Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

WARNING: VERY LARGE POST
And by very large, I mean HUGE. Biggest I've written, I think.
However, for those of you who decide to read it, I think you will find it thought provoking, to say the least. Unless of course you made a hate-thread about me, in which case it shall build your ire, I am certain. For such uses are the Journals... God I love them! heart

It's hard to think of endings to "On a Journey Through Darkness" that don't say, basically, the same thing as the last one! gonk I'll probably stop soon.

Anyways, it's been a while since I posted something in here. I've wanted to, grant you, but I couldn't really think of anything. Or at least, I couldn't think of anything to say that I wouldn't regret later. The specific reason for such problematic issues is this thread. Now what could you hate about little old me? :innocence:

First of all, she starts out insulting me. A bad bad way to start a rant; Better to give -reasons-, and then insult at the end... Not that that's what I plan to do. :innocence: Seriously though, I hope I keep myself from being too specifically insulting. I like to think of myself as a level-headed person.

Anyways, what she says is this: What? I'd be able to understand better if I went to an accredited university? Hmm. I'll have to consider... OH WAIT! I'm going to one! Geez, fixes that problem. And since I'm in my ethics class this semester, the things I learn there are still fresh, and most useful. But the fact that I quoted from my Ethics book to her (She looked it up on Amazon: As though I were going to list a source that weren't real. rolleyes ) didn't cue her into the fact that I was already taking 'general' classes in college.

Is it easier to attack them when you twist/simplify their views? I wouldn't know. Of course, I've been tought that it's best to simplify something before arguing against it; It only makes sense not to use big words and confuse the audience. And given that I was speaking directly to my "opponent" (For lack of a better word), it would be easy for her to correct me, rather then launching a behind-the-scenes attack. But, given that statement, I must ask in return: Is it easier to attack by twisting and simplifying views in a direct face-to-face argument? Or by making up thoughts for your opponent based on their religion and your personal feelings, and then posting in a private forum full of people who will agree with you just because the person you are attacking is from a guild with opposite views?

Second, read her "reasons" most of the way down the first page. Are any of these really empirical? Are any of them based on real fact? She claims that I "morph" her opinion. Well, her opinion or not, "Moral Relativism" and "Anarchy" and "No-Absolute Morals" mean what they mean. Moral Relativism I quoted to her from my Ethics book on, but I don't feel like looking it up yet again. Long story short, Moral Relativism means that each society can choose it's morals, no set of morals is bad or good just different. This means there's no way to be morally better or worse, and you can't claim superiority over any other culture. A flaw of this is that it doesn't allow you to say that morals such as those of Nazi Germany are wrong.

Anarchy is, essentially, a total lack of government. The dictionary states it as: She said that it was when the people decide their own rules. This sounds nice, except that, in reality, it means that I don't have to follow your rules and you don't have to follow mine. I can kill you if it's in my rules, and you can't do diddly about it. Of course, then the rules of your best friend would bend to allow them to kill me, and on and on. She gave me a link to somewhere that said that anarchy worked because the people kept their own morals, and as long as everyone was moral it was OK. However, she also mentioned "No-Absolute Morals," and in a state of "No-Absolute Morals," you basically make your own morals, so you are still stuck in the same situation. An idea that you all agree to your non-absolute morals might work in a small community, but in a larger community such as the world it would be, I believe, impossible to agree on one set of morals.

In a perfect Utopia, no argument, Anarchy would be in place. In Perfect, as the Walgreens commercial might say, everyone has the right set of morals, no one makes war upon another, all is at peace. However, we live far from Perfect. Anarchy doesn't work here.


The fact that she assumes I'm taking it from a non-logical standpoint annoys me. What in the world led her to believe that? Because I'm known to be Catholic means that all my decisions, all my definitions and everything I believe comes from my religion? Does this not sound like anti-Catholic talk?

And whether or not she said she supported them, she put up a thread about "No Absolute Morals". And, in PM, she defended them. So it is irrelevant whether or not she believed them or not, I don't think there was any problem with my statement in the Pro-Life Hangout Thread of "I'm currently replying to the author of a topic in their thread that said that there are no moral absolutes, so abortion should be legal. rolleyes " And then subsequently speaking conversationally with my guild mates as to the validity of this, for a few posts.

The second thing she says about me is:
First of all, most of the people in her guild who actively post are women. She claims it proudly elsewhere. Second, of the, oh, maybe four or five men who regularly post in the guild, I consider two to be rude, obnoxious morons (I will not name names, however) and the other two/three didn't really post threads much. Of those male-initiated threads that I could find on the first page, one of them was looking for advice in a debate with me (A debate I am quite enjoying) and the other was the very last thread on the page. So I don't see how she made the, "Well he only quotes women in his journal!" translation to "He must be threatened by disagreeing women."

For another thing, when dealing online I've noticed that the gender of an avatar rarely enters my mind. I'm debating with the person, after all, the avatar is irrelevant and might not even be the same gender as said person. Not to mention that it is the "battle," as it were, that brings me to debate, the use of logic to find out more about what the other side thinks and to press one's own point. The person doing the fighting means nothing to me, except in so far as how well they fight.

Does anyone else translate that as a threat? I feel kinda embarrassed about the whole "disapointed" thing now that I look back. I'm not certain why I included that. But as far as the "threat" goes, I thought she might care back then: And I've seen too many Pro-Lifer's characters attacked by Choicers to not put a little clause in there. Incidentally, I don't feel the need to act on it right now, because, quite frankly, I'm enjoying the attention too much. whee heart Amazingly, it feels -great- to have someone in the Pro-Choice guild feel so threatened by me that she's tilting at windmills of me ridiculing her. Honestly, what I say here might be considered ridicule. However, given my own personal hate thread,(Don't let the title fool you-It's only glancingly about Lymelady) I don't really have much of a problem with that. And given that this is my journal, I don't see as how someone else could have a problem with me blowing some steam in here. Do note that I am not encouraging anyone to harm her; Given her state of being before she found out I was Catholic, she seems only mildly annoying at most times,(She "laughs" an awful lot) and she -can- make some good sense.

Next, she says: I find it extremely interesting that my "behavior" isn't the main part of the thread, considering it takes up the most space, and in fact the rest of the thread consists of two statements about my way of thinking, which she must know better then me given that neither are true, then misquotes a half pre-apology half introduction to my journal entry about abortion (Two entries ago if you are interested), then she goes back to my "behavior" in "singling her out," and last but not least, she makes her one real "point" about Lymelady.

Hmm. Very interesting that she, again, knows better then I what I think about Pro-Choicers.
1. They aren't Pro-Death; I am. ("Pro-Death with Pro-Life tendencies" was my signature as I wrote this)
2. They are Pro-Abortion by the definition I think of when I think pro-abortion: They want Abortion to be legal, generally(As opposed to only for medical/psychological reasons).
3. If there is another side to the Pro-Choice platform, I'd love to hear it because it's never been mentioned before. She gives no example. (And an appropriate answer is not, "Oh, well we're for choices all around.", that's not specific enough.)


She really seems to have a vendetta against the Church. Yes, obviously there were things done in the past; I'm not going to pull a Germany and say the Spanish Inquisition never happened. I won't deny that we once burned heretics and witchs at the stake. However, saying incidents such as that make the Church bad seems kinda silly to me. England once tried to take away the freedom of America; I hold no grudges. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor; I -love- the Japanese, and I hardly think that they are bad because of it. Yes, there were greedy bad people in the church; There are greedy bad people everywhere. The United States once had slaves and once held the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Is the United States bad?

She says, in her morality thread, that the Bible encourages male supremacy, homophobia, etc. However, she disregards the fact that the bible was originally translated by men of power waaay back when. Not to mention that I still don't know of which verses she speaks. As far as I know, the Christian books of the bible, at least, talk about tolerance; Jesus saves a prostitute and adultress from being stoned to death. He eats with known sinners. He puts down the "High and Mighty" pharisees and their ilk. One of his disciples is a tax collector, someone who was known to be corrupt. I know that in the Old Testament there was plenty of death and destruction; For instance, Sodom and Gomorra<sp> were destroyed for sodomy(Gasp!) and things like that. Someone once quoted me God's destroying of someone for trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant safe.

I have all sorts of theories as to the reasons for such things, but I don't think I'll discuss them just now. However, it seems to me that the Old Testament, or the Jewish Bible is more of what she should be concerned with then the New Testament or the Christian Bible. When Jesus came he did away with many of the things of the Old Testament. Thus, I don't see what her issue is, except maybe with Jews (But she wouldn't want to be called anti-semantic)

The next little thing was taking my introduction to the abortion thread wrongly, as I mentioned earlier. Rather then her taking it as me explaining my rant, she took it as, me being " bothered by seeing viewpoints that he didn't agree with." Which is kinda silly, and you can ask most anyone besides her that's debated with me, and you'll probably be told that I debated well. Passionately, maybe. But not as though opposing viewpoints automatically set me off.

I guess I might explain why I was upset. The real reason is that I feel the need to debate when I read an argument I find ridiculous or easily disputed. Given that the threads I had been reading at the time were in the Pro-Choice forum, I had no way to argue there. So I decided to take them here to my journal and argue against them. No one else seemed to see a problem with it.

Again she mentions me singling out people, this time she means herself specifically. I used her because her threads, after I read them, seemed to have used most of the Pro-Choice arguments I'd seen. Since I needed to work on schoolwork, I finished up before searching for more arguments.

And her parting shot is this, which I find absolutly despicable:
She quotes Lymelady's opinion. Then she laughs at it (Without bothering to argue against the point) and, from what I can tell, essentially calls Lymelady a slut/whore and claims the moral high ground because she's a virgin.

For those of you who might not understand Lymelady's comment the way it's meant, she has often mentioned that 95% of abortions are, basically, birth control. Only 5% are because of rape or health. I don't know about the accuracy of the statistic, but it's what she says. So what she's saying is that, because of that, we should ban abortion in situations where the mother's just doing it because she doesn't want the kid; "...killing for convenience was banned way back..."

---

Hmm. Before I went back and re-read her "morality" thread, I hadn't realized that we had stopped our little conversation only after I had posted my two-part reply. For some reason, though she wrote a reply and in fact pasted it into the thread, she never sent me one. I intend to copy and paste, and either PM her it or post it here or something. Unless it's all anti-Catholic bias, which I wouldn't doubt, I don't want all her work to go to waste.

Given the fact that some of her slander against me seems to be based on the fact that I'm Catholic, I must wonder if my admittance to being part of that religion is what led her to this hatred of me? Especially given the fact that, even though she states she doesn't hate believers of the religion, she says that my religion itself disgusts her.

Please, note how her last couple of posts in the thread (I'll make another link here so you can find it again) stop being directed toward me, and start being either defensive, or offensive. Please, tell me: In the part about her signature,(It said, basically, "I think men who respect my choice are attractive" wink which I truly found interesting at least, and a compliment at best,(I made a banner that jokingly said, "Pro-Life: Because our women are hotter then yours." wink does she not sound a little... Defensive? Like I've backed her into a corner? She tells me -exactly- "how I feel about it": Interesting that she knows how I feel about it, no? Even though I was sure I felt a different way...

Again, sorry if I've lost my cool anywhere in here. I'm sure you understand, given the situation.