It's a very interesting case study in selective outrage.

My fundamental belief about the nature of marriage as being between a man and a woman, and its consistency with DOMA, and all that other stuff has not changed.

Yet the general tone against me went from highly confrontational to fairly amicable seems to me to be based solely on the added knowledge that my position includes that civil unions should replace marriages from the POV of the government.

I think it demonstrates that (as is the case in many such discussions) people care more about the conclusion than the reasoning that leads to the conclusion.

Will be interesting to see what your new position is when DOMA gets nuked.


Well your overbearing protection of the word marriage is still weird since it is biblically based and nothing beyond that. But yes of course if you think SSCs should have benefits they currently don't have people will lighten up. Do you really find this surprising and if so why?


Tautology at it's finest. Yes when it comes to gay marriage if you think aliens told you it was cool we would raise an eyebrow at that but say "OK well at least he got the functional part right". Again, why is this surprising to you?

It will be that the law no longer defines marriage as being a man and a woman.

If it's true that the word marriage is "Biblically based and nothing beyond that", then wouldn't those who hold to a separation of church and state hold that the government simply should not be involved in marriages?

At a deeper level, where do you get the belief that my understanding of the word "marriage" is "Biblically based and nothing beyond that"?

I don't find it surprising. But I do find it disappointing. People who don't value the process of reasoning over the conclusion demonstrate that they are not very critical thinkers.

Do you even know what a tautology is?

Did you read my little parable?

Anyhow, it's been stated more explicitly:

I had higher expectations of certain posters, and I would have thought the statement "it is better to believe the wrong thing for the right reason than to believe the right thing for the wrong reason" is uncontroversial ITF.

Yes and it seems fairly cut and dry (toast), namely this:

Yes. Also your parable is just a fancy way of saying "I don't support gays because I think gayness is gross"? Seriously asking. Can you just explicitly state what the reasons for opposing SMS are?

Is this even true? If the "thing" is what guides our ultimate decision and not the reasoning then we are just selectively replacing one for the other when it is convenient anyway. Otherwise why not use our proper reasoning to arrive at the proper answer? And what are these reasons?

Please help me out. What is the wrong thing to believe, and what are the right reasons to believe it?

No one ever said that. It just became clear that you were not capable of being reasoned with as your definition of marriage is set in stone and also a stumbling block for you. So if we can get your conclusion in line with common sense it is a small victory, since the bible is corrupting your reasoning in between the endpoints and not falsifiable.

Also pretty sure most of us value both parts of the process. They kind of go hand-in-hand. And I based my belief in this having to do with Jesus from your posting history and you not denying it and some vague pointing to "the greeks" having different marriages or something. I won't label it empirical reality because going through all of your posts melts my brain.

Depends on how meta you want to get. I'd like to be very meta, but then most of this forum can't even tell the difference between the question "does holding a belief that gay marriage is wrong or undesirable imply bigotry on the part of the belief holder?" and the question "is gay marriage wrong or undesirable?"

Seems the first question was so abstract it went over the heads of many posters, so they stuck with the latter question which is more concrete. This thread, which seems like it was designed to raise the abstraction level above that of the first question, all the way to "can holding a belief necessarily imply bigotry on the part of the belief holder?", was started in response to the breaking down of the first thread, and then I tried to raise it even higher to "can holding a belief necessarily imply anything about the personal characteristics of the belief holder?", and I'd like to take it to a higher level of abstraction still, and look at how beliefs are formed and justified, what incomplete information does to the process, and how reliably different factors influence the ultimate conclusion.

But looking around, it seems like the best "wrong thing to believe" for me to reference as a specific example is "this thread is about gay marriage." As for the right reasons to believe it, I'm pretty mystified but some people seem confident enough that they exist.

Seemed to me like we zoomed right past the first part since everyone can agree "yes it is possible the person is misinformed and not bigoted." You are never going to explicitly list your reasons for being anti-gay marriage, are you? You can use either thread really, I don't see what the problem is. Are you afraid of being labelled a bigot incorrectly?

Except that's not what happened, instead most of the people in that thread said that anybody who's against gay marriage must necessarily be bigoted.

I said there are reasons a person might have for opposing gay marriage that don't necessarily imply that person is a bigot, and have since given examples.

"Man, if I had a dime for every ill-mannered little **** who believed that the cold stares provoked by his bigoted drivel were proof of his incorruptibility and his hearers' intolerance... well, I might have enough money to be one of those little ****s myself."
-?-

It seems less that we can't tell the difference and more that we have the wrong answer to the former question.

I thought your post was pretty clear, but perhaps the link to the other thread doomed this one from the start? Give it a few hours for everyone to completely forget about marriage, and then have a go at a thread on beliefs.

You lost me here. If you're referring to this thread, that belief doesn't seem like the best anything. And I thought your point was that wrong beliefs arrived at through proper critical thinking were better than right beliefs for the wrong reasons. But your quote above certainly doesn't seem to be creditting anyone with proper critical thinking.

If you're referring to the other thread, then I think that is what it's about. That isn't what the OP asked, but 29 pages in, with only one more post by the OP, isn't the thread about whatever people want to talk about?

No, you were right the first time, I'm just venting.

Basically, I think any belief at all (possibly excepting things like "1 + 1 = 2" or "a and not a") can be justifiable depending on the information available, etc. Certainly any conclusion (that isn't self-contradictory) can logically be reached given some set of premises, so any belief can be logical if a person accepts those premises (could imply insanity in some cases).

But I don't think it's as simple as prejudice and logic. A lot of questions may come down to complex webs of belief that involve various levels of certainty about different things based on history, surroundings, etc.

For example, if my Uncle Ned tells me that homosexuality has a negative impact on society, and my Uncle Ned has generally been reliable in the past, is it irrational for me to believe him here?

Let's say as I grew up I was given a variety of opinions, presented with a variety of research, and otherwise exposed to a variety of views that were all supportive of the conclusion that gay marriage would be a disaster. What's my play?

These aren't even questions of bigotry, they're more questions of rationality. On the other hand, if it can be rational to be a bigot, then that throws more wrenches into the mix.

If we assume that any sane person who has gathered all the evidence available to him will support gay marriage, does that make support of gay marriage the rational conclusion for everyone? Gathering all the possible evidence would take decades of dedicated work - any normal, reasonable person just isn't going to have access to that much data. Most everyone will be working with information that is limited to some degree. How much information does a person need to have before it's rational for them to form an opinion on a subject? Is there any reliable way for a person to determine that the information content they're exposed to is (or isn't) representative of the whole? And if there isn't, then doesn't that admit bias as a possible source of belief on virtually any issue?

Etc, etc. At some point I think it becomes necessary to conclude that either everyone is behaving irrationally when they hold positions in these types of debates (and I don't know that I disagree with that conclusion, especially when it comes to politics), or we have to acknowledge that sometimes two people holding diametrically opposed beliefs wrt any given issue will both be rationally justified in holding whatever beliefs they hold.

Aaron, in my mind civil unions are a very relevant piece of evidence.

A personal story. A very prominent California legilslator once told me over lunch once that ANY gay rights initiative can count on not getting a single Republican vote in the state legislature. Not just gay marriage, but any gay rights initiative at all. Even hospital visitations. Even protection from hate crimes. Even protection from job discrimination.

The point is, there are a lot of people out there who are currently ARGUING the case against gay marriage but in fact oppose doing anything to protect the fundamental equality of gays and lesbians at all. Then there are some others (perhaps including you) who are concerned about the definition of the concept of "marriage" but are fine in general with affording gays and lesbians with equal access to some sort of marriage-like arrangement where they get the same legal benefits.

The two groups are very differently situated with respect to the bigotry question.

lawdude, you didn't respond to this:
Supposing there really is a strong population correlation, would you agree that we'd be justified inferring (obviously not a deductive inference) someone's disease ridden and promiscuous if the only thing we know about that person is that he's gay?

I think statistics kills that. In order to be justified in making such an inference, a majority of gays would have to be disease-ridden and promiscuous. Over-representation might justify sliding gays up the scale a bit, but to say "this person is likely to have an STD collection" you'd need something much stronger.

My point is actually that statistical inference doesn't work in many cases its currently taken to work if we don't allow the assigning of probabilities based on the fact that something belongs to a reference class for which we have relative frequencies.

I agree that if we want to infer "more likely than not" in this case, a majority of gays needs to have these characteristics.

Sure wish I knew what I was right about...

Agreed.

Given that information, nope.

My guess is that you would oppose gay marriage. But I would also expect you to consider alternative views, should you be exposed to them.

Who couldn't use more wrenches?

I'm with you here...

The latter. But we also have to acknowledge that sometimes people present their view in a certain way, that does not reveal their true beliefs. Not that anyone would do that here.

Interestingly (or perhaps not), you're still just justifying prejudice.

When a white cop pulls over a black man, it's immediately labeled as racial profiling.

Well, it depends, as discrimination often does, on relevance.

(1) As far as I know, sexually active gay males are not allowed to be blood donors, and (2) I would certainly suggest that anyone who is going to have sexual intercourse with person known to have engaged in same-sex relations should get an HIV test result or use a condom. Those are two examples where it is relevant and as a result, there's nothing wrong with making the assumption.

On the other hand, it's not relevant to a lot of other discussions, such as gay rights, so one shouldn't make the assumption.

The reason why the bigotry assumption is important is because we are asked to buy what seem to be very speculative and convoluted arguments about supposed interests that marriages serve, and the fact that the people advocating these claims are motivated by animus towards gays, if true, is something to be considered when evaluating the arguments.

Speaking of prejudice, this sounds like white resentment to me. (It also sounds false. Lots of white cops pull over black drivers WITHOUT accusations of profiling.)

That said, I don't think that you are using "prejudice" in the same sense as a bigot is prejudiced. It is true that, for instance, I am prejudiced against Holocaust deniers whom I believe to be anti-Semitic. I don't think, however, that this "prejudice" is of the same category as when we label an anti-Semite as prejudiced against Jews.

Yes, starting with faulty premises can logically and rationally lead to conclusions which are bad. That points to the premises being bad though and doesn't mean all conclusions ever can't be trusted. It sounds like you are bailing on empiricism.


Yes people are biased, so? That is why we construct systems external to ourselves to help us judge things.


Maybe. To just trust him as an authority on this subject blindly yes is irrational, especially if Ned offers no supporting evidence. It sounds like your standards for evidence are bad maybe?


I don't understand. Did you try to falsify these beliefs? It sounds like not, so I would question this person's conclusions one way or the other. I settled on being pro-gay marriage after hearing the arguments for and against, how I was brought up is irrelevant to what is true. Or put another way it might be self-rational for someone to be a bigot, and I would imagine for a lot of people it is, but it sounds like they have shoddy premises so ultimately they are wrong even if they are using proper logical form.


OK your standards for evidence are terrible. By this logic you can never have an opinion on anything at all ever! What is all of this other evidence that needs to be gathered? Of course we always have limited information but that didn't stop us from landing people on the moon.


But aren't I irrational to hold the position I exist, big bang happened, anything happened with your universal doubt? This is like a gay of the gaps argument.

Part of the disagreement is about what it means to be bigoted. You seem to understand bigotry as being about the reasons why you hold the belief--that a person is bigoted if their belief-forming mechanism in some way includes (unfairly?) prejudicial processes. Many of those in the other thread seem to think that being bigoted means that you hold bigoted beliefs, e.g. beliefs that we should treat some class of people in unfair ways. Thus, even if your trustworthy Uncle Ned told you that Jews were greedy and so should pay higher taxes, and you are rational in believing your uncle, you still hold a bigoted belief and so are a bigot.

We're all much too open for such dirty tactics.

Aaron points out that it's hard to find any formal definition of "bigot" that fits these criteria. Also, going from "James holds a bigoted belief" to "James is a bigot" invokes new assumptions. And "bigot" is definitely a word that describes a person, rather than a belief.

We'd rarely describe a person as a "bigot" just because that person happens to hold a belief that is (non-obviously) bigoted.