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The Insect Court posted:The Burmese junta oppress the Rohingya for reasons that are more about national and ethnic chauvinism than religious bigotry. You don't say, could this in fact be the explanation for many conflicts that are labeled religious by gloating white flacks?
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Jan 21, 2015 00:33
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SedanChair posted:You don't say, could this in fact be the explanation for many conflicts that are labeled religious by gloating white flacks? Almost all of them, I'm sure. Still, it's good to burst that bubble some people have that 'oh yeah it's only those loving monotheists that are out murdering people'. Eastern spiritualism~ is all cool and peaceful. Blame California.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:40
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The Insect Court posted:
The white and mestizo ruling class of Latin America isn't somehow magically separate from the west, it is the west in the same way the people whose name figure in the Mayflower compact or DAR are the west.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:40
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Disinterested posted:Almost all of them, I'm sure. It's some analogue of the noble savage. Why can't mom and dad be cool like the Indians etc. Why can't they be mellow like the Chinese.
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Jan 21, 2015 00:42
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Cingulate posted:
I understand the Jews have some stuff like that, but Christians? Please tell me where.
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Jan 21, 2015 02:31
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The Jewish scriptures are part of the Christian scriptures.
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Jan 21, 2015 02:38
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:The Jewish scriptures are part of the Christian scriptures. So Christians are supposed to be beholden to the Jewish laws?
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Jan 21, 2015 02:46
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spacetoaster posted:So Christians are supposed to be beholden to the Jewish laws? That question has some rather lengthy historical rather than theological answers, Modern jewish practice is not really derived directly from the old testament and both Christianity and Judaism have a two thousand year old tradition of interpreting the scripture and the old laws within, determining what's important and what isn't etc, so technically nope, but the text is the same text, it is wrong to characterize either religion as being particularly bent on vengeance, "an eye for an eye" is not really an important tenet of either religion, or of Islam as far as I know. emanresu tnuocca fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 02:56
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Yeah, they don't have to follow the Levitical law to the letter, but the early church didn't just throw the Jewish scriptures into the biblical canon for shits and giggles or as an optional history lesson either.
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Jan 21, 2015 03:01
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:Yeah, they don't have to follow the Levitical law to the letter, but the early church didn't just throw the Jewish scriptures into the biblical canon for shits and giggles or as an optional history lesson either. I understand that, but cingulate mentioned biblical sections on revenge. There is a decided change of tone about revenge when one get's into the new testament (the Christian part of the bible) vs the old testament. If he was talking about the old testament, then yeah, old school Hebrews were pretty hardcore (eye for eye).
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Jan 21, 2015 03:08
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The tone changes a lot throughout the Old Testament, too. First you have the Pentateuch/Torah, which has all of the Mosaic and Levitical law. Then you have the history books, which is where the genocidal stuff takes place, but also lots of cool and interesting stuff about the kingdom of Israel and Judah. Then you have the wisdom books, which are genuinely insightful to the modern reader. And finally you have the prophets, which is mostly blaming the Israelites for their own downfall, asserting that they will restore the Promised Land one day, and saying all enemy nations will be eradicated. According to Paul in the New Testament, Christians are not obligated to follow the Mosaic law by the letter, but rather to seek the spirit of the law, especially the awareness that nobody can follow it fully and so we are all sinners before God. Modern Rabbinic Judaism has all sorts of authoritative interpretation of the law, and if you are an Orthodox Jew, you still try to follow it as purely as possible within that interpretation.
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Jan 21, 2015 04:17
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An eye for an eye was actually fairly progressive for the time because the standard procedure before was "half of your family for an eye". It also dates from Hammurabi and not Judaism specifically.
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Jan 21, 2015 04:23
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spacetoaster posted:I understand that, but cingulate mentioned biblical sections on revenge. There is a decided change of tone about revenge when one get's into the new testament (the Christian part of the bible) vs the old testament. If he was talking about the old testament, then yeah, old school Hebrews were pretty hardcore (eye for eye). Besides for this, the New Testament explicitly builds on and interprets the Old. I will defend that the New Testament is, while far from faultless, an impressively pacifistic text, to an even unrealistic degree. This contrasts with the Quran, or most other holy (and many ethical) texts. But everyone who thinks Christians can or do simply ignore the old testament is extremely uneducated to the degree that they should, on the subject of Christianity, restrict their speech to questions. computer parts posted:An eye for an eye was actually fairly progressive for the time because the standard procedure before was "half of your family for an eye". This actually also goes for many of the violent or otherwise offensive passages of the Quran.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:25
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Kyrie eleison posted:According to Paul in the New Testament, Christians are not obligated to follow the Mosaic law by the letter, but rather to seek the spirit of the law, especially the awareness that nobody can follow it fully and so we are all sinners before God.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:27
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Don't forget the anti-abortionists y'all. They just keep piling bodies and exploding trains and airplanes. Christians are constantly waging a terrible war of terror, murder and slavery in the name of their religion. Also the US invasion of Iraq was a Christian crusade. Those who don't remember the cries of "For Jesus Christ!!! He will be avenged!!!" and the black flags with crosses are stupid right-wingers. And conservatives. Who are stupid.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:32
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Agnosticnixie posted:The white and mestizo ruling class of Latin America isn't somehow magically separate from the west, it is the west in the same way the people whose name figure in the Mayflower compact or DAR are the west. I would say that "Western Culture" is much younger then most people think. The seeds of it can be found in things like the Magna Carta, but it doesn't start to take shape until things like the Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, and the French Revolution, brought it into being with a little violence. (irony) If you buy into concepts like human rights, or basic freedoms, and try to hang onto a religion that has not evolved to be compatible these concepts then you could find yourself in a dilemma.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:34
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Dahn posted:I would say that "Western Culture" is much younger then most people think. The seeds of it can be found in things like the Magna Carta, but it doesn't start to take shape until things like the Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, and the French Revolution, brought it into being with a little violence. (irony) Dahn posted:If you buy into concepts like human rights, or basic freedoms, and try to hang onto a religion that has not evolved to be compatible these concepts then you could find yourself in a dilemma.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:35
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Cingulate posted:What do you mean? He means that if you buy into concepts like human rights, or basic freedoms, and try to hang onto a religion that has not evolved to be compatible these concepts, then you could find yourself with a problem.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:08
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Ligur posted:He means that if you buy into concepts like human rights, or basic freedoms, and try to hang onto a religion that has not evolved to be compatible these concepts, then you could find yourself with a problem. Lets say you buy into the idea that "owning another human being" is wrong, but your religion thinks it's just fine. (example: the Christian religion) If your religion does not change to adjust to these new social ideas (ignore the slavery parts of religious text) then "your" belief system may be different, then "your religion's" belief system. One of them is wrong.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:26
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Dahn posted:Lets say you buy into the idea that "owning another human being" is wrong, but your religion thinks it's just fine. (example: the Christian religion) If your religion does not change to adjust to these new social ideas (ignore the slavery parts of religious text) then "your" belief system may be different, then "your religion's" belief system. One of them is wrong.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:29
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Dahn posted:Lets say you buy into the idea that "owning another human being" is wrong, but your religion thinks it's just fine. (example: the Christian religion) If your religion does not change to adjust to these new social ideas (ignore the slavery parts of religious text) then "your" belief system may be different, then "your religion's" belief system. One of them is wrong. Reminds me of this quote, from a Discworld book: quote:"There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example," said Oats.
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Jan 21, 2015 17:30
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Cingulate posted:What is this entity that does the thinking in the situation where you say "the Christian religion [thinks slavery is fine]"? Why, it's almost like the One True Platonic form of a religion is something that doesn't exist and that various Christianities and Buddhisms and Judaisms really only exist through the ways they are practiced in the world.  (Except for Islam, the One True Islam really does exist disconnected from the material world and it is responsible for every bad that might happen to me) 
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Jan 21, 2015 17:45
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Cingulate posted:But everyone who thinks Christians can or do simply ignore the old testament is extremely uneducated to the degree that they should, on the subject of Christianity, restrict their speech to questions. Perish the thought. 
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Jan 21, 2015 18:22
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Cingulate posted:Or consider Mark 7:7. That's actually Isaiah.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:25
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spacetoaster posted:Perish the thought. * well ... suffer minor inconveniences. That's about as far as I'd go realistically.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:26
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spacetoaster posted:That's actually Isaiah. Now re-read my post in the original context. I was not presenting Mark 7:7 in the context of NT violence.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:27
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Cingulate posted:I'd die* for your right to voice your opinions on topics you're extremely uneducated about, but you yourself would be prudent to not do so, but ask questions and listen. Cingulate posted:Do you mean, Mark 7:7 is quoting the old testament? In which case: yes, you have correctly understood the meaning of quotation marks, congratulations. My word, you're actually upset here.  Thanks for agreeing with me though.  Ligur posted:He means that if you buy into concepts like human rights, or basic freedoms, and try to hang onto a religion that has not evolved to be compatible these concepts, then you could find yourself with a problem. Well, American views on what is a basic freedom can be very different from what some European countries view as basic freedom. Take American free speech vs France's free speech. Or the 2nd amendment.
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Jan 21, 2015 18:41
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Why, it's almost like the One True Platonic form of a religion is something that doesn't exist and that various Christianities and Buddhisms and Judaisms really only exist through the ways they are practiced in the world. That sure is a devastating takedown of an argument nobody has made in the thread. Nobody has been talking about "Platonic forms", you disingenuous putz. The written doctrine of a religion is PART of the practice of said religion. Yes, yes, Salafism is a recently ascendant ideology, all religious doctrines can be interpreted violently if you put your mind to it, etc. That doesn't change the fact that for those who want to engage in a campaign of religious violence, Islam (as a collection of doctrines, but more importantly, as it is most widely practiced in modern times) is more easily bent to serve as a justification than is Christianity or Buddhism. I find the claim that Muslims and/or Arabs have suffered at the hand of 19th and 20th century imperialism more than any other religious/cultural group to be utterly unsupportable. Yes, the west has done some bad things, and continues to do bad things. Launching massive, explicitly-religiously-motivated terrorist attacks is a great way to empower reactionaries in the west so they keep doing those things. I don't buy the equivalency with Buddhist anti-immigrant movements or pseudo-fascists in the vein of Anders Breivik who mix some christianity into their manifesto. Violent actions by these groups have almost always been focused on domestic goals in a single nation or a cluster of them, whereas Islamic terrorism is explicitly internationalist and universalist. In any case (going back to the very beginning of the thread here), I don't think it's a settled proposition that rhetorically associating conservative Islam ("extremist Islam" or "fundamentalist Islam" doesn't cast a wide enough net, in my opinion) is a net negative. When various moderate Islamic leaders appear on television to say that terrorists are hurting Islam when they do things like this, they are more or less correct - so why shouldn't secular western cultures take advantage of that? The equivalency of terrorism and conservative Islam should be pushed in every form of media and pounded into the minds of the Muslim masses however possible. If you advocate for blasphemy laws, you're one step away from being a terrorist. If you shout at non-muslim women to "cover up" when they happen to walk through your neighborhood, you are one step away from being a terrorist. If you aggressively proselytize to secular people and constantly condemn their culture as corrupt, you are one step away from being a terrorist. Both western-produced and arab-language media (who probably sympathizes with the west far, far more than most of their fellows) should be drawing the contrast between the 'good Muslim' who embraces social change and equality and can expect to be treated as a friend by the dominant global civilization, and the 'bad Muslim' who stubbornly clings to a distorted vision of the past and amounts to little more than a petty wanna-be tyrant whose only joy is forcing harsh practices on his neighbors. Yes, it is possible that messages like this will also "give cover" and appeal to members of the far-right. More than possible, actually - more like certain. Maybe feelings of racism will be inflamed among some people in the short term. But the only thing that will truly solve this cultural friction in the long term is if the cultural and political precepts that are coming in conflict are changed - and in this case, it is the beliefs of the Muslims that need to change. Not the beliefs of the secularists. Cultural imperialism? Sure. But cultural imperialism, like anything on the spectrum of aggression, can be justified depending on how it is used. This doesn't mean that every conservative muslim deserves a missile pointed at them in the form of predator drones (a horrible moral blind spot by the west, which will hopefully soon be addressed). But they absolutely do merit having a hostile media pointed at them. I'm sure the natural response to this is "You'll justify more western wars and interventions!" but I find that argument very questionable. For all its horrors, some good has come out of the Iraq war in that it has poisoned the political well for military interventionism for a generation. Drones are bad, sure, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and there isn't going to be another one of those.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:05
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Liberal_L33t posted:[That sure is a devastating takedown of an argument nobody has made in the thread.] ... the claim that Muslims and/or Arabs have suffered at the hand of 19th and 20th century imperialism more than any other religious/cultural group ...
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Jan 21, 2015 19:44
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Liberal_L33t posted:That sure is a devastating takedown of an argument nobody has made in the thread. Agreed. White people should dictate how nonwhites think about themselves.
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Jan 21, 2015 19:54
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Cingulate posted:Before I read the rest of this post, can you just link me to where this claim was made? It is an implicit corollary to the argument that resolving the issue of Islamist extremism is solely a matter of changing the foreign policies of western nations. The idea that no religio-cultural group is more predisposed to religiously-justified violence than any other seems like a very difficult case to make. For what it's worth, when tallying harm being done by religious or cultural institutions, I consider the routine governmental functioning of places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Morocco etc. to be far more damning than the occasional attack against the west. Yes, the fact that the latter tends to draw more media sympathy than the latter constitutes a form of hypocrisy. If you're going to condemn everyone who is more concerned with terror on their doorstep than that afflicting people thousands of miles away, you'll be hoarse long before you've gotten through the last names starting with 'A'. We all suffer from that kind of myopia, and getting indignant about it only carries an argument so far. Effectronica posted:Agreed. White people should dictate how nonwhites think about themselves. In this particular sphere of conflict, one cultural group which is more white than non-white is justified in dictating how another particular cultural group which is more non-white than white thinks about themselves. It isn't that racism and a legacy of colonialism don't weigh against the former group; they certainly do. Just not enough to outweigh the current and ongoing horrendous oppression and self-flagellation of conservative Islamic culture (or cultures).
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Jan 21, 2015 20:37
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Liberal_L33t posted:It is an implicit corollary to the argument that resolving the issue of Islamist extremism is solely a matter of changing the foreign policies of western nations. Is it then than nobody has made that claim (but, if at all, implied it)? Can you link me to the people in this thread who have said resolving the issue of islamism is solely a matter of changing the foreign policies of western nations?
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Jan 21, 2015 20:41
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Cingulate posted:No, it is not. However, this leaves me with two further questions: I think the question that is trying to be framed is: If Islamist terror is something caused by us, would us desisting in the behaviour that created be sufficient to end it? E.g. If it's caused by imperialist foreign affairs, would America becoming isolationist overnight be sufficient to cause it to stop?
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Jan 21, 2015 20:46
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Liberal_L33t posted:In this particular sphere of conflict, one cultural group which is more white than non-white is justified in dictating how another particular cultural group which is more non-white than white thinks about themselves. It isn't that racism and a legacy of colonialism don't weigh against the former group; they certainly do. Just not enough to outweigh the current and ongoing horrendous oppression and self-flagellation of conservative Islamic culture (or cultures). Huh, I would think that attempting to annihilate the freedom of expression of individuals on a primordial level was a horrific crime, but apparently, it's actually good to compromise liberalism and the Enlightenment in the name of preserving them.
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Jan 21, 2015 20:46
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Effectronica posted:it's actually good to compromise liberalism and the Enlightenment in the name of preserving them. This can be true in genuine states of emergency - we're just not facing one right now. But property confiscation, censorship and so on are sometimes completely defensible and legitimate when fighting an existential war, on the assumption that there: (a) A defined, demonstrable and existential threat to the polity, and (b) A defined end to the compromise. Obvious example: stopping a newspaper printing leaked d-day invasion plans, or something like that. Soldiers taking over your house in a battle as cover. The problem is that the threat of Islamist terror has never really satisfied either criterion very well, so it's hard to say why we need to do all this poo poo apart from the fact intelligence agencies literally constantly beg for more rights to snoop.
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Jan 21, 2015 20:50
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Disinterested posted:This can be true in genuine states of emergency - we're just not facing one right now. But property confiscation, censorship and so on are sometimes completely defensible and legitimate when fighting an existential war, on the assumption that there: There's a difference between censorship and other violations of principle and attempting to deny people the privacy of their own heads, which is a complete compromise of liberal ideals at a minimum, and more often a rejection of them.
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Jan 21, 2015 20:52
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Disinterested posted:If Islamist terror is something caused by us Maybe Ligur or Tezzor (I always mix them up).
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Jan 21, 2015 20:52
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Effectronica posted:There's a difference between censorship and other violations of principle and attempting to deny people the privacy of their own heads, which is a complete compromise of liberal ideals at a minimum, and more often a rejection of them. Yeah, I agree. I think you can often find edge cases where maybe it's OK to infringe the odd liberty here or there, but broad and firmly entrenched civil liberties are a safe setting because who the gently caress trusts their government to be totally chill and not at all abuse its power?
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Jan 21, 2015 20:54
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Cingulate posted:I'm not sure anybody in this thread would defend that. Depends how far back you want to pin the cause (The Iranian Revolution - one of the key defining factors for radical Islam - was a reaction to a regime put in place by the West).
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Jan 21, 2015 20:54
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computer parts posted:Depends how far back you want to pin the cause (The Iranian Revolution - one of the key defining factors for radical Islam - was a reaction to a regime put in place by the West). That seems terribly eurocentric.
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Jan 21, 2015 20:58
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