Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Barry Bonds: Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera ‘the best’ ... but not better than me
(www.usatoday.com)
Seems as if The Barry Bonds Family Foundation has welcomed a new member.
Read More...“I don’t try to compare me to anybody,’’ Bonds said. “I was the best on the field. I did more things than he did. My game was different than his game. So comparing him, to me, there’s no comparison.
“He doesn’t have my MVPs. He doesn’t have my numbers. Well, not yet, anyways.
“But does he have that ability? Yes, he does.
“Does he have that gift? Yes, he does.’‘
...“Winning a Triple Crown is amazing to me,’’ Bonds ...
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Page 4 of 7 pages
< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >That is a well-reasoned argument but not compelling to me. There are two key flaws:
An awful lot ties to a single word (arsenokotai) that you point out is very difficult to translate. Much of your argument falls apart if that word does indeed refer to gay sex. I'm no greek scholar, and I can't prove that it does (though I've read arguments supporting that), but you can't really prove that it doesn't either.
The other issue is that there are other ways to read Romans 1. Your starting point of reading it as Paul building an argument about why everyone needs grace is fundamental to most Christian theology. But there's no reason to specifically tie it to 1 Corinthians either - the argument is exactly as it states: idolatry is the most basic sin there is, because it is ultimately a denial of God. You don't need to say anything about gender roles in the 1st century to connect the sin of idolatry to any other sin, such as sexual impurity, because idolatry is at the heart of all sin. Any rational actor who believed in a sovereign and loving God would not put anything else before that God, but that is what opens the door to all types of sin, of which sexual impurity is one of the most visible. This is a much more straightforward reading of Romans 1, and says nothing about gender roles of submissiveness or the "natural order".
I recognize that many, many people strongly disagree with my beliefs about the difference between sexual orientation and sexual activity, but it has nothing to do with me believing anything about women being submissive to men. And if you want to argue that all of Paul's doctrine is inherently sexist then we can have a separate debate about that.
Attacking and belittling Torii for what he believes and said instead of saying "Well, I disagree and I think that he's wrong and here's why" when he is simply practicing freedom of religion and speech is by definition intolerance.
I read TFA again. All I see is that he says having a gay teammate would be "difficult" and "uncomfortable" for him. He is not taking any legal position, nor a position on policies of the Tigers or MLB. He is not calling for anyone to join him in protest, or even to agree with him. I don't see how a person saying "I dislike you", "I disapprove of you", "You are doing things that I believe God disapproves of" or anything similar is violating anyone's rights. As far as I'm aware no one has ever advocated for the right to be popular or universally approved of. You are allowed to dislike or disapprove of people for any reason you want to or for no reason at all. You just cannot discriminate against them in the workplace or in other circumstances for specific reasons as described by the law. I don't see where Torii is advocating doing anything to homosexuals or taking a position on a law adding homosexuals as a protected group.
The issue isn't what your or I or anyone is for or against. The issue is whether you believe that your beliefs make you superior or more moral as someone with different beliefs, or whether you recognize the equal right of people to hold beliefs that are different from yours.
Seriously. Yes. And I'll go further than that. I would consider a person opposed to interracial marriage but willing to acknowledge that others have a right to different beliefs morally superior to someone who is in favor of interracial marriage and is not willing to acknowledge the validity of any other position.
And you would be correct to do so. People who believe that any position but the one that they hold is not just wrong but invalid - like the feminist who once famously told my father "You have no right to hold that position" - are fanatics.
Why are rights of belief more important than rights of action? Why is it more important to be tolerant of what people think than what people do? I'd think it should be the other way around, since no amount of intolerance can truly change what people think or believe, but intolerance can and does change what people are allowed to do.
No one is attacking Hunter's freedom of speech. He's free to say as many stupid, bigoted, hateful things as he wants, and if some government official tried to stop Hunter from speaking his mind, I'd absolutely rise up to Hunter's defense. But freedom of speech is not a "Get Out of Being Called an #######\" card. People aren't required to agree with what you say, or refrain from criticizing your statements, or even to associate with you after you're done speaking. Actions have consequences.
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that what Cap Anson said about black baseball players?
Oh, and a big coke to base ball chick earlier. Post #80 is one of the best laughs I've had here.
But that isn't what I was commenting about, which is that people who maintain that Hunter's views are invalid are themselves the epitome of intolerance.
I think you're saying Torii can believe whatever he wants but if he says it in public it deserves denouncement from those who disagree or find it despicable. I agree that both Torii and the denouncers have freedom of speech, but I don't agree that the denouncers have any moral high ground. Nobody has to publicly approve of everything everyone does. As far as I'm concerned it's OK to approve or disapprove of abortion (which I think is wrong), polygamy (which I think is fine), prostitution (which I think is fine), bank bailouts (which I think is not fine), heterosexuality (which I think is fine) and homosexuality (which I think is fine). Whether I approve or disapprove of something doesn't make me a better person than someone else who thinks differently. I have the legal right to freedom of speech, but I do not have a moral high ground to denounce anyone else's speech, no matter what I think.
BBC is always awesome, but I don't think poly/cotton blends are comfortable. Natural fibers are the only way to go. I'm definitely bigoted on this point.
Who's being intolerant of opposing views? Hunter has the right to say whatever stupid, hateful things he wants, and in return, observers have the right to accurately describe his views as stupid and hateful. It's win-win!
As far as the right to public discourse is concerned, Hunter's views are a perfectly valid, just like a white supremacist's or a flat earther's. All three of those positions have about the same amount of merit, and are likely to be similarly received by reasonable people - but that's an entirely separate issue from the question of validity.
You don't get to be the moral arbiter and decide that. No one does.
FYI I know a number of quite reasonable people of merit who hold similar viewpoints to Hunter's. I know a number of reasonable people of merit who disagree with him. Neither side is right or wrong - these are matters of opinion.
I think if he said having a deaf teammate would be difficult, it would at least be marginally defensible. How is that guy going to know that you're calling him off?
OK, I would disagree, at the risk of being excluded from your group of "reasonable people".
1) White Supremacist -- white supremacy was widely accepted by white people (no surprise there) in many places at many times in history and was the dominant way of thinking in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and basically everywhere where people who considered themselves "white" moved to either recently or millennia before. It worked pretty well for white people to hold this view for centuries, until it became unfashionable in the past 50 or so years. In countries where White Supremacy was official policy, "white" people continue to be among the richer people in the country.
I know lots of people, white and otherwise, who have an emotional preference for white people -- either with respect to immigration ("My friend is having all kinds of trouble with the immigration people, and she's from Germany. It's not like she's from ..... oops sorry I didn't mean anything"), employment ("We need a white person for this job. We have too many Asians right now and the optics for clients will be better with a white guy "), sex ("I prefer white"), security ("Why do they pick old white people at the airport for [additional] screening? It's not like they're going to be terrorists or anything"), proximity ("My friend was sitting in Business Class in Japan Air Lines and the Japanese guy next to him asked the stewardess whether she could move him away. When she said Business Class was full, the guy told her to move him back to Economy. He was a [white guy]! It's not like he was Indian or Black").....I could go on and on.
Can you guess which of these statements were made by a white person? I bet you'd be wrong. As far as I'm concerned White Supremacy is incorrect but I cannot disprove that it's true, nor can I prove that it's not advantageous for white people to hold this view. I would consider all of the people who made these statements to be friends and quite reasonable.
2) Flat earth -- this is scientifically proven incorrect when taken in its literal physical meaning.
3) Torii Hunter is uncomfortable with gay people -- I have no reason to doubt him when he says this, and he's describing his feeling....just as the person whose German friend was having trouble with the immigration authorities was stating theirs. He's perfectly entitled to be uncomfortable with gay people in close proximity, and my opinion on whether he should or should not be comfortable is not more valid than his.
#2 is not a matter of opinion. #1 is an opinion and a strategic underpinning for a society. As an opinion it is unprovable one way or the other. As a strategy it has worked for the benefit of the people it was intended to benefit until recently. #3 is a statement of feeling. None of the three are alike in any way, other than Vlad disagrees with them.
What really got me going was the part about neatly groomed men's beards. Even the most right wing orthodox jewish people I know understand that one can groom their beards without violating a biblical commandment. That is kind of stuff that makes me shake my head. If someone had made a comment so uninformed reagrding baseball, we would be all over him. But to make a completely uninformed comment about religion is no problem.
In any case, does anyone think the Tigers are going to get their money's worth out of Hunter? Or will that ball park expose his flaws?
As for "Christians" (only the bigoted version gets the scarequotes), they certainly should have the right to express whatever views they like, and if they want to exclude gays from their circle of friends, that's their business. But when people react to what they're saying, they shouldn't act surprised.
If I were part of an interracial couple (which I have been in the past), I wouldn't give a crap about anyone's "moral superiority". I would give a crap about the effects of a person's beliefs on my freedom to marry. To the person or people on the receiving end of bigotry, a bigot's willingness to concede other viewpoints isn't really all that much of a consolation.
Substitute "child molesters" for "gays", and have a Happy New Year!
(Obviously, in my example, I am pro hating on child molesters, and anti hating on those who hate child molesters.)
Now, wanna make the same argument about intolerance and homosexuality?
and
So to believe these things you have to accept that there is no right and wrong. And I don't mean Right and Wrong in some super-humanly determined cosmic sense. I mean plain old right and wrong. If we accept that there is a right and wrong, which I'm hopeful we can all agree on, then there certainly is a moral high ground to be claimed in any moral disagreement, and that claim belongs to the side that is right. It's up to each of us to decide whether the bigots or the tolerant people are right, but whichever side we choose we can certainly claim the moral high ground. It should, of course, be obvious that the bigots are wrong and that the tolerant people have the moral high ground.
I want to hold a vote to take away your freedom of speech. You object to this. Can I seriously defend myself by "correctly" pointing out that I have the right to vote?
Now if you want to say we should be very careful about whom we label "intolerant", then fine. Ultimately, we need to realize that what's beyond the pale to Person A is very often within reason to Person B, and to somehow try to come up with compromises even in situations where both sides are convinced that the other side's position is abhorrent (e.g. abortion). But to say that there is never a point where we can say "hey, that person is perverting what that right is supposed to be about"? I can't comprehend that at all.
Bullsh1t.
(as if there were one THE concept of diversity ... or one THE Christian position on homosexuality.)
Woah, that's heavy.
*bong hit*
After centuries of being subjected, not just to prejudice, but to exiles, physical abuse, forced conversions and murder, I think I have every right to tell Christians that their beliefs about Jews are full of shit, and that if they don't like it, they can take their crucifixes and shove them up their collective asses.
Just because hate is cloaked in religion, is no reason to pussyfoot around it.
If you had the courage of your convictions, you would
I have never understood the Cult of Saul.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- purported witnesses to the actual words of the Nazarene.
Saul -- just another Jew so desperately trying to sell something that he changed his name.
Would that they had all followed it.
I'm down with that. Enough with passive/aggression.
@epoc - You actually believe that there is a right and wrong in opinions and in personal preferences? Wow, you just made Torii Hunter look good.
@The DA - If you don't tolerate the intolerant, then - surprise - you're just as intolerant as they are.
@Mayor Blomberg - Diversity, and I've been through formal diversity training, does include respect for any and all opinions, whether you agree with them or not.
I have been appalled by some of the intolerance shown here and the odd bit of self-righteous ignorance that insists that people who are uncomfortable around homosexuals and say so are somehow bigoted, wrong, and/or deserving of punishment.
All too many of you come off as intolerant self-righteous would-be oppressors, convinced that you hold some non-existent moral high ground of opinions. You don't. None of us do. We are all just people, and we all have our own opinions, and the ones that you don't like aren't "wrong," they're just different.
You might reflect on that the next time someone expresses an opinion you don't like.
I think that the weak link in your argument is the bolded section. To be clear, I generally don't think that Paul's argument is anything more than the product of a man of his times, so to me, the idea that it was canonized some 1600 odd years ago means very little, so that's how I am approaching it.
I don't think the connection has to be about hierarchy. Paul is a neo-Platonist. It can also be about forms. In the same way that people worshipped idols, as a dim reflection of God, they also had gay sex, a [in Paul's mind] dim reflection of natural sex. While Paul obviously does also discuss the natural subservience of women to men at other points (most notably in Corinthians, I think), those passages are not directly connected to this one.
It's possible to read Paul as making a neo-Platonist argument rather than a hierarchical one.
Grow up already. Nobody cares if you are holier than thou.
Srul Itza Posted: December 31, 2012 at 10:05 PM (#4335680)
Celibacy is the preferred Early Christian approach to sexuality.
Would that they had all followed it.
Very nice. Fight homophobia with Christophobia.
*Yawn*. The people who should grow up, are the ones who feel their fragile sensibilities are being hurt by a group of people having the nerve to exist. It's easy to tell other people to grow up, when you aren't the one who has to feel the sting of the whip. Homophobia actively hurts people, actively makes their life miserable and worse. Being gay hurts... well apparently the sensibilities of people who actually should grow up.
As long as one side is doing nobody any harm, and one side is actively hurting the other, then one side is wrong and bigoted, and one side is righteous. And the people on the wrong side should be dealt with in the same way we deal with everyone else who actively hurts someone out of spite and hatred.
No it doesn't. It means being willing to put up with other people's belief and resultant actions so long as those beliefs and their resultant actions fall within broad limits defined (often, but not always, in legal form) by society as a whole. No one is under any obligation to tolerate human sacrifice cult, for instance, or one that promotes pederasty or slavery. It just so happens that the social limits are mutable, and that persecuting homosexuals is quickly being defined as socially intolerable.
That wasn't where I was going with that at all, but, now that you mention it, some people who are uncomfortable around homosexuals do take it to criminal lengths.
People that tolerate axe murderers aren't criminals. They're just idiots.
edit...Idiots isn't fair. People who tolerate axe murderers are sick. People who tolerate bigots are sick.
That requires you to accept that the concept of "Sin" isn't a load of old cobblers.
Once "diversity" means putting your critical faculties on hold, it's a personnel management strategy -- "diversity training" -- not a mode of constructive interaction capable of furthering the interest of the polity. the goal is avoiding lawsuits caused by old white guys who can't keep their mouths zipped when they have offensive beliefs and opinions they'd like to share!
As too many others in the thread have said, treating other opinions with full respect means not trying to change conditions one finds abhorrent: don't like slavery? Well, slaveholders find it just peachy and their opinions, after all. I've read too many student papers with that ######## argument. obviously from students who've been diversity trained.
Diversity isn't a strategy or a platform anyway; it's a condition that does or doesn't exist.
Tolerance? Well, I don't want them arrested for their opinions, stripped of their citizenship, tattooed on their foreheads. Don't even put people on ignore for beliefs alone. But I sure as hell ain't gonna praise someone's ill-informed beliefs and opinions.
from my previous post:
I'm going with demographics.
The NHL has a larger number of Canadian and European players than any other league.
Compared to the US, Canada and Europe are more accepting of homosexuality (marriage equality and all that).
Throw in the fact that there are more Canadian teams (and therefore more Canadian fans of those teams), and the chance of acceptability grows higher.
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