It's also some people's standard reaction to being insulted. And an argument can be irrefutable (1) by being right, (2) by being too vague and allusive to get a grip on, or (3) by being nonsense. Or (4) by there actually being no argument to refute. In this case, lisper hasn't made any actual argument for characterizing not having "spiritual experiences" as a kind of blindness, he's just gone ahead and done it.

(There's no shame in being colour-blind, says lisper. Quite true. There should be no shame in being unintelligent either, but most people here would be greatly displeased at being called unintelligent. There should be no shame in being ugly, but most people -- perhaps fewer here than in most venues -- would be greatly displeased at being called ugly.)

That surprises me. Why?

Please note that "spiritual" != "supernatural". I'm using "spiritual" here to describe a particular kind of subjective experience that some people have and others don't. So there's no such thing as "rejection of the spiritual" -- that's a category error.

A while ago I talked to a person studying theology at university to become a minister. I asked him about spiritual experience. He answered that he doesn't have any strong spiritual experiences and most of his classmates also haven't. A few have and he considered them a bit strange because they were than also serious about things like no-sex-before-marriage. He was religious because he was brought up with the rituals of religion and not based on special spiritual experiences. The conversation took place in Berlin with is culturally different than the US, but he still considered himself to be really religious.

On the other hand I do have experience surrounding what most people would call a near-death experience. I do meditate together with nonreligious people who teach not to take visions during meditation too seriously.

It's quite interesting that the spiritual experience of you was at a Christian summer camp and not in a church on Sunday. The Christian summer camp is not a standard institution of Christianity. The church on Sunday's is. To me the church on Sunday is not a system that looks like it's designed to produce spiritual experience. That's how people can work on becoming Christian ministers without having had spiritual experience.

When it comes to the spiritual experience of lay people I Christian's burned women as witches for going in that direction. I don't think focusing on creating spiritual experience is a traditional focus of Christianity.

"nice forum you got here, would be a shame if someone called it sexist"

That's mistakes my perspective. You are likely either Eugine trying to circumvent his ban or somone without a real stake in this forum. I do care about this forum and also regularly attend LW meetups.

I know that there are woman who don't participate on the LW forum but who do participate on meetups. Reinventing LW2.0 means shifting LW into being more welcoming to those people.

Even before reading Richard posts I predicted the post to drive away people and my prediction was accurate. Far from being mind-killed I made an accurate prediction. Most people who leave LW also don't post publically about the reasons why the leave.

I have little to gain by calling LW sexist.

An SJW is someone who engages in certain types of behavior, and your "nice forum you got here, would be a shame if someone called it sexist"-style blackmail here was definitely SJW-behavior. You don't get to act like a SJW and then complain when someone calls you out on it.

As a result of mind-kill you confuse the issue of what's true from the social level of complaining and winning arguments.

As far as truth goes it's irrational to think that a the actions in a single case determine who someone happens to be.

The more extreme position the more trouble one can get into for attempting fact based discussion.

That's basically if you don't know how to setup the debate. Part of my upbringing as far as having political conversations was a debating seminar by people from the Cambridge debating society who considered it important that and position can be defended.

EphemeralNight and you hide behind anonymity, and can therefore speak without much personal consequences anyway. My own real world identity is linked to this account. Richard's also is.

It's not good for LW to move to a point where only people who want to hide their idenity want to participate.

Also, what do you consider an "extreme" position for purposes of this rule? Can you cite any instance where you applied this to any position that was to "extreme" left-wing?

Most of the time people don't try to make points on LW by telling stories. Can you point to a single parable that someone posted on LW that you think I should have opposed based on my standards but didn't?

More in a "how dare you try to hide from me" kind of sense.

No, you get that sense because you mislabel me as SJW when I'm not.

I find that incredibly hard to believe given your behavior elsewhere in the comments but especially in this thread.

I guess that says more about your model of the world than about me. Or that the topic is heavily mind-killing.

If you read through my LW history you will find my quite civilly discussing the issue of pedophila with a person who wants to legalize it.

On Omnilibrium he have been called right-wing because of how I see the perfomance of the post-apartheid government of South Africa.

My position is that everybody should be allowed to argue any position but not that everybody should be allowed to argue any position in any way they like. The more extreme a position the more important it is that the person focus on focusing on having a fact based discussion.

No, I'm afraid of the witch-hunters. (So far, polling indicates that this was not the right hypothesis for the commentary in general.) I avoided commenting until my previous comment because I was pretty sure I'd regret it--probably missing the point or getting drawn into the political deluge--and it seems this was the correct expectation.

I've noticed most LWers who bother to speak on the matter predict with high confidence a Republican win, whereas I don't see that anywhere in the realm of possibility this year. By contrast, RationalWiki is all for Sanders, it seems.

That's your problem right there. If you want people to respect you, don't hide, fight.

The whole reason he wrote a parable instead of a fact-based article was hidding. Hidding was part of my critcism from the start.

And your problem here is that your immediate reaction to extremely unfair criticism by people who can be extremely charitably described as mind-killed is to apologize and attempt to say "no really I didn't mean it".

I don't think saying "no really I didn't mean it" and appologizing are the same thing. Sincerely apologizing does earn respect. Falsely pretending that you didn't actually wanted to say what you said doesn't earn respect. It's again a symptom of not wanting to communicate openly and sincerely and that's one of the core criticisms I had from the beginning.

As far as me being SJ In the days where I actually did run a forum where I had moderator power I took the side of the right of an African to speak of homosexuality as a crime that's legalized in some countries. I don't have a problem with people sincerely arguing for positions that aren't PC.

Many LWers are careful enough to notice when even the slightest signaling towards a hot button issue crops up. This is just a good idea as a form of basic social hygiene since people in other environments have very powerful reactions to even the slightest of comments made towards those topics and can easily put you into an Enemy category or become much less comfortable around you for the foreseeable future.

Much of the annoyance at this thread was the fact that it included a signalling towards that at all since it's a substantial faux pas. This is especially true if the story was meant to have a different purpose as the writer later claimed.