Un-der-stan-ding met-a-phor

Here’s a stupid remark. On a post of Russell Blackford’s on Bunting’s encounter with the hostile commenters there’s a guy defending Bunting’s reading of the book (despite not having read the book himself, but never mind). He said some really point-missing stuff about the whited sepulchre etc, and I tried yet again to explain it, saying that

The point is that religion is ugly because it is used to dress up ugly things. Is that not obvious? The white tie and tails on an executioner are themselves ugly because of what they are doing. This is vastly more true of religion precisely because religion is supposed to be the heart of a heartless world, the fount of compassion, etc etc. Religion is made ugly by the many people who use it to justify cruelty.

He replied, astonishingly

Oh, please. Cruelty can be justified in the name of love, science, freedom, and so on. That hardly makes any of the latter ugly.

Are you kidding me? Of course it fucking does! If someone is being cruel and justifies it by talking of love – that’s a very ugly version of ‘love.’ It’s not unknown, either. OJ Simpson made a career out of it. That love is another wart hog in a party dress.

It’s so hard to abandon internet arguments when people are being obstinately stupid, you know? I’m hopeless at it.

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