Saying that one needs to believe in “privilege” OR “a delusion of fair play” is a tedious, stale, and dishonest argument. As if to say that if I don’t believe in the concept, that I am saying that racism isn’t real. I think the problems are based upon bias, and exploitation, and that this sums it up perfectly. There’s no compelling reason to bend over backwards to make it fit somebody else’s clumsy buzzword narrative.
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I am not sure about this God and Satan thang. There seems plenty missing from the story. As when a parent condemns the child, I am compelled to question both how guilty (or bad) the child is and how good the parent is, which echos of equal rights.
I guess you could just call me a devil.
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There is NOTHING in the sign that mentions gays, or compares them to Satan.
I always imagined the interaction between god and satan being just a couple of guys tossing dice in a back alley.
God’s just standing there on the street corner, and satan sidles up to him and says “Hey man, I bet your boy Job doesn’t love you so much.”
And god’s all like “you’re on bitch, let’s make this shit interesting!”
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It’s an implication. The equal rights issue at hand is pretty obviously marriage equality. So they’re trying to poison the well saying that satan wanted equal rights as well.
Of course, this is the same form of argument that goes “You wash your hands several times a day? Hitler did that too!”
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It wouldn’t be hard to build a case for Satan just based on the claim that ‘he’ welcomes all individuals, where God accepts only those who genuinely grovel before ‘him’.
The heroes of stories written thousands of years ago really reflect the primitive morality of the times.
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Kyle Baker somehow anticipated this sort of response, from “Why I Hate Saturn”:
“It was just an insult. No offence was intended.”
Thank you, God, for the healing gift of Religion.
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Or maybe Lillith, who refused to be subservient to Adam, depending on what version you read.
Anyway this sign reads more pro-Satan to me, which is probably not their intent.
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Pastor says sign comparing gays to Satan “did not mean to offend”
Pastor goes on to say that all religious statements are basically insulting, wonders why people are surprised.
Well Satan, Lucifer, the Devil all the others commonly grouped together were actually similar, but different, characters that have all been lumped together in modern christianity. Same with hell, hades, and the rest of the underworld.
Same thing happened with Mary Magdalene.
Lilith is badass. She not only refused to be subservient to Adam, but to Jehovah as well. And he couldn’t do anything about it because she could wield the power of his secret name. She was too much woman for either of them, and struck out on her own. So the next strategy with Eve, aka Adam’s Rib was to posit a woman who was a subset of man, not quite a whole person.
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I see where you’re coming from, but I give a rat’s ass because so very many people believe it and won’t stop believing it…and if you can show them another way to interpret it, you can improve things. My sister is now questioning her stance on gays since I’ve pointed out how very seldom the Bible actually mentions homosexuality, and the contexts under which it does. I’ll never make an atheist out of her, but I might nudge her toward becoming a more moderate Christian…and it takes knowledge of the Bible to do it.
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Sorry your sister is infected with religion, hopefully the field of psychiatry can come up with a cure. However framing an argument with the religious in the terms of religion itself dignifies the entire concept with a level of credibility it fails to deserve.
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How is psychiatry any different from religion? You sound like a person who has made up their mind that “religion” is by definition a problem, while simultaneously deciding to not know anything about it. This tends to not be a sound way to make decisions about anything. I can read about stuff I don’t like, ranging from fascism to infectious diseases without succumbing to them myself. In fact, I’m probably more secure from them than I would be if I just tried to wish these things away. Nobody needs to “credit” a concept to learn what it is, and how it works.
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Psychiatry is an evidence based science, religion is based on unprovable make believe. I have made up my mind religion is a problem, the number of deaths happening daily in the name of religion could be taken as evidence enough. However the decision is based on an education that encompassed comparative religion as part of the curriculum, world history and critical thinking.
I agree that to learn about something does not require crediting it with anything other than a requirement to understand. However having understood that religion has no credible basis I see no reason for it to be given any intellectual support. For thousands of years and even today religious thinking has been used as a way of explaining the world and has caused untold mental and physical suffering. Continuing to offer it any support continues the suffering, I would prefer to have no part in that.
It could have been directed at black people. It is the Deep South after all.
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I find that most people don’t agree about what religion is. It’s like art in this way - everybody seems to have an idea about it in their mind, but when they start talking about it, they don’t agree what it is. I think this happens with any purely subjective thing. Likewise, if somebody was going to kill over people not seeing what they did in a painting, I’d just say they were stupid and try to get rid of them.
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Well, I’m sure that attitude makes you feel all smug and superior. And it utterly ignores human nature. I’d rather have some actual moderating effect on people in the real world.
…I’m not completely sure how whatever you just said is supposed to relate to my post. I never said anyone had to “believe in privilege” (belief doesn’t really matter, the data is there, being white empirically gets you better treatment in this country due to systemic bias and historical discrimination that’s never been repaid for).
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