alt Hacker News> Surely you are aware that there are actually people with religious beliefs?
Yes. What's your point? It doesn't make those beliefs rational. Faith is belief in something despite the absence of evidence. I am using the term "religious belief" interchangeably with "faith based belief system."
> belief that there are people with religious beliefs is anything but irrational.
I have no idea what you are trying to say in this sentence.
- I don't "believe" that there are people with religious beliefs. I observe that to be the case.
- I never described "belief that there are people with religious beliefs" as irrational.
I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them? Or something?
I really don't know what you're trying to say here. There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
We were talking about language and communication and the absurdity that there is a such thing as an arbitrary sequence of phones or characters that would cause anyone exposed to that to be offended. All I was saying is that such a belief is unfounded. I honestly don't know what you are trying to say.
Replies
> It doesn't make those beliefs rational.
Humans are irrational. This shouldn't be news to anyone who is a human. I think it is reasonable to say that literally every single non-infant human in existence has done at least one irrational thing in their lifetimes, including you and me. Certainly there are humans who do more or fewer irrational things than others, but that doesn't matter all that much.
> I think your point might be that, because there are people with irrational beliefs out there we must appease them?
Sometimes, yes. Often, I'd say. People's feelings actually do matter. Sometimes the level of irrationality can be high enough that one might not care too much about hurting someone else's feelings in calling our or ignoring that irrationality. But very very often, we humans take into account others' irrationality when dealing with them, in order to make interactions more pleasant for both parties.
(Anyway, I don't disagree with the sidetracked point: that it's not absurd for a sequence of phones or characters might cause offense. It seems disingenuous to deny the reality of "bad words". I do think that this side discussion on irrationality and how to deal with it is potentially interesting, though.)
>There are people out there who believe in crazy things. We agree on that. How we should treat those people, or react to their existence, is entirely outside of the scope of conversation. It is perfectly acceptable to call an irrational belief irrational.
But in this context, the purportedly irrational belief is that some phrases are offensive. If you accept that there are people who would, rationally or not, be offended by some phrases, then I don't understand why you would even make the claim that it's absurd to believe that some people would be offended by some phrases.