Statistics, the perfect weapon to justify hate?

[Ferrocyanide]

There seems to be some talk about what Todd Christofferson has said.
"Adultery, promiscuity, elective abortion, and out-of-wedlock births are but some of the bitter fruits that grow out of the immorality sanctioned by the sexual revolution"
----D. Todd Christofferson October 2020 LDS General Conference


I was talking to some mormons about this, whether it is a good idea to call out-of-wedlock births bitter fruits and the overall response is that yes, they are all bitter fruits because the statistics say that children from single parents are no good.

This troubles me because when you use statistics, you are putting a lot of people, a lot of good people (single mothers, single fathers, homosexual men and so on) in the same group and labelling them as defective.

Couldn’t statistics be used to label other groups as well.
For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Are you aware of any other statistics that labels people? Perhaps, statistics that allows for gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination?

[Deesse23]

For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Has this homophobe ever considered that homosexuals kill themselves so often because of fucking homophobic bigots like himself?
I say: Homosexuals kill themselves often, therefore bigotry is not a good thing.

[downbeatplumb]

There seems to be some talk about what Todd Christofferson has said.
"Adultery, promiscuity, elective abortion, and out-of-wedlock births are but some of the bitter fruits that grow out of the immorality sanctioned by the sexual revolution"
----D. Todd Christofferson October 2020 LDS General Conference


I was talking to some mormons about this, whether it is a good idea to call out-of-wedlock births bitter fruits and the overall response is that yes, they are all bitter fruits because the statistics say that children from single parents are no good.

This troubles me because when you use statistics, you are putting a lot of people, a lot of good people (single mothers, single fathers, homosexual men and so on) in the same group and labelling them as defective.

Couldn’t statistics be used to label other groups as well.
For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Are you aware of any other statistics that labels people? Perhaps, statistics that allows for gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination?

"there are lies, damned lies and statistics" 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damn...7s%20point.

[Anomalocaris]

“ He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts. for support rather than illumination.”


― Andrew Lang



Statistics by itself is incapable of revealing the underlying causes, nor does it offer pointers to what other effects any underlying cause may have that Countervails the statistic.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There seems to be some talk about what Todd Christofferson has said.
"Adultery, promiscuity, elective abortion, and out-of-wedlock births are but some of the bitter fruits that grow out of the immorality sanctioned by the sexual revolution"
----D. Todd Christofferson October 2020 LDS General Conference


I was talking to some mormons about this, whether it is a good idea to call out-of-wedlock births bitter fruits and the overall response is that yes, they are all bitter fruits because the statistics say that children from single parents are no good.

This troubles me because when you use statistics, you are putting a lot of people, a lot of good people (single mothers, single fathers, homosexual men and so on) in the same group and labelling them as defective.

Couldn’t statistics be used to label other groups as well.
For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Are you aware of any other statistics that labels people? Perhaps, statistics that allows for gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination?

"there are lies, damned lies and statistics" 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damn...7s%20point.

Not so much a statistic as a way to demonstrate how little people understand about statistics, here's an argument I've actually heard:

'Women are 100% more likely than men to give birth. Since giving birth is a very time and labour intensive thing, women cannot be as productive as men in the workforce.  Therefore, it is sensible and reasonable to not hire women and, if you do, it's perfectly ok to pay them less than their male counterparts.'

Among professional sociologists and economists, this is technically known as the How Can You Be So Fucking Stupid Theory.

Boru

[Ferrocyanide]

For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Has this homophobe ever considered that homosexuals kill themselves so often because of fucking homophobic bigots like himself?
I say: Homosexuals kill themselves often, therefore bigotry is not a good thing.

==He said that he is an atheist and also had homosexual friends and that by being rude to them, by calling them fags, by trying to convert them into hetero, he was doing them a favor.

I don’t know what his thought processes were but I dug up some information and like you said, the results of a terrible life, a sad life, a depressing life is generated by the homophobes and homophobes tend to be christians (If we are talking about the USA, Canada, Australia and other european flavor of countries).

I provided the links to him and after a bunch of back and forths, I failed to convince him that he is the source of the problem. In the end, he stopped responding.

[The Grand Nudger]

Call him a cunt and then say "you're welcome". You'd be doing him a favor, after all.

[Deesse23]

Has this homophobe ever considered that homosexuals kill themselves so often because of fucking homophobic bigots like himself?
I say: Homosexuals kill themselves often, therefore bigotry is not a good thing.

==He said that he is an atheist and also had homosexual friends and that by being rude to them, by calling them fags, by trying to convert them into hetero, he was doing them a favor.

 
Tell him he is a fucking idiot....and that you are just trying to do him a favour by doing so.

[Prycejosh1987]

There seems to be some talk about what Todd Christofferson has said.
"Adultery, promiscuity, elective abortion, and out-of-wedlock births are but some of the bitter fruits that grow out of the immorality sanctioned by the sexual revolution"
----D. Todd Christofferson October 2020 LDS General Conference


I was talking to some mormons about this, whether it is a good idea to call out-of-wedlock births bitter fruits and the overall response is that yes, they are all bitter fruits because the statistics say that children from single parents are no good.

This troubles me because when you use statistics, you are putting a lot of people, a lot of good people (single mothers, single fathers, homosexual men and so on) in the same group and labelling them as defective.

Couldn’t statistics be used to label other groups as well.
For example, I was talking to a person who was against homosexuals. His reason is that the rate of suicide with homosexuals is high, therefore, homosexuality is not a good thing.

Are you aware of any other statistics that labels people? Perhaps, statistics that allows for gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination?

Gender discrimination, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination is not only something that Christians believe. Besides not all Christians feel the same way. I personally believe being gay is a sin, because it goes against nature. If God intended gay relationships in His design He would of at least said something about that, He would of created women and men as hermaphrodites, etc. If everyone was gay the human race would become extinct, rapidly I hate the sin not the sinner, a gay person can confess their sins juts as thief, murderer, envious person, etc. The world is getting worse and starting to follow the devils guidelines instead of Gods. The bible says things about most of what i have said. Men wanted to rape the angels in Sodom, if gay people went to heaven, they would be attracted to the angels. This causes many problems in heaven, and for God Himself. 

When someone goes to heaven, they become sinless like the angels and adopt a heavenly mentality and state. Gay people do none of these things.

[Rev. Rye]

Statistics are good in and of themselves, but the thing is it's stupefyingly easy to divorce them from the context of why they're the way they are.

Case in point: are you familiar with the meme "13/50"? It's about a statistic that claims that black people make up 13% of the population of America, but commit 50% of the violent crime. This is actually accurate, if the Department of Justice's statistics on homicide are any indication


But the question remains: why is this the case? Well, there's a lot of factors to consider (including the fact that black people are disproportionately questioned by police, arrested, and convicted, and are likely to spend more time in prison than white people for the exact same fucking crimes), but the answer tends to boil down into two categories: either black people are naturally more inclined to commit violent crime than the rest of the population, or there's something in society that's causing a disproportionate number of black people to commit crimes.

And it turns out there's a wealth of studies exploring the latter possibility. And for those of you who want a story about how this comes about, here's Vaush giving a history lesson:




That said, if you've heard people bringing up the whole 13/50 meme before this, they're not going to give you that critical context, and, odds are, even if they don't outright state that black people are just naturally stupid and violent, odds are, they're going to dismiss any and all potential environmental causes out of hand. And so, they feel free to continue doing this to an entire aggregate of people: