Yes, the epistemology of ID is screwy. Yes, they are annoying people who are doing our society more harm than good. No, I don't think the author of this post [via and via] (or the authors of several other variations thereof) are advocating violence against ID proponents.
But, funny as it is -- intense irony, of course -- this is precisely the kind of dehumanizing violent humor that so many of us on the left decry when it's displayed by the right. Is it exactly equivalent? No. But it's close enough that to let it pass would be splitting hairs, at best.
Laugh if you will, but be careful what you complain about in the future.
2 comments:
There's a followup post which speaks to your point. OK, whines self-justifyingly in the general direction of your point.
(I thought the original suffered not only from its similarity to a style of rhetoric I'd prefer "my" side avoid but also from being crashingly unfunny.)
Thanks for the link. As humor goes, I thought it was structurally one-sided, too. But there were an awful lot of folks who cited it as "laugh out loud" funny, so obviously we're not the final judges....
In the case of Judaism (which he really doesn't address, though a good portion of that is Torah which Christians hold at a distance anyway) there's a tendency, going back to pretty early Christianity and set more or less in stone in the Enlightenment, to view Judaism as "frozen" at the point that the Gospels "supercede" or "evolve past" the Jewish tradition.
There's pretty broad consensus, as I understand it, that the violence of the Torah is very particular to the generations which were clearly and unqualifiedly in communication with and acting with the (mostly) approval of God, which the Rabbis of the Talmud and beyond were humble enough to eschew (mostly) as self-justification.
Even Moses and Abraham, the greatest and most holy of us, were flawed and human and did not always act justly. That we recognize that is an important part of who we are as a faith.
I suppose I ought to go copy this to his post, eh? I'll think about it, anyway.
Thanks again!
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