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Who What Now posted:It's possible, sure, but the problem is that an overwhelming majority of people don't bother to make that distinction. And I'm willing to bet that your judgement of Catholics is colored by your judgement of Catholicism. Maybe, but I don't think so and crucially (I think!) I really hope not. My judgement on Catholicism is based largely on, what seems bluntly plain to me, that it was conceived as a supremely effective oppression device for the Roman empire. It is the institution that deserves the harshest criticism rather than the religion. Catholicism is an interesting case because of this, wriggling and writhing to maintain its ancient wealth and power. In it's desperation to maintain its grip in the world it is actually turning more liberal all the time as the world around it does, back peddling rapidly on things like the use of condoms in the last decade or so. There are Catholic ideas worthy of criticism of course, original sin, and the idea that unless you spend your life repenting in a Catholic manner you will burn in eternal fire and brimstone for it... what an abhorrent idea.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:16
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WampaLord posted:Whenever a Muslim doesn't commit violence, is that motivated by Islam? Because there's literally hundreds of millions of non-violent Muslims so judging all of them off a tiny minority is extremely hosed up. At what point did I claim to be judging all Muslims? This is yet another wrench that gets thrown in to dismantle the machine of this discussion. It literally doesn't matter if many, or even most Muslims are non-violent. And by the way, if they have Quranic bases for their nonviolence, then yes, it is motivated by Islam. But the relevant discussion is if the doctrine of Islam is a motivation for the violence we see in the Muslim world (and to what extent etc.), and if so, is the minority of violence an even trade for the majority of nonviolence? Would we be better off if the violent and the nonviolent Muslims were all suddenly Jains, or Christians, or atheists? I am not implying an answer here, I am trying to get us honed in on what the discussion actually is. Ze Pollack posted:Working around this problem is generally agreed to be the reason for Mohammed's prohibition against translating the Quran, and even then the concept "this is the direct and inarguable word of god, no disagreement is possible" has (as with pretty much everyone outside of aformentioned strain of evangelical christianity) quietly been gotten rid of in favor of interpreting ways around particularly annoying or contradictory passages. But who should get the credit for that? Did that come from within Islam, from an idea that God had changed his mind or that Mohammed had made some error? Or was it the secular culture that changed, dragging the archaic 7th century practices into the modern age? Note that this same question can be asked of certain Christian tenants. Did the churches that softened their opposition to homosexuality do it for theological reasons or because secular culture changed, and people began to see this tenant as barbaric, so the church had to change or risk losing its members? OwlFancier posted:See: Many fundamentalist Christians might be huge pieces of poo poo as a result of their religious beliefs but the ones that go out and shoot people are far fewer and distinct from the general shittiness of what might be considered their peers. You can suggest that perhaps a religious community does enable and encourage their ideas but even then it's not "Christianity" as a whole that does that, it's their specific community because there are certainly plenty of Christians which don't encourage violence or even especially lovely opinions. Right, but it's also not vague "religion" as a whole either; the specific precepts within Christianity really are doing some work in this situation. Without the idea that a 12 week old fetus is a person with a soul, there would be no motivation to kill abortion doctors. If we invented a new religion that still had souls and the afterlife and a creator deity, but which had a Holy Book that explicitly stated a fetus was not a person until, I dunno, 20 weeks, then we would not expect animosity toward abortion doctors to ever crop up (at least, not animosity engendered on the basis of them being abortion doctors). Who What Now posted:I'm happy to address the rest of your post, but I need you to be intellectually honest and acknowledge that I'm not calling you a racist so you can take that loving chip off your shoulder. Fine. Acknowledged. Proceed.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:16
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Right, but it's also not vague "religion" as a whole either; the specific precepts within Christianity really are doing some work in this situation. Without the idea that a 12 week old fetus is a person with a soul, there would be no motivation to kill abortion doctors. If we invented a new religion that still had souls and the afterlife and a creator deity, but which had a Holy Book that explicitly stated a fetus was not a person until, I dunno, 20 weeks, then we would not expect animosity toward abortion doctors to ever crop up (at least, not animosity engendered on the basis of them being abortion doctors). There appears to be no motivation to kill abortion doctors for the overwhelming majority of people who believe that life begins at conception, otherwise again, we would be running out of doctors very quickly. It is quite possible to disagree ardently with a thing while also believing that killing people over it is not acceptable. Which again, suggests that the thing that drives people to religious-themed murder is not the religious tenets, but instead something else. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:But who should get the credit for that? Did that come from within Islam, from an idea that God had changed his mind or that Mohammed had made some error? Or was it the secular culture that changed, dragging the archaic 7th century practices into the modern age? Note that this same question can be asked of certain Christian tenants. Did the churches that softened their opposition to homosexuality do it for theological reasons or because secular culture changed, and people began to see this tenant as barbaric, so the church had to change or risk losing its members? Considering the Sunni/Shia schism happened almost immediately after Muhammad died, I'm pretty sure Muslims can take the credit for that one. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 17:19
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TURN IT OFF! posted:More like Richard Dawkins, but yes. Same thing almost, what with Dawkin's actions towards female presenters at conferences: quote:Between Dawkins' rushing to the aid of poor beleaguered Sam Harris and propping Christina Hoff Sommers, it started to dawn on everyone that Dawkins might have a cartoonish understanding of feminism. This has lead PZ Myers to write an open letter on FtB to Dawkins[57], where he tried to explain to him what feminism is about and his own journey to understanding it. It fell on deaf ears, as Dawkins instead went on Twitter to rant about "Feedingfrenzy Thoughtpolice Bullies"[58] and "clickbait"[59]. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Elevatorgate Granted, three years later Dawkins apologized for his 'Dear Muslima' letter, but his reaction in the first place was abhorrent.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:22
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Crowsbeak posted:My gosh this is the height of falseness. If one is even going to take this from a "rational" context at least note that Zorastrianism already believed in a place of punishment long before Christ was born, likewise the Greeks also had Tarturus for those who had really pissed off the Gods. Seriously if there is one thing that really gets me about people like you is when you make such easily disprovable comments. I'd argue that the 'introduced' part of what I was saying isn't really the crux of the argument I was making, despite hell being categorically not part of Judaism. Who What Now posted:Except that conflation of criticality of ideas with bigotry is a real thing that happens. You don't get to pretend that it doesn't because you find it uncomfortable. Of course I acknowledge that. My point is purely that those who do hold that idea (some clearly do) are very hard to reason with.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:23
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OwlFancier posted:There appears to be no motivation to kill abortion doctors for the overwhelming majority of people who believe that life begins at conception, otherwise again, we would be running out of doctors very quickly. This is irrelevant. The fact that a religion has nonviolent members, even overwhelmingly, does not undo the fact that it has violent ones as well. Are the violent ones motivated by their faith? Would they still commit the same kinds of violence, at the same level, without it? You seem to be assuming the answer is "no" and "yes" but I can't see why. Why is it that religious beliefs don't ever seem to be at fault when they "go wrong"? It's always something else messing with the religion, not the other way around? quote:Considering the Sunni/Shia schism happened almost immediately after Muhammad died, I'm pretty sure Muslims can take the credit for that one. What does that have to do with anything?
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Jul 8, 2016 17:32
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jiggerypokery posted:Maybe, but I don't think so and crucially (I think!) I really hope not. That's fair. quote:My judgement on Catholicism is based largely on, what seems bluntly plain to me, that it was conceived as a supremely effective oppression device for the Roman empire. It is the institution that deserves the harshest criticism rather than the religion. Catholicism is an interesting case because of this, wriggling and writhing to maintain its ancient wealth and power. In it's desperation to maintain its grip in the world it is actually turning more liberal all the time as the world around it does, back peddling rapidly on things like the use of condoms in the last decade or so. And this is all fair, too. Like I said, the criticisms themselves are not inherently bigoted, it's where those criticisms often lead that is the problem. Because they don't exist in a vacuum, and when the leap from "Islam motivates violent actions" to "therefore we need to check Muslims for weapons and explosives before they board a plane" or "we need to be proactive about defending ourselves from jihadists" is made that's a problem*, and it's one that I believe New Atheism suffers greatly from. *To be clear so Gaining Weight doesn't flip his poo poo, I'm not saying you or anybody else in this thread has made this kind of leap in logic.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:32
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The idea of a second death which is synonymous to Hell existed within second temple Judaism though. So no it was a Jewish concept.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:32
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It's interesting how much D&D has changed over the years, I distinctly remember being one of a tiny number of posters trying to defend Christianity against the overwhelming majority of posters who hated all religions. Now even suggesting that Christianity is a force for homophobia for example is considered an entirely unacceptable view, even though actual historians have taken that position who certainly weren't associated with New Atheism. I view both the old D&D view and the new D&D view as overly simplistic, I don't think it's right to blame religion for all of humanity's problems nor is it right to say that religion by itself is never the problem. It's weird that the Popular Thug Drink view of being extremely defensive of religion is so prominent here when I don't see that outside of this forum among most leftists and liberals, luckily many on the left are still willing to be critical of religion.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:35
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I think trying to create thought experiments where hundreds of millions of people magically change religion are pretty pointless in analysing a problem. This is sociology, not philosophy.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:38
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Who What Now posted:And this is all fair, too. Like I said, the criticisms themselves are not inherently bigoted, it's where those criticisms often lead that is the problem. Because they don't exist in a vacuum, and when the leap from "Islam motivates violent actions" to "therefore we need to check Muslims for weapons and explosives before they board a plane" or "we need to be proactive about defending ourselves from jihadists" is made that's a problem*, and it's one that I believe New Atheism suffers greatly from. The profiling thing I agree with you on, but the rest of this I don't see what is unreasonable. If the antecedent of "Islam motivates violent actions" is indeed true, then why would the consequent "we need to be proactive about defending ourselves from jihadists" be unreasonable? Or are we just disagreeing on the definition of "jihadist"? ShredsYouSay posted:I think trying to create thought experiments where hundreds of millions of people magically change religion are pretty pointless in analysing a problem. This is sociology, not philosophy. It's both. How would you suggest analyzing the problem?
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Jul 8, 2016 17:40
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Crowsbeak posted:The idea of a second death which is synonymous to Hell existed within second temple Judaism though. So no it was a Jewish concept. Ok, then if that is the case I am wrong about Catholicism 'introducing' a vile concept worthy of criticism. I resent and reject the concept and it's implications as someone who believes that everyone in the world should be happy and free. My original point was it is important to maintain an objective scepticism of ideas regardless of who implements them or passes them on. In my view it is utterly irrelevant which, if any, religion teaches a bad idea. All that matters is whether the teaching of the idea makes the world a better place or not.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:43
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:This is irrelevant. The fact that a religion has nonviolent members, even overwhelmingly, does not undo the fact that it has violent ones as well. Are the violent ones motivated by their faith? Would they still commit the same kinds of violence, at the same level, without it? You seem to be assuming the answer is "no" and "yes" but I can't see why. Why is it that religious beliefs don't ever seem to be at fault when they "go wrong"? It's always something else messing with the religion, not the other way around? Violence often occurs without any apparent religious motivation, or with motivation which is so clearly aberrant from the religion as practiced by the overwhelming majority of its adherents as to be barely recognizable as the same thing. And equally religion occurs without any particular inclination to violence against one's peers, the overwhelming majority of the time. To suggest it's something wrong with the religion which makes it responsible for the violence is akin to the idea that videogames make people violent because famous mass murderers played them. The prudent deduction is that violence is not significantly caused by religion and religion does not significantly incite violence. It is not a meaningful criticism of religion to point at a vanishingly small number of violent individuals as proof that the whole thing is somehow wrong. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:What does that have to do with anything? A major point of contention in the schism is which religious texts and leaders are divinely inspired and which aren't. So it's hardly a new thing to Islam to have disagreement and differing points of view as to what rules to follow and what to take literally, and a little patronizing to suggest that they had to import it from the enlightened West. MaxxBot posted:It's interesting how much D&D has changed over the years, I distinctly remember being one of a tiny number of posters trying to defend Christianity against the overwhelming majority of posters who hated all religions. Now even suggesting that Christianity is a force for homophobia for example is considered an entirely unacceptable view, even though actual historians have taken that position who certainly weren't associated with New Atheism. I view both the old D&D view and the new D&D view as overly simplistic, I don't think it's right to blame religion for all of humanity's problems nor is it right to say that religion by itself is never the problem. It's weird that the Popular Thug Drink view of being extremely defensive of religion is so prominent here when I don't see that outside of this forum among most leftists and liberals, luckily many on the left are still willing to be critical of religion. No Christianity in a pretty large margin of cases totally is a motivating force for homophobia, I don't think anyone could really dispute that.
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Jul 8, 2016 17:44
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In America sure, but you can defo see even in ex-Soviet Russia they are supremely homophobic. And it's fear and hatred of difference from the "norm", rather than God says X.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:00
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:It literally doesn't matter if many, or even most Muslims are non-violent. Yes it does. You're trying to make a judgment to see if religion is a net positive or net negative for society, and you're using .01% of a religion's followers to declare that it's a net negative. What about the 99.99% that aren't violent? If we could somehow magic all of the Muslims into Jainists or whatever, I imagine the same .01% would commit violent acts, they just wouldn't use Allah as a justification.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:00
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:This is a good discussion to have. If indeed the New Atheists (which, by the way, we could also discuss whether this is a good term and exactly who falls under this banner, because it seems no one really refers to themselves this way except to say "I am known as a New Atheist by some") are mostly racist, that is a big problem. It seems to me, for the most part, though, that even if they are, they tend to at least attempt a conversation rooted in statistics and facts, even if they are wrong about what either of those things say. I don't tend to see many criticisms of Islam that could only be applied to brown Muslims. I'd agree with the bolded portion, however just because they couldn't only be applied to non-white Muslims doesn't mean that they aren't applied only to non-white Muslims. Hell, it doesn't mean that they aren't applied to non-whites as a whole! Look at any writing by a New Atheist regarding the European refugee (or, ugh, "rapeugee crisis" as so many put it) to see what I'm talking about. It used as a catch-all for people of middle eastern descent regardless of their actual religious or political beliefs; Arabic people are automatically assumed to be Muslim and Muslims are automatically assumed to be woman-hating barbarians. quote:But saying something like this: Oh lord, I made a joke. What a monster I am. quote:Besides that, your assertion that New Atheists use "Muslim" as a stand-in for brown people does not at all match my experience, and the fact that you cite Trump rallies as proof of this to me shows how much you have misinterpreted the situation. I agree that a lot of people do use this term in a dogwhistle way, but I hear that more from American Christians and/or Tea Partiers than I do from atheists, New or otherwise. No, my anecdotal evidence does not prove that New Atheists are colorblind saints, but neither does your anecdotal evidence prove that they are synonymous with the New KKK. Go watch some videos by Thunderf00t, the Amazing Atheist, or Sargon of Akaad, or read articles from Richard Dawkins about Islam and loving tell me that they aren't conflating the two. If you don't see it you're either hanging out with the one group of reasonable New Atheists or you're willfully ignoring it, because it's everywhere. gently caress, ask some atheist women or non-white atheists about their experiences with New Atheism, see what kind of horror stories they tell you. I'm haven't misinterpreted jack poo poo. quote:This seems to be the foundational problem with having this discussion: the automatic assumption of racism on those who criticize any piece of Islamic doctrine. If you read racism into every criticism of Islam, of course you are going to see all critics of Islam as racists. I don't read racism into every criticism of Islam, but you can't completely divorce the criticism from its source either, which is what you want to do. quote:Consider the following two statements: Do the people in the examples actually believe and do those things, or are you just assuming that they believe those things because of who they are? Do you believe that other people of the same faith should be assumed to have the exact same motivations as the people in the examples? By themselves, no, neither of them are racist, but they can very easily lead to racist conclusions, and they very often are even if you don't do so, and that's the problem I and others have with New Atheists.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:04
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quote:a little patronizing to suggest that they had to import it from the enlightened West. OwlFancier posted:Violence often occurs without any apparent religious motivation, or with motivation which is so clearly aberrant from the religion as practiced by the overwhelming majority of its adherents as to be barely recognizable as the same thing. And equally religion occurs without any particular inclination to violence against one's peers, the overwhelming majority of the time. To suggest it's something wrong with the religion which makes it responsible for the violence is akin to the idea that videogames make people violent because famous mass murderers played them. If religion (perhaps I should start saying "any religion" to be more clear) has ever motivated even one person to be violent when they otherwise wouldn't have been, then it's a problem worth talking about. If there was a religion with 1000 adherents, 999 of whom were motivated by their faith to be kind to others, and 1 who was motivated by the faith to decapitate his next door neighbor, would we be better off without that religion? Maybe you're right in that publicly decrying this religion as "violent" would be too broad or simplistic, but the question remains: do we find the 999 somewhat kinder people to be an even trade for the one death? To me, the answer is no. I can deal with the lack of kindness to save that one life. And the answer to this is not "well, maybe he wasn't actually motivated to do that by his religion!" Forget that piece of the puzzle for just a second. Would you agree that, if all 1000 people were motivated to do whichever of the above explicitly by the tenants of their faith, that we'd be better off without it? This is not meant to be a gotcha; I sincerely want to know if one of the areas of our disagreement is the relative value of kindness of many vs. death of one. But I think that simply assuming that because the violence is in the minority, it can't be motivated by the religion is a bad assumption. And you seem quite happy to acknowledge this in other cases, even though I could just as easily trot out the fact that "not all Christians are homophobes!" quote:No Christianity in a pretty large margin of cases totally is a motivating force for homophobia, I don't think anyone could really dispute that.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:05
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ShredsYouSay posted:In America sure, but you can defo see even in ex-Soviet Russia they are supremely homophobic. And it's fear and hatred of difference from the "norm", rather than God says X. True, patriarchy is everywhere and in everything and no one pillar of it can claim responsibility for all its effects, but religion as a whole does remain a major pillar of it, and that's a fair criticism of it.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:05
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I think interpreting religion as aggression-inducing, that it somehow makes people violent by itself, isn't justified, by that's not necessarily the same thing as saying that a world without religion would be just as violent. Having a world filled with people who do not understand nor what to understand each other is certainly something that religion helps perpetuate, and that kind of world will encourage violence, without necessarily making people intrinsically more violent.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:06
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:The profiling thing I agree with you on, but the rest of this I don't see what is unreasonable. If the antecedent of "Islam motivates violent actions" is indeed true, then why would the consequent "we need to be proactive about defending ourselves from jihadists" be unreasonable? Because killing Muslims who haven't harmed you yet is morally wrong? How the gently caress is that not a basic concept?
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Jul 8, 2016 18:06
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:But I think that simply assuming that because the violence is in the minority, it can't be motivated by the religion is a bad assumption. I find it far more likely that a very small percentage of humans are mentally broken in some way that causes them to be violent. There have been violent atheists. If you eliminated all religion from the world there would likely still be a roughly equivalent amount of violence, the stated reasons would just be different.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:08
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:If religion (perhaps I should start saying "any religion" to be more clear) has ever motivated even one person to be violent when they otherwise wouldn't have been, then it's a problem worth talking about. If there was a religion with 1000 adherents, 999 of whom were motivated by their faith to be kind to others, and 1 who was motivated by the faith to decapitate his next door neighbor, would we be better off without that religion? Maybe you're right in that publicly decrying this religion as "violent" would be too broad or simplistic, but the question remains: do we find the 999 somewhat kinder people to be an even trade for the one death? To me, the answer is no. I can deal with the lack of kindness to save that one life. Well I mean I think it's perhaps more along the lines of "millions of nice people many of whom go out of their way to preserve the life and wellbeing of others for religious reasons versus oh, several people claiming overt religious motivation for their murder per year in the western world." That does sort of complicate the issue slightly. And if you're very concerned about small numbers of a population being disproportionately dangerous to the rest I hope you have very strong opinions about cars and driving them. Again this is why people may suspect there is an ulterior motive to this whole new atheism thing.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:11
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WampaLord posted:Yes it does. You're trying to make a judgment to see if religion is a net positive or net negative for society, and you're using .01% of a religion's followers to declare that it's a net negative. What about the 99.99% that aren't violent? Whoops. This would have been good to include in my last post. See above where I address this. quote:If we could somehow magic all of the Muslims into Jainists or whatever, I imagine the same .01% would commit violent acts, they just wouldn't use Allah as a justification. Then I think you're imagining incorrectly. I think changing people's religious doctrines will affect their behavior, and I'm confused by the argument that they wouldn't. Are you saying a religious belief is never a motivation for an action, it is only ever a post-hoc justification for one? Why else would someone who converts to Christianity suddenly behave more compassionately, or be motivated to do so, if the doctrine had no effect? I think Jains would be reliably less violent because you cannot justify violence within the tenants of Jainism. The more extremist a Jain is, the LESS violent they become. This is not true of Islam. Islam has the benefit of many passages of scripture that outright instruct a believer to kill the infidel. Who What Now posted:Because killing Muslims who haven't harmed you yet is morally wrong? How the gently caress is that not a basic concept? Okay then yes we have different definitions.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:14
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Hard to contribute because there actually seems to be some good discussion here, without either side getting dog-piled to much, especially now that we got past the page 1-2 hurdle. Personally, I've always been a fan of Dawkins and Harris, but I can agree lately they haven't been producing anything that is of the quality that originally attracted me. I went to college for Genetic Engineering over a decade ago, and while I never pursued it for a career it is always been an interest, which has stemmed from learning about evolution as a child. All this along with my Atheism can likely be traced to a childhood fascination with dinosaurs, and some pretty negative experiences at Sunday School to simplify things a little. Harris's The Moral Landscape is still one of my favorite books, and the best argument I've heard for defending a moral system without need to fall back on religion or divine authority. I can agree his focus on Islam is annoying at this point, and while I feel the level of vehemence directed his way by many people on this forum is overdone, and I can't say it is entirely unwarranted. This being said I don't think he has really done anything that means he should just be disregarded entirely and thrown on a poo poo list. I would say the same for Dawkins as well, his "Dawkin's reads hatemail" video on youtube still cracks me up. Both these men have very intelligent things to say on numerous subjects. Did we ever get around to defining "New Atheism"? Because earlier we had WhoWhatNow making some pretty blanket statements about them, and up until this point I had considered myself in that category, and here we got people claiming they mostly MRA/Anti-Muslim shitheads, and I'm at a loss when this transition happened... I am unsure how much potential is left in a New Atheism movement of sorts. I'd say it did quite a bit to highlight just how large the number of people who be can considered "non-religious" has become, but as a movement of its own I feel it is yet another unneeded division in the overall Progressive Movement that benefits greatly from large numbers of leftist people of religion. If one feels that religion has an overall negative impact on the world, then they should be happy because my understanding is that there has been an overall drop in almost all religious categories for over a decade, excluding those that would be considered more fundamentalist. Isn't this a sign of gradual "victory"? The overall religiosity drops while the remnants continue to grow more fanatical and therefor alienate themselves from their liberal/moderate counterparts, resulting in large numbers of people moving away from such things in general?
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Jul 8, 2016 18:15
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OwlFancier posted:True, patriarchy is everywhere and in everything and no one pillar of it can claim responsibility for all its effects, but religion as a whole does remain a major pillar of it, and that's a fair criticism of it. I'm no sure if it's even a patriarchy thing. One group encounters another that is very different, and it feels instinctive fear and anger for feeling fear. I'm guessing most of us here are reasonably well travelled, and don't feel that to the same degree, but it is a part of the human condition. An annoying, redundant part, but it is still there. This isn't an apology for homophobic fuckheads, but an analysis of why this happens.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:16
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Okay then yes we have different definitions. Do you assume every Muslim is a suicide bomber?
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Jul 8, 2016 18:16
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ShredsYouSay posted:I'm no sure if it's even a patriarchy thing. One group encounters another that is very different, and it feels instinctive fear and anger for feeling fear. I'm guessing most of us here are reasonably well travelled, and don't feel that to the same degree, but it is a part of the human condition. An annoying, redundant part, but it is still there. This isn't an apology for homophobic fuckheads, but an analysis of why this happens. If we consider patriarchy as an almost universal constant throughout human civilization then that explains why homosexuality is a thing that is very different as opposed to just a thing people do that is considered kinda gross, like picking their nose. There's a sort of theme with things like feminism and sexuality which trigger a really strong defensive reaction among people who buy heavily into patriarchcial norms so I think that's a significant part of why there's the degree of rejection to those things that there is.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:20
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:If religion (perhaps I should start saying "any religion" to be more clear) has ever motivated even one person to be violent when they otherwise wouldn't have been, then it's a problem worth talking about. If there was a religion with 1000 adherents, 999 of whom were motivated by their faith to be kind to others, and 1 who was motivated by the faith to decapitate his next door neighbor, would we be better off without that religion? Maybe you're right in that publicly decrying this religion as "violent" would be too broad or simplistic, but the question remains: do we find the 999 somewhat kinder people to be an even trade for the one death? To me, the answer is no. I can deal with the lack of kindness to save that one life. quote:But I think that simply assuming that because the violence is in the minority, it can't be motivated by the religion is a bad assumption. And you seem quite happy to acknowledge this in other cases, even though I could just as easily trot out the fact that "not all Christians are homophobes!"
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Jul 8, 2016 18:21
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I think Jains would be reliably less violent because you cannot justify violence within the tenants of Jainism. The more extremist a Jain is, the LESS violent they become. This is not true of Islam. Islam has the benefit of many passages of scripture that outright instruct a believer to kill the infidel. I think this is an incredibly naive view. Violence is almost never justified internally by the person committing it, they are just angry and broken in the brain and come up with a reason after the fact. E:VVV Yo, you quoted my post but put Gaining Weight's post in it. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 18:21
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^uh totally deliberate, just seeing if y'all were paying attentionGAINING WEIGHT... posted:Then I think you're imagining incorrectly. I think changing people's religious doctrines will affect their behavior, and I'm confused by the argument that they wouldn't. Are you saying a religious belief is never a motivation for an action, it is only ever a post-hoc justification for one? Why else would someone who converts to Christianity suddenly behave more compassionately, or be motivated to do so, if the doctrine had no effect? How about if they all became Sufis? Bryter fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 18:24
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WampaLord posted:I find it far more likely that a very small percentage of humans are mentally broken in some way that causes them to be violent. There have been violent atheists. I think you'd need some data to support "every instance of religious violence is actually attributable to mental illness." On its face, that seems to be some terribly fatuous reasoning. If you really do believe that there is a God, and that that God has instructed you to murder gay people, then doing so becomes extremely rational. Yes, there have been violent atheists, but I would never be tempted to say that all of them were mentally ill, at least not in a strict, clinical sense. The difference is that they are not motivated by atheism to be violent. We can't say the same for religion. I disagree completely that there would be the same amount of violence because, for instance, Sunnis and Shias would entirely lose their motivation for hating each other. Without the religious divide, they are just citizens of the same country; from where would the motivation to kill come from? Uroboros posted:Did we ever get around to defining "New Atheism"? Because earlier we had WhoWhatNow making some pretty blanket statements about them, and up until this point I had considered myself in that category, and here we got people claiming they mostly MRA/Anti-Muslim shitheads, and I'm at a loss when this transition happened... We did not. Who What Now posted:Do you assume every Muslim is a suicide bomber? Of course not. twodot posted:No. At least one person has been motivated by professional wrestling to do violence, but professional wrestling isn't a problem worth talking about with respect to global violence. If you want to make a statistical claim, find the statistics first. If this is true then professional wrestling absolutely would be a problem worth talking about. I hope no one is taking this thread to be the position that "religion is the worst or even only problem in the world". WampaLord posted:I think this is an incredibly naive view. Violence is almost never justified internally by the person committing it, they are just angry and broken in the brain and come up with a reason after the fact. I think this is the naive view.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:26
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I think part of the reason people assume many of those "critical of Islam" are racists is that, when they criticize Islam, there's an implication of "and we should do something about it" (because otherwise there's no point to so persistently attempting to force a discussion about it). But there isn't really anything that you can "do about it" that isn't horrifically hosed up and racist in practice. So it's not so much that the things these people are saying are explicitly racist (though they sometimes are), but that there's no real answer to "why would someone be so incessant on discussing this" that isn't motivated by racism in some way. As a side note, another reason the group as a whole is considered racist is that these absolutely complain far more heavily about Islam than Christianity, even if there may be some individuals who don't. They also tend to complain heavily about stuff like refugees in Europe, which is definitely a racist go-to issue.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:27
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MaxxBot posted:I view both the old D&D view and the new D&D view as overly simplistic It isn't just D&D it is the debate in general, and arguably all debates. Something that just crossed my mind, however, is in the case of Islam it is relatively new in the west. In the UK particularly, there was a lot of immigration from Pakistan during the 50's and North Africa more recently. The women's rights movement happened here in the UK within living memory, which is loving incredible to think really. I'm wondering just how much criticism Islam takes on civil liberties is rather because predominantly Muslim countries haven't had such civil rights movements and it is an issue of culture rather than religion? Skip to the bottom for summaries of responses on each question. https://www.icmunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf Here is a statistic... when asked if homosexuality should be legal in Britain 52% of Muslims asked disagree versus 11% in the control group. More than half asked think there should be legal repercussions for being gay. That is loving terrifying. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:3) If the answer to question 2 is yes, religion is, on balance, doing more harm than good, then what is our best strategy in opposing it? It is extremely difficult to understand the relationship between Islam and cultural background of where they or their families emigrated from. Having thought about it this afternoon, and reading some of the posts in this thread I don't think factoring religion into the equation brings anything to the table at all. Criticising religion is of negative value as sidestepping bigotry is far too difficult. Instead, perhaps it is better to draw the debate to why a view like 'homosexuality should be illegal' is unacceptable. Like Catholicism on contraception, religion will hopefully follow the mood of the times on these things.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:28
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Perhaps what we need to do is build a wall and put the professional wrestlers on the other side of it, as pre-emptive defence. And then we should suspend the title belt above the wall and whoever grabs it wins. jiggerypokery posted:Here is a statistic... when asked if homosexuality should be legal in Britain 52% of Muslims asked disagree versus 11% in the control group. No, that's maybe 20 years ago, if that. It was literally illegal to say anything positive about homosexuality in local government until 2003. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 18:29
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:Of course not. So how do you accurately identify them without racially or religiously profiling? That's the problem with "proactively" defending oneself, it always involves targeting innocent people unnecessarily.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:31
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GAINING WEIGHT... posted:I disagree completely that there would be the same amount of violence because, for instance, Sunnis and Shias would entirely lose their motivation for hating each other. Without the religious divide, they are just citizens of the same country; from where would the motivation to kill come from? Yes, I can't think of any country that had a sharp divide between its citizens for a non religious reason. Certainly not enough to have a Civil War over it.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:31
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OwlFancier posted:If we consider patriarchy as an almost universal constant throughout human civilization then that explains why homosexuality is a thing that is very different as opposed to just a thing people do that is considered kinda gross, like picking their nose. Aye, sorry I kind of wondered off, was trying to make a more generic point about why fear splits people due to different norms. I'm very ignorant about how male homosexuality was treated in the few matriarchal societies there have been. (Like some of the aboriginal American tribes)
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Jul 8, 2016 18:33
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Not everything wrong with religion is about violence and murder. I think a lot of people defending religion in this thread might not realise how common hate preaching and divisive ideals are within religious sects. These beliefs come solely from from religion. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bV710c1dgpU
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Jul 8, 2016 18:35
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Ytlaya posted:But there isn't really anything that you can "do about it" that isn't horrifically hosed up and racist in practice. Please. You can propose a campaign of awareness like in the gay rights or civil rights movements to get people to step away from their religious beliefs, and this has not only been done, but has worked in many cases already. The books these "New Atheists" have written have actually deconverted people. jiggerypokery posted:It is extremely difficult to understand the relationship between Islam and cultural background of where they or their families emigrated from. You don't think that the religion is serving to protect that "culture"? You don't think that the "culture" is heavily informed or influenced by the religious precepts?
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Jul 8, 2016 18:38
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I mean generally hate preachers follow a form of religion which encourages people to split off and form cults of personality around individuals for their visionary interpretation of the ideas which shape a lot of our society and perhaps the problem is not with the ideals being there and more with the specific bit about encouraging individual cults and excessive empowerment of some individuals over others.
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Jul 8, 2016 18:39
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