Aneris wrote:Shatterface as Guest wrote:Can we have a show of hands please?
Who, having read Steers talking endlessly about analogies, thinks he actually understands the concept'?
He seems utterly incapable of grasping the salient features that are being compared and fixates on irrelevant details.
Shatterface
It's more of a red herring, just as spinning dancers, collapsing bridges, metronoms synchronizing, bimodal statistics, and random Shermer or Pinker quotations. Let's be honest, even goose and gander look suspicious. He's closer on the mark with “kettle of fishâ€, where he is at least in the fish business.
Something “a little fishy†about some (all?) of my arguments? ;-) However, I think all of those were advanced to emphasize or illustrate some quite reasonable and important, if somewhat obscure, points; sort of a case of a part of my modus operandi: Point-Reason-Example-Summary. For example, the bimodal statistics graphs were presented to illustrate the point that many have a tendency to conflate the individual with the group – as with Jet_Lagg’s comments about some gene in the Finnish population.
And I think many others here have similar problematic tendencies. Not quite sure who that would apply to, or to what extent, and I don’t think that is particularly relevant, but it seems many have a tendency to insist that – because person A in a particular group says X, and another person B in the same group says not-X – that group is being hypocritical.
Aneris wrote:Steersman,
- What have analogies to do with the proposal that muslims should be deported under some circumstance?
- Do you think other people should be deported who also hold anti-democratic beliefs?
- To where would you ship white supremacist?
- Are you aware that muslims can be temporarily blasphemous, if they need to? This is known as Taqiyya.
Not quite sure which analogies or which aspects of them you’re referring to, but I think it was James Caruthers who advanced the analogy that my argument to deport Muslims was analogous to some racist’s argument to deport blacks. And I didn’t think that held water because of several reasons, notably that race is a matter of genetics, about which we have no control, whereas religion is a matter of choice, or at least a much greater degree of control.
Although I suppose one might argue that I have used analogies in comparing the suggested deportation with the historical use of that particular method. However, the history does suggest that sometimes that is the lesser of two evils.
As for white supremacists, while there are certainly some similarities there, I think there are some significant differences. For one thing, as you suggest, it isn’t clear where they could be shipped to – not the case with recent or not-yet-naturalized immigrants. And for another, it seems Muslims are generally far more public about what might reasonably be construed as the hate speech that figures as a large part of their “holy book†[ha!]. And for a third, I don’t see that there are that many white supremacists who are into blowing up buildings, and chopping people’s heads off. Although I suppose the recent torching of black churches might be a reasonable approximation. In any case, maybe those differences aren’t all that significant, but it seems that we kind of have to focus on one problem at a time, and deal with it the best way possible, even if that way may not be particularly effective in similar or analogous cases.
And, relative to “temporarily blasphemous – which of course many others do likewise in similar circumstances, while deportation may not be a particular workable solution, at least at the moment, one might reasonably suggest that something needs to be done along that line. Maybe restricting immigration would work. Or maybe, since the UK laws on hate speech stipulate fines for that crime, maybe there could be ongoing fines levied on all Muslim mosques – say, a million dollars per year – until such time as they explicitly repudiate or expunge the problematic aspects of the Quran. I don’t know for sure. But it sure seems to me that, in the face of the virtually innumerable depredations and horrors perpetrated by Muslims in Western countries on a monthly if not weekly basis, we should all be saying, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any moreâ€. To coin a phrase.
