So a horse-loving, feminist-hating Roosh V fan popped into my Twitter mentions today, defending Roosh against accusations of rape by noting that he’s never actually been charged or convicted of rape. Which is true, though not actually proof of his innocence any more than OJ’s acquittal in criminal court is proof that he didn’t murder his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend.
When Phil pointed out that his belief that Roosh is a rapist seems to be supported by Roosh’s own words, Ms. Smith declared that Roosh’s own words didn’t count, because they appeared in a post of mine. And that’s when, for better or worse, I entered into the discussion myself.
And then I asked the questions I ask everyone who accuses me of taking quotes out of context: Have you read the original quotes in context, and if so, could you tell me how I misrepresented them?
I don’t think anyone I have ever asked these questions to has given me a satisfactory answer. Most slink off at this point, their bluff called.
But others continue to bluff and bluster onward, doing their best to avoid answering the questions — either because they have read the quotes in their original context, and know full well that I didn’t misrepresent them, or because they haven’t read the quotes in the original and don’t want to admit it.
Still, I don’t think I’ve ever run across a bluffer quite as brazen or as persistent as Ms. Smith, who somehow managed, over the course of several hours of on-and-off “debate,” to avoid saying whether or not she actually read any of the books she claimed I was misrepresenting. Or even the post of mine she was ostensibly critiquing.
As the hours went by, her attempts to wriggle out of answering these rather basic yes or no questions took on a kind of Dadaesque grandeur. Read on, if you have the patience for it.
Seeing the name “Mina” so often in my mentions made me think of the Bollywood classic “Eena Meena Deeka,” which is certainly more entertaining than Mina Smith’s “arguments” above.
I like knowing that all the atoms in my body were once stars and some day will be again.
@weirwoodtreehugger
…Okay, wow, NOW I get what you mean. I’m so very sorry; I must have completely misread that. ><; Yes, I do agree, hurt feelings are not equal to oppression. You are absolutely right there, and I completely disagree with anyone who says that you can't be moral without being religious. And I see what you mean by the whole "can I pray for you" thing now; I suppose I never saw that, since I always only asked friends who I was already familiar with.
I'm so very sorry. I'll definitely keep all of this in mind from now on.
Also your atoms being stars again one day is a pretty awesome thought.
@ Pandapool and WWTH
You familiar with the quote:
“The most terrifying thing about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent”?
Whilst I can understand why people seek the comfort of religion so as to feel they have a place and a purpose and they are somehow special in the vast nothingness, I actually love that we’re just the product of a series of accidents. There’s no plan or higher goal, just random accumulations of particles forming a world and random chemical reactions that led to us, but will keep on going.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no nihilist, but the fact that a gamma ray burst or even just an asteroid could wipe us out in an instant and the universe wouldn’t even notice is so exciting. Like that tingle you get when you’re doing something really dangerous.
Makes you enjoy living whilst you’ve got the chance anyway.
(Everybody’s in awe about star stuff, and I’m just giggling about dinosaur pee.)
Broken butterfly,
No worries. It’s tough to read people’s meaning on the internet sometimes.
@Alan
I’ve either heard that quote or something similar to it. And I, too, ind it just pretty neat and beautiful that it was all random, that’s we’re just an accident…if only for the fact that it’s an reproducible, not one in a universe accident.
There maybe, in fact, a planet with alien dragons on it, somewhere out in the universe. And my tears dry at the thought.
@SFHC
BUT THE WATER I’M CURRENTLY DRINKING WAS ONCE DINOSAUR PEE AND I AM ALL ABOUT THAT.
There might be a universe where MRAs don’t exist.
If you subscribe to the Copenhagen theory then there’s an infinite number of universes where dragons exist, an infinite number where MRAs don’t exist and an infinite number where dragons feast on MRA’s.
@Alan
Me too.
I also get lots of meaning from thinking this is my only life. I have to make *this* worthwhile, while I’m here.
While I love stories, novels, myths, etc. I think of those as human culture and fun.
Tim Minchin’s storm comes to mind. I really resonate with his tune “White Wine in the Sun” too.
@everyone who mentioned alternate universes
Does that mean that if I was just born into another universe I could have been a riderwith a dragon partner/mount in a world without MRAs?
Man, now I feel ripped off.
@ Broken Butterfly
You have to avoid the universes with MRA dragons and their constant whinging about how the lady dragons prefer dragons with bigger hoards of gold and/or better fire breathing abilities.
@Alan Robertshaw
I feel like they’d also be whining about how those lady dragons were just TOTALLY leading them on so that they’d eat that king and get them a whole kingdom for themselves and constantly hunt mammoth for them and their egglings.
….actually, MRA dragons would be kind of hilarious to see drawn, if just for the double layer of absurdity of a dragon yelling about alpha male dragoncock carousels or something.
@Broken Butterfly
There could be a universe out there where there a dragons, there are no MRAs, we all have magic and great tunes are always on the radio with minimum commercials. All we have to do is figure out time travel and/or how wormhole work and we’re golden.
@ Broken Butterfly
“We burned the village for you”
@ Pandapool
In our universe we have the BBC so *no* commercials. 🙂
Male dragons are commonly victims of misandry. Just look!
http://2.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/36/22/6f038a22773525ec3a2a270f79f892c3.jpg
This why I am a MDRA. Free male dragons from the chains of misandrous feeemales!
When faced with things like this, I tend to want to ask fairly early on in the argument whether there is any actual evidence I can supply to the questioner that they will accept. This is mainly because my time is valuable (to me, at least) and if I’m going to spend it doing the metaphorical equivalent of banging my head against a stone wall until I’ve made a window, I can think of more pleasant and/or rewarding ways to be doing this.
If they’re not willing to state what they’re looking for in evidence from me to substantiate my position, then I’m not willing to participate in a “discussion” which will boil down to me banging my head against the aforementioned wall. Discussion, such as it is, ends.
(To put it even more bluntly: I won’t participate in games I haven’t a hope of winning. It’s a long-standing habit, since childhood.)
Re: religion/atheism subthread – in a lot of ways, this is the proto-argument to rule them all, because it’s the one where a lot of the tactics we see in arguments like the one in the original post get their first airings. Sadly enough, the more reasonable people in this particular argument (just like the more reasonable people in the other ones) are the people who are least willing to get involved in it, because they’re willing to take “live and let live”, “and it harm none, believe what thou wilt”, and “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” as texts for living by.
Alan Robertshaw (@7.17pm) – My favourite bits of stuff about the absolute uncaring nature of the universe are “The Galaxy Song” from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” (most particularly the final couplet – “Just pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space/Because there’s bugger-all down here on Earth!”) and the observation by Marcus in the “Late Delivery From Avalon” episode of Babylon 5 that the uncaring nature of the universe is actually somewhat reassuring – after all, wouldn’t things be horrible if the “just world” fallacy was accurate, and when bad things happened we actually did deserve them?
@ WWTH
That looks like the dragon’s secretary is holding the phone for him. If anything that just reinforces old gender stereotypes!
@ Megpie
Oh the Galaxy Song.
That’s the nearest thing to producing the effect of a Total Perspective Vortex I’ve ever come across in real life; and I *do* have an ego like Zaphods!
I just want to say… this is the nicest conversation about religion ever here (in my recollection, anyway) and you’re all awesome. 🙂
@Alan
Years ago I went to Egypt, and did one of those group tours out into the middle of the desert in which a Bedouin community pretends to tolerate your presence while you gawp at them and eat chicken. On our way back, the convoy stopped and told us to get out and just stand there… it was night, the desert was completely silent, the sky was filled with stars. I stood there, feeling so small and insignificant and amazed, thinking of that quote and the incomprehensible enormity of the universe, and you could feel everyone else thinking and feeling it too and then… the silence was broken by the dude next to me pissing in the sand, and we all laughed and came back to earth, and it felt strangely appropriate.
🙂
You should write the brochures.
@kirbywarp: Yes, it is circular reasoning to say, in effect, “There can’t possibly be any supernatural entity undetectable by rational/empirical means, because if a supernatural entity did exist, we should be able to detect it by rational/empirical means”. That’s known as begging the question.
Maybe, hypothetically, there actually IS some type of supernatural entity whose reality is manifested by some kind of irrational mystical conviction rather than by evidence and reason. And maybe you and I just aren’t aware of it because we lack the ability to perceive that kind of irrational mystical conviction. Sort of a spiritual equivalent of being deaf or colorblind, as it were.
I personally don’t believe it, but just because I don’t believe it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.
I’m not arguing that Christianity isn’t the privileged religion in the West, it totally is. But in my limited experience with what I assume to be the worst dregs of “movement atheism” (i.e. The sexist/racist dudes, the ones that made Elevatorgate a thing), they appear to stem from highly privileged backgrounds- white, male, hetero and cis, generally. I’m not so sure that their hositility towards religion stems from oppression so much as a desire to consider themselves above all others. These are also the ones that seem to like to shit on all religion, not just Christianity, too.
That said, harassing folks on the internet, while dickish, does pale in comparison to forcing legislation that strips the rights of downtrodden people on the basis of a belief system that not everyone shares.
I would really appreciate it if my country would stop praying on the street corner and start praying in private, like the anarcho-communist hippie radical they swear up and down they love to pieces told them to.
The people who are using religion in my country to legislate oppression against marginalized groups look pretty much just like me, so I feel obliged to oppose them.
It’s not just legislation, they’re having a lot of success at distorting our educational system, too.
I’m sorry, it’s almost midnight as I type this and my head feels stuffed full of cotton. I think I’m making sense but I’m probably just shooting my mouth off.
@ Paradoxical Intention
Rephrasing:
I believe that Mina is a member of a group that has little fear of being raped.
Either that, or Mina is in deep denial.
Otherwise, I don’t think that this individual could defend Roosh, who–without using the word–admits to rape in the quotes that David shared from Roosh’s Bang books.
@kimstu:
My position is not that such a supernatural being must not exist. My position is to not believe in such a being unless I have a valid reason to. And for people who want to argue for the existence of such a being to me, they should be able to share that valid reason for me to believe them.
Apart from that… am I wrong, or are you getting a bit lost in the semantics of “rational and logical,” words I haven’t used? You talk about a hypothetical being that manifests solely in a sort of irrational conviction… but even that sort of being would be detectable. You’d find people professing this conviction despite not being raised the in the same religion, and not being exposed to the idea from other people. You’d see a bunch of disconnected individuals coming to believe the same things without communicating. That would be evidence of something weird going on.
Even if you and I weren’t affected by this being, we would be able to observe the effect in others. And if you couldn’t devise some sort of test like this, if the conviction truly did act exactly like normal irrational beliefs, then the being might as well not exist as far as people in this world are concerned.
I don’t think I’m arguing for something all that radical… It’s literally just that any being worth believing in would have some noticable effect on the world. If there was no noticable effect, then there would be no reason to believe it exists.
Here’s a fun puzzle, if you haven’t heard of it before. Pretend you lived in a world where everyone save you saw in black and white, and you wanted to prove to people that the world was colorful. How could you do it?
The key is to find some way that the color changes the world, and use it as part of a test. Take a bunch of identical boxes, but have one colored red and the rest not, such that the boxes look identical to the people running the test. Put an object in the red box, and have the testers shuffle the boxes around. You then point to the box with the object in it. You will be able to pick out the right box every single time.
Maybe you won’t be able to explain color to the testers, but you will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something, something visual, that is outside their experience but not outside yours. And nothing about this setup requires the testers without color vision to impose some sort of limited epistemology on you.