VG,
Given your views on religion, I'm not surprised that you think a characteristic of being religious is to interpret religious texts literally and dogmatically. It's similar to racists thinking all black people are criminals. Ignorance leads to generalisations.
Interpreting religious texts literally and dogmatically
is “a” characteristic of religion, not because of my “views on religion” but because that’s observably a
fact. Interpreting religious texts allegorically is
another characteristic of religion. Some religious people do the former, some religious people do that latter and some are somewhere in between. Moreover I’ve never suggested otherwise.
Accusing me of generalising about the religious
in toto is just straw manning and does you no credit, and then comparing the straw man you've created to racist attitudes is contemptible. The ignorance here is in other words all yours, not mine.
If your criteria is those who play regularly and take part in matches, then your criteria for most religious should be those who practise their religion regularly and give sermons rather than just focusing on those who are dogmatic and literal. Plenty of sermons that are not literal interpretations of texts and which are given by people who are willing to discuss differing interpretations.
Dear god but you struggle. These things are not “my criteria” – they were just examples of
the type of behaviours that would lead others to conclude that Fred is football mad, but Bill isn’t. There are plenty of other criteria available – attending talks about football for example.
Re the two of the people I was referring to for example, more than once my wife and I have commented on X (brought up in an evangelical family, bible literalist, convinced that god intervenes in her life on a regular basis, regular church attender etc) being “really religious”, and Y (cradle catholic, more agnostic then theistic these days, aware that he can’t justify what’s left of his beliefs but finding comfort in them nonetheless by lighting a candle in church when he’s passing) as not so religious. And here’s the thing: my wife and I both knew what we meant by that and, I dare, say, so would anyone else too.
If I saw a sign saying “cabbage’s for sale” I would work on the basis that the grocer didn’t know how to use apostrophes, not that he just one cabbage for sale. You presumably on the other hand would march and in and berate him for having more than one cabbage for sale. What do you get from it though?
And just to figure out your level of prejudice…
You don’t get to lie about what I’ve said than then call that a prejudice. Try to remember this in future.
…do you think footballers who dive or foul other players or who rape women are more "footbally" than footballers who don't do those things? Just wanted to check in case you had some strange view that religious people who behave badly or commit crimes are more religious than those who don't.
Your dim-wittedness is letting you down again here. There’s nothing in the rules of football that legitimises diving or fouling (let alone rape), so no interpretation of those rules however literal would justify these behaviours. On the other hand there’s plenty in the various religious texts that, if interpreted literally, would justify horrific behaviours (and often does too). And that’s why you’ve made a category error.
Can you see where you went wrong here?
Except it's not given that most people would have a similar understanding to yours in ordinary conversation. Unless by "most people" you mean that you tend to converse with people who hold similar prejudices to you.
Wrong again – are you seriously suggesting that in the example above most people wouldn’t understand perfectly well what was meant by X being more religious that Y (or, in that sample set of two, X being the “most” religious)?
Seriously though?
Given your strange and biased criteria for "most religious" that's not really surprising.
A word of advice for you here: if you insist on turning up on an mb to argue for a position you might want to consider trying it without relying on fallacies. Here for example you’ve poisoned the well with pejorative language (a fallacy) because you haven’t establishing first your premise – ie, that there’s “strange and biased criteria”. Good luck with it though.
It's always a pleasure to point out to you when you're wrong.
It would probably say more about you than me if you ever you did manage to do that, but as it hasn’t happened yet your pleasure will have to remain postponed I’m afraid:
“
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias[2] whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect If being shown to be wrong embarrasses you and you want to pretend that its "obfuscations" etc etc, that's a matter for you.
Explaining to you your hair-splitting and obfuscations isn’t pretending that you hair-split and obfuscate. The double whammy here is that not only do you do these things by looking for linguistic error to avoid the point, but you also get even that effort badly wrong when you try it.
Glad I confirmed that your criteria for "most religious" is based on your particular prejudices.
“
Pigeon chess" or "like playing chess with a pigeon"[note 1] is a figure of speech originating from a comment made in March 2005 on Amazon by Scott D. Weitzenhoffer[2] regarding Eugenie Scott's book Evolution vs. Creationism: An introduction:“
Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory. The pro-creationist reviewers of this book clearly demonstrate this to be true.
As such "debating techniques" are not limited to creationists, the phrase has entered the general Internet lexicon,[3] together with the source quotation, which is sometimes cited as an anonymous "Internet law". The reference to creationists is usually replaced with whatever group the user is arguing with.
Even the Bible advises against this sort of thing, in Proverbs 29:9: "If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest."
Andrew Schlafly was similarly described for his contributions to Usenet talk.origins in 2002:[4] "I tried it for a while, but arguing with Andy is like playing chess with a small child who doesn't know the rules."
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pigeon_chess
