would be the Jewish taboo on speaking the name of god (including the word "God") aloud or in print. This is pretty similar to the taboo on not depicting Muhammad, yet it would be obscene if they insisted that everyone (including liberal Jews) followed this taboo.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, this issue is not limited to depictions of Muhammad alone. Pictures of pigs and anthropomorphic pigs are to some extent (there's a lot of smoke here, but the publisher DID ultimately admit it) being avoided in children's school books in the UK for fear of offending conservative Muslims. They also admit they are avoiding depicting things like "girls going shopping for shorts", in books being published for UK schoolchildren. (Although here ease of international adaptation was cited as the reason... if that makes it any better.)
Depictions of other prophets are considered to be taboo by conservative Muslims but of course they don't yet feel politically strong enough to demand we censor depictions of Jesus. Go further than that, and you'll find out that it was once a widespread taboo to depict any animal or human at all. This taboo is
Well, our point of disagreement may be finer than it first seemed. To wrap it all up a little tighter, then: the taboo of Muhammad not being drawn (in a neutral or positive manner) should be broken by anybody and everybody. This is a positive act because it raises awareness, it spreads the risk and it spits in faces that very badly require spitting in. The reaction of "Bububuuuh, my religion doesn't allow me to!" is to be tolerated with a shrug, but in no way celebrated.[1]
Negative drawings of Muhammad should be viewed as negative drawings of any other religious figure and (unless the context strongly implies otherwise) construed as an attack on an ideology, not an attack on a heterogeneous community. To the extent that we still have way too many faces that require spitting in, I am inclined to view this as a more immediately useful act than negative portrayals of Jesus. It's lamentable when asshats (or worse, as you say) are the ones doing it, but as Sam Harris[2] points out this should be viewed as pointing out a failing of liberalism, not praising conservatism... and shying away from these activities because there are so many conservative blowhards are involved only makes it much worse. I'm not sure what this continued polarization is going to lead to, but the obvious fear is we could have another generation of neocons (the phrase "neoconservative" originally referring to ex-liberals who broke with the left over the issue of confronting the USSR.)
1. In the case of either positive or negative portrayals, the reaction of "I think you should be thrown in jail for doing it" should be treated with contempt and (civilized) hostility.
2. No, I'm not some huge fanboy of his--I disagree with his views on torture, airport profiling and nuclear war game theory. But he makes very solid arguments on some other points.
Keep talking like that, though, and it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If all Muslims are capable of that then you are saying that all Muslims are murderous extremists at heart; they just haven't shown their true colors yet.
Let me clarify: That is not what *I* am saying (I do not believe this is true); that is what *you* are saying. If you actually believe this is true, you are a huge and dangerous bigot.
Those of us who believe that moderate, humane and liberal Muslims really exist also tend to believe that we shouldn't be pandering to the hurt feelings of jihadis all the time.
How's this for an idea: some form of visual media (video or drawings, whatever) depicting Muhammad and Islam in a very positive light, marketed and clearly honestly intended to educate westerners about the positive elements of the Muslim community and their history.
Then see if the kind of people who try to shoot people for drawing Muhammad throw a fit over even something like that.
This might not go as nicely as you'd think. A teacher in Sudan made the mistake of allowing her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad (their idea, not hers) and for this crime she was arrested and deported. At one point she had to be taken to a secret location because mobs in the street were literally demanding that she be killed. The chaos was such that the school had to be closed for a month:
If there was a serial rapist targetting redheads in a certain city, and some redheaded women decided to wander the streets alone at night carrying a legal a concealed pistol, and one of them was attacked and shot the attacker... to my knowledge, no American law was violated. Maybe places in Europe have a "provocation" legal precedent whereupon people are required to avoid offending potential murderers, but there thankfully is no analogue here.
The "fighting words" doctrine, as someone else mentioned, cannot be (and to my knowledge never has been) expanded so as to encompass religious blasphemy law. If it could, according to your logic a Scientologist could kill me the next time I crack a joke about Xenu.
Religion is not the only source of bullshit in the world.
But this conversation is about an explicitly religious attack. No one other than a self-proclaimed Muslim would be willing to both kill (or at least try to) and die for people drawing pictures of Muhammad.
If someone "wouldn't normally consider" launching a suicide attack against infidels but reading about a contest to draw pictures of Muhammad changes their mind, they are an extremist and they were obviously an extremist long before the contest was announced.
The phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" needs a stronger, beefier cousin to describe attitudes like yours. The exist Muslims in this world who would not kill infidels for any degree of perceived blasphemy. These are the people we should support, this is the belief system we should support, and we should make it abundantly clear that all other belief systems are not welcome here (by "here" I mean planet Earth, not just the United States.)
This remains true regardless in spite of the many stupid, bigoted things Gellars and the Dutch fuck say.
By analogy, there was plenty of completely unfair, bigoted anti-German propaganda before and during WWII. That in no way renders criticism of the Nazis invalid, or nor does it make appeasement a more attractive alternative.
I'm perfectly happy to limit the conversation to your experience instead of mine. From what you have said, your experience appears to have been limited to being in a room with people who are giggling. I am sorry, but that is not the same thing as hostility.
Hostility implies some degree of anger and/or an adversarial stance. Giggling, by itself, does not imply any of that. There are certain pictures (e.g. let's take the extreme example of a picture of a woman being raped) that, if giggled at, would imply hostility--but a cropped version of a softcore nude picture is not such a picture. There are certain kinds of comments that, in tandem with giggling, could convey hostility. But you have not mentioned any of these comments. You seem to think that giggling over a naked woman is a hostile act, and that is ridiculous.
If you disagree, please pick up a dictionary of your choice and explain how your experience coincides with the definition of "hostility".
Really? You certainly cannot call yourself a Christian with that attitude.
I do not because I am not. I am a freethinker and a liberal.
Why is it ok to bait Muslims but we have laws against baiting other groups to include racial (go ahead, host a competition to see who can spray paint the word "NIGGER" on a wall in the biggest letters), and even homosexuals
Are you living in America or Europe? It is not illegal to spray paint the word "NIGGER" or "FAG" on a wall you own. I would not defend any such infringement of free speech, and I think the arrest of Dieudonne following the Charlie Hebdo attacks was a travesty.
"We provoke them, they try to murder us, we kill them first."
That makes you a murderer, one who acts with pre-meditation and lures the victim into a compromised condition.
The fascist assholes who want me to obey their interpretation sharia are not victims, and fuck you for implying that they are. Plenty of moderate Muslims will say that there is nothing wrong with drawing the prophet, many of them receive death threats for saying so. They are the victims. The people in body armor trying to shoot cartoonists are not victims.
Civilization starts with civil behavior. What you advocate is called barbarism, most of us are well past that but, meh, to each knuckle-dragger his own.
What I advocate is identical to Gandhi's strategy for fighting the British. Hundreds (or thousands, I forget) died because he advocated disobeying the British's shitty, immoral rules on salt taxation. This helped keep the issue of British barbarity in the spotlight--other, non-evil Britons saw this and eventually enough of them sided with the Indians that the conflict was decided in their favor.
But I guess your interpretation is valid too. I guess the schoolgirls willing to risk their lives defying local interpretations of sharia by obtaining an education are merely "knuckle-draggers", along with all of the armed guards willing to protect them against theocratic fascists.
Hint: mockery and blasphemy is a HUGE part of modern American culture.
It's tempered by the maxim that you never punch down.
Two of the 9/11 hijackers had PhDs from western institutions. The rest had all attended college and (IIRC) most had degrees. "Jihadi John", the ISIS guy who was personally cutting off the heads of aid workers, had a career in computer science. Osama bin Laden was a millionaire. The men in charge of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi nightmare are extremely wealthy.
I am poor, and I would like to make fun of these rich fascist assholes. But no, you say I shouldn't do so because these evil men and their beliefs are representative of all of the poor Muslims in the nation.
So, that's what I have to say about "punching down", but there is another point to be made here: There are moderate Muslims (along with some non-moderate Shias) who do not have a problem with picturing the prophet. But no, their beliefs do not matter to you--only the extremist belief that infidels should obey parts of the sharia matter. If the extremist interpretation really is much, much more popular than the moderate interpretation of Islam. that is a problem with Islam as it is commonly practiced, full stop. If the moderate interpretation isn't uncommon, then you are guilty of not only the soft bigotry of low expectations, but you are also ignoring and turning your back on the people who suffer the most from Islamic extremism--non-extremist Muslims.
In this case, the man who got shot in the ankle is a victim. The people who had to duck and run for their lives are also victims. The two gunmen wearing body armor who were upset that the infidels didn't want to follow sharia's laws on blasphemy and idolatry are not victims.
The most ignored and by far the most important amendment, the ninth, was crafted specifically to counteract the notion that people didn't have any rights other than those that are carefully spelled out in the other amendments.
I think the word "viable" as you're using it implies efficiency. Since we don't have an (widely agreed on) explanation of how this thing works, we don't know if it will efficient enough to be worth bothering with when scaled up to useful levels of thrust.
In the rice analogy, we know it's edible but we've no idea how much effort it takes to grow on a commercial scale.
To some degree, it is good to hate, fear and (in some ways) oppress bad ideas. I am a bigot to the same degree you are probably a bigot about Scientology. The assholes in Clearwater don't want us making Xenu jokes, and yet for some bizarre reason I don't really feel like a bigot when I do.
You know, Hitler was a vegetarian and loved children. If you're a a vegetarian or love children too, that mean you like killing Jews. Hey, I'm just pointing out objective facts here.
I was arguing that Christians are not going to "always" (the parents' word, not mine) respond to a blasphemous picture with violence. This seemed like a pretty fucking easy point to make. Shooting fish in a barrel, I thought.
But no, after several ACs have interjected with half-baked nonsense we now have someone trying to claim that the actual conversation is about *my* hypocrisy for not treating abortion (which is a subject I have not weighed in on, at all, except to say that it wasn't what we were talking about at the moment) equal to the murder / attempted murder of cartoonists.
Congratulations, you've successfully convinced me that for the sake of my sanity, I need to start ignoring all ACs. I hope you're happy.
The fighting words doctrine is wrong and on this general point I don't care whether the current Supreme Courts agrees with me. However, just because they (might) disagree with me does not mean they disagree with your definition--it is insanity to allow one group to unilaterally determine what constitutes fighting words. Given their peculiarities, I'm sure the Church of Scientology would love to consider even mentioning the word "Xenu" to be fighting words...
Recall the Denmark cartoon controversy---showing Muhammad with a bomb in his turban (widely agreed as the one of the most "offensive" images in the bunch) is not an 'insult disguised as free speech' or whatever doublespeak nonsense you were trying to say there. It is the epitome of vitally important speech that needs protection. If you are not allowed to make an observation on the ideologies and actions of a major historical figure and founder of a massive religion, then free speech does not exist in any meaningful sense of the term.
I've no doubt some of the cartoons in that contest yesterday were crude and didn't say anything of substance. I've also no doubt that many of them correctly referred to Muhammad's historical conquests in war and his ideologies as portrayed in the quaran. And here's the kicker: no one can be trusted to sort this pile of invective, some worthless and some priceless, into two separate piles. The only way to save what is vital is to save all of it.
Is it really okay for you to support the actions of "known asshats" if you don't actually join the club? How does that work? "I'm no Klansman, but those asshats sure do a good job! Keep it up boys!" What does that say about you and your beliefs?
I'm very glad you asked: it says that my beliefs are not frivolous. It says that they are thoroughly grounded in a moral framework I have worked out for myself, and I'm not simply choosing which side to be on based on whether I like the look of the guy who happens to be standing next to me.
If everyone started doing this, I daresay Fox News would fold overnight (rapidly followed by quite a few others from across the political spectrum.)
As for the rest of your spiel, well, first off the last I heard at least one of the guys was a recent convert to Islam, so I'm not sure your oppression argument carries very much weight there. Further discussion on "hatred" towards minority groups (and why the various minority groups react in different ways) would absolutely have to mention Jews, and I simply don't have time right now to write the 27 disclaimer-ridden paragraphs of analysis necessary to even try to avoid all of the baggage and knee-jerk bullshit that comes with that comparison. Sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, it is two thousand freaking fifteen. This is an article from some site called "Techie News" being re-reported at Slashdot. Can we please get a little ridicule of this supposed binary concept of "statistical significance" ? It would take us one or two sentences to tell us the actual numbers involved--the expected value, expected deviation, margin of error, confidence level, etc.
And then when all's said and done, if indeed the level of significance was too low (e.g. p too high), maybe we could get a Bayesian or two in here to criticize the traditional 5% value is being arbitrary and tell us all a little about the Frequentist vs. Bayesian rivalry in statistics that persists to this day? (Obligatory XKCDs: https://xkcd.com/1132/ , https://xkcd.com/882/)
Maybe I'm old, and maybe you kids really should get the fuck off my lawn, but young adults DO whine incessantly.
Old people do it too (arguably moreso), but it's not called "whining"--it's called "grouching" or "grumbling" or "ranting" or "bitching" something. I mean hell, just look at the "get off my lawn!" meme we have here. This phrase is always, ALWAYS attached to a rant that would, if uttered by a kid, be considered "whining".
(Disclaimer: I am on balance anti-systemd although I freely admit I'm not familiar enough with the specifics to be confident in my appraisal.)
Just take a look at the systemd fiasco for a great example of this. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be against it (even vehemently against it, from what I've seen so far), but the average post I see arguing against it is a pile of self-centered, self-entitled whining I've ever seen. It introduces a new standard for "no reason", boo fucking hoo. It's not at all uncommon to hear you greybeards explicitly say that you don't want to learn a new standard, period. Just complain and complain and complain that you can't do X any more... oh wait... there's a new tool that does everything the old tool did and more? Who the hell cares--why should *you* ever have to learn anything new!? Goddamn kids fixing things that aren't broken! I'm not whining; I'm righteously indignant!
You're too wrapped up in your "real work" to even notice that half of the claims you make against systemd are FUD-fabricated bullshit (again, my disclaimer: the other half of the criticisms seem valid. And on a big picture level, of course it's terribly anti-UNIX and Pottering's rambling justifications for this shit is terrifying.) But just stop and think--how arrogant would this attitude seem if it was coming from a recent grad? And as the experienced ones, you guys are supposed to know better.
Let's face it...the term "helicopter parent" is a very new term.
Not a new concept or phenomenon. You should've seen how the Victorians did things.
I played with the other kids in the neighborhood. I often left the house (unescorted) during the summer in the morning and showed back up at home in time for dinner. I rode my bike and skateboard for miles away from home.
Yeah, kids still do that all the damn time. Just because in some isolated cases & areas the cops have gotten uppity and called CPS doesn't mean it's the norm. If you live within a couple miles of the schools near where I live, you are REQUIRED to walk/bike/skateboard to school--no buses are provided.
this latest generation has been more coddled and has more of an entitlement attitude than previous generations. They seem to feel "owed" by society a job, and to be treated nicely and fairly. They are the generation of everyone getting a trophy just for showing up.
The headline-grabbing liberals in a handful of upper-middle / upper class towns are not even remotely representative of the country as a whole. For every hyper-egalitarian anti-competitive nutjob teacher (or parent) out there, there are fifty burned out and working to get by just as their parents did. Harder, even--average weekly hours worked by Americans have been steadily increasing, not decreasing. This is not a country of millionaires. Most parents do not have the luxury of behaving like whatever punching bag O'Reilly is roasting this week.
Ironically enough, the overprotective parents and cops are falling prey to the same trap you've apparently fallen into--believing the bullshit the infotainment media sells you. The scaremongers still seem to believe that crime is rising, well over 20 years into a major decline. And you seem to believe that most people are overreacting, despite the fact that most parents don't have the time, money or energy to bother overreacting, because they are in fact working harder (or at least longer) than their parents ever did and (adjusting for inflation) earning less for it.
One more major detail you failed to mention: my parents didn't need a degree to get a reasonable job. My grandparents' generation didn't need a degree to get a GREAT job. The jobs themselves haven't changed very much; only the requirements have. This is a result of increased prosperity combined with an enabling government and horribly (if understandably) cynical universities that realize that fleecing millions of undergrads is the only way they are going to be able to fund their grad students' and postdocs' research. So if there is a tiny bit of increase in the so-called "entitlement attitude", well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that our society has just recently begun demanding indentured servitude for anything more complicated than flipping burgers.
One set of simpering, drooling morons is the same as another.
They aren't. Overall, the Amish have a pretty horrendous view of how we should live but when it comes to figuring out how we can coexist with them, I would hope you can see that the situation is not at all the same.
You should note that the belief you say is crap is the belief of not worshipping idols - one which you probably share
Incorrect. The belief that I say is crap is the belief that it is wrong to draw Muhammad. My opinions on idol worship[1] are irrelevant. I do not accept the logic of these religious homicidal maniacs, nor the logic of the men who authored the relevant hadith.
As for muddying the waters, well, the simple approach has already been tried: attacking and/or flouting bad beliefs is an inherently good act. But I admit there could be exceptions to this principle, hence the wider discussion
1.It depends on what that involves. If there's supernatural nonsense then no, I probably don't hold a high opinion of it
There seems to be a large amount of people who failed to grasp your point, then. Would you like to try to clarify it while you are still able to post here?
Sorry, but I believe in a definition of civility that rests on the ideals of Socrates, not the offended religious maniacs who forced him to drink poison.
So it was uncomfortable, sure. And perhaps it should have been stopped or prevented. You could even (though I personally disagree) make an argument that the awkward giggling should be proactively prevented by not using the image.
I'm just asking for a little honesty in language. I expect this kind of behavior from the Right, but as I get older I am noticing more and more newspeak tendencies from the Left as well. "Hostile" is an actual English word with actual English meanings, none of which are a synonym for "awkward", "embarrassing", "uncomfortable", "distracting", "prurient" or any of the other fine English words we have at our disposal to characterize the events you have described.
In case you think I'm making a mountain over a molehill here, "hostile" is a word that dovetails nicely into the ridiculous MRA vs. SJW nonsense that is wasting time and distracting from very real issues of gender inequality in the world (the large majority of which are of course anti-female, at least on a global scale.)
It does not follow that it's morally right to go out of your way to break the taboo.
It's not MY taboo; it's theirs. Since I was specifically excluding negative portrayals on that point, please note that banning a depiction is neither is it a common / 'universal' taboo.
It is morally right to break the taboo based on the I am Spartacus principle alone combined with even the tiniest bit of respect for the principle of free speech. I'm sorry if you believe that free speech isn't worth fighting for, but I hope you can at least understand where we are coming from.
I was familiar with Charlie Hebdo years ago precisely because after the South Park censorship debacle I had, out of curiosity, researched and made a list of everyone who was willing to produce depictions Muhammad. It was an extremely short list and Charlie Hebdo was prominent on it. The presence of such a very short list gives encouragement to would-be assassins by 1. Indicating that their intimidation IS working and 2. Showing that just a little bit of murderous effort would be required to kill off every single significantly prominent producer in the world.
But there is something else as well: The single biggest flaw in your argument is the implied isolation of liberal Muslims. Presumably you would not argue that a liberal Muslim like Maajid Nawaz or some Shia Muslims (who have a rich tradition of artwork showing Muhammad) is morally bound to obey conservative Muslim taboos? And yet, by asking the entire non-Muslim world to obey conservative Muslim taboos, you are kicking the chair out from under them; you are discrediting their beliefs and propping up the beliefs of extremists. You are hanging a big red target around their necks, whether you realize it or not. Maajid Nawaz received death threats for re-posting a neutral illustration of Muhammad. I believe that implicitly telling him he is wrong and lending support to the conservative forces in Islam is extremely immoral. If you don't want to get involved in the war of moderate vs. extremist Islam that's your prerogative, but by deliberately choosing to obey the taboos of one side you are NOT remaining neutral.
The vast majority of the people who would feel uneasy about it are not the people whom I want to feel uneasy.
If they feel uneasy about other people violating the laws of their religion, then I feel rather uneasy about them.
"I think your cultural taboo is pointless and stupid" is not a good reason.
What about "I think I should not be bound by YOUR cultural taboo" ? There's a big long discussion we could have about multiculturalism vs. assimilation and whatall, but the minimum standard is being (reasonably) comfortable being around other people who do not follow your religion. A simple analogy would be the Jewish taboo on speaking the name of god (including the word "God") aloud or in print. This is pretty similar to the taboo on not depicting Muhammad, yet it would be obscene if they insisted that everyone (including liberal Jews) followed this taboo.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, this issue is not limited to depictions of Muhammad alone. Pictures of pigs and anthropomorphic pigs are to some extent (there's a lot of smoke here, but the publisher DID ultimately admit it) being avoided in children's school books in the UK for fear of offending conservative Muslims. They also admit they are avoiding depicting things like "girls going shopping for shorts", in books being published for UK schoolchildren. (Although here ease of international adaptation was cited as the reason... if that makes it any better.)
Depictions of other prophets are considered to be taboo by conservative Muslims but of course they don't yet feel politically strong enough to demand we censor depictions of Jesus. Go further than that, and you'll find out that it was once a widespread taboo to depict any animal or human at all. This taboo is
Well, our point of disagreement may be finer than it first seemed. To wrap it all up a little tighter, then: the taboo of Muhammad not being drawn (in a neutral or positive manner) should be broken by anybody and everybody. This is a positive act because it raises awareness, it spreads the risk and it spits in faces that very badly require spitting in. The reaction of "Bububuuuh, my religion doesn't allow me to!" is to be tolerated with a shrug, but in no way celebrated.[1]
Negative drawings of Muhammad should be viewed as negative drawings of any other religious figure and (unless the context strongly implies otherwise) construed as an attack on an ideology, not an attack on a heterogeneous community. To the extent that we still have way too many faces that require spitting in, I am inclined to view this as a more immediately useful act than negative portrayals of Jesus. It's lamentable when asshats (or worse, as you say) are the ones doing it, but as Sam Harris[2] points out this should be viewed as pointing out a failing of liberalism, not praising conservatism... and shying away from these activities because there are so many conservative blowhards are involved only makes it much worse. I'm not sure what this continued polarization is going to lead to, but the obvious fear is we could have another generation of neocons (the phrase "neoconservative" originally referring to ex-liberals who broke with the left over the issue of confronting the USSR.)
1. In the case of either positive or negative portrayals, the reaction of "I think you should be thrown in jail for doing it" should be treated with contempt and (civilized) hostility.
2. No, I'm not some huge fanboy of his--I disagree with his views on torture, airport profiling and nuclear war game theory. But he makes very solid arguments on some other points.
Keep talking like that, though, and it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If all Muslims are capable of that then you are saying that all Muslims are murderous extremists at heart; they just haven't shown their true colors yet.
Let me clarify: That is not what *I* am saying (I do not believe this is true); that is what *you* are saying. If you actually believe this is true, you are a huge and dangerous bigot.
Those of us who believe that moderate, humane and liberal Muslims really exist also tend to believe that we shouldn't be pandering to the hurt feelings of jihadis all the time.
How's this for an idea: some form of visual media (video or drawings, whatever) depicting Muhammad and Islam in a very positive light, marketed and clearly honestly intended to educate westerners about the positive elements of the Muslim community and their history.
Then see if the kind of people who try to shoot people for drawing Muhammad throw a fit over even something like that.
This might not go as nicely as you'd think. A teacher in Sudan made the mistake of allowing her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad (their idea, not hers) and for this crime she was arrested and deported. At one point she had to be taken to a secret location because mobs in the street were literally demanding that she be killed. The chaos was such that the school had to be closed for a month:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm not saying a positive documentary would necessarily be met with assassins, but neither could we rule out the possibility.
If there was a serial rapist targetting redheads in a certain city, and some redheaded women decided to wander the streets alone at night carrying a legal a concealed pistol, and one of them was attacked and shot the attacker... to my knowledge, no American law was violated. Maybe places in Europe have a "provocation" legal precedent whereupon people are required to avoid offending potential murderers, but there thankfully is no analogue here.
The "fighting words" doctrine, as someone else mentioned, cannot be (and to my knowledge never has been) expanded so as to encompass religious blasphemy law. If it could, according to your logic a Scientologist could kill me the next time I crack a joke about Xenu.
Religion is not the only source of bullshit in the world.
But this conversation is about an explicitly religious attack. No one other than a self-proclaimed Muslim would be willing to both kill (or at least try to) and die for people drawing pictures of Muhammad.
If someone "wouldn't normally consider" launching a suicide attack against infidels but reading about a contest to draw pictures of Muhammad changes their mind, they are an extremist and they were obviously an extremist long before the contest was announced.
The phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" needs a stronger, beefier cousin to describe attitudes like yours. The exist Muslims in this world who would not kill infidels for any degree of perceived blasphemy. These are the people we should support, this is the belief system we should support, and we should make it abundantly clear that all other belief systems are not welcome here (by "here" I mean planet Earth, not just the United States.)
This remains true regardless in spite of the many stupid, bigoted things Gellars and the Dutch fuck say. By analogy, there was plenty of completely unfair, bigoted anti-German propaganda before and during WWII. That in no way renders criticism of the Nazis invalid, or nor does it make appeasement a more attractive alternative.
I'm perfectly happy to limit the conversation to your experience instead of mine. From what you have said, your experience appears to have been limited to being in a room with people who are giggling. I am sorry, but that is not the same thing as hostility.
Hostility implies some degree of anger and/or an adversarial stance. Giggling, by itself, does not imply any of that. There are certain pictures (e.g. let's take the extreme example of a picture of a woman being raped) that, if giggled at, would imply hostility--but a cropped version of a softcore nude picture is not such a picture. There are certain kinds of comments that, in tandem with giggling, could convey hostility. But you have not mentioned any of these comments. You seem to think that giggling over a naked woman is a hostile act, and that is ridiculous.
If you disagree, please pick up a dictionary of your choice and explain how your experience coincides with the definition of "hostility".
"Why shouldn't we provoke them?"
Really? You certainly cannot call yourself a Christian with that attitude.
I do not because I am not. I am a freethinker and a liberal.
Why is it ok to bait Muslims but we have laws against baiting other groups to include racial (go ahead, host a competition to see who can spray paint the word "NIGGER" on a wall in the biggest letters), and even homosexuals
Are you living in America or Europe? It is not illegal to spray paint the word "NIGGER" or "FAG" on a wall you own. I would not defend any such infringement of free speech, and I think the arrest of Dieudonne following the Charlie Hebdo attacks was a travesty.
"We provoke them, they try to murder us, we kill them first."
That makes you a murderer, one who acts with pre-meditation and lures the victim into a compromised condition.
The fascist assholes who want me to obey their interpretation sharia are not victims, and fuck you for implying that they are. Plenty of moderate Muslims will say that there is nothing wrong with drawing the prophet, many of them receive death threats for saying so. They are the victims. The people in body armor trying to shoot cartoonists are not victims.
Civilization starts with civil behavior. What you advocate is called barbarism, most of us are well past that but, meh, to each knuckle-dragger his own.
What I advocate is identical to Gandhi's strategy for fighting the British. Hundreds (or thousands, I forget) died because he advocated disobeying the British's shitty, immoral rules on salt taxation. This helped keep the issue of British barbarity in the spotlight--other, non-evil Britons saw this and eventually enough of them sided with the Indians that the conflict was decided in their favor.
But I guess your interpretation is valid too. I guess the schoolgirls willing to risk their lives defying local interpretations of sharia by obtaining an education are merely "knuckle-draggers", along with all of the armed guards willing to protect them against theocratic fascists.
It's tempered by the maxim that you never punch down.
Two of the 9/11 hijackers had PhDs from western institutions. The rest had all attended college and (IIRC) most had degrees. "Jihadi John", the ISIS guy who was personally cutting off the heads of aid workers, had a career in computer science. Osama bin Laden was a millionaire. The men in charge of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi nightmare are extremely wealthy.
I am poor, and I would like to make fun of these rich fascist assholes. But no, you say I shouldn't do so because these evil men and their beliefs are representative of all of the poor Muslims in the nation.
So, that's what I have to say about "punching down", but there is another point to be made here: There are moderate Muslims (along with some non-moderate Shias) who do not have a problem with picturing the prophet. But no, their beliefs do not matter to you--only the extremist belief that infidels should obey parts of the sharia matter. If the extremist interpretation really is much, much more popular than the moderate interpretation of Islam. that is a problem with Islam as it is commonly practiced, full stop. If the moderate interpretation isn't uncommon, then you are guilty of not only the soft bigotry of low expectations, but you are also ignoring and turning your back on the people who suffer the most from Islamic extremism--non-extremist Muslims.
In this case, the man who got shot in the ankle is a victim. The people who had to duck and run for their lives are also victims. The two gunmen wearing body armor who were upset that the infidels didn't want to follow sharia's laws on blasphemy and idolatry are not victims.
The most ignored and by far the most important amendment, the ninth, was crafted specifically to counteract the notion that people didn't have any rights other than those that are carefully spelled out in the other amendments.
I think the word "viable" as you're using it implies efficiency. Since we don't have an (widely agreed on) explanation of how this thing works, we don't know if it will efficient enough to be worth bothering with when scaled up to useful levels of thrust.
In the rice analogy, we know it's edible but we've no idea how much effort it takes to grow on a commercial scale.
To some degree, it is good to hate, fear and (in some ways) oppress bad ideas. I am a bigot to the same degree you are probably a bigot about Scientology. The assholes in Clearwater don't want us making Xenu jokes, and yet for some bizarre reason I don't really feel like a bigot when I do.
You know, Hitler was a vegetarian and loved children. If you're a a vegetarian or love children too, that mean you like killing Jews. Hey, I'm just pointing out objective facts here.
I was arguing that Christians are not going to "always" (the parents' word, not mine) respond to a blasphemous picture with violence. This seemed like a pretty fucking easy point to make. Shooting fish in a barrel, I thought.
But no, after several ACs have interjected with half-baked nonsense we now have someone trying to claim that the actual conversation is about *my* hypocrisy for not treating abortion (which is a subject I have not weighed in on, at all, except to say that it wasn't what we were talking about at the moment) equal to the murder / attempted murder of cartoonists.
Congratulations, you've successfully convinced me that for the sake of my sanity, I need to start ignoring all ACs. I hope you're happy.
The fighting words doctrine is wrong and on this general point I don't care whether the current Supreme Courts agrees with me. However, just because they (might) disagree with me does not mean they disagree with your definition--it is insanity to allow one group to unilaterally determine what constitutes fighting words. Given their peculiarities, I'm sure the Church of Scientology would love to consider even mentioning the word "Xenu" to be fighting words...
Recall the Denmark cartoon controversy---showing Muhammad with a bomb in his turban (widely agreed as the one of the most "offensive" images in the bunch) is not an 'insult disguised as free speech' or whatever doublespeak nonsense you were trying to say there. It is the epitome of vitally important speech that needs protection. If you are not allowed to make an observation on the ideologies and actions of a major historical figure and founder of a massive religion, then free speech does not exist in any meaningful sense of the term.
I've no doubt some of the cartoons in that contest yesterday were crude and didn't say anything of substance. I've also no doubt that many of them correctly referred to Muhammad's historical conquests in war and his ideologies as portrayed in the quaran. And here's the kicker: no one can be trusted to sort this pile of invective, some worthless and some priceless, into two separate piles. The only way to save what is vital is to save all of it.
Is it really okay for you to support the actions of "known asshats" if you don't actually join the club? How does that work? "I'm no Klansman, but those asshats sure do a good job! Keep it up boys!" What does that say about you and your beliefs?
I'm very glad you asked: it says that my beliefs are not frivolous. It says that they are thoroughly grounded in a moral framework I have worked out for myself, and I'm not simply choosing which side to be on based on whether I like the look of the guy who happens to be standing next to me.
If everyone started doing this, I daresay Fox News would fold overnight (rapidly followed by quite a few others from across the political spectrum.)
As for the rest of your spiel, well, first off the last I heard at least one of the guys was a recent convert to Islam, so I'm not sure your oppression argument carries very much weight there. Further discussion on "hatred" towards minority groups (and why the various minority groups react in different ways) would absolutely have to mention Jews, and I simply don't have time right now to write the 27 disclaimer-ridden paragraphs of analysis necessary to even try to avoid all of the baggage and knee-jerk bullshit that comes with that comparison. Sorry.