Bill Maher: Comparing Islamist violence to Christianity is "Liberal Bull****"

I don't really have a different view than you. What I said is... the core of original teaching and people interpretation evolve.

You meant the Bible as God's word? There is middle ground in that people interpret it differently and their interpretation changes over time.

 

Yes, probably true. Nothing prohibits a Buddhist from believing in god or accepting the teachings of Jesus in fact I'd say that Jesus's teachings, whether you believe he was a man or a concept based on teachings or what have you, are quite respected and much in line with what the Buddha taught. A pretty cool guy that Jesus!

 

I've seen that movie! He claimed to be the man that Jesus was based on. It's kind of odd but the ending was pretty cool.

 

Harsh. I definitely wouldn't say you believe whatever you want. Buddhism is very much in line with science and logic.

You talk about enlightenment like its a piddly thing. Haha. Enlightenment isn't escaping the world, it's revealing the world. It takes an incredible amount of discipline and strength to let go of attachment, desire, anger, and such things that lead to suffering. Speaking of slave mentality, i feel you have it backwards. We're all slaves to those emotions that hurt us.

Anyway, good debate.

 

If you established the connection just from reading John, that is very well done.

John is easily the closest thing to a Gnostic book in the bible. It contains so many ideas and words that are clearly from very close to a Gnostic tradition - the book starts out with a reference to Logos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Gnosticism

 

Interesting thoughts. Not many can achieve the end games of the respective religions though. It's probably at most 1% with the way the world's set up and more people isn't making it easier. In my mind, I'm more collectively concerned about finding a religion that strikes a better and more tolerant fit to a world growing increasingly smaller and chaotic.

My conclusions so far of Buddhism is that it attempts to accept the natural flow of life and how our collective impact on that flow is nothing than a mere pebble in an ocean. The progress in science and modernity humanity has achieved does nothing to change the size of that pebble. Perhaps the ultimate end game isn't to concern one self with progress at all. It follows the paradox of action from inaction.

But I came to a similar realization that "enlightenment" as it was understood can be ostensibly seen as a state of living death. One rising above desire may attain inner peace, but without personal motivators of change, what serves as the driver of living for the enlightened? Even that question is thrown out as the desire to live is one of the paradoxical challenges toward reaching pure enlightenment.

There are stories of different sects of Buddhism where the monk is sealed in a cave while or after achieving Nirvana. I don't see a greater purpose in that other than serving as a cultural and political driver for the other 99% out there that would unlikely follow or be able to achieve a similar path.

That doesn't mean the pursuit of enlightenment and self-awareness is futile or even self-restricting. I'd consider the mindless drive for progress through science and capitalism on the other side of the humanistic continuum. The constant change and chaos produces a different kind of animal inside us, and not necessarily for the better. What provokes an individual to say, "I'm done after earning a 100 million dollars" instead of 1 billion? In both cases, the earning potential far exceeds thousands+ of other people combined. On that idea, can greed and greater ambition be qualified into its own rigid philosophy of attainment? It seems like material for self-help and entrepreneurial books...or even Rand-like Objectivism, but I doubt any of those will last the test of time because its lack of greater insight or philosophical rigor.


As for Christianity, lionizing the weak has been one of the main appeals towards it. Another appeal is how the only God out there personified himself only to willingly sacrifice himself by us. One could see it as God being inside all of us and having his potential to do better as we are in its image. Or more realistically, one could dump all of their personal flaws onto God Jesus and subconsciously tell themselves that although Jesus was a perfect person on earth, he was still a God and becoming like him is impossible and blasphemously arrogant. The product of the world we live in today seems more like the result of the latter path.

I doubt a socialist Christian society will spring up inside the US during my lifetime as the American cultural DNA rewards individualism, even when its countercultural or obscene.

 

Thats the beauty of it --- you cant possibly be sure.

 

The world as 99.99999% of us know it might not be what it is (perhaps the one that have been enlightened see it differently). Quantum mechanic indicates that and I bet we are still far from finding the theory of our world. Who know... science and religious thinking might actually one day be compatible.

 

I highly doubt that, especially the compatibility of science and Christianity. Science today is based on the belief that humans can develop scientific theory solely from human reasoning. Science based on biblical teaching regards God as Creator, with such a complex web of systems as to go beyond the realm of human thought. With such a fundamental philosophical difference on how to even study science, compatibility does not seem possible.

 

is based on faith.

 

Science is science, not based on anything in particular. Heck, anyone can said the theory of this is x and y and x & y are from the Bible. It doesn't matter. What matter is it can be observed, tested and validated eventually.

Just a century ago, no one would think it's possible that an object can exists at two location at the same time, that just simply observing something changes it's nature, that two objects seem to be linked by some unknown something in some way that seems to easily break the speed of light or maybe even that there is no such thing as Time. These are all today theories that have be tested to some degree already (except for the Time portion).

Let's just said that one day, it's true that there is no Time. What kind of implications do we have then? There is no beginning and no ending? Everything is possible? Everything is inter-related? Each human being still "experience" time... perhaps that is an illusion, a perception due to our limitation so that we experience thing sequentially when it might be that it's not that way at all.


On compatibility... some crazy examples

if everything is inter-related, maybe prayers do actually do something. Prayers are thoughts. Thoughts are from our brain, exercising signals... "particles" (which we already theorize today are linked in some strange way and perhaps are never self independent) and are "communicated" and have some affect to something, somewhere, some way.

if there is no Time, the universe can be "created" in whatever way... it's no longer correct or incorrect to said something is created in some timeframe.

 

Al-Qaeda top dog: Boston jihad bombings show U.S.'s fragile security, Muslims in U.S. should carry out more bombings

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/06/a...re.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

"While they are in their enemy's den." Qassim al Rimi obviously thinks that Islam is at war with the U.S. He must be a greasy Islamophobe. "Boston Bombings: Al Qaeda Chief In New Warning," from Sky News, June 2 (thanks to Kenneth):

Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has said the Boston blasts revealed America's fragile security and showed making bombs was within "everyone's reach".
Qassim al Rimi, the military chief of the group, urged Muslims in America to "carry on with this way" and defend their religion in an audio message posted online.

In "A letter to the American people", he said: "The Boston events ... and the poisoned letters (sent to the White House), regardless of who is behind them, show that your security is no longer under control, and that attacks on you have taken off and cannot be stopped.

"Everyday you will be hit by the unexpected and your leaders will not be able to defend you."...

Al Rimi also said the killing of Al Qaeda's founder Osama bin Laden in May 2011 and top Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011, had not ended the struggle.

"Have you eliminated the jihadist groups that have spread everywhere after they had only been in Afghanistan? Today, they are in your land or close to it," he warned.

To the Muslims in the US, he said: "We encourage you to carry on with this way, be steadfast in your religion.

"Carry out your obligations, defend your religion and follow in the footsteps of those who supported their religion and Ummah (Muslim nation) while they are in their enemy's den."...

----------------------

And to think Obama wants us to ship the detainees to Yemen.

 

Middle East genocide

We do nothing as Muslims eradicate the last vestiges of Christians and Jews from nation after nation

By RALPH PETERS
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/middle_east_genocide_CYyETqFc0LgMfoQUbYXzWM/2

We are witnesses to murder, and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East’s Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent.

Captives of political correctness, our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile, our Middle Eastern “allies” and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment, best ignored.


Muslims set fire to a Copt Christian church in Cairo.

The banishments and butchery aren’t new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the “Arab Spring” has empowered psychotic fanatics who do not even value the lives of the faithful, let alone the lives of unbelievers. This is the end-game, the final persecution of Christians clinging to lands they’ve called home for 2,000 years. Except for Israel and the rarest exceptions elsewhere, Jews are already gone from the realms that nurtured them since the early years of their faith.

A thousand years ago, there were more Christians in the Middle East than in Europe, and Jewish communities prospered from the Nile to the Tigris. Even a century ago, more than 20% of the region’s population was Christian, and Jews still adorned Arab cities with their talents.

Today, estimates put the Christian population of the region at under 5% and sinking rapidly — and only that high because of the 9 million Copts who remain, for now, in Egypt.

The birthplace of Christianity, Bethlehem, now has a Muslim majority of as much as 80% — a reversal that coincided with the West’s decision to embrace Palestinian terrorists as “partners for peace.” A few decades ago, Lebanon had a Christian majority. Now, with Christian numbers fading, it’s tugged between Shia Hezbollah and Sunni fanatics.

Slighted by the US occupation — as our government pandered to Muslim hardliners — the Christian population of Iraq has fallen by two-thirds over 10 years. And the most ferocious elements in the Syrian insurgency see no place for Christians in Syria’s future. Even Jordan, struggling to appease its own Islamists, has cracked down on Christian activities.

The Jews, of course, are already long gone.

But the stones of ruined churches cry out, and vanished synagogues haunt decayed Arab neighborhoods.

If you read the New Testament or study the formative centuries of Christianity, there are few references to western cities other than Rome. The names that dot the Epistles of St. Paul and histories of the church are now in Muslim hands: Alexandria, Damascus, Tarsus, Carthage, Ephesus, Nicaea, Constantinople and so many others. Even Mecca and Medina had thriving Christian and Jewish quarters before the first jihads.

But all they possess does not suffice for Islamist fanatics. Israel must be blotted from the earth, and the last Christians must be driven out.

This is an old, old story, nearing its end. We shroud it in lies to excuse ourselves from taking a stand, even accepting the preposterous Arab claim that Muslim failures today are the fault of the Crusades, a brief interlude when Christians occupied a coastal strip hardly larger than Israel. In fact, it was the Mongols, then the Muslim Turks, who shattered Arab civilization. And as for conquests, Muslims occupied Spain in all or part for 800 years — and brutalized the Balkans for half a millennium. The Crusades were hardly a burp.

We also accept extravagant claims that “civilized” Arabs rescued the classical texts that formed our civilization. That’s utter nonsense. The Arab hordes that burst out of barren Arabia in the 7th century were composed of illiterates. Conquering at a time when the warring Byzantine and Persian empires had exhausted themselves, the new rulers found that tribal practices didn’t suffice to run provinces. So they took over the existing bureaucracies, staffed by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews. It was those officials who saved the Greek classics for Europe’s future Renaissance — and their descendants designed Islam’s greatest monuments.

Yes, some Arab rulers came to value learning — but the Arab world never produced a Homer, Plato, Sophocles or Thucydides whose appeal transcended their culture.

Islam was a religion spread by war. It was only a “religion of peace” where it had conquered. True, Islam sometimes proved more tolerant of minorities than Europeans, but that was at the zenith of the faith’s power.

There’s yet another illusion of ours — that Islam is gaining strength. Islam is on the ropes. What we’ve seen in the pogroms and outright genocides over the last 150 years has been the spleen of a once-triumphant faith whose practices and values can’t compete in the modern age.

Consider today’s Middle East, apart from Israel. Despite the massive influx of oil wealth, there isn’t one world-class university. Nothing of quality or technological complexity is manufactured between Morocco and Pakistan. Not even Saudi Arabia has first-rate health-care. Research is nil. Patent applications are statistically zero. Women are regarded as lesser beings, wasting half of the region’s human capital. Not one Arab society’s a meritocracy. And corruption cripples all.

A handful of glitzy hotels and shopping centers do not make a civilization (especially when the merchandise is all imported). Should Islamist fanatics succeed in driving all minorities from the region, they’d be left with a human wasteland of comprehensive failure, seething with hatred and uncontainable violence. The self-segregation of the Islamic heartlands would be a tragedy for humanity — but, above all, for Muslims.

Birth rates are a red herring. More mouths to feed are not magic sources of strength in lands of scarcity and poverty. The Middle East is self-destructive, morally brittle and falling ever further behind a world that’s charging ahead. Islamists can’t even get terrorism right — today, we’re terrorizing the terrorists. So they turn on the weak in their midst, the last minorities.

The initial wave of destruction and slaughter began almost a millennium ago, when the Muslim world first felt itself under threat. But, more recently, as the West shot to power (thanks to science, learning, hard work, religious tolerance and organization), the creaking Ottoman Empire could not shake off its centuries-old stupor to keep up.

Enraged by failure, the Ottomans turned on their most-productive minorities — whose successes outraged yesteryear’s fanatics. Beginning in the 1880s and accelerating in the 1890s, pogroms against Armenian Christians stunned Western witnesses. But European leaders turned a blind eye, just as we do today. So during the First World War, the Young Turks who had seized power decided to finish the job.

It was genocide. At least a million Armenians — perhaps twice that number — were systematically exterminated . . . although not without being tortured, raped, starved and death-marched first. The scale of the butchery was such that it obscured other, concurrent genocides, most notably that of Assyrian Christians at the hands of Turks and other Muslims. Estimates of Assyrian deaths run from just under 300,000 to one million.

Nor did the slaughters stop there. In British-created Iraq, massacres of Christians recurred from 1933 to 1961.

City names we know from our recent wars, such as Mosul, Basra or Tikrit (Saddam’s home town), once were centers of Christian culture, with bishops, cathedrals and monasteries famous for learning.

Gone. And the last pale ghosts, those Christians holding on to homes their blood knew for 20 centuries, are soon to go. Meanwhile, our president assures us that “Islam’s a religion of peace.”

Mr. President, go to Iraq and speak those words in the bomb-torn churches amid desecrated graves.

Mr. President, go to Egypt and explain to the brutalized Copts why your embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood government’s good for them.

Then go to Israel, Mr. President, where Christians worship freely, and tell the Israelis they should “return Palestinian land” after Muslims seized the homes that sheltered Jews for 3,000 years.

Explain to Jews why their temples were profaned and obliterated by the adherents of that “religion of peace.”

Of course, the real tragedy for the Arabs in the last century wasn’t the Naqba, Israel’s close-run struggle to survive attacks by an arc of Arab armies. The tragedy was that the most-backward, intolerant and indolent Arabs, primitive tribesmen, got most of the oil wealth and used it to spread their Wahhabi cult throughout the Islamic world. The intellectuals in the great Arab cities never had a chance.

My wife and I spent our honeymoon on a long bus trip through Turkey, a country for which I have great, if frustrated, affection. All went fine amid splendid hospitality . . . until we reached the east. Along the roadsides in what had been Armenia (the first Christian kingdom, by the way) desolate villages, razed to their foundations, scarred the landscape between drab modern towns. When asked what those ruins were, a Turk would avert his eyes and mutter, “Abandoned.”

Those villages weren’t abandoned. They were the site of the last century’s first great genocide. No one stood up for those inconvenient Christians.

And no one’s standing up for the Middle East’s tormented Christians now, or for the last handful of Jews left beyond Israel.

Even the dust cries for justice, and we look away.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of the new Civil War novel, “Hell or Richmond.”

 

Interesting article, I can't think of a single country where proliferation of the Muslim religion has improved the lives of its population? Muslim religion and law takes over and the country spirals into the 3rd world dominated by hate and oppression.

 

what about Indonesia? 87% of their population is Muslim. Are they dominated by hate and oppression?

Note- their Constitution guarantees freedom of religion (although I think not freedom of no religion).

 

Is there a critical mass of Muslims needed before they start taking over the country? Is one Muslim family moving into the neighborhood bad enough? Have you met anyone who follows Islam that doesn't seek to hate you or oppress you?

 

Indonesia is an exception but not without warts. The government recognizes some religions but doesn't do much if the majority wants to persecute the minority. Indonesia has been an up and comer economicaly since moving to a democracy with some freedom of religion.

I don't know anyone from Indonesia so I can't say how they treat the religious minorities but a short internet search turned up articles that say they aren't treated well.

I had no idea Indonesia was the fourth most populace nation? Huh

 

Bro, that greenwald video obliterates ur Maher vs professor video. It isn't even close. I like how you completely ignore the Greenwald video as if it didn't happen.

You probably have absolutely no counter argument just like Maher had nothing left in the chamber so he attempted to change topics real fast......

 

Egyptian Cleric: Leftist Protesters In America “Raised Banners Saying ‘We Want An Islamic Economy’”



What exactly is an “Islamic economy?”

Via MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Shaaban, which aired on Tahrir TV on May 14, 2013:

Mahmoud Shaaban: My dear sir, the entire world has its eyes set upon Islam. We resemble a bad salesman, who has the best merchandise but does not know how to market it. America has its eyes set upon Islam, and so does Italy.

Let me give you some quick examples. During the Wall Street protests of October 1, 2011 over the financial crisis, banners were raised demanding an Islamic economy. At first, we thought these were Muslims who had infiltrated the demonstrations, but it turned out that they were Jews and Christians, who had conducted research and found that the economic solution lies with Islam.

Interviewer: Where was that? In Italy?

Mahmoud Shaaban: The Wall Street protests in the U.S. They raised banners in all languages, saying “We want the Islamic economy.”

Interviewer: The Americans did that?

Mahmoud Shaaban: Yes. They weren’t even Muslims. Check it out on the Internet. They researched the subject and found that the solution lies with Islam. The solution lies in having Islamic interest-free loans.

Brother, Europe would not have made progress if not for Islam. Anything good that emerged from Europe can be traced back to Islam. The good aspects of European democracy were also taken from Islam.

http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3852.htm