apropos forbidden words:

  Interesting.  The Hammer seemed eager to emphasize that his people, the Jews, have historically been the victims of persecution and genocide. Well, no argument from me, it's a matter of record.

  Strangely he seems to have ignored the many OT references that indicated his ancient Hebrew predecessors were likewise big fans of engaging in genocidal warfare.   It seems that God's "Chosen People" had a nasty habit of slaughtering whole towns and villages ( ie, men, women, children, babies, and even animals ) because they worshipped the wrong god.

  Double standard, anyone ?

    ( PDW slaps palm to fore head to express exasperation.  )

   Your observations regarding population differences or whether genocidal warfare was typical in the ancient world has no bearing or relation to any point that I was trying to convey.    I was referring to the cognitive dissonance regarding the moral aspects of genocide as it relates to the Jewish nation; on the one hand the indignation of modern day Jews is rightly justified at their reprehensible treatment in the Nazi death camps.  The Nazis had no regard for Jewish victims...it mattered not if they were old and feeble, young and strong, mentally deficient, or even if they were infants.  No mercy was shown.

  The Old Testament allegedly records multiple instances where the ancient Hebrews also engaged in warfare that is easily the moral ( and tactical ) equivalent of any modern act of genocide. Under the leadership of Moses, Joshua, etc the ancient Jews showed no mercy to the helpless non-combatants.  All were destroyed regardless of their age or status.  Is that right or wrong ?

  Any modern day Israeli / Hebrew / Jew who can't bring themselves to admit this ugly parallel has no moral high ground to stand on.

  The systematic slaughter of noncombatants belonging to any group by their enemies is morally indefensible.  Whether the victims number in the hundreds, or even in the millions doesn't change the character of the act.

I was just looking over this thread again. I can't believe I made such a ridiculous error and didn't notice:

This is completely wrong. I can't believe it took me this long to notice. (1) because mating patterns aren't random and (2) more importantly, all mating occurs between distant cousins.

Whoops. My apologies.

Carry on.

I really do hope he comes back. But anyone, not just him, but anyone of any "faith" of any religion needs to understand that it is not out of hate that we blaspheme your claims or criticise them. It is because we want you to be brave in your introspection and take a step outside your beliefs and look at it from a neutral standpoint.

There is no way for us to be polite all the time, nor are we going to be dishonest with you or ourselves.

NOW TO ANY THEIST READING THIS, get over your insecurities. We will not use government to have you arrested or killed. We will not hate you because you believe something we find to be absurd, we will treat each of you as individuals, but expect you to do the same with us. But we are not going to sugar coat reality to placate your emotions or insecurities.

WE DO NOT HATE YOU, we simply are pointing out that you got it wrong. If you believe you got it right, then demonstrate it without fear and jump into the verbal boxing ring without fear. We do not expect to deconvert everyone, but we are damned sure not going to mince words.

Do not come to sites like this unless you are mature enough to handle blunt criticism.

WE DO WANT THEISTS HERE, WE DO NOT HATE ALL THEISTS.

But many here, including me, cannot stand crybabbies when they chose to come here when no one put a gun to their head. You are going to hear things you are not used to hearing. You are going to be offended.

HOWEVER, once you stick around long enough, you will not be offended, even if you never change your position. You will at a minimum see us as people who merely say you got it wrong, and there are many ways to say that, both polite and blunt.

(DISCLAIMER: I am only speaking for myself as a mere fan and poster, but I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way)

No one has anything to fear from atheists, we are actually trying to help you see that your myth is not needed to live life. We direct our criticism toward all fantastical claims, be they of psychics, telepathy, alchemy, Vishnu, big foot, horriscopes(sp), ect ect ect.

If you think you got it right, be brave and bring it on. We wont hate you, but if you cannot prove what you claim, we simply wont adapt your position.

GROW THE FUCK UP and debate us. We wont give you cooties and we won't eat your babies.

So if someone came to your house and told you what the ground rules were, you wouldn't be even a little upset?

Ah, but I stated that a religion has to have a dixcernment of ultimate reality pertaining to God. Amazon certainly lacks this aspect. Thus it is not a religion. Same goes for the gaming forum, no discernment of God. I also think it's great that people on this forum think that Jesus was a historical man. Maybe then I should just call it "The Doctrine of Jesus Mythicism," instead of a dogma.

I'm not painting the RRS like me. I'm not religious. I do believe in God (commence with common RRS insults about imaginary friends). At the very least, I think that the RRS resembles a religion in many ways. I remember once I started a thread that accused Christopher Hitchens of defending a Holocaust denier named David Irving. He defended the bastard as a legitimate historian. What struck me about the thread was that almost no atheists criticized Hitchens. They defended him. It was like a Catholic defending someone's sainthood.

 What does annoy me is when atheists take it to the point of religion(without becoming religion, it's all but impossible). Darwin day is creepy. There are more worthy people, If you honestly think the guy who discovered  evolution is worthy of of a day then I would hate to see what you would honour  the guy who discovered the Germ Theory or perhaps Penicillin or Vaccination or with. 

You may have to concede that this is a community, and any community with a shared culture resembles a religion.

If I recall his speech at Hart House in Toronto, he compared those who deny the Holocaust as being equivalent to those who assert that the Earth is flat. So you may have missed out on the subtlety of what he was saying. He generally argues for the protection of unorthodox speech, not that the content of what is being said is valid, but that the speaker should be protected in case there is some shred of truth in what they say.

There's an enthusiastic Holocaust denier on this site who is not silenced for that particular reason, despite being openly derided by most of the members of this site. He's not being defended because he has some kind of atheistic "sainthood", he's defended as a public demonstration of  tolerance with regards to dissenting opinion. As to the validity of what the man says, there are several unanswered questions.

[edit: addendum]

Here is the piece:

http://www.fpp.co.uk/StMartinsPress/Hitchens0696.html

Hitchens calls Irving's ideas "depraved" in great big, bold letters. I'm not sure how that means he defended Irving in any sense but his freedom of speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMxleCC5VVg

The speech you saw was certainly more recent than this video. I think Hitchens has changed his views (especially since he discovered that he is Jewish). But in this video, Hitchens argues that a private publishing company should publish a book about Holocaust denial. It's not a free-speech issue, a private company can do whatever they want.

The fact that Hitchens even refers to Irving as a historian is a joke. Irving has a hard-on for Hitler and is a raging anti-Semite.

Also, the guy from the post that Hitchens debates is clearly nervous on TV. It's great

I think you may have missed it again. "A private company can do whatever they want" isn't quite it. St. Martin's (sp?) violated their contract to the author under public pressure. That's very much a censorship issue. Hitchens makes that clear. He even goes so far as to say that if the publisher thought it was so offensive, then they could have rejected the book outright, instead of getting ready to publish it, and going through all the motions of doing so. In that circumstance, he says he would have no argument with the publisher at all. But that's not what happened. The publisher picked it up, gave Irving a contract, and only later renegged on the contract in order to save face.

Hitchens doesn't argue that Irving's views are valid, in fact at one point (in the second half of that debate) he calls the man's views "secondary". Irving can be wrong and still be a historian. Hitchens is still clearly arguing for Irving's protection despite any validity that his views may have.

It seems like he has some sort of thyroid condition or mild Tourettes. If that's his "nervous", I guess it's a good thing he's a writer and not a television personality. It looks as though his shoulders are eventually going to meet with his ears!

  By all means, lay out your theological position in a OP.  I'm sure there are atheists here would be happy to examine your claims...

I'm not sure what to make a post about. I'd feel kinda weird just doing a post like "hi, I'm a heathen and roman recon, ask me questions about it please."

LOL

A cat like me cant sharpen his claws without a scratching post. The good thing about me is that my bluster and blasphemy is not out of hate, but merely a "verbal smack in the face" in saying, "wake up and smell the coffee". Anyone who takes me on in debate has nothing to fear other than my bad jokes and puns. If anyone, including the atheists who know me here, actually worked with me in person, would want to stone me to death for torturing my co-workers with bad jokes.

FOR EXAMPLE:

At work my boss said, "Hit me with some ice" refuring to an ice bin he wanted refilled. So I picked up an ice cube and beemed it at his back. He turned in suprise and I threw up my hands and responded, "Hey I was only doing what you told me to do."

Nay. Still not a censorship issue. This isn't the government censoring the book. The company reacted to public pressure and backed down. They're still a private company. They can still do whatever they want. Now if Big Brother said that the Institute for Historical Review couldn't print it, then that is a censorship issue.

Ooooh, he really insulted Irving there. C'mon, Irving is a joke. His work isn't secondary, it's hate filled horse shit. Hitchens gives him way too much credit.

Agreed. I wanted give him a drink and tell him to relax.

Well, the poster only asked individuals not to say it or to write it, out of respect for him, not necessarily out of respect for his God. Its sort of like how some people don't appreciate foul language, so out of respect, I'd refrain from being a potty mouth in front of them. I didn't see what was so hard about that, it was a fairly simple request, and there was no reason why anyone couldn't grant him that. 

But of course Hamy likes to behave like an annoying child, a possible loser in his normal everyday life, one has to wonder if he even has friends who actually like him outside the forum. He likes to provoke behind a computer screen, for no other purpose than the sake of provoking, and with his autonomy here he can do so freely. 

If you own a website and you choose not to post something on it that's not censorship. You own it! Censorship is when someone else comes in and tells you that you can't post something on the website you own.

This isn't a very difficult concept. If I own a newsstand and I choose not to sell hustler magazine I'm not censoring hustler magazine. I can sell what i want. It's my newsstand. If another person tries to compel me not to sell hustler magazine that is censorship. If I own a chocolate factory and I chose not to sell nougat I'm not censoring nougat. It's my fucking chocolate factory. My factory, mine mine mine, get it?

A one line definition of "censoring" which doesn't take into account ownership and choice is not justification for describing my non-selling of nougat and hustler magazine as censorship whether it's official policy or not. "Official" means that you have the authority to take some action. Of course the owner of a website has the authority to choose what to post and what to exclude. That's not censorship it's discretion.

I have heard of self-censorship and me choosing not to sell hustler magazine and nougat because I don't like them isn't it.

"Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work (blog, book(s), film(s), or other means of expression), out of fear or deference to the sensibilities of others without an authority directly pressuring one to do so."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-censorship

You should actually read that lenghty encyclopedia definition of censorship before you assume that you know what it means because what you're describing doesn't fit any definition of censorship, polital, moral, religious or even corporate.

You're right about one thing, I had read your examples wrongs, you nougat example and if it's taken to be in the same context as your hustle article, that wouldn't be censorship.  Just because I prefer not to call everybody Yabadaba, that doesn't neccesarily mean i'm censoring myself. But these examples have nothing to do with what the RRS does.

The gripe I took with you, was from your initial response to me, that claimed that when the RRS deletes post they find demeaning to the site founders, or to the site itself, regardless if they own the site or not, that's censorship. They're well within their rights to censor my post, but it's still censorship regardless.

To illustrate this with your newsstand, assume your the owner of the actual stand, and you allow people to rent out the stand and sell whatever they want with it. Someone comes and rents that stand and decides to sell magazines and papers, but the owner comes along and prohibits the man from selling hustler, when the man himself wanted to, and forces him to take whatever remaining issues he has off the racks. That's censorship.

If i say Hamy is a fag, and he deletes my post, and bans me from the site because of it, he censored me, regardless of he's the owner of the site or not.

Hammer wasn't acting as a censor at all, at best he was requesting if individuals here would self-censor themselves from using a term that offended him. But in self-censorship, the "self" is the censor, not the individual requesting it. 

Do not equate exposing a needless superstition to a biggoted slur, they are not the same subject.

Saying "Yahwey" is not going to bring the end of the world or make anyone's penis fall off magically. It is not bigoted to point out reality.

Calling someone "fag" in a mean ignorent way, is not a demonstration of credible evidence, it is a display of personal insecurities.

Read, re-read, untill it soaks in.

1. "Santa is not real, that is an absurd claim"=Statement of fact, not bigotry.

2. "COMMIE, HEEB, NIGGER, ATHEISTS LOVE HITLER, SPIC, FAG!"=Bigotry

Unrelated.

It is irrational for anyone to set up a taboo and expect others not to question it. Galileo was put under house arrest for telling the truth and was done so because he broke the "taboo" of telling the Church they got it wrong.

We don't hate Jews and it is NOT bigoted to say, "Your wee wee will not fall off if someone says the name of your deity".

So knock it off. Hambi did nothing wrong.

There is so much rage in this thread.

So, I'm gay. Does that mean I get to rage with flair and throw pink triangles around for sympathy for the holocaust?

Do I get to make special demands based off this?

Can I talk about persecution yet? When do I get a turn?

At least can I address traditional jewish attire as poor fashion?

"If i say Hamy is a fag, and he deletes my post..."

That was the slur that was mentioned above, that was mentioned by Brian of you using for comparison.

You've already conceded that the OP was asking everyone to self-censor and that the "censorship" this website engages in is ethical. You clearly lack the sophistication to understand even simple concepts like the fact that free speech may legitimately be limited when conflicting with the rights of others like property rights, not to mention more nuanced one's like the difference between censorship and editing. What is your point exactly, that a definition of "censoring" that would just as easily apply to changing the channel on your television also applies here? Congratulations!

Instead of asking me stupid questions you should be trying to explain what type of censorship it is and how it's distinguishable from the discretion of a property owner over the control and use of their property which is a fundamental principle of the concept of property rights, or editing which is the prerogative of someone in authority within the publishing entity, or at least how it's a bad thing.

Oh wait. You're a fucking idiot who doesn't even know what censorship is and you've already conceded everything else.   

 

A feat of avoidance clearly shows who the real idiot is. I asked you two simple questions, that I explicitly asked you to respond to and you fled like a little bitch. But tis cool. 

You latched on to a post, a reply to hamby, who claimed that hammer asking politely if people would refrain from spelling out the word Yahweh out of respect for him, as censorship, and claiming that he (hamby) was being "persecuted" as a result. And if hamby was stupid enough to equate censorship with persecution, then you'd have plenty of trolls, and theist on these forums claiming "persecution" as well. 

I asked you to find one definition in support of your view of censorship and you still have not done it. I wonder why?  Clearly the definition of the term supports my claim that the RRS site censors (this is not claim that that's a bad thing or a good thing), and you have failed to demonstrate even one point in which the term according to the dictionary or any other material defining the term, for which the use here would not apply.

You pulled some definition out of your ass, and want everybody to take it on blind faith, that a cat is actually a duck. So I suggest if you can't put out, you shut the fuck up. You can call me an idiot all you want, but clearly you've demonstrated who the real idiot here is.