[Saya]

Originally Posted by AshleyO

Yeah well... feelings and all. I feel like imperialism and capitalism are bad things. But most Westerners feel differently. I feel like X-Files is an incredibly amazing show. Why the hell would you or anyone else care? Why SHOULD you? Are we supposed to change our minds about how people feel when that feeling becomes popular? How many people does it take to dispense an amount of respect for someone's feelings? Misogynists feel like there's a proper place for women. Why should I care? Am I not bound to offend that feeling? Shouldn't I?

I think there's quite a difference between believing in UFOs and being a misogynist. Yes, misogynists feel they have proof, believe me, if there's ever a study done to show there's a difference between men and women, its thrown in my face. If there's any scientific appeal made, its thrown in my face. What goes on isn't pure logic, its picking the data that appeals to your sensibilities and sticking with it. And everybody does it, and we're also at the mercy of a media who cherry picks what studies to talk about and which to ignore. So if someone sees UFOs, they're probably likely to stick with what they saw, and its not like there's a respected body of scientists who will validate what they saw.

The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the one who makes the claim. No one even has to god damned say it. The books and scriptures and all the myths are sitting right there on the god damned pages. Anyone who observes them will obviously be saddled with the burden of proof. Mostly because spoiler alert; religious observance isn't as personal as so many wish it were.

Neither is atheism? Again I'm not so sure if religion should merely be personal and have no impact. If that were done, Newfoundland would have no education system, for example, that was done purely because the church decided the proletariat caste here should be educate, while the merchants fought establishing religion in the outports because they didn't want workers to be empowered, spiritually or educationally. Some religions do harmful political work, some do good. In Canada most stay out of the practice of lobbying and there's little appeal made to religion, but that doesn't mean religion doesn't help shape one's political views. Indeed, its hard for me to say where my Buddhism starts and my socialism ends sometimes, I definitely prefer the BPF to the Communist Party of Canada or any white guy dominated group for that matter.

Not really because your all encompassing definition doesn't necessarily change the fact that it brings us all back to square one and ideas within the zeitgeist are still set against each other. You can't escape doubt and skepticism simply because it's now thrown into some religious arena. By all means, let people try and pray the gay away. We'll see how effective it really is.

It was thrown into the arena in a long long time ago, nothing much is really new, just our understanding of how religious dynamics work. The American religious fundamentalism is actually relatively new and a backlash against skepticism, it didn't come before. You can see the differences between black churches and white churches, the black evangelical churches were from a time where the evangelical movement was more about social change; slaves could be preachers and preach to white people. Black churches evolved from this line of evangelicalism, and have been surviving pretty well and have often been involved in social justice. White evangelicalism still has churches that adhere to that, but for the most part white evangelicalism lost its significance, waned, then got popular again, and are more anti-worldly. It would seem, that perhaps, religion gain privilege from its members and not from itself, funny that.

Yeah and Brent made a fucking FABULOUS musical once about religious myths. It turned out way fucking awesome. I honestly don't see what the problem is with appropriating religious myths for some good story telling. Jesus Christ Superstar is fucking badass. They should do one about Muhammad. I'd pay good money to see that.

I didn't say it was a bad thing? My Christian sister's idea about Jesus I think was actually very influenced by Jesus Christ Superstar, which is really about the quest for the historical Jesus that has been going on for the last two centuries. Religion influences culture which in turn influences religion, see?

Personally, I'd love to see them all unite against the west. I do in fact think that a better world will come from the non-core nations. Unfortunately they will have to do something about the extremism some day. Tit for tat, saya. The west deserves a whole hell heaping amount of the business end of global justice. But what do you want anyone to do about it? Who in the west can really be revolutionary in their name to make the struggle easier? We can't even celebrate the bravery of one cop deciding to eliminate a few corrupt ones without calling him a criminal.

Yeah, he was so brave for shooting a black woman because of something her father did.

Islamic extremism is again, rather new and reactionary. Muslims are totally capable of being chill, some of the most compassionate and tolerant people I know are Muslim, and I don't think a Muslim in Canada or the US has to answer for the extremism of oppressed people in other countries. If I were Palestinian, I'd probably be extremist too, who can say?

And its not my place to tell them how to deal with it. If Afghanistan and Iraq are any indication, we tend to muck things up when we try to "help" so I don't think any of us should be in a position of authority over their lives.

I don't mind religion in this context. If you want to move people with myths for doing the right thing; by all means. Irrational beliefs tend to galvanize action far more effectively than a nuanced logical point.

Religion and logic aren't mutually exclusive.

If it helps, I freely admit that there are some things I'm fairly absolute about. I don't care about any manifestation of bourgeois feminism. Not like I can stop a bunch of people from being empowered by Ayn Rand; but conflict is absolutely inevitable in that case.

What I'm saying is in feminism there's way too much overlap to clearly state you're one kind of feminist over another, you know? Its not like how there's a million kinds of communists with distinct flairs. Even bourgeois feminists can think of really good things sometimes that is useful to the rest of us. In fact I'd say a whole lot of academic feminist is inherently bourgeois.

Of course. I'm really not surprised by this. A lot of people have some bad beliefs that they want to desperately be true and any sort of incident that helps their confirmation bias must be a blessing from the gods for them.

Like most people I know, regardless of religion.

All I really have to say on it is that it's incredibly telling that you can actually get the same results from a drug addled rock show than you can at some religious service. Honestly; how can that NOT be good news for skeptics? Typically I get really excited when I hear or read about workers taking over a means of production or scientific advancements that do things such as ACTUALLY curing blindness or what-have-you. Frankly, if someone wants to thank a god for that... I don't see why they shouldn't. They wouldn't be correct about it; but whatever floats their boat.

Actually, I haven't read it, but there's a book in the library I saw about queer religion, but it was mostly about how queer culture provides religious experience without organized religion. Without having read exactly what they say, I can definitely see that. I don't think that's dismissive of organized religion, just that people find religious meaning in ways more appropriate for themselves than what organized religion may be able to provide for them. Now there's actual gay churches popping up and previously established churches doing outreach to see how they can better serve their queer members. Being queer is a lonely thing, and I'm happy people find meaning and solace in the community, and now its more and more likely that even in rural Newfoundland where there are no gay bars, they'll still have access to it in churches. I can't really make a value judgement on why people turn to religion in any of its forms. Good for you that you see it as an opportunity to say how stupid belief is? But honestly the more I learn in class about religion the more I appreciate it. Its funny, because the department is probably mostly atheist and same with the undergrads, but they all reiterate this.