Where to draw the line between the right to say what we sincerely believe and the right of others not to be insulted, belittled, threatened? Where to draw the line on protecting those who post pseudonymously on the internet?
The Internet has created opportunity. The opportunity for those living under repressive regimes to communicate, to organise, to advertise the fact of their oppression internationally. But also the opportunity for oppressive regimes to trace and document this activity and track down dissidents. And the opportunity for groups with extreme views to advertise and organise racist rallies.
I’m conflicted. My conflict is between ensuring the right of anyone to speak their mind and the responsibility of owning up to those views.
Where to draw the line?
Homo sapiens: a species of wild violent apes, with a thin veneer of sociality.
Once people can be anonymous, they tend to lose that veneer of sociality. What keeps people behaving reasonably, are the social pressures. And too much anonymity removes those social controls. I base this on what I have seen on the net over several decades.
I fail to see much downside.
Can we Feature this thread?
So I thought that Rumraket’s insinuation that phodoo is a Jew was over the line.
And of course, when I dared him to back that up with evidence, that could be seen as racist.
Given the times that Patrick accused Salvador of being a child molester, isn’t it a bit late to be getting a conscience about what people write here?
Oh, and where was Elizabeth then? And the worries about the site hosting libelous comments.
Someone who influenced millions if not billions of people once said this:
“Treat others as you would want them to treat you.”
If that rule had been applied in Charlottesville, would we be talking today about the tragic events there?
Would we be reading the uncivilized, degrading comments here full of hate, prejudice, racism and unfounded accusations?
I intended this thread to be a venue mainly to address the issue of the conflict between unfettered free speech and racism. Events in Charlottesville, and reactions to them, and who is prepared to be counted in condemning Donald Trump’s stance are already being addressed in Tom’s thread so perhaps there’s redundancy and discussions might be better concentrated there.
Surely by these days Free Speech has been settled. in fact I understand its the agreed moral right and legal right.
YES one must submit to what people sincerely believe and so say.
Slander means the person was lying. Thats illegal.
Why do we have free speech?
We have it because we are free men and nobody tells us to be quiet or punishes us in our nations/homes.(if they do its oppresion)
Our free governments back up this.
Its settled!
Of coarse its not settled as over the centuries famous, or otherwise, cases prove it.
Everyone knows examples.
we do not have free speech in our parents home. rightly so!
therefore free speech is really just for important things in our societies/nations.
Otherwise society organizes speech pretty good.
Therefore we have to obey free speech, unless otherwise contract is made, but reject malice or obstruction to the purpose for speech.
Forums/blogs like this should ensure free speech for free conclusions/opinions/floating thoughts but not tolerate malice.
The bosses have the right to judge when malice has come.
I have never spoken malice on the internet because of my identity as a Evangelical Christian, and general good natured person(if I can say so).
I have gotten a lot of malice at me but its just silly and beneath me to feel the sting.
i use my real name as I’m proud of all i say .
i never put anyone on IGNORE.(how does that work anyways)
I never complain about other people or the bosses.
TSZ is very reasonable and I notice they put up with unreasonable people.
Mankind wants free speech for truth and good reasons.
So free speech must be obeyed but reject malice. mankind accepts censorship/punishment of malice.
Yup that means somebody is the JUDGE.
Yeah maybe send warnings before imprisonment etc etc.
Yeah its up to accusers to prove their case. Accusation is not indictment.
I give my support to TSZ to demand free speech and censor malice.
TSZ is the Judge.
Yes, many people go reckless when they perceive there is no responsibility enforced on them. However, this means they were not really humans to begin with. Real humans have rationality and morality regardless of social pressure.
And let’s be clear. This thread was apparently created because of the case with Byers, who seems to be speaking under his own full name openly, so his behavior is the same regardless of anonymity. Not that this makes it moral. It just means that anonymity and social pressures are not factors in his case. Maybe you have seen stuff on the net over several decades, but you have not been drawing the correct conclusions.
Free speech is not absolute, as we all know. Inciting violence against others is illegal. Anyone doing so can be charged. But I would be interested in what people here think about a hypothetical (although I suspect it will not be hypothetical).
There are plenty of videos of the neo-nazi’s KKK and other white supremacist nut-jobs protesting in Charlottesville. Let’s assume that the entire protest was peaceful as opposed to what we saw, but retaining all of the racist chants and symbols. Undoubtedly, many of these people’s employers also saw them on these videos. Do these employers have the right to fire any of their employees that they saw on these videos? Or are these people protected by free speech?
What the flying fuck are you talking about? I have never made any assumptions about or commented on anyone’s ethnicity and I don’t give a shit where they come from or anything along those lines.
Retract that fucking bullshit right now.
Pretty much, political views are not a protected class covered under the law. If you are a small company under fifteen employees many of those laws don’t apply.
Bite me. You tried to smear him by associating him with the practice of stoning, and for no reason whatsover than your own anti-religious bigotry. Own up to your comments or retract them.
That had nothing to do with anyone being jewish you gimp. I used the term abrahamic religion, as he’s clearly a believer in abrahamic religion.
And I didn’t try to “smear him” with anything. HE brought up the tendency for captive chimpanzees to throw feces, and I argued that this was basically an expression of the same behavior humans have where they throw objects at people and things they disapprove of and showed this same basic behavior even comes to expression in the abrahamic religions with the practice of stoning various offenders.
So retract the claim that I have somehow brought up anyone’s ethnicity (jewish or otherwise) as a smear or any kind of issue. I have not and you fucking know it.
Christianity is considered to be an Abrahamic religion that doesn’t call for stoning anyone. Who else does that leave? Do the math.
The old testament is part of the bible, isn’t it? And the bible is the primary christian holy scripture, isn’t it?
Here’s a nice article on the subject for you to peruse: What does the Bible say about stoning?
So the bible really does condone stoning. Christians (thankfully) today just make excuses for why it no longer applies.
Supposing that’s even true, that would still leave judaism AND islam. So nice own goal there buddy.
Look, your pet religion in all it’s preposterous copies, forebears and interpretations clearly calls for stoning of sinners of various transgressions. I recommend you just:
Burning at the stake no problem?
So you have something against Muslims too?
Now you’re getting it. You implied phoodoo was either Jewish or Muslim. Neither one makes you look good.
Did you read it? It is the Christians who were being stoned. Nice own goal, genius.
In several places by other christians, genious. I fucking quoted the whole thing stop bullshitting.
I see that the concept of granting an assumption for the sake of argument is lost on you.
I didn’t imply anything, I know for a fact he’s an adherent of one of the three abrahamic religions, but there was nothing in any of my posts that were an attempt to “smear” him with a religious identity as if that itself would diminish his worth as a person. And you fucking know it stop kidding around.
What you wanted to insinuate was that I’m some sort of antisemite. And now that you can’t because the facts don’t support that charge, you want to insinuate that I’m some sort of bigot who hates jews and muslims instead. Neither of which are true, and you know it.
And to be clear, I think all three religions are shit. Their teachings are false and they inspire people to do a lot of bad shit. Though ironically, judaism less than the other two.
But I didn’t actually argue that phoodoo is somehow a bad person simply because of his religious beliefs (nor do I think that). And you know it.
I merely pointed out that the primate tendency to throw objects at things they disapprove of also comes to expression in the abrahamic relgions. By showing phoodoo that despite his sense of great human superiority to the other primates, his very example of a primitive primate behavior (captive chimps throwing feces) comes to expression in his religion in the act of stoning sinners.
And who were casting the stones, first or otherwise?
I see nothing in what Rumraket wrote that could be reasonably interpreted as racially slurring phoodoo. If you want to continue arguing that point please do so in the dedicated thread.
I think what Mung is trying to say is that back in the old testament days before Jesus, there were no christians, they were all jews, so it was jews stoning jews in the old testament. Fair enough, that’s true. But the old testament is still part of the christian bible. Problem is there’s nowhere in the bible where the practice is repudiated other than in the example with Jesus, the traditionally required witnesses weren’t present. So it’s not that stoning is repudiated, it’s just that the conditions that would call for it aren’t met to Jesus’ apparent satisfaction in that purported situation.
Actually, there is. You finally made the correct connection between stoning and the Mosaic Law. Now all you have to do is make the disconnection between the Mosaic Law and Christianity. Go ahead, you can do it.
That should be your motto here Alan.
I find no social media censoring Islam or BDS, and I find them hateful. There’s lots of hate out there. I don’t know anyone I’d trust to censor it.
No commandments to worry about anymore? woohoo!!!
Mung, to Rumraket:
You mean this “disconnection”? Jesus said:
The Bible can be so inconvenient for Christians sometimes.
Oh do you?
Is this the same way you know other facts, by declaring them?
Poor keiths, as clueless as ever. Your cluelessness does not make the Bible inconvenient for anyone but you.
Jesus, in the verse I quoted:
Go ahead, Mung. Explain to us why Jesus is wrong about that, and you are right.
Poor keiths. Not only does he not understand the Bible, he doesn’t understand plain speech. I see little point in trying to reason with someone who fails at understanding even the simplest communication.
Does anyone know why I should try?
Either Jesus was wrong, or Mung is wrong. How utterly black and white. One might suspect a false dichotomy. Especially given it’s the keiths stock-in-trade.
You’re dodging, Mung.
Jesus says:
Yet you say it’s okay for Christians to do that. Exactly how can you and Jesus both be right?
I enjoy watching Christians fight the Bible, particularly when it’s Jesus’s own words they’re fighting.
Only in the irrational world of keiths does “anyone” mean any person at any time in any place, ever. Only in the hypercritical world of keiths does “anyone” never have a limited applicability. Such barriers to communication are far too often erected by keiths.
A word has one and only one meaning, and it just so happens that it’s the meaning that suits keiths, regardless of context or hermeneutics. You simply cannot reason with such a person.
Mung,
The straightforward interpretation is that Jesus meant “anyone”when he said “anyone”.
Let’s hear your argument for why that passage should be interpreted differently.
No, keiths, you have the burden of proof, not me.
You need to demonstrate that there is no possible alternative reading that makes sense in order for your false dichotomy to be an actual contradiction.
Your claim is that Jesus was right and I am wrong. You have to be right about that, not simply possibly right. You need to justify your interpretation. That your interpretation is one possible interpretation and that it may therefore be the correct interpretation just isn’t going to cut it.
The keiths interpretation would be any man, any where, at any time, ever.
ETA: And women are excluded, because it obviously says man and therefore can only mean a man.
Mung,
No, it isn’t.
However, you’re a Christian. If Jesus said
…and you want to argue that he didn’t really mean “anyone” when he. said “anyone”, then it’s up to you to support your odd interpretation. As a Christian, you can’t just toss Jesus’s words aside when he says says something you don’t like.
Deal with it.
Mung, who famously said “I don’t just read the Bible, I study it,” gets grumpy when someone out-Bibles him.
It must really chap his ass when that someone is an atheist
Mung knows that the bible can be interpreted any old way. So he can never lose when “interpreting” the bible.
Sure. I know plenty of decent theists. The reason phoodoo is a terrible person is not because he’s religious. If it was then there would be hope for him as many people see the light, eventually. But even if that were to happen it’d still be phoodoo the terrible person who is now an atheist.
And you have no evidence that I am doing so. You have only bare unsupported assertion. not only that, but I see you’ve been reduced to quote-mine the text in order to try to make it say what you want it to say. Naughty naughty.
Yes, keiths is a perfect example of it in practice.
No, my argument is that “anyone” has a range of meanings, and that you’ve cherry-picked the most ridiculous one. 🙂
My second rebuttal to your silly argument is that you’ve been reduced to quote-mining.
So your interpretation is absurd on its face.
Judaism doesn’t hold that everyone is subject to the Mosaic Law, so why does keiths think that Jesus made such a claim?
Did the church keiths attended growing up observe the Mosaic Law and did keiths ever question the pastor of his church about why they disagreed with Jesus?
I’m a preterist. The simple response to the keiths claim that Christians are still waiting until “everything is accomplished” is that we aren’t.
A little study on the part of keiths would have shown him why Christians don’t interpret the passage the way he does, but he’s not interested in that.
What does Mung’s preference for assless chaps have to do with this discussion? 🙂