Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Oleksij » 2011-07-15, 22:32

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Ashkhan » 2011-07-16, 9:04

Oleksij wrote:
Rumpetroll wrote:Johnny is the embodiment of 4chan.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Mars80 » 2013-09-03, 10:33

I just don't see why atheists would be more likely to be grammar nazis than theists.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby iodalach93 » 2016-08-29, 12:42

In Italy atheism is only present among middle or high-cultured people, whereas Catholicism extends to people of every kind. So yes, if someone is acting as a Grammar Nazi, it is probable that s/he is a middle- or high-cultured atheist.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-08-29, 14:47

iodalach93 wrote:In Italy atheism is only present among middle or high-cultured people, whereas Catholicism extends to people of every kind. So yes, if someone is acting as a Grammar Nazi, it is probable that s/he is a middle- or high-cultured atheist.


:?: Your sources?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby iodalach93 » 2016-08-30, 1:34

Well, mainly Facebook. You have a different opinion?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Michael » 2016-08-30, 2:29

IpseDixit wrote:
iodalach93 wrote:In Italy atheism is only present among middle or high-cultured people, whereas Catholicism extends to people of every kind. So yes, if someone is acting as a Grammar Nazi, it is probable that s/he is a middle- or high-cultured atheist.


:?: Your sources?

His opinion may be very anecdotal, but it does make sense, especially from my perspective as a former Catholic, devout for a time as well. Most laypeople are lapsed to a certain extent, and only superficially religious, like in matters of ceremony, patriotism, and folk belief, and don't really become that pensive about their religious convictions (which, in my case, inevitably lead to total loss of faith further down the road), which means they probably aren't very pensive when it comes to other matters either.
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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-08-30, 9:06

Personally I think Atheism is pretty much across-the-board in society because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that Catholicism is BS.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-08-31, 1:36

Okay, but if you rely on Catholicism (or whatever other religion) as a set of moral principles or something to live your life by, to what extent will you care? What if you have more pressing concerns than "gee, I wonder whether God exists or not"?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Michael » 2016-08-31, 5:47

vijayjohn wrote:Okay, but if you rely on Catholicism (or whatever other religion) as a set of moral principles or something to live your life by, to what extent will you care? What if you have more pressing concerns than "gee, I wonder whether God exists or not"?

That was pretty much the point I intended to make in my above post.
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„Çdo njeri është peng i veprave të veta.‟
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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-08-31, 8:30

vijayjohn wrote:Okay, but if you rely on Catholicism (or whatever other religion) as a set of moral principles or something to live your life by, to what extent will you care? What if you have more pressing concerns than "gee, I wonder whether God exists or not"?


But why should we assume that all low-cultured people in Italy rely on Catholicism?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-08-31, 11:10

Michael wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Okay, but if you rely on Catholicism (or whatever other religion) as a set of moral principles or something to live your life by, to what extent will you care? What if you have more pressing concerns than "gee, I wonder whether God exists or not"?

That was pretty much the point I intended to make in my above post.

Oh, okay. :)
IpseDixit wrote:But why should we assume that all low-cultured people in Italy rely on Catholicism?

I'm honestly not sure what either you or iodolach means by "low-cultured." If y'all mean "low-class" or something, I think that's a fair point; after all, my own mother turned away from Christianity at a time when she was in especially dire straits. Although her family was well known and respected, they were also poor, and her own mother had just died.

However, in general, if you grew up in a Catholic family (regardless of class, nationality, or whatever else) and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism, then why wouldn't you? As Mike said, there are lots of people who don't seem to find such a reason all over the world; I don't see any compelling reason why Italy would be an exception, either.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Aurinĭa » 2016-08-31, 12:15

Michael wrote:
IpseDixit wrote:
iodalach93 wrote:In Italy atheism is only present among middle or high-cultured people, whereas Catholicism extends to people of every kind. So yes, if someone is acting as a Grammar Nazi, it is probable that s/he is a middle- or high-cultured atheist.

:?: Your sources?

His opinion may be very anecdotal, but it does make sense, especially from my perspective as a former Catholic, devout for a time as well. Most laypeople are lapsed to a certain extent, and only superficially religious, like in matters of ceremony, patriotism, and folk belief, and don't really become that pensive about their religious convictions (which, in my case, inevitably lead to total loss of faith further down the road), which means they probably aren't very pensive when it comes to other matters either.


vijayjohn wrote:in general, if you grew up in a Catholic family (regardless of class, nationality, or whatever else) and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism, then why wouldn't you?

Because you can't be bothered / don't care enough? Most of the people I know only go to church for baptisms, weddings, funerals.

I find that a very strange idea, the idea that "you probably aren't pensive about other matters if you aren't pensive about religion". Most of my family doesn't really care about religion, but they do care about using correct language. I fail to see how (not) thinking (critically) about religion has anything to do with (not) thinking (critically) about other matters.

And iodalach93, what exactly do you mean with middle- or high-cultured?

IpseDixit

Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-08-31, 14:10

vijayjohn wrote:I'm honestly not sure what either you or iodolach means by "low-cultured." If y'all mean "low-class" or something


By low-cultured I meant someone not very educated (honestly I was just using iodalach's terminology, I didn't even bother to check whether such word exists).

vijayjohn wrote:However, in general, if you grew up in a Catholic family (regardless of class, nationality, or whatever else) and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism, then why wouldn't you? As Mike said, there are lots of people who don't seem to find such a reason all over the world; I don't see any compelling reason why Italy would be an exception, either.


If we consider that Catholicism has quite strict rules about morality and sexuality, I really struggle to believe that someone might uncritically accept those rules without giving that some thought, unless you're talking about "folkloric" Catholics, that's to say those who basically celebrate Christmas and Easter and a few other traditions and then do whatever they like for the rest of the year.

Moreover when you say "and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism", it already implies that you have actually bothered to ponder over the existence of god, doesn't it?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-09-01, 0:54

Aurinĭa wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:in general, if you grew up in a Catholic family (regardless of class, nationality, or whatever else) and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism, then why wouldn't you?

Because you can't be bothered / don't care enough? Most of the people I know only go to church for baptisms, weddings, funerals.

:hmm: It sounds to me like we're talking about completely different things here. I'm talking about something more like whether people self-identify as Catholics and/or believe in Catholicism, whereas it sounds to me like you're talking about how people practice their religion.
IpseDixit wrote:If we consider that Catholicism has quite strict rules about morality and sexuality, I really struggle to believe that someone might uncritically accept those rules without giving that some thought

I don't think I struggle to believe that at all. If that's all you ever hear, that's all you think exists; you think it's that way for everybody and therefore just normal. I mean, I'm not even Catholic, and until I joined UniLang (and stayed here for a while, read what other people had to say about stuff like this, and talked about it here), I used to think I had to abstain from sex until marriage, too, because otherwise, I could contract or help spread an STD or even get someone pregnant.
Moreover when you say "and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism", it already implies that you have actually bothered to ponder over the existence of god, doesn't it?

Nope. If you don't ponder, you don't find a compelling reason.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Aurinĭa » 2016-09-01, 11:22

vijayjohn wrote:
Aurinĭa wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:in general, if you grew up in a Catholic family (regardless of class, nationality, or whatever else) and you don't find any compelling reason not to rely on Catholicism, then why wouldn't you?

Because you can't be bothered / don't care enough? Most of the people I know only go to church for baptisms, weddings, funerals.

:hmm: It sounds to me like we're talking about completely different things here. I'm talking about something more like whether people self-identify as Catholics and/or believe in Catholicism, whereas it sounds to me like you're talking about how people practice their religion.

Not necessarily. I'm sure there are a lot of people who believe (somewhat), but don't care enough to go to Mass. But I'm equally sure there are a lot of people who don't care enough to actually believe, people who don't care enough to self-identify as anything at all.

People baptise their children because it's tradition, and it provides a nice opportunity to get the family together and celebrate the new baby. People get married in church because getting married for the law is just a short ceremony, with very little opportunity for individualisation, which a church wedding does provide. People organise church funerals for their deceased loved ones because they, often for an older generation, are/were more likely to be religious and if you don't have a church funeral, what alternatives are there, really? When someone dies, the remaining relatives only have a few days to organise everything, and having an established tradition to follow, telling you what to do, makes that a whole lot easier compared to having to start from scratch and think up a goodbye ceremony without following the established formulae.

In all of these case, it doesn't really matter whether or not the people involved believe in God/the Church/something/nothing/not sure.

I think the mainstream view of religion in the USA and (Western) Europe is just so different, equipping us with a very different frame of reference, that it's difficult to understand each other without lengthy explanations.

IpseDixit wrote:If we consider that Catholicism has quite strict rules about morality and sexuality, I really struggle to believe that someone might uncritically accept those rules without giving that some thought

I don't think I struggle to believe that at all. If that's all you ever hear, that's all you think exists; you think it's that way for everybody and therefore just normal. I mean, I'm not even Catholic, and until I joined UniLang (and stayed here for a while, read what other people had to say about stuff like this, and talked about it here), I used to think I had to abstain from sex until marriage, too, because otherwise, I could contract or help spread an STD or even get someone pregnant.

I was raised Catholic (more or less, my parents didn't really talk about religion), went to a Catholic school for kindergarten and secondary school, had Religion for all of it (Catholicism), and I never believed that. Neither did my parents, who were raised properly Catholic.

IpseDixit

Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby IpseDixit » 2016-09-01, 13:54

Honestly, I'm not sure what the purpose of this conversation is anymore. I just wanted to say that iodalach's idea that if you haven't received a good education then you must be Catholic is untrue and unfair, and I know that for a fact because I personally know several people who barely have a high school diploma and are Atheist/Agnostic/vaguely Deist.

vijayjohn wrote:If that's all you ever hear, that's all you think exists; you think it's that way for everybody and therefore just normal.


In the context of Italian society, this is impossible unless you live like a prisoner in your house.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby kevin » 2016-09-01, 14:52

Aurinĭa wrote:I was raised Catholic (more or less, my parents didn't really talk about religion), went to a Catholic school for kindergarten and secondary school, had Religion for all of it (Catholicism), and I never believed that. Neither did my parents, who were raised properly Catholic.

Hm, maybe I'm missing the obvioius, but... What do you mean by "raised Catholic" when your parents never talked about religion nor believed in it? Just the religion classes at school?

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby Aurinĭa » 2016-09-01, 15:58

I didn't say my parents didn't believe in it. I've no idea if they did or do. All I know is that they are very comfortable joking about it, and don't really care about it. But I was baptised, and when I was little we'd go to church for Easter and Christmas. When I did my First Communion (at 7 years old), I still believed. I think. :P It was all so long ago. It's possible my parents talked about religion when I was small, I honestly can't remember. I do remember we had a children's bible, which I read several times.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say my parents used to believe, but have since then become apathetic towards it all.

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Re: Atheists are more likely to be grammar nazis

Postby kevin » 2016-09-01, 16:01

Oops, I misread what you were referring to with "believe that". Sorry, my bad.


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