Wow, out of context much?

Jason Thibeault,

Written by my wife, Jodi. Her account didn’t get migrated for some reason.

Wow, just wow.

Anyone who read my sex-positive post a few days ago (if you haven’t you should) really needs to see this for a laugh.

I’m quoting the whole post here since it’s fairly short and I want to preserve it in the case that it gets removed. Clicky to read.

Sunday, 2 January, 2011
Atheism and sexual self-contradiction
I don’t mean to pick on this Lousy Canuck, I just kind of randomly came across his blog while seeing what the atheists were up to these days. But I found a good launch pad for discussion concerning atheism’s basis for morality. Justin writes in this post here that “… we should all just have sex the way we want with the types of people we want and *enjoy* it, because enjoying it makes it awesome.” But in an earlier post he writes concerning pedophilia that “… we have empathy for other human beings, and we understand that as children sexual advances would empirically harm if not destroy a child’s psychological state, it seems obvious that we’d endeavour to protect these children from these acts with or without some deity’s say-so.”

How does the atheist square this circle? Now, I don’t mean to suggest that the Lousy Canuck, Justin, supports pedophilia, but rather that his embrace of atheism does not comport with his rejection of pedophilia. If, as Justin says, we should all just have sex the way we want with the types of people we want and enjoy it, then why shouldn’t people have sex with children? On the basis of the Christian worldview, we can make sense of our rejection of pedophilia, as we believe in universal, invariant laws of morality based upon God’s character. But if you’re an atheist, how do you account for universal, invariant laws of morality – concerning sexuality, for example?

Perhaps Justin would say that the sex has to be consensual. Agreed. But why? Says who? Or why should the atheist care about “a child’s psychological state?” To what universal and unchanging standard does he appeal to make his case? Or, why for the atheist is pedophilia wrong even if the child consents to it? If atheism is true, and when you die and I die that’s the end and everything is forgotten because you’re dead and everyone else will die and that will be their end, then why should anyone care about children? With what part of what Justin says would a pedophile disagree: “… we should all just have sex the way we want with the types of people we want and *enjoy* it, because enjoying it makes it awesome.”? Reading it in that light makes me sick, but this is where atheism takes you, dear friends.
Posted by Peter @ 10:27 PM

I’ve honestly never read something taken so out of context before. How did he even get to the ‘just enjoy it’ line without realising it was a female writing. Had he realised that, it wouldn’t have been a stretch to figure out that Justin Jason and I are two different people and were thus not talking about the same thing at all in our two separate posts that he links.

Gah. Really? Really?? I can’t even get my head around this, don’t people know how to READ? I certainly can’t bring myself to address it seriously since Peter clearly didn’t take the time to even try to understand what my post was about. If you want to be taken seriously, maybe you should try being more serious about your research.

Thankfully Jason Justin posted a comment already to Peter’s blog that covers everything.

Jason Thibeault said…

a) My name is Jason.

b) the sex-positive post was written by my wife Jodi.

c) Her intention in writing it is to counter a horrible meme that says that you shouldn’t be satisfied with your partner unless they have a huge penis or gigantic pendulous breasts.

d) Atheists dislike the idea of pedophilia because children are vulnerable, and it is in human nature to protect vulnerable members of our species. They are not sexually mature enough to make an informed consenting decision, and therefore they are not “consenting adults”, and therefore do not count as someone you can “have sex with and enjoy it because sex is fun”. It has nothing to do with objective morality, because all morality is subjective. Just look at all the commandments you’re ignoring in the old testament because they’re supposedly not applicable any more. That is the very definition of subjectivity.

e) You really ought to stop pointing out motes in other people’s eyes when theists have logs in their own. There are more important things to be outraged about than atheists claiming sex should be good while at the same time saying sex with kids is bad — such as the rampant pedophilia going on in the Catholic (and now Protestant) churches.

I’m probably not coming back here. If you want to continue this discussion, take it to my blog. I consider the link there and accusation that I support pedophilia to be a hit-and-run, so I’m okay with making a hit-and-run in return.
6 January, 2011 10:17 AM

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Wow, out of context much?

About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.
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25 thoughts on “Wow, out of context much?”

  4. jthibeault
    4

    Well, there IS that whole chapter in Deuteronomy that says what should happen if it’s not consensual. Mind you, depending on the circumstances, the woman might be stoned to death or forced to marry the rapist while the rapist has to pay restitution of 50 shekels of silver to her father (for depriving her of her virginity, making her unmarriageable and screwing him out of some dowry, you see)…

  5. jthibeault
    5

    Gordon, you are as like a fruit of my loin. Only not my loin or anything. That might be weird. Would involve time travel.

    Yeah, bearing false witness is a grave sin, unless you’re doing it For Jesus(tm)!

  7. Jodi
    7

    Let’s even forget for a moment that you didn’t just get every specific for your premise wrong in this case. (Only for a moment though, because you got EVERY specific of your premise wrong. That is hard to do, even incompetent people get some of their premise right and then use false logic or misrepresentation to come to an ill-informed conclusion, you couldn’t even muster that…)

    Dude. That was awesome.

  8. Tom
    8

    LOL! The entire notion that an atheist has no moral or “universal and unchanging” standard is absurd! Do theists really have a monopoly on moral an ethical standards???
    I think not.

  9. Jodi
    9

    They think they do. Because if God isn’t telling me not to kill you then why shouldn’t I kill you if I feel like it?

    What?

    It’s all a little disturbing, really.

  10. George W.
    10

    I keep getting a “414” error when I try to post this, but I responded to Paul Peter. Here are the comments, for those interested:

    I don’t want to harp on this too much, as Justin/Jason has already responded to your post.

    I am sure you will consider not getting someones name right to be a minor quibble to your larger point, but you didn’t even do that. You got the poster completely wrong from the get go.
    I can prove that you didn’t read the “sex positive” post.
    How can I do that you ask? Because the post has the following sentence in it:
    “I had a great conversation today with a friend that started by me relating a story about once having sex with a guy whose penis was large enough that he hit my cervix. It was a painful experience and has always stuck in my mind as a counter point to ‘bigger is better’.”
    Is that sentence buried somewhere deep in the post? No.
    It is the third sentence in the post and the premise for the entire article.
    If you read the post, what led you to believe that Justin/Jason, someone you repeatedly refer to in your post as a “he”, has a cervix?

    So we have established that you never read, or that you never comprehended, the post to which your whole premise rests. It really does make you look like your higher reasoning faculties are retarded.
    Let’s even forget for a moment that you didn’t just get every specific for your premise wrong in this case. (Only for a moment though, because you got EVERY specific of your premise wrong. That is hard to do, even incompetent people get some of their premise right and then use false logic or misrepresentation to come to an ill-informed conclusion, you couldn’t even muster that…) Could the context of the quote you used be misconstrued? The answer, of course, is yes.
    From the original post by Jodi:
    “Soo … what about the people who really do prefer an 8 inch penis? What about the people who really do prefer a playboy figured woman? What about the people who actually have/are these things? Well, I don’t know.

    Actually I do know. They should have sex the way they like, with whom they like and be happy about it. They just shouldn’t be held as the ‘standard’ or ‘ideal’ in society. In fact, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we should all just have sex the way we want with the types of people we want and *enjoy* it, because enjoying it makes it awesome.”
    So in this case, Jodi is clearly referring to previous statements made regarding the size of adult body organs. Your implication is that statements are independent of context, and can be applied to all other situations. That is ridiculous logic, and logic that I am confident you do not want to defend.
    So, to summarize the whole of your argument:
    1. You do not have to read a post to comment on it.
    2. If you read, you are not required to use comprehension skills to comment on a post.
    3. Forgiven obvious errors in your premise, you are allowed to misrepresent someones comments to imply motives that are clearly not there in context.

    I’ll be more than happy to address the questions in your post once you are willing to admit that the whole premise from which you derive them is demonstrably false.
    Then we can have a conversation about what atheists really believe and where they derive their morality.

    Christians have a number of questions to answer on this subject, too. I just met one who clearly broke Commandment #9!

  11. Dan J
    11

    Hi, Jason Justin.

    Taking things out of context is one of the things Christian apologists do best, it seems. They do it with their own religious texts all the time.

    At least he didn’t get Jodi’s name wrong. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice her name at all!

    The proof for Christianity is that apart from the Christian worldview it is impossible to prove anything. God exists because of the impossibility of the contrary. In fact, even atheism presupposes theism.

    The stupid is strong with this one.

  12. Yakaru
    12

    Apart from wondering why he didn’t berate Justin for being gay and having a cervix, I also wonder about the mentality behind the implicit expectation that anyone commenting about sex should routinely admonish their readers not to have sex with children or rape adults.

    Also, I suspect he doesn’t know what a cervix is.

  13. George W.
    13

    Jodi,
    You seem to bet that Greg-Peter will take down the post. Can I suggest that he might double-down?
    Anyone want to bet he retracts and apologizes? I didn’t think so.

  16. jthibeault
    16

    Thanks, Erin. I guess I’d better get on writing up the paperwork to change my name back to Jason now. I kind of liked being named after a Greek myth badass, rather thank Latin for “fair” or “just”.

  17. jthibeault
    17

    Spam filter apparently went a bit sideways, and prevented two linkbacks and the comment from Clifton from showing up. Fixed now. Deleted the other 368 comments that were pending… I don’t plan on sifting through that many links for viagra, books about yoga, or online casinos to try to find legitimate links. Sorry if anyone’s not been able to post.

    Also, Clifton, at least you didn’t say Rihanna.

  18. Jodi
    18

    Yakaru,

    I guess from now on when I write anything such as “Sex is fun!” I should always include “(but don’t rape anyone including children)”. Apparently some people need that kind of reinforcement.

  19. Dan J
    19

    I would think that a person’s first real blog post in nearly three years would involve a little more though, but when I consider the source, I suppose any more thought would be out of the question.

  20. jthibeault
    20

    Yeah, we’ve probably given the fucktard more traffic than he’s gotten since he started, at that. He has like no comments on any of his previous posts. Must consider this post an unmitigated success.

  21. sinned34
    21

    Okay, you guys are all getting upset over what should be common knowledge to all of you after dealing with fundies for years. Remember, these people consider the Bible to be inerrant, containing only historically and scientifically accurate information, and describing the god Yahweh as a loving, forgiving deity. Reading comprehension is not a quality they possess, nor is it a quality they desire to obtain, because actually comprehending scripture leads one to atheism. So, in order to protect their all-important faith, they are capable of reading a book that commands them to murder witches and stone rebellious children to death and come away remembering only one thing: John 3:16’s “for God so loved the world, blah, blah, Jesus lubs me!”

    These people are masters of reading massive volumes of text (if they actually bother) and only picking out what they WANT to find. In this case, Peter read Jodi’s Jason’s Justin’s post and only noticed one thing: “OMG! Atheists call for people to have sex for fun with anyone they want! Pedophilia!”

    Remember, these people are idiots. They model themselves after Ray Comfort, who famously defended his volumes of pathetic quotemines of scientists supposedly talking about “holes” in evolutionary, geological, and cosmological theories by stating that he “picks diamonds out of the dirt.” Context and comprehension means nothing when you can take the opportunity to quotemine and score rhetorical points against your adversaries.

    In most cases, quotemining won’t win you converts, but it sure helps to keep the flock in the fold, and that’s about the only thing presuppositional apologetics is capable of.

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