Banned
So I haven’t blogged for a while. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because nothing has been happening worth talking about. Actually quite the opposite. Life’s been throwing a lot at me lately. I’ll try to catch up a little bit but I may have to break it down into a few posts.Banned
Last month sometime my blog was tagged as offensive on Facebook. Somebody who calls themselves a friend of mine, at least as far as facebook’s definition of “friend” goes, reported my blog as offensive. I had to appeal it to the powers that be at facebook in order to get unlabelled. Every since then I’ve been really wondering what specifically I said that was offensive. I’ve never intended to offend, disagree? Certainly. But never offend. I’ve since brushed it off as just somebody who doesn’t know the difference between offensive speech and disagreement. It’s just taken me a little bit to get motivated to actually post something again.
Banned
So I haven’t blogged for a while. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s because nothing has been happening worth talking about. Actually quite the opposite. Life’s been throwing a lot at me lately. I’ll try to catch up a little bit but I may have to break it down into a few posts.Banned
Last month sometime my blog was tagged as offensive on Facebook. Somebody who calls themselves a friend of mine, at least as far as facebook’s definition of “friend” goes, reported my blog as offensive. I had to appeal it to the powers that be at facebook in order to get unlabelled. Every since then I’ve been really wondering what specifically I said that was offensive. I’ve never intended to offend, disagree? Certainly. But never offend. I’ve since brushed it off as just somebody who doesn’t know the difference between offensive speech and disagreement. It’s just taken me a little bit to get motivated to actually post something again.
Respect
Take a second and read this speech.
If this is Oaks’ interpretation of the First Amendment I'm glad he isn't still practicing law. He seems to think that it's OK for a church to criticize but that they should be immune from criticism. We can't have it both ways. If we demand that other groups keep quiet when it come to criticizing us then perhaps we should afford them the same courtesy and stay out of politics. If you feel, as I do, that churches should have every right to make political statements, then we need to accept the flip-side of that same coin we toss and stop whining about being criticized.
If this is Oaks’ interpretation of the First Amendment I'm glad he isn't still practicing law. He seems to think that it's OK for a church to criticize but that they should be immune from criticism. We can't have it both ways. If we demand that other groups keep quiet when it come to criticizing us then perhaps we should afford them the same courtesy and stay out of politics. If you feel, as I do, that churches should have every right to make political statements, then we need to accept the flip-side of that same coin we toss and stop whining about being criticized.
I'd like to know which article in any constitution protects a church from criticism. He needs to pick up a history book. Freedom to criticize the dominant churches was also a main tenant of our founders. Most of the religious colonists were looking for both, freedom of their religion and freedom from the one they were fleeing. This church wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Joseph's right to go against what others felt should stand beyond criticism. But the laws of this country allowed him to continue.
I agree with the advice given in the speech as far as how to respond when confronted with people with whom we disagree. I just disagree with his notion that religious organizations are due a certain respect and should stand immune from criticism even after they throw their two cents in to an already very heated political argument.
Shifted Burden of Proof
I’ve been having a little struggle at work. A local government is insisting that there’s a piece of equipment in a ditch that belongs to us that we need to move. Well we are not in the business of placing this particular type of equipment and so I politely told her that it was not ours. To which she responded, “Well somebody must have put it there!” I agree 100%. Somebody must have put it there. I gave her a few suggestions as to who else may have done it but she wouldn’t let it drop so easily. She didn’t seem to want to hang up until I solved her problem for her. I was as polite as possible but just ended up telling her that I had no idea whose it was but it wasn’t ours.I’m not sure what you’d call it, a logical fallacy, a debating tactic or just a rhetorical device. But what she was attempting to do is to shift the burden of proof. I see this technique used all the time. You see in any discussion the burden of proof lies with the person who has the most extreme claim. For instance if I claim that grass is green and you were to claim that grass is really blue but there is a yellow haze that always hovers directly between the viewer and the grass that just makes it appear green, your claim is clearly the more extreme. Your claim may in fact be correct, but it just requires more proof than my claim. If I challenged your claim you couldn’t counter by just asking me to prove that the yellow haze doesn’t exist. That would be shifting the burden of proof. In my real life situation it shouldn’t be my job to prove that the equipment isn’t ours. That burden still lies with this government organization to prove that it is ours. It’s almost as if I was presumed guilty until I could prove my innocence.
My situation at work is a minor issue and I don’t expect it to go any further, but I see the same tactics invoked in political discussions all the time. One side will come up with an extremely farfetched scenario and expect the other side to take the Herculean task of proving that their opponent is wrong. But the burden should remain with the person making the extreme claim not the accused.
A key example of this is the whole “birthers” phenomenon. These people have found a few inconsistencies with Obama’s early life history and from that have deduced that there is a conspiracy involving all levels of government, doctors and two local newspapers to conceal his birth location all the way back to the day he was born. They would also have us believe that even Hillary Clinton knows these details but didn’t bring them up during the primaries even though it would mean that she would have had a much better shot at the Presidency with him discredited and out of the way. It is my opinion taht the “birthers” and those that believe this idea are trying to shift the burden of proof. They want the President to go out of the way to deny and prove that their claims are false. Nope. That’s not how it works. They have the more extreme claim. It is up to them to make their case and present their evidence.
Now I didn’t vote for Obama and I’m not particularly enamored with some of his policies so far. But if anybody wants me to believe that he was born in Kenya it’s their job to prove it to me. Before you ask, yes, UI have seen the DVD "A question of Eligibility" and I see nothing in there strong enough to counter the evidnece that he was born in Hawaii, but all that is irrelavent. It’s not Obama’s job to disprove your conspiracy theory. And likewise if this local government official wants me to remove this equipment from the ditch it’s up to them to prove to me that it is ours. It’s not my job to prove it isn’t ours.
Diet Drinks
Earlier this week Aaron and I went to QT after scouts. We each got a fountain drink. Aaron asked me,“What’s the deal with diet drinks?”
I got a little bit of a chuckle out of the question and told him that he needed to ask his mother that same question when she gets home. I then gave him a brief description of what her response would be. So last night we were walking around Ikea and Aaron pops the same question on Victoria,
“What’s the deal with diet drinks?”
Victoria went on complete autopilot and pulled out her prepared statement on why she dislikes diet drinks and read every point to Aaron, line by line. I’ve heard her diatribe about diet drinks several time. She didn’t miss a beat and hit every major point that I told Aaron she’d hit. At this point Aaron and I are just rolling and Victoria is just looking around confused, wondering what is so funny. We confessed that the previous few minutes were planned ahead of time and that she had played her part better than if we had handed her a script.
Last year I was in an online discussion and the subject came up that “the Mormon Church controls the Boy Scouts of America”. Like Victoria, and probably everybody else, I too have a cache of prepared diatribes that I pull out whenever certain subjects come up. I too went on autopilot and proceeded to state my reasons, and evidence that the Mormon Church does not control the Boy Scouts of America. I’d given the speech a few times before so I thought I knew what I was talking about. Over the course of the discussion it was shown that a couple of my facts were out of date. Specifically, I had made the claim that Thomas S. Monson was the only LDS member of the leadership committee of BSA. I was shown that although it used to be true there was at least one other member of the committee who was LDS. My prepared speech was out of date. The gist of it was still correct and I still stand by my initial claim, but my supporting details need to be updated. So I did a little more research to see what else had changed.
For the record I agree with Victoria’s assessment of diet drinks and I don’t know if any of her supporting facts have changed in the last few years. Both of us routinely just order ice water with a little bit of lime rather than ingest the artificial sweeteners in most diet drinks.
My only point in sharing these two stories is that they have given me pause for reflection. How many prepared speeches do we have cached away ready to give at a moment's notice? I’m sure we all have quite a few. Are the facts up to date? When was the last time you verified them? Have you given the issue an honest re-evaluation or are you still basing your opinions on the way things were when you first formed that opinion? Perhaps it’s time to pull out those speeches and give them a second look. If, after careful evaluation, you still feel the same and the facts still support your position, Great! If, on the other hand, things have changed the other direction does that effect your opinion on the issue? I just think that it’s healthy to periodically question our beliefs, especially those that we cherish the most.
Victoria is dead right about diet drinks. Most of them are rather nasty and unpalatable. I’ve become a little more tolerant of Sprite Zero lately but I still prefer just ice water with a little bit of lime. If you want to really have some fun with Victoria start talking about how you really love dark meat chicken. Incidentally I agree with her on that one too. She’s just got a better diatribe than I do.
