Sunday, September 11, 2011
Profiling and Stereotyping on the basis of Religious Beliefs
Something which is very obvious to me seems to totally escape others. Consider two different people; one is a bitter woman who finally escaped a series of abusive relationships. The other is a straight but very homophobic male who has never really know any LGBT. What do such people do? I say they generalize, stereotype and profile. The homophobe is convinced that LGBT are pedophiles perhaps with a hidden agenda to convert everyone or seduce everyone. The bitter woman is convinced that all men are selfish, sadistic, predatory, etc. Are these two people correct? Of course not. There are all sorts of males. Some males are very sentimental, nurturing, sensitive, etc. Many LGBT have no interest in children and do not care what the orientation of others might be and are perhaps only attracted to a few people in there lifetime or perhaps only one person. So what shall we say of someone who stereotypes all brilliant scientists as of necessity atheistic and profiles anyone with religious feelings as flawed in their reasoning and most likely to produce false results in research. When we view things from this light then people who stereotype seem immature and ignorant. Some Communist dictators have characterized all intellectuals as a threat to society. One such dictator encouraged all intellectuals to step forward and make suggestions to help the government and those who did so were then imprisoned or executed. How might you define an intellectual. Is Noam Chomsky and intellectual. Is Barack Obama an intellectual. How about William F. Buckley, Jr and Adlai Stevenson. What may we say holds true universally at all times for all intellectuals? Should we say that the like to read and write a lot? By the way, this hairsplitting and quibbling over whether a doctor is a scientist is nonesense and has nothing to do with the heart of the issue. My opponents, Lair and Justine, are bitter, hateful people who stereotype and spew venom at every opportunity even on some thread that may one vaguely be construed as touching upon the topic of religion. How would you stereotype a person of color? How are they different from "white" people. We know that for centuries much was disputed on this issue. Now we gradually see that what we call "race" is an artifact. I have been thinking about this thread on and off during the day as I engage in other activities.One PhD in the sciences in one of these threads insisted that he would not consider hiring a scientist who is known to attend a place of worship on a regular basis. I argued that this is illegal discrimination no different from refusing to hire females over males, or LGBT over straight, or Caucasians over people of color, or able-bodied people over the physically challenged. I shall post now so as not to have the computer monster eat up all this typing.. but I shall continue to think on this thread and reread. Thank you for your interest and contributions.
