Re: I hate to admit Engineer was right but too much cross-posting is ruining SRQ


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Ian Davis wrote:

I run into a pacifist here. He once told me that because he feared that Iraq
might launch a nuclear attack on Los Angeles, he thought the pre-emptive war
against Iraq justified. I've good friends who living in Seattle who thought
similarly. I've no problem with people thinking wars fine, beyond myself
thinking them misguided. But I do have a problem with someone who claimed
to be an ardent pacifist finding it ok to start pre-emptive war when they
think their city might be nuked. My problem is that this response to the
risk of being nuked doesn't seem like the dictionary definition of being
pacifist at all.

You have shoved the whole "pre-emptive war against Iraq justified"
position into the mouth of the the pacifist and are criticising him
for holding views that he has repeatedly stated that he does not hold.

For the record:

Here is the passage that You are characterizing as "He once told me
that because he feared that Iraq might launch a nuclear attack on
Los Angeles, he thought the pre-emptive war against Iraq justified."


| From: Engineer
|
|...
|
|Consider the "facts" that were presented to me at the time:
|
|[1] A group of terrorists took down the WTC.
|
|[2] Iraq encourages another group of terrorists by giving them
| a big reward for killing Jews.
|
|[3] Iraq is developing nuclear and biological weapons (this was
| from the highest sources - people who should have known - in
| England and the US).
|
|[4] Iraq is willing to sell nuclear and biological weapons to the
| terrorists took down the WTC.
|
|[1] and [2] were true. It turned out later that [4] was very
|questionable - they hated each other - and that [3] was a total
|fabrication. But I didn't know that at the time.
|
|I decided to be against the war anyway, and put a fair amount of
|effort into a group that was and is far more effective at causing
|change than any newsgroup is, but I must admit to wondering whether
|I was doing something that would lead to a nuclear explosion in
|Los Angeles.
|

You have once again totally ignored the clear statement that I was
against the war and working with a local pacifist group that opposed
it. You tell a bald-faced lie when you say that I thought the pre-
emptive war against Iraq justified, and then you criticize me for
the words you put in my mouth. This is a classic example of the
straw man fallacy.

Also for the record; silence on a topic means silence. I am not
required to state every position I hold in a newsgroup, and you
cannot turn not speaking against something into evidence of
being for it.

I run into someone here who being Quaker I imagined would wish to stand in
defence of the RSofF. But by his actions he says that the rules laid down
by the RSofF regarding who may call themselves Quaker, can be ignored.

You have shoved a fictional set of rules upon the RSoF and are
criticising others for not following rules that not held by the RSoF.
This has been explained to you several times already.

For the record:

Here is my actual position concerning membership:

My position is that Quakerism is more that just the organization
called the Religious Society of Friends (RSoF). That organization
of yearly and monthly meetings could be replaced with some other
way of organizing Friends without changing the heart of Quakerism.

On the other hand, you could perfectly preserve the organization
of yearly and monthly meetings while losing the heart of Quakerism.

When I attend a Quaker meeting (sometimes I cannot because of
work or my role as a caregiver) I split my time between a local
Pacific YM (liberal, universalist and unprogrammed) meeting and
a local Evangelical Friends Southwest meeting (Christ-centered,
evangelical, pastoral, and programmed). Because I do not believe
in or agree with the split that caused these two groups of Quakers
to belong to separate yearly meetings and because I believe that
Quakerism is non-creedal, I choose not to join one and reject the
other.

Dual membership is not an option. It is an explicitly requirement
of Pacific YM that members renounce being a member of other YMs.
Evangelical Friends Southwest does not require renouncing PYM, but
they do require "personal agreement with basic Christian beliefs
as practiced by the local congregation of the body of Christ" and
believe in "confronting Christians in the church who err in
doctrine" -- which pretty much includes anyone who believes what
Pacific YM believes.

There are no "rules laid down by the RSoF." That's how the
Pacific Yearly Meeting and the Southwest Yearly Meeting both manage
to be part of the RSoF. Most denominations would have kicked one
or the other out for heresy. The RSoF lets each YM make its own
rules. BTW, the Pacific Yearly Meeting is in error when it states
that "The monthly meeting is the final authority in all matters
concerning an individual?s membership." It clearly is not. It
assumes that there is one monthly meeting in a particular area.
That is true in some places, but not where I live.


There are questions here that are worth examining, once you get
past the lies about the RSoF having some sort of "rules" that
force one to take a particular stand on the following issues.


The first question is:

Do all Quakers or all YMs believe that one cannot be be a Quaker
without being a member of the RSoF?

No. There are those who are full members of Quaker meetings
(and thus members of their Yearly Meeting and of the RSoF) who
believe that one be a Quaker without being a member of the RSoF.
There are those who don't. Some Yearly Meetings have taken a
stand on this. Some haven't. Some Friends recall that "Quaker"
was originally a pejorative name and use only "Friends."


The second question is:

Can one be a member of the RSoF without being a member of
a local meeting?

We have the answer to that one. Yes. You can. There is a procedure
that allows a Friend who lives where there is no meeting to be a
member of the RSoF without being a member of a local or yearly meeting.



The third question is:

Can a person who wishes to be a member of two local meetings do so?

It depends on the meetings. Some welcome such dual members. Others
don't, especially in cases where the two meetings have very different
practices and beliefs.


The fourth question is:

If a person wishes to be a full member of two meetings, one pastoral,
programmed, and Christ-centered, the other liberal, unprogrammed, and
Universalist, and one or both of the meetings do not allow dual
membership with the other, can that person be a member of the RSoF
without being a member of either meeting?

The answer is currently no. Unlike the case of the person far from
any meeting, there is no procedure for doing that. That;s why I
never call my self a "member."


The fifth question is:

*Should* the person described above be allowed to be a member of
the RSoF without being a member of either meeting?

I don't know the answer to that one. Given the rarity of such
a situation and the fact that one can fully participate in
most meetings without becoming a member, it may not be worth
trying to get an official answer -- and the answer will vary
depending on which Yearly Meeting you ask. My position is
that Quakerism is more that just the organization called the
RSoF, and thus I see no need to seek membership.


The sixth question is:

Can one be a member of the RSoF without being a Quaker?

One can be a member of the RSoF without knowing what a Quaker is!

Until the late 1940s a person who was born to a Quaker family
automatically became a member of the Society by right of birth.
These are known as Birthright Quakers. Some of them were adopted
and know nothing of their birth parents.



The seventh question is:

Can one be a Quaker without being a member of the RSoF?


I say yes. Clearly there were Quakers before the RSoF was
formed and the system of Yearly Meetings was set up. In fact,
there was a time when there was exactly one Quaker, then two,
and so on. Just as clearly, there would be Quakers even if
the entire Religious Society of Friends / Monthly Meeting
scheme was abandoned and replaced with an entirely different
type of organization -- or even no organization at all. The
day may come when there is exactly one Quaker left. Will he
or she stop being a Quaker just because there is no RSoF to
be a member of? No. It may even come to pass that there are
no Quakers left with the organization of yearly and monthly
meetings going on as some sort of social club, and then later
someone reads some Quaker literature and becomes a Quaker.





I run into a libertarian here, and expect him to be as consequence of
claiming to be libertarian like other libertarians. I read www.antiwar.com
every day and that is a libertarian front promoting libertarian values. I
watch every video I can find of Ron Paul, who is also libertarian. I've
a pretty good idea of what I expect of someone who claims to be libertarian
just as I've a pretty good idea of what I'd expect of a neocon. My concern
arised not from the presumption that people are flawless gods, but that
when people tell me something about themselves, I can reasonably then
conclude something about what their positions and behaviour can be expected
to be. I think it reasonable to be confused when those who claim to be
libertarian consistently seem to avoid reading from a libertarian script.

The only possibility that you refuse to consider is the possibility that
you have shoved a position into the mouth of the the libertarian and are
criticising him for holding views that he has repeatedly stated that he
does not hold. All the other libertarians accept that I am one. Many
Neocons have told me how wrong I am. You say that I am a Neocon and not
a Libertarian? Prove it.


You tell me you were wiccan. Is it reasonable knowing that to presume that
you'd not be in favour of the edict that a witch should not be suffered to
live. Now suppose I watched you for years, and every time you had an
opportunity to defend the notion that witches should not be burned, you instead
(unlike all the other wiccans I knew) said nothing, and when you once were
finally pushed into giving an answer on the burning of a witches you said that
it might be premature to put the flames out just yet.

If that happened I would conclude that you are most likely doing to the
Wiccan what you did to the Libertarian, the pacifist, and the Quaker.
Past behavior predicts future behavior, so the most likely explanation
is you putting words in the Wiccan's mouth.

I am not grappling with people being less than godly. I am grappling
with the concern of hypocricy,

You accept without any examination the lies you have fabricated
about others and ignore all protests by them that you are putting
words in their mouths, then claim to be "grappling with the concern
of hypocrisy." To speak plainly (another Quaker practice) that is
a steaming load of crap.

and hypocricy is the antithesis of truth.

If I dressed you up in a truth skin, doused you in truth musk,
and made you do the truth dance in the middle of a field of horny
truths at the height of truth mating season, you still would not
be able to find the truth. Truth is not what you seek. You seek
something to flame people about.

.

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