Miracles

[Happy Monkey]

Originally posted by mrnoodle
That annoys me a little, but not as much as the ones who want to be exempt from any kind of established behavioral guidelines, and who get their feelings stepped on whenever you suggest there might be such a thing as right or wrong.

I think this is a bit of a bogeyman. There are really very few people who truly amoral, and they usually have the excuse of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Even the philosophers who theorize that there are no universal truths don't run around raping and killing.

But "established" is no longer an excuse for a "behavioral guideline" that is hurtful to someone, no matter how outnumbered they are. For much of history, "we've always done it this way" was considered an extremely powerful argument. The radical original leaders of the United States started the process of removing that mentality, and the US changed the world. In my opinion, humanity has advanced more in the last 200 years than in the rest of the history of the species, more so in the civilizations that are less bound by tradition.

Of course, not all traditions are bad. We need to pick and choose which ones are useful, and which ones are based on our baser instincts. Unfortunately, when some people fight tooth and nail to defend the worst traditions, they cast a pall on some of the better ones. For example, The people screaming "God hates fags!" and equating it to polygamy are more likely to promote polygamy than convince anyone else to hate gay people.

There are nuts on both sides, of course, and I dislike PC police just as much as I dislike people pushing creationism in the classroom. I consider zero-tolerance to be a synonym for mindless, and I abhor clothing restrictions, be it religious iconography or heavy metal T-shirts. When a student-run Bible study class is banned, all that does is fuel the people who would like Bible study to be mandatory.


And please don't consider me hostile to your beliefs - consider me interested in lively debate.