I don't know that Ray Comfort is not under one of those hoods.bigotry, atheism, atheist, ray comfort, christianity, wtf
I know Ray Comfort isn't American by birth, but he's been here long enough to know that percentizing people is a tradition in this country*, but not one we're proud of. I can't quite understand exactly why Ray thinks it's okay to baldly state that atheists are 2/3 of a person.
If you are not conscious of the reality of God, it’s because you are only two thirds a person. You are made up of your body (the machine in which you live), your soul (the real you that lives within your body--your emotions, your will, consciousness, etc.), and spirit. Your spirit is your “God conscious” part, and that part of you is "dead in trespasses and sin" (see Ephesians 2:1). The plug is pulled, and so you have no light.
Ray, it's not okay to state that some human beings are less (33% less than Christians, but still 0.07% more than slaves!) than others. That kind of reasoning is offensive and dangerous. Hard as it is to believe, there are those that take you seriously, Ray. And you just told them that I am only 67% of a real person. Whenever people think they are more than others, that those others are intrinsically less, they feel free to do all kinds of things to the others. US history, which you should be familiar with by now, is rife with examples: the extermination of the Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, and oppression of women are just a few examples.
Even you can go too far, Ray, and implying that the 3/5 Compromise was right, just applied to the wrong group, is going too damn far.
*For those not familiar with US history, prior to the US Civil War, slaves in the US were counted as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of enumeration for tax distribution and representation.
Ray is only 1/3rd of a person according to Freud, since he only has a Super Ego.
ReplyDeleteI thought Ray was entirely ruled by his Id. Damn, do I have to reread Freud?
ReplyDelete"The id contains primitive desires (hunger, rage and sex), the super-ego contains internalized norms, morality and taboos, and the ego mediates between the two and may include or give rise to the sense of self and the well being of humans."
ReplyDeleteHere's an easy, albeit not perfect, way to remember the correlation, assuming you know the three main characters of the Original Star Trek:
Spock: Super Ego: Logic
Kirk: Ego: Compromise
McCoy: Id: Emotion
I dunno. I think this is one of those situation where you really should call off your dogs. There's a standard belief in certain realms of Christianity (and it's based off of the philosophy of some guy somewhere. Helpful, I know) that there are three aspects to all people: the physical, mental, and spiritual. Comfort attributes it to Ephesians, but that's very much one of those ex post facto Biblical justifications of a third party idea.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the attitude isn't that atheists are only 2/3 of a person. It's that in order to be whole you have to be physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy.
So they're basically saying, "Those sad atheists. They're incapable of being truly healthy and happy because they don't acknowledge the need to work on the spiritual self." They're not saying, "Those atheists, they're not real people."
Well, some do say that. But that's the fault of the three-part person concept plus bigotry and/or stupidity, not the three-part person concept alone.
Whether that's any nicer is open for debate, of course. I mean, a condescending jackass is a condescending jackass whether they're saying you're not good enough or they're saying you're not deserving of the same rights as other people. But it's really all in an attempt to prop up their own beliefs, hold down dissent, and engage in self-congratulations by saying, "See, these other people can't possibly be happy like we're happy."