At 12:35 PM 7/24/2005, I wrote:
> >Maybe some people feel personally attacked when religion is attacked
> >(as with "f*ck god")?
Kelley:
> Is there some reason that should be viewed as an attack?...
some people are insecurte.
> Is there some reason anyone has to respect religion -in the LBO space that
> is? I don't have to respect people who are libertarians or anarchists or
> conspiracy theorists and treat their views as something that's off limits
> from ridicule, criticism, attack, critical engagement.... I can say, "Fuck
> rightwing nuts" ...
I think a lot of religious folks like feeling like victims, so that _for them_ attacking religion is attacking them. (I wasn't saying I agree with them. I don't.)
Michael Pollak: >... You don't have to attack religious people personally to make them feel attacked. You can achieve that by attacking religion harshly in the abstract...<
right.
>I can't help thinking that some people get a real rise out of
denouncing religion in much the same way and for much the same reasons
as fundamentalists take pleasure in denouncing the godless: because it
feels like action, and it because fires up the cockles of their faith.
And they don't want to give it up. It's important to their sense of who they are. And this refusal to give up their pleasure they call principle.
>It doesn't take that much to phrase our criticisms of beliefs with
which we disagree in such a way as to acknowledge that the people who
hold them have feelings and intelligence, and feel the same way about
having their beliefs spat on as any of us do. They take it
personally. <
so, it's like how I feel when people attack, say, socialism, in the abstract?
>It may not be as much fun as giving our aggressive impulses free rein. But
that's what civilization is all about.<
the current civilization is all f*ktup. But maybe sometime we'll have a real civilization, in the good sense of the word.
-- Jim Devine "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" -- Richard Feynman