beastie wrote:If people are being manipuated, someone is doing the manipulation. In your response to runtu, you have conflated the group of manipulators with the manipulated.
At least you, unlike Runtu, are willing to admit that you are talking about people, rather than just beliefs.
However, the fact that you draw a distinction between the so-called manipulators and the manipulated, is no less indicting. You are simply and prejudicedly stereotyping two subgroups within the supergroup of religionists, and expressing "deep resentment" because of the relationship between those two subgroups--which is tantamount to a "deep resentment" for the two subgroups and the supergroup of religionists. In other words, the distinction makes little or not difference.
Besides, the CoJCoLDS is not alone in having a lay ministry, where most all of the members are involved in leadership capacities at some level in their faith tradition, thus creating a large overlap between the subgroups (however one wishes to label them). So, the distinction you draw above is, on this basis, also relatively meaningless.
Now, it is not that you see religionists as being reasonably and rationally pursuasive and persuaded, or evagelizing and evangelized, or converting and converted, you percieve religion in general, or in other words religionists, as manipulating and manipulated.
Your use of the pejoritive term "manipulate" is quite revealing. It tells us what a low opinion you have of both subgroups--the one group for allegedly unfairly and/or insidiously influencing or controlling others supposedly to their advantage, and the other group for allowing themselves to be supposedly manipulated or lacking the capacity to prevent themselves from being manipulated--i.e. because they supposedly "don't know better".
And, it suggest what an inflated opinion you have of yourself and non-religionists as compared with religionists--being intellectually (supposedly knowing better) and morally superior to manipulating and being manipulated like religionists.
This low opinion that you have of religionist in general, and your inflated opinion you have of yourself and non-religionists, is not modest, but so profound that it has caused you to "deeply resent" religionists in general. How can that not be bigotted?
The religionist would resent the scientists who are manipulated those who do not know better, not the actual people being manipulated.
This religionist (me) wouldn't resent either. In fact, in general terms (as you spoke in), I do not consider science or scientist to be manipulative or manipulating, nor do I view adherents of science to have been manipulated (not knowing better or otherwise). For me to view science and scientist in general in the way that you suggest, would be bigotted, and I prefer not to view others in that way--particularly given that I do not wish others to view me and my faith in bigotted ways (the Golden Rule).
But my point is that I resent religion because it provides a power to manipulative people that no other vehicle provides.
Certainly, there are vehicles that have as much if not more power to persuade as do religions in general--such as science, politics, commerce, etc. But, somehow, to your way of thinking, it is manipulation when religion does it, and persuasion when non-religionist do it. How can that not be bigotted?
Besides, to say that people are being "manipulated", is to also unavoidably say something about them--clearly something less than flattering, though certainly steroetypical.
Nowhere did I indicate that I think that all believers in religion are being manipulated. In both scenarios, I am talking about a small segment of believers who have been deliberately manipulated by people whose motivations are colored by something other than religious beliefs.
Perhaps you forgot where you extended these two scenarios to a deep resentment towards religion in general, and thus towards religionists in general. You said: "To me, it appears none of this would have been possible without the utilization of religion to manipulate. At this point in my life,
I deeply resent religion in general for this reason, as well as the manipulation of Islam to create terrorists."
There is also this unqualified, general comment about religion: "But what currently concerns and distresses me about religion is its apparent facility in being utilized as a tool of manipulation."
Now, perhaps you didn't mean to generalize your resentment and concerns and distress in that way (a Freudian slip perhaps?). But there it is. The only way to correct this is to admit you misspoke, and to restate it--and, from my lengthy experience with you, admitting you are wrong seems to be something you have an extreme aversion to.
Unless you want to pretend that either no human beings can successfully be manipulated by others, or you want to pretend that religious belief automatically innoculates people from being manipulated, this approach of yours is useless.
Were that what I was supposedly pretending, then you may have a point. It wasn't, and so you don't. Rather, I was simply pointing out the clear elements of religious bigotry in your OP.
Of course, I realize that you use selective comprehension to bolster your own bigotry against exbelievers, so this will likely fall on deaf ears. I humorously note for others, though, that Wade denies that he would view EV who insist that Mormonism is rooted in Satan are being bigots, but uses the fact that I resent religion for being the vehicle that allows certain segments of our society to be manipulated to engage in acts they would not have otherwise engaged in as proof of my bigotry.
An interesting bit of baseless projecting and deflecting, but failed nevertheless. However, it is also understandable. From my experience, those of you who are the most prone to "criticizing" your former faith, and religion in general, seem the least prone to be open to criticism of yourselves. It is a dysfunctional self-protective strategy perhaps the result of
Fundamentalism.
For those interested. Juliann has informed me, via email, of a thread at MAD in which she notes the similarities between Beasties OP here and Richardson's description of "atrocity tales". See
HERE
Thanks, -Wade Englund-