“Flamewar” is a prolonged exchange of deliberately hostile messages over the Internet. – Wikipedia
Last week I blogged about the battle of the wings. The political Left Wing and the Right Wing are battling it out to the death.
The vitriol and hyperbole on both sides is so disproportionate with reality. Left wingers are not communists and right wingers are not corporate overlords. We are all really much closer to the middle.
One area that there is no real middle is on the issue of God.
The recent LA Times flamewar pretty much proves that point. Last week the most emailed column on LATimes.com was an op-ed piece by Charlotte Allen titled, Atheists: No God, No Reason, Just Whining.
The column is really silly. It overstates things like, atheists are angry for being flogged in Church and all atheists think that believers are not as intelligent as they are. We even get some name calling, “Atheists are boring”.
Lost in all the hyperbole are some good points, like many believers easily reconcile evolution with their beliefs (as Jewish people believe), as well as the point that many arguments against God’s existence are empty, like, if there is a God why do bad things happen? (that’s no contradiction…).
Even better are the responses by the infuriated Atheists. Using the Jews as his muse, Hemant Mehta writes, Jews are boring, they complain, they are never have a serious conversation about God etc. He then points out that those statements are bigoted and off the wall. Just like Charlotte Allen. Point well taken. Let’s call it a day.
Then you get to the comments. More vitriol tossed the believer’s way.
Belief in God is a major issue. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Why the name-calling? Why toss out implausible arguments and faux-intellectualism on your behalf?
Who does that benefit?
Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we agreed to disagree on God and moved on to the next topic. I understand there is no middle ground here, so let’s forget about this issue and discuss something worthwhile.
Enough with the flamewars already. Politics, religion, God. Let’s use our minds, resources and time to help our world instead of fighting each other.
Is that something that we could all agree upon?
Related posts:
- Shame on Gizmodo | Shame on Us Too
- The D.C. Sniper’s Execution
- Madoff’s alleged misdeeds spark feelings of betrayal, outrage in L.A.'s Jewish community – Los Angeles Times
- How Many Is Too Many?
- 27 Years Is A Harsh Sentence But Not The Only Harsh Sentence
See, the problem here is that you are reading the L.A. Times and expecting something more than flame wars
(I kid)
“Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we agreed to disagree on God and moved on to the next topic. I understand there is no middle ground here, so let’s forget about this issue and discuss something worthwhile.”
Great suggestion; I wonder if it can work though. Fundamentalist Christians here (and Haredim in Israel) are trying to impose their views on the rest of the country. A good example is teaching creationism in Kansas.
[...] agree on this, let’s choose not to fight about our disagreements and otherwise be friends. I mantioned this revolutionary concept on this blog a little while ago. We have more in common than not. Let’s stop fighting about God, or anything else we feel [...]
Hehe. Makes for good blogging material or for lining gerbil cages…