Some people treat "taking offense" as if it's a sport. If you have a friend who had a traumatic experience, you might avoid certain topics or jokes or even certain terms, because they may find it offensive and you don't want to hurt their feelings or jeopardize a friendship. But if someone I did not even know said to me that they were offended that I had decided to take up a hobby that they felt 'belonged to their culture,' I'd shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. I have no doubt that there are people who would be offended to learn that I don't believe in god. I wouldn't even stop to shrug my shoulders at that.
There are a lot of factors that determine whether someone else's feeling of offense is worth my time to care about, much less address.
There are a lot of factors that determine whether someone else's feeling of offense is worth my time to care about, much less address.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
