Essay talk:On criticism of religion

You're attacking Jews? What an antisemite!--^talk 00:23, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

...That's a joke, right? Wehpudicabok (talk) 00:29, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

As a Jew, I can confirm that every gentile who discusses Jews is an anti-semite. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 03:38, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe. The point wasn't to excuse anti-Semitism, but to delineate how it differs from legitimate forms of criticism. Wehpudicabok (talk) 23:53, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I mostly agree. All people, even scientists have belief systems - string theory? Multiverses? What I do object to though is the practise of chopping off parts of a baby's sexual organs with the usual excuses.... 82.2.75.224 (talk) 08:59, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

That does raise some tricky questions regarding consent, yes. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 10:23, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Though you state - "Other common, though not necessarily universal, components of religions include" ... (5) an ethnic group, as in Jews as followers of Judaism.

I'm not at all sure that religions confined to ethnic groups are particularly common. Apart from the Jewish religion I can't think of any other significant religion/ethnic group link where criticizing the ethnic group could be construed as being the same as criticizing the religion.--Weirdstuff (talk) 11:18, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I imagine there are several smaller religions with tribal links and some of them may meet the criteria you mentioned. Especially those belief systems involving personal ancestors and how they watch over you. I couldn't tell you any names, though. Nullahnung (talk) 11:24, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Your description included the word "common" in respect of religions with these characteristics. If neither you nor I can think of one off the top of our heads then I'm not sure that your "common" stands. My criteria included the word "significant" which - even based on those which you suspect exist - is even less likely to work. :-)--Weirdstuff (talk) 11:38, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

First off, it seems you somehow confused me with the essay author, who I am not, but I shall try and respond nonetheless. Well, see, they may not be all that "significant" as religions, but "common" is another story. You see, we are a bit susceptible to First World perspectivism here at RationalWiki, I'd reckon. Civilization as we know it does not in fact permeate as huge a part of the world as we assume, so loads of tribal communes and similar communities that we might call obscure from a First World perspective aren't actually all that rare on the whole. That's how I feel, anyways. As always I find myself unable to provide any statistics or sources in demographics and anthropology to support my notions of "common", even though that would be ideal, I'm sure. Nullahnung (talk) 12:16, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry Nullahnung I confused you with Wehpudicabok. I guess that I just saw "strange name" - my bad.

Nevertheless, "demonstrably common" and "I imagine they are common" are not really the same. And furthermore even if there are many hypothesised tribal religions which are unique to certain hypothesised ethnic groups that still doesn't mean that insulting the ethnic group would be the equivalent of insulting that group's hypothetical religion.--Weirdstuff (talk) 14:38, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's all fair enough, but - wait a minute - the author doesn't actually say anything along the lines of "insulting the ethnic group would be the equivalent of insulting that group's hypothetical religion", which is an equivalency statement, the author rather says something like "Criticism of the ethnic group is generally considered as "criticism of religion," with little attention paid to what form of criticism it is and whether this sort of criticism has any merit.", the emphasis being on whether mentioned equivalency statement has any merit. Slight distinction there, but it tells us that the essay is in fact fine as is with regard to our topic of discussion, or at least I feel like it's fine as is. Nullahnung (talk) 15:02, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

(EDIT:)Reading back, I had a bit of a patronizing tone there, explaining something in exhaustive detail that I'm actually sure you're already aware of. Sorry for the tone. I just kinda still don't see a problem with the essay. The central question to our discussion seems to be whether there exist a significant amount of people who would construe criticism of ethnic group as criticism of religion and whether that occurs often enough to enough number of religions to use the word "common" with that. Personally I feel (I can't demonstrate, so this is as good as I can give you) that there are enough people who, for example, see certain types of criticism of arabs as criticism of Islam ("Why do Arab women cover up so much? Islam makes people unsexy!"), or another example, see certain types of criticism of Indians as criticism of Hinduism ("Why do cows get treated so respectfully by Indians? Hinduism makes people hippies!"). Note, I've used very crude and offensive examples, sorry about that, wanted to come up with examples "off the top of my head", since that seems to be of value here. Nullahnung (talk) 15:16, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow, people are reading my essay!

Thanks to both of you for the constructive criticism. You're right, Weirdstuff; I don't know that ethno-religious groups are all that common. I'm going to change it slightly to reflect that. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 06:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

This easy is really good!

I agree with a lot of your points. I feel that people don't criticize Judaism as much and Christianity and Islam. And I'm glad you brought up the nuance between criticizing Judaism and anti-Semitism. It's like an article I'd write. Keep up the good work! :) Rational Dude (talk) 01:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)