“Belief doesn’t really matter?”
I’m not sure if you are asking me, or quoting somebody here. I am sure that belief matters to some people. I prefer to operate on a balance of the best evidence available to me, without belief or disbelief in anything. I personally suspect that belief is merely a shortcut to thinking, and generally avoid it.
I agree that there is evidence of bias, so why not simply call it bias? My point was that when people bring up the concept of “privilege”, and I explain that what really happens is “bias”, that many people then make the bizarre leap in stating that I either don’t think that racism is real, or that I think it isn’t a problem. People are so determined to frame the issue in just this way that basically they tell me that if I do not believe in privilege, that I do not believe in racism. People who can’t bear to conceptually reframe a complex social problem are identifying with it rather than trying to solve it.
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I had to quit halfway through reading that due to nausea induced by the author’s sanctimonious self-righteousness. I’ll try again later, maybe it gets better…
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Right. Biblically-speaking, Satan isn’t a thing. Mythologically speaking, Satan is around doing stuff, but the moment you involve that entity, you’re off the book.
Debatably, yeah. There’s nothing in the text suggesting that A&E wanted to become equal to god, the Serpent more explicitly appealed to human defiance (“Hey, God told you not to eat that fruit…but you totally want to eat that fruit, don’t you?”) than to pride. Still, motivation can get mixed up here in Allegorical Fable Land where you’re not supposed to think about these people as people, but as props.
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I don’t seem to recall that chapter in the book of Job, the only place in the christian bible where anyone named “Satan” is mentioned.
. . .
Thats it, I’m worshipping Zeus, God of lightning from now on.
I’ll try to convert people by raising an army to either kill the “unbelievers” or convert them. I’ll open up schools in area that have no education and brain wash the children into thinking the world is not round, or created in a big bang, but rather a flat plain hoisted on the shoulders of Atlas, son of Lapetus. We’ll burn all the books and people that have to do with that Yahwah guy (Yahwah is the name of the Christian god - yes He’s a guy and he has a name. Look it up or ask all the old bearded Jewish guys that wrote the book.)
Then we’ll celebrate swans in remembrance of the times Zeus took the form of a male swan and made babies with unwilling human girls. And because it was written down a long time ago it must be true!!! And if you don’t believe me than you are damned to the ever burning fires of hades.
. . .
I am face-palming so hard right now
You don’t need to think of myths as allegorical. But this is arguably how they work, and what they are good for.
Allegories are about telling stories with certain kinds of meaning. Imbuing or finding meaning does not have much of anything to do with evaluations of true or false. This is what happens when people mistake myths for history. Are the stories of Gulliver “true”? Or those of Darth Vader? It is not an Aristotelian dualistic process, except that you can know that either find them meaningful, or you don’t. Condemning the media instead of the illiterate is not likely to prove educational.
OK, I’ll bite. Which “equal rights”-seeking group do you think the sign IS referring to? Women? Ethnic minorities? People who follow other faiths? Would any of those possibilities make the message less offensive?
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I am guessing that the intent was probably offensive. But also I am guessing that their limited in-group perspective failed to consider that their message would only connect with those who acknowledged “Satan” and held it in a similar regard to how they do. Not having any fixed ideas about Satan, it doesn’t mean much to me beyond being mildly amusing.
It’s a signalling schema though. I as an atheist scoff at the idea of satan, but it means something different when a believer says something like “you’re as evil as satan”. Just because I don’t believe in a literal devil doesn’t reduce how hurtful a statement like that is, because the person saying it actually does believe in a literal devil.
It’s quite honestly scary to me when christians start calling me evil and satanic, because they are people who are motivated by their beliefs to treat me as a sub-human pox on humanity. They have what to them is iron-clad justification to persecute me. A justification that’s been driven into their minds since they were children. And the only effective way I can counter their fear and hatred is either to just be a nice human (but the devil is tricky so there’s special pleading on their side), or I can just hide in the closet and be intellectually dishonest.
Not acknowledging satan isn’t a valid defense against the ideology and actions of people who are driven to believe in and fear satan no matter what.
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I can relate! Even though I don’t think my appearance or mannerism are anything outré, something about me often screams “FREAKISH!” to people instantly. I have often had people suddenly decry me as “evil” immediately, with no provocation.
I guess I’d argue that there isn’t ever an “effective” way to counter the fear that resides in people’s imaginations. What often works for me is that such an “ideology” is usually a self-contradictory mess. It’s much easier to point and label than for most to even know what their label represents.
Continuing the discussion from Pastor says sign comparing gays to Satan “did not mean to offend”:
I condemn no media sir, only everyone that is a non believer in Zeus. Ok, yeah, and those that didn’t look it up - though this does not mean they are ill capable of reading. I damn the literate as well as the illiterate. Yeah so may have damned everyone to hades, but they have an awesome pools an a great sauna. Once you slip into those cool refreshing waters all your worries will melt away… because the water steals your memory. 
And Zeus is as real as Yahwah is as real as Darth Vader. And in a universe far far away they do/did exist. Infinite is a neat number of universes. The funny thing here is this is all Ancient politics crafted to leverage the animal brain’s shortcuts it takes to interpret everything that’s going on. Second hand knowledge mixed with faith and a dash of circumstantial evidence should come back as “not enough information” but our imagination fills in the gaps. And we’re still arguing about crap that happened thousands of years ago.
But I have indeed digressed.
The point is that a pastor lumped a huge group of innocent people into one basket and teaches to everyone that they are Satan, the symbol that represents the most evil of evil and is worse than a raping, cereal killing or lying. I’m sure in his opinion that it’s hard to offend a cannibal by calling them a cannibal. That’s what he teaches the kids.
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Sure, I’m not saying that that it’s a good or justified message, just that it’s not generally as meaningful as they assume it to be. It’s only “the most evil” to a certain group. I could call somebody a “John Bircher” and know that some will be insulted, and others flattered by the term. To some, it probably doesn’t mean anything.
Of course. There’s also a lot less ambiguity in defining a cannibal, versus Satan, which means many different things to many different people. I feel badly for kids who are forced to deal with indoctrinary BS, but I also give them some credit of not needing to internalize it.
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