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I think vbnautilus is generally a pretty intelligent poster, but this stuff is absurd. He makes a bunch of vague generalizations and cites nothing as evidence or proof. If it just "makes sense" to you, you are naturally disposed to his line of thinking. Nothing he says (in what you've quoted here, anyway) has anything of substance to back it up. It's just: stuff he says.The 1+billion of Muslims around the world are localized in six regions: North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. They are citizens of corrupt oil dictatorships, corrupt totalitarian dictatorships and third world slave wage economies. They are almost universally poor and undereducated. That they are vulnerable to a poisoned version of their religion being shouted into their ears by Islamists who promise them a better life should be no surprise. That some of them are indeed converted to this perverted sect of their religion is not a valid reason to be "against Islam". Their religion is not the problem. The fact that they have no economic opportunity is their problem.

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The most interesting thing about the worlds largest beaver dam is that it was discovered via Google Earth and some guy trekked out there to see it IRL and was the first person to ever set foot in that

Beware of overcharging someone. Thats the #1 lesson learned from the Zimmerman case. He was guilty of avoidable behavior that ultimately culminated in a fatality- manslaughter- but he was not guilty

You should've tried to get on the jury and convince the rest that he was not guilty.

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But the point is that Islam isn't bad when it's perverted, it's bad when it's followed completely.
When it's "followed completely", that's Islamism, which is not mainstream Islam.
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In a theocratic dictatorship, how do you separate the two?
By reducing the world's dependence on oil, thus crippling the oiligarchs and forcing actual economic reform and by allowing them to practice their religion in peace aka not supporting israel totally and blindly.
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When it's "followed completely", that's Islamism, which is not mainstream Islam.
Well then, um, I'm not sure I know what we're talking about anymore. Where does Sharia law fit in here?Also, since I'm quoting vb liberally here, I feel like I should say that these posts do not constitute the totality of his argument and it's also possible that I'm misconstruing them as they apply here. But this has been discussed in great length in the religion forum.
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Well then, um, I'm not sure I know what we're talking about anymore. Where does Sharia law fit in here?
Modernists and fundamentalists have wildly different ideas of how Sharia is to be interpreted.
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IS THE OLD TESTAMENT NOT PART OF THE FUCKING BIBLE?IT DOESN'T GET A FREE FUCKING PASS IF IT'S PART OF YOUR BOOKThis is PRECISELY the point.If I were an extremist Christian, I could interpret those passages literally and try to convince people how they ought to live TODAY, just like Islamists do with the Koran. If I were to do that in the poorest areas of the rural southern U.S., I'd probably have a lot of success (see Falwell, Jerry and Robertson, Pat). That wouldn't NECESSARILY mean that all Christians were evil, murderous psychopaths.
Oh, mk.I'm late to the party, so I won't rehash. Carry on.
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So is there a breakdown of modernist Muslims vs fundamentalist?
I'm not a theology expert or anything, but I believe the delineations are something like:Islamist: strict total islamConservative: total islam but part of community, non-violent etcModerate: mainstream, 'modern' interpretationLiberal: most modern interpretation, not all, 'womensrightslol' etc
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what vb wrote sounds good at face, but I don't know anything about islam, and I don't really care to know anything about it. you'll never see me expressing a strong opinion on the topic for that reason.mk's pretty much right IMO, find an economical way to stop chugging oil and a good portion of the world's problems go away. sadly, this is a controversial opinion in this country for some reason.

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A few more semi-random thoughts on the issue.-It's not a matter of singling out one religion, but focusing on the unacceptable abuses that any belief system, religious or otherwise, might commit. Islam tends to have more abuses than most popular belief systems. -Obviously much of the bible is not morally superior to the Koran, but there are two caveats. As VB said, the New Testament gives Christians an excuse to ignore the Old Testament. Also, the separation of church/state that is much more accepted in Christianity allows for compartmentalization that limits the damage from extreme religious beliefs. -You can use whatever excuse you want, but the fact remains that majority Christian nations tend to treat nonbelievers significantly better than majority Muslim nations. -A decent part of this might be that many of the Muslim nations are based on extractive or poor economies which tend to be bad in various ways(google the curse of oil). But since the prospects of fixing this problem any time soon seem to be pretty slim, then Islam is going to have to either change its ideological focus to help alleviate these problems or get blamed for exacerbating the problem. -Just because some Christians do bad things does not excuse Muslims. The relevant distinction is the baseline rate at which current members of an ideology do bad things. Muslims score pretty poorly on that measure. -I think you can make useful distinctions between religions. I would argue that it is much harder to pervert Buddhism than Islam.-"Pin the tail on Hitler" might be a fun parlor game, but I think it is far enough in the past that we should focus on what ideological groups are doing today. -This isn't about freedom of religion. I think Muslims should be allowed to worship as they like, barring some extremes. It's their oppression/crimes that I am opposed to. Also, there are of course many things that people are free to do that tend to be negative. You can be completely opposed to something but still give other people the freedom to do it. -Parsing verses is a rather pointless game. What matters most is how they currently tend to be interpreted. -When talking about global belief systems everything is going to be general to a degree. But that doesn't mean valid distinctions can't be made. You pretty much aren't allowed to scientifically study the issue, but at first glance there do seem to be negative patterns of behavior across Muslim societies that go above what you would expect from poor/unequal societies. -It's true that there are modernists in Islam. However, as I've already stated, Islam seems to be unusually hostile to a modernist interpretation. So unless the modernists start to make a lot more progress then the "modernism will win out" argument is not very persuasive.

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I mean if you really want to do this and get absolutely ****ing crushed by me for the billionth time, be my guest.Hosea 13:16: Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.1 Samuel 15:3,8: Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.' " … He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.Psalm 137: Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.Deuteronomy 2:32-34: Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, unto battle at Jahaz. And Jehovah our God delivered him up before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones; we left none remaining.Now, compare this to the verse that is constantly cited by the Koran quoters, the verse which says "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you," and was using "infidels" to refer directly to the Meccan aristocracy which was at full-out war with Muslims at the time. That verse is immediately followed by "If any of the unbelievers asks you for sanctuary, then take them into your houses so that they might hear the word of God and then let them go on their way."Would you like more?
Yes please.Feel free to show examples of these 'principles' being applied to humans in the last 4,000 years.
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It might be a little weird since it's me, but I might actually be able to help clarify some things here.-vb and I would both say that religons are bad, but I don't believe the term evil is necessary in this regard. Anyone can be evil. And though religons can have some good, they are notnecessary for people to be good and probably have more detriment than positives in this day and age.-We would be obviously in favor of church and state and support their rights to think as they please, christian, islam or whatever woo woo. You know build churches or mosques. But they should have to follow our laws like any other and recieve no priveledges because of that religon.-Moderates in either religon always claim that they aren't the extremists, but by supporting the religon itself, by default they are enablers and apologists for the cause of the extemists.

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It might be a little weird since it's me, but I might actually be able to help clarify some things here.-vb and I would both say that religons are bad, but I don't believe the term evil is necessary in this regard. Anyone can be evil. And though religons can have some good, they are notnecessary for people to be good and probably have more detriment than positives in this day and age.-We would be obviously in favor of church and state and support their rights to think as they please, christian, islam or whatever woo woo. You know build churches or mosques. But they should have to follow our laws like any other and recieve no priveledges because of that religon.-Moderates in either religon always claim that they aren't the extremists, but by supporting the religon itself, by default they are enablers and apologists for the cause of the extemists.
Again, not sure that the definition of the words being used match the ones the rest of the world uses...
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all of what vbnaut has posted wrt to this topic is hateful, ignorant bullshit
mk, i dont think you have any idea what you're talking about here. vb is absolutely correct. and he is without a doubt not hateful or ignorant. quite the opposite in fact.
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I'm not a theology expert or anything, but I believe the delineations are something like:Islamist: strict total islamConservative: total islam but part of community, non-violent etcModerate: mainstream, 'modern' interpretationLiberal: most modern interpretation, not all, 'womensrightslol' etc
Nobody has to invent terms like gardenist to differentiate the ordinary gardeners from the extremist gardeners, because there's no problem with extremist gardeners.
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mk's pretty much right IMO, find an economical way to stop chugging oil and a good portion of the world's problems go away. sadly, this is a controversial opinion in this country for some reason.
I don't think anyone in this thread disagrees with that small part of what mk was saying.
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mk's pretty much right IMO, find an economical way to stop chugging oil and a good portion of the world's problems go away. sadly, this is a controversial opinion in this country for some reason.
Who in this country says that we don't need to decrease dependence on foreign oil?
do you own a tribute penny?
Heh.
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Who in this country says that we don't need to decrease dependence on foreign oil?
some people don't understand the concept of a fungible good, and so they think this is a debate about drilling at home vs drilling abroad.
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