Biology is what organic matter is made up, NOT what made the organic matter
Cosmology is the study of the cosmos NOT what made the cosmos
Genetics is what we’re made of. NOT what made us.
Statistics are prone to error and human made
Physics explain motion and such, NOT what created those molecules and movements
Geology does not disapprove Noah’s flood, in China there was a massive flood in the BC era. Geology studies the earth and rocks, NOT what created the earth and rocks
Neurology does not disapprove the soul as the soul is what makes you, you. It’s reincarnated and ever lasting.
Anthropology is the study of human movement throughout history, NOT what made those humans.
There are things we humans cannot explain, don’t just say “well science” science cannot explain everything. There is ZERO harm in believing in a God. So why not just do so?
“Theology is the study of superstitious myths associated with creator gods, NOT what made those gods.”
What, precisely made your god? This is the long-debunked Argument from First Cause. If your god doesn’t need to be created, why on Earth do you think everything else does? What you’re ascribing to an unproved “god” - whose properties you can’t even validate, let alone the specific attribute of “existent” - can be applied to a universe we know to be there just as easily and with an increase in intellectual fidelity. To claim an exemption to things needing creators would be the Special Pleading fallacy.
What existent materials did your god made everything out of? If the materials didn’t exist, then you’re describing “something from nothing.” If they did exist, then they always existed. Take your pick, because neither works out well for you.
Why is your god so incompetent that it would create humanity with so many biological flaws? And why is it so limited that it can only create life on the only planet in our solar system most likely for life to arise anyway? A truly powerful creator god could create life on Mercury or Pluto as easily as on Earth. Why is your god so weak as to require Easy Mode?
Making these assertions doesn’t prove any of them. It is upon you to demonstrate them, not for science - or me - to disprove what you have failed to prove. Prove your god. Prove it with evidence. Prove it without “faith” and without weak, fallacious, long-debunked apologetics.
For reference, that unfalsifiable proposals cannot be disproved also means they cannot be proved. Things when examined can either be evaluated to be true or not-true. So saying that “you can’t prove me wrong” simply says it cannot be evaluated at all, and is an indictment on your case.
There are things we humans cannot explain, don’t just say “well science” science cannot explain everything. There is ZERO harm in believing in a God. So why not just do so?
There is ZERO harm in believing an invisible unicorn lives in my garage. So why not just do so? When I ask for the city to make laws that will protect the feelings of my unicorn - he’s sensitive to loud sounds - then what could be the harm in that? The neighbors on opposite sides of my house disagree on whether my invisible unicorn is purple or pink, and have armed themselves over this argument. There’s ZERO harm in this. My sister brings her children over to absorb my unicorn’s aura, instead of taking them to the doctor. There’s ZERO harm in this.
Why not just believe in ghosts and goblins and fairies and Bigfoot and aliens and fairies and bunyips and banshees and a teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars? Why not believe everything you’re told until it’s disproved? Especially when you’re told that they’re they most existentially important things, such as the risk to your afterlife in Sto-vo-kor if you don’t follow the way of Kahless?
How about we give this a go. I’ll pick a thing, and you just believe it. There’s ZERO harm, so why not just do so?
Are you ready?
Um….. traffic light fairies! Go!
How’d that work out?
Because it’s intellectually lazy and dishonest? It explains literally nothing and prevents you looking for real answers. There are people who actually have the curiosity and persistence to spend their lives learning about the universe in a methodical, worthwhile way. “Goddunit” prevents any further investigation. There is nowhere to go.
Science is a method, not a “thing.” You don’t appear to understand this, and yet still benefit from all the technology, medicine, clean water, comfortable lifestyle with a life expectancy that has been doubled in the last few hundred years. It’s a rather arrogant hypocrisy to rail against the science that gives you the ability ignorantly rail against science on a worldwide stage.
Science is a process for allowing ideas to be proposed, but declined from being regarded as “true” until a rigorous process of hostile examination has tried to test and falsify (disprove) those ideas, demonstrate accurate explanatory and predictive power (i.e. they actually explain something), eliminate subjective biases and bad reasoning, and even then hold them provisionally true, in case they might be subsumed into a larger idea, or a later falsification arises. Which part of this rigorous desire for truth do you find unacceptable?
You cannot claim to solve a mystery by invoking an even greater mystery. You haven’t solved or explained anything.
Lightning could not be explained. Now we can, and it wasn’t your god. Earthquakes could not be explained. Now we can, and it wasn’t your god. Every time we figure something out, it wasn’t your god. You’re backing the losing horse here.
This is nothing but the Argument from Ignorance, the very worst of bad, fallacious reasons to believe anything.
Your god does not win just because you’re incurious, because you don’t understand science.
The existence of your god is upon you to prove, not simply assert that science doesn’t have perfect answers and perfect evidence. Especially when your “solution” provides no answers, and is offered with no evidence at all.
Isn’t “because it hasn’t been shown to be true” not enough? Seriously, why is it that being actually true is not a higher priority?
Does it even matter which god? Ra? Quetzalcoatl? Kahless? Are the results in any way distinguishable? Doesn’t every religion claim to be the Truth™ and get results bestowed upon them by their respective god(s)?
No harm, eh? Belief in a god has death toll. Of course there’s no harm, if you can’t value human life.
O Ye who believe! Enter not the dwellings of the Prophet for a meal without waiting for the proper time, unless permission be granted you. But if ye are invited, enter, and, when your meal is ended, then disperse. Linger not for conversation. Lo! that would cause annoyance to the Prophet, and he would be shy of (asking) you (to go); but Allah is not shy of the truth. And when ye ask of them (the wives of the Prophet) anything, ask it of them from behind a curtain. That is purer for your hearts and for their hearts. And it is not for you to cause annoyance to the messenger of Allah, nor that ye should ever marry his wives after him. Lo! that in Allah’s sight would be an enormity.
I of all the people know best this verse of Al-Hijab. When Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) married Zainab bint Jahsh she was with him in the house and he prepared a meal and invited the people (to it). They sat down (after finishing their meal) and started chatting. So the Prophet (ﷺ) went out and then returned several times while they were still sitting and talking. So Allah revealed the Verse: ‘O you who believe! Enter not the Prophet’s houses until leave is given to you for a meal, (and then) not (so early as) to wait for its preparation…..ask them from behind a screen.’ (33.53) So the screen was set up and the people went away.
“Whenever the Prophet (ﷺ) passed by (my mother Um-Sulaim) he used to enter her and greet her. Anas further said: Once the Prophet (ﷺ) way a bridegroom during his marriage with Zainab, Um Sulaim said to me, "Let us give a gift to Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ).” I said to her, “Do it.” So she prepared Haisa (a sweet dish) made from dates, butter and dried yoghurt and she sent it with me to him. I took it to him and he said, “Put it down,” and ordered me to call some men whom he named, and to invite whomever I would meet. I did what he ordered me to do, and when I returned, I found the house crowded with people and saw the Prophet (ﷺ) keeping his hand over the Haisa and saying over it whatever Allah wished (him to say). Then he called the men in batches of ten to eat of it, and he said to them, “Mention the Name of Allah, and each man should eat of the dish the nearest to him.” When all of them had finished their meals, some of them left and a few remained there talking, over which I felt unhappy. Then the Prophet (ﷺ) went out towards the dwelling places (of his wives) and I too, went out after him and told him that those people had left. Then he returned and entered his dwelling place and let the curtains fall while I was in (his) dwelling place, and he was reciting the Verses:– 'O you who believe! Enter not the Prophet’s house until leave is given you for a meal, (and then) not (as early as) to what for its preparation. But when you are invited, enter, and when you have taken your meals, disperse without sitting for a talk. Verily such (behavior) annoys the Prophet; and he would be shy of (asking) you (to go), but Allah is not shy of (telling you) the Truth.’ (33-53) Abu Uthman said: Anas said, “I served the Prophet for ten years.”
This embarrassing story is repeated at least another four times in the sahih hadith.
Muhammad was annoyed that guests arrived too soon before the meal and stayed too long after, and got jealous when they talked to his wives, but had trapped himself in his own pretentious prophet bullshit, barely concealing the fact he was a small, petty man. So, “Allah” obediently solved the problem by telling people to eat and get out.
It’s also referred to as “The Verse of the Veil”; in that sense it refers to the curtain or screen that separates the wives from those who aren’t mahram - men they’re not related to - in order to alleviate Muhammad’s crippling insecurity and jealousy. As a result of this, devout Muslim households are typically also set up to separate women from any men who are not mahram.
For the same reason of his petty jealousy, no one is ever allowed to marry them after him. Probably not an altogether bad thing; one imagines after he finally met his maker (the one he made) they’d probably much rather be with each other.
Muslims are obligated to conclude that it’s more likely that this ayah existed in the eternal, uncreated word of the creator of the entire universe, before the universe and time itself, and was revealed just after Muhammad had needed it, than that Muhammad was solving his domestic issues with his Allah sock-puppet.
It was narrated from Mu'awiyah bin Jahimah As-Sulami, that Jahimah came to the Prophet (ﷺ) and said:
“O Messenger of Allah! I want to go out and fight (in Jihad) and I have come to ask your advice.” He said: “Do you have a mother?” He said: “Yes.” He said: “Then stay with her, for Paradise is beneath her feet.”
I was just saying this recently. In a very religious household, while the father may be physically threatening, the mother is often even worse. Because her coercion will be psychological: guilt, shaming, threatening with Jahannam (hell), threatening with shunning or disownment, putting the status and reputation of the family onto the children (”what will others think?”), and based on the hadith above, the notion that it is the mother who will decide if they get into Jannah (heaven) or not.
There’s even a popular hadith - which is acknowledged to be fabricated, but that doesn’t stop people repeating it - often used to coerce girls into hijab, It says that women who don’t hijab will end up in hell, hung by their hair, with their brains boiling.
Physical abuse you can escape and leave behind. But emotional abuse stays with you longer. The betrayal by a mother, particularly of her daughter, cuts particularly deeply.
The future for an Islam-free world resides with the ex-Muslims showing the way out of it, and particularly the ex-Muslim mothers who won’t betray their sons and daughters.
“All of Christianity is a lie. Its whole purpose was to control the weak, ignorant masses.
The Bible was paid for by Constantine to keep early Christians from starting wars in his kingdom at that time.
Everything you think is true about God was decided at the Council of Nicaea.”
– Isaam G
“Emperor Constantine, who was the Roman emperor from 306 CE until his death in 337 CE, used what motivates many to action - money!
He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. He did that to stop all the different crazy Christian sects from tearing apart his kingdom.
The point is that the Cible came into being solely through human methods and nothing divine. The creation of the Bible was a purely political move.”
Regarding the Statement of Allah" “And We granted the vision (Ascension to the heavens) which We made you see (as an actual eye witness) was only made as a trial for the people.” (17.60) Ibn `Abbas added: The sights which Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) was shown on the Night Journey when he was taken to Bait-ulMaqdis (i.e. Jerusalem) were actual sights, (not dreams). And the Cursed Tree (mentioned) in the Qur'an is the tree of Zaqqum (itself).
Malik bin Sasaa said that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) described to them his Night Journey saying, “While I was lying in Al-Hatim or Al-Hijr, suddenly someone came to me and cut my body open from here to here.” I asked Al-Jarud who was by my side, “What does he mean?” He said, “It means from his throat to his pubic area,” or said, “From the top of the chest.” The Prophet (ﷺ) further said, “He then took out my heart. Then a gold tray of Belief was brought to me and my heart was washed and was filled (with Belief) and then returned to its original place. Then a white animal which was smaller than a mule and bigger than a donkey was brought to me.” (On this Al-Jarud asked, “Was it the Buraq, O Abu Hamza?” I (i.e. Anas) replied in the affirmative). The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “The animal’s step (was so wide that it) reached the farthest point within the reach of the animal’s sight. I was carried on it, and Gabriel set out with me till we reached the nearest heaven. When he asked for the gate to be opened, it was asked, ‘Who is it?’ Gabriel answered, 'Gabriel.’ It was asked, 'Who is accompanying you?’ Gabriel replied, 'Muhammad.’ It was asked, 'Has Muhammad been called?’ Gabriel replied in the affirmative. Then it was said, 'He is welcomed. What an excellent visit his is!’
We know Xianity is false because Jesus prophesied that he would return within the lifetime of his then present-day followers to bring Judgment Day, the end of the world, to which Xians eagerly look forward, to this day.
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.
But some of the desert Arabs believe in Allah and the Last Day, and look on their payments as pious gifts bringing them nearer to Allah and obtaining the prayers of the Messenger. Aye, indeed they bring them nearer (to Him): soon will Allah admit them to His Mercy: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
No One knows when the Day of Resurrection will come except Allah
Here Allah tells His Messenger that he cannot know when the Hour will come, and if people ask him about that, He instructs him to refer the matter to Allah, may He be exalted, as Allah says in Surat Al-A`raf, even though that was revealed in Makkah and this Surah was revealed in Al-Madinah. Allah continues to tell him to refer this matter to the One Who knows about it, but He tells him that it is at hand, as He says:
(What do you know It may be that the Hour is near!) This is like the Ayat:
(The Hour has drawn near, and the moon has been cleft asunder.) 54:1
This hadith has been reported by Sahl b. Sa’d that he heard Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:
I and the Last Hour are (close to each other) like this (and he, in order to explain it) pointed (by joining his) forefinger, (one) next to the thumb and the middle finger (together).
Anas b. Malik reported that Allah’s Messenger (way peace be upon him) said:
I and the Last Hour have been sent like this. Shu'ba said: I heard Qatada as saying in his narration: The excellence of one over the other. And I do not know whether he narrated it from Anas or Qatada himself said so.
I heard Qatada and Abu Tayyab narrating that both of them heard Anas as narrating that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said: I and the Last Hour have been sent like this, and Shu'ba drew his forefinger and middle finger near each other while narrating it.
‘A'isha reported that when the desert Arabs came to Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) they asked about the Last Hour as to when that would come. And he looked towards the youngest amongst them and said:
If he lives he would not grow very old that he would find your Last Hour coming to you (he would see you dying).
Anas reported that a person asked Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) as to when the Last Hour would come. He had in his presence a young boy of the Ansar who was called Muhammad. Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said:
If this young boy lives, he may not grow very old till (he would see) the Last Hour coming to you.
Anas b. Malik reported that a person asked Allah’s Apostle (ﷺ):
When would the Last Hour come? Thereupon Allah’s Messenger (way peace be upon him) kept quiet for a while. Then looked at a young boy in his presence belonging to the tribe of Azd Shanu'a and he said: If this boy lives he would not grow very old till the Last Hour would come to you. Anas said that this young boy was of our age during those days.
A young boy of Mughira b. Shu'ba happened to pass by (the Holy Prophet) and he was of my age. Thereupon Allah’s Apostle (ﷺ) said: If he lives long he would not grow very old till the Last Hour would come (to the old people of this generation).
That young boy is long dead.
Muhammad was also a false prophet, therefore Islam is alsofalse.
The “truth” of the bible could have been so easily proven by simply describing a South American capybara or an Australian kangaroo.
Instead, we get a book of nonsense that reflects the primitive superstitions and concerns of the people of the time, such as demons in pigs, and how much to sell your daughter into slavery.
There aren’t even any dates, and most people are unnamed.
Okay I was with you till the last line.
Have you *read* the bible??? The old testament is a helluva lot of just lists of names.
Like page after page of who begat whom
Like….generation after generation of just names.
The names are an integral part of it.
Name Lot’s wife. Name his daughters (this one is possible, but not using the Xianbible).
Name the boys who were killed by the bears.
Name Jephthah’s daughter.
Name the man who was killed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Name anyone from that story other than Moses.
Name the man who offered up his concubine to be raped and then cut her up into pieces. Hell, name anyone from that story.
Solomon had 700 wives. Name two or more.
Name anyone from Samson’s storyline other than Samson and Delilah.
Name the woman Jesus called a “dog.”
Name one person from the 500 witnesses of Jesus’ return.
The bible goes into specific detail about what these people did and said. Yet can’t name any of them.
The bagats are boring but irrelevant, because very many of them are named only in the begats and never do anything or do very little outside or all the begetting. But almost nobody outside of the begat family line is named.
Re-read your bible and take a drink any time someone is mentioned without being named.
But first, put the poisons control hotline on speed-dial.
Name all the characters at Hogwarts or all the background characters in Titanic
Not every character in a story has to be named.
Correct. And that’s exactly the point.
If Harry Potter was a historical record, we would know the names of everyone who attended the school. We would have enrolment records, class lists, staff records, student reports, etc. Especially if we know precisely where they went and what they said.
The bible is not a historical record. It doesn’t contain factual information about the real world. Like Harry Potter, it’s a story people made up, set in a fictional universe, and never bothered to name even the secondary characters, much less the background characters.
And it reads exactly as such.
And we know from the Titanic’s records exactly who traveled on it, who survived and who did not. Which is why - other than the fact they tell us up front - we know the framing story of Jack and Rose in the movie is fiction. We know, for example, that the character of Jack Dawson was loosely based on someone who did survive named Jack Thayer. So, again, my point.
If the bible is a book of history, then it has failed to provide the, y’know, history.
The “truth” of the bible could have been so easily proven by simply describing a South American capybara or an Australian kangaroo.
Instead, we get a book of nonsense that reflects the primitive superstitions and concerns of the people of the time, such as demons in pigs, and how much to sell your daughter into slavery.
There aren’t even any dates, and most people are unnamed.
Has it really come to this? That mental health and personal resilience, and notendorsing imaginary helplessness, “oppression,” and victimhood, particularly among the most privileged, most entitled people in the safest, freest, most prosperous countries in the world - and worst of all, actually saying, *gasp*, the truth - are now “Republican” qualities?
If hearing the truth triggers or offends you, the problem is you, not the truth.
“If your personal beliefs deny what’s objectively true about the world, then they’re more accurately called personal delusions.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
–- Carl Sagan
“If you are emotionally attached to your tribe, religion or political leaning to the poi that truth and justice become secondary considerations, your education is useless. Your exposure is useless. If you cannot reason beyond petty sentiments, you are a liability to mankind.“
– Dr. Chuba Okadigbo
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
– George Orwell
If I don’t tiptoe around the delicate feelings of the traditionally religious, why would I tiptoe around yours? You’re not on the side you think you are.
“Faith triumphs over facts.”
– Church sign.
“I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.’
–Elder Boyd K. Packer, Mormon Elder.
Thank you for proving the point of the meme. And reinforcing why I regard myself as politically homeless.
And maybe take the opportunity to look at a world globe some time.
What if people are emotionally sensitive because they’re overtaxed?
We’re fed a lot more emotional information than we’re practically prepared to process well.
Oversensitivity might result. Like exhaustion from overstimulation.
In a way, you’re correct. Someone who is overweight, has poor fitness, etc will be “over-taxed” simply walking up a flight of stairs. The problem isn’t the stairs, it’s the physical fitness of the person.
The same is true of emotional resilience.
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and describes the phenomenon.
According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.
But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.
There is no resilience to challenge or to hearing things that are true that are uncomfortable. We have an entire culture of “micro-aggressions” and “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” built up around validating and reinforcing the fragility of people, particularly college-age. In a way their parents did not. Students are actively protesting against free speech, while their grandparents protested forit.
Which is to say that they don’t understand to point of freedom of speech at all.
We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had “felt overwhelming anxiety” in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good.
Greg Lukianoff, co-author of the Coddling article and subsequent book, runs FIRE - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and he has described it like a switch that was suddenly turned on in the 2013-2014 timeframe where everything suddenly changed, where the nature of the cases and complaints they dealt with changed, and students were suddenly describing things they didn’t like in terms of “harm” or “danger” and demanding speech codes, safe spaces, and other protections from reality.
Christina Hoff Sommers talks about a lecture she gave where fainting-couch feminists fled to a “safe space” with bubbles and coloring books, rather than engaging with her in an intellectual discussion. This is completely new, bizarre behavior compared to the prior decades she’s spend lecturing and presenting.
Haidt and Lukianoff argue that these people been protected from danger - don’t go out into the world on your own, stranger danger!, etc - which makes it more difficult to build resilience (Seerut Chawla likens it to a muscle). Because in order to learn to walk, you have to fall over.
Childhood itself has changed greatly during the past generation. Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers can remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unchaperoned by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to occupy themselves, getting into minor scrapes and learning from their experiences. But “free range” childhood became less common in the 1980s. The surge in crime from the ’60s through the early ’90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than their own parents had been. Stories of abducted children appeared more frequently in the news, and in 1984, images of them began showing up on milk cartons. In response, many parents pulled in the reins and worked harder to keep their children safe.
The flight to safety also happened at school. Dangerous play structures were removed from playgrounds; peanut butter was banned from student lunches. After the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, many schools cracked down on bullying, implementing “zero tolerance” policies. In a variety of ways, children born after 1980—the Millennials—got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.
And that they’ve also been taught the “three great untruths”:
Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
Untruth of Us vs Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
These are three of the exact cognitive biases that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is intended to help you un-learn. Specifically because they’re unhealthy. But these are the modern-day “virtues.”
So, yes, they may well be “over-taxed” but not for the reasons you’re suggesting. And it can hardly be blamed on simply saying things that are true, much less an excuse for denying them or claiming they cause “harm” or “hurt.”
Instead it can be blamed on their emotional resilience, the weakness of their emotional “muscle.”
Think of resilience like a muscle. It’s *meant* to be used.
If instead of using & strengthening your muscles you were very carefully carried around all the time- they will atrophy.
The good news is: like your muscles, resilience can be developed.
The idea that we should change the world to accommodate those with low emotional stamina is like saying we should flatten out San Francisco in order to accommodate those whose walking muscles have atrophied. It’s unreasonable and unrealistic, and functions as little more than a plausible deniability excuse. It means it’s always the world’s fault, and never the responsibility of the individual. “It’s the world’s fault I can’t walk around San Francisco, not my fault for not exercising.”
Suggesting that we should protect people from ideas they find uncomfortable or offensive, especially true ones, is the same as suggesting that they remain mentally unhealthy and incapacitated. That they’re correct to feel that helpless and frightened.
The world is a safer place now, particularly in first world countries, than it has ever been. Violent crime is down, standard of living is up, poverty has never been lower. And yet, everything, even this meme, is a drama. And no, it’s not simply drama and “emotional information” being fed. It’s being created by the same people.
And, my point remains. None of my readers expect me to tiptoe around the fragile feelings of believers, to back away from telling them the truth just because they find it uncomfortable or offensive. They cheer me when I don’t.
Why would anyone expect the opposite when it comes to the fragile feelings of others in non-religious matters, simply because they find it uncomfortable or offensive to be told the truth?
Is it just the public spectacle of “the people I don’t like”?
Why would anyone want to read someone who was so lacking in integrity that they’d be that inconsistent and hypocritical? Don’t you already have CNN and Fox News for that?
Has it really come to this? That mental health and personal resilience, and notendorsing imaginary helplessness, “oppression,” and victimhood, particularly among the most privileged, most entitled people in the safest, freest, most prosperous countries in the world - and worst of all, actually saying, *gasp*, the truth - are now “Republican” qualities?
If hearing the truth triggers or offends you, the problem is you, not the truth.
“If your personal beliefs deny what’s objectively true about the world, then they’re more accurately called personal delusions.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
–- Carl Sagan
“If you are emotionally attached to your tribe, religion or political leaning to the poi that truth and justice become secondary considerations, your education is useless. Your exposure is useless. If you cannot reason beyond petty sentiments, you are a liability to mankind.“
– Dr. Chuba Okadigbo
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
– George Orwell
If I don’t tiptoe around the delicate feelings of the traditionally religious, why would I tiptoe around yours? You’re not on the side you think you are.
“Faith triumphs over facts.”
– Church sign.
"I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.’
–Elder Boyd K. Packer, Mormon Elder.
Thank you for proving the point of the meme. And reinforcing why I regard myself as politically homeless.
And maybe take the opportunity to look at a world globe some time.
