[Religion of Intolerance] Muslim Mass Attacks, Mar 13

Look--I don't even know why we're disagreeing.

Let me just put it this way: my heroes don't ask me to abandon their families for them. My heroes take principled stands and don't have to promise eternal life to get people to follow them. Morality doesn't have to be a static code determined centuries ago by a covenant of self-motivated politicians based on the life story of somebody who started a cult.

For those of you in the bleachers: continue to believe what the hell you want--so long as your individual belief doesn't translate into irrational collective norms on how everybody should live. If they do--that is something that must be fought tooth and nail.

Which is exactly what I'm decrying right now. So I hope you understand I decry every example you just brought up.

 

Head dab is on another level, could only be you and me breh.

 

they're just jealous of our love, breh

 

I take your point here, Northside Storm...
...and not to belabor the obvious here, in regards to what Jesus of Nazareth "said"...

...I tend to think that, along those aforementioned lines (also taking into consideration that Jesus was as just as critical of his Jewish government and priesthood...in effect suggesting the same type of dissolution and division stated earlier)...

...what Jesus may have been offering was to make sure that whatever you align yourself with (spiritually, socially and personally) needed a more convincing and compelling reason than tradition (family, class, historicity)...

...because people, by and large, would find any reason to create "others" that they could justify cruelty...indifference...suffering...towards in order to further personal agendas....

...strangely enough, following along the "cult" theme of Christianity (or at least, the adoption of cultist tendencies, as it were)...

...if the New testament Gospels are to be believed...Jesus had no problem dying for what he believed...and did everything he could to prevent any of his followers from dying because of those beliefs.

...for whatever else it may be worth...Jim Jones or David Koresh, Jesus of Nazareth was not (by what we do know of him for the New Testament)...

 

I agree with this -- the uneducated fundamentalist Christian on my local school board that wants to ban Huckleberry Finn or change the Biology curriculum has more of an impact on my life than a bunch of clerics in Syria who make rules about how to correctly rape underaged children and kill gay people and wizards.

I think it's natural to project into spaces -- when you have a mythological figure, real or invented, people have a tendency to make them in their own image and use them to justify what they already believe. In that regard, religion can be poisonous, but the same is true for any idol. Think of all the people with differing ideas who claim to be followers of Marx...or Thomas Jefferson...or Ronald Reagan and claim to represent their beliefs. You can look at any school of philosophy from the Hellenic world and follow it's trajectory into Rome and see how they all eventually died as they all suffered from mission creep.

But I agree with fchowd0311 about Islam. The starting point with the life of Mohammed as a guide to ultimate virtue is especially problematic, especially when you combine that with the problem of nearly every religion where revealed revelation is the defense from any criticism. "Because God said so" doesn't play fair in the marketplace of ideas. In studying religion (and when I say study, I mean required graduate level Orthodox Judaism courses at Bar-Ilan university) no matter how illuminating the Middle Age philosophy could be...when getting to the root of things, the ultimate Unquestionable Authority of Because I Said So was always what I found in the end, and all the Abrahamic faiths have this glaring flaw.

Hitchens was very clear in the last decade of his life, that as ardent an atheist as he was, he regarded Islam particularly, and above other ideologies as the greatest threat to civilization. It made otherwise moral people willing and able to commit very anti-social acts from any moral vantage point, and at a scale much greater than any other religion. I think the argument of numbers alone in 2016 bears that out.

Anecdotally, I'll also concede that I've met plenty of moral religious Christians and Muslims and Jews, but I generally see that as doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Again: "Because God said so" is a poor argument, even if you could prove in the infallible existence of such a deity, a person would have to question what creator would demand the subjugation and undying devotion of it's creations, much less that such a creator was a source of pure good.

So in short: some imaginary friends are more benign than others, but you are right in feeling impatient in expecting progress from a war between followers of one imaginary friend vs another.

 

i find it a little amusing that you have studied a bit about Orthodox- Judaism, but you cant recall the fact this particular group is the prime example of when opponent take charge to reshaping others's faith and ideology to fit certain stereotype or prejudice agenda ,they were label-ed this way by no other than their Jewish opponents !
When nationalist especially the Zionist movement found this group a political obstacle in their way to form the Jewish state , and they came up with a very creative name : backward people =orthodox. there is a strong reason why they were on a verge of extinct by the Nazis '. and as if pissing contest not done yet , another group came with the idea of calling them self : Ultra Orthodox !

You agree with a guy on a very distorted narrative of Islam, I never heard of it nor found a reliable bases of these claims . i do have a problem with atheist when they become more blindly driven and motivated by their own agenda than some die hard religious believers

The main difference between Islam-on one side and Christianity-Judaism, is that the main source of religion obviously preserved ,and still a vital tool to confirm believes (not only the narrative of examine the faith based on : oh believe me! , it has other factors that collectivity add to it ) .the main core :Quran, is the main reason to affirm this religion, not based what is happening now in Tora Bora or a thing accrued in the past decade.

For instance , the earth wasn't flat in Qur’an, the galaxy was moving , many scientific relatively discovered within a century a go confirms what's in Qur’an. Islam as a religion co-exist with others and relatively speaking ,is more tolerance to human progress

Take this for example
[youtube]u1RY0IqcoE4[/youtube]

 

Orthodox Judaism is a 19th century invention, as a reaction to the Reform movement, because traditional Jews felt alienated when visiting a synagogue that allowed mixed-gender seating and other things that were taboos to the religion. I'm not sure what you are on about.

I'm not sure where you get your information from about the origins of the State of Israel, but religious parties were and always have been courted and given special rights in order to keep them within every coalition that ever won an election. The Orthodox self-identify as such to differentiate themselves from other movements (whether the less restrictive like Reform and Conservative, or the more restrictive like the Haredi) The Modern Orthodox movement, easily the largest bloc within Orthodoxy,is quite Zionist, and if anything, has taken over the "movement."

I have never found a reliable evidence to support the existence of gods, angels, djinn, or flying horses. While some of it is the kernel of good storytelling, fans of the Torah, New Testament or Koran have no sounder argument for heaven and hell than Lord of the Rings fans have for Mordor. It's nonsense and I have yet be compelled to respect it as truth other than by threat of violence, and I'm under no obligation to return that sort of rhetoric with a smile.

Atheists, as a group have no agenda, nor a uniform opinion about anything other than a lack of belief in superstition.

I have no idea what you are trying to say, but I'll say the main difference between the Koran and other books of the faiths of Abraham is that many of the (non-supernatural) events and people described can be confirmed by archeological record and other sources. There is little doubt that Mohammed, Hamza and Ali were real people. I can give you that, but the same cannot be said for the supernatural claims attributed to them.

Last time I read the Koran, i didn't see any illuminating information in the fields of modern biology, the geography of the world and all it's continents, chemistry, or physics. I did read quite a bit about supernatural actors, none of which have I seen any evidence for. If your claims were true, since I am not a theist, I have no need to retcon any religious books with the last 200 years of scientific progress, nor do I have an invisible leash that restricts me from following evidence to where it leads me for fear of blasphemy.

And again, if your claims were true, it still required scientific inquiry to prove them so, and most of what we know about cosmology and life on Earth is largely within the last two centuries.

I find it strange that so many take on faith that God not only exists, he told his secrets to different desert-dwelling patriarchs in the Bronze Age, and not say, the Chinese, who had developed philosophy, machinery, a code of secular law, gunpowder and paper when the Middle East were still getting adjusted to crude agriculture.

 

Heh.

I liked this part the best.

 

I think it is a bit ignorant to define and label all religions equally (keeping the religious out of the argument). Certainly Jesus asked his followers to abandon their families and, turning toward another religion, even Buddha abandoned his only family to find spiritual enlightenment, but I wouldn't say that these actions place the two on equal footing with other religious figures.

 

The Sermon on the Mount might be the most immoral proposition in the NT. Take no thoughts of tomorrow, abandon your family (including your children), abandon any thoughts of the future, all your aspirations, all you own, follow Jesus and seek perfection.

Is that a moral thing to demand of people? If I knew someone who did that I'd call CPS at the very least.

 

When Jesus said that Israel was a mustard seed, do you think he was making a literal comparison? Even people 2000 years ago could understand parables and metaphors.

 

It's the longest speech JC has in the NT -- it reads pretty explicitly.

 

Fair point--but not a very high bar.

 

My take on this is that there isn't progress so long as the discussion revolves around "X religion is better than Y religion"--when the real discussion should be about why people feel the need to have religion in the first place.

 

This kind of sentiment is exactly why I think religion is not something for me. Why do I have to compare religions in the first place?

I don't compare Harvey Milk with Aaron Swartz and choose one on the path to everlasting life. I choose principles, data, and outcomes--not force, dogma, and predestiny.

You can call it ignorance. I call it a deliberate avoidance of what I consider failed mental models.

 

Siddhartha was a very dysfunctional and perceptive human being with a very dysfunctional family. He abandoned everything to find something that make sense to him. When he became Buddha, which is simply an awaken being, he came back to visit his family. It was not that Buddha has some higher calling or knowing and decided to leave his family - that was a very dysfunctional human being, Siddhartha.

 

just from the link that you have provided ...(..*Modern Orthodoxy is dominated by*Religious Zionism; however, although not identical, these movements share many of the same values and many of the same adherents.[1]..),



though i was referring to the original Orthodox sector on this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Judaism


and their beliefs on the state of Israel is echoed from here :


http://www.truetorahjews.org/qanda/source1


most noticeably a note by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch commented in 1854 was not the 'Orthodox' Jews who introduced the word 'orthodoxy' into Jewish discussion. It was the modern 'progressive' Jews who first applied this name to 'old', 'backward' Jews as a derogatory term. This name was at first resented by 'old' Jews. And rightly so. 'Orthodox' Judaism does not know any varieties of Judaism. It conceives Judaism as one and indivisible. It does not know a Mosaic, prophetic and rabbinic Judaism, nor Orthodox and Liberal Judaism. It only knows Judaism and non-Judaism. It does not know Orthodox and Liberal Jews. It does indeed know conscientious and indifferent Jews, good Jews, bad Jews or baptized Jews; all, nevertheless, Jews with a mission which they cannot cast off. They are only distinguished accordingly as they fulfill or reject their mission.

'largest victim groups — religiously orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe — are excluded from the most famous symbol of the Holocaust' quote from Timothy Snyder

there is a wealth of info spread over the internet , here is an example http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/opposition.cfm

 

I can't believe I'm going to go down this road, but can you point out to me where Jesus asks you to abandon family/children in the Sermon on the Mount?

I've read it quite a few times in my life, and I must have missed that part. I assume you're talking about the Sermon on the Mount that appears in Matthew chapters 5-7, right?

 

Pretty sure it's in Austin 3:16: And Jesus said to them "I am the Bro of Life, and he who hath chosen Bros before Hos, chooses to walk with me."

 

Bro, that's my favorite verse!!!