Superheroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church 631
sv_libertarian writes "They've faced down humans time and time again, but Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church were not ready for the cosplay action that awaited them at Comic-Con. After all, who can win against a counter-protest that includes robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi, and... kittens?"
Worthless summary (Score:4, Insightful)
If Trekkies and Jedi can work together (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there may be hope for the middle east.
Re:slightly funny, but kind of predictable by now (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition, his viewpoint will gradually become more and more accepted; people will think him "normal" even if they don't agree with him. And good humoured satire seems to me the very best way to deal with him. Amusing, photogenic to spread the word, and non-confrontational. Freedom of speed (correctly) allows him to express his loathsome opinions - it should be used to provide the counterbalance.
I particularly liked "Odin is God - read The Mighty Thor #5". It beautifully encapsulates the curcularity of the bible bashers arguments.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:3, Insightful)
I saw kdawson and just ignored the entire thing...up until I saw your comment. Then I just *had* to say something...but I forgot what.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>However, we do think you are all delusional.
And you also get upset when theists call you asshats, am I right? (Do you never wonder why?)
Honestly, I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite, but doing your dickwad atheist bit isn't a good counterargument.
Dawkins has made being-an-asshole-to-theists his raison d'etre, but it neither makes him right, nor even sound particularly smart. His arguments are laughably bad when he strays outside the area he knows (evolutionary biology) and into a region he knows nothing about (theology). To be fair, though - he's still not as stupid as the Westborough fuckers.
Re:Puzzled in Portugal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I've read the Bible and believe Jesus taught the right lessons in ethics.
By that logic I'm a christian. Personally I think this is the worst case of selective doctrine I've ever seen.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone's sig says "taxes buy civilisation". Phelps wants it both ways: he wants the Government to let him sue anyone who crosses him, and he doesn't want to pay for it. This, in my book, makes him a leech.
Re:If Trekkies and Jedi can work together (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually I think he was a spoofer, playing on the age-old Trek vs. Wars feud. After all, true Trekkies hate Star Wars and all things from that universe, the Jedi in particular. Also bear in mind that the Church of Jedi have been officially recognized as a church now, which makes the "God Hates Jedi" a pretty obvious slogan... ;)
Re:Puzzled in Portugal (Score:3, Insightful)
The best solution in this case can be gleaned from MMORPGs. Just put them on your ignore list.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
What if there were a single cause for many of the world's ills in both the social and personal spheres, from overpopulation, ecological destruction, ethnic violence and hatred, to addictions, conflicts between the sexes, the breakdown of the family, and even why it feels good to be bad? Sound too simplistic or far-fetched? A core underlying cause of all these problems is hidden authoritarianism.
Buying into, communism, spiritual cults, organized religion, UFO cults, therapy cults, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Hitler or other authority beliefs where there is an unchallengeable book, ideology or leader generates self mistrust. It makes a person feel fundamentally mentally flawed. It causes you to look at evidence, logic, reason and what your mind would say is true, as garbage, you can not trust in, if it doesn't fit, the authority belief you bought into. These authority beliefs are social viruses that, like a computer virus, makes our basic human operating system dysfunctional. Just as a computer operating system controls how the parts work together, they say, moral codes provide the operating system both for self-control and social interaction. When the operating system is faulty, this produces distortions and malfunctions at all levels. As with computers, unmasking and decoding a virus allows one to disempower it. Buying into any religion does away with trust in your own mind and does away with uncorrupted critical thinking. Buying into an authority belief makes you a mental vegetable. The answer is to have courage enough to think for yourself.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9671.htm [positiveatheism.org]
Re:Phelps is a hero! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if religions had to pay taxes. Why do we continue to give religion special status that they earned when belief was compulsory and religion controlled politics? Oh wait, in the US, religion still does control politics. Any politician who is willing to demonstrate that he is a reasonable thinking person by publicly professing non-belief in the supernatural will likely lose elections.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
"And you also get upset when theists call you asshats, am I right? (Do you never wonder why?)"
Nope. Theists are deluded, what can one expect from them?
"Dawkins has made being-an-asshole-to-theists his raison d'etre, but it neither makes him right, nor even sound particularly smart. His arguments are laughably bad when he strays outside the area he knows (evolutionary biology) and into a region he knows nothing about (theology). To be fair, though - he's still not as stupid as the Westborough fuckers."
Hm? How do you measure qualifications in theology? So far, I haven't been able to discern 'good' theologists from 'bad' ones.
Re:Phelps is a hero! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if religions had to pay taxes.
Just imagine how much less national debt we would have if corporations had to pay taxes.
Re:Two word : infinite regress (Score:2, Insightful)
Many Americans are confused and think the Bible is the basis of American law or that we are a Christian nation. Which is amazing, since everyone should learn/have learned in history class in school that we are founded on a secular constitution that specifies that religion must not be used for law making or as a test for holding any office.
Dude, that was rude. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, we do think you are all delusional.
Fellow atheist here. Although, I prefer to say "I don't believe in God." instead. Yeah, I'm an atheist but atheism is developing its own dogmatism and I'm not interested, so I'm trying to distance myself from it.
Anyway, getting in people's faces about their religion is as bad as when religious folks get in ours about our lack of belief. If we show more respect for one another,maybe,just maybe most folks will chill.
Sure, there still will be the Phelps crowd and others who will have a problem, but if you'll notice, even folks of the same faith consider them (Phelps' crowd) to be kooks.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with religion is this.
Let's say that we accept the theory that something needed to jumpstart the universe, and that thing does not necessarily have to follow the same rules the universe does (and thus doesn't need a creator of it's own).
What reason exactly do we have to believe that thing is the biblical god?
Couldn't it just aswell have been Zeus? Odin?
Are the Muslims right? Jews? Christians? Buddhists? Tao?
The only sane position to take is that they're all wrong, and while there might exist an omnipotent entity, it's insane to think he gives a fuck about you following a religion.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:2, Insightful)
>>You should realize that atheists bring actual arguments and use logic, not a bunch of stupid excuses that have no chance of being considered logical arguments.
There's logic and valid arguments on both sides, as well as a bunch of emotivism and bad arguments. I'd recommend reading Peter Kreeft's list of arguments on both sides. He goes into pretty comprehensive detail breaking down the arguments for and against on both sides.
Islamic thinkers used pure reason to derive the fact that our universe had to have an origin, and thus that the universe tended to show evidence of God, rather than the opposite... back in the middle ages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument)
Scientists, especially atheist scientists, used their "faith" that God doesn't exist to try to constantly prove that the universe was eternal. Einstein was guilty of this, and the Big Bang got its name from Hoyle, an atheist scientist, derisively mocking the notion the universe had an origin (because he felt it would strongly imply that God existed).
I'm sure these arguments don't fit into the pretty little preconstructed world you've built for yourself, so please feel free to continue deluding yourself that scientists are the shining beacon of logic in an otherwise inhospitable world.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:1, Insightful)
This shouldn't even be a story. Not even on idle.
Fred Phelps and his followers should be dragged out behind the barn, and put out of everyone's misery.
People claim that violence has never solved anything - but a good, solid dose lead in his ear would solve all of Phelp's problems.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:2, Insightful)
>>Religion has, historically speaking, been the greatest force for good our planet has ever seen.
[citation needed]
>>Hitchens is a frothing moron who doesn't know the first thing about what he's talking about - his sole tactic is to sound British and snotty when talking about religion.
Ad hominem isn't a real argument.
>>I've yet to see him put together a single cogent argument.
What's not cogent about the arguments put forth in the videos linked just now?
Re:Dude, that was rude. (Score:5, Insightful)
Myself I prefer to say "I don't believe in an anthropomorphic god".
It's a fact that the universe exists and *something* caused the universe to exist. This something could be the laws of physics or some hitherto unknown mathematical or logical principle. You are welcome to call that principle "god" if you wish.
But to extend that basic principle to some super-accountant being somewhere who's keeping tabs on everything we do and will intervene in our existence if we nag him enough and will punish those of us who don't praise him enough...
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but that wasn't the point. Suppose we accept that this entity exists, what makes Christianity in particular correct?
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better to be considered an asshat by someone who is clearly delusional, than being delusional yourself - or enabling their delusions at the cost to society as a whole. Religion needs put down, hard.
Ideology is the only thing that is able to keep a human society from imploding upon itself. Be happy that you're able to choose your ideology yourself, and be honest about your ideology if you want to be.
And before you dream of putting down mainstream Christianity (for example), think for a while what is most likely to replace it. I'm pretty sure it won't be as pleasant for you.
Religion will disappear on it's own, if it's to disappear at all, when humanity is ready to collectively replace it with something else. Trying to speed the process directly will lead to rise of ideological fundamentalism.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing religion is good at is getting otherwise good people to do, enable those that do, and believe in, terrible acts. That's it. You don't need to be religious to be charitable, as the existence of secular aid organisations around the world will attest to. But this dick measuring contest between theist vs atheist "good works" is ridiculous and belittles that same work on both sides, so I'll avoid that as much as possible. What I will say to this though is on a different aspect of the same point. You will accept, I hope, that humanity seems naturally predisposed to the belief in a God. And I imagine you will also accept the obvious statement that for a large portion of our history, religion exerted a far greater force on our lives than it does now. So when you say that, historically speaking, religion has been the greatest force of good, you must also accept that historically speaking, religion mandated that it be the only allowable force. The difference between now and then is that now it no longer has the power to enforce that mandate. In the lifetime of human society, it is only last week that you would have to be almost suicidal to admit that you did not believe in a God, when the church of that God had power over the course of your life. It is only last week that Christians were burning the philosophies of ancient Greece in the belief that any morality before Jesus was devoid of value. Religion had a stranglehold as the only acceptable front for morality - so of course, if you look back over history and notice the good things it does, you will see some religious involvement.
Religion does however retard humanity's progress. It does not do it sufficiently that we stall or move backwards, but this is something that the modern world is changing. In history, when religiosity was a problem, it killed people. It burned books. It maybe wiped out a town or village. Started a jihad that ended in the death of a tribe or culture. Maybe even instigated the odd war, leading to the deaths of thousands. Terrible as these things no doubt were, they were not enough to halt human progress. It continued inexorably upwards - I posit, without the need for religion at all. Today, when religion makes a mistake, it can take a mere modern convenience, slam it into another and kill thousands. Imagine for a moment what would happen if religion today got its hands on a real weapon. In the last hour of human history, we gained the capability for mass destruction, the likes of which would only take one more religious mistake, to not just retard human progress - or set it back - but to wipe it out completely. You can of course say, it doesn't have to be a religious mistake that does this. You're right, it doesn't. But having another finger on the trigger is not ideal, and whereas a non religious person will not want to destroy the world - the 3 great monotheisms positively look forward to it.
>>Hitchens is a frothing moron who doesn't know the first thing about what he's talking about - his sole tactic is to sound British and snotty when talking about religion. I've watched several dozens of his debates online, especially with Dinesh D'Souza (who doesn't do an especially good job defending Christianity), and I've yet to see him put together a single cogent argument. Other than, I suppose, the fact that he'll sneer at you if you believe.
Ad homimum.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:4, Insightful)
People claim that violence has never solved anything - but a good, solid dose lead in his ear would solve all of Phelp's problems.
I note that you became so excited, so worked into a froth as you wrote this that you even dropped an entire word. I can imagine someone saying this with flushed face and breathless voice.
If you truly think that this is the answer, then why don't you take up arms and go see to it instead of making pathetic comments about it on Slashdot? Yeah, that's what I thought. Why don't you leave us alone and go back to watching American Gladiators? You don't have the intestinal fortitude for real violence.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:4, Insightful)
hehehe
I'm not sure how it works in the US but here in Europe those idiots would probably have a pro-gay net effect, because most people would recognize how ridiculously stupid the Westboro nuts are.
It wouldn't work in the UK, as he (and potentially anyone from his church) are denied entrance :D
I kinda wish the US could do this to him.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Islamic thinkers used pure reason to derive the fact that our universe had to have an origin, and thus that the universe tended to show evidence of God, rather than the opposite... back in the middle ages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument)"
Kalam's argument is stupid on many levels.
First, it's applicable to God - it also has to be created by something (a meta-God?). Which in turn must be created by something else, ad infinitum.
If you try to apply an argument that God is infinite and thus has no beginning, then this argument can very well be applied to the Universe itself.
And this is only on a level of philosophical arguments (i.e. within the model postulated by the author).
If we look at the real world, we'll see events happening without cause everywhere (virtual particles, radioactive decay, etc.).
And General Relativity also posits that it's possible to have the 'beginning of time'.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dude, that was rude. (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to hope that Gould's non-overlapping magisteria would apply to the world at large - believe what you want in private, but don't interfere with others. But even this doesn't hold up to the briefest of thought experiments. Imagine, for a moment, that you are a deeply religious person who also happens to exert power over your contemporaries. You could be the President, a senator, a mayor, a teacher, or even just the head of a family. Now, what faith? Doesn't matter. I will invent this faith: you could remove every nasty bit from the bible, and still be left with a faith that is eventually immoral. You don't even have to believe in hell. It's as simple as being offered the choice: Paradise for being "good", or not. Not can be living on in earth, or even the state of non-existence you were in before birth. You just have to believe that obeying the religious laws leads to untold paradise the likes of which makes earth seem a hell in comparison.
You're taught that your Holy Book is sacred. What could go wrong with that? Well, you must also then outlaw recycling - since if you follow the chain, a recycled Holy Book could end up as toilet paper. Definitely not Holy.
You're taught that jealousy is bad. Maybe it is! Maybe people should just be happy for others instead! But of course, it doesn't work out this way. Your neighbours wife is far more attractive than your own, which, as much as you might try to resist it, makes you a little jealous of him. It's impossible for humans to avoid thought crime, so the only chance for you avoiding this sin is to make sure that if your neighbours wife leaves the house, she does so, covered head to toe in a bulky, form concealing gown, with the merest of slits for vision.
Your religion compels you to ensure the well being of your neighbours, family, loved ones, etc. This seems an innocuous teaching. But in a faith where breaking religious edicts can put your eternal soul in jeopardy, then it's your responsibility to help prevent others from doing something so tragic. So you outlaw abortion. You outlaw contraception. You outlaw a heretical book - which if you find, you promptly burn.
And although these things might seem to be inconveniences to you and others at the time, as a religious person who believes in paradise and eternal damnation, you will willingly pick any temporal inconvenience in aid of an eternity in Paradise.
My eventual point in all of this is, religion is incompatible with morality and power. Morality obviously has an existence separate from religion, and is far more important than it. Power is essential in the running of society at all of its levels. But the moment you give someone with faith power, you cause in them a conflict. They abandon their faith for overall morality - not inflicting their choices on others. Or they pick their faith, and abandon morality, making edicts on behalf of others, "for their own good", whether they believe that way or not. This world has examples of both kinds of religious person. We're gambling with our lives though - all it takes is one religious person getting enough power, picking faith over morality, and using that power to enable the destruction of us all - for our own good.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
-George Washington
I love it when the fanatics quote that. Read it very closely, he's saying religion is good for stupid people who can't be bothered to reason through things on their own. It's one of the most damning comments on religious believers written by any of the founding fathers.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
ou know what? Religion is a good way for people to feel good about themselves as well as band together and help out those less fortunate
Of course it is just as true that religion is a good way for people to feel good about themselves as they band together and harm those less fortunate,
Re:Worthless summary (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Phelps is a hero! (Score:1, Insightful)
I fail to see the difference.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Still doing that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I think this is the worst case of selective doctrine I've ever seen.
More like the best case of selective doctrine. A great moral advantage of being atheist is the easy "selective doctrine" of accepting what is right and good from all religions and philosophies.
Once you skip past the invisible-sky-wizard and the magic stuff elsewhere in the Bible, most atheists readily agree that Jesus taught a lot of really good things. In fact Thomas Jefferson published an edition of the Bible doing exactly that. A version of the Bible dedicated solely to Jesus's teachings and deleting deleting all the magical stuff. And as Jefferson put it, a REAL Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ. The fake Christians are the people preaching all that other Bible dogma, the stuff which Christ never said nor saw.
A Christian missionary once asked Ghandi "though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?" to which Ghandi replied "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ".
-
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your points are just as valid with respect to non-religious causes. For example, Nazi ideology was based on the master race theory, which had nothing to do with any of the major religions, yet killed more people in one year than the inquisition killed in all of history. And lets not forget communism, which killed about 50 million people in Russia alone. While you do have people with insane religious zeal, most religious people have a conscience which keeps them from taking part in mass misery; contrast this with "rational" ideologies which will make arbitrary divisions based on skin color, social class, etc... and disenfranchise a whole class of people.
Re:/me sighs. (Score:5, Insightful)
one shouldn't assume that WBC are Christian
Re:Worthless summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Australia got a better deal.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:1, Insightful)
Heh, the person behind this "non-story" has made you so angry you advocate his deah.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:5, Insightful)
This shouldn't even be a story. Not even on idle.
Fred Phelps and his followers should be dragged out behind the barn, and put out of everyone's misery.
People claim that violence has never solved anything - but a good, solid dose lead in his ear would solve all of Phelp's problems.
And what good would that do? Isn't free speech protected in America? Or is it only agreed speech?
These morons have no followers other than their own "congregation" which are all related. Just how much more pathetic can they get?
They have no ability to spread their views, because they are so extreme, they even force people to question their own prejudices.
In spite of themselves, they may actually do some good.
Raise a finger against them, and they have won. Kill them and they have won. Stop them, and you become them.
Laugh at them, and nothing they do can make any difference.
Put Lookalikes on a float in a gay pride march. Use them in advertising with a slogan to the effect of "Phelps picketed, so it must be good.." Make them into a tourist attraction, do like the comic convention people did and make them look even more bat shit crazy.
Make Phelps dildos. Do what ever daft and disrespectful thing you can think of to ridicule them. And hope they never stop, because they are what you become when you try to force your views on those who don't think like you do.
These people are a joke. Treat them as such. But remember, the best comedy has a social commentary undercurrent hidden in it.
The comic con people handled it perfectly. You on the other hand, allowed them to get under your skin. You lost.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I love fundamentalist atheists. They reassure me that hatred and intolerance of others' beliefs are found in all humans, not just those who believe in one or more deities.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Though it doesn't appear that religious people on average are any more moral then the secular. Most of us learn right and wrong from our parents and society in general and those that don't want to be moral seem to have no problem finding justifications for whatever they want by selective readings of their favorite books and religious and secular alike are just as good at saying "Oh, those people aren't like us, they don't deserve to be treated good"
Re:Phelps is a hero! (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound like a job-killing, america-hating liberal.
Sadly, there are a lot of mouth-breathers who think like that previous sentence.
Re:Dude, that was rude. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm an atheist but atheism is developing its own dogmatism
As an atheist and a skeptic, I have to ask, what's your evidence for that?
In fact, atheism, by definition, cannot be a dogma. You're an example of this -- atheists can't even all agree on what to call themselves, though the word itself is simple and unambiguous.
getting in people's faces about their religion is as bad as when religious folks get in ours about our lack of belief.
The problem is, there's really no way to avoid getting in their faces. [atheistcartoons.com] Many are offended that we even exist. [atheistcartoons.com]
But let's get real -- we're not doing this. [atheistcartoons.com] It's more like this. [atheistcartoons.com] I have honestly never seen an atheist be militant [atheistcartoons.com] in the sense that believers are every day.
If we show more respect for one another,maybe,just maybe most folks will chill.
I can respect you as a person, but I will ridicule your ridiculous ideas.
That goes for most people, but unfortunately, most people are incapable of seeing the difference.
Here's the funny part -- you probably agree with most of what I just said. In fact, you probably agree with the GP -- you agree that religion is a delusion, you just don't want to say it like that, because you don't want to offend people.
Re:Dude, that was rude. (Score:4, Insightful)
getting in people's faces about their religion is as bad as when religious folks get in ours
When's the last time an atheist rang your bell to try to get you to join his non-church?
Re:Worthless summary (Score:3, Insightful)
300 years ago, England sent all their convicts to Australia. America got all their religious nuts. Australia got a better deal.
You're kidding right? They have an Internet Filter for Christ's sake. What do we have: A first amendment. I'd say we got the better deal.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom of speech also means that you are to respect your fellow man's views, regardless of how unpopular they are, for it may be your views next that become sanctioned
In fact it's exactly the opposite. Freedom of speech guarantees you the right to respect, disrespect, ignore, or anything else of someone elses views.
I think what you're getting at is that to maintain freedom of speech we must all believe in peoples rights to express their views. Respect is something else entirely.
Re:slightly funny, but kind of predictable by now (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? Freedom needs to be continually fought for; if you ignore Phelps and give him no opposition
The source of the problem isn't really that there's people like Phelps, and nobody is opposing them. It's that guy and his utterly minuscule congregation get any media attention at all. There's a million people out their that are batshit insane and worry about the orbital mind control lasers that nobody pays attention to. But yet this guy and his handful of followers gets paid attention to. Why?
If we could somehow get the media to drop covering this guy, that'd do a hell of a lot more than these counter-protests ever would. That's likely not possible, as this guy sells a lot of eyeballs. I'd just like to point out that ignoring people is sometimes a very good solution to the "problem".
Re:Bogus claim (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because you're ignorant (I'm using the word literally here, not as an insult -- there are things you are unaware of.) Muslims worship the same god; they consider Jesus one of their prophets. They just think Christians worship incorrectly (exactly the same complaint many Christians make of each other.)
Calling the Odin / Valhalla stories fiction is really a stretch, especially... Get my point?
Just because there is a story, doesn't mean, or even hint, that it is true. Further, when a story contains magic as we understand it today, rather than science as we understand it today, so far, for all the stories in human history, this has been an excellent indicator that the story is not true. The bible is rife with nonsensical claims. Water into wine. Pillars of salt. Voices from the sky. Parting of the sea. Virgin birth. Resurrection. It's clearly a book whose central truth -- the existence and acts of the son of God -- rests upon many magical claims. Yet no one has demonstrated any magic, anywhere in the world. Ever. That's how I can assign it to the category of myth without any doubt at all. That's without even digging into the straightforward contradictions in it.
Quite aside from this, it's not my job to prove it untrue; it is your job to prove it true. I don't believe it; you do. Jupiter, Odin, Set, Yaweh... a huge long list... they're all the same to me. Imaginary creatures dreamed up to focus power for humans, something they all actually did. Strangely, they're all the same to you as well... except for Yaweh. So I'm sure you can understand my position if you try.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:5, Insightful)
"Freedom of speech also means that you are to respect your fellow man's views"
NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T. Read the fucking constitution, from the goddamned Declaration of Independence all the way through the bill of rights. Freedom of speech is the GOVERNMENT being unable to silence our thoughts about the government or speaking our minds. Respect is earned, not inherently given.
And your views right now get absolutely NO respect from me with that sort of ignorance.
Ironic pseudoviolence...? What of the Children? (Score:3, Insightful)
["Funny"]
I've thought of several funny semi-violent responses...
Get five or ten street-boys to jizz in a squirt gun, use said squirt gun to "anoint" WBC while holding "WBC shows gay spunk as Phred hoped" sign.
Get geek to factor wind biases and then use "Bear Spray" suitably up-wind.
[Serious]
But in truth, if WBC ever showed up in my region I would file a "reckless child endangerment" complaint against them with the department of child and family services. They are clearly trying to incite violence with "fighting words", to the degree that the cops have to show up to protect them. They are also using their children basically as "human shields" by bringing them, and putting them in harm's way, without regard to the safety of the minor children.
If they _don't_ think that the children would be in danger, why do they pre-arrange police protection?
I think WBC needs to be dragged through family court whenever they show up with kids and make them hold signs that inspire people to punch people in the face.
If the adults want to do it, then fine. But not the kids.
hum... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Two word : infinite regress (Score:2, Insightful)
Many Americans are confused and think the Bible is the basis of American law or that we are a Christian nation.
Why wouldn't they be confused, we have a political party that actively tries to tie the government with Christianity. We had a president for 8 recent years that called a war a crusade. We put 'in god we trust' on our money. We added 'under god' to the pledge of allegiance to show that we are a godly country as apposed to the godless Soviets. We are offended that someone would want to build a mosque near the 9/11 site. We try to make laws governing abortion. We try to make laws banning sex education and evolution from schools. We try to make laws inserting christian doctrine (Intelligent Design) into schools. We label sex and eroticism as porn and try to ban it from public and private life.
We have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. And Christianity is the predominant religion.
Re:Worthless summary (Score:5, Insightful)
The man who kills any member of Phelps' crew has done something far worse than any member of WBC. He is a murderer.
He is for killing people based on their unpalatable opinions.
In particular, he is for killing someone who is a fairly good test of an American's freedom to express unpalatable opinions.
Someone who also fairly accurately represents a fundamentalist religious message ("God hates fags" - not "humans should hate fags") and exposes the angry roots of Abrahamic religion.
Someone who reminds us of several millennia of thinking about homosexuality, tweaked only in the past 40 years and extant in many parts of the world. An argument cannot be fought if its defenders are simply oppressed.
Someone, finally, whose messages are more complex than simple gay-bashing. I can guarantee you that every man you respect has at least one opinion which would make your blood boil, but you're happy to listen to everything else they say. Is it good to speak out against pedophilia in the Catholic church? To question the military's idolatrous respect of the US flag? To point out that Iraq was quite secular for an Arab nation while Bush was on a warmongering anti-Muslim campaign? To protest hate speech laws? Phelps has done all these things. And does his politically incorrect, courage-of-convictions straight talking have a place in modern debate? Certainly. If a mad cunt from the middle of nowhere can achieve that sort of international public recognition over such a long period, we all have something to learn from him.
Even if all you learn is that "God hates fags". Which is true. Abrahamic God as described in the OT hates fags.
And if this makes you not respect Abrahamic God because Abrahamic God sounds like a bit of a douche, well, all's the better.
What is there to lose by allowing Phelps to speak? He's not even wrong.
If people like Phelps cannot protest at military funerals any more, then America has lost and the American military's missions are yet more futile and other than in the spirit of defending America's freedom. If that's even possible.
Re:Still doing that? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe people still are religious in public.
Not only do I worship in public, I did so today with 200 other like-minded souls. We've even got (hold on to your hat) an entire building dedicated to it. With a sign telling _everyone_ what's going on inside.
I am from Sweden.
Well I'm sorry for that but do you think you should admit that in public?