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Olympus Mons
esprit de l'univers
Registered: 09/15/09
Posts: 5,777
Loc: ∞
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13886357 - 02/01/11 06:30 AM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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uber_aj said:
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Olympus Mons said: That whole tar sands situation is pretty much an environmental disaster. Instead of finding new and more horrible ways to extract money from the earth, we should be focused on more SUSTAINABLE methods of producing energy. If we cut the idea of greed out of the equation we'll find that while using fossil fuels was fine when it seemed as if it was unlimited,but it was a really terrible idea in the long run.
It's actually not the environmental disaster that it's claimed to be. It's certainly not healthy for the earth either, and it definitely contributes to global warming but it's on par with conventional oil when you look at the big picture. Early reports about cancer rates increasing in the local areas were exaggerated, as were the "mutant fish."
You and I are in clear agreement that we need to focus on sustainable energy. Unfortunately there's no overnight solution (not even fusion could save us from that 7 gallons oil needed to make one tire), so in the mean time it's crucial that we pursue cleaner and more ethical ways of producing oil, solely as a means to increase our window of opportunity for finding new alternatives.
Thankfully, many brilliant minds are working on both problems as you and I speculate about this. I'm just saying, we've dug ourselves a big fucking hole but we're historically very good at building ladders, too. No need to nervously await the imminent collapse, it's not going to happen in our lifetimes (unless science finds another way to dramatically increase our lifespans).
how could you say that as if it's fact?
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I close my eyes and seize it I clench my fists and beat it I light my torch and burn it I am the beast I worship....
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Olympus Mons
esprit de l'univers
Registered: 09/15/09
Posts: 5,777
Loc: ∞
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: deCypher]
#13886358 - 02/01/11 06:31 AM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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deCypher said: With regard to Islam being a "violent religion", I will say that I don't see Christians packing explosives on their bodies and blowing up innocent civilians, or for that matter flying planes into buildings. Although Christians do kill abortion doctors and invade countries because God told them to, so it may even out somehow.
there are extremists of every religion. Islam promotes peace.
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I close my eyes and seize it I clench my fists and beat it I light my torch and burn it I am the beast I worship....
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gerryjarcia
biophiliac
Registered: 05/29/10
Posts: 1,889
Loc: the woods
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Quote:
Tchan909 said: Religion is in the foundation of virtually every community in the world. You are not going to mobilize grassroots action or change our communities for the better - anywhere in the world - by spitting on religion.
You can, however, talk good common sense into even the most religious people by speaking their own language. This is true; I have seen it happen, even done it myself - I've used Bible verses and the right theological concepts to convince Jehova's Witnesses to respect my viewpoints, even the viewpoint that I was not interested in converting to their religion. I did not have to convert to their religion to do this; I just had to understand and respect their belief system, however daft the ideas might seem to me at face value.
Rational, right-thinking people need to get over their bruised egos sufficiently enough to understand that sacred scriptures and theological concepts are all just words, and nothing more. Words are very powerful tools (please note the emphasis) for inspiring and mobilizing people, even for making yourself understood.
Our enemies, the psychopaths and the greed-heads, have always known this, because they don't have the same sense of "right" and "wrong" that we do; to them, religion has never been anything but a means to an end, and they have been using it this way since about the time human beings developed language. They are whores and have no inhibitions about saying whatever they have to say to get people to do what they want, and it turns out that a deficit in morals makes them pretty damn good at it. People are in a TV haze because they are alienated from their God, and our enemies are moving away from this used-up tool to give us new gods - the cheap, superficial idols we see on the boob tube and in tabloids.
Our enemies are not books or ideas, but living, breathing human beings who don't give a fuck about anybody or anything but themselves. Stop sitting at your computer whining about how awful your privileged life in WASPland is, get outside, and smell the napalm.
damn tchan, you really put some thought into this response. cheers to you for that
Much of what you wrote strongly resonated within me, especially the bit about "the bruised egos" of "rational, right-thinking people". I've spent a disproportionate amount of my life surrounded by fundamentalist christians (was raised in it and then chose it as a way of belief through most of my twenties) and have learned much from all that I've experienced.
The last few years have found me "faith-less" and I've intentionally avoided dogma like the plague.
Here's the rub. I hear the same sort of fundamentalist dogma being spewed by the likes of Richard Dawkins as I did from the mouths of all those scared christian fundies.
While the coating may look different the core is always the same: fear.
It takes work, real soul work, to not live in and respond out of fear. To not respond out of ignorance, hatred, bitterness, pride, etc. Anyone can be reactionary, that takes no real thought whatsoever (hell, all you have to do is turn on the t.v. if you want to see people who make a living out of being reactionary).
Seems to me we should be doing the real work of trying to find what we as humans share in common, not the petty differences we let tear us apart.
-------------------- "We are all intoxicated. We were born into an insane asylum, a world crazy-making. We believe what we see and hear. The real myth is the myth of sanity, of rationality: it's a disease that is eating away at the earth. All the poisons flow from our denial. We deny madness, we forget our crimes, we dismember the corpse, we imprison our children. We need poison to poison the poison, to remember the sacred nature of intoxication, the green body of the young god." ~ Dale Pendell
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HELLA_TIGHT
Madge the Smoking Vag
Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 84,387
Loc: Afghanistan
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: blood4blood]
#13886709 - 02/01/11 09:17 AM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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blood4blood said: you're an idiot. passing judgment based on a username. you're pretty much whats wrong with the equation.
I never knew the problem had to do with math?
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HELLA_TIGHT
Madge the Smoking Vag
Registered: 08/19/03
Posts: 84,387
Loc: Afghanistan
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: HELLA_TIGHT] 1
#13886715 - 02/01/11 09:20 AM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Fuck jesus lovers, muslims, and jews.
I'm out.
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Noetical
Flip Horrorshow
Registered: 11/28/04
Posts: 9,230
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13887530 - 02/01/11 12:53 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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uber_aj said:
It's actually not the environmental disaster that it's claimed to be.
I've seen them
Its like fuckin Mordor
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uber_aj
Goodbye Shroomery!
Registered: 11/13/05
Posts: 4,486
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: Noetical]
#13887871 - 02/01/11 02:03 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Olympus Mons said:
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uber_aj said:
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Olympus Mons said: Thankfully, many brilliant minds are working on both problems as you and I speculate about this. I'm just saying, we've dug ourselves a big fucking hole but we're historically very good at building ladders, too. No need to nervously await the imminent collapse, it's not going to happen in our lifetimes (unless science finds another way to dramatically increase our lifespans).
how could you say that as if it's fact?
B/c I figure that you're similar in age to me (23) and that given the fact that we already get 20% of our oil from the tar sands and that we've barely scratched the surface of the 1.7 trillion barrels of oil there, it's a good enough amount to support a continually growing demand (which is an assumption considering how much green research is being done) for ~80 years. Even then Venezuela has another ~500billion and our shithead former president set up a massive, permanent military complex in Iraq, so we can steal their oil by force when conventional oil is almost gone.
In other words, I hope I will live to be ~173 years old but it might not happen. A banking collapse could happen when that $14 trillion in debt starts to catch up on us but as for oil, not gonna happen for at least 100 years. My opinion is based on many hours of researching this topic, I was inspired to do so by the same movie you get your opinion from, too.
Do you think we should cause the collapse intentionally to help the environment, leaving ~2.5 trillion barrels of oil in the ground, bringing our ability to research alternatives and clean-up methods to a halt?
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Noetical said: I've seen them
Its like fuckin Mordor
I'm sure it's not pretty, oil extraction never is. The point is, in comparison to conventional oil, using what we have in the tar sands is not a step backwards. It's no step forward, but it's not the evil, impossible to produce oil that the peak-oil argument relies on. Not to mention that major strides have been taken in the last 3 years to clean up the extraction methods.
I'm not defending oil dependency, it's our collective fault and we're paying for it. We have figured this out early enough to come up with a solution, but it's crucial that we continue to function as we search for it.
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Sophistic Radiance
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: gerryjarcia] 1
#13887883 - 02/01/11 02:06 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Thanks Gerry, some distance helped me clear up my thoughts on the matter.
I think it's very interesting how hard it is to remind so many self-professed atheists that the Bible is just a book containing nothing but words. They seem to believe it hides some sort of malevolent supernatural force with the power to seed evil in the hearts of men.
This is why I'm an agnostic - if you're going to deny the existence of God, you've got to replace that social, cultural, and linguistic construct, which has been seeded in your consciousness over countless generations, with something else of equal power. That is not so easy as simply telling yourself and others "there is no God." Many atheists talk the talk, but few walk the walk. They never replace their God, they just bury it underneath mounds of bullshit and denial. It's really not healthy; it's personally disempowering, and it leads to broken thoughts and nonsense. It only makes sense. By denying God instead of replacing God, you're ostracizing a part of your own personal and ancestral consciousness.
I don't disapprove of atheism, by any means. I'm just saying that if you're going to call yourself an atheist, you have to really believe it, and part of that means not blowing the power of religion up into something bigger and more powerful than the rational self-interest of human beings. That just makes you a theist in denial.
Anyway, I'll stop preaching, this just happens to be a subject that has fascinated me my entire life. My grandparents were Protestant, but my parents are agnostic/atheist/Asatru by varying turns. My dad's family lives in the same state as me but I don't even know them because they don't seem to get along too well with my dad. From what little I know of them, they are uber-WASPs, whereas my dad is sort of new-agey. I have no love for WASPs or other fundamentalists, but I don't think it was very responsible of my dad to reject Christianity altogether along with his parents without finding a suitable spiritual replacement. There are many forms of worship which do not involve prejudice, punitive ideas about Heaven or Hell, or forcing your beliefs down the throats of others, but he's too prideful to admit he believes in God, and I've watched him struggle with that since I was young.
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
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gerryjarcia
biophiliac
Registered: 05/29/10
Posts: 1,889
Loc: the woods
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Quote:
Tchan909 said: Thanks Gerry, some distance helped me clear up my thoughts on the matter.
I think it's very interesting how hard it is to remind so many self-professed atheists that the Bible is just a book containing nothing but words. They seem to believe it hides some sort of malevolent supernatural force with the power to seed evil in the hearts of men.
This is why I'm an agnostic - if you're going to deny the existence of God, you've got to replace that social, cultural, and linguistic construct, which has been seeded in your consciousness over countless generations, with something else of equal power. That is not so easy as simply telling yourself and others "there is no God." Many atheists talk the talk, but few walk the walk. They never replace their God, they just bury it underneath mounds of bullshit and denial. It's really not healthy; it's personally disempowering, and it leads to broken thoughts and nonsense. It only makes sense. By denying God instead of replacing God, you're ostracizing a part of your own personal and ancestral consciousness.
I don't disapprove of atheism, by any means. I'm just saying that if you're going to call yourself an atheist, you have to really believe it, and part of that means not blowing the power of religion up into something bigger and more powerful than the rational self-interest of human beings. That just makes you a theist in denial.
Anyway, I'll stop preaching, this just happens to be a subject that has fascinated me my entire life. My grandparents were Protestant, but my parents are agnostic/atheist/Asatru by varying turns. My dad's family lives in the same state as me but I don't even know them because they don't seem to get along too well with my dad. From what little I know of them, they are uber-WASPs, whereas my dad is sort of new-agey. I have no love for WASPs or other fundamentalists, but I don't think it was very responsible of my dad to reject Christianity altogether along with his parents without finding a suitable spiritual replacement. There are many forms of worship which do not involve prejudice, punitive ideas about Heaven or Hell, or forcing your beliefs down the throats of others, but he's too prideful to admit he believes in God, and I've watched him struggle with that since I was young.
i sent you a pm.
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uber_aj
Goodbye Shroomery!
Registered: 11/13/05
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Quote:
Tchan909 said: This is why I'm an agnostic - if you're going to deny the existence of God, you've got to replace that social, cultural, and linguistic construct, which has been seeded in your consciousness over countless generations, with something else of equal power. That is not so easy as simply telling yourself and others "there is no God." Many atheists talk the talk, but few walk the walk. They never replace their God, they just bury it underneath mounds of bullshit and denial. It's really not healthy; it's personally disempowering, and it leads to broken thoughts and nonsense. It only makes sense. By denying God instead of replacing God, you're ostracizing a part of your own personal and ancestral consciousness.
I see so much judgment passed down on atheists online, it's really shocking to me. It might be necessary for you to replace God, but you can't speak for what many versus few atheist think or do.
I've seen many, many peers grow up in a fundamentalist church and all but one of them who walked away from religion did so out of education and common sense rather than denial or rebellion. Most just stopped believing and went about their lives with less guilt and fewer filters. Some went militant atheist but those were the ones who were the most fervent while religious; they felt betrayed and are prone to extremes.
I think the "god-sized hole" you perceive to be in our consciousness is only given power by you. No equal power is needed to replace it for me, it's made my life way more beautiful to know that the little, directing voice in the back of my head is me. It's empowering.
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Sophistic Radiance
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13888155 - 02/01/11 02:54 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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I may have gotten a bit personal there. The point I wanted to make is that many atheists blow religion up into something bigger than it actually is. They see evil where I just see a book. The evil comes from people, just like words.
To get back on topic, this goes for Islam as well. The Quran is just a book, and the different sects of Islam are just the different interpretations millions of different people arrive at upon reading it. To blame the book, or the religion, for the evil interpretations people come up with is like chasing shadows.
Theism in denial.
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
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CaptainYowza
Stranger
Registered: 01/14/11
Posts: 15
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
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Wow. I thought all the idiocy over suitcase nukes had died down, but apparently a few of our slower sheep are still buying it. Look up "suitcase nuke myth" - it's just another scam to keep our lowest common denominator ready to cheer on the next profit war con job.
Don't forget, in this nation the "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" scam worked very well, resulting in a majority of Americans supporting the illegal destruction of a disarmed nation that had not harmed us in any way. War is marketed just like Nike shoes, and in the end it's all about money.
Then, the scam is exposed, nobody is punished, and they move on to their next atrocity.
-------------------- I think that life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber - Roger Waters, on an obvious ripoff of Echoes. STOP calling me "Old Squaw"!!! - Eunice Douglas, to Chief Yellow Horse
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uber_aj
Goodbye Shroomery!
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Well I think part of the problem is that the books claim to be the only valid truth of our human experience. Nobody bitches about Buddhism b/c it doesn't. You can find sections of both works that inspire charity and unconditional love but twenty pages over genocide is carried out b/c some other group of people had their own myths.
Everything we've observed objectively about our universe tells us that the creation stories are bogus and the "morality" in these books isn't really what most people think. Still, by claiming to be the infallible word of God, people who are scared of death will always get caught up in fundamentalism for it's promises of gold streets and or virgins.
I think it's wonderful that you see just a book. Me too. The problem is that other people see it as the book. Some of them will simply disregard science and cling to superstition and prayer, others will pick up a rifle and murder an abortion doctor or somebody who made an Allah joke. Either way the harm that comes from it is usually passed on to others rather than restricted to the individual.
I'm not arguing that any books should be burned or banned or that religious people should be persecuted. I do however, think that as a society we would only benefit from less fundamentalism and organized religion. It isn't theism in denial, it's seeing the ways that these deep-rooted beliefs make people act. It's powerful and it's dangerous and we know enough about our world now to move past it.
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Silversoul
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13888636 - 02/01/11 04:13 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Uh oh...guess I was wrong about the peaceful Muslims:
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Sophistic Radiance
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13888647 - 02/01/11 04:16 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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The Bible doesn't claim to be the only valid truth of human experience. It actually has books that contradict other books. These books KNOWINGLY contradict the other books. The Bible contains a history of revisions to secular and religious law as they occurred over thousands of years, interspersed with non-literal fables and literal histories about how and why these things happened.
When read with a critical eye, it is VERY easy to see the separations between history, fable, and secular law.
"God" in the Bible is only a device used to prop up the narrative; it is as integral to the story told by the Bible as the word "I" is to you and me in explaining ourselves.
Only ignorant people who have no idea how the Bible was compiled would believe that everything in it is literally true or could be taken out of context at will. By their own logic, they'd have to make sacrifices at Temple every Thursday. They are ignorant of their own so-called "faith" and probably haven't even read the damned thing.
I agree with you about fundamentalism. This has been a plague haunting our freedom, to varying degrees, throughout millenia. I simply charge you to lay the blame for it at the feet of the people who have perpetrated it, not ghosts.
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
Edited by Tchan909 (02/01/11 04:26 PM)
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Sophistic Radiance
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: Silversoul]
#13888743 - 02/01/11 04:31 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Silversoul said: Uh oh...guess I was wrong about the peaceful Muslims:
You know what you said about the would-be bombers getting ratted out by their moderate parents?
IT'S A TRAP!
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
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Sophistic Radiance
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"The only man you can trust is a dead man."
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
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uber_aj
Goodbye Shroomery!
Registered: 11/13/05
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I see what you're saying, but I think the promise of everlasting paradise preached by the majority of churches today (which are fundamentalist) is a big enough perk to lure in otherwise perfectly intelligent people.
My dad was an evangelical pastor, he has a doctorate from a leading theological school. He's a smart man, too, but he went down that road early in life and once you've given your whole life to it it's impossible to turn away from it. I can see the same critical thinking in him that I possess, but he denies blatant contradictions in his theology b/c he wants the end promise so badly.
I do lay the blame at the feet of those who perpetuate it's existence. It's nobody (or deity's) fault but theirs. The issue is that most people who read these books take the literalist path. There'd be no complaint from me if the story of Jesus was interpreted by most as a gnostic tale of self realization. My only argument in this thread with you is that while it comes off as smug and pseudo-religious in itself, vocal atheism is a necessary mechanism for letting other people know that it's not crazy to stop believing. I don't advocate shoving ideas down other people's throats, but I've had people accuse me of being a smug atheist after asking me for my opinion on the topic of god. I believe this is where most of the bias against atheists and their convictions comes from.
The ridiculous part is that I don't even ascribe to atheism b/c of the .0000000001% that there might be a god, but it's easier to say, "You're wrong and your god isn't real" than it is to get Socratic with, "define god" during a religion chat.
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Sophistic Radiance
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Re: Netflix, The Third Jihad, watch it, holy shit [Re: uber_aj]
#13888849 - 02/01/11 04:49 PM (13 years, 2 months ago) |
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Again, I don't have a problem with atheism, I have a problem with people who seriously view religion as more powerful than than the people who follow it, but I don't think I want to repeat this point anymore.
That's exactly what this thread is all about. Why do we have to say "Islamic extremists," giving the legitimacy of an ancient system of belief, philosophy, and governance with a nuanced and well-recorded 1400-year history to hate groups and guerilla fighters? Why can't we just call them "political extremists?"
Maybe I'm asking too much of people here, but to refer to terrorist hatemongering these people do with words with such a long and nuanced history as "Islam" and "Jihad" is like throwing a can of propane onto the fire. It's pandering. I would say the same thing about "Evangelical Christian" groups who kill abortion doctors and gay people. They, also, are nothing but terrorists who do not deserve the honor of a denomination, and about 90% of Christians (a figure I pulled out of my ass but I bet it's close to the mark) would agree with that.
So why do you pile the hate onto the belief systems held by vast numbers of innocent people because other people holding up a completely insane belief system and calling it by the same name are violent psychopaths? The niche created by this bad habit is what gives groups like the Church of Scientology the veneer of legitimacy.
This comparison might be trite, but it's kind of like outlawing psychedelics because maybe 5% of people who use them do irresponsible things. It's like using a flamethrower to take care of a cockroach problem by one turn, and like giving the cockroaches flamethrowers by the other.
-------------------- Enlil said: You really are the worst kind of person.
Edited by Tchan909 (02/01/11 05:02 PM)
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uber_aj
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Well I don't believe that religion is more powerful than the people who practice it. I believe that most people are too willing to believe it entirely for it to do any good.
I also don't think the psychedelic argument is a good metaphor for several reasons. For one, I'm not arguing that it should be made illegal, nor are atheists. Secondly, religion offers cheap make believe answers for important questions. It robs people of the desire for greater understanding and it encourages ignorance paraded under the name "faith."
A better metaphor would be religion to meth. While most users don't kill other people while on it, they do a disservice to themselves by using it and a world full of meth heads wouldn't progress very far. I'm for freedom of religion just as I'm for legalization of meth and all other substances, but I will argue against the use of the most harmful forms to the people I care about.
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