...show her the same respect and consideration she shows you. Should prove interesting, and perhaps instructive.
For a clue as to what I'm talking about, see here. And be sure to read past the initial outrage.
Progressive Conservative needs a friend. I think Karen's just the ticket.
Dana, new to your blog/site, nice.
ReplyDeleteRe Karen, I will try to be polite to her, here and elsewhere. But you know as well as I do that many of the xtian people who show up on "PZ's Playhouze" come on only to spread the word and/or just to irritate the crap out of the denizens there. People are a bit gun shy.
That said, your posts on the Playhouze and here are noted with a smile. We do need to try to remain open. Who knows, may "convert" her to atheism, she does seem to think.
Ciao, JeffreyD
Bienvenido, Jeffrey! Nice to have you round the place.
ReplyDeleteAs for folk like Karen, I try to make allowances for the fact they've been brainwashed into believing non-believers must be converted or suffer the fires of eternal torment and all that rot. We get nowhere simply yelling at each other. But my patience frequently wears thin, and this is why I don't ask patrons of this cantina to treat dissenting views with blanket respect - merely the respect shown, which in many cases is little to none.
Feel free to whip out the Super Deluxe Smack-o-Matic 3000 paddle and start spanking should such become necessary. And I figure, if someone wishes to convert us, it's open season: we can return conversion attempt with conversion attempt. I have no problem with anyone turning the tables. Or turning someone over the table, comes to that...
Hasta!
I have stopped by and As I have said I do not have the slightest desire to covert anyone. I come in peace though slightly offended by the conservative jab. If you knew me you would know just how wrong that is. Also I have not been brainwashed any more than any of you. I just have a different perspective. I did not say you were wrong or anything at all about burning in hell. Don't paint me with the same "Christian" brush that you paint other "believers". I'm not them. Lets just converse as fellow humans.
ReplyDeleteKaren, re your comment at #3 - deal! And welcome to the monkey house that can PZ's Playhouze can sometimes be. I do wish to reiterate that people are a little gun shy there. Way too many Kennys are posting and people really do get tired of the same arguments and attacks over and over again. If you do not fit that bill, you will fit in fine. Oh, and the people are boisterously rude, it is their Playhouze, after all. Newbies do need realize that. That all said, welcome. (smile)
ReplyDeleteDana, thank you for the welcome. My attendance is spotty because I am abroad for two months plus at a time, but look forward to interacting her and at the Playhouze.
Ciao, y'all - JeffreyD
Karen, for fuck's sake, don't be so sensitive. You're leaping to conclusions based on no evidence - read the sentence again, and you'll realize I wasn't calling you a conservative. Progressive Conservative is one of the commenters here. Your take on religion and his just seemed like they'd mesh, and he's awash in an ocean of atheists, that's all.
ReplyDeleteI don't know you. You don't know me. That can change, and I hope that once we get past the initial awkwardness, it shall. Just keep in mind that taking offense at the slightest jab or perceived jab is going to make that tough.
So you weren't brainwashed. Excellent. You do, however, come across as someone who still thinks that atheists are inferior to enlightened Christians, and that gets right up our noses. That has always seemed to me to be an artifact of the brainwashing so many Christian churches engage in. So yours doesn't. Tell me more about your church and your faith. How does your church treat non-believers? Are we to be pitied, protected like other helpless victims, saved, what?
Tell me why you came to Pharyngula. What were you looking for? What do you want from us? That's the main reason I invited you here, other than my desire to get a good dialogue going between believers and non and try to achieve some common ground. I didn't feel we could fully explore such topics over at PZ's Playhouse, simply because those threads get overwhelming.
I want to make something clear: you offended the hell out of me at first, but then I caught a glimpse of someone I truly want to open a discussion with. We're probably going to end up shouting at each other at a few points here - I tend to get a bit on the intense side - but I think you have some very valuable things to bring to the table, and I think we could actually end up liking and respecting each other quite a bit despite sometimes fierce disagreement.
So, bienvenido! Thanks for coming, make yourself at home, pull up a chair, and remember that the legs make excellent tools for bashing right back. ;-P
Jeffrey, I'll just be happy to have ye whenever you can stop by! It's always good to have folks from Pharyngula around. Some of my favorite people in the world, you are!
ReplyDeleteGood morning,
ReplyDeleteI've had a few hours of sleep now, sorry for being so sensitive I was over tied. It was 6.00am local time and my menopausal carcass had not pulled an all-nighter (alas without booze) in a very long time. As for your question of how I found myself on Pharyngula, I was doing research on birth defects ( I am a Special Education assistant) and that was one of my hits. I stayed because I was fascinated with the site and with PZ. I am an unapologetic knowledge nerd. I am sorry If I appeared to seem superior that was not my intent. I just want to look like I have a few brain cells that fire together. I have to watch myself sometimes I have been called an intellectual snob by my own boss (in a loving way, we are good friends), but he meant it. I do not think I am any better than anyone else. I am a Christian and a Catholic in my way, but I do not attend mass. I don't need a male priest as a go between to my interpretation of the divine. I also do not put spirituality in a box. There is alot of crap out there and my faith journey is a personal one. What I want is stimulating discussion with other people who have brain cells on all kinds of subjects. I'm sure that there is more common ground than we think because we are all seekers. Now I must have a nap.
Karen, I am tremendously glad you're here! My sincere apologies for making silly assumptions - we atheists do it too. Especially this perimenopausal atheist whose temper is on a hair-trigger after Yet Another Installment of Kenny.
ReplyDelete(If you stick around Pharyngula, you'll see why we've given up on being kind and reasonable with him.)
Having you involved in the discussions is going to force us to confront a lot of knee-jerk responses and assumptions, which is just what I've always wanted. Not to mention, you have a fine intellect, and from your earlier comment it seems you're not a conservative, and hey, we don't always talk about religion round here... *wicked grin* Stimulating discussion ye shall have!
Well we can discuss George W and his band of born again thugs. I sure you will agree with me that they do not have one firing brain cell among them and have taken your country back to the moral ice age. (This is a Canadian perspective). At least our government had the balls to legalize same sex marriage.
ReplyDeleteAnd that in a nutshell is why I'm tempted to move to Canada. Only I hear that Stephen Harper is doing his best to earn the title of "Outrageous Fuckwit of the Decade."
ReplyDeleteBut Canada's still doing far, far better than we are. Moral ice age is right. *shudder*
True, but he is really pretty harmless with a minority in parliament. The Liberals and New Democrats will not let him stay too far. He is from my city though,(Calgary) and I have been tempted to go egg his house. The Prime Minister is much more accessible here the last one got a pie thrown in his face! It beats getting shot!
ReplyDeleteOoo, if you egg his house, can I go? I've also got some friends in Canada who would be all over that! LOL.
ReplyDeleteI can only wish Bush was hemmed in. Alas, after too many years of a Republicon majority, and Democrats shaking in their boots at the mere mention of the word "terrorists," he created far, far too much power. The pushback we're seeing now is too little, too late.
Still. Better late than never...
Right. I'm off to the movies
(ctd, stupid blogger rar) See you laters! ;-)
ReplyDeleteWelcome Karen Simon! And feel free to drop by the decrepit zone too. I just mentioned your exchange with Dana in a post. Stay and look around if you like.
ReplyDelete- DOF
George, you're just so awesome. And Kaden's thrilled at the hat-tip - it's his first evah!
ReplyDeleteAnd don't worry. He was amused by the whole getting his gender wrong thing... neither of us realized that, well, you know, it wasn't obvious to anyone but us. Whoops. ;-)
Totally off-topic... if any of you haven't seen The Forbidden Kingdom but love Jackie Chan flicks, run, don't walk, to the nearest theatre showing it and enjoy! It's fantastic. Jet Li as the Monkey King is just awesome.
Good Morning Dana,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the movie review. My honey would love that. I for my part am a documentary fan. Big fan of Michael Moore. Not too long ago there was a doc on commercial pet food. We have a part time beast by the name of George (wasn't my choice of a name). we share him with Jim's Ex Clare. She's one of my best friends. we went to SAIT together. Well I digress. George is a mangy rez dog of more than a few breeds. He also has attention issues, He needs it 24/7. Well anyway, I saw this doc and it scared the hell out of me. What they pass off for pet food would be a joke if it weren't so bad for them. Inferior and degraded protein, not to mention the non food grade fillers. and to add insult to injury the package information is a pack of lies. The sad thing is that testing only detect the presence of protein, not it's quality. Needles to say George gets people food when he is with us. That way I know that he is eating what we are eating and I feel better about that.
Karen, glad to see a friendly conversation is going on here.
ReplyDeleteRe feeding the dog human food:
It's understandable that such a documentary concerns a pet owner, but really, that there is bad dog food around should come as no surprise. After all, there's a lot of bad human food around too.
On the other hand, feeding human food to dogs is often unhealthy and sometimes outright dangerous. Don't just assume that what's good for you is good for the dog. See for instance here for some pointers.
It is good that you started taking control of your pet's diet, but it concerned me to hear that you are feeding him whatever it is you're having for dinner. Don't take my word for it, do some more research, and talk to your vet.
Morning - well, afternoon. Day sleeper, thee knows.
ReplyDeletePet food. Shudder. I've gotten lucky with a particular brand that keeps my kiddo fat and happy and healthy, and thankfully wasn't using whatever it was that killed so many animals last year. She won't eat people food, or we'd be on lean chicken. Strange beast. That documentary would have left me with a permanent nervous twitch.
The documentary that got to me most recently was the HBO one on voting machines. Spent a day watching it on YouTube. Appalling.
You know what's sad? I love non-fiction stuff, and I'm a flaming liberal, but I have yet to see a Michael Moore movie. Does that mean I lose my flaming liberal card? ;-)
Soooo.... what else shall we talk about?
Beowulf,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the information the site was very helpful to me. We feed him a pretty good diet. I knew about Chocolate, onions and booze, the others just seem like common sense. He does however love pizza and lasagna. I myself eat healthy because I am in the care of an obesity doctor and so far have lost about 40 of the 128lbs I need to lose. I will now pay more attention to his diet.
Congratulations! That's pretty damned impressive, that is.
ReplyDeleteBeowulf, welcomes! Sorry, I'm on my work computer, for some reason it likes to hide comments from me. Thanks for the pet feeding tips!
No,I don't think you lose your flaming liberal card. From what we in Canada have heard the Bush government was trying to surppress Michael Moore, correct me if I am wrong. I will catch up with you later. I'm off to Sunday dinner at my folks. You would be happy to know that my Dad who trained for the priesthood no longer believes in God, I don't try to convert him either he was burned when they brought in Vatican 2. He said all he was ever taught turned out to be a lie. I respect that. I however did not suffer that trauma. Talk later
ReplyDeleteKaren
Have an excellent dinner!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I actually don't get overjoyed to hear about people losing their faith - I know it's important to them, and I know that losing it due to trauma, rather than the slow drift from belief to agnosticism to atheism, is rough to say the least. I'm only glad if the end result is a happier human.
Guess that kills my militant atheist creds. At least I get to hang on to my flaming liberal card! lol
Thank you for being the kind of person who's willing to accept another person's choice. We need more like you in this world.
Hey Karen, what did they say about Purina cat chow? Now I'm worried. Though my two kitties are still bugging the hell out of me despite 8 years of the stuff so maybe I shouldn't worry.
ReplyDeleteThe contaminant in pet food imported from China was melamine, a component in plastic resins and fire retardants. If you have a Formica table top, or melmac plates, you have handled melamine, though bound in a harmless form.
Like certain other amines melamine shows up as a protein in the crude analysis tests given to pet foods. This allowed them to charge a higher price. No one would usually be looking for a plastic resin component in pet food so they got away with it until it destroyed the critters' livers and became international news.
China takes that sort of thing pretty seriously, executing the head of their FDA where pharmaceuticals were involved. I don't know what happened to whoever was responsible for watching pet food, though.
Wow, that's some serious quality control. Ouch.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember right, a lot of the el cheapo brands weren't contaminated - it was higher-end brands like IAMS, which would make sense in light of what you said. I guess my kitty dodged the bullet because she eats a Wal-Mart ripoff of Science Diet. The vet says she's robustly healthy, so we stick with it. Irritating, though - Wal-mart's the only one that sells that brand, so I don't get to shop my conscience. Grrr.
Hi, I'm Back.
ReplyDeleteI didn't hear anything about Purina per-say, but they made it quite clear that it was the premium brands that were the rip offs. You are certainly not getting what you are paying for and they are lying outright about the quality of their content. Also you must really trust that your vet's advice on feeding is not tainted by perks they may be getting from the pet food companies. This was a Canadian documentary run in the wake of the Chinese Gluten Scandal. I could not even give you the name of it because I missed the opening credits and this was a few weeks ago. But I can tell you that a lot of pets in Canada were affected and owners filed lawsuits which is unusual because Canadians by in large don't tend to sue. The notable exceptions being Aboriginal land claims and pedophiles being sued by victims. So people were pretty pissed about this.
I'd be pissed too. It's a horrible betrayal. maybe it's a good thing I didn't go in for the fancy pet foods and stuck with the same brand I've been using since the '60's. One of my cats lived to 19 on that stuff. That's 1963 to 1982. But he was an exceptional cat in every way. We traveled all over the United States and Canada with him.
ReplyDeleteAh, George, you give me hope! I'm hoping my cat's homicidal enough to make it to 20. Isn't it the hostile ones that tend to live forever? In that case, she should live to 100, lol.
ReplyDeleteI have this horrible debate with myself every time I have to go to Wally World (when the cat food runs out every 2 months). I tell myself to only buy the cat food and get out. The penny-pincher in me says to stock up on the everyday crap like shampoo, etc. The liberal in me says no fucking way. And round and round they go until the writer gets up, clears her throat, and says, "If you're driving all the way to bloody Lynnwood for effing cat food, you're fucking well going to get your other shopping done while you're there. Your mother loved working for Wal-mart, remember? Think of the fossil fuel consumption if you drive all the way across town to Target just for shampoo. Not to mention, you're only allowed one hour for the shopping. Deal with it." And on and on until I've been beaten into submission.
Having a social conscience sucks some days.
Ya, I Know How You feel I sometimes have to suck it up myself
ReplyDeleteWe all do. Imperfect world and all that.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had my daily dose of political outrage yet. Anything new and exciting?
Well have you heard of the Full Quiver Movement? They are a bunch of nuthead fundies who are "breeding warriors for Jesus". They believe that you must have as many babies as the woman can possibly shot out because according to Psalms children are a blessing of the Lord. Normally the fact that someone wants a big family would not disturb me, but these yahoos are producing little fundie clones and some are running for office. They have one agenda and that is to outlaw all abortion. I found out about these people when the learning channel ran a series called, Kids By The Dozen. The nuttiest family were the Duggars from AK. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have so far bred 17 kids all with names that begin with J. Mrs. Duggar has that stetford wife glassy eyed look you would expect from someone abusing Valium. If that weren't scary enough all these children are home schooled using leaning aids written by the founder of the full quiver movement. Jim Bob was in the state assembly then ran for the Senate. Thankfully he lost. They are now grooming there oldest son for politics. This is a growing movement in the fundie world and if I were an American I'd be very afraid.
ReplyDeleteI - wha? That's why they keep popping out kids?
ReplyDeleteThese people are disgusting beyond words. Thanks for this - I'll have to do some digging and get a post up. I never knew this. And it's terrifying.
If you google "duggar family" and "full quiver" you will find out more than you ever wanted to know. Make sure that you look at the links that the Duggars have on their website. they will lead you to the big fish that influenced them.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy this take on their little project
ReplyDeleteOther good key words are, "pearl beyond price" and "prairie muffin" This is What fundie women are telling each other on how to be good "help meets"(sic)to their masters. Oh sorry I meant husbands.
ReplyDeleteI can't do it. I can't bring myself to look at that shite right now. I'll either start laughing hysterically or crying hysterically or possibly both.
ReplyDeleteKaren? You and I are women. You and I wouldn't consider becoming baby-making machines under the thumb of a domestic tyrant. We're not stupid enough. Which begs the question: what the hell are these women thinking?
I get women who want to have a passel of kids. I get women who want to be housewives. I even get women who are more comfortable with someone else in the driver's seat. But this - it's beyond pathological.
I can only quote one of Neil Gaiman's characters, here: "Lord, what fools these mortals be."
Dana,
ReplyDeleteYou have to have a a boo at this.
When a wife Disagrees with Her Husband,Part5 An article by Teri Maxwell.
I don't know how to send this link to your blog. If you would kindly tell me how to do it, or email me at karen.simon@shaw.ca and I will send it to you. Be for warned though, you may want to throw up after reading it.
Here is the website that the article comes from.
ReplyDeletewww.titus2.com
*takes Smack-o-Matic 3000 down and grabs an airsick bag*
ReplyDeleteRight. Bring it on.
;-)
I've added ye as a friend. First time I've checked MySpace in weeks!
Anyone else who wants to find me at MySpace, come on along! I'll try to check the damned thing more often.
Right. I'm off for a nap with Mencius. Back later.