JCC Arena The Theist/Atheist Thunderdome™

Your entire position is worth the question I am presenting.

 

This is either biased, dishonest or just uninformed. It wonderfully fits the narrative that has been created in 'christendom' about their own history, but to an outsider it's a laughable thing to say.
'Saint' Cyril of Alexandria was sainted after a lifetime of leading mob violence against the city's non-Christians, including the truly horrific mutilation and torture of Hypatia for the crime of being a pagan and a woman in a position of political power.
'Saint' Istvan took the Pope's money and mercenaries to usurp the throne, then had all the Taltosok, their families, and many others skinned alive and hung from the walls of the cities as a warning to the rest of us. The Pope was delighted.
Junipo Serra was recently Sainted for his 'valiant efforts' in tearing down native culture, suppressing its language, demonizing its faith, and leading its people into willing servitude.
Such broad comparisons are ripe for bias and pushing narratives, but will only fool those unfamiliar with one or both religions.
I've met far more Christian Nationalists and Dominionists than I would have ever hoped to, in many countries, and they've usually glorified and sought to emulate Christian 'heroes' who did monstrous things to non-Christians, or other kinds of Christian.
I've also met Buddhists who have supported the arson attacks and mob violence against Bon practitioners and Hui Muslims in Tibet, or the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, based on religious jingoism.
Just as the political climate of a country can move between ultra-nationalism and anti-nationalism in only a few decades, so can the climate of a religious community. People twist any religion to justify the psychological needs of their situation.

You again miss my point. It's the tension between identity groups, not the traits of those identities that matters.
The fact that someone can be a 'catholic or protestant atheist' and still be invested in the struggle, and define themselves by those group markers is exactly my point.

 

I should also point out that for almost all of Islam's history, the Muslim world has welcomed Jews and protected us from 'Roman' persecution in the exile.
Aside from the small injustice of the 'jizya' tax, Jews came to be famous and wealthy scholars, poets, officials and traders from Iberia, to Iran. When the crusaders came for Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims defended their city together, and were butchered in the streets together in the "winepress of the Lord". Once Christians took the rest of Iberia, the Spanish Inquisition started. Everywhere Christianity has seized power, atrocities have been visited upon those who refused to bow.
When Mehmet took Constantinople, he crowned himself Roman Emperor (no less legitimate than the Germanic Christian claimants, and he was descended from a Komnenos), and urged the Christian population to stay, guaranteeing against the seizure of their wealth, and safe passage for those who wished to leave; all that mainstream English history books remember is that he turned the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque. Compare to the earlier capture of the city by their fellow Christians, and the atrocities committed there.
We have a narrative, in the West, which guides people to make the common misinterpretations that Mehmet was a brutal barbarian who 'destroyed the ERE', and the Crusaders were valiantly 'defending civilization'.
The Caliphates were no more or less violent than other expansionist Empires in the era, but more tolerant than most. Muslim Persian Empires were no more or less brutal than earlier Zorastrian ones.
The 'religion of peace' is so named by its practitioners (and not called that by violent, radical sects) because the Quran mandates all rulers to protect and nurture the foreigner or infidel in their midst.
There are Hadiths such as "The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr." and admonitions to remember that god loves all mankind, not just those who love him back.
But it's no more the "religion of peace" than any is. Good people will find the beauty in it, bad people will justify their actions with it, vulnerable people will by manipulated with it. So it ever has been and ever will be.

 

See also saint Constantine (conquering emperor, murdered his own wife and child) saint Louis (crusader king, also known for burning down a village in his native france)

 

It seems like the pope is trying to turn things around and be a bit more progressive, but is that enough?

 

Saint Ambrose and Saint John Chrysostom were chief proponents of the persecution of non-Christians under several Emperors:
(Saint John) "Chrysostom held Jews responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus and deicide (killing God, see "Jewish deicide" for the subject) and added that they continued to rejoice in Jesus's death.[37] He compared the synagogue to a pagan temple, representing it as the source of all vices and heresies.[38] He described it as a place worse than a brothel and a drinking shop; it was a den of scoundrels, the repair of wild beasts, a temple of demons, the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils, a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ.[39] Palladius, Chrysostom's contemporary biographer, also recorded his claim that among the Jews the priesthood may be purchased and sold for money.[40] Finally, he declared that he - in accordance with the sentiments of the saints - hated both the synagogue and the Jews.[41]"

Ugh. I can't even stand to be sarcastic about such terrible people being held dogmatically as exemplary and holy.
This is what happens when we play this game. The casting of Islam, or any large faith, as the historical 'bad guys' is bunk.

 

Paul may have marred Christianity with his bull****, but the Roman Empire making it a state religion was the final nail. From then on it became primarily a tool of the state and Christians who rejected the state along with its violence and its social stratification were always branded as heretics and persecuted into extinction. Even the most successful heretics-- Protestants-- saw the Reformation hijacked by feudal lords in order to serve political ends (e.g., the fact that Protestant Europe tends to be far from Rome isn't a coincidence).

 

... Although protestantism also didn't stop with fuedal times. Not all branches of Christianity today are corrupted by state and regional interests, but sadly many are and always have been. As a Christian, I also think Rome ruined things for a long time. Constantine was an ass.

Colbert had a nice tribute at the top of the show. It's just really unfortunate that he also had noted bigot Maher already booked for the show. Colbert did his best, although I would have preferred he rebuff Maher's comments about Muslims because Colbert does not feel the same. Though I think Maher makes enough of an ass of himself by repeatedly insulting Colbert's intelligence, which is plainly high.

The sad reality is that, even if there were no such thing as religion at all, people would find reasons to hate other people. There would still be nationalism, tribalism, sectarianism. People would just find a new label or excuse. For Muslim Extremists, they may as well call themselves Crips and Blood instead of "Muslim", because it really is just a self-applied label to try to justify what they were going to do anyway. Just look at GamerGate. People have formed hate groups based solely on gender and literally no other rationale.

 

Reza has a problem with telling people "I am right because PhD."

 

Colbert shaping his profile as a Catholic is a new thing, though. I don't think anybody was ever sure if he was, or not. It's odd that he references Pascal's Wager. Is he making it? I mean, he claims his favorite guest is Neil deGrasse Tyson. I don't believe he believes in miracles.

 

Yes, Colbert only believes in natural instances of deceased people spontaneously coming back to life after 72 hours, teleporting around a province, and then literally floating up into the sky.

 

Colbert has implied more than once that he doesn't really believe any of the doctrine of his church.

 

He points out how ridiculous much of it sounds, but the guy is/was a Sunday school teacher.

 

Your examples are true enough, I've known IRA sympathisers who said prayers for terrorists (sweet old ladies they were too), and I hope you're right about Islam swinging back to sanity in such a short time, but the point I was making was about scriptural content rather than the ecumenical tradition of a particular sect. One logically follows from the other (with a little bit of jiggery pokery with regards to Nicea, etc), but for most contemporary Christians, study will concentrate on the Bible with the legends of subsequent saints being more of a curiosity. Of course there have been some insanely evil popes over the centuries but the scripture, interpreted through the political lens of the time, allowed for it THEN but not so much now. If you compare and contrast the themes of martyrdom in the Bible and Qu'ran what I said is not actually contradicted by your rather excellent points about extremism and religion. Yes it's true that all religions are useful in the justification of immoral acts of violence and oppression, that nearly all Christian sects have done unforgivable things in the past and continue to do so, the Catholic church especially. These facts do not prevent me from recognising that Islam has a problem with Islamism in the here and now. A superficial reading of Judeo-Christian scripture simply does not glorify aggressive martyrdom like Islam does. They all have common themes such as dying with a prayer in your heart and all that fluff, but scripturally the Judeo-Christian narrative around martyrdom orbits around some ancient stories of angry God ordering tribal smiting, and hippy God stories of pacifists facing persecution, while the Islamic scripture was the verbatim dictation of an actual warlord laying out practical rules to people engaged in acts of brutal warfare. There's some comparatively lovely hippy style stuff at the beginning of the book, but things panned out as they did and we're left with what we've got.

I'm not missing your point I'm denying it and contradicting it, while you're misunderstanding my use of an old punchline.

Neither of us would deny Islamic State pose a problem, and neither of us, if we were being honest, would deny there is a link between Islam the religion, and Islamism the theocratic political ideology. Neither of us would deny the Northern Ireland troubles were sectarian.

The violence and cultural narratives in NI is far better described and understood without excluding its religious sectarian nature. Reducing it to 'tension between identity groups' is ridiculously vague and unhelpful, if we assume that identifying a problem is somehow involved in its solution. There are numerous identities each side adopts along religious, political, class and wider cultural lines - all with various subdivisions and varying levels of extremity and liberalism, each sharing narratives up to a point, and divergent narratives with common features. But the question posed to you at the makeshift roadblock by the balaclava clad gentleman pointing the gun in your face is not "are you a unionist or a republican", it's "are you a Protestant or a Catholic?" Answering with "it's not the traits of identity groups that matters" might be the last thing you ever say.

Or they might retort with "Aye but are you a Protestant pseudo-intellectual or a Catholic pseudo-intellectual?"

About that Protestant atheist joke... It indicates that those who are heavily invested in the narrative view everything and everyone else in that binary fashion. When presented with an answer outside the binary choice, the terrorist/gangster/freedom fighter can only restate the question incorporating the new information, even if that information invalidates the terms of the question. There are many, notably the atheist one (you already heard the punchline) and the Muslim/Jewish one (it works either way round) which goes: Are you Protestant or Catholic?/Neither I'm a (Jew/Muslim), why what are you?/I'm the luckiest (Muslim/Jew) in Belfast (bang). I'm not endorsing these jokes, just commenting that they came out of NI culture and that they satirise the situation as accurately as a superficial stereotype can.

Of course some atheists identify as culturally Catholic or Protestant (or Muslim or whatever), and I'm sure there must be some atheists on both sides, and likely more stuck in the middle, but that's well beside the point.

Pffffffffft!

By British animal loving standards, it's pretty grim for animals in Pakistan. If you want to look up some videos do so, but I'm not linking them here. When I say pretty grim, I mean ****ing grim. Of course I'm sure there's a variety of conditions in which animals are worked, kept and slaughtered, and some of them must do better than others, hopefully. Animal rights activists do tend towards the sensational.

I don't know about the rest of the west, but

(emphasis theirs)

84% in a 1 week survey (which I'm not sure but it doesn't sound like a surprise inspection, so abattoirs probably had time to prepare). We might expect that 16% figure to coincide with the demand from orthodox/fundamentalist Muslims.

Setting aside doubts about the value of that figure, if your argument is that halal is not so bad because only 16% of the animals slaughtered by halal methods really suffer more than a standardised humane method, well that's not a very strong defence of animal cruelty but well done for having a go.

That well known anti-Islamic hate group the RSPCA also say of a 2003 study:

http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/slaughter/religiousslaughter

(emphasis mine)

Doesn't Cheetara live on Third World? And check my posts, I don't think I've been using a term like Muslim country.

Eating what you're fed as a child is totally fair enough though. And I'm sure I didn't have the same opportunities you had, either. It's a wonderfully vague statement that literally anyone, perhaps except your twin, can make with total conviction. As ignorant I am of your past, you are of mine. I'm not claiming to know things about you that you've not revealed....

The ...taste? I'm almost scared to ask...

I'm treating you considerably better than I would an animal torturer! Considering what I'd said on halal slaughter at the point in the conversation (that it bypasses regulations put in place to limit animal suffering) combined with your comment on preferring the taste of an animal that's suffered more, I'm getting a bad feeling about you. You think you know things about me that I've clearly not expressed - and that I know are not true. So that excludes you being psychic, but not a psycho.

A) Are they exempt from those regulations or not? (Hint - they are.)
2) Fair enough, but you are apparently now free to make your own decisions and choose not to support the barbaric superstition. Have you been to a halal butcher since your childhood? Do you still prefer the taste? What is it do you think that affects the taste, the adrenaline rush the animal gets?

I went to a restaurant and thought the food was nice and I didn't crap myself, so how can the hygiene inspectors shut it down the week later?

I used to sing in a cathedral choir as a schoolboy and didn't once get molested, so how can anyone suggest the church has a problem with child abuse?

I never got shot in the kneecaps in an Irish pub, even when I've been asked to make a donation to 'support the boys' and politely declined. 'The Troubles'? Delusional ravings of drug-addled Satanists and conspiracy theorists.

There are millions of Americans who live their whole life without being shot dead in a school, nor see a single one of their friends being shot dead in a school. So how can anyone with a single functioning neuron make the baseless claim that America has a problem with school shootings? People arguing that the US constitution should be amended with regards to gun control are bigoted condescending irrational gun-racists.
...
It's not that the majority are immoderate, but that moderate in Islamic terms falls far short of 'liberal'. Moderate is so-so, not excessively one way or another. It's relative to how extreme something could be. In relation to Islam and Islamism with its wide range of cultures and traditions, moderate often means toning down the regressiveness a little and toning down the progressiveness a lot, especially when the loudest voices internationally are backed with Arab cash.

Examples of moderate views you might have encountered:

• Tolerating women behaving as if they have equality, but not accepting that women are actually equal. Alt: Men and women are equal but naturally have different roles (childbearing, cooking, cleaning, sex work).
• Denying that homosexuals exist in their country/culture/religion, or claiming it's a lifestyle choice, or being content that Allah will judge them, rather than advocate violently executing them in front of a stadium audience (or, you know, maybe that as well).
• Believing that not all Jews are evil, but...
• Begrudgingly accepting that the accursed heretics from other Muslim sects have a right to exist, for now.
• Having free speech is fine for some, as long as they say nothing too thought provoking or blasphemous.
• Surgically removing limbs as punishments for crimes rather than just ceremonially chopping them off is actually quite progressive for Saudi Arabia.

Am I stereotyping too much? This is all stuff that I hear common or garden British Muslims saying in polite conversation as well as mainstream televised Imams discussing here in the UK. Being moderate on a scale so low means satisfying arbitrary theological requirements, being just unkind enough to satisfy conservatives, and giving the tiniest concession to the liberals/progressives. Orthodox/Fundamentalists may agree with moderates or not, depending on whether they're content to live that way privately, or if they need to force others to believe the same as them, but as with all fundamentalists of all religions, they are a drag factor for social progress. What passes for mainstream or moderate thought in contemporary Islam clearly overlaps with the ideological prejudices of radical Islamism.

You could rightly argue that I'm being selective, and you could cite seemingly endless examples of other religions doing and saying awful things all over the world, and I'd condemn those idiots too. Knowing that other religions have issues should in no way hinder you from recognising the issues that Islam has with its violent minority within its membership, nor should it hinder you from being consistent in your condemnation of illiberal values in your own back yard and elsewhere. You don't have to dismiss the importance of religion and scripture in order to embrace the importance of geopolitics and sociology.

 

You should look into professional point-missing. It's honestly impressive.
The question boils down to "Are you Us or Them?". Will a study of the comparative religious traditions of Irish Catholicism and Anglicanism tell you whether the IRA or RUC is more likely to blow your head off?

Stop that.

Yeah.

Most of those points, short of the last one, sound like a plurality of Midwestern Christians I've met. To a T.
Get back to me when you've spent some time among Iran's huge Jewish communities, or in any Muslim country. Realize how embarrassing and ugly what you posted is.
Recognize that your experience in the UK has more to do with the communities and conditions in the UK than it does with the 1.5 billion other Muslims in the world.
I'm no more supportive of the Saudi royal family than I am of Vladimir Putin. I wouldn't judge Poland based on my misgivings about Russia.
Remember that America is where a 'moderate' Republican sang "bomb, bomb Iran" and the phrase "glass parking lot" is part of public discourse.
And watch the Reza Aslan clip posted earlier. You make assumptions about people of different cultures, on different continents. I'm tired of responding to it.

 

1) "it's pretty grim for animals in the third world" well no **** it's pretty grim for every ****ing thing in the third world. Why the **** do you think my family moved here? The most idiotic obvious thing you've said.

2) you then proceed to fully misunderstand the point that singling out halal slaughtering as some kind of special evil when there isn't any objective source claiming animals suffer more than they already do in western factory faming.

3) you then decide to dismiss all the evidence against your point through conspiracy theory handwaving. Brilliant. Let me just dismiss your rspca nonsense too.

4) i'm confident in stating that most people here grew up with more opportunities than i did. It's called Newton's method. You start with the most likely answer and then shift up or down based on new information.

5) yes, the taste from the lack of blood. Halal slaughter drains the blood after the animal is killed. Tbat tastes different from meat where the blood wasn't drained. Not from any kind of hypothetical suffering. Did you even bother to read up before you accuse people of being cruel?

 

Abadacus
Aren't you even vaguely creeped out by someone claiming that an animal cruelly slaughtered tastes better than an animal humanely slaughtered? This is precisely what he said, that halal meat tasted better. Bloodsport aficionados make the same claim, and I get a bad feeling about them, too.

Funnily enough I nearly quoted Aslan in a few of my recent posts in this thread. I used to admire Aslan before his ridiculous lies about Sam Harris. He's certainly good when faced with an idiot from Fox or CNN, but he's one of these 'shut the conversation down' types. Fair play to him correcting misapprehensions so efficiently and eloquently, but some of his arguments don't stand up to much scrutiny, such as (from that video which I've seen before) his claim that FGM isn't an issue in any Muslim majority country. That's beyond misleading, that's BS. The fact that some Christian majority countries have a higher % of the female population with mutilated genitals than some Muslim majority countries does not mean that the issue vanishes in Muslim majority countries:

And as you can see, his claim about Eritrea having the highest proportion is a bit contentious. In Eritrea FGM is prevalent in 99% of Muslim women, 89% of Catholics and 85% of Protestants. Ethiopia breaks down as: 92% of Muslim women, 72% of Protestants, 67% of Catholics and 67% of Traditional Religions.

He's also wrong to characterise it as merely an African problem. A school near me has a problem with girls from Pakistan having their vaginas mutilated. Peruse this list and see for yourself, paying attention to the percentages by religion. It's a global problem and largely (though not exclusively) associated with Muslim communities. Countries with a higher percentage of FGM among non-Muslim communities seem to be the statistical outliers. He's often right to point out that problems perceived to be associated with Islam are not exclusive to Islam, but he's also a deeply dishonest and manipulative man. Have you seen this?



It's 3 hours (2 and a bit, really, IIRC the video loops round again to make more ad money), but well worth it, and Aslan's well intentioned lies are a prominent topic of the discussion. I used to tolerate, if not respect Cenk Uyger before this, too. Two people who can definitely rot the regressive liberal pile.

I'll not make a list of cultural demands for you to comply with before responding to me, like some sort of terrorist. You make assumptions about people on different continents too, we all do. You even go so far as to make counter assumptions about the people I've made assumptions about, based on what they've actually said to me in person. The lengths people will go... Some, like Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz cite polling data and first hand experience of working as an Islamist, respectively, to back up their assumptions, and get called racists and New World Order shills for their trouble.

I used to make similar arguments to you, echoing Aslan and the sentiments of the left wing press, but the evidence of the fantasy just kept pouring until it was overwhelming. To be honest I still use a lot of those arguments, at least the ones least discredited ones, tempered with reality, against actual racists and nationalists. Rhetorically they're useful, enlightening, and often give a casual or uncommitted racist pause. But there's just no point pretending to anyone that Islam is no different to any other religion, or that the causes of jihadism/radical Islamism aren't at least in part causally linked to the logical prerequisite of Islam itself, just as it would be stupid to claim that the actions of crusaders were completely removed from the dominant forms of Christianity of the time, or that the actions of Jim Jones were removed from his religious ideology.

 

> Aren't you even vaguely creeped out by someone claiming that an animal cruelly slaughtered tastes better than an animal humanely slaughtered

You're a god**** liar. I've already explained that i prefer meat without blood in it. i'm not going to sit here and let you misrepresent my statements.

 

1: I never used the term third world, and I berated you for using it. The most idiotic thing I said was a figment of your 19th Century imagination.
2: There are objective, empirical sources cited and linked to you that demonstrate how animals suffer more than they do in western farming.
3: What evidence against my point? That you had a cordial relationship with your butcher as a child so Islamism doesn't exist? I think I covered that.
4: Cool. How's that working for you so far?
5: This is ridiculous and factually incorrect. Halal slaughter is about draining the blood while the animal is alive and conscious, often struggling, in obvious distress. Western methods also drain the blood while the animal is alive (it's the draining of the blood that kills the animal) but the animal is electronically stunned first. Empirical studies (cited in the page I linked to you) have shown that animals that are correctly stunned before slaughter feel no pain.

Interestingly, studies have convincingly proven that appearance and expectation have a significant effect on how we perceive the taste and quality of food and drink. Check out Elephants On Acid by Alex Boese.

ETA:

There are no gods to damn me and I am not lying. Report me if you think I've done anything wrong.

 

Islam is just like any other religion.
Halal food is a step down from kosher food.