Some poeple scare me

I shouldn't be blogging at work, but this is fairly major.

Paul, the guy who provided the excellent critique of the "conscience comes first" argument, is more extreme than I thought. I knew he had a very strong opinion against abortion (if you're pro-life, it's hard not to). I tried to explain the pro choice position as calmly as I could. He called me an animal, a hypocrite and a murderer, but I let it pass, because I wanted to demonstrate that I am a fundamentally reasonable person, and that a lot of the stereotypes he seemed to hold about pro-choice people were not correct.

Here's a link to his site, but I'm removing all direct links to posts on his site, because... well, today, he posted this (I've posted the full blog entry he made, current as of 3:45 PM local time on the 18th, so I can't be accused of taking things out of context. But it is rather long, sorry...):

Liberals are bastards. Every damned one of them.

They are despicable, dishonest, hypocritical scum. They kill babies, even after birth, and by the millions before birth, and celebrate it as a right.

There are no depths to which they will not sink to gain power. They are whores and pimps, liars and thieves. They care for nothing but their own pleasure and their own power.

They care nothing for the rule of law, nor for the innocents they hurt.

People who celebrate the killing of babies will do anything. They are beneath contempt:

They'll even break into private email accounts and publicize what they find:

Sometime early this morning, between approximately 3:00am - 4:00am, members of an infamous group of hackers broke into Gov. Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account. The incriminating discussion threads included screenshots of Palin’s e-mail and private e-mail addresses of her contacts. The threads have since been deleted.

Hacking e-mail is a federal crime. A TV anchor who broke into his colleague’s e-mail account recently pleaded guilty and faces a maximum five years in prison.

The law will catch up to the hackers, but what about the lowlifes who are now gleefully splashing the alleged contents of Palin’s private e-mail account all over the Internet?

The Gawker smear machine — see here for all the background you need — has posted private family photos of Palin’s children that were apparently stolen from the e-mail account.

They have used Bristol Palin’s illegally obtained private cell phone number from her mom’s private account, recorded her voicemail message, and posted it on their website.

They have reprinted her husband Todd’s private e-mail address and son Track’s private e-mail address.

You think this is just a harmless prank? Those of you who have had to deal with break-ins and identity theft know exactly what a burdensome process it is to recover from crimes like this.

Gawker knowingly and deliberately published illegally obtained photos of the Palin children.

Where are the privacy absolutists now?

You think Palin Derangement Syndrome is bad now? These by-any-means-necessary lunatics are just warming up.
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Bastards. Bastards all.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "silence is the truest herald of rage, I should be but little angry if I could say how much."

The culture war is a real war. Like the war against Islamic terrorism, we didn't choose this war, our enemies declared it on us, without provocation or warning, and they are implacable and merciless.

Over at DailyKos, diarists and commenters are delighted:

When Sarah Palin and McCain decided to run on a platform that splits America between the "elites" and the rest of decent America, the gauntlet was thrown down - and it looks like some techie - most likely an urban one, broke into her email account at Yahoo. The account was deleted - which could get interesting if there were emails relating to one of her numerous scandals, but there are screen shots out there to gaze upon...

I have no pity for this woman - I hope she's destroyed by the media she first disdained and then hid from. McCain is playing a nasty game, aiming to rip this nation into red and blue in an effort to get his chance at the wheel. There was a time I respected him - but that was a long time ago...

Another commenter had this to say

maybe this is the excuse they'll use to drop her. they arent smart but they are sneaky.

Athough this commenter seems to have a clue:

This isn't the gov.sarah account she used for government business, this appears to be a different account. gov.palin, and it appears it was just her personal e-mail account for private purposes, so really there's nothing to talk about, and an invasion of privacy.

It is legit, it was hacked, but it is her personal e-mail, nothing to do with politics, and is only gonna get democrats in trouble if they jump on it.

But here's another despicable hacking fan:

Exactly this hack may make a lost of pols re-think this shit. Sorry times are too tough, and Palin/Cheney's view of gov. is too extreme to play by the rules. I suspect Palin was targeted bc of how she harasses bloggers in Alaska. She's a scary vindictive, dictatorial woman.

This one is "not sure he approves", but after all, she really deserved what she got.

Hackers can do amazing things. I'm not sure if I approve of this intentional invasion of her personal email account. That being said, she did leave herself open for this by using the account for official business. Doesn't make the hacking right, but it could have been avoided

If Palin had been raped in the street, these sub-humans would have been there cheering. And joining in.

Southern Appeal comments.

Wired has more coverage. Notice the quality of the comments there, as well.

This is a war, and it has no limits. Liberals target children, they care nothing for laws, for decency, or for civilization. They lie, they undermine the institutions of our nation and our culture, and they want to indocrinate our children. They deserve nothing but contempt. Their homes should be sprayed with toxic chemicals just as we do to mosquitoes. We should make no distinction between the worst of them and those who share their political platform. They all have fleas.

This is the last straw.

UPDATE: RedState comments:

this angered me, until one of my fellow Contributors reminded me of a little, small, surely insignificant detail that apparently everyone involved with hacking the account, publishing the hack, and favorably publicizing the hack seem to have forgotten. Sarah Palin is now under the protection of the United States Secret Service, which means that they are going to very interested in this attack.

Let me put this succinctly: everybody who had a hand in this is [expletive deleted]ed.

Have a nice day!

Which might be the opposite reaction to mine. Or at least 90 degrees off from mine.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin has more details on how it happened, including a confession from the guy who did it!

And The Atlantic's pride and joy, the increasingly despicable Andrew Sullivan, America's foremost sodomite, approves. He appears to think this a normal and appropriate part of the political process.

I agree that it's wrong to hack into someone's computer and steal personal records, but... What scares me is this:

They deserve nothing but contempt. Their homes should be sprayed with toxic chemicals just as we do to mosquitoes. We should make no distinction between the worst of them and those who share their political platform.

And I'm a liberal. And I've just spent several days speaking that viewpoint on a site where (the comments on the above post indicate) people agree with him that liberals should be killed. And the post immediately before this one had several paragraphs discussing me, specifically.

This is why abortion is tough to talk about. Because people are scared for their own safety. And I'm sorry to say, now I am too. So, no direct links to this guy's site (because the backlink feature will lead people to me who might do more than threaten), and no more conversation over there.

I had actually gotten into quite an in-depth conversation with the co-owner of the blog (screen name Paladin), and ending that mid-way through makes me sad. But I will not participate in a site where someone is encouraging people to kill me.

I don't know how much anyone can influence this guy, but I hope that some people (particularly pro-life Catholics, who he might listen to more) will join me in expressing to him the fact that encouraging people to kill each other is a bad idea.

Clarifying my position on millitancy

I'm a middle-ground kind of guy. So when I see people in attack mode, my first response is to say "Now let's just calm down" or something similar. It doesn't make sense to me for people to be angry or frustrated with one another. I think generally it's my responsibility as an adult to exercise some self-control, rather than taking things out on other people. And I think if you put up with a little bit of flak from other people when they're frustrated, and respond calmly, you're a lot more likely to get listened to.

So the fact that I immediately had people go on the offensive on the Why Won't God Heal Amputees site put me off. I didn't get it. If you're trying to make a case for something, why immediately put the person you're talking to on the defensive? Why not assume they're a human being, like you, and accept that reasonable people can reach different conclusions legitimately? It seemed to me that not doing so was silly. It just didn't make sense.

But here's the thing - usually, when you can put yourself in other people's shoes, and see the world as they see it, their behaviour becomes a lot more understandable. I didn't see how it was possible that what I was reading could at first. But if you've already tried to talk to the people around you, and been told you're going to hell for thinking what you think, and if that's consistently happened for a while, from most or all of the people you talk to, then talking reasonably starts to make less sense.

Myself, I've lost a good friend because he decided that since I didn't believe in God the way he did, he couldn't be around me any more (although he would give up his "violent" Spider-Man comic books "when he had the strength"). Because he wanted to deepen his faith, he cut me off. And so, since I believe it's always important to try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, I thought about what it would be like if it wasn't just one good friend, but my family, and my community that I got cut off from. And if most of the people around me believed some really extreme form of religion, like I only see on TV, so instead of just being cut off from people I cared about I was also genuinely scared of how they might react. And if at first (because many of these people had been Christians at one point) I had believed the same things as those around me, so when I gave up that I didn't know what else there was to believe. When I looked at it that way, the way they were acting made sense. Objecting to using analogies and insisting on perfect rationality doesn't really make sense most times. But when you see even a little bit of irrationality as the start of a slippery slope and you've seen first-hand exactly what's at the bottom of that slope, because you've lived in it, well, then it makes sense to object to an analogy that might seem harmless to me.

So no, I don't approve of militancy, on either side of any debate. I still think it's not an effective approach, and I will insist that all discussion on this site be respectful and open. But I think someone in a different situation might say to me "Well, that's all very nice of you to say where everything is sunshine and roses, but in the real world, in my world, your approach doesn't work, I've tried it." Which makes me feel lucky to be where I am.

Last night I just had a "Wow" moment, where another perspective I didn't understand became clear to me, that's all. And although I don't agree with the viewpoint, understanding where it comes from helps me to talk to people who hold it, and that's a good thing.

And I understand too that it can go both ways. I guess being a person of faith can make you feel cut off from people who don't believe the same. But I've got to say it doesn't make the same kind of sense to me (yet). People moving away from others who don't share their beliefs makes me a little scared, because it cuts off dialog, which seems like a step in the wrong direction. So I hope nobody takes me saying what I think as an indication that they're not welcome to think differently. All you have to do is be willing and able to explain to me how your position makes sense.

Second Response - From Why Won't God Heal Amputees.com

Wow.

Earlier I said that I didn't get a response from the website Why Won't God Heal Amputees, where I also posted my idea. Until this morning, the only objection anyone on that site had been willing to post was "First prove God made the universe and exists outside of time. Hell, just prove he exists. And also, shorten your paragraphs, they're too long."

Not the most promising introduction. "Wow", I thought, after reading some of the other threads. "These people seem really bitter, and angry. Why not just let people be? I mean, sure, there are fundamentalists out there, and it does seem like there are a large number of religious-to-the-point-of-clinical-insanity people on this site, but it's the Internet. When you get to make up your name and not show your face, many people's sanity goes out the window (which is the reason comments on this blog are moderated, and anonymous comments are disabled). Why is it such a big deal to convince someone who believes in God that they're wrong?"

I have since gotten several intelligent critiques, and a much better appreciation for truly millitant atheism.

One of the critiques was as follows:

I'm just going to focus on this one little point. Yes you are correct in saying that the analogy over simplifies things, and most analogies it turns out are traps (unless they are mathematical analogies). Most analogies used in apologetics like C.S. Lewis's are obfuscation, smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand (but not necessarily maliciously so). The problem with this analogy is that book is at least two different things, a physical object and a collection of ideas. Both things however exist in the same universe and are composed of the same "material" as the author.

Which is an entirely valid criticism, the analogy isn't literally accurate, and doesn't accurately represent the relationship between God and the universe because they're fundamentally different things. And it will strengthen my work if I make sure this is 100% clear. I assumed people would get that it was just an analogy, and I said something to the effect of "Excellent point about the analogy not being accurate. But I think that analogies can be effectively used to convey complex ideas so long as people understand the difference between an analogy and an actual situation."

And then I continued to lurk on the WWGHA forum, just getting the style of the debates that were going on there. I started to read one particular thread, where the person who started the thread asked what people got out of debating here. Seemed a reasonable question, because as I said, some of them seemed really bitter, and I don't think they were making a lot of progress with the fundamentalist Christians who were the main representatives of the Christian religion on this forum. And the person who asked the question said they got initially marked as a Troll by a moderator (meaning the moderator thought their question wasn't genuine, but was just posted to start a fight). So the original poster had gone into more detail, to explain that he actually was honestly interested in the answer, and he was an atheist himself. And still two people out of the first few said they thought he might be lying, and might actually be a Christian.

But this is where giving people the benefit of the doubt comes in. Because I kept reading, and once people figured out that the question was genuine, they started giving genuine answers. And some people, quite a few of them, said they were from the Bible Belt, and in the place where they lived, you had to be religious. If you weren't, you were shunned, and told you were going to hell. And as an atheist, you couldn't get away from being blessed all the time. There were "five or six churches within sight of your house". If you didn't believe, you kept quiet because you didn't know what else to do, until you saw this forum and that other people had been able to get out. Religion just surrounded you, and a surprising number of the people there said they had no non-religious friends to turn to in their local communities. No social support, and they were just looking for like-minded people to talk to.

I learned an important lesson about how lucky I am to live where I do, where thinking for yourself is encouraged, and it's perfectly OK if you don't go to church on Sunday. It's OK if you do, too, and lots of people do, but you have the choice. And so when the person who posted that critique came back and said

The problem with that is that many people accept the analogy, and stop thinking any further. Those who seek to confuse, influence or control others will relentlessly exploit this regardless of whether the analogy itself is malicious or benign.
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This is why most people on this forum favour precise, well defined explanations, and why I personally regard analogies with enormous suspicion. Anyone who is seriously discussing these topics should avoid using them when possible.

I understood, and just said "Fair enough, no more analogies." Because in certain situations, millitant atheism, I mean really millitant atheism (but still trying to make a statement with words alone, and on your own forum) is fair. If you're a religious moderate, thinking "rational people can be religious, I don't get why Atheists don't understand that sometimes", I'd reccommend going to the forum and asking one.

UPDATE (August 1st): The more I think about it, the less of a good idea it seems for religious people to ask questions on that forum. I just recently posted "No good or clarity will come from there - they aren't interested in finding answers, only taking yours away" on a Christian's blog. And that's about accurate. But if you live in a place where fundamentalism is rare, and you'd like to see its effects, that's where you'd go.

That's it for me for tonight.

First response

Ok, so... Now that I've got this up, I e-mailed the site to a few people I know, just to see what they'd think. One of them, an extremely religious person, basically told me it's wrong because it contradicts the bible, end of story. The fact that I didn't even get a "that's interesting, I don't agree, but at least you've put some thought into it" is... just indescribable. This person is relatively nice, too, just absolutely unwilling to permit the idea that someone might hold different beliefs with some level of legitimacy. It's such a contrast with the wonderful open conversation I was able to have on "Et Tu?". That gave me hope. This... doesn't.

But, such is life. You talk to the people who will talk with you, and cross your fingers and hope something good comes from it, I guess.