re: #1007 mcmeador

There you go letting this turn into a debate about free speech. In case you didn’t notice, this is not a forum of free speech. We’re not allowed to say whatever we want to say here. Charles controls that, and he often deletes things that he does not agree with or that he finds offensive. We’re all free to criticize race and sexuality as well. But I’m sure that won’t fly here. And the discussion is over what will be allowed here. The conclusion seems to be that Charles will not allow hateful things to be said about race, gender, sexuality, etc., but religion is fair game.

And that is because race, gender and sexuality are about intrinsic physical and behavioral characteristics, while religion is about voluntarily embraced ideas. Genes vs. memes. Ideas can be debated; characteristics can only be attacked.

Well there are social disadvantages to being a porn star, so are we to believe that people are naturally inclined to pursue that career? In that case, I guess we wouldn’t be fair to criticize them, would we? People feel natural inclinations to murder. Are they off limits as well? Because that would be hate speech, right?

People individuallychoose to become porn stars (because there’s money in it) or to murder (for a variety of reasons), but they aren’t born to be either.

Oh…and the biggie…it’s also suggested that people are naturally inclined to believe in a higher power (a.k.a. to be religious). Uh oh…

This has indeed been suggested by some. But, since far from everyone believes in higher powers (check out the Buddhists, and Taoists and Confucians, for example, not even to mention secular atheists), it is highly unlikely to be a genetically based exigency.