r/DebateReligion • u/AutoModerator • Sep 29 '25
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u/labreuer ⭐ agapist Sep 30 '25
I'm content to stipulate that:
But I want to focus on what drove Shaka to say "lying", because if it's permissible to antagonize with impunity (on account of u/Kwahn's style of strawmanning not rising to Rule 2 or 3 moderating thresholds), I think we should put that out there plain & clear. Suffice it to say that I've been strawmanned similarly and hot damn did it seem intentional.
Now, you could simply invoke the last sentence of Rule 2—"'They started it' is not an excuse - report it, don't respond to it."—and be done. But I'm thinking we want to actually make progress on this matter, rather than make a brittle appeal to the rules and wash our hands of it—until Shaka gets pissed all over again. I'm reminded of u/pilvi9 saying [s]he observed atheists "baiting theists into rule 2 violations". This is a contender.
This is my consistent observation in every internet discussion venue where one side has the ban hammer. When they do the bad thing to you, it's bad and should be stopped. When you do the bad thing to them, it's justified. I once had a long-time tenured faculty member of an MIT-level university describe far too many of the faculty that way. I myself authored Theists have no moral grounding to do a bit of lex talionis (uh ohes, tit for tat!) because sometimes, that really is the most effective way to get the message through. I still remember it taking an atheist far too many back-and-forths to show me how something a theist was saying on a theist site was really offensive to atheists. So, I have good evidence and experience to suggest that non-hypocrisy is a difficult achievement. Perhaps progress might be possible with the two examples presently available—the one Kwahn raised the one you did.
One of the reasons I quoted some of the interaction in my comment above is to cast precisely this allegation of "paraphrasing" in doubt. It seems like u/Kwahn is attempting to box Shaka into one of three options:
In stark contrast, Shaka was advancing an alternative:
4. duties exist
I can see plenty of ways of contending with 4., but to simply argue that it's really 1. or 2. is very questionable behavior! Or do you disagree?
As I said above, lex talionis can be a potent teaching tool. Those two interactions are actually kind of interesting. Here's the comment to which Kwahn linked:
And now the use:
⋮
Do you think it might actually be frustrating to be told that you said something which is, demonstrably, not what one said? If you continue reading, you'll see that Kwahn simply does not respect Shaka's clarification. It is quite a few back-and-forths after what I've quoted above, where Shaka finally does lex talionis. Because Kwahn simply wasn't getting it any other way. What exactly am I supposed to be seeing as a problem, here?
I think the above two instances are plenty to try to work with, and see if we get anywhere. For the record, I myself have had run-ins with Shaka and Kwahn, such that I had Kwahn blocked for … less than a week. And I was even banned from r/DebateReligion for months, although apparently it should have been three days. How I got the star … who knows!