Oslo Attacks: Suspicion Falls on Attackers Rather than Religion I Don't Like

False equivalency.

Neither of those attacks were retribution in response to some kind of violation of religious blasphemy law.

 

This. Can ATW be a bit bigoted? Definitely. But in this case he was simply following a fractured story.

Now everybody please just STFU. It's a damn shame, I came here to find out more instead I get a bunch of whining. I swear, I think the Hangout has smarter posters than here.

 

religion of peace strikes again baby!!!!

but yah, Christians do this all the time too.

 

What are you talking about? Muslims weren't responsible. Islamic terrorist groups weren't responsible. Please try and bring something to the table if you want to engage in discussion.

 

lol, this has to be the most ironic post in D&D for a while.

 

So you think that if you a newspaper published a cartoon of Jesus in Norway or OKC, people would die (en masse), or there would be death threats because of it? People would have to live in hiding? Really?

Your assertion that what would trigger violence (or how much violence it would trigger) in Christian/Western culture is the same as what triggers violence in Muslim culture is beyond wrong.

And yes, people violently flipping the f*** out en masse over a cartoon is a much bigger problem than random isolated incidents of some looney toon going apes**t because of paranoid xenophobia and a racial superiority complex.

Neither are acceptable, but to say that they're on equal footing in terms of a modern day problem is just ridiculous.

 

Great post, DonnyMost. Too bad it probably flew right over ScamFisher's head.

 

I think Sam, like a lot of liberals, just tries too hard to defend Muslims/"brown people" (his words, not mine) from unfair scrutiny/discrimination to the point where they simply refuse to believe that certain cultures/religions/etc are worse or better than others.

Its trap I used to fall into all the time, mostly as a reactionary method of dealing with uber bigoted posters. So, I understand where a lot of these guys are coming from.

 

No culture/religion is better than another, they are all the same, everything is cyclical. One religion/culture may have stepped into the forefront as being more civilized and advanced, but that won't last forever. In the end we are all the same in nature. It's a short-term perspective you take, too bad you can't see the bigger picture. You are witnessing the downfall of the west as we speak, just wait till regions within start falling. You will see people start clinging to religion or ideologies that behave the same way as those that are struggling today.

 

You have got to be kidding me.

You think all cultures are equal?

Seriously?

You think that the Scandinavian culture, for example, with it's enormously high standard of living (healthy, productive, educated, low crime, excellent human rights record, etc), is the "same" as a culture in, say, the horn of Africa, where they ritually slaughter albinos and mangle the genitals of female babies because of superstition, lack infrastructure to fight famine or drought, and have only the most rudimentary education and healthcare.

"We" are mostly the same, as humans. Yes. "We" are most definitely *not* the same as cultures. Some are better and more enlightened, some are worse and not. Your assumption that all cultures eventually go through self-ruination is not only false, but it ignores the fact that the ruination they sometimes go through is essentially *because* they changed their culture for the worse. (e.g. the middle east after the 12th century)

 

Not even remotely true, some cultures lend themselves to longetivity, while others burn themselves out in a short time frame.

This is a very general statement, and hard to quantify any truth from reality.

Religion is differnt than culture, while they are intertwined, they are not the same.

In most cases religion seems to hinder culture, more than help it advance, we are seeing it being removed from Europe, and the USA is following suite, it is becomming less and less prevelant as society advances and moves away from the mythology that is religion.

Not saying you do not see the bigger picture, but nothing you have said shows any knowledge of said picture.

Ah, so now we come to it, the West is falling, which is not remotely true, the West is changing but what is happening is the world is getting smaller and people naturally resist change, which is why we are having so many culture clashes.

Eventually though, it should even out, and the world will be better for it, and I predict the West will ultimately win, or at least have the majority of the world in it's corner, one KFC and McDonalds at a time.

The rest of the world is just realizing they need to catch up and don't like it.

DD

 

This is an odd statement. If we view culture as "the attitudes and behavior characteristics of a particular social group", there is no such thing as hindering culture. Culture is a state of being; it is the collective set of attributes that define a group of people.

Also, be careful not to confuse causes with effects; it's arguable that America's economic and social superiority are results of an era of much different culture. To assume that the spread of America's more negative cultural aspects like theophobia and corporate ethics has to come as part of a package deal is wrong.

Just because the USA is mighty doesn't mean it can't fail, we've seen major shifts in nearly every aspect of politics and social focus that I'm sure I don't need to explain. It remains to be seen if the nation will remain as great as its ethics and culture shift.

 

Sorry, but this is simply wrong. I believe I understand what you are trying to say and where you are coming from, but objectively, some cultures/religions are better than others. If I were to start a religion today that ritually slaughters children as part of their belief system, you bet that other religions are "better". There are objective moral standards.

 

I am not saying the USA as it stands today will be the outcome, usually it is a mixing of all things and the best will survive (sometimes the worst too unfortunately), but I am saying the west's way of doing things will win out.

The internet has opened up the eyes of millions of surpressed people to what could be, witness the Arab spring for example, and I believe the West's way will eventually prevail.

As for your bit about the confusion in culture being hindered by religion, I can see your point, perhaps I should have said, societal evolution is hindered by the mythology that is religion.

All religions eventually die out, so will the ones that are prevelant now, or they will diminish significantly, IMO.

DD

 

YES all cultures/religions go through the same cycle. Some religions/culture fall, some rise, but in the end they go through the same cycle. Some die out or morph into new cultures/religion, but in the end they all obey to the nature of a human being.

Think long term. Has Scandinavian culture always been so peaceful and advanced? I think not.

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People don't change their culture for the worse, it's the nature of things to cycle through periods of change, good and bad.

 

Culture does not win out, East or West. Technology does.


Everyone else follows...


Better pray that we still have some innovative intelligence in America...

 

No, they don't all go through "the same cycle". And even if they did, it wouldn't change the fact that as of *right this moment*, some cultures are better than others.

It's about priorities and values. Those aren't the same across humankind. They develop based on how each culture operates, what each group of people believes is important, and how intelligent they are to make the right decisions.

If you think every culture, when boiled down to the bare bones of living, will essentially revert to chaos and the worst parts of humanity, I'd ask you to go take a look at some places after disasters and see the difference in how people act. New Orleans vs. Japan is a great example. Not everyone is the same. Cultures have different beliefs and priorities, and those things come out naturally, no matter the situation.

Of course they haven't always been that way, but they got their s**t together, just like America did by abolishing slavery, or any other one of the numerous things we've done to make our culture better.

Yes they absolutely do. Baghdad was the richest, most educated, prosperous, healthiest place on the planet 1000 years ago. Now? A shadow of that. Which can all be traced back to a severe change in cultural priorities brought about by fundamentalist Islam gaining major influence in the region. Education and free thought were considered evil, outsiders were shunned, women were subjugated, children abused. And the culture is still trying to recover from that. It wasn't just part of some "cycle" of ups and downs, it was an active failure of humanity. Which, since we're humans, we f*** up sometimes and do the wrong thing (like abuse people, for stupid reasons).

And back to my original point, even if cultures did have some "cycle", it would not change the fact that some are better than others at this moment in time. And it isn't blasphemy to point that out. You sound like you're trying to push some defeatest "welp, we're all f***ed anyway so why bother trying to get better" argument.

 

Culture comes before technology.

And right now, our culture kind of sucks.

 

How so?