JCC Arena The Theist/Atheist Thunderdome™

What you are saying here seems to be contradictory - one the hand hand you are saying that IS recruits from a pool of Muslims but on the other hand you are saying that converts are prominently represented among the terrorist community. If they are recruited as Muslims how can they be converts? Am I misunderstanding something? IS recruit from everywhere but I would reject the idea that the bar is set particularly high for religious knowledge as a prerequisite for IS membership. The stereotype recruit for IS out of Australia for example is largely young people who are attracted to the adventure and glamour of being soldiers in a far off place..immature idiots basically who think they are going to be able to act out a Rambo movie , the Islam thing is just the price of admission.

I doubt this idiot for example could give you much of a discourse on Salafism/Wahabism:

http://www.news.com.au/world/middle...s/news-story/9c1115e907b2585fed7903368491c67d

I disagree that anything to do with scripture is "very clear". I reject that there is something which can be described as a "base, superficial reading" of scripture. On face value, scripture can be read as saying something but then when you read a paper written by a theologian or a religious scholar then that something gets turned around and interpreted to mean something else entirely. That is the nature of words.They are open to interpretation. Give me any text and I guarantee I can place some spin on it so that it means what I want it to mean.

I don't really take much at face value these days, particularly works written about religious extremism and terrorism. "Islamism" shouldn't be a problem for Islam but it is because of simplistic labelling. Acts of terrorism, murder, violence, genocide, cultural heritage destruction, subjugation are a problem for humanity.

 

Very clearly. To an extent I frankly didn't believe was possible. I strongly suspect you are just taking the piss, but I can't be sure. Good skills.

I'm tempted to reject this outright, but I'll wait until you provide evidence to back up this claim. Certainly the evidence I've seen (including the evidence presented to me in this thread) contradicts the narrow stereotype you describe. What you're saying in answer to my questions seems at this point to be 'yes, but...'

This seems to reinforce my point about converts being prominently represented, and from his statement I see no indication of a low function and we're left with no indication as to the depth of his theological knowledge. Surely you're not doing the one true Scotsman bit?

Then either our cultural lexicons are misaligned and you don't know what I'm talking about, or you just don't know what you're talking about.

But this is what we're talking about. 'Face value' is 'superficial reading' is 'face value'. This is precisely it, and precisely what Islamism does. So maybe you DO understand. Damn you're good. Or stupid. Which would make you even better, if you're good.

I gladly accept your challenge and the text I give you is the Jain Agamas. I'd like you to spin it to justify suicide bombing as part of a military campaign to capture land and establish a theocratic empire. Take your time and let me know how you get on.

My point was that the passages in Islamic scripture (dictated by their conquering warlord prophet) ordering the terms and conditions under which it is preferable to martyr yourself for the cause, offering the ultimate reward for you and your family to bypass the wait for judgement day to sit in paradise with Allah and the angels, etc is a lot easier to interpret literally to justify killing yourself and others in a suicide attack, than it is to arrive at the same conclusion by reinterpreting specific orders from Yahweh to specific Jews to kill specific people/peoples at specific times for specific reasons in the OT.

Nor is it as easy to interpret Jesus' angrier comments regarding bringing the sword in the NT to justify suicide attacks. It's harder, though not theoretically impossible, but we just don't see it in practice. Even if Jesus harboured militaristic intentions (which if we take him at his word, maybe he did) the example history provides Christians of the perfect human being is a man who was persecuted and killed for opposing Jewish and imperial Roman authority. The Islamic perfect human being was a successful warlord with a string of trophy wives and a slow mental decline.

There's a brilliant Lennon/Elvis comparison I could make but let's not cheapen this.

'Works'? Implying dishonesty, fiction, sensationalism? The holocaust was real and Islamism is real. Seriously check out the work that Quilliam does, watch Nawaz debate or discuss Islamism.

No. Islamism is an actual political movement, it's entirely related to Islam and the name is not some mistake or clumsily chosen judgemental label.

My. Point. Exactly.

 

I have no real idea what you are talking about or what points you are trying to make or refute. It's like we are talking past each other or perhaps this is a deliberate strategy on your part, I don't know. You seem to do this in other threads so perhaps it's just the way you choose to engage. In any case, life is too short to waste it unnecessarily, so I'll just call it a day.

 

And for a while of Christianity's early history, they were regarded as anti-Imperial terrorists; the example of Christ dying at the hands of the Empire has been emulated everywhere from partisans in the Hellenic world to the modern United States.
These violent emulations often include an anti-semetic element; the conspiratorial notion that the Empire (America, the UK, the EU or UN) is secretly controlled by Jews. It was nonsense in Rome and now.
They've been prevalent in times that Christians were not in power, rivaled by other groups, with a weak government and economic scarcity. So not so much Europe or the US at the moment. In the Balkans, when the Ottomans loomed? Yes.
Have you ever spoken to former anti-communist fighters (many of whom were granted asylum in the US)? People whose countries were economically broken and dominated by a foreign power of a different ideology.
They have some rather strong opinions on the nature of Christianity. Those who survived their ideas, anyways.
Are you starting to see a pattern?

Let's try a thought experiment:
Remember the Pastor calling for homosexuals to be killed? There are countless other examples.
Can you imagine that if the US was invaded by some hypothetical foreign superpower, then again a few times, its major cities ruined, economy raided, radical groups on several sides armed, and a foreign-backed, ineffectual and corrupt government composed of an ethnoreligous minority were put in place, the United States could not foster the same kind of regressivism and fanaticism that exists in Iraq and Syria? Would the relative religions make a substantive difference? Would it not leave ripples across the western world?

 

Anti-communist fighters? Like my pacifist Solidarity comrades in Poland, most of whom were Catholic? They tend to have very little criticism for Christianity, unless they've had a drink. Or do you mean those trained killers the Mujehadeen, all of whom were Muslim? I've not spoken to any, but from interviews they seem to prefer Christians to atheistic communists a LOT. Maybe your argument is failing because I'm free to choose examples that obviously contradict it.

Okay let's take the USA example, but instead look at reality... How many organisations in America have the same goals as IS, and how many of those are actually doing anything about it? How many of those are actually waging a war in the Middle East, destroying humanity's cultural heritage, etc.? I can immediately think of two, both subscribing to radical Islamism and quite high profile.

Before the USA was the USA, it was invaded by some actual superpowers. Its cultural heritage destroyed, it's resources stripped and stolen, and a government of ethnic minorities was put in place. Show me the kind of regression and fanaticism from the indigenous people that exists in Iraq and Syria (where IS are the ****ing invaders, I'm sure you're missing this point, but never mind).

Don't just point to armed resistance to occupation, that's to be expected by anyone, even Jains would respond like that. Show me the Native American death cults blowing themselves up to kill the children of the invaders of some other land. Show me the native American death cults vandalising USA cultural heritage. It's a ridiculous thing for me to demand isn't it? But then the IS situation is quite unique.

Now I'm sure there were a handful of tribes who may have been suited to the task exemplified today by IS, but did they come close to achieving those levels of destruction?

I am sure that the USA with its on average low function, abundance of advanced weaponry, and high levels of religious stupidity could produce crazed fanatics to rival IS, but would they behave the same? It's certainly possible, but unlikely given the scriptural examples each side of crazies chooses to follow.

Look at Palestine - there are Christians and others living there who have to go through the same roadblocks and border checks, they have to live in the same ghettos, behind the same wall, starved of the same resources as the Muslims. Their ancestral lands are just as much under threat. Where are the Palestinian Christian suicide bombers? Where are the Christians even throwing stones? There are many religions and cultures represented in this small, cramped, tense country, all of whom could decide to recognise any kind of grievance against the others. Which ones strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up to kill a few Jews is a very significant detail.

If you had to guess, what will be the religion of the next person to hijack or blow up a commercial plane?

 

V-2, this is something you won't read in a Sam Harris book but you should take on board in the privacy of your thoughts (as I know you have this shtick going on here) but Palestinian Christians are leaving the Occupied Territories in droves and are being allowed to leave. Palestinian Christians represent less than 1 per cent of the population in the Occupied Territories. They don't need to blow themselves up because they can readily just pack up and go without much fuss from the militias and they have access to resources which facilitate that through various organisations. This is not the case for the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are stuck there and are often subjected to intimidation and threats if there is talk of leaving by the militias. In fact not all of the suicide bombers in the Occupied Territories were necessarily willing. Many are coerced.

There are Christian suicide bombers. Hezbollah has produced quite a few. This is documented in Pape's study.

I'm sorry you have been brainwashed by Sam Harris. I've read his stuff and he is an excellent writer but he is an armchair warrior (like Richard Dawkins) and has no clue really how stuff happens in the real world. Neither do you. Goodnight.

edit: BTW, the Palestinian "terrorist" who pioneered airliner hijacking and kidnapping was a Christian.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/film/201...nce-israeli-hunger-games-mockingjay-2-posters

 

Slam dunk Hoth!

 

Yeah I read that earlier today. I suppose there's silliness to be found in all religions of course (and believe me that's me putting it very mildly) but the delightfully humorous meme is more of a reference to Jews in North America who actually greatly outnumber Jews in Israel.

Also I personally can't stand the Hunger Games but that's neither here nor there.

Edit:

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess it won't be an atheist.

 

LostOnHoth
Fair enough (and very good post), but as I said before you can point to statistical outliers all day without changing anything about the nature of the problem.

 

More broadly, the Hasmonean dynasty--or some of its monarchs, anyway--practiced forced conversions of its subjects to Judaism. These issues of intolerance are not unique to certain religions, or even to religion at all. They are a commonality among all social movements, and emerge with human actors in the right historical moment. I've always thought this is sort of a silly way of measuring the content or quality of ideas.

 

Both of those are weird, since the Torah specifically excludes external conversion -- only internal conversion (i.e. making less religious Jews more religious), which is why you have the Mitzvah Mobiles, those Hasids who ask passers-by if they are Jewish. It's to get non-religious Jews to be more Orthodox.

As well, I don't think there's a prohibition of an unmarried woman to display her hair in Torah; only married women. The rest of the outfit is "immodest" but Jewish history is rife with woman combatants, including modern era. So, yeah, still doesn't make sense...

 

Well, but again, we can point out how examples of bigotry or intolerance that we see in other religions are consistent with their traditions, too. My point was not to criticize Jews at all. It was simply to point out how common these problems are.

 

Oh, no, I wasn't commenting on you or your post other than to comment how those two things were incongruous to me (I hadn't heard them before). When, for instance, Christians kill abortion doctors they are violating a commandment -- but doing so to prevent violation of commandments. So it's incongruous in a different way than the above ones which... have no equivalent in the religion. So not even sure what they are trying to prevent. The Hunger Games one in particular is more Christian than Jewish so it's super odd!

 

That was pretty on point, except for the weird comment about slavery. Sure, many slavers used Old Testament comments about slavery to justify still owning slaves. But it's not like they enslaved people because they thought it was what their religion wanted. They did it for economic reasons and made excuses later (and the Africans who did the initial enslavement and sale were similarly motivated).

On the flipside, the majority of influential abolitionists were motivated by religion. And for that matter, so were many civil rights leaders for decades to come.

My point is, we had slavery in human history across religions and cultures. It's just an evil thing that evolved out of a desire for free labor in settled society. It would have and did happen without religion. But it may not have ended when it did if not for religion. And there continue to be many religious organizations that fight against modern slavery.

Just saying, that particular comment seemed out of place in the video.

 

When did slavery happen without religion? Seems like an odd claim to make...

 

Well it's impossible to prove that every single slave owner throughout the entirety of human history belonged to a religion. And I really doubt that was the case anyways.

 

I don't think it's odd at all that someone might own slaves, but not be religious.

 

Sorry, but if we're speaking about the southern United States example, slaveholders were religious (mostly Baptist) and used theology to justify their peculiar institution. I don't at all think that religion causes slavery or whatever nonsense. The truth is, however, that religion and slavery coexisted for millennia and aside from fringe movements such as the Quakers, followers of Abrahamic faiths overwhelmingly did not have objections until the 18th and 19th centuries. And I think non-religious factors had at least as much to do with the change in thought as religious factors did-- most importantly evolving secular humanist/"Enlightenment" sensibilities and the fact that slavery as practiced by the countries who participated in the Atlantic trade was a particularly inhumane example in history.

 

Wasn't there also just a racist view that black people were basically just inferior and practically retarded, such that slavery was a kindness to them because at least they were fed and sheltered and if left to their own devices (that is freed) they would just fumble around and fall down wells and stuff?

 

Yes. Southern planters were invited as guest lecturers at university to share their first-hand expertise with the inferiority of blacks. The science of the day absolutely supported slavery. That's the point I think sj was making, in part. The antebellum South was a society built entirely around slavery. Everything about the society therefore supported that fact, especially major institutions of any importance at all. No alternative was tolerated. A family so powerful that the last generation had been a State Supreme Court Justice and Speaker of the State Assembly was firebombed and driven out of the South on threat of death for daring to consider abolitionism. Literal bills of attainder were passed against others, even though such things are explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. In such a setting, its pointless to note that one or another part of the culture "supported slavery." It's a bit like trying to blame a single part of present day North Korean culture for supporting the Kim family.

 

I read his assertion as saying that slavery had never existed outside of religious groups throughout all of history. Yes, you're right about the Southern United States slave trade, but I thought the question was being posed in a much broader sense, ie. "When did slavery exist without religion?"