Religious Methods: thimblerig , sophistry, legerdemain, chicanery
If we look at the current crop of religious anti-human rights websites we find a very amusing recurring argument that goes something like this; They start with the false assertion that what they’re doing has nothing to do with religion. That will come in the form of a statement:
I’m not a Muslim (Evangelical, Catholic, you choose, it doesn’t matter)
They’ve set the groundwork for the second lie:
My interest is in science/biology!
Fabulous, so is ours. So what’s your theory?
This is where it really gets interesting because the floodgates of absurdity suddenly get opened.
Women should wear burqas because of biology! It’s not that I’m a Muslim, not at all. My real concern is skin cancer. And if you oppose women wearing burqas, that doesn’t just mean you don’t care about women, it means you want women to die of skin cancer.
A nice, tight little package of information. That form of sophistry is surprisingly common, and surprisingly effective. I used the burqa because it’s so very obvious that women don’t need to live under their own portable tents to protect themselves from skin cancer. They can just walk into any major pharmacy and get spf 30 Calypso sun lotion for £1.20.
And doesn’t that imply that it doesn’t really matter if men get skin cancer? This bait and switch tactic is used across the board. They’re not against lgbt unions, they’re for “protecting children”. And to make super-duper sure imaginary children are protected, they want to ban childless gays who don’t want to have children from having a legal union and protections as well! Brilliant.
See what’s really going on? Smokescreens galore. Fraud on an industrial scale. Amazing how all their ‘scientific’ arguments always end up back at a religious dogma. These are the people who say that 1001 scientific studies don’t matter, but they have the one real study, you know, the only one that wasn’t manipulated which just happens to support their position. It was even peer reviewed and published in TCBJ (The Christian Bigot’s Journal), which is just like JAMA (because there are four capital letters in the title!)
My Mazamet 
You just inspired me to find out how the shell game works. Thank you. It’s rather simple.
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A sort of ‘Find the Lady’…under the burqua…
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What is common with a well-played shell game and the skulls of religious “true believers” is that, if you look under the shells, you’ll find the same thing that’s inside the skulls of the “true believers”: nothing.
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Russia has a law banning “propaganda of homosexuality”. The official purpose of this law is “protecting children from harmful influences and pedophilia”. In practice, any public acknowledgment of one’s own homosexuality is considered a “propaganda of homosexuality”, so is any public discourse on the matter. People are persecuted for that up to jail sentences.
At the same time, it’s OK for a 51-year-old man to marry a 17-year-old girl, apparently, against her will while being in an unofficial relationship with another woman. Technically, it’s not polygamy, but practically it is.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/18/chechen-teenager-forced-marriage-russia
So much for protecting children from pedophilia.
Homophobia in Russia is political. After the fall of the Soviet Empire, the government failed to make Russia into a strong economic and political power as everyone hoped due to the rampant corruption at the highest level. To excuse this failure, they use the usual trick — external threat, just like the Bush’s “war on terror”. Putin has declared that America and the West, as usual, are aiming to destroy Russia. He denounces western cultural values and plays on patriotic feelings of Russians, claiming some sort of Russia’s “special” spirituality and the role in the civilization”. Claiming the “special historic role” for the nation is very similar to Hitler’s rhetoric. But the background behind it is simply the desire to stay at power. It work’s. Putin’s approval rate in Russia is 89%. Homophobia is one of the aspects of this “special role”, “national spirituality”, and opposition to the “corrupt values of the west”.
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It definitely works, and in the end it’s all mostly politics- or shall we say political manipulation.
The Gauls are supposed to hate the Romans. The Iberians are supposed to hate the Moors. The supporters of one team hate the supporters of the other team in the nearby city.
Tribalism is better than currency, or perhaps it simply IS currency. How do we get people past it?
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We can’t. Because even in our own conversation we separate ourselves from “those people”. The problem is human consciousness and self-awareness. The moment you become aware of yourself, you get a sense of identity and you start to divide the world into “I” and “not I”. Division is the way to define things. This is the result of cognition. Adam and Eve should not have eaten from the tree of knowledge.
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Putin and his government shamelessly propogate religious obscurantism! The fact that putin uses the argument that usa wish to destroy Russia for his own purposes does not entail a conclusion that this empire of imperialist evil the usa does not wish to destroy Russia, yes it does, but i do hope, that it will fail, like fascist germany failed.
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Destroy? Does the US also want to destroy the Russian people? That seems a bit obscurantist to me.
The US, like Russia and every other country, has political interests. From that to destroy there’s a very large gap.
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This “gap” is not very large. Russians must not trust the usa.
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I wonder, though, why would “evil U.S.A.” wish to destroy Russia and lose a huge market for software, electronics, technologies, etc. as well as an influential ally in the Middle East and does not wish to destroy China which is much stronger economically and militarily than Russia and is a far superior economic and geopolitical rival than Russia.
These days, Greece takes more space in U.S. media than Russia. Whereas Russian media has been obsessed with the U.S. recently. The wave of anti-gay crap after gay marriage legalization, wide coverage of the Charleston shooting and Ferguson protests. Russians are concerned with the alleged corruption, racism, and depravity in the U.S. much more than the corruption, racism, and depravity in their own country and, definitely, more than Americans are concerned with Russia.
It’s clear that Russia will suffer from alienating itself from the west economically. U.S. would not benefit from Russia economic downfall. Why is Putin doing this? The answer is fairly clear to me. Russians already suffer economically from corruption and government monopolization of the private sector. People are willing to suffer more in the face of an external threat. They will also readily give up their civil rights out of fear. The main beneficiary from this policy is Putin himself and his cronies: 1) there is someone to blame for the poor economy, 2) there is a reason to beef up security and crack down on protesters labeling them as “traitors”, 3) internally, Putin has created a personal image of himself as a tough leader opposing the enemies who wish to destroy “Mother Russia”.
Putin is not a religious fanatic, but he uses religion as a tool of boosting the chauvinism, playing on the age-old rivalry between western and eastern Christianity. Anti-gay propaganda is just a part of this game.
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By the way, religion is just a tool in this game. None of this crap originates from religion or is caused by it.
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Most religious leaders will obfuscate in an attempt to show their sincerity for the true care towards mankind. Since the direct approach of religious punishments hasn’t worked they must now show that they’re helping the homosexual for his own sake because he’s ill or lacks will power.
The shell game moves so fast that you’ll never find the true explanation under the shell anymore so being baffled by science is your next choice.
Whether they like it or not, the church and the ‘True’ Christians will have to accept the decision has been made and that most people are happy to see any couple in a strong relationship regardless of gender. The backlash against the Catholic Church in Ireland shows they have to accept the times they are a changin’.
Hugs
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You can actually turn the “protection of children” argument against religious people. Simply tell them that adoption is an alternative to abortion. If gay couples can adopt, then there will be less abortions.
Therefore, religious person against gay adoption is actually wanting to kill children.
Awesome post. 🙂
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Do you seriously expect logic from people who oppose homosexuality?
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Not logic, but there’s something shady going on on top of it. When someone sets up a site that’s basically a scam, and gets other people to pretend they’re independent parties who just happened to stop by and comment, all the while hiding their true agenda- they’re fraudsters. Not just ignorant, but manipulative fraudsters.
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That’s a valid comment. However, my question still stands regarding anything whether it is women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, non-white rights (including Hispanics :P), logic doesn’t come into it.
Your example is good though, and the answers are similar to the ones I would use. Actually I would say wear a loose long sleeved shirt, and loose trousers which achieves exactly the same effect as a burqa. That’s what I wore in Morocco.
The tactics are also similar to those of politicians, and as journalists, we (royal we here) are used to bringing people back to the question/point that someone is inevitably trying to avoid by going off at a tangent.
Interestingly, Ark and John persist with their questions. When they aren’t being moderated or banned of course 😀
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All I see here is appeal to motive and framing. If by ”human rights” you meant gay marriage you could have just said gay marriage. Can internet atheists just make an argument, without spin and demonising anyone who disagrees with them?
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Are you implying a person’s motivations don’t factor into the value of a judgement? Why do you think judges have to recuse themselves from certain cases?
By human rights, I mean liberties as recognised by modern constitutions in most of the western world – including the rights of gays and women.
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