Okay everybody, say it with me:
“Thank you, oh Lord, for your healing gift of monotheistic religion.”
I don’t know about y’all, but I think we would have been better off if we still prayed to the four winds and danced around fires, and whatnot. Every time a thread fires up about religion around here, I thank my lucky stars that I’m atheist.
No organized religion can claim to be free of prejudice, persecution of perceived enemies be it in war or otherwise… for those so intent on portraying muslims as bad, think about crusades, witch-hunts, inquisition…or in our time: Anti-abortionists, anti gay/lesbian rights etc…
Me, - Im luckily an atheist, so I at least dont have to claim divine justification for not liking someone…
LittleJay,
Granted, having re-read my post i understand ur point.
In terms of Israel/Palestine etc no doubt there are points where there we all differ on what the situation maybe. Although your statement in regards to ‘homeland’ is not quite true but as you say we probably will not come to an agreement on this.
Brian,
In no uncertain terms was i making excuses for terrorist activities such as Spain, NYork,etc that was never the intention.
My choice of example wasn’t thought through and that i admit.
I guess my main point was that despite what the media may portray or threads such as this may say(louden swain), being a muslim is not about killing.
lothario1132 and dd90, I’ll give you your 4 winds and your religious extremism, but Islam wants converts (and in many places today, this happens by force), and Judaism accepts converts. There are salient differences between the monotheistic religions.
What about missionaries ??? Jehovas wittnesses distributing “The Watchtower” etc. ?
In my opinion, the difference is purely sociological: The persecution, holy wars, crusades mass conversions etc. were extremely prominent throughout history for Christianity, - however the western world (where Christianity is mostly widespread) has evolved past the middle ages and religion isnt of as much importance in the organisation of society. A lot of muslim coutries (and please dont see this as racism, prejudism etc. but merely an observation) are not as far on the technological/infrastructure/sociological developmental scale, so these features of religion are still predominant in many cases…
DD90, you still haven’t addressed Judaism’s position on conversion. If you compare the Inquisition to what’s happening in Sudan, that’s kind of limiting.
Being from an “officially christian” country (Denmark), my experience with Judaism is limited, so I will not start speculating on something I dont really know much about…
All Im saying is that what people are now finding as faults of islam, is a feature of large organized religions…
Heh, what most people don’t see is that religion is a tool of god. Not so much as a tool to worship or to go to some heaven or hell but as a Tool (of many)to help inteligent life evolve and re-discover itself.
The physical universe has a certain set of rules that apply to it. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transfered. for every physical force, there is an equal and opposite physical force acting upon it. These things bring balance to the universe, which despite any attempts will never be out of balance. It is not possible.
Humans live in between dimensions, 3rd and 4th that is. Our spiritual aspects are actually dipping into a whole new set of rules. One rule that will always remain in any dimension is that there must be some sort of balance. In otherwords it is impossible to rid the world of what one would consider evil. From a single perspective, there will always be a higher and lower point of reference. When a very large group experience the same things this can cause the points of reference to become very much the same.
The best example to show this is what americans experienced on 9/11. This was a spiritually unifying event. It imposed a rock bottom perspective of Terrorism for millions of people.
Another way to show this spiritual relationship to the very lowest point of reference for an individual would be when a husband finds out his wife is cheating on him. For spirit A this could be so bad that he would want to kill his wife and the cheater, for spirit B this might even be a turn on, or maybe more realisticly a non event which may lead to a split up.
Hell some days it’s wrong for me to sit and play video games for 3 hours in my girlfriends eyes, other days she could give a shit.
Everything is perspective, there is no right or wrong in essence, only positive and negative individual experiences. No one can ever be “right or wrong”.
Did I ramble on enough for everyone?
The prince of Darkness and all things bad, Vegita
Vegita: Huh?
Or religion is simply a sociologically necessary tool to impose order in societies lacking government…its a little more imposing to say “God gave me these rules we should live by or we will get punished!” than “Look guys, I think we would all be much happier if we did it like this…”…
DD90: Freud argued in Future of an Illusion that religion did, in fact serve that purpose. But he also felt that for many people, the effects wore off… it only takes a few times of doing something wrong without anything bad happening to realize “hey, I’m not going to get struck down.” And then there are no limits on behavior whatsoever. He argued that instead of religion, rationality ought to be used as the basis of morality, as rationality would be more difficult to overthrow.
nephorm, - I totally agree with you (if you see above, Im an atheist…)…
However I still think that the “rules from God” has worked for 2 reasons in spite of no-one being struck by lightning when they broke them:
Eternal punishment/no salvation: The punishment happens AFTER death, so its pretty hard for someone to return and say “dude, it was all BS!”.
Persecution/alienation etc. by the local community: The punishment for breaking the rules doesnt have to come from God himself, but can be doled out in various forms by the clergy or believers in the local community, - be it judgement, exclusion or whatever…
Bear with me or simply skip this post.
My god is not a thing, it is everything. It is the only thing and it wanted to know other than itself. therefore it, either actually or hypothetically split itself into an infinite number of different scenarios, basically every scenario possible, to experience all that it could. Universes with rules other than our own, different dimensions, lefeless voids, basically anything.
Then to learn about itself god infused spiritual intelligence into its creations to experience them for the first time. It scrapped his ultimate knowledge of itself for each of these instances, which are probably also infinite. There is also communication back to itself, and sometimes even communication the other way.
Basically as a spirit moves through these creations learning and experiencing (actually Remembering) the greatness of itself, it grows closer to the source from which it came (itself).
This sometimes happens to trauma victims, they forget all of a certain thing that they experienced. so if humans can do it certainly god can.
Anyways, obviously if I am here I don’t know everything but maybe I have received some information from up the pipe so to speak. Hell maybe i’m crazy.
Anyways to make a long story short, my beleif system is based on god being everything and everything being part of god, including me and you and the ground etc… hell we might even just be his imagination?
The prince of Darkness and chaos, Vegita
Well, Freud was also concerned with what he saw as nihilistic tendencies in upcoming agnostic/atheistic groups. While an individual in an earlier time might believe very strongly in an afterlife, the emergence of a secular scientific community under the influence of enlightenment ideals shook many people’s faith in the afterlife. I believe Freud also argued that every religion provided for ways to redeem oneself before death, and therefore the amoral person needed only to die carefully, so that he could avoid eternal damnation.
As for your second point, I agree with you, but the rules have then become laws, in such a case (even if only in a loose sense).
Nephorm,
I havent read any Freud, - this is just my own little pocket philosophy which to some extent is influenced by Neal Stephensons novel “SnowCrash”.
yep, - the rules eventually became laws at the point where our communities were structured enough to have a civil goverment…
At the same time, a second function of religion “explaining the unexplainable” has been taken over by science…which pretty much explains the crisis of religions in the western world, since they are only left with the “meaning of life” issue, - which I for one have no problem dealing with without a god…
Vegita, - head trauma victims forget previous experiences due to damage to their hippocampus and neocortex…so did your god get hit on the head ?? Do less drugs…
Heh, I’m not really into the drug thing, or drinking(well very often). Trauma victims, often hide away the seriouse event without any blows to the head. It is some type of internal protection or something.
As I read back over my origional 2 posts they are a bit choppy and don’t quite get across my ideas as well as i’d hoped. so nevermind.
Just know that if you stop letting your ego run the show, Things can seem much better than many think they are now.
I am simply here to offer another possible experience, another possible reality that awaits us as we journey through life and the “after-life” or as I would call it the continuation of life.
In any event, To imply that I use drugs because I have ideas that do not make sense to you to quote spock “would be illogical”
peace
Tokman,
Since you brought up the Palestinian Jihad, I thought it would be helpful to see how that jihad is defined on the ground. At this address you can find a MEMRI special report on a 2003 Palestinian Authority high school text book which (in deliberate violation of Oslo) calls for jihad against ALL NON-MUSLIMS:
Here are some choice quotes from this textbook for 11th graders:
[pg. 208] “Islam is Allah’s religion for all human beings. It should be proclaimed and invite [people] to join it wisely and through appropriate preaching and friendly discussions. However, such methods may encounter resitance and the preachers may be prevented from accomplishing their duty…then, Jihad and the use of physical force against the enemies becomes inevitable…”
“Jihad is an Islamic term that equates to the term war in other nations. The difference is that Jihad has noble goals and lofty aims, and is carried out only for the sake of Allah and for His glory… [By contrast] wars by other nations are mainly waged because of wickedness, aggression, love of domination, expanding influence, looting properties, murder, and the fulfillment of ambitions and desires, such as the war that the Western countries waged to exploit Islamic countries for imperialistic purposes, to control their Muslim citizens and to rob their resources and richness…”
[214] “Allah’s Messenger instructed those who wage Jihad not to initiate war against their enemies [as a first option], but to offer them Islam, and if they refuse it–to suggest to them to pay Jizya [tax imposed on non-Muslims under Muslim rule]…and if they refuse again, to fight them.”
I suggest you read the whole report because it’s astounding. Not only does it give detailed discussion of the Islamist view of Jihad, which the Palestinian government propagates, but it also lays out the only acceptable form of government: Islamic theocracy.
Tokman, your Palestinian “righteous Jihad” is a war declared against ALL non-Muslims and against the idea of non-Muslim statehood. Jews and Israel happen to be the non-Muslim entities next door. Decades before Israel even existed, the Grand Mufti of the Palestinians was spouting the same genocidal fascism masquerading as religion, and even went to Germany to ally his people with Hitler. So the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people do not make their jihad “righteous” in the least. The poisonous ideology that is forcing pregnant women to blow themselves up admist Israeli children is what all of us–whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim–who believe in a democratic and pluralistic society are fighting against.
Vegita: I think somebody’s Alpha brainwaves are working at 7/8ths (if nobody knows what I am talking about, ignore that)
But anyways, As a Christian, I gotta step in and represent. First off, we(christians) are not supposed to hate anybody, the whole basis of how we are to deal with people in our religion is to love everybody without fail.period. You don’t have to agree with them, you don’t have to like them, but you are supposed to love them, not because there is a ‘daddy figure’ watching from a million years ago, but because it is what we believe is right. But as humans, we screw that one up alot.
And we are also supposed to spread the word of God, I do that the same way that I spread the word of T-mag and the gym. I tell people and if they are interested, we talk more, if they aren’t I shut up.
Don’t tell me that you don’t tell your out of shape friends that they should join you in the gym, whether they want to hear it or not, I tell my friends that. Same thing with religion, except one is for life, and the other is for eternal-life.
Now JW’s and the mormon’s and any other door-to-door religion is a little pushy in my opinion, well a lot pushy, and they cast a shadow over religion in my opinion, I think too much zeal can be bad.
So in short, I don’t force, I enlighten those who are ready, and those that aren’t ready, I love all the same.
Brian, I think Tokman’s catching a lot of heat as the “sole” representative of Islam here, so let’s ease up on the man!
Also, I don’t think it comes as any surprise that Islamic fanatics publish that sort of thing (that you posted)…Christian and Jewish fanatics have their own equivelent. Personally, I know that the Jewish Kahanists are the rough equivelent of the Islamicists (religiously, at least). Heck, athiest fanatics are scary, too! Yes, it’s true that our governments don’t put that crap into textbooks…point acknowledged!
The problem in much of the Islamic world, as I see it, is that the religious fanatics hold sway over many because religion is often the only “legitimate” form of expression in so many of those countries. Even Arafat (a secularist masquerading as a devout Muslim) has to appease the Islamicist types because they “defend” a part of Arab identity that has been one of the few things that has survived the perceieved corruption of the 20th century. We obviously have our own views as Jews, Christians, etc…, but that doesn’t change Islamic percpetions one bit. They have their reasons for believeing what they do.
Personally, I don’t think Tokman has to answer for the actions of Muslim terorists or fanatics any more than I have to answer for Kahane and the other Jewish whackos. Finally, I’m surprised Tokman was so civil after the post that started this thread. That was really an insult to Islam!
LJ
LittleJay, I more or less agree with you except that Kahane-types stop their theocratic ambitions at “Biblical Israel,” are reviled by the majority of the Jewish community everywhere (this is a SIGNIFICANT difference with how Muslim radicals are viewed by Muslims), and when Kahane’s people tried terrorist activities, Israel made his party illegal and arrested the members. (Barach Goldstein was immediately condemned by almost every segment of Israeli society; you would find just about the opposite reaction in the Arab world.) Also, there is scant parallel to dhimittude, etc.
The problem I’m trying to identify to Tokman here is that the co-religionists he criticizes are in fact the religious representatives of the Palestinians, and their religious views have taken over the Palestinian government.
Hopefully, Israel will divorce itself from the contiguous territories and and Hamas will lose its mandate, so that the whole Palestinian regime can finally subject itself to democratic reform without persecution. Then there may be a true partner for peace in the next 25 years.
I believe Sharon is “digging in for the long haul”–the defense of Israel and several established settlements (that also function as military sattelites)–because there can be no repeat of Oslo. (Caroline Glick actually exoriates Sharon for giving the Palestinians all the promised fruits of Oslo, including the settlements, without anything in exchange.) This will be a major paradigm shift in the Middle East. The Palestinians will declare statehood and Arab criticism of the Palestinians will be sharper, less qualified by any action Israel takes.