BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!

Subject: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:15 AM

I feel much better now, thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:18 AM

Secucrats, wouldn't it be?

-Ists and -Crats seldom engage. -Ists like other -Ists, and -Crats prefer -Crats.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Severn
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:21 AM

To a bloody pulp?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:24 AM

No Susan, I meant theocrats. Isn't it time for the preacher's wife to be getting ready for Sunday services, dearie?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:54 AM

This preacher's wife has her own ministries, on Saturday night; my Sunday ministries are not based at the church. And I was commenting not on your use of the word "theocrat" but on "secularist." You're more interwested in arguing with me than in the clarity of your own point? :~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:57 AM

And I thought you said in the other thread you didn't have time for any of this nonsense today Susan!

Jaysus you are deeply threatened by secularists aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 09:59 AM

I'm getting plenty of things done this AM, thanks so much for your concern, nameless one!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:01 AM

Like I said, you sure are threatened by the presence of secularists in your midst, Susan.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:39 AM

Actually I am a bit of a secularist myself.

As are most of my friends.

As has been most of my career.

As is my training in (and teaching of) a specific form of peer counseling.

:~)

(Each of which I have posted about many times before at Mudcat.)

This is the problem when one (Guest) over-simplifies in order to tear down. What a waste of effort, when the world neeeds a more positive focus in general, secularly and theologically.

But I do love it when a GUEST proves my points for me.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:40 AM

Usually, secularists don't mind what religionists beklive int heir religions. While many religionists get very upset that secularists do not subscribe to their version of truth.

It is unusual to see this sort of backlash, even from a chest-beating cipher. It's like hearing a strange sound coming out of thin air.

A

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 10:51 AM

Actually, as a secularist I do mind what religionists believe. I have a whole lot less problem with certain religions than I do others, and again a whole lot less problem with certain factions of certain religions than others.

But as a non-religious American Freethinker secularist, I am deeply concerned with the theocratic takeover of the US body politic by cynical power mongerers using fundamentalist fananticism to further their very personal agendas.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:12 AM

One of the most untouchable issues in American politics is the damaging proposition, deliberately fostered by government leaders, that religious devotion and patriotism are inseparable. These past few weeks we have seen an awful lot of that sort of damage occurring. A large part of the problem is the utter lack of fairness in reporting from the secular perspectives in American society.

This unholy alliance of religious devotion and patriotism is completely tied up in the current push to theocratize the US government in ways our Constitution forbids. But when we have no secular defenders of the Constitution being allowed to speak through the mass media and thereby reach a mass audience, who do we expect to defend us, our Constitution, and our way of life from these religious/political demagogues? The pope? Not likely.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 11:50 AM

From a letter to Dave Farber's IP List on a related topic:

"Some religionists, feeling one way or feeling another, are unwilling to keep their religions private. The commons of civic discourse may be fed by feelings but in the final analysis, it is best served by reason, and our Constitutional tradition is that that reason is bounded in its concerns to the secular—including the emotional, unavoidably, but placing religion behind a Jeffersonian "wall of separation".

There is reason for doing this which is both good and sufficient, since it is demonstrable that differing religious views are irreconcilable in their basic nature, and cannot be particularly tested. It is also historically true that the glib and irrational use of religious icons and notions to justify irrational courses of action is a peculiarly human pox.

Studying that religion exists, and what it does or does not say in a comparative framework is innocuous enough on the face of it, and your friend is right that Christmas deserves as much analysis as Kwanzaa or Ramadan. But whether one or another adherent of any given religion feels his non-secular, religious beliefs are given sufficient honor by those who do not share them is pretty irrelevant under the doctrine of separation. He/she may find solace in congregation, or meditation, or prayer in a private moment. Not in debate on the commons."


A

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:06 PM

I wish I believed in Hell, so I could tell some 'guests' to go there. Being a secularist myself, I find some on my side of the issue who make me wish they were not.

I will never understand why it seems necessary to be insulting and condescending to those whose basic beliefs you disagree with....though I DO understand why it's done under a cloak of anonymity.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:16 PM

My, my. A man with sensibilities as dainty as a hothouse flower.

I suppose it shocks you too, to know that not all of us secularists are liberals in search of "common ground" with the enemies of civil society.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:27 PM

Naw ..... no shock there .... except that you are the most uncivil person I have seen use that term. No one here has ever asked you to not state your position. But some, myself included have asked you to do it in a civil manner. That, apparently is beyond you. What comes out is that you are a bitter person, who obviously has some real or imagined axe to grind, so you do it under the cloak of anonymity, and further you hide behind a ragged air of superiority. It is so ragged that folks that might otherwise agree with you, Bill D (it seems) and myself included. You are just a nasty person, so fire away. But you fool no one.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 12:48 PM

Go right ahead nameless guest. For the couple of eejits unable to follow a discussion without you naming yourself flopsy wopsy, there are many more of us who enjoy your postings.

Uncivil? Nasty? No, just presenting an opposite point of view in a very articulate manner. If those who have a problem with that, find themselves compelled to read your posts, which are clearly marked as guest, and then equally compelled to post the obligatory 'nameless guest' rant, they have more issues than they could cope with.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:23 PM

Thanks for the props Guest 12:48 PM.

Those Mudcat members who go off on their 'nameless guest' rants don't cope very well at all, do they?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:29 PM

we cope just fine...we still recognize cowardly rudeness when we see it, and if you can BE rude, we can point it out.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:32 PM

"Usually, secularists don't mind what religionists beklive int heir religions."

Ha ha ha! I can tell from your typing that you nearly choked on that BS!!

(some things seem as true as they are not.)

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 01:41 PM

Trouble is bill, your idea of cowardly rudeness is only shared by a few people on here, all who will fight their corner to the death while unable to accept others. And when you realise the 'we have been here forever and what we say is right' speech isn't getting the message across, you resort to your pet peeve. Not only predictable, but boring.

All the rest of us who aren't mortally offended by the lack of a name, are sure sick of your constant whinging.

Wake up tomorrow and try and not open a guest post. Go on really try, do us all a favour. Or will you continue banging on about guests until you implode? The world doesn't always run the way we would like it to. No matter how many times I wish I could see a double rainbow, I don't get in a hissy fit when one doesn't appear.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:13 PM

One does not "open a guest post" one opens a thread and finds anonymous posts. There is no way to know that subject has been started by a rude coward OR been coopted by them until you are reading.

So, fine..be "sick of my whinging" *grin* ...you can always don't read it, if I understand your logic correctly.

(We have a lot of unregistered posters, but most of them pick a name so that guests 1-27 can easily be told apart during a complex discussion..only a few take perverse pleasure in the idea that THEIR posts are so clear and unique that they don't need an identity, even a fake one)

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:19 PM

Bill do you ever get tired of typing that? We get tired of reading it. Perverse pleasure? Jeeze some of you need to get a life.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:23 PM

"we"?

...as in "all guests"?

What? You've united?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:27 PM

Yes John. We are assembling in an outdoor arena to plan more perverse pleasure anyday now.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:37 PM

"When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it."

                                                               --Eleanor Roosevelt

I've always applied that philosophy to the whole guest bashing phenomenon here at Mudcat.

GO SECULARISTS!

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 02:48 PM

That's not a 'philosophy', that's a speculation, and a fairly vague point.

(Sure I get tired of typing that....maybe you'll wear out first an BE someone.)

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:11 PM

Honest bill we won't. So please, either you deprogramme your mind, or copy and paste the same bit into every thread where you have been disagreed with by a guest.

You see the problem is YOU are telling us how to post, we are NOT telling you how to post. So accept the fact that nothing you repeat ad nauseum will change our decision.


In fact to prove your point you could drop the bill bit, nobody will harass you, unless you can't stop harassing yourself?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:12 PM

We are all someone BillD. You just don't need to know who in order to carry on in an internet chat forum where most of us are strangers to one another in the 3D world.

But I promise, if I ever meet a BillD in person, I'll be sure to introduce myself as Anon. OK?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:16 PM

And some poeple's religion is Secularism, showing their true colors after all.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:21 PM

Oh stop with the right wing labelling and demonizing Seneschal.

Secularism isn't a religion. You know it, I know it, and everyone else here knows it too.

And your statement "shows their true colors after all"????

What, did you think with that thread title I was trying to hide my "true colors"? You aren't one of the brighter bulbs in the box, are you? Think we don't know the right wing baiting game lingo when we see it?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:24 PM

well...are there two of you in THIS thread?

"where most of us are strangers to one another in the 3D world."

most of us?...maybe..I have met...in 3D...many Mudcat posters(over 100 now, with many more due to show up during the rest of the year)...and I have exchanged tapes, ideas and plans with many more. These are people. You are intent on being only humorless, critical phantoms.

My attitude just doesn't suit your idea of how humans should share ideas.

(and if a stranger introduces 'itself' as Anon to any Bill D, I'd sure like to see Bill's face...unless you are lucky enough to meet me....I'll charm you right out of your ID card!)

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:30 PM

My attitude just doesn't suit your idea of how humans should share ideas.

Wrong. It is you telling us to change. It is your attitude that wants us all to think like you, hey we don't. I couldn't give a monkeys how people label themselves. It isn't my problem. If any of you find it such a problem you have to carp on and on and on etc.....
then take a walk and find a real problem to devote your energies to.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:31 PM

Not only is there more than one of us in the thread, there is even more than two of us.

But BillD, you could give this a rest any time now.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:34 PM

Don't say that! As soon as he gives it a rest we'll have mcgrath banging the drum. But he doesn't read our posts so he won't know this. nod nod wink wink. Hi mcgrath.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:35 PM

Oh, you must know I don't EXPECT you to change! It is just MY choice to point out the problems with totally anonymous posting by an unknown number of .....of....words fail me, I'm not Martin Gibson, so I can't call you anything but rude.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 03:41 PM

So do you suppose BillD keeps going on and on because he is waiting for McGrath to come tell him he can't tell if there are one or two of us?

Chilling thought on cool day in Rio.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:03 PM

Yes, that was the plan but it didnt work. But in light of the anon guest infantry being in pursuit of bigger issues than us right now, bill has almost retreated graciously. And we are also without amos telling us how arrogant we are not to follow HIS example. I feel short changed.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:09 PM

re: the infantry.

It's Sunday

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:13 PM

Sunday. Indeed. Yet, I've had WYSIWYG, Big Mick, Amos, and you spitting at me today. Just my luck I suppose.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:22 PM

Secularism can be a religion. Anything can. In fact switch the names and you're comments are just like the religious ones you affect to despise.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:28 PM

No they aren't, and very few people on the planet would mistake secularism for an organized religion. I never said I despise religion, BTW. That's you attempting to paint secularists as a "secular humanist" so you can keep us in your neat little mental box marked "heretics".

Secularists and freethinkers aren't the same as atheists. It is entirely possible to be a member of a conventional church, and still be both a secularist and a freethinker.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST,Seneschal
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:46 PM

Your religion is anything you make it. Doesnt matter what you are nominally.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:51 PM

Tell that to the pope.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:53 PM

It is entirely possible to be a member of a conventional church, and still be both a secularist and a freethinker.

First you characterize a nice set of responses as "spitting," then you agree with me? :~) Just continuing to try to bait me, more like it.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:57 PM

wizzy you started off your nice set of answers with your trademark 'what you really mean is this', snide put down and continued that way. Can't you go and preach to those unsure and leave the rest of us alone?

Subject: elief RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 04:59 PM

I have heard it said that an absolute belief in the nonexistance of God (or god, if you prefer) is as much a religion as an absolute belief. Not, mind you, that I really think the ANON.GUEST really believes in anything except his/her/its right to try to raise the blood pressure of assorted Mudcatters.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 05:12 PM

Tosh. I absolutely don't believe in Little Red Riding Hood either, does that mean I worship at the wolf's altar?

If people can't read an internet discussion, and a very well put together one at that, without having their blood pressure raised, they should seek medical help forthwith.

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 05:20 PM

And where might one go to read that very well put together internet discussion?

Subject: RE: BS: GO SECULARISTS! BEAT THEOCRATS!
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Apr 05 - 05:25 PM

To a land far, far away. Please.