Philosophical and Moral Question of the day

[hidari]

Religion is harmless.... That is the understatement of the last 3000 years...Too many dead people to count..... Fahrenheit 451 for all religious books? intriguing question...

[happy_terd]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

oh see, I completely disagree. I think organized religion can be, is, and has been one of the most destructive forces on the planet

I think if this was a perfect world where there was no so thing as religion the same people would be controlling and killing the same people.

--------

I have always believed that religion isnt to blame. The regular guy doesnt care at all about attacking anyone or killing anyone just based off of what he or she reads. I do not believe any bible incites a riot or a call to arms. It is something that is manipulated and twisted by certain leaders to get the regular guy to fight for them.

Every time religion was organized to a certain degree the common man was forced to accept it. The crusades, the witch trials, modern day terrorists are not the common guy with the bible in hand. It is the little guy forced into something. There is no religion there.

[DMcCunney]

I live in New York City. I was here during 9/11 when hijacked airliners took down the World Trade Center Towers. I remember the clouds of toxic smoke in the sky. I remember roads being cleared for emergency traffic, and National Guard in full kit with M16s patrolling the streets. I remember the hospital emergency rooms being cleared for a flood of casualties that didn't occur because everyone either got out with minor injuries or didn't get out at all. I remember masses of flowers left at fire stations whose firemen responded to the attack and didn't return. I remember every telephone kiosk turning into an impromptu shrine, with votive candles and posters pleading for information on the missing. The annual ceremony of the reading of the victim's names is taking place as I write.

I wish it were as simple an issue as many would have it.

I don't see the underlying conflict as religious. I see it as cultural. The religion you espouse may specify what you believe. The culture in which you are raised determines how you express it. You can find fanaticism and a willingness to die for the cause in almost any religion, if the believers are raised in a culture that expresses things that way. Consider what Islam might look like if Mohamed had been a Teuton in Germany instead of a Arab in the Mediterranean. Do you suppose it would look anything like it does now? I don't. The underlying cultures are very different. The Arabs might have invented "an eye for an eye". The Teutons were less motivated by spite.

The late psychiatrist Eric Berne did an interesting analysis which concluded that the real motivation of a terrorist was causing terror. The cause in which they labored provided the means for causing terror and a justification the terrorist could use to tell himself it was okay. Berne suggested that a terrorist could turned to work for the other side with appropriate psychiatric supervision: just give them the ability to create bigger bombs and more terror, with a plausible justification for why they are doing the Right Thing, and you've got your man.

The current tempest in NYC over the placement of a new mosque near the Ground Zero site is simply an aftershock, and we'll see more of them.

Burning a Koran might make you feel better, but it's pointless in addressing the underlying issues. It might be better to actually read that Koran, to attempt to understand the mindset of the believers who can do things like blow themselves up to make a statement. Until you can understand the motives and feelings of such folks, you can't realistically hope to counter them.
______
Dennis

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by nohmi2

Although, upon reflection I cannot see the pastor sending in suicide bombers into public areas to cause mayhem.

There are at least a couple of reasons for that. One being that Christianity happens to have a strong traditional taboo against suicide, though no proscription against it is explicitly spelled out in the bible.

Another is that Christianity is a zombie religion. No, not because they worship a guy who rose from the dead-- the religion itself. A very few centuries back, Christianity wasn't much less intense than Islam is today-- everyone was expected to attend church regularly or be shunned or worse. Punishments for breaking religious rules or being suspected of not being a Christian were severe, up to and including torture and death. Most people really, really believed the religion.

Today, people as a whole in the West are much "richer" and better educated than the people of a few centuries ago, and have less need for a security blanket against the abject misery that is no longer a part of daily life. Yes, there are still pockets of people really fervent about their Christianity, but they are outliers, looked at strangely by even the bulk of people who identify themselves as Christian. For most of the world, most of Christendom is a social club where you associate with good friends and play at comforting rituals, and when they step outside their church, they act and are mostly indistinguishable from the secular world. The fire-and-brimstone passion and certainty of the religion is dead except for a few pockets of embers, mostly in poor third-world countries and the United States.

Islam, though, still has much fire left in it, and is widespread in parts of the world where a large percentage of the population is little better off educationally or financially than a medieval European peasant. They don't have a strong education, they don't have physical comfort-- they have a strength of belief that usually can come only from a combination of being miserable and pig-ignorant.

You want to see what living Christianity was like for over a thousand years? Look at Islam today. The Christianity of today is a shuffling corpse. And given time to catch up to the Western world (decades, centuries?) serious Islam will fade away just as serious Christianity has mostly faded away.

(On a slightly different focus, nice article here.)

[WT Sharpe]

Jon Stewart, Weekend at Burnies:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/we...end-at-burnies

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

There are at least a couple of reasons for that. One being that Christianity happens to have a strong traditional taboo against suicide, though no proscription against it is explicitly spelled out in the bible.

Another is that Christianity is a zombie religion. No, not because they worship a guy who rose from the dead-- the religion itself. A very few centuries back, Christianity wasn't much less intense than Islam is today-- everyone was expected to attend church regularly or be shunned or worse. Punishments for breaking religious rules or being suspected of not being a Christian were severe, up to and including torture and death. Most people really, really believed the religion.

Today, people as a whole in the West are much "richer" and better educated than the people of a few centuries ago, and have less need for a security blanket against the abject misery that is no longer a part of daily life. Yes, there are still pockets of people really fervent about their Christianity, but they are outliers, looked at strangely by even the bulk of people who identify themselves as Christian. For most of the world, most of Christendom is a social club where you associate with good friends and play at comforting rituals, and when they step outside their church, they act and are mostly indistinguishable from the secular world. The fire-and-brimstone passion and certainty of the religion is dead except for a few pockets of embers, mostly in poor third-world countries and the United States.

Islam, though, still has much fire left in it, and is widespread in parts of the world where a large percentage of the population is little better off educationally or financially than a medieval European peasant. They don't have a strong education, they don't have physical comfort-- they have a strength of belief that usually can come only from a combination of being miserable and pig-ignorant.

You want to see what living Christianity was like for over a thousand years? Look at Islam today. The Christianity of today is a shuffling corpse. And given time to catch up to the Western world (decades, centuries?) serious Islam will fade away just as serious Christianity has mostly faded away.

(On a slightly different focus, nice article here.)

I have to agree. If present day Muslims are on the whole more dangerous than present day Christians, it's because they still believe their religion, and still take their holy book literally. There's much in the Bible that if taken literally would be just cause to be locked away.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I think you embody the negativity that too many people in this country express and causes so many problems. this is a matter of free speech regardless how repugnant it is.

Flag Burning is legal in this country and it makes me crazy that the flag can be disrespected so. but it is our RIGHT as citizens of this country to have these freedoms to make these statements. I wore the uniform for many years to allow idiots like this out of control pastor to perform a truly stupid action. 2 of my exes, my son, my niece, my brother in law and my son in law also either are actively wearing the uniform or have worn the uniform to give idiots like this pastor and self righteous scardey cats like you the right to do it and be safe in your actions.

go ahead and delte your Koran. walk around and feel smug about it. have you even read it?

I think this is a foolish, stupid, ill-informed, dangerous act. when any form of book burnings begin and are tolerated, society quickly begins to break down.

Well said. As a veteran, one of the only things I find more offensive than someone burning the flag is for someone else to say, "There out to be a law." Freedom means nothing if it doesn't include freedom to dissent from the status quo. I'm reminded what Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address : "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

[Fat Abe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I live in New York City. I was here during 9/11 when hijacked airliners took down the World Trade Center Towers.
<snip>

I don't see the underlying conflict as religious. I see it as cultural.
______
Dennis

Ditto on where was I during 9/11. Nine years later we still don't have real answers. It's starting to look more like an act of economic terrorism and manipulation. You can put me in the tin-foil hat camp if you like, but religion and culture are a smokescreen. Just google Project Hammer, and skip the game references. This is no game.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

You can put me in the tin-foil hat camp if you like, but religion and culture are a smokescreen. Just google Project Hammer, and skip the game references. This is no game.

Yeah, I'll be putting you in the tin-foil hat camp. In fact, I'll put anyone who believes that the US government was behind 9/11 in the holocaust denier camp-- something openly offensive.

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Ditto on where was I during 9/11. Nine years later we still don't have real answers. It's starting to look more like an act of economic terrorism and manipulation. You can put me in the tin-foil hat camp if you like, but religion and culture are a smokescreen. Just google Project Hammer, and skip the game references. This is no game.

I wasn't in New York, but like thousands, if not millions of people around the world, I sat and cried in front of the TV.

Methinks that I also belong in the tin-foil hat brigade.

Follow the money.

Cheers

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Ditto on where was I during 9/11. Nine years later we still don't have real answers. It's starting to look more like an act of economic terrorism and manipulation. You can put me in the tin-foil hat camp if you like, but religion and culture are a smokescreen. Just google Project Hammer, and skip the game references. This is no game.

Originally Posted by nohmi2

I wasn't in New York, but like thousands, if not millions of people around the world, I sat and cried in front of the TV.

Methinks that I also belong in the tin-foil hat brigade.

Follow the money.

Cheers

good freaking grief. my best friend who was about as high up as you can get in the Intel World was IN the Pentagon that day.

[Druid_Elf]

DMcCunney
Burning a Koran might make you feel better, but it's pointless in addressing the underlying issues. It might be better to actually read that Koran, to attempt to understand the mindset of the believers who can do things like blow themselves up to make a statement. Until you can understand the motives and feelings of such folks, you can't realistically hope to counter them.

You are absolutely right. More people should read the koran instead of them being read too. Fact is that many people in those countries can't read the arab language, and it are the imams that tell their version of the koran which is the underlying problem (anyone sees the reference to cristianity in the dark ages )
I've actually read it, out of curiosity and in a translated version, but many things which are in their are not practiced correct. The head veils for one, you can't find one damn reference to it. It states that a woman should not draw the attention of men.. In the western world you draw attention by wearing that.
Smoking is something that they can't do as it intoxicates the brain (nicotine does that for you), yet they all smoke.

Burning a book should be prohibited as it has happened before in history and many great works got lost. And think of the poor trees that got chopped down for your pages

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

good freaking grief. my best friend who was about as high up as you can get in the Intel World was IN the Pentagon that day.

Surely the families of those who died on that dreadful day are entitled to disclosure. The families of the firemen who went even beyond bravery, climbing those steps and knowing that they may not make it down. No matter what you believe, it's completely irrelevant to what they may believe. Let them have peace of mind knowing that every avenue was followed, because there might be some doubt.

KK Nice picture.....recent?

[ellimak]

Originally Posted by happy_terd

I think if this was a perfect world where there was no so thing as religion the same people would be controlling and killing the same people.

--------

I have always believed that religion isnt to blame. The regular guy doesnt care at all about attacking anyone or killing anyone just based off of what he or she reads. I do not believe any bible incites a riot or a call to arms. It is something that is manipulated and twisted by certain leaders to get the regular guy to fight for them.

Every time religion was organized to a certain degree the common man was forced to accept it. The crusades, the witch trials, modern day terrorists are not the common guy with the bible in hand. It is the little guy forced into something. There is no religion there.

Exactly. In any conflict where religion gets the blame, there's always at least one other real cause. Usually, the ugly face behind any conflict (involving religion or not) is a desire for power or money, which is of course the means by which one acquires power. When religion gets dragged into it, it is manipulated and twisted beyond all recognition. I mean, really, when 0.001% of a religious population acts out, can you really blame the other 99.999% too? It just doesn't make any sense.

As an aside, we really need to reconstruct the way we think about religious extremism. That term is thrown around so frequently and with such carelessness that it has become meaningless. I love the way Dr. King talked about extremism in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

Was not Jesus an extremist for love -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist -- "Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Dorothy Day was a religious extremist. Gandhi was a religious extremist. Osama bin Laden is just an asshole.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by nohmi2

Surely the families of those who died on that dreadful day are entitled to disclosure. The families of the firemen who went even beyond bravery, climbing those steps and knowing that they may not make it down. No matter what you believe, it's completely irrelevant to what they may believe. Let them have peace of mind knowing that every avenue was followed, because there might be some doubt.

I think that the government should pursue the avenue that the attacks were masterminded by Al-Katie-- the rotund, jovial weatherman and his pixie-like co-conspirator engineered their careers on The Today Show purely as a means to have intimate access to Manhattan.

What? It is 100% as likely as your theory!