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I had quite the throwback culture war experience this past weekend. While at a family gathering, my dad was cornered by an in-law and quizzed about my “agnosticism”.
He was asked if he had led me to this lack of faith, and was then informed that it’s the patriarch’s responsibility to “get his family into heaven” – a neat little double-duty insult of both himself and me.
I tend to be a very laid-back guy in meatspace, but found myself livid. I’ve been in this family for close to a decade, and the sheer cowardice and arrogance of this exchange was breathtaking. To circle around to one of my direct family members instead of having the cajones to challenge me directly was ridiculous (and in hindsight, what I should have really expected from these people).
We’ve been existing in what I thought was a reasonable detente. As a victorious participant in the Atheism culture war, I’ve been kinda-sorta prepared to have these skirmishes with my wife’s catholic family for a long time. The unspoken agreement was that I go to church for holidays, let you splash water on my children, and don’t bring up anyone’s hypocrisy/the church’s corruption, rampant pedophilia/the inherent idiocy in believing in god.
In exchange, I get to stay balls deep in my excellent wife and should be left alone.
I’ll be the first to admit the excesses of Atheism’s victory laps and see how “live and let live” can slide down the slope into a children’s drag show. But this indirect exchange reminded me that when the culture war pendulum swings back, I should be prepared for the petty tyrants and fools on the religious right to reassert themselves. We’re already starting to see the tendrils of this, even if some of their forces have been replaced with rainbow-skinsuit churches across the US.
For Christian motteziens - No disrespect intended. I'm aware of the hypocrisy of my arrogance in this post, and it's intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek
This post is an interesting little mirror to this sub's CW leanings. Imagine if the positions were reversed with a left-leaning interlocutor instead of a right-leaning one. Say you told a story where they were making snide passive-aggressive remarks implying you were racist. The response you would have gotten would almost certainly be cheering alongside you. I highly doubt they would be as unanimous in their scorn, claiming this post breaks rules, that your previous compromises means you somehow deserve this, or that snide remark essentially saying "we're not your therapist, bro".
The fact that Christianity's cultural side is inextricably linked to the superstitious side is clearly causing some amount of cognitive dissonance. But instead of resolving it (either by severing the two sides, or by rejecting Christianity entirely if doing so is infeasible), this sub... tries to ignore it as much as possible. This sub pretends it doesn't exist, and then gets really conspicuously oversensitive whenever someone reminds them of it.
Well, now and then it comes up, but we have actually managed a detente here that the outside world has not: the atheists won't sneer at the Christians, and the Christians won't wag their fingers about Jesus and hell. (When that detente gets broken, as happened recently, you are likely to get modded.) Nobody wants this place to become either a platform for evangelizing or /r/atheism.
That Christianity gets treated with the kid gloves here is a blatant double-standard. The modding happens because the Christians don't even bother trying to defend their superstitions since they know they'll get trounced, so instead they fight with oversensitive interpretations of the rules (declaring anodyne statements to be "unnecessarily antagonistic", "bad faith", stuff like that).
This forum should be open grounds to challenge any view.
When you try to claim that Christianity gets treated with kid gloves, you get bland shoulder shrugs and some upvotes. When you point out that actually, it's atheism that is treated with kid gloves, you get banned. The modding happens because atheists don't even bother trying to defend their absolute bollocks metaphysics since they know they'll get trounced, so instead they fight with oversensitive interpretations of the rules (declaring that actually responding to people's questions is "obnoxious" and "unnecessarily antagonistic").
If anything in this forum is 'sacred' in the language of Robin Hanson, it is atheism. It shall not mix with the profane things, like arguments about the culture war.
Right there in the link that you helpfully provided is the reason why you were banned, along with proof that what I accused you of doing when I banned you was correct. So you know perfectly well that the reason why you were banned is not what you're claiming.
"Pointing out that actually, it's atheism that is treated with kid gloves" is not something you get banned for. Antagonism, disingenuously rewording someone else's post without being open about what you're doing, and posting in blatant bad faith (or, not to put too fine a point on it, lying about why you were banned), on the other hand...
I suspect you posted this message just so you could get banned and add that to your list of injustices. You've been more or less well-behaved since that last ban, and you've posted a few AAQCs, which suggests maybe I should cut you some slack, despite my reflex to just give you what you want. But if you're really looking for another ban to whine about, do this again.
I have been around long enough to know that 95% of the time, "It's holistic," means, "It's bullshit." Interestingly, I've even seen this attempted in peer review. Thankfully, the Editor in Chief didn't buy it and told the academic janny to do a better job. He needed something real, specific, and actionable.
You wrote:
Point me to one. Make it something specific. Something real. Something actionable. Something that can actually be put into practice to improve future posting. Without something, the most likely conclusion is, "Atheism is the sacred at The Motte."
Notice that last time, your complaint was that I didn't make it obvious enough that I was riffing off something. [EDIT for appropriate bold:] This time, that is exceedingly obvious. Last time, you complained about me responding to follow-on questions. This time, I have said nothing else up to this point. Give me something real. Something actual. Something actionable.
This is neither a court of law nor an academic journal, and we're not relitigating your last ban. You can conclude whatsoever you please; people claim lots of things.
I asked about this time. But just like when you mod comments, you sometimes make notes about how there is parsimony with prior comments by the offender... when we "litigate" this modding, it would be helpful if the mod comments are parsimonious with prior mod comments.
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