(October 27, 2010 at 3:41 pm)Synackaon Wrote: Poor argument and doesn't invalidate anything Adrian said. Emotions are inherently irrational. And no, if you said that black people made you feel uneasy, or gay people, or anything else, but then admitted that it is just a fear - I'd say that you just conquered your own prejudices.
I get uneasy when scruffy looking men are walking near behind me. Clearly I must be hobo-ist.
Never mind that I simply just recheck the situation, find that there is nothing of concern rationally, and control my fear as a man (Women aren't incapable of fear control either).
Are you so anti-bigoted that you're conflating irrational fears with well thought out hatred? There ain't a boogey man in everything.
Admitting that it is "just" fear is just the first step in conquering prejudice. And a very small step at that. You don't truly conquer your prejudices until you stop living in fear, until fear just isn't a factor in how you behave towards others. How do you expect to resolve the issue of prejudice against atheists, if you can't conquer your own against others? This is why I have a problem with some of the language used here in discussions of people of faith. Yes, I have problems with many of them. And so I admit to some prejudice in this regard. But I also understand that the only route to understanding is through empathy. And so I agree that there "ain't a boogey man in everything", which I believe was my original point.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
