Pope Opens Mouth; Inserts Foot

[Ryantology]

If I deliberately verbally abused you to the extent that I knew you would be driven to retaliate having exhausted all other courses of action, could you then be abused of acting unfairly?

Absolutely. At no point am I forced to retaliate to verbal abuse. Sticks and stones.

There's a line that you can cross when you offend people. They can be pushed too far. If I know that what I say will cause a physical reaction in you (assuming that you didn't have the mental capacity to overcome your instinct) then I think I can fully expect that reaction. In all fairness I don't think you could be judged to be acting unreasonably. It would be my fault.

I think a Muslim put it well when he said: everyone has the right to say whatever they like. They should also expect the consequences of what they say.
I'm totally against violence of any sort. I'm against war too.

No amount of verbal abuse justifies a violent reaction. If a person can't handle verbal abuse enough to restrain his violent tendencies, that's the problem. Not the free expression of ideas. I would never harm another person in reaction to words, unless those words were a direct and intentional threat to myself or someone else, in which case I have an obligation to take action. A person who insists that respect for faith supersedes the respect we should all have for the right of another to live, is a person deserving of no respect. You encourage more Charlie Hebdos with your approach. You and the Pope are proving that the underlying problem responsible for such murderous fuckery is not merely a Muslim problem.

We're all guilty of bias at some point. Censorship can be good. As I said above.. I know my limits, and judge yours.

Theists never get it, and that's why superstition will continue to retreat. Censorship can be good, indeed. When we ask questions of you that require you to describe your beliefs and expose them to scrutiny, the more you talk, the more you meet our arguments with evasion and redirection, the more you make the undecided minds of the world see the lunacy and weakness of your beliefs. The louder and more obnoxious you are, the more young people will abandon the churches.

Censoring people like you is the last thing any of us wants.