Interesting Links for 28-2-2011

[andrewducker]

• Human breast milk ice cream on sale in London
  (tags: milk IceCream human food)
• Julian Assange loses extradition battle
  (tags: extradition wikileaks assange)
• The Largest Telescope on Earth
  (tags: radio telescope technology)
• Why do Christians eat shellfish but not have adulterous relationships?
  (tags: christianity relationships religion judaism)

Comments

[birguslatro]

Just remembered the date...

That article sits deliciously on the edge of taste!

[birguslatro]

Doh! Got it wrong. The date, that is. Was thinking the 1st, which it is - just not this month! But next's...

So the story's real? Then the BBC's really lost the plot. Sure, it's a story to be told, but a humorous one? It reminds me of a local newspaper's front-page story about a woman who was breastfeeding a puppy. That had a similar tone, and included asking a vet about it. Just not any human medical professionals.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Christianity is like playing a roleplaying game. It's easy to follow the letter of the rules, but following the spirit is often a lot more fun.

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I've tried to work out why human breast milk is considered so taboo as a foodstuff. I mean, we get most of our milk from _cows_ which is, IMO, tantamount to bestiality - or at least some kind of serious kink ;->

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

To me it's sad that Jesus got his start being the kind of kick-ass pharisee who did his best work negotiating the Torah into a liveable Torah ... and so many of his followers have spent so long making it as unliveable as possible. Bring on the spirit!

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Here's what I had to say . . .

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The letter of the rules is pretty damn hard, too, unless you do like that dude does and pick and choose which ones you feel like following on any given day. Jesus says outright no less than three times that it is an absolute impossibility for a rich man to go to heaven, for example.

But yeah. That guy was amusing for a few hours, but he's got the typical Evangelical subliteracy (including his second account responding to "this is not X, it is Y" with "YOU'RE WRONG! IT'S NOT X, IT'S Y!" at one point to ladysisyphus, while quoting her, using her exact phrasing), he's working hard on the standard-issue Evangelical persecution complex (because everyone is being MEAN by engaging his homophobic statements as if they were homophobic! You all just hate God!), and he's got the Evangelical hypocrisy down pat (he says he wants a free and open discussion where people will listen even if they think the other person is wrong - and then freezes comment threads after he's gotten the last word and bans people who point out where he's wrong more than once).

[robhu.livejournal.com]

The reason your discussions got frozen was not because you were being 'mean'. It was because you never listened to what I was actually saying in response and kept trying to pigeon hole me.

Just look at what you've written here: "because everyone is being MEAN by engaging his homophobic statements as if they were homophobic! You all just hate God!"

I never said you were being mean, nor did I claim that you hate God. It's pretty obvious from your characterisation here that you weren't trying to understand my perspective or engage with why I disagreed with you at all, and as such I'm very glad that I'm not spending my time engaging with you over there anymore.

As it happens you didn't (successfully!) point out that I was wrong anywhere (with the exception I admit of ladysisyphuses interpretation of the review) - I tried to explain various things to you from the perspective of those inside the group but you kept trying to incorrectly apply language and terms and meaning that are simply incorrect to the majority of the group (like the whole thing about dictation). Had you said something like "Yeah, OK, so the vast majority don't think that, it's just this minority, and yeah I get that actually what you guys think is not dictation so what I said was wrong there, but I think my main point still applies with the model you do actually hold..." the discussion would have gone somewhere interesting. As it was you just kept trying to re-maneuver to reapply your original point without understanding why for the Christian your actual criticism didn't actually work.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's pretty obvious from your characterisation here that you weren't trying to understand my perspective or engage with why I disagreed with you at all,

Of course I was, and, more particularly, I was trying to help *you* understand why people say your position is homophobic (hint: Because it is.)

And, tellingly, you wouldn't object to people calling your position "racist" if it were a racial one. Another tip: "homophobic" in sociology doesn't mean "fear", just like "hydrophobic" in chemistry doesn't imply that the sodium is afraid, and "hemophiliac" in medicine doesn't mean people who get off on bleeding.

But when you decided you didn't like polite and reasoned disagreement and weren't interested in hearing things that weren't an ongoing self-pitying circle-jerk on the matter, I didn't particularly feel the need to keep being nice when talking *about* you. It's funny how that happens.

As it happens you didn't (successfully!) point out that I was wrong anywhere

I could go back and point out a half-dozen cases of you flatly ignoring what I said and saying unrelated things as if they were a rebuttal, but even leaving aside your complete inability to address an arguemnt:

#1: you are DEAD WRONG about the definition of "homophobia" - you simply don't understand the meaning of the word, and have demonstrated that you don't understand it, in your own words, repeatedly.

#2: your position is a homophobic position. Your reasoning for why it shouldn't be considered one is specious, inconsistent, unconvincing, and self-serving, in addition to being, uh, WRONG since you're basing your argument around an incorrect definition in the first place.

#3: You said that no Christian thinks the Bible was directly written by God. When I pointed out a great many Christians who do, you backpedaled, No True Scotsmanned... and then repeated the assertion and locked the thread.

That's three, right off the bat.

As it was you just kept trying to re-maneuver to reapply your original point without understanding why for the Christian your actual criticism didn't actually work.

See, this is one of those things I describe as "Evangelical subliteracy"

Let's summarise one more time:

Ladysisyphus: Here's a book recommendation!

You: This review says the author doesn't treat the Bible as the direct personal handiwork of God!

Her: Yes, but no serious scholar thinks God wrote it.

You: My copy is the same as the original!

Me: And? You're not disagreeing

You: She couldn't POSSIBLY have meant that, because no Christian anywhere ever believes that. That's only Muslims

Me: [a long list of Christians who believe exactly that, along with an attempt to distinguish between "written/dictated by God", "Sent by God through the medium of a man who would then write it exactly the way God wants it", and "written by a man using his own words about his experience of God, without God's intervention in the writing process". With the point being that all serious scholarship understands that it's THAT THIRD ONE, even though many many many Christians believe it's the second or the first.]

You: I make no distinction between the second and third cases, so all your examples of second-case individuals and sects are invalid! And I'm not going to listen to you any more because you keep disagreeing with me!

Me: You've made another mistake in there - you've conflated positions 2 and 3, and thus missed the point entirely. People REALLY DO believe that, and while they might be Doing It Wrong, this leads back to that other thread about people not actually reading, considering, or following the text. Oh wait I didn't say this because you cut off commenting.


The fact that your reading comprehension is sub-par and you aren't actually addressing what people are saying is not helped by your insistence on cutting them off when they say "no, no, really, here's what you're not understanding".

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to go through your continued mischaracterisations here of what I said or believe. You're free to think that's how things went if you like!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Discussion is HARD when you can't just automatically make a final statement and prevent further response, isn't it.

But hey! Now I've got YET ANOTHER case of you ignoring what's said because you don't like it. One might even see a pattern starting to form!