I think it's fine to mock stupidity in all its forms, so the archaic superstition of religious belief is fair game. I'd be equally fine with mocking racism, homophobia, any other religion, etc - all of which, you'll note, would also be susceptible to this kind of attack. Coincidence?

Anyway I think you're well aware of my views from other discussions so I won't repeat myself.

what kinds of jokes we can make against ethnic groups? Minorities? People who are retarded?"

Christianity is a choice, unlike membership in the other groups you've mentioned. That changes everything.

Let's say I choose to believe in the Great Pumpkin. I mean I really believe in him. I've got the wall stickers, posters, the book of the great pumpkin -- everything. Now -- aside from your predilection for belittling people who don't live up to your intellectual expectations, do you think it's right for you to take over my FaceBook account and start a long diatribe about how the Great Pumpkin sucks?

Don't you see how that's worse than just being an asshole? You're taking over somebody's persona on the net and making them trash their own value system.

That's not civil conversation. That's not even mocking people you think are stupid. It's a whole other level of nastiness altogether.

I can't believe I'm hearing this. Yes? Of course? I mean, I don't condone people hacking FB accounts, of course. But why do you think a belief as ridiculous as that deserves any protection whatsoever?

I'm not really singling out Christianity, either. If someone hacked a known homophobe's Facebook account and posted photoshopped pictures of them sucking cock, or got into a racist's account and started talking about their black girlfriend, I'd applaud, and couldn't give a damn about "making them trash their own value system".

And the funny thing is, if the opposite occurred and, say, a right wing nutcase hacked my FB account and could say whatever they wanted - they couldn't really do any damage, because my entire self-image isn't founded on maintaining some ridiculous social façade. It would be an embarrassing security lapse, possibly provoke some mild teasing from friends and family, and life would go on.

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UPDATE: Man, I am a really bad debater. I'm coming across pro-vandalism and anti-peaceful-tolerance here. Despite my views on religion that's not what I wanted to say; my argumentative position is drifting towards the extreme to oppose Mr. Markham. If I were a better debater, I'd be able to resist that - we're well into "devil's advocate" territory for me by now.

I do not condone these attacks. I wanted to make the point that I don't consider these attacks to be particularly hurtful or serious, and that anyone who is seriously upset "when somebody takes their identity and has them say things they never would" should lighten up.

I got a little too far into "asshole mode" above too. I won't change it now but actually, I wouldn't support defacement of this Great Pumpkin believer's page. Why? Because my whole actable complaint against religion is that it's intolerant. I strongly oppose religious superstition, of course, but that's not a legitimate reason to take action against them. Simply being stupid is not evil, in and of itself. Intolerance, however, is the actable offence and that's what legitimises attacks upon religion. Now if the Followers of the Great Pumpkin had a political agenda against other segments of the worlds' population, that would be a casus belli.

I would like to say, though, that if you hold beliefs that seem to make you a favourite "lulz target" then you should probably re-examine them.

The only way to not be a target is to believe in "nothing". He who stands for nothing will fall for anything. That's not a good way to live.

The whole idea of (today's) "lulz" is to make people who are defensive about something react in a completely over the top manner. Rational people are rarely defensive and don't tend to overreact, so they are rarely targeted, and it would be a failure if they were. Hence, if you have a belief that tends to make you overreact defensively when teased about it, it is probably flawed. That was my point.

We can agree that identity theft is bad, that identity theft that trashes somebody's reputation is worse. We can also agree to disagree on mocking people. As you pointed out, the entire problem with religion is that it is intolerant. Once you become intolerant yourself in opposition, you lose the basis for your argument.

I'd like to see everybody re-examine their beliefs on a regular basis, no matter what they believe. In fact, it's the ones that don't do this that I worry about.

BTW -- don't cut your debating skills short. I wrote three replies to you before I came up with the last one. All the others had me going over the deep end and taking positions that were far afield of what I wanted. Perhaps today you're just a lousy re-writer.

Ah, that's the Achilles' heel of liberalism right there, isn't it? Actually, I think we must make an exception for intolerance. The goal is not just to promote tolerance at the level of the single person. It's to maximise it society-wide. With that perspective, intolerance is identifiable as a cancer in the system, and must be excised.

"taking positions that were far afield of what I wanted"

Ha. Sounds familiar! There's a fine art to maintaining one's argument, even in the face of in extremis counterargument pushing one further and further away from one's core position. It's an art I have not yet mastered. Elsewhere on this site you'll find plenty of examples of my being suckered into making spirited defences of unsavoury things while trying to defend some much more noble principle. Perhaps the format of this site's discussion is simply unsuitable to making complex arguments with deep roots, especially given the expedited timeframes for making a response anyone is likely to read.

A fews years ago I tried starting to write a book which would describe all my beliefs, and why I believed them, derived from as close as I could get to first principles. I abandoned the project when it became an organisational nightmare; trying to justify what I thought in one area turned out to have links to 10 other areas and after a while I didn't know whether I was trying to enumerate and codify my answers to moral questions or writing a blueprint for "my perfect society". Anyway it was completely unmanageable and I gave up.

I've given some concepts in graph theory and structured data a lot of thought since then and I should probably try again. Most of my beliefs can, I believe, be encoded in a directed acyclic graph. I should attack the problem again not as a book but as a web site, so I can just post a link to the appropriate section here and save a lot of time, while also keeping the discussion formal and free of scope-creep.

That would also satisfy your requirement for belief self-scrutiny. What could be more rigorous than explicitly enumerating and justifying - and thus throwing open to public scrutiny - every founding element of every belief you hold?

Damn, I really should get started on that ..

I think that you just need to not be so concerned with this... Unless, of course, you're talking about taking a week to write something out. If you're talking about "if it's still on the frontpage," I tend to use the 'threads' link at the top to frequently check on any responses to my posts.

I think breaking into people's stuff to mock them is being a pretty big asshole, but I don't think it's worse than being an asshole.

Well, the victims still have their own value systems, I wouldn't say this stunt trashed it for anyone. But..

That's not civil conversation. That's not even mocking people you think are stupid. It's a whole other level of nastiness altogether.

This I agree with completely. I feel sorry for religious people just as much as the next sensible guy, but what the 4chan people did is not funny, it's not commendable, it's just world-class douchebaggery.

Religion and ignorance, in all their forms, are a curse upon mankind and should be mercilessly eradicated.

There is so much to know we are all ignorant. Some of us realize we are ignorant and some are so full of themselves they think they know everything.

You might notice that countries that ban or curtail religion want the people to depend upon the government (either do what the government says or starve). Any sort of organized Religion is the closest thing to a social safety net that is not government run. Until recently, even the United States didn't have a social safety net.

When I was in my teens and 20's I thought the same way as you. Then I became less ignorant. I know I don't know what I don't know and I don't go around pretending to know everything.

I have seen that on TV but never in real life. Those people exist somewhere, likely in Texas and I almost forgot, Pentecostal churches are like that. People have different needs I suppose, I find that sort of thing a little too intense.

> $DIETY's followers are there to help pick you up and tell you that $DIETY is the meaning of life while they help you out.

That was my expectation. In real life people just want the items you are giving out (from doing food programs, etc)

Religion (whichever it might be) is something you have to live as a core-set of values that make up yourself (I do a bad job myself) and when you do well, other people are interested, and when not, not so much.

People who go on TV, tell everyone what they shouldn't be doing, then end up doing the exact things they said people shouldn't be doing, were not living it. You will never find the people living it on tv because they are far too busy. People on TV are out for self-glorification but people have free will.

I am more of a Methodist liking person, it is boring (and as such draws a more senior crowd but) Wikipedia sums it up well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley)

"Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social justice issues of the day, including the prison reform and abolitionism movements."

Imagine there are 20,000 Churches in the United States. Here are some of the outside items the church I go to does, http://www.foothillsumc.org/Ministries/Outreach/default.aspx, just times that by 20,000. Now magically erase all sorts of religions. Now try to replace that with government workers. It can't be done. Everything serves a purpose, just because you don't like it doesn't automatically mean it's all bad.

The part about going straight to hell, all sin is the same but repenting of what you have done (adultery, steal a pack of gum, whatever) is the ticket out of the dark place and back into a place where you can be of some benefit to others. It is hard to be a person who can make a difference and be a person who steals packs of gum at every opportunity. A person who is repenting but is falling short, that person is still in good enough shape to do whatever (work charity for instance) one can't expect to always be repenting and falling short for the same thing though. Luckily once one major sin is taken care of there is usually another big sin to work on next.

Also similar are those 'televangelists' that end up spending all the money they collect on a mansion, expensive cars, and hookers.

These attacks were not on religion, they were an attack on religious people. This is the equivalent of saying "Communism should be mercilessly eradicated" and immediately killing as many citizens of communist countries you can find.

APPEND: ...while ignoring the Politburo!

To correct your example, it would be like eradicating communism by killing all the self-confessed communists you can find. Which actually sounds pretty effective, if brutal.

The attacks on Christian facebook accounts were a drop in the bucket, they were a few of the self-confessed Christians who happened to use the same name and password on Facebook that they did on a dating site, hardly all anyone could find.

The whole thing reminds me of skinhead teen-agers getting drunk and anonymously vandalizing homes with spray-paint at night. Hardly a blow to eradicate anything and much more like vandals desperately trying to dress up their lust for destruction in noble robes.

I thought they were susceptible to this because of security problems with a website, and not specifically because they're religious?

Reasonable people unconcerned with maintaining a squeaky clean image would indeed just laugh it off.

Right, so if someone did the same thing to you, you're absolutely sure you'd think it was hilarious and laught it off, without feeling even a hint of annoyance about it?

Right, and not what other people think of you or your opinions. Unless you also consider a purpose of your life is what other people think of you and your statements.