[quote]pookie wrote:
Smoking is voluntary and self-inflicted. Slavery is not. Rewards and encouragements are used with smokers to help them overcome a physical and mental addiction to nicotine. I really doubt slavery is addictive to the user.
[/quote]
Have a bit of imagination. View the slave as the cigarette and the master as the smoker.
If slavery wasn’t addictive the US civil war would not have happened. Slavery = money = power. Money and power are extremely addictive.
And like I said, if you answer the question by the affirmative, there’s is nothing more I can do to convince you.
It serves a dual purpose. It showed that since religion quenches one’s need for revenge, one will be less inclined to commit violence actions.
But of course, you conveniently overlooked that conclusion.
I most certainly would, but I’m afraid I couldn’t locate any papers on his reasoning on the web. Maybe you could guide me.
Meanwhile, here’s something noteworthy by Einstein on religion:
“A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value”
So much for your Islam being anti-science argument. Well, better luck next time.
Most Muslims I know don’t reject evolution.
You’re hilarious.
There’s no such thing as a universal solution to all problems. However, there is a vast panel of specialized tools optimized for every problem. Would you highly value J. Berardi’s advice on wine making? Would you care about Newton’s political views? Would you quote Arnold on other things than bodybuilding?
Interesting argument. I especially like the last sentence.
Do you think a God-made universe makes your argument stronger or weaker? The universe may not be perfect but it sure is damn coherent.
How about man? Bacteria? Atoms?
I’m genuinely interested in hearing your views on this.
It’s a tough question. I suppose that there wouldn’t be any challenge if miracles were common place.
Forget I just said that. I have absolutely no idea.
Again, very good point. I don’t know.
It reminds of a James Cameron documentary on the “Exodus” in which he debunked all the miracles scientifically. A must see. You can easily find it on the web, I believe.
Maybe so. I just pointed out that the times when miracles were common place were over.
It’s not just a feeling. It’s something many people rely on when confronted to problems. The wiki was founded with this idea.
Of course, I don’t have any scientific evidence to back that up beside my own personal experience. At this point we have two solutions to settle the issue; We can take a vote and see what the majority think or we can do a statistical analysis. I have nothing against the first option.
I’m afraid we have a misunderstanding here. My stated purpose since the beginning was to defend myself as a Muslim against the defamatory remarks you make. I tried to show you that in my view, Islam doesn’t advocate violence.
You can’t possibly have thought that I’d have the arrogance to preach my faith or demonstrate the existence of God on an Internet forum.
[quote]You’re the one arguing for consensus as support for an idea. I’m simply pointing out that 88.5% of the world doesn’t consider Islam to be the one true religion.
The argument can be applied to all other religions too. It supports my personal conclusion about religion.[/quote]
I’m not sure it does. If all the non-Muslims didn’t believe in the existence of a God, that would be convincing.
But once more, if you read back thru the thread , you’d see that I used the whole majority argument to choose a starting point. It was by no mean sufficient to convince myself of anything. Remember? You asked why I started my spiritual journey by assuming that “God exists” and not by “God doesn’t exist”. It was merely supposed to give a feeling of the more reasonable starting point and could never have never sufficed as an argument to show anything else.
There are plenty of such columns in the alternative/dissident press in the West. I don’t know why they don’t appear in the mainstream, but there are many other things you don’t find in the mainstream.
It was just a guess. I don’t know what goes inside their heads.
That said, I’ll always condemn unlawful use of violence.
Here we have to distinguish between two minorities; The pro-West elite that rules and the anti-West self-proclaimed Jihadists that blow others up. I don’t know which you’re referring to here.
Both face tremendous opposition from the mass. It’s just that the rulers are literally put in power by the West and the fanatic Islamists want them out. You only hear of the resistance by the Islamists because it’s the most spectacular, thus making the news. The mass is caught in the middle.
Arab nationalism was the only alternative to a fanatic Islam, but was violently repressed by the West. This is why and how the Jihadist gained momentum (the CIA essentially created Al-Qaeda). It might sounds loony and all “conspiracy-theory” to you, but it’s the truth. You don’t need more than a study of history to reveal all that. The literature on the subject is abundant.
[quote]But again, if the vast majority are such cowards, please tell them to step aside and not interfere while we clean the mess.
You can thank us later.[/quote]
Again, to whom are you referring? The Jihadists or the rulers?
If it’s the rulers, stop supporting them and they will eventually collapse.
If it’s the Jihadists, you need to act on the roots of the problem. Any terrorism expert worth his salt can see that. If you advocate striking a whole population because a handful of individuals among them decided to jump on planes and blow them up, well, think again. It’ll only piss off more people.
Causality. Every action has a reaction. Decades of interventionism by the US in Arab countries and its blatant support of the Israeli massacres lead to 9/11.
It’s told in the Quran that the Bible was corrupted and its text changed by different groups to accommodate their own interests. If you look closely, there’s no established chain of custody for the bible going all the way to Jesus himself.
I have no doubt the original bible was from God. It’s just that there’s no way of telling the original parts from the altered ones.
[quote]I oppose changes that reduce freedom and liberty for some people to accommodate a minority. Big difference.
A few examples of situations that have occurred in Quebec in the past few months:
- An Hasidic Jewish temple asking the YMCA across the street to frost up its windows so that the young jewish men can’t see the women exercising.
- Hasidic Jews, again, asking that only male police officers deal with them. A woman police officer is to call for male backup and not talk to the persons.
- Jews again asking and receiving and extra three days paid vacation to be able to celebrate Yom Kippur.
- A young Sikh’s parents petitioning for him to be allowed to wear his kirpan (ceremonial knife) in school.
- Muslims asking that a separate swimming pools be made available for the girls in a school that has only 1 swimming pool.
- Same swimming pool demands being made on the city for the public municipal pools. They didn’t offer to finance it.
- Demands being made in hospitals to be seen before other patients because of religious holidays and/or sabbath day.
- Demands for dedicated prayer rooms in schools. (Public ones).
- Demands for segregation of various activities in public schools and publicly organized activities.
- etc.
Now, I can understand all the demands. What I don’t understand is why we should change to accommodate the minorities and worse, pay for the various accommodations.
If they want religious pools, fine, build them in or near the Mosques/Synagogues/Temples/etc. Frost your own windows. Don’t want to deal with female police officers? Don’t get arrested. Need a prayer room in your schools? Fine, do it. In your own private schools.
As for the rest, if you come to live here - we didn’t kidnap you and bring you here against your will - you learn to live in our society.[/quote]
I agree with every single point you made here.
I empathize with your situation and begin to understand your antagonistic position towards religions. I’d be pretty pissed too if that happened to me.
Quebec always had a steady flow of immigrants and made sure it can accommodate them to ensure that they’re properly integrated in society. That policy has tremendous advantages that you may not realize. Remember the 2005 French riots? That was a direct consequence of the failure of the state to integrate a community. Or a community to integrate itself within the French society. So, it’s a trade-off.
Your issue can be solved politically. So, educate people about the problem, militate or create a party and of course vote in the elections. It’s a serious matter because if you granted every single community privileges, that would be very costly on many levels.
And, oh, diabolizing religions will only worsen the problem as it’ll only radicalize more people. You aren’t gaining anything from it. At least, I get credit with the man upstairs. What do you get for bashing Islam?
You alleged that there was no difference between Muslims and blood thirsty freaks.
By any means, do so.
Just lay off the hasty generalizations.
If I misinterpreted your “Is there a difference?” please let me what you intended by it. Else, I will continue to view it as a personal attack.