tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post1996221540833085094..comments2023-10-24T04:29:23.693-06:00Comments on Atheist Ethicist: Atheist and Secular Strategy: A Question of StyleAlonzo Fyfehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05687777216426347054noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-63245918625660385842012-01-11T01:12:06.374-07:002012-01-11T01:12:06.374-07:00i can't argue against the fact that it works a...i can't argue against the fact that it works and we need to use tools that work. but it feels like heading to the darkside, from which we will never return. <br /><br />trading our philosophy for sophistry... doesn't resorting to emotional appeals weaken our ability to claim we value reasonable discourse over the manipulative methods so often used by religous institutions? <br /><br />if someone has quick fingers and a deft eye pickpocketing might be a useful tool for self enrichment but that doesn't mean we should use it... even if it works really really well. usefulness and a desirable end is not sufficient for a statement of "should use"<br /><br />emotional stories can be illustrative like you said about using a picture of ice in water, but the story of two kids being left inside a car and being killed by the heat does not illustrate a resonable point about the religous community. what would that illustrate? do you think that if some legislation had been passed in some book in washinton D.C. that somehow that would have trigered the daycare employee's memory about children they forgot in a car? that without regulations religous people don't care as much if your child dies? i can't see those two stories doing anything more that creating an emotional response with an intent to manipulate the audience. your story of your near drowing illustrates a very real problem created by our society toward the non-religous. the daycare stories illustrate nothing.<br /><br />emotional appeals are meant to be manipulative, not informative, and i think that it is something we should build our base to fight against not something that we should also use to create our base.<br /><br />the more we manipulate our base with emotional appeals when recruiting; the more likely we will be to end up with an easily manipulatable base. and an easily manipulatable base can be turned on any target by a pretty smile and a good hair cut, including itslef. and given time it will be. <br /><br />building a community worth belonging too will take time. and if we start taking short cuts to build that community more quickly becuase we are impatient for the power necassary to create real change; we risk creating something worse than we started with. so many movements start benevolently unitl they find themselves in a position of power. once they gain power the movement suddenly turns ugly.<br /><br />i realise you tempered your post by saying that after the empotional appeal we should point it out as a bad argument and then give real evidence, but i think it would backfire to play on someone's emotions, then tell them how thouroughly we just manipulated them and then how irresposible those types of arguments are when we were just using them 5 minutes prior as part of our recruitment strategy...<br /><br />i know we aren't making as much progress as the other minority movements. we don't have the money or the votes of other movements and we need them. i don't know of a better way to get them. i don't have a better solution. but i am very hesitant to stoop to emotional manipulatiion. even if it works. <br /><br />some fights aren't worth winning if you don't win them the right way. some fights are worth winning by any means necassary. Our fight falls into the former category.Kristopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08544209777124068097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-20235767109329648292012-01-10T21:56:17.215-07:002012-01-10T21:56:17.215-07:00Don't agree with your reasoning. Having them a...Don't agree with your reasoning. Having them adhere to a standard doesn't decrease safety. Perhaps the 10 were from only a few bad places but since they were never adhering to the standard people didn't know which location was safe or not. A "standard" isn't if not everyone is following it. I do agree with your comments about stories leading to incomplete rationale.triscelehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05354664906045226955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16594468.post-35095802270351166712012-01-10T12:12:17.234-07:002012-01-10T12:12:17.234-07:00An A.S.S. with style is certainly preferable.An A.S.S. with style is certainly preferable.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com