Reply #70: Interesting

[apnu]

You go after me by putting words in my mouth, taking things out of context by using piece meal fragments of my post and then assault me with logic when I can clearly see you using straw man and red herring arguments.

I'm not gonna debate logic with you, when fallacies occur in an opinionated conversation, it's pointless.

First off where are the ethnic and racial minorities in this conversation? I haven't seen any come up until you presented me with a red herring defense. (I'm not debating logic here, bringing race into this conversation is a red herring act, any basic book on logic will show you that it's an act of changing the subject)

As for born agains being a minority, that's a myth... born agains are Christians and last I checked, Christians are an overwhelming majority in the set of religious people in the United States. So there's no minority to attack.

And your statement of: "And so it's OK to call those who feel differently "assholes" and "cult members" and all the other slurs you used?" Asshole may be a slur, and it may not. Most born agains have been real nasty to me when I DARE to disagree with their choice, hence my opinion that most born agains are jerks. Which is my opinion, based off my personal experience. As for cult status, that's not a slur, not even close to being a slur. The points I used in reference to cults is culled from FBI and psychological indicators to determine cult status. I stand by my reasons of cult status BASED OFF MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. Does it mean that it's a fact? Nope. Personal experience of one person does not a fact make.

In the whole "perhaps you "lost" it somewhere and found it again." fragment you disagree with... I suggest you go back and re-read that part in whole again. My point is, I believe people always have it within them to be as spiritual as they want, and that the level of intensity for that spirituality has ups and downs, and so I don't believe being born again is necessary or that it even exists. I think its just an act of psychology to convince a specific person to change their direction in life and pursue another path.

You may not believe me, but I do give a wit about your happiness, I take spirituality very seriously, and I've seen all too often people falling into it without properly analyzing their decision and acting upon that analysis and then falling away from their god, or worse, becoming some insurable version of a spiritual dry-drunk. (I'm not saying that you specifically are one!) To ME this is wrong, but, I do honestly, wish happiness to everyone and I want people to be comfortable with their religion. And I rarely see comfortable born agains, as I've said before.

However, my concern with people being happy has nothing to do with expressing my opinion on things. If I allowed that to affect my expression of free speech, I'd never say anything because everything that is ever said is offensive and upsetting to someone somewhere. And I'm not going to do that, I will speak, and I will speak the truth as I understand it, and if other people don't want to listen to me, or disagree with my statements, I'm not going to loose one second of sleep over that.

Now, this whole statement: Who said I was entirely happy? Have you taken a look at who is sitting in the Oval Office? And your conclusion about my happiness and the way you base it on your experiences with OTHER PEOPLE, is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. It's stereotyping This doesn't make much sense to me. I mentioned specifically about personal happiness, satisfaction within your personal life. Political happiness is a different matter altogether, and I don't think that any person (regardless of political belief) will ever be 100% politically happy. And where is the sterotyping... I listed my reasons based off PERSONAL EXPERIENCE to explain how I came to the opinion that born again is cultish. If that offends you, OK you're offended, that's the price of free expression.

And then this you said:

And so it's OK to call those who feel differently "assholes" and "cult members" and all the other slurs you used?

I'll refer you to the complete text when I first introduced the word "assholes" here in case you were too irritated to read the full text:

But yeah, normally when people are "born again" they become assholes. My experience with them tells me that usually people who are "born again" usually are so to please another (such as a lover) or that they have a massive guilt complex about something and choose to be "born again" to save themselves from whatever that guilt is. The "ex-gay" community is choked with those kind of people.

Notice that I said NORMALLY in there. That means I'm not saying that the set of all born agains are assholes, I said that in my experience born agains are normally assholes... meaning most of the born agains that I've met are jerks. Arguing my opinion instead of discussing it or proving me wrong isn't helping any one, nor is it proving a point. You can't argue opinion and expect to get anywhere but pissed off. I'm merely trying to explain what I said and why I said what I said not debate the issue of "assholes".

So calm down, I never said that you, specifically, are an asshole, I said that most born agains I've met are assholes. And let's make this clear... my posts weren't offensive, they were offensive to you... don't say I'm stereotyping anything when you use language that suggests that you are beholden to all people's opinion. I'll say it again, my statements are not offensive, they are offensive to you.

As I said before, I'm sorry if I pissed you off, and you're entitled to call me a jerk until the cows come home. Go a head and start a dingbat poll about me if it makes you feel any better. Call me a Jesus hater, call me any word offensive or other wise you like, you're entitled to it, and I thank you for voicing your view on my comments.

On edit: fixed some grammar