Saw this article on the NPR web site and thought it was nice to see these two young ladies managed to get out from under the thumb of WBC: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/29/241643924/we-hurt-a-lot-of-people-westboro-pastors-granddaughter-says
Yeah. It is sad what people do to their kids when they raise them with this kind of mentality. I feel bad for them that they were brought up that way and ultimately placed in the position of having to abandon their family, but I feel optimistic nevertheless that they had the strength to do it.
Nate Phelps, Fred's son, also left the group and has spoken out against them. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/nate-phelps-westboro-baptist-church_n_1348861.html
I admire these girls. My only fear is that they won't be able to get a job, because lord knows how much higher education that they were allowed to get. I hope that they are able to make good, free lives for themselves! Nice job, girls! And why the hell would the WBC protest against an effing holocaust museum ? Some people have serious mental illnesses, very sad.
sp... i'm wondering how many who frequent this site did you think would know what 'WBC' was without having to look it up [as i had to!]...
Good question. I lived in the midwest where we heard about these loons all the time, and WBC was a common abbreviation for them, so I just used it without giving it much thought
And do the people in the WBC know that they destroy stretch the very meaning of what a church really is? All they do is hate people, which is what Jesus preached against, and they don't participate in anything actually helping people. They don't actually deserve to call themselves a "church" because by spiritual definition, a church is "people of God". (I learned that from my Confirmation test. Which I got a 100 on.)
The WBC is an occasional topic in the skeptical community (The JREF, the Reason Rally, Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, ... those groups). I've known about them for years.
'skeptic' is my middle name, but since i'd also be skeptical of any 'skeptical community' that partially explains why 'WBC' didn't mean anything to me... coulda been 'warner brothers conspiracy' for all i knew!
The "skeptical community" is a very large diverse international group of loosely (and sometimes more tightly) knit people that self identify as rational thinkers who promote critical thinking. The James Randi Educational Foundation Skeptics Meetup Groups across the planet Skeptics in the Pub groups CSIOP and The Skeptical Inquirer Skeptic, Michael Shermer Editor Skeptical, Scientific, & Critical Thinking Links The point is this is an extensive community with a significant online presence and many local groups in cities all over the world.
Ginger, don't come to my school. A girl went nuts today when someone told her that Santa wasn't real.
The basic tenets of skepticism are nice, but they're rarely borne out in practice. In my experience, that community has plenty of people who aren't skeptical enough about their own pre-conceived notions, which are as much cherished dogma as anything. Self-identifying as a rational thinker doesn't necessarily make it true, and if a person has to go out of their way to self-identify as one, they're likely compensating for something. Not that there aren't also people in the community who live up to the ideal, but they're more rare than the other kind. I believe someone is a rational thinker when I see evidence of it in their thinking and their ability to incorporate and consider new facts and ideas, not when they tell me they're a rational thinker (which usually turns out to be false). That's my take on "skeptics."
and, as a rational-thinking skeptic and practicing philosopher, sp's take on 'skeptical communities' and those who join them is pretty much the same as mine...
If a 13 yr old is upset Santa isn't real, I don't think anything I might say would reach the top of her problem list.
Commonly heard in the skeptic community, "there is no true Scotsman". Your assumption that someone who identifies as a skeptic is compensating is wholly unsupported by any evidence. It also suggests you made no effort to look at any of the links I posted. People in the community identify as skeptics for as many reasons are there are members, but the majority are interested in promoting rational thinking and debunking charlatans that often scam desperate people out of millions of dollars. The community is huge, diverse, and for the last 5 or so years split by part of the group that adopted a ludicrously unskeptical view of extreme feminism (see "elevatorgate"). It was unfortunate since there have been legitimate issues with sexual harassment involving some well known members, big events, and it overlapped harassment events within other large organizations including, Science Fiction Writers of America. A number of these communities overlap, (skeptics, atheists, Comicon, Dragoncon, SFWA, ... like I said, diverse). This sexual harassment subject may need a new thread: A-timeline-of-the-2013-sfwa-controversies
IOW, uninformed. You are dismissing thousands of people you know nothing about who have spent decades promoting critical thinking and debunking charlatans as useless and worthless.
I'm not a rational thinker, at all. I think, but more about social issues "How can we stop child labor?"and "How can I increase cat adoption in my community?" and personal matters "Will this pizza kill me due to old age?" and "How can I improve my book?" then scientific or psychology matters. Not like I think that much, though. (outside of school) I'd rather just watch youtube, lol.
Ginger, first of all, nobody said the population of the skeptic community was 'useless' or 'worthless'. Secondly, calling someone 'uninformed' is just different way of calling someone ignorant and contains just as much contempt.
I was addressing these specific comments and uniformed is not the same thing as ignorant: Both of those positions reflect a lack of information about the skeptical community.
What is funny is that a lot of people (I'm talking general public here) in the skeptic community blindly believe what Hitchens or Dawkins or whoever tells them. I've heard of skeptic gatherings that sounded just like church meetings (they even asked for donations). Skeptic groups and communities are a good thing, but I do think there's room for improvement.
