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[Vikarion]

If you think that you can't disagree or voice disagreement in a non-offensive, non-hateful way, that you need to go against the right of all humans to live in dignity - on which all human rights are based - and which demands that humans are to be treated with respect and are to be kept safe from attacks upon their honour and reputation, then, well...
you have no basis for the right to freedom of speech either.
The right to freedom of speech needs to be limited, necessarily.

That said, not all 'hate speech laws' are really aiming to outlaw hate speech: Some modern ones do, though. Anyhow, the failure to legislate properly against it doesn't make hate speech any more acceptable.

So, no: Freedom of speech is not the freedom to offend, and certainly not the freedom to speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which may incite violence or prejudicial action or which disparages or intimidates a human being or an association of humans, which is formed through and in the excercise of their basic and fundamental human rights.

The freedom to disagree is an entirely different animal than the freedom to offend or to hate speech.

Well, where are you getting this human dignity from?

I don't actually think that there are human rights, in the sense of some eternal law that springs up from the ether. And it takes only a visit to a hospice center to put the idea of human dignity to rest.

"Human Rights" are a concept we create as a society, as rules for basic treatment of each other. But they can be abrogated, and, indeed, often are, and often have to be. And there are some that are more important than others. For example, I tend to view my right to life - that is to say, our agreement as a society that we won't go around killing each other - as more important than my right to shelter.

So I reject your premise. And I also reject even the idea of a "right not to be offended". My very existence as a non-believer offends quite a few people, who have been quite happy to tell me so. Stating that I think they are wrong about a six-day creation, in exactly those words, turns out to be even more offensive. Give these people political power and a hate speech law, and I'll be in jail for disagreeing with the Bible. No thanks. I have no desire to live in a pastel version of North Korea, which, trust me, some would happily create.

[Lyn Farel]

Oh, and I would make a point about censorship (sorry Lyn  ): Freedom of speech is the freedom to offend.

You don't need freedom of speech if you don't want to offend. No one is going to get in trouble for saying that Allah is awesome in Saudi Arabia, or that the Catholic church is wonderful in the Philippines, or that the Communist party in China is terrific. No, you get in trouble when you decide to offend people by disagreeing - most often, the people in charge.

What hate speech laws do is create a class of thoughts that it is illegal to speak. And then hand the power of enforcing such laws over to the very institutions and people who have a great interest in destroying the ability of others to oppose them. Make it illegal to call gays "sinners", and you eventually have a way to toss any Christian you like into jail. Make it illegal to call Islam bullshit, and you've essentially outlawed atheism.

And I think the idea of outlawing thoughts should be troubling. In creating rules for what people may think out loud, you're establishing a precedent for denying everyone in your society access to ideas. Sure, today it may be homophobic remarks, but let the demographics change a bit, and tomorrow it may be the teaching of evolution that is outlawed.

Well if you think i'm all for censorship... I was an ardent supporter of Charlie Hebdo for example. Even if that stems from the right to satire - which is actually not a right in most countries - I truly believe in that. When it starts to become an issue is when it stops targeting institutions, religious icons, opinions, to turn into slander, libel, or defamation, which is punishable by law pretty much everywhere (which Charlie never did afaik).

So, I believe in freedom of speech, but absolute freedom of speech seems rather dangerous to me. Should we stop censoring ISIS pamphlets on the internet out of freedom of speech ? Neo-nazi drivels and parties ? Hateful speeches inciting people to hatred and violence ? Or whatever fitting the bill ?

I'm honestly asking here. That sounds like a difficult question to me, and certainly not as simple as you make it sound.

[Vikarion]

Sorry, Lyn, I was joking about bringing the thread back onto topic. 

Also, great post, Saede.

[Vikarion]

Well if you think i'm all for censorship... I was an ardent supporter of Charlie Hebdo for example. Even if that stems from the right to satire - which is actually not a right in most countries - I truly believe in that. When it starts to become an issue is when it stops targeting institutions, religious icons, opinions, to turn into slander, libel, or defamation, which is punishable by law pretty much everywhere (which Charlie never did afaik).

So, I believe in freedom of speech, but absolute freedom of speech seems rather dangerous to me. Should we stop censoring ISIS pamphlets on the internet out of freedom of speech ? Neo-nazi drivels and parties ? Hateful speeches inciting people to hatred and violence ? Or whatever fitting the bill ?

I'm honestly asking here. That sounds like a difficult question to me, and certainly not as simple as you make it sound.

Good points, and I'm not defending the right to cry fire in a crowded theater. I don't have a problem with the limits generally in America, as I think there is a difference between describing one's thoughts, and attempting to create an immediate action with them. It's a thin line, but it's there.

What really worries me is this "right not to be offended". My very existence is "offensive" to quite a lot of Muslims. Gay rights are offensive to most of the world's Muslims and quite a lot of Christians. Do we jail everyone in the next gay pride parade? Apparently. Or, at least, if we're going to be consistent.

I mean, I can play this game too. I'm offended by virtually every word a Christian or Muslim (or any other religion) apologist says. I think that they are advocates against human rights quite a lot of the time. There. Now can we jail them? Probably not. This sort of actionable "I'm offended-ness" seems to be reserved for the use of those who believe.

Or we can just agree that people, like Charlie Hebdo, are going to say things we don't like, and just accept that that's the price of guaranteeing our own right to express our beliefs.

[Saede Riordan]

Oh, and I would make a point about censorship (sorry Lyn  ): Freedom of speech is the freedom to offend.

You don't need freedom of speech if you don't want to offend. No one is going to get in trouble for saying that Allah is awesome in Saudi Arabia, or that the Catholic church is wonderful in the Philippines, or that the Communist party in China is terrific. No, you get in trouble when you decide to offend people by disagreeing - most often, the people in charge.

What hate speech laws do is create a class of thoughts that it is illegal to speak. And then hand the power of enforcing such laws over to the very institutions and people who have a great interest in destroying the ability of others to oppose them. Make it illegal to call gays "sinners", and you eventually have a way to toss any Christian you like into jail. Make it illegal to call Islam bullshit, and you've essentially outlawed atheism.

And I think the idea of outlawing thoughts should be troubling. In creating rules for what people may think out loud, you're establishing a precedent for denying everyone in your society access to ideas. Sure, today it may be homophobic remarks, but let the demographics change a bit, and tomorrow it may be the teaching of evolution that is outlawed.

Well if you think i'm all for censorship... I was an ardent supporter of Charlie Hebdo for example. Even if that stems from the right to satire - which is actually not a right in most countries - I truly believe in that. When it starts to become an issue is when it stops targeting institutions, religious icons, opinions, to turn into slander, libel, or defamation, which is punishable by law pretty much everywhere (which Charlie never did afaik).

So, I believe in freedom of speech, but absolute freedom of speech seems rather dangerous to me. Should we stop censoring ISIS pamphlets on the internet out of freedom of speech ? Neo-nazi drivels and parties ? Hateful speeches inciting people to hatred and violence ? Or whatever fitting the bill ?

I'm honestly asking here. That sounds like a difficult question to me, and certainly not as simple as you make it sound.

I don't think anything should be censored. Not the ISIS pamphlets, nothing. here, is a semi-relevant link with some really good reasoning (to me) for nothing to be censored. Its a bit old and not quite topical, but he makes some really good arguments for freedom of speech.

[Lyn Farel]

I don't know, the main argument seems to be "it would not be America if it breaks first amendment in its absolute definition"... Well, i'm not America (thankfully then), and I think people might have different definitions of freedom of speech...

I think you may be a bit too much optimistic for your own good... If you think the masses would suddenly stop at thinking in a mob rule mentality as soon as they get free to say whatever they want (kill the jews ! yay ! kill the muslims ! kill the christians ! kill the infidels ! grarh !), i'm pretty curious to see how your lonely little cry of protest or criticism will do any good against the wild majority of the mob.

Anyway.

So if the point is really to proselytize that eve mentality of the bully where HTFU is the main rule, and that only the strong survive, that the poor fragile girl that suicided because you said cruel things to her on the internet and that guess what, she was the only culprit because you had the perfect freedom and right to tell her so, because she CHOSE to take offense, and that to begin with she should just have had to HTFU in the first place so nothing would have happened...

Yeah, right, words can harm, and pretty bad at that. Then of course, if you believe in all of this, then why not going to harass people more fragile than you because they aren't fit to live in a society where only the thick skinned (meaning, the sociopaths) can live ? Yeah, well, why not ?

That's a hyperbole ? Well yes. But it carries very loaded questions no ?

Of course in the frame of ideologies, religion, icons and the like, starts to be slightly different to mere libel, slander, and ad-personam, granted. And that's where i'm not sure you are doing any difference in your reasoning.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Metaphysical naturalism is a claim that nature is all there is. Methodological naturalism is the assumption that we should look for natural causes for effects. I never heard or read Hitchens saying that there couldn't be a God, but rather that the evidence for such was woefully lacking.

methodological naturalism/materialism is not an assumption: It'a a methodological decision. It's made in the context of laying down the methodology of natural science.

If you - and Hitchens does that - claim that the only valid form of explanation and justification is to do so in accord with this method, you by necessity elevate this past the mere methodological decision and enter the realm of metaphysics.

If you demand empirical, that is scientific evidence for God, then you are begging the question as you previously excluded forms of evidence or reasons that might justify belief in God and reduced the options to those that won't.

By limiting justification and explanation to scientifc, empirical evidence you limit reason. And by the way: Everyday observational evidence is oftentimes far from the empirical evidence of science. It is not the same. Everyday observational evidence is oftentimes made without the context of a peer group: And a peer group is necessary to establish proper scientific evidence. Everyday observational data is quite often individual and subjective.

And especially if we deal with humans we stop to use anything like the empirical evidence of natural science  to explain and justify our beliefs. If the average person explains why he went to play EVE, he will give an explanation in terms of intentions rather than the firing of neurons and the commencing muscle actions. You might claim that the former is reducible to the latter - but it's farm from obvious that such a claim has any promise to be verified anytime at all.

Two.

Well, then you'd have to find some other foundation to justify the freedom of speech. Good luck with finding empirical evidence for it.

Three.
Actually, you're beginning to make me wonder if you have more than a passing acquaintance with what Hitchens wrote or spoke. I didn't claim that Hitchens said that religion was a literal mind-virus, I said that I thought it was an apt analogy.

Well, Hitchens obviously drew on his characterisation of religion as 'mind virus' on Dawkins idea of memes. Anyhow: It's not an apt analogy. First, religion doesn't spread as a virus does. Second, ideas don't work throgh analogous mechanisms as viruses do. Third, there is no evidence that it is religion "lead(ing) to them doing things harmful to themselves and others".

Fourth.
I didn't claim that my personal experience is evidence. I claim that it was my search for evidence that led to my experience. How you create a claim that I didn't make, I don't know. I am certainly not going to say "I experienced atheism, and you should become an atheist because of that". I'm saying "this is how I lost my faith".

See, and I say you didn't - according to your own statements - loose faith because of empirical, scientific evidence. It wasn't peer reviewed, you didn't use the appropriate methods and instead you decided to use methods that are the proper ones for investigating natural things in the context of natural science to examine the religious truth of texts.

And while this personal experience, on which you base your decision to become an atheist, and even anti-religious is good enough for you to come to believe what you believe, you don't extend the right to base the right to those that come to religious beliefs based on personal experience. That's kind'a skewed.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Well, where are you getting this human dignity from?

Where are you, then, getting that right to freedom of speech (offense) from?

[Vikarion]

I think you may be a bit too much optimistic for your own good... If you think the masses would suddenly stop at thinking in a mob rule mentality as soon as they get free to say whatever they want (kill the jews ! yay ! kill the muslims ! kill the christians ! kill the infidels ! grarh !), i'm pretty curious to see how your lonely little cry of protest or criticism will do any good against the wild majority of the mob.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it interesting how all those things tend to happen a lot more in countries without freedom of speech? From experimental evidence, it appears that free speech doesn't eliminate these harms (see, genocide against Native Americans), but it does seem to make their occurrence much less likely. And it's also interesting that those who would be tyrants try to suppress it - for example, the Nazis used roving gangs of brownshirt thugs to silence the opposition, which is one very big reason for Hitler's success.

So if the point is really to proselytize that eve mentality of the bully where HTFU is the main rule, and that only the strong survive, that the poor fragile girl that suicided because you said cruel things to her on the internet and that guess what, she was the only culprit because you had the perfect freedom and right to tell her so, because she CHOSE to take offense, and that to begin with she should just have had to HTFU in the first place so nothing would have happened...

I think there is an easier solution for this. You should have the right to say what you want, but other's aren't required to carry it. I don't mind social media being policed by social media companies for bullying. As for bullying in person, well, that's not going to be stopped by suppressing free speech. In fact, given the nature of bullies, they will probably eventually be the ones determining what you're allowed to say.

Yeah, right, words can harm, and pretty bad at that. Then of course, if you believe in all of this, then why not going to harass people more fragile than you because they aren't fit to live in a society where only the thick skinned (meaning, the sociopaths) can live ? Yeah, well, why not ?

That's a hyperbole ? Well yes. But it carries very loaded questions no ?

i think that the solution to this is what the solution has always been: educate people on the necessity and value of treating others as they wish to be treated. Telling people that they can't say something nasty isn't going to change the fact that they are nasty, and it's probably the nastiness that we really want to change. And yes, free speech, as with any right we create, gets muddy around the edges. That's the price of living in a world where things aren't perfect.

[Lyn Farel]

Sorry, Lyn, I was joking about bringing the thread back onto topic. 

Also, great post, Saede.

The real topic was not about censorship per se by the way, but anti feminists outraged at being censored, if I believe the video in the OP.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Just grabbing this bit here Vik, because a really super easy way to prove this point is to demonstrate to the person that they already are an atheist. They already don't believe in every other god save for their own. Its their own specific religion that they are blinded to the faults of.

Uh... nuh. Not at all flying. If I'm a theist, I'm believing in a divine person, simply speaking. What you're talking about is another kategory than the existence of divine persons: It's the question of what form the divine person(s) take: Are they one or many or a few or...

So, you're makeing a category mistake in positing that the question which form divinity takes has a bearing on the question whether divinity exists.

So when you say 'you should not have the freedom to offend someone' its actually a very dangerous thing to say, because again, offence is taken, not given.

Well, that is quite the simplification: You yourself explained how offence can be given, under the condition that the offender knows what offends. generally, there is a level of cultural and social knowledge that leads to some good idea what offends. So, given that, you have no right to offend (intentionally).

Also, not having a right to offend doesn't mean that it is necessarily prohibited to offend. Offence may be permissible in some cases, even if you don't have a right to it. If you do so unintentionally, you are not culpabale anyway.

All that said: I'm not against being offensive in some limited capacity: But when offense becomes so blatant that it devolves into hatespeech, then the victim has a right to protection - and the potentioal offender is oblieged to desist from those forms of offense.

Now, on to your proposition that you don't need evidence for beliefs to be reliable.

That's not my position at all. I said you don't need empirical (in the sense of scientific) evidence for all kinds of beliefs to be accepted as reliable. For scientific theories, e.g., you do need empirical (intersubjectively checkable and checked: peer reviewed, observable) evidence to consider it reliable. In other academic fields, like the humanities observability does not take such a precedence, for example. mathematics, e.g., is largely non-empirical. Yet, mathmatical knowledge usually exeeeds the knowledge of empirical sciences by far in reliability!

I didn't say that Science is based in Faith, either. What I said is that if you want to justify science, you can't do so with science. You need a metaphysical fundament, that is non-scientific, to justify science as a process. One can do so, quite reasonably.

IF you stand by the position that all kinds of explanations and justifications need to be scientific, THEN you have the problem where you are in a situation where the cat races after it's tail. You can't justify the principles you want to justify by themselves. The poition defeats itself, unless you commit to some fundamentalism, where science doesn't need justification, but is to be accepted without justification.

[Lyn Farel]

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it interesting how all those things tend to happen a lot more in countries without freedom of speech? From experimental evidence, it appears that free speech doesn't eliminate these harms (see, genocide against Native Americans), but it does seem to make their occurrence much less likely. And it's also interesting that those who would be tyrants try to suppress it - for example, the Nazis used roving gangs of brownshirt thugs to silence the opposition, which is one very big reason for Hitler's success.

Ok, aside from the Godwin that wins the thread, I never said they eliminate anything. And even America first amendment is far, like very far, from what you and Saede are putting into hypothesis. Say whatever you want, you are not allowed to say absolutely anything at all in America.

I think there is an easier solution for this. You should have the right to say what you want, but other's aren't required to carry it. I don't mind social media being policed by social media companies for bullying. As for bullying in person, well, that's not going to be stopped by suppressing free speech. In fact, given the nature of bullies, they will probably eventually be the ones determining what you're allowed to say.

I'm sorry but I didn't understand anything in that statement... :/

i think that the solution to this is what the solution has always been: educate people on the necessity and value of treating others as they wish to be treated. Telling people that they can't say something nasty isn't going to change the fact that they are nasty, and it's probably the nastiness that we really want to change. And yes, free speech, as with any right we create, gets muddy around the edges. That's the price of living in a world where things aren't perfect.

I don't disagree with that, but that will not solve the issue either. And the end result is similar. Both go hand in hand, but eventually, by educating, you do exactly the complementary thing that is to tell people what is, and what isn't tolerated to say.

[Vikarion]

Lyn, it's only a Godwin if you are comparing someone to Hitler. It's not a Godwin to use a historical example where appropriate.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

And it's also interesting that those who would be tyrants try to suppress it - for example, the Nazis used roving gangs of brownshirt thugs to silence the opposition, which is one very big reason for Hitler's success.

Actually, in those countries the victims are usually the ones of which one is allowed to call for their deaths...

[Vikarion]

Mithra,

You have a definition of methodological naturalism which seems to contract and expand according to your argument. But it's really irrelevant. I'm not coming from methodological naturalism and then trying to say that there cannot be any other ways of knowing something. I'm coming from the fact that no other way of knowing things seems to produce results that correspond with reality, or even be internally coherent.

And if you want to respond "what's wrong with internal contradictions", or "so what if my way of knowing produces models of the world that don't seem to correspond with reality", then the conversation is over, because that sort of statement means we don't even have the use of logic. I can't give you a philosophical justification of why the law of non-contradiction is true...it's an axiom. It just is the way the world works, the way I observe the world to work.

You want to assert that I have to first adapt some sort of view to justify science. No, I don't. Science just works. And science isn't peer review, or a specific academic process. It encompasses those things, but it is first and foremost just "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.", to use the dictionary. Or, in other words, observing the world. I am perfectly entitled to notice that it works, and thus adapt the view.

Could there be other ways of knowing? Certainly. But in order to show that there are, you need to have a means of showing that they actually exist. Otherwise, I can claim that I'm receiving revelation from the Cookie Monster, that he wants you to give me all of your cookies, and you have no way of telling me I'm full of it.

How do I know that science works? Again, all I can point to is fact that it seems to. Does it really? Well, this is essentially solipsism. I can't prove that I'm not a brain in a vat imagining everything. But the reality is that this is not how people live - no one questions that science works when flying at 20,000 feet.

I'll have to disagree with your statement that everyday observational evidence is different from scientific evidence, not least because I have scientists who tell me otherwise. I'll also note that it seems a bit strange to claim that when I look at the moon with my unaided eye, that's a different sort of evidence than when I put that same eye behind a telescope.

As for free speech, I already gave a ground for human rights: human rights are created by a society trying to establish rules that apply to everyone. That's why they're so easily abrogated, and why they take so much work to maintain: because they are social constructs.

As for my de-conversion, I'd prefer to let you be the one to tell the New Testament scholars that they aren't peer-reviewed. The archaeologists too, I suppose. And the philosophers. Or if you're arguing that my deconversion wasn't scientific because I didn't have it peer-reviewed, well, I already pointed out that your definition of science is an arcane one that is in use by only you. By your definition, Newton's laws aren't scientific, because he didn't submit them to a journal.

As for using the wrong methods on religious texts, well, really. Either Jesus actually did, physically, rise from the dead, or he didn't. Either Moses really did lead the people out of Egypt, as the Bible says, or they were in Canaan all along, as the archaeologists say. Now, why is archaeology a better means of knowing? Well, it's the one with the pottery shards. Why do I value that evidence? Well, valuing evidence is the only thing that seems to work.