Monday, March 27, 2006

An Apology

So I posted about a hot-button topic and then went away for the weekend, leaving my blog unsupervised. I never delete posts based on content, but I'm usually around to steer the conversation a little and ask people to be more civil when necessary. I'll resist writing such controversial posts before I go away in the future.

This blog would be boring without differing opinions, so I hope that those who felt ganged-up on or treated uncivilly in that thread will keep coming back.
Posted by Jewish Atheist at 2:31 PM

6 comments:

Sadie Lou said...

There are really only a few people that take advantage of your "hot button" posts. It appears that instead of trying to have a decent back and forth discussion, they use your blog as a platform to spew forth their contempt of people who are from a religious backround.
The dialog stops being about the topic and starts to take on an us vs. them agenda.
The feeling of being ganged up on destroys my enthusiam to particapate.
Esther said a very important thing on my post: She said that what went on in the last post is reflective of what she sees going on in the world at large and I totally agree.
We need to value each other's differences and actually take time to read what other people are trying to say instead of assuming that because they think differently; we can't ever be on the same page.
If anything, yesterday's discussion proved one thing:
People are dead wrong about Christians and a group-think mentality.
If you go through the posts, there were Christians at all ends of the spectrum. Some of us agreed with each other to a point. Some of us were the same down the line and still others were more in step with the atheists.
I hope that proved to show that we are individuals first with a common, secondary religious affiliation--second. Quite a special, unique sense of unity if you ask me; contradicts the assumption that Christians lack critical thinking skills. If I were an atheist that stereotypes Christians as not being able to think past the "group think" I would seriously pay attention to these little debates and see if I've been wrong. If anything, almost all of the atheists were touting the same argument and virtually unable to conjure up anything that deviated from what everyone else in their camp was saying.

Anyways,
Thank you for the apology. Part of me feels like you shouldn't have to treat us like a Kindergarten class and keep a close eye on us but the other part of me is in agreement with you: some people need more accountability than others...

3:50 PM, March 27, 2006
dbackdad said...

See my contrition on your blog, Sadie. :-(

JA, I thought your lack of comments on that post was all part of some brilliantly conceived sociological experiment. We were all the mice running around the cage with mad scientist JA looking over the proceedings. In general, I think we proved the point of the survey.

5:00 PM, March 27, 2006
CyberKitten said...

dbackdad said: In general, I think we proved the point of the survey.

Me too. There was a definite theist/atheist split on the issue... though probably not the way most people would've imagined before hand - I certainly didn't.

5:11 PM, March 27, 2006
Foilwoman said...

CK: I would have picked the survey that way. Some of the most horrible torture inflicted on humans by humans has been inflicted in the name of a religion or a deity. When you believe you hold the key to someone's salvation, human life and dignity in this realm maybe don't seem so important? And a lot of religion has a sort of pornography of suffering: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have martyrs who died horrible deaths, and all three religions can also have "us" vs. "them" demonization. Actually, that's not religion, per se, that's just human nature. But the torture/religion connection, no surprises for me.

5:41 PM, March 27, 2006
Jewish Atheist said...

Esther said a very important thing on my post: She said that what went on in the last post is reflective of what she sees going on in the world at large and I totally agree.

I agree as well. Unfortunately, politicians (and talk-radio blowhards) exacerbate the problem by portraying everybody on the other side as being immoral. Listen to antiabortionists rant about how liberals have no respect for human life or to Kanye West talking about how Bush (and, by proxy, his voters, presumably) doesn't care about black people. I personally believe that the right does more damage in this regard than the left, but both sides are somewhat guilty. Politicians also use issues like abortion and gay marriage intentionally as "wedge" issues, in order to purposely divide the public. Instead of finding common ground, both sides shout about the things they disagree on.

If you go through the posts, there were Christians at all ends of the spectrum. Some of us agreed with each other to a point. Some of us were the same down the line and still others were more in step with the atheists.

I've been saying this since day one. Part of why I dispute the very idea of "Christian" morality is because there are Christians on both sides of every issue.

dbackdad:


JA, I thought your lack of comments on that post was all part of some brilliantly conceived sociological experiment.

Eh. That experiment was done. It was called "usenet." :-)

8:59 PM, March 27, 2006
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7:31 AM, May 20, 2006

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