Spin off thread: satire versus insult

Ridicule, yes. Not on this website perhaps, because of the rule against personal insults, but certainly in a society that honors free speech.

Intolerance, no, within limits. We're all free to choose our friends and the social groups we join, but civilization by definition requires that we be civil to each other, which is a minimal level of tolerance that allows the other person to live his own life in the contemporary definition of freedom.

We're not required by the rules of civilization or this website to love each other, and in fact we're free to hate, although there are limits on the expression of that hatred both in civilization and on this website. Tolerance and compassion, again, yes; or to be precise, civility, which is a measured minimum level of both of those. Understanding... well hey that's something you either can do in any individual case, or you can't. I can't understand what people like about grand opera or Japanese court music, and many of them can't understand what I like about reggae or heavy metal. I don't think that lack of understanding is a big problem for them, me or civilization.

I echo the previous member who pointed you to a dictionary definition of "personal." Insulting a group is not the same as insulting an individual member, especially since almost everybody who has negative feelings about any group makes exceptions for individuals, as in: "Some of my best friends are Jewish." Based upon that commonplace dichotomy, one could cop a legal plea that just because one says generically that the people of Berzerkistan are fools doesn't automatically imply that one feels that way about the one Berzerkistani who posts on this forum.

Racism falls under a different rule on SciForums, not just one more category of personal insult. It's specifically prohibited both at the group and individual level.

This is a place of science, and religion is unscientific at best and antiscientific at worst. This is one of the few havens we have where we can speak freely about the idiocy of religion; they have many of the other ten zillion websites to spew their ignorance, illogic and tribalism that periodically threaten to bring down civilization. Negative remarks about religion are tolerated here, especially if they are specifically about religion's unscientific stance, or in the case of evolution, the downright antiscientific stance of the Religious Redneck Retard Revival that has been spreading across America like a cancer for the past thirty years.

You betcha. Fuck that stoopid bullshit. They say the same kinds of things about us among themselves, and often to our faces. Perhaps with less profanity but that's hardly the point.

We make no claim to be tolerant of religion here, but we still don't allow individual personal attacks against religious people.

He'll remind you that we have a hard-and-fast rule against racism that is one of the quickest ways to get banned. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that it's something we all have to accept if we want to post here. Allowing racist posts is an easy way to get blocked out of myriad corporate and family computers by their filters.

You know this, Max. You're lapsing back into your trademark disingenuous style of argument. This puts you in the same category with Sam, who pretends not to know things in order to stir up trouble.

 

I think that describing a particular behavior is more of an accusation than an insult. I notice you have not denied being disingenuous. Sam never did either. It's difficult for a person to defend himself against someone saying he's inferior, or an idiot, or something like that. Those are pure insults. But if someone says you're disingenuous, that's an assertion. Feel free to abide by the scientific method and rebut it.

As I said, it's policy here to permit religion (but not religious individuals) to be insulted. This is a community and that's one of our community values. Don't extrapolate that to something else or you might get exactly what you expect. Particularly a racial group.

Many do, or at least they come to it through maturation and reasoning. I was an exception. I was born into a second-generation atheist family and never heard of religion until I was seven. Laughed my fuckin' head off the first time some little kid started talking about it. I thought he was just making up a fun story. When I told my mother about it and she got real sad and sat me down to explain that there are actually adults who believe that preposterous crap, I was shocked to the core. I lost a lot of my faith in humanity and was an uncompromising cynic for many years. I did manage to get over it. Perhaps some day Max will too.

That is not how science works. We believe things that have been proven "true beyond a reasonable doubt": canonical scientific theories. We may have hunches about other things, especially our own pet hypotheses, and strongly suspect they are true, but that's not the same as "belief."

As I said, this is a place of science and our charter is to abide by the scientific method. One of its cornerstones is the Rule of Laplace: Extraordinary assertions must be presented with extraordinary support--evidence, reasoning, something--before we are obliged to treat them with respect.

Religionism in general, and creationism in particular, have not even ordinary support, much less extraordinary. The "evidence" provided by so-called creation "scientists" is a collection of fossils carefully selected to make a fraudulent point, and poorly-reviewed papers from third-rate universities.

We are truly not obliged to treat evolution denial with respect. That doesn't mean we are required to treat it with disrespect, but neither are we prohibited from doing so. Especially when so much of it is a mix of dishonesty, willful ignorance, and misuse of words. (Many creationists use "evolution" to mean "abiogenesis," and by now they've got no excuse for not knowing the difference.)

All together now: FUCK RELIGION and FUCK EVOLUTION DENIALISM.

 

How do you know that?

Recent years you say? You have only been a member here for just over 10 days.

I have to admit, I am loving the dedication shown by certain new members these days. I mean here you are.. only joined less than 2 weeks ago and you appear to have gone through the ban list and read through the posts of those who have been banned and determined the superiority of said banned members. I take my hat off to you. That is dedication!

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Indeed.

If email addresses were the only things that mattered.

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But carry on. I just found your comment amusing in light of your join date, that is all.

 

Date. Not post count. Date.

Well the alternative is that you have been reading these forums for years, without ever participating. Which is a bit strange, don't you think? Staying in the shadows and watching for so long without once saying a word, or even becoming a member.

This is turning into a possible drama and you are getting cranky. Please, forget I said anything. Shine on..