This is one of those things that, as I’m sure you can understand, got sparked by watching a bunch of videos over on The Atheist Experience. That should come as no surprise to anyone, but since today, as I’m writing this, is Thanksgiving, I had a lot of time, sitting around and waiting for the food to cook, so I spent it watching some YouTube videos.
Yeah, that rarely ever goes well. So let’s talk about it.
Some of this will be no surprise to anyone but I’m going to take a different angle on it because, as is no surprise, Matt went off on a tear about slavery in the Bible once again and I think that, in light of other things that happened on the show, it’s pretty obvious why.
So I’m going to try to link to some of the individual videos for context but I’m sure you’ve seen it all before. Matt has a particular hate-on for slavery and the second the subject comes up, he flies off the rails. I’ve written articles about that before (see here and here) so I really don’t want to do it again. Yet in this video, he took leave of his senses once again, hung up on the caller and ranted that anyone who didn’t agree with him, they were automatically wrong because he was automatically right, so there!
Yet that’s not how rational discussion actually works. On this particular subject, Matt simply isn’t rational though. He’s got a severe emotional reaction and the second it comes up, you can’t hope to think he’ll step back and have a calm, quiet and intellectual discussion on the matter. It just doesn’t happen.
Shannon Q has her own particular bugaboos where she goes completely off into emotional la-la land too. Usually, it’s when the subject of women’s rights come up, things along those lines and she’s yelling every bit as much as Matt does.
It was funnier then that a caller got in that wanted to talk about emotions. While they made some decent points about the rationality of emotions, the one thing that they didn’t do was recognize that it isn’t the emotions that are the problem, it’s how the individual reacts to them and how they permit them to be in charge of their reactions that are.
Because immediately thereafter, we got this call, where someone tried to ask if rape was always wrong. This went about as well as you might have expected. Both Matt and Shannon, Matt especially, started playing the “my opinion is the only right opinion” game, just like he does with slavery. It’s like they recognize, on some level, that opinions are subjective, but when it comes to their own personal opinions, all of that goes right out the window.
Let’s look at this. If you listened to any of the linked calls, it becomes really obvious that Matt thinks that because he has these views, that makes the views automatically correct. Because he defines his morality based on his particular version of well-being, that suddenly becomes the only acceptable standard he’s willing to continue. Does he say that he’d have to talk to those who disagree and see if they could come to an agreement? Yes. Does he actually do that, especially when it comes to slavery? Not a chance. He hangs up and then goes on a rant when the other person can’t defend themselves. He does this time and time again.
This is not how you have rational discussions but, in these particular instances, I don’t think that Matt is capable of being rational.
This is why I pointed out what I did on one of the videos. Emotions can be rational, they can be irrational, but the only thing that really matters is how you permit them to be displayed. Your rational mind needs to ultimately be in control at all times. You can’t freak out, you can’t leap to emotional conclusions, it doesn’t matter what the chemical cocktail in your head is pushing you to do, your intellect needs to be able to override it and come to rational conclusions.
The other thing that I’m getting sick of is this whole “pronouns” bullshit. It’s one of the reasons I stopped watching Skeptic Generation, the show that Eric Murphy and Vi La Bianca started once they left the ACA. I don’t give the slightest shit about your pronouns and that’s just a mindless appeal to idiotic leftist ideology. Now I get why Matt is doing it, he’s dating Arden and she’s trans and that’s fine, but it’s one more place that feelings are being interjected above facts and I’m going to be doing a post on that too, coming up sooner or later. It’s not based on the whole “pronouns” thing, but it’s a good parallel. The other reason I stopped caring about Skeptic Generation is because, at least at the beginning, they spent way too much time talking about veganism and other emotionally derived nonsense. I’ve got better things to do. That was the end of that.
So anyhow, what do you think? This is exactly what I spend so much time talking about over on my YouTube channel. If you can’t keep your feelings under rational control, what use are you? How do you think you’re going to solve the problem if you’re part of it? Let me know what you think in the comments.
Professional anti apologists tantrums; irritate me too. Thanks
I just wonder what’s going through their heads, to shift gears so radically when it comes to their own emotional beliefs. It’s really not that hard to understand how the religious get away with it, doing the exact same thing.
“. . . .so I spent it watching some YouTube videos. Yeah, that rarely ever goes well.”
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. . . .well,
Kindness is the excuse that social justice warriors use when they want to exercise control over what other people think and say. No-one is equal to anything. Even the same woman is not equal to herself on different days.
For me, it is always: ―Alison, how are you going to keep your emotions from hijacking your intellect? That is the question! . . . .And false hope. Oh my, that used to be my favorite. That’s what is usually being peddled in Christianity and false hope is the worst, the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. ―It’s such bad news. When false hope shows up, it’s only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.
But these emotions can get ―you― harmed too, no matter how rational you are: starting at 06:11 in Let’s Talk Tactics . . . [paraphrasing] many years ago I was having a debate with a theist and I discredited everything he had to say [. . .ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. GOOD!!!] and he said he wanted to come beat me up. Now, it just so happened that he lived a couple of blocks away so I invited him to come over and of course he never showed up. This is hardly the only time I’ve ever tried this tactic and the online bullies never make good on their threats because bullies are at their core chickens. . .
I don’t know, maybe this is too emotional, but I would say: Hellfire and Brimstone, do you know how many unstable people are in this world? I would invite you to consider not throwing down these types of challenges. The last thing this world needs is one less person telling the truth about Christianity.
Of course, for me, when I was a Christian, taking on too much of other people’s drama was just a poor excuse for not taking ownership and control over my own life. Christianity is just full of symbols and symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama. In Christianity, everything becomes heaven-or-hell, good-or-evil, everything is so, so terribly ridiculously dramatic and “grand.”
Atheism is the realization that it’s a do-it-yourself universe; there’s no god who pulls a rabbit out of a hat for you.
Those are really the questions that we need to keep foremost in our minds. Sure, some things just feel “wrong”. Then you have to ask yourself why and separate your emotional reaction from your critical faculties and far too many people just don’t do that. There could be some good reasons to rationally think these things and if so, that’s great, but mostly, I keep seeing people just reacting, not thinking and that’s where the problem always comes in.
So, do you think I ought to keep linking some of the appropriate blog posts over on YouTube? I’ve got access to that functionality now, I might as well use it if people are interested.
I’m sorry for posting twice. I don’t know how Word Press really works but over on You Tube my comments get whisked away for the most minor of things: too many emoticons, too many dots [. . . . .], the names of various drugs, too much N.T. Greek, the names of various players in early Christianity, it mistakes all kinds of things for spam, hate speech, et.al. If I re-write them, they often then post.
re: separate your emotional reaction from your critical faculties✔
re: but mostly, I keep seeing people just reacting, not thinking and that’s where the problem always comes in.✔✔✔
re: So, do you think I ought to keep linking some of the appropriate blog posts over on YouTube?
—Oh, absolutely you should! Especially gold like the FEE-FEES discussions because you are really on to something there. It never really hit me until you kept talking about fee-fees over and over again but then it hit me. Wow, is not the whole Born-Again experience just an “In-Love” experience? The in-love experience causes us (—especially people more given to emotion, very often women. I say this to my shame.) to be blind and it is basically infatuation. All these warm devotional feelings; feelings in the heart; the in-love experience of a perfect imaginary friend. . . .You know, Jesus is my boyfriend. The history of Christian origins makes one thing clear: —It is a VAST, mind-boggling in-love experience. . . .Jesus we love you; Oh, how we love you; You are the one our hearts adore. It looks like an identical psychological structure.
The fee-fees are what cause people to just scroll to the bottom of a vast theological agreement and hit “I accept” without really understanding what they have accepted. In fact, logic, reason, evidence deconstruct the Christ-of-Faith and much of the Jesus-of-History. What most Christians believe has NOT come into contact with the last 275 years of structural and factual issues in the manuscript evidence, archeology, textual contradictions, textual variants, interpolations, redactions, textual alterations, unverified authors, subjectively canonized books —issues with cosmology, evolutionary biology, mythology in the texts. (—I know you know all that.💖)
re: I’ve got access to that functionality now, I might as well use it if people are interested. YES!!! —absolutely!
Re: so I spent it watching some YouTube videos. Yeah, that rarely ever goes well.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Kindness is the excuse that social justice warriors use when they want to exercise control over what other people think and say. No one is equal to anything. Even the same woman is not equal to herself on different days.
For me it is always this question. ―Alison, how are you going to keep your emotions from hijacking your intellect? That is the question! And false hope. Oh my, that used to be my favorite. That’s what is usually being peddled in Christianity and false hope is the worst, the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you so fast and kills you even harder. ―It’s such bad news. When false hope shows up, it’s only a matter of time until someone gets seriously hurt.
But these emotions can get you harmed too, no matter how rational you are. Starting at 06:11 in Let’s Talk Tactics [paraphrasing] Many years ago I was having a debate with a theist and I discredited everything he had to say [GOOD!] and he said he wanted to come beat me up. Now, it just so happened that he lived a couple of blocks away so I invited him to come over and of course he never showed up. This is hardly the only time I’ve ever tried this tactic and the online bullies never make good on their threats because bullies are at their core chickens.
I don’t know, and maybe this is too emotional on my part, but I would say: Hellfire and Brimstone, do you know how many unstable people are in this world? I would invite you to consider not throwing down these types of challenges. The last thing this world needs is one less person telling the truth about Christianity and irrationality.
Of course, for me, when I was a Christian, taking on too much of other people’s drama was my poor excuse for not taking ownership and not taking control over my own life. Christianity is just full of symbols and symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama. In Christianity, everything becomes heaven-or-hell, good-or-evil, everything is so, so terribly ridiculously “Grand.”
Atheism is the realization that it’s a do-it-yourself universe and there’s no god who pulls a rabbit out of a hat for you. Reason imposes limitations on what can be true, but faith, (false hope) has no limitations at all. False hope is a terrible thing, harsh reality is always better than false hope.
And I know full well that people aren’t interested in the truth. They’re interested in safety, security, what keeps them comfortable. They’re interested in being looked after. They’re interested in a tale being spun and Christianity is one tale being spun.
No sentimentality, no false hope, no self-petting lies, merely that which is!
I was in a conversation with my wife, a Christian, and the subject of emotions came up. I offered the following analogy which I still believe holds a lot of truth.
Facts and reality are the food of life. Emotions are like salt. Add a little and you’ve greatly improved the taste. Add too much and you gag and throw up.
That’s an excellent analogy.