I'm glad you're uncomfortable with the example, because putting atheism aside, if someone is that much of a fanatic they consider killing someone over their beliefs justified, then you should feel uncomfortable.
Madeleine Bunting quotes Harris in saying "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them," and states "[t]his sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition."[57] Quoting the same passage, theologian Catherine Keller asks, "[c]ould there be a more dangerous proposition than that?" From that other Wiki.
Now Harris claims to have been misconstrued, but his problem seems to be the implication that he advocates killing rather than his comments being misquoted, he stands by the idea that it may be moral to kill those with religious beliefs because he sees them as so dangerous. So as much as critics of atheism may lay into the likes of Dawkins, he never went this far. The very suggestion that it may be moral to kill those who hold belief pushes this into Culture Police status.
The Rational Response Squad, okay, since my last visit there they've mellowed quite a bit, but I included it here because they were making no bones about converting people away from religion. They saw themselves as literal culture or religious police. But please, take a look at their site
and judge for yourself.
I'm editing and adding the example back in. Please feel free to discuss this further if you have any problems with it.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
I'll add that that I think TV Tropes staff were here just recently and they didn't seem to think the example was Flame Bait. So Yeah.
Edited by tsstevens Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
Why not move that (in my opinion, stupid) example to the Moral Guardians trope? because this trope seem to be mostly for goverment organizations censoring, while the rational responders seem to be more like a secular version of a Moral Guardians-type organization.
Frankly, I get a bit insulted by the fact that a small, rather fringe group like this get equated with ENTIRE GOVERMENT ORGANIZATIONS trying to censor art on religious grounds. That is grasping at straws at its worst.
Edited by 82.182.254.28
Would the religious examples also be moved, seeing they are also not government based, or are we only trying to protect your sensibilities?
The examples aren't all governmental, I would agree. However, all the other examples are of groups that are in some sort of power censoring what they find objectionable. For instance, many of the religious examples are about religious schools censoring their students.
If we set the bar for inclusion here as low as "They're a wacky fringe group with a website" we should have links to half the internet and the page should be the length of a novel.
Again, should we remove Westboro as an example? Or is it only a problem because atheist organizations are being criticized the same as religious ones?
Yes, we should. While they're certainly obnoxious they're not in any position of power to enforce their nastiness on anyone.
In response to your edit note:
No, what I was saying was that this doesn't necessarily have to be about government groups, but groups that have some position of power that allows them to enforce their censoring policies. That's why the atheist site and Westboro Baptist were gone: whatever you may think of either of them, they don't have any capacity to actually censor anything, as much as they may wish it. This is what separates this page from Moral Guardians.
The religious schools, on the other hand, do have the power to censor the people they have control over: their students, which is why they fit here.
If Atheist examples are Flame Bait, Christian examples should be, too.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how -Neitzsche (I know)
Precisely. We are not here to protect your religious sensibilities, we are here to discuss tropes as they apply, and if the boot fits for a religious or atheist group they should be made to wear it. If we wish to reserve the trope to those who have power on the other hand then we can look at it that Westboro or the Rational Response Squad have no power, so with that in mind we can feel comfortable in excluding them because of how little they matter.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
So... Who is that guy on a picture? Isn't that pic a bit too much of a Just A Face And A Caption ?
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I second. Who the hell is he? He's Just A Face And A Caption and Boobs.
He's John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the U.S. from 2001-2005. See the Truth in Television section.
Sen
I'm a Romanian, and I don't remember the "straight-out genocide" after the Communists fell, only the interethnic clashes in Târgu Mureş and cities like that. Can we back up that statement somehow?
Probably should get working on that essay now...
"•Individuals such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, and groups such as the Rational Response Squad come across as this. It goes far and above a simple disbelief or criticism of religion and into an almost obsession with wanting to repress religion, even going so far as claiming that religion is so dangerous that killing those who follow it would be justified, making them some sort of atheist fundamentalist thingy."
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm rather uncomfortable with this "example". I'm going to remove it for now, and if anyone is opposed, they can edit it back in later, provided they add sources for such dubious statements.
GM of AGOG S4: Frontiers RP; Sub-GM of TABA, SOTR, & UUA RPs Hide / Show Replies