islam

DCDeac said:

The language doesn't leave much to the imagination:

"Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the prophet who represents God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged."

or

"A holy man’s daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death."

or

"If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death."

or

"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

or

"Anyone who blasphemes God’s name must be stoned to death by the whole community."

For those who believe in the literal interpretation of religious texts - of course they're going to commit acts of violence in the name of their religion. They're basically commanded to do so in no uncertain terms. I mean, all those passages are from the Bible but still...

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The Bible tells Christians to kill people in the name of God? Say it isn't so.

JuiceCrewAllStar said:

Deaths notwithstanding, even modreate Islam has a pretty poor track record with regard to sexuality and gender.

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That has been addressed.

Is that the number one problem facing America, worthy of the tremendous expense of money, lives, and shitty policy response that it gets?

knowell said:

You can be aware that Islamic Extremism is a real problem that has to be dealt with and not be in favor of military action that requires perpetual occupation of middle eastern countries.

Other than Lindsay Graham and John McCain (and maybe Hillary Clinton), you are unlikely to find much support for the way we have been fecklessly fighting Islamic Extremism.

That doesn't mean it is not a problem.

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Seriously?

myDeaconmyhand said:

We would all appreciate hearing your fresh ideas on combating middle eastern Islamic extremism, since it's a problem that we can't ignore

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

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Please add north and central Africa. Boko Haram is no joke.

ImTheCaptain said:

no, i believe there is a total lack of evidence of the existence of an infinite omniscient benevolent being

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Self declared atheist my self, but, The God Delusion asserts that there is no one that is a true atheist. Therein, Dawkins presents a 7 point scale of religious belief with 7 being a completely convinced atheist and one being a biblical (or Koranic, or whatever) literalist. Dawkins, widely know as an atheist spokesman who has written several anti religion books, declares himself a 6 on that scale and says that his training in statistics and hypothesis testing ( i.e. The scientific method, etc) prohibits him from being a full on 7.0 level Atheist. I tend to agree with him. To put it in statistical terms I'd have to give it something a like a p<0.01 that God of any sort exists, though I am increasingly a Bayesian adherent and I don't particularly like p-values.

WakeandBake said:

The Bible tells Christians to kill people in the name of God? Say it isn't so.

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It is more accurate to say the bible told Jews to kill people in the name of God. Jesus announced that it was proper to kill an adulteress only if the stone-throwers were without sin. (Hint: they weren't.)

WakeandBake said:

That has been addressed.

Is that the number one problem facing America, worthy of the tremendous expense of money, lives, and shitty policy response that it gets?

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Facing America? No. But if you, like I, like to imagine yourself as a global citizen then it's important.

birdman said:

Self declared atheist my self, but, The God Delusion asserts that there is no one that is a true atheist. Therein, Dawkins presents a 7 point scale of religious belief with 7 being a completely convinced atheist and one being a biblical (or Koranic, or whatever) literalist. Dawkins, widely know as an atheist spokesman who has written several anti religion books, declares himself a 6 on that scale and says that his training in statistics and hypothesis testing ( i.e. The scientific method, etc) prohibits him from being a full on 7.0 level Atheist. I tend to agree with him. To put it in statistical terms I'd have to give it something a like a p<0.01 that God of any sort exists, though I am increasingly a Bayesian adherent and I don't particularly like p-values.

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I believe Blaise Pascal may have said something similar. He also made it existential, instead of just mathematical.

Bill Maher and others have been making the case for quite some time (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins too) that coddling Islam and asserting that it is a religion of peace every time one of these violent acts takes place, allows the nasty elements of Islam to fester. I do not think that Maher, who despises pretty much all religions, thinks Christians are much better expect that most of the violence was rooted out of Christianity a hundred or so years ago by voices of reason from with in that faith. Maher's purpose here is not bigotry, he is trying to lift a veil which ultimately should enable the moderate elements of Islam to stamp out these bad ideas with in the religion. I don't think this approach will work though, because Maher is not a Muslim, and comes off looking like a close minded islamophobe. This particular clip is a little more aggressive than his previous efforts, but I guess now that we have had three Islam inspired mass shooting within our borders he feels the need to step up his assertions.

birdman said:

Self declared atheist my self, but, The God Delusion asserts that there is no one that is a true atheist. Therein, Dawkins presents a 7 point scale of religious belief with 7 being a completely convinced atheist and one being a biblical (or Koranic, or whatever) literalist. Dawkins, widely know as an atheist spokesman who has written several anti religion books, declares himself a 6 on that scale and says that his training in statistics and hypothesis testing ( i.e. The scientific method, etc) prohibits him from being a full on 7.0 level Atheist. I tend to agree with him. To put it in statistical terms I'd have to give it something a like a p<0.01 that God of any sort exists, though I am increasingly a Bayesian adherent and I don't particularly like p-values.

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That sort of attempt to justify and quantify his beliefs with various labels of levels seems like a religion in itself. If you don't believe in something then you don't believe in it, and that should be the end of it. I don't believe in flying unicorns, and that's it, no further explanation needed. It sounds like he is just trying to backdoor a win in case he is wrong. He sounds like a pussy.

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:

That sort of attempt to justify and quantify his beliefs with various labels of levels seems like a religion in itself. If you don't believe in something then you don't believe in it, and that should be the end of it. I don't believe in flying unicorns, and that's it, no further explanation needed. It sounds like he is just trying to backdoor a win in case he is wrong. He sounds like a pussy.

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Pascal also said something similar.

"You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked."

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:

That sort of attempt to justify and quantify his beliefs with various labels of levels seems like a religion in itself. If you don't believe in something then you don't believe in it, and that should be the end of it. I don't believe in flying unicorns, and that's it, no further explanation needed. It sounds like he is just trying to backdoor a win in case he is wrong. He sounds like a pussy.

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Why don't you believe in flying unicorns?

I think he is trying to "backdoor" his case using logic as opposed to leaving it based on faith alone, since we do that for pretty much every other facet of life aside from religion.

Junebug said:

Pascal also said something similar.

"You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked."

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Religion in itself is inherently illogical in the sense that it is based in faith.

I agree that given the choice between "believing" and "not believing" you should always "believe" from a pure risk/reward standpoint. There is no loss if you believe and there is nothing there, whereas there is great loss if you do not believe and are eternally damned.

That seems to leave out the notion of "intent" behind the belief, which an omnipotent God would most certainly be able to sort out.

If I wanted to believe as much as I could, but I just can't get past the lack of any information backing a supernatural being, then that will not be sufficient to avoid the eternal damnation would it?

I don't buy Pascal's defense to that---if the wager is truly valid then you are unable to rationally believe there is no god---as it is circular logic at its finest.

Unedited version of the transcript:

Junebug said:

It is more accurate to say the bible told Jews to kill people in the name of God. Jesus announced that it was proper to kill an adulteress only if the stone-throwers were without sin. (Hint: they weren't.)

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Right, my bad. Those pesky Jews. Why would the Muslims who live next to them adopt a similar credos, I wonder.

Does it really matter what religion extremists use to justify their actions? There are currently large numbers of extremists located in various parts of the world and with a strong presence on the internet. These people are filled with hate toward anyone who doesn't agree with their beliefs and intend and espouse violence against those non-believers. Furthermore, they have demonstrated the desire and ability to actually carry out these threats in large-scale fashion all over the world - directly, through remote cells and through unconnected persons convinced to participate in the mission. In this way they are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people in many different countries. The one thing these people have in common is a reliance on the religion of Islam to justify their actions.

This doesn't mean that Islam itself is bad or wrong or that other adherents of Islam are terrorists. It only means that this group of people are a danger to non-Muslims everywhere. It is not the case that Islam, in and of itself, is the problem - only that the current set of worldwide terrorists happen to be using it as the raison d'etre of their actions - if they were Hindu terrorists or Christian terrorists then that religion would be the one we were talking about.

There is violence in the Bible and in the texts of other religions. There are extremists in every religion. Christianity certainly has some terrible periods of violence in its past. But at this current time in history, to my knowledge, no other religion has large numbers of extreme members actually carrying out violence against innocent people all over the world on a large scale - using the religion as justification. If I am wrong about that, please correct me.

Until we see a bunch of terrorists killing innocent people all over the world and using the Bible as justification, I am not sure it matters right now what the Bible says on the subject of violence.

I just took a shit in the office bathroom that I am pretty sure severely injured a guy from accounting's olfactory glands. As I pinched it off, I said "This is for Allah."

Am I a terrorist?