[quote]lixy wrote:
vroom wrote:
We are fighting the symptoms, not the underlying disease.
They had to do something with all those bombs and fancy weaponry.[/quote]
It seems a whole lotta converts misunderstanding their religion. Germany searching for 10 additional suspects:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070906/ap_on_re_eu/germany_terror
[quote]lixy wrote:
Sifu wrote:
Two of them were recent converts to Islam like Richard Ried. One of the trends we are seeing is recent converts are much more likely to take a literal interpretation of the Koran than those whese families have been Muslim for generations.
That’s a key aspect. Converts willing to harm innocents (and yes, American troops in a German bar fall into that category!) have evidently not done much research in the Quran and Sunnah. In this case, as is the case with the Talibans and Pakistanis, those guys don’t know a word of Arabic and rely totally on their “guru”.
The Wahabi exception is worth noting. That’s because despite its adherents’ command of Arabic, the ideology is totally controlled by a bunch of self-appointed whackjobs who severely reprimand anyone thinking for themselves.
That is why the Saudis are our common enemy. Al-Qaeda, the Talibans, and others are financed by them. It should have been the priority. Sadly, since the regime is buying bonds from the US and letting foreigners plunder the country, everybody’s looking the other way. But, I digressed. The point was that someone who doesn’t know his/her Quran is a lot more prone to fall into radicalization.[/quote]
Hear Hear!! Kill the Wahabi asswipes! They’re the cause of all crap in the world. They have carefully over the past few years misled poor, innocent, uneducated believers into believing that their brand of Islam is true. For anyone’s who’s interested there is this excellent short story by an South Asian author, Saadat Hassan Manto, about how these clergymen abuse their power in society.
By the way I would like to point out how this can be linked to the perception of Iran as a terrorist state. Iran’s main religion, Shia Islam, is one of the main opponents to Wahhabi-ism. The Saudis have worked hard to fulfill their Wahhabi agenda by maligning Iran. And it works for them that the US is on their side - after all, as Michael Moore pointed out in Fahrenheit 9/11, 10% of the American economy is controlled by the Saudis.
[quote]lixy wrote:
honestly, the message is crystal once you read it a few times.[/quote]
How crystal can it be, if it requires multiple readings to understand the message?
[quote]51747 wrote:
…
By the way I would like to point out how this can be linked to the perception of Iran as a terrorist state. Iran’s main religion, Shia Islam, is one of the main opponents to Wahhabi-ism. The Saudis have worked hard to fulfill their Wahhabi agenda by maligning Iran.
And it works for them that the US is on their side - after all, as Michael Moore pointed out in Fahrenheit 9/11, 10% of the American economy is controlled by the Saudis.[/quote]
Both sects are more than happy to use terrorism to gain power. Just because they hate one another doesn’t mean they don’t hate the infidel even more.
Iran is perceived as a terrorist state because they act as one.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
51747 wrote:
…
By the way I would like to point out how this can be linked to the perception of Iran as a terrorist state. Iran’s main religion, Shia Islam, is one of the main opponents to Wahhabi-ism. The Saudis have worked hard to fulfill their Wahhabi agenda by maligning Iran.
And it works for them that the US is on their side - after all, as Michael Moore pointed out in Fahrenheit 9/11, 10% of the American economy is controlled by the Saudis.
Both sects are more than happy to use terrorism to gain power. Just because they hate one another doesn’t mean they don’t hate the infidel even more.
Iran is perceived as a terrorist state because they act as one.[/quote]
Agreed. There is some truth about Iran. But I’ve been to Iran and it seriously isn’t as bad as the media (or the US) portrays it to be. In fact, a lot of non-Western countries are not the way they are portrayed.
But not all people belonging to either sect condone violence against ‘infidels’. Let’s point out a main different - not all Muslims are Islamists - perhaps this distinction is easier to comprehend.
[quote]pookie wrote:
lixy wrote:
honestly, the message is crystal once you read it a few times.
How crystal can it be, if it requires multiple readings to understand the message?
[/quote]
Oh come ON! You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous in about 100 different ways. Look, I usually disagree quite spiritedly with Lixy’s outlook, but I can point to about 10,000 different examples of needing to read things more than once in everyday life, none of which involve confusing or misleading items. Generally, anything that requires you to use your brain and/or makes you thinks needs a couple readings. Good books, newspaper articles, journal articles, historical documents, scientific papers, business papers, etc. Everyday, all day. It’s only when you turn off your brain and read the incantations that you have to start thinking that anything that requires more than one read is confusing.
In other words, if you only read the surface meanings of a book, any book/article/item/memo, then you’re guilty of being an idiot as well as of violating every responsible academic, intellectual, scientific, philosophical and business rule in the book. Anyone who wants to simply surface read everything and accept authority is going to end up being a cultist anyway in some area of life.
[quote]pat36 wrote:
‘New Al Qaeda plot to blow up planes on September 11’ smashed
Last updated at 15:23pm on 5th September 2007
Police have smashed a suspected al Qaeda terror cell plotting to bomb civilian and military jets by Islamists nursing a “profound hatred of US citizens”.
[/quote]
Sorry, I’m calling “bullshit” on this one. Everyone knows that policework is a totally ineffective way to fight terrorism. The only thing that works is a military response.
The Republican party has made that crystal-clear.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Oh come ON! You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous in about 100 different ways. Look, I usually disagree quite spiritedly with Lixy’s outlook, but I can point to about 10,000 different examples of needing to read things more than once in everyday life, none of which involve confusing or misleading items.[/quote]
But we’re not discussing something from everyday life, we’re discussing a text supposedly dictated by God itself to his illiterate prophet. We’re talking about God here, a being of infinite perfection in every way, not some dude who just finished Creative Writing 101.
Surely God is able to convey his directions clearly, able to make sure his meaning cannot be misinterpreted by his readers? If he can’t, then how much of a God is he, really?
Yet, here again, as with any other “holy” book, you’ve got countless different sects, cults, schools of thought, etc. This “crystal” text is so clear that whole countries will go to war over different interpretations of it’s crystal clarity. Individual believers will kill each other over it. Various expert Imams will issue fatwas against blasphemers, who are just people who get a different “crystal” message from the same text.
So, again, how “crystal” is it really?
[quote]pookie wrote:
Surely God is able to convey his directions clearly, able to make sure his meaning cannot be misinterpreted by his readers? If he can’t, then how much of a God is he, really? [/quote]
I don’t wanna get into a blasphemous argument with you pook, and not just because I got my ass whooped the last time I tried either.
The overall message is still crystal for me.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
Oh come ON! You can’t be serious. That’s ridiculous in about 100 different ways. Look, I usually disagree quite spiritedly with Lixy’s outlook, but I can point to about 10,000 different examples of needing to read things more than once in everyday life, none of which involve confusing or misleading items.
But we’re not discussing something from everyday life, we’re discussing a text supposedly dictated by God itself to his illiterate prophet. We’re talking about God here, a being of infinite perfection in every way, not some dude who just finished Creative Writing 101.
Surely God is able to convey his directions clearly, able to make sure his meaning cannot be misinterpreted by his readers? If he can’t, then how much of a God is he, really?
Yet, here again, as with any other “holy” book, you’ve got countless different sects, cults, schools of thought, etc. This “crystal” text is so clear that whole countries will go to war over different interpretations of it’s crystal clarity. Individual believers will kill each other over it. Various expert Imams will issue fatwas against blasphemers, who are just people who get a different “crystal” message from the same text.
So, again, how “crystal” is it really?
[/quote]
The sun might be out, but it is still night if you have your eyes closed.
God is speaking to us every day and loving us every day but most people have their ears shut and their eyes closed. God does not force Himself on us, though He loves us enough to continue to pursue us throughout time, no matter what our sin may be.
Have you ever had your parents telling you exactly the right advice/instructions at some point in life, but you thought you knew it all and ignored them or presumed certain things about them? Then later on in life with maturity you realized that they knew what they were talking about?
God is not human, nor does His communication come by words alone. Words are a human means of communication that are wholly insufficient to convey the depth of God. The Bible has to approach different concepts and aspects of God’s truth from many angles so as to attempt to awaken one’s own reception of the full image.
Part of our soul is developed by the receptive reading of holy books. Patience is a very important virtue, and sound reasoning comes from exploring the seemingly paradoxical stories in the Bible. The Bible’s riches are hidden in its depths. To understand it is not to take it literally, or at least ONLY literally.
I regret this post was a bit disjointed. I FEEL what I want to express but I am not sure I communicated it well.
[quote]Tokoya wrote:
Noted this about the three misguided youth:
The three had no steady work and were drawing unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said.
Perhaps they were going to open up some hair salons with all that peroxide. [/quote]
I have to rsearch it again to 100% sure but I think all the radical islamist in England have been on wellfare.
Here’s the Grandaddy of all the terrorists:
"Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
(born 1838, Asadabad, Persia �?? died March 9, 1897, Istanbul) Muslim politician and journalist. He is thought to have adopted the name Afghani to conceal the fact that he was of Persian Shi’ite origin. He lived in Afghanistan from 1866, and a year later he became counselor to the khan. Displaced after a change of rulers, he went to Istanbul and then to Cairo in 1871. After becoming known as a rabble-rouser and heretic, he was deported from Egypt in 1879. By 1883 he was in Paris, where he championed Islamic civilization in the face of European domination. In Russia (1887 �?? 89) he seems to have worked as an anti-British agitator. His next stop was Iran, from which he was deported as a heretic in 1892; four years later he avenged himself by instigating the shah’s murder. He died in Istanbul after failing to interest the sultan in his pan-Islamic ideas."
[quote]lixy wrote:
I don’t wanna get into a blasphemous argument with you pook, and not just because I got my ass whooped the last time I tried either.[/quote]
Really? I don’t recall…
For another reader, the message will be just as crystal, but it won’t necessarily be the same message. For each reader, the message will always be a little different, simply because your personal values and opinions will color it. The crystal message you gets says as much about yourself as it does about the text itself.
I’m sure the suicide bombers are also completely convinced that they get the crystal message of the Koran.
[quote]Moon Knight wrote:
The sun might be out, but it is still night if you have your eyes closed.[/quote]
In that analogy, I could open my eyes and see the sun. I could even be forced to open them by having my eyelids removed. With God, there is no objective evidence to be “seen” or “felt.” You have to chose to believe even in the complete absence of evidence. Telling someone who won’t believe that he has his eyes closed might sound good, but it is not intellectually equivalent.
If he loves us so much, why does he submit so many of us to pain and suffering? Why so much evil affecting innocents? Why do so many children suffer from the first day they are born until the last day of their painfully short lives? Where is the love there?
If you have children, you know you’d do anything for them; when they hurt, you’d gladly trade place with them if you could. God’s love supposedly surpasses any possible human love, yet we still have millions if not billions of people suffering, most often needlessly.
Am I supposed to reconcile that with what I can read in the Bible? If so, then I agree that there is much that is laudable in the Bible, as you would expect from any moral code of conduct. But there is also much to be ignored, at the very least, simply because it makes no sense, be it from a mathematical, physical or moral sense.
The Bible describes at least two different Gods. The angry and jealous God of the Old Testament, limited in power and pretty much describable as a “super man” little more, and the “God is Love” God of the New Testament, an entirely different being for whom forgiveness, acceptance and love of your fellow man is the essence of life.
We could add the “bad LSD trip” God of Revelation, but it would add little to the point.
In all cases, there is no testable evidence that those being exist, or have ever existed.
The soul is another concept for which we have no evidence. Give someone alcohol, recreational drugs or anti-depressants, and you’ll see incredible changes in personality and behavior. I personally have lost friends I had after they became medicated with Paxil or Effexor, simply because whatever we had that made our mutual company enjoyable somehow was lost with the chemical changes induced.
If the “soul” was the person, and that it was a spiritual entity detached from the physical body of the person, shouldn’t you keep seeing the person even though you’re interfering with their brain chemistry?
As for the Bible, the same can be said of any book, and even of many movies. If you read a book enough times, you’ll find hidden meaning, discover previously unseen relationships, etc. Look at all the articles and even other books written about Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix and even Fight Club.
With a book as rich in poetry and imagery as the Bible, the miracle would be if you couldn’t interpret millions of meanings from the same text. Any complex work of imagination will lend itself well to becoming a “playground of the mind.” Unfortunately, that does little to attest to the veracity of its content.
There are no such things as Hobbits, Darth Vader doesn’t exist, nor does Tyler Durden. I fear God is also, on the strength of supporting evidence, much more likely to be a literary creation than a real entity.
It’s always hard to reason about unreasonable things.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Moon Knight wrote:
I regret this post was a bit disjointed. I FEEL what I want to express but I am not sure I communicated it well.
It’s always hard to reason about unreasonable things.
[/quote]
Your belief system is as unresonable as his for you cannot disprove any the metaphysical entities he believes in.
Damn, atheists are arrogant.
[quote]pat36 wrote:
Your belief system is as unresonable as his for you cannot disprove any the metaphysical entities he believes in.[/quote]
Following your “logic,” you must then accept that Zeus, Batman, Santa Claus, Fairies, Elves, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, Vampires etc. all exist because you can’t disprove the existence of any of them. That’s why reasonable people put the onus on proof on the claimer. You make the extraordinary claims, you back them up. If I don’t believe in them, your inability to produce any supporting evidence is all the “disproof” I need.
Furthermore, the “beliefs” I hold are quite amenable to change if I’m shown that they are wrong or imprecise; something not possible with religious dogma. I’m entirely open to considering new evidence and revising my views. In most faiths, such a process is referred to as “heresy” and severely condemned by the religious authorities.
Rejecting myth, folklore and fairy tales as worthwhile means of attaining knowledge and truth is not arrogance, it’s rational thinking. You should try it.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Rejecting myth, folklore and fairy tales as worthwhile means of attaining knowledge and truth is not arrogance, it’s rational thinking. You should try it.
[/quote]
Faith is not rational.
If rational is your standard - then knock yourself out.
There are many many things in life that can’t be explained rationally. The medical profession is full of miracle cures, inexplicable phenomena and other such things that just can’t be answered with rational thought.
Closing oneself off to everything but what can be explained is not nearly as open minded as some would have you believe.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
There are many many things in life that can’t be explained rationally. The medical profession is full of miracle cures, inexplicable phenomena and other such things that just can’t be answered with rational thought.[/quote]
Most, even all, of those are simply so because we either lack the proper understanding, or because our current knowledge about some issue is wrong.
You can believe that the laws of physics suddenly suspend or reverse themselves on the whim of a deity for someone, it’s your prerogative. Me, I’ll reconsider when an amputee suddenly grows back a limb and it’s not our doing.
Conversely, being so open-minded that any possibility, no matter how remote, is considered on equal footing with everything else when it comes to deciding what’s worthy of consideration leaves you with no mean of separating the wheat from the chaff. That’s why you have “open minded” people buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics and card readers and getting their astrological chart done.
Dismissing irrational beliefs is not being close-minded; it’s having a working bullshit detector and using it properly.
[quote]pookie wrote:
pat36 wrote:
Your belief system is as unresonable as his for you cannot disprove any the metaphysical entities he believes in.
Following your “logic,” you must then accept that Zeus, Batman, Santa Claus, Fairies, Elves, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, Vampires etc. all exist because you can’t disprove the existence of any of them. That’s why reasonable people put the onus on proof on the claimer. You make the extraordinary claims, you back them up. If I don’t believe in them, your inability to produce any supporting evidence is all the “disproof” I need.
Furthermore, the “beliefs” I hold are quite amenable to change if I’m shown that they are wrong or imprecise; something not possible with religious dogma. I’m entirely open to considering new evidence and revising my views. In most faiths, such a process is referred to as “heresy” and severely condemned by the religious authorities.
Rejecting myth, folklore and fairy tales as worthwhile means of attaining knowledge and truth is not arrogance, it’s rational thinking. You should try it.
[/quote]
While “Zeus, Batman, Santa Claus, Fairies, Elves, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, Vampires etc.” have never actually presented valid evidence of existance, the has been and is actual evidence of God’s existance. You likely choose to ignore it and that’s your perogative, but it does not substantiate your claims that all things metaphysical can’t exist because you cannot detect them with your 5 senses. That to me is irrational.
I didn’t say it is arrogant to seek the truth. It is arrogant to think you are better, smarter or more well reasoned than a theistic counter part simply because you managed to reason out the existance of God. You put your self at the center and hence closed your mind to new informattion that may put you at odds with your current belief system because you not only want to be right, you want to make sure everybody else thinks your right to.
Atheists have to be right, theists do not.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
pookie wrote:
Rejecting myth, folklore and fairy tales as worthwhile means of attaining knowledge and truth is not arrogance, it’s rational thinking. You should try it.
Faith is not rational.
If rational is your standard - then knock yourself out.
There are many many things in life that can’t be explained rationally. The medical profession is full of miracle cures, inexplicable phenomena and other such things that just can’t be answered with rational thought.
Closing oneself off to everything but what can be explained is not nearly as open minded as some would have you believe.
[/quote]
I’d say actually, that you are half right. There very much is a rational component to “faith” as you are describing it. Religious people answer the question “Does God exist?” with a “Yes”. That is a rational question with an answer that is ellusive to everyone.
The faith journey is a matter of the heart. Your relationship with God, is not a rational thing.