Rob, I think you are reaching with some of your own priuspposetions and ideologies a little bit with some of your responses. The only leg religion now stands on is linked to morality? Really? I think that is true if you only understand religion from the definitions of the anti-religious and if you are only listening to the arguments made by the religious defending themselves against atheists that are telling them their religion is worthless. I think it’s a quite shallow understanding of religion to look at the Dalai Lama and say that the only leg he has to stand on is that he is has some link to morality and others do not.You are making it seem that I’m saying you can still be good with God as if it’s a stretch of the imagination to imagine that there could be good people that believe in God. When all i’m doing is pointing out that you can be good with or without a belief in God. To take a side’ on that issue is to wrongly understand religion, humanity and the direction of society. I’m not suggesting the same old argument to ignore the thousands of dead and the horrors of the world, I’m simply refusing to attribute evil done evil by religious people to religion as if religion in and of itself has the power to corrupt humans. Humans (from my belief) are already corrupt, or have the potential to be corrupt, so to then point to external factors such as religion and blame their evil on that instead of humanity itself taking responsibility. Which if you can at least believe that (that humans have the capacity of both good and evil) then religion can be viewed a lot differently as not the cause of good and evil but rather the attempt to acknowledge and define it.If you think the core components of Christianity are immoral I would love to know what you think those components are? I think I have a pretty strong moral compass and I also hold to the Christian faith so I don’t follow?I think though that JMW is onto something in needing to define someone as religious and someone as not religious. For instance, when you say ENTIRELY religious what does that mean exactly? I would consider myself very religious (probably entirely if we were really to lay it out). What makes that community entirely religious and say an atheist anarchist activist’ who uses violence to destroy corporations and save the environment not religious? Is it because one uses the term God to describe their beliefs and the other refuses to use the term? Is the only way to distinguish between someone entirely religious and someone who is not religious (which I assume is probably your view of yourself?) that one claims that God is their muse and the other claims science is?

Very good! That gets you forgiven – you can come back. 🙂

I wasn’t objecting to the evolution of language or calling new usages incorrect. The joke is premised upon ‘virgin‘ also being able to refer to a male, so maybe when the Muslims are promised 72 ‘virgins‘ males could be meant. But they aren‘t promised 72 ‘virgins‘ they are promised something in Arabic. Something which either means ‘maidens‘ or, as you say, white grapes (o_O). I guess we’ll just have to disagree as to whether this ruins the joke or not.

I did, in a way, feel you were being a little hard on me, but I found this slightly amusing rather than disagreeable.

To make up for coming into your home and coming across as petty, I hope you‘ll accept the following alternative response, in place of the customary bottle of wine (even if this particular bottle is a cheap one):

Ha! The satire, eh!
Heather Hastie.
I hate haters, eh!
Hear atheist, eh!

The ‘eh‘s are a tribute to your kiwiness, and totally not just because that’s all I could make work.

I thought the Family Guy joke was funny, although I too was aware of the history and etymology of the word “virgin”, and recalled it at the time. You are correct that majorities are often and easily oppressed, but there’s a time for literalism and a time for keeping it in the back of your mind.

The Greek work that has been translated into Latin and English as “virgin” for Virgin Mary, doesn’t actually mean virgin either. I’m sure the Catholic Church has been aware of this for centuries, but it suits them to ignore it.

There’s an alternative translation for the Arabic word usually translated in the context you refer to above as virgins. It is white raisins. When you read the whole theory in context, the raisin translation makes more sense. However,”virgins” are more popular among the type of men who, in my opinion, are likely to be able to be persuaded to be suicide bombers.

It’s not so long ago that “gay” didn’t also mean homosexual, but that doesn’t make using it in that context wrong nowadays.

My point is language is constantly evolving. I’m sorry if you feel I’ve been too hard on you, but given that I consider this site an extension of my own home (read the rules), I felt you were being a bit petty.

Let us consider a joke from Family Guy in which a Muslim terrorist goes to heaven only to find that the promised 72 virgins are male geeks. Funny? My Collins dictionary from ’77 (first printed in ’56) defines a virgin as, “a girl or woman who has not had sexual intercourse with a man; a maiden.” The sense of the term extended to include males is recent, and I would not be surprised if modern societies are the only such to ever have had a term for a person, male or female, who has not had sexual intercourse. I don’t know Arabic but I would be willing to bet that the term in the Koran cannot refer to a male. ‘Maiden’, though once synonymous with ‘virgin’, would then be a better translation into English of the term in the Koran. So the joke only works because of the translation of an Arabic word to an English word which has recently acquired a historically unprecedented extension of its meaning beyond the meaning of the Arabic word, and wouldn’t have worked if it had been translated into an until-very-recently synonymous term. These considerations occurred to me almost instantaneously upon encountering the Family Guy joke. To me this makes the joke stupid rather than funny. To others I am just being humourless and pedantic. Likewise as soon as I saw that pie chart I thought, “majorities are easily and often oppressed”, now if this had occurred to me a little later maybe I would have already been amused by the joke “Ha Ha! complaining of oppression while being an overwheling majority. Silly Christians!” It’s not my fault I’m not more slow-witted. More seriously, I suspect it is about context. If your thoughts are limited to the context of English terms you would find the Family Guy joke funny. If your thoughts were limited to the context of Western democracy and of power residing in politicians maybe the pie chart would be funny.

As for an inability to think logically creating murderous extremists: I was not being entirely serious (where is your sense of humour?). I was just reacting to your having drawn a parallel between me and the murderers of cartoonists because I said I did not find a single cartoon funny.

Where is your sense of humour? It is a cartoon. I didn’t make it up, but I do think it makes a point in the way that satire so often does.

It’s not an inability to think logically that creates people who think murder is an appropriate response to satire. If that was the case the human race would be wiped off the earth in no time flat – belief in the supernatural is not logical; that’s why it requires faith.

The graphic doesn’t say: “Christians: It is silly to think of yourselves as oppressed since you are a majority, and the majority of people holding political power now and in the past have been Christian.” It says: “Christians: you are the majority! Therefore it is silly to think of yourself as oppressed.”

Where is your logic? It’s an inability to think logically that creates people who think terrorism is an appropriate response to satire.

Your analogy is invalid as blacks in apartheid-era South Africa, or Russian serfs had no political power. In the US, all American presidents and almost all political representatives, ever, have been Christian. Currently, well over 90% of members of Congress are Christian. Only one is openly atheist. It many parts of the country, it is impossible for someone openly atheist to be elected to political office. The same cannot be said about Christians.

And anyway, where’s your sense of humour? It’s an ability to laugh at themselves that creates people who think terrorism is an appropriate response to satire.

Or Russian serfs, or peasantry almost everywhere through almost all of history…

Now, if it were of the identifications of senators or suchlike, that would make more sense. I assume it isn’t but it has no title.