Why You Should Not Bring Up Religious Quotes In A Debate
Yesterday I posted about a religious topic. For better or worse, some responders decided to pick up on the particular religion in question. The name of the religion doesn't matter. Quote mining is wrong for the same reason I can take any word or sentence someone has said and apply it to a different context.
Nonetheless, quote mining is powerful when it comes to debates of politics and religion because the average mind can only make direct correlations with the subject matter without properly evaluating context. Imagine for example if we are talking about nuclear bombs and someone quotes some random scientists from military projects in order to criticize the entire field of science. That wouldn't be fair right? Even so, it works and we all learned that the hard way.
Same applies for religion and everything else really. If we are trying to make a point about an entire ideology that involves sometimes billions of people then using a quote from a book, speech or paper, will make our argument weak. It is the trap of overgeneralization and supersimplifaction. We just hope the masses "bite" the bait.
In subjects of religion, the text is interpreted differently for different people and for different reasons. Heck, even in science peer-reviewers can have different opinions about the data and interpret them differently. For anyone involved with statistics, they know very well what I mean. Using statistics you can pretty much prove anything you want. The only thing one has to do is shift the target of their evaluation and move some ratios around.
Religious quotes without context can and will be perceived differently because people carry different histories, practises and ideas about the subject in question. Without proper argumentation, without rational arguments, we will be dooming the debate into an ideological war. The very thing we are trying to avoid.
Language is a very powerful tool. We all know more or less how some arguments are unfair but only when they are used against us. Interpretation is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human and that should never be used as a tool to deceive someone to accept our point of view. Let us no become like the ones we often accuse.
Everyone has their own religion and like always , fights occur because of religious thoughts . Religion is something that should not be brought up because that is one ascpect of what makes us all different from one another and we should respect each other’s beliefs
saya setuju sir/ dear
A quote for your post.
using religious quotes affects me the same way that waving a red flag affects a bull.
If religious texts can be interpreted countless ways, and if one can find anything they want in a religious text - violence, love, compassion, wrath, evil and righteousness - then why would anyone trust them when seeking for truth?
I have participated in a lot of debates where the other side would always quote the bible to defend a certain thing's morality. It sucks, because we all know how illogical it could always be when one uses such argument, plus when you want to make a purely rational point that could keep everyone regardless of religion listening, that whole misuse of religious stuff just gets in the way and automatically makes the people even the panelists (damn, here in Philippines they're always religious) side with them. It's not fair in the event of civil debate.
Very beautiful advice dear @kyriacos. Once I also fond of this type of debating but soon I came to know the reality that I was only deceiving myself. Debate's real reason should be to found the truth & reality and when the debaters will actually realize this they will never even intend to deceive anyone else for their own ego & pride etc.
And you are right about context. Context is every thing, so without context one can use anyone's words for any purpose.
the fun part is that if you go a step further and try to merge the religion with that person who argued you gonna find out that even those religious people don't follow the exact things their religions talks about :P
People always try to explain everything around them. This is our nature. People are trying to put everything into the language of numbers. People are trying to predict everything. Think about the meaning of fundamental analysis, about the forecasting of exchange rates, stock prices. Using the desire of people to foresee the future, statistics are often used as a tool for deception and not for the proof of truth. It's bad, it's appreciated, it's immoral, but they often useing us.
Awesome post I like it.
When an argument eventually lead to religions quotes, it's automatically moves the issues from a realistic perceptive to an ideological level, which makes it totally impossible for it to be solved. When ever I am locked in an intellectual argument with some, immediate he or she start making use of Religions quote, I immediately agree with the person's point of view in order to save my strength for something more productive.