Qualifiers.

[Justanatheist]

Okay, so here it is.
For a limited, yet not insignificant set of cases for all humans with access to the Internet, it can be dangerous to go see a doctor for questions about mental health. Further doctors as medical doctors are not the only one who deal with mental health and seeing one doctor or only doctors might not be enough.
There are further considerations to make and I am willing to go into them. So since you are authoritative on mental health and can do it over the Internet, please explain as true and with certainty your position.

Take it to the proper debate where I can ignore it in its proper place.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So if I write, Danish people can be blond I am not saying all Danish people are blond.. Simples. Maybe if people understood the use of a qualifier in a sentence we might have even more reasonable debate around here. Or maybe some people understand qualifiers anyway and they just want to mis represent what the other is saying and strawman the argument.

Recently, I made a comment on another thread about the Christian church being the principle if not sole source of both homophobia and atheophobia in the West, and another poster commented on disliking the use of the word Christian there, since her denomination didn't do that, and that I should qualify that I meant fundamentalists, Catholics, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

That seems like when I say that Americans like hamburgers. I don't mean every American. Some are vegetarians. Yet it is true that Americans like hamburgers more than say tacos. Americans have hamburger vendors everywhere, many known for serving principally hamburgers. I don't want to bother to break it down into which kinds of Americans are eating those hamburgers. It's not important to my point. And it's not important to my point that some Christian denominations don't participate in marginalizing and demonizing people.

Is that unreasonable? I don't really care which denominations are contributing when making this point, just that whichever they are, they're all Christian. The Druids aren't doing this. Nor the Jains, nor Baha'i, nor Hindus.

Regarding religious people can be dangerous, yes, that should be qualified. We seem to be saying that they are more dangerous than irreligious people. If that's what is meant, say so. It's a different point than merely noting that some religious people are dangerous. So are some irreligious people.

I commented on this a few days ago in a thread that began with something like, there's no good in atheism. Same problem. We know that there is no good in atheism, or bad, just as there is no good or bad in theism. But limiting one's comment to just atheism and just there being no good there implies that atheists are not good people, which of course was the purpose of the thread.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Take it to the proper debate where I can ignore it in its proper place.

So you decide that it is not proper to debate what true is, but it is proper that you can use it as a positive and then ignore it. It that proper?

 

[Nakosis]

Across the many debates I have had on this forum it appears to me that a lot of people do not understand what a qualifier is in a sentence.

Qualifiers and intensifiers are words or phrases that are added to another word to modify its meaning, either by limiting it (He was somewhat busy) or by enhancing it (The dog was very cute). Qualifiers can play an important role in your writing, giving your reader clues about how confident you feel about the information you’re presenting. In fact, “hedging” (as it is sometimes called) is an important feature of academic writing, because academic writers need to clearly indicate whether they think claims are certain, likely, unlikely, or just false.

It’s also very important to distinguish between absolute or universal claims (in which you are asserting that something is true always and everywhere) and more particular claims (in which you are asserting something but recognizing that your claim has limits).
Qualifiers – The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

So if I write, Danish people can be blond I am not saying all Danish people are blond.. Simples.
Maybe if people understood the use of a qualifier in a sentence we might have even more reasonable debate around here.
Or maybe some people understand qualifiers anyway and they just want to mis represent what the other is saying and strawman the argument.

Your thoughts?

Ps, mods I was very unsure of where to actually put this debate.
Edit
I have edited my original statement to make it less contentious it was not meant to be the subject of the debate but just an example.
Another Edit
I have edited it again to make it even less contentious, please be aware I am not having a go at Danish people or blond whether natural or not.

I notice this often in news broadcasts. The commentator will make a "damming" statement about an opposing opinion with a qualifier, then go on to make derogatory statements as if the qualifier was never present.
I suspect people tend to overlook the qualifier and take the remaining commentary as factual. Critical parsing of statements with a qualifier does not seem to be a common practice.

 

[Justanatheist]

I notice this often in news broadcasts. The commentator will make a "damming" statement about an opposing opinion with a qualifier, then go on to make derogatory statements as if the qualifier was never present.
I suspect people tend to overlook the qualifier and take the remaining commentary as factual. Critical parsing of statements with a qualifier does not seem to be a common practice.

I noticed it in a video here, the documentary was quite good a polemic about atheism, the presenter was at pains to say, many atheists, some atheists etc, but the poster immediately summarised it by stating that Atheists do this and that was that.

 

[GardenLady]

Recently, I made a comment on another thread about the Christian church being the principle if not sole source of both homophobia and atheophobia in the West, and another poster commented on disliking the use of the word Christian there, since her denomination didn't do that, and that I should qualify that I meant fundamentalists, Catholics, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yeah, I was asking for a qualifier.

 

[Meow Mix]

One small thought. English is not the first language of all the posters on RF. Qualifiers may not always be included because of this perhaps? And of course there's the Americans, who can barely even spell.

Pff tell me again about colours and torches instead of flashlights and cheques (which is underlined in RED because the forum knows you're wrong).

We don't need your fancy extra letters, cool words, or awesome accents. I am not jealous at all, nope.

 

[Secret Chief]

Pff tell me again about colours and torches instead of flashlights and cheques (which is underlined in RED because the forum knows you're wrong).

We don't need your fancy extra letters, cool words, or awesome accents. I am not jealous at all, nope.

Yer wha?

 

[Viker]

One small thought. English is not the first language of all the posters on RF. Qualifiers may not always be included because of this perhaps? And of course there's the Americans, who can barely even spell.

Thats not fare. We can spill to.

 

[Quagmire]

***Thread Moved to General Debates***​