Blacks and the Priesthood redux, ala David O. Mckay

[woot]

Originally Posted by K-dog

It isn't sophistry, I'm not arguing for it. What it is, is an effort to try to understand the logic or lack thereof presented by the other side of a question. Your inability to suspend your personal beliefs in order to understand the opposing position is telling. You speak of an enlightened society, you reference an enlightened people but your approach to this question shows an idealogue without an interest in true enlightenment. The mental exercise of taking the argument in a vacuum is a way to determine whether the argument is fallacious or the underlying assumptions are wrong. You can use math instead but that is much less interesting. This is a common technique taught in philosophy courses throughout the US so it may be mental masturbation but it is sure better than mental celibacy. It results in something that resembles offspring while mental celibacy results in nothing.

Now you're arguing that the entertainment of intolerant bigotry is requisite for enlightenment? It seems to me that the tolerance of intolerance is one of the greater threats to enlightenment.

I don't think anybody misunderstands what you're saying, we've just heard it before and know that it isn't worthy of respect.

[TripletDaddy]

Originally Posted by woot

I was thinking about opining, but this sums it up beautifully. I agree with all of it. For a short summary of where black skin actually comes from, I recommend this here link.

Woot, I am not disagreeing with your link, but in fairness, you posting a link to "Secular Skeptic" is no better than Snipe posting a link to a religious study done at Oral Roberts University, no?

[All-American]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

AA, since you are the one who generally plays the peacemaker role, I am a little surprised by this response. SU has as much right to find interest in and explore this topic as we do. He was raised LDS and most of his family is LDS. It is very much a part of his culture and heritage.

I'd agree, if that is his reasoning. By and large, he's disavowed any connection to that part of culture and heritage (unless, SU, I am mistaken, in which case I withdraw my objection). It rather smells like he is picking a fight.

[woot]

Originally Posted by TripletDaddy

Woot, I am not disagreeing with your link, but in fairness, you posting a link to "Secular Skeptic" is no better than Snipe posting a link to a religious study done at Oral Roberts University, no?

Not really. Oral Roberts' stuff is generally easily debunked. Arguments should stand on their merits, and OR's stuff doesn't. Sure, I could've posted an actual paper, but I figured a couple paragraphs would be easier to take in than a 20-pager. That, and this isn't my field so I get most of my info from blogs rather than peer-reviewed stuff. Blogs are the best sources available other than journals, assuming one is careful about finding credible blogs.

[K-dog]

Originally Posted by woot

Now you're arguing that the entertainment of intolerant bigotry is requisite for enlightenment? It seems to me that the tolerance of intolerance is one of the greater threats to enlightenment.

I don't think anybody misunderstands what you're saying, we've just heard it before and know that it isn't worthy of respect.

I think that, like SU, you are too emotionally involved as well. I don't think intolerance is necessary for enlightenment. I think understanding of others is. How can you understand someone if you don't understand their position? How can you argue for something when you don't see the strength of the argument against it? Furthermore, isn't tolerance of intolerance necessary in order to prevent further intolerance? It doesn't matter if you're bigoted against black people or bigoted against rednecks, at least not if the question is whether you are a bigot.

[All-American]

Originally Posted by woot

Now you're arguing that the entertainment of intolerant bigotry is requisite for enlightenment? It seems to me that the tolerance of intolerance is one of the greater threats to enlightenment.

I don't think anybody misunderstands what you're saying, we've just heard it before and know that it isn't worthy of respect.

Disagree. To refuse to tolerate intolerance is to essentially say you will tolerate different opinions, so long as they agree with or do not challenge yours. To tolerate is to let all believe what they will and reap the rewards thereof.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by woot

Not really. Oral Roberts' stuff is generally easily debunked. Arguments should stand on their merits, and OR's stuff doesn't. Sure, I could've posted an actual paper, but I figured a couple paragraphs would be easier to take in than a 20-pager. That, and this isn't my field so I get most of my info from blogs rather than peer-reviewed stuff. Blogs are the best sources available other than journals, assuming one is careful about finding credible blogs.

And the Secular Skeptic is unbiased and fair?

[TripletDaddy]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I rest my case. Like I said, sophistry. Mental masturbation. Who cares?

K-Dog presumes that English words like "racism" can mean something in a "vacuum," outside educated society's common understandings and expectations. They can't. This is why the dictionary needs to be constantly revised.

The priesthood ban is a perfect, crystal clear example of unadulterated racism, as that word is understood in our enlightened society. No amount of sophistry can obscure that fact among enlightened people.

I think the more interesting question is whether racism is always "bad." The scriptures are filled with proscribed actions being justified or even commanded.

Identifying something as "racist" in and of itself is as much mental onanism as suspending all disbelief. Like you said, "ok, it was racist that blacks could not have the priesthood." So what?

Nephi and David were killers. Technically. In and of itself, the fact is pretty meaningless.

[TripletDaddy]

Originally Posted by woot

Not really. Oral Roberts' stuff is generally easily debunked. Arguments should stand on their merits, and OR's stuff doesn't. Sure, I could've posted an actual paper, but I figured a couple paragraphs would be easier to take in than a 20-pager. That, and this isn't my field so I get most of my info from blogs rather than peer-reviewed stuff. Blogs are the best sources available other than journals, assuming one is careful about finding credible blogs.

You may want to check out a cool, credible blog that impartially analyzes the situation in the middle east...it is called 'I Hate Islam..." It is pretty impartial....

[SeattleUte]

One more thing, K-Dog, Korematsu did not inolve any statistically demonstrated racial bias. (I think that's a term of art you threw out there kind of like name dropping.) The Court dealt with direct evidence of disparate treatment by government--interning Japanese during WWII. Nowadays it just so happens that the Court deals pretty much exclusively with statistical evidence of racial bias because, practically speaking, the kind of bias the Court dealt with in Korematsu is today so widely recognized as wrong and illegal that it rarely happens, and probably would never provide justification for a Supreme Court case.

To the extent that racial bias meriting Supreme Court review does occur today, it is large-scale, sophisticated and occult, often the product of numerous combined decisions within large institutions, and must necessary be proven by statistical evidence (not to say it is any less invidious that the more crude forms of racial discrimination that occurred in times past). That's the only significance of the "statistically demonstrated racial bias" catch-phrase.

The law is simply that governmental distinctions based upon race are inherently suspect and subject to the strictest scrutiny. I dare say that today there does not exist a circumstance that can satisfy this burden. Any exception you could come up with would be the one that proves the rule.

Of course, the Civil Rights Act imposes a similar burden on private institutions.