'Monkey Girl' and Religious Tribalism

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Tim

“I don’t know for sure if your impression of the US is biased, because I’m not completely sure what that ‘impression’ is.” What part of my statement that I was “basing my opinion on these, and similar rankings and comparisons that I’ve seen reported” led to this uncertainty?

The uncertainty is based on your extremely negative reaction when I’m trying to respond to anything you say.

@Tim

dga471: in this, and at earlier occasions on this thread (your “Because you claimed that the toxicity from religious tribalism is worse than other types of tribalism” comes most prominently to mind) your over-interpretation of what I have been saying reaches the point of outright extrapolation – beyond what ‘Tim must mean’ to what ‘Tim might mean’.

No, Tim, I’m trying to interpolate, not extrapolate. All conversation involves some amount of interpolation, because communication is never perfect. If I converse with someone and they say, “Look at this bad religious fundamentalist behavior in the US, and look at these rankings which show how the US is trailing other countries in many metrics,” then I would infer that they are trying to connect these two things in some sort of causal or correlative relationship, because they chose to juxtapose these them together. Would my interpolation necessarily be a correct representation of what is actually meant? Sometimes yes, sometimes not. Yes, sometimes misunderstandings happen, and what person A thinks is a valid interpolation of what person B is saying is actually not - it’s an extrapolation instead! But the normal reaction by person B is not to angrily accuse A of disrespect or accusing A of “using an argument from silence”. Rather, it’s to simply clarify that he doesn’t mean that.

@Tim

In the thread as a whole, I am arguing that whilst the behavior documented by my OP, and documented as being more widespread by the article I cited, is neither ubiquitous among conservative Christians, exclusive to conservative Christians, unique, or “worse than all others”, it is sufficiently serious, and sufficiently rare outside the context of conservative Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases , that it is worthy of heightened condemnation and heightened law enforcement scrutiny. It is in effect, as I suggested before, a (low intensity) form of religious terrorism – an attempt to get your way through fear, when you cannot do so through legal means. And I would say that about any group that engaged in such tactics – be they Rabid Right, Loony Left, Church-burning Atheists – or even Immoderately Anti-extreme Moderates.

I agree with the basic sentiment that the behavior documented in the OP is egregious in a civil society and should be condemned, no matter what kind of group - religious or not - engages in it. (I will leave it to law enforcement to determine which kinds of threats are more important to monitor.)

Once again, I don’t think such behavior is more commonly encountered in “Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases” compared to other controversial issues. I’m not accusing you of saying otherwise. If we don’t disagree on this, then good.

@Tim

It does not follow that “there must have been a time 2020-X when the US was not lagging behind these other developed countries”. I was silent on what happened before then – and therefore said nothing about that time period. You are simply making the unfounded assumption that this is what I meant. In fact the reason I placed that limitation on my statement was that whilst I had reasonable certainty about the last few decades, I did not have any strong impression before then (I don’t even know if there is even reliable data going back much further to base a well-informed opinion on). You committed what amounts to a particularly egregious form of the ‘Argument from Silence’ fallacy.

Well, thank you for clarifying your opinion. I’m sorry for misunderstanding what you meant to say in that case. Note that I was not making any sort of sustained argument about your claims in the US. I was asking you to clarify by asking some questions (not arguments):

@dga471

When was the last time the US did not lag behind other developed countries? Why do you think it lags now compared to then?

and you did clarify by pointing out that these questions assumed something which you didn’t believe. There is no need to accuse others of making logical fallacies or arguments from silence when they never meant to argue in the first place.

@Tim

If the US ranks worse than reasonable comparitors (e.g. worse than most OECD countries) on a wide range of criteria from a wide range of organisations, I can reasonably generalise an opinion that it is worse than these comparitors, within the general range that these criteria cover, without my opinion being in any way biased .

I won’t disagree with the statement that the quality of life US is worse than some other developed countries according to some metrics. But such a statement oversimplifies something complex - “quality of life” and might give a misleading impression. For example, despite the metrics you cited, many people are still more interested to live or work in the US compared to other developed countries, because of the greater range of opportunities in certain fields, such as science and technology. (That’s certainly one of the reasons for why I chose to study in the US instead of say, Sweden or New Zealand.) While certainly the quality of life in the US is worse in some aspects, it’s not always much worse to the point that it outweighs these other benefits. To take an example: a national murder rate is just that, a national murder rate. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m 5 times more afraid of being murdered when I’m in the US than in Australia, for example. The US is a large country, and the local situation is likely more pertinent to the question of the quality of life.

@Tim

If you don’t want me to be “adversarial” then I would suggest that you stop extrapolating my claims – as I find it very difficult to view anybody who repeatedly misrepresents me in other-than-adversarial terms. If you cannot help yourself, then perhaps we should avoid interacting.

You are certainly in my top 3 of the most adversarial users I’ve encountered on PS. I’m also not the first person to notice here that you commonly elevate casual and friendly interactions to an adversarial debate very quickly. For example in this thread:

@swamidass

Chill out. Seriously.