(April 21, 2009 at 5:27 pm)Overmars Wrote: (April 12, 2009 at 5:22 am)EvidenceVsFaith Wrote: I think both should.
(be allowed).
I disagree, religion or lack of is a matter of personal choice, you can't "advertise" religion or atheism like some product that you are trying to sell. No Christian is going to change his/her's religious opinions if they see one of those Anti-Christian ads and the same is valid for an atheist who sees a Christian banner. Those banner's only reason is to piss off people and arouse controversy.
Hmm... but what about the people who will be pissed off if they don't have the freedom to post such ads? Who are told to shut up?
Freedom is important to me. Sure people can be offended - but have they really got any more rational reason to be offended by
mere words of disagreement than the advertisers have got to be offended by not being allowed to express their own personal views?
Sometimes people have very bad reasons to be offended - religion
often does. Blasphemy for example!
Not being able to express harmless personal views on life in regards to religion could be thought of as offensive! Why should the fact that expressing them offends people for their own personal reasons prevent you from expressing your own? (after all how come they're allowed to express
theirs by saying that you shouldn't be allowed to express
yours? And if they couldn't complain you wouldn't know and you'd just carry on (or you'd have to 'guess')) What should everyone just shut up and keep themselves to themselves? Like everyone has that personality and is comfortable with that? Pretend they don't care, not expressing?
Restrictions on language when it's only advertising personal views (and it's not even hateful like the ' there's probably no God' slogans) I see as OTT.
It's not like it's hate speech - can't people express their views?
And the thing is often a matter of principle, of freedom, I think. Also there are indeed a lot of very stubborn people around who never change their views despite the evidence - but it doesn't NEVER happen. It happens, for various reasons all depends - theists become atheists and vice versa, etc, etc for whatever reasons... - as I'm sure you are obviously well aware.
And furthermore I do not believe religion or lack of IS in fact;
a personal choice. It's personal (although it's not always kept that way!) but I do not believe it is a "choice" because a belief, beliefs and a belief system are not a matter of policy.
Finally - I'd also say that.. - for instance, - I'd rather have controversy than everyone pretending to like each other and learning to 'fit in' etc and having hate build up over time and despise each other behind their backs...to whatever end.
If people don't agree I don't think they should just ignore each other completely or worse - pretend to like each other and really hate each other and perhaps end up being two-faced backstabbers or whatever for example - I mean if that's the alternative of people not being able to express their own views on religion (or a similar subject).. - Bunch of bitching basically - lot of people are like that already, I wouldn't want more people like that, although it's not up to me of course.
EvF
P.S: I think perhaps (and I'm thinking this bit on the spot though), ideally if people could understand the context and intention of language a lot more without all the upset misunderstandings going on - language itself shouldn't ever be illegal. It should be the hate and the prejudice of whichever form (racism, sexism, etc being obvious examples) - it would be nice if people could just talk about things and not be offended - but often it's hard to see the real intention and meaning so you have to be very literal.
E.G: Someone could say something completely non-racist and be a racist and someone could say something seemingly racist but in fact wasn't - and not be a racist. But with all the misunderstandings it's obviously better to generally go with the literal interpretations at least when in doubt.