http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading
In short, yes. I disagree with you. I don't care if you think Muslims are thin skinned or not, we offend them just the same as we offend whichever God you happen to subscribe to. There is no difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_pleading
In short, yes. I disagree with you. I don't care if you think Muslims are thin skinned or not, we offend them just the same as we offend whichever God you happen to subscribe to. There is no difference.
No, they are not. Atheism precedes any current ideology, it can be actually traced back to ancient Greece. Was Diagoras a socialist? There are liberal Atheists, conservative Atheists and socialist Atheists. Bertrand Russel was an atheist, Ayn Rand was an atheist and please tell me that Ayn Rand was a socialist. Actually, atheists being usually opposed to the infringement of rights by the state, are more likely especially in the US to be liberals and not socialists.
Please don't shoot in an internet forum.
Based on research studies that you will present in your reply. I mean, you seem to have a deep understanding of the issue so data are forthcoming. I guess.
Yes. You have no idea what you are talking about. Dawkins (which I dislike for other reasons) wrote in the afterword of a book named "Dangerous Ideas":
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
So for you, evoking the possibility to start a discussion on a topic, means "support"
It's called pre-natal control. Technocrats, like doctor,s affect the decision of proceeding with childbirth everywhere already.
And what on earth China has to do with that? The one child policy (which affects around 35% of Chinese population since there are numerous exceptions) has nothing to do with Eugenics. It's not "technocrats", it's politicians who decided that.
Did you just equated the attribution of meaning to a political ideology with attribution of meaning in rape?
I have no issue with equating blind faith to an ideology, religious or not, with a cult. Religion after all is another ideology. The difference is that a theory based on a non religious ideology can be demonstrated as false, while a theory based on a religious ideology will always fall back to magical and mystical explanations as last defense.
That of course is true in the case of your ideology. However confused and inconsequential it may appear through your posts, it is also a cult. A religious cult I might add, since in all these posts you have failed to offer any evidence to support your claims.
Last edited by Darth Red; January 14, 2013 at 12:11 PM. Reason: continuity
Here. Let me remind you of your argument.
And yet you know of one in the Netherlands who was killed? So yes. We do dare "attack" (criticize) other religions just like we "attack" (criticize) your religion. Your victim complex doesn't alter reality.
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don’t know anything about. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing.
- Richard Feynman's words. My atheism.
So they've become arboreal barbarians. Doesn't change the fact that the religion they follow was written by their desert ancestors and follows desert standards.
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don’t know anything about. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing.
- Richard Feynman's words. My atheism.
Most of the Sharia are actually customs and laws of the arabian tribes.
Islam itself is actually Christianity converted to suit the mentality and customs of arabs, just as christianity is a conversion of judaism for wider audience. Core belief is the same in all of these.
I do know very little about Arab culture, but I also don't really get your question. What outside influences? The Quran was thought up by an illiterate man during his stay in a cave, who somehow managed to dupe his friends into writing it down for him and selling it as gospel. Either that or they were all in on this hoax and that it would be funny. As for Islam as it grew over the decades and centuries that followed, I can't say. What I do know is that a religion can be no more than the sum of its followers, and in Islam's case its followers were desert barbarians.
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don’t know anything about. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing.
- Richard Feynman's words. My atheism.
This is not entirely accurate. Shari'a law came from the Whaddist [sic] movement that started in Egypt. They were expelled from Egypt, but found a home in Arabia where the message resonated with the tribes.
BTW I actually taught scripture in a Christian school and later taught comparative religions as part of a World Cultures course. I am not an expert, but I am knowledgeable on the religions of the world.
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Because 95% of the religionists I get into internet fights with about religion are Christians. This fact may in turn be connected to the fact that 95% of the religionists in the English speaking world (i.e. people I can actually have an argument with on a level playing field) are Christians.95% of atheistic attacks are against christianity.Why?
Dominion of Dust. A city of sand. Built your world of nothing. So how long did it stand?
A 100 years? Now wasn't it grand? Built your world of nothing. How long did it stand?
What did you think would happen? When did you think it would all fall down?
Domain of dust in a land of sand. Did yourself right, so let's feel grand.
Domain of dust in a land of sand. Now there's nowhere left to stand.
Well you take a look at the pork deal. "No eating the pigs" is definitely a part of the Arabic culture. It's thought that the law came about when water was becoming scarce (being in a desert and all.) I don't know if you know much about raising pigs, but they require an absurd amount of water.
So yeah, a lot of the laws are dependent on the geography. Though I'm sure you're right, I wouldn't put stealing from other cultures past any religion.
Answer to OP:
Because Christians turn the other cheek so it's the easiest target.
If you attack Islam in the same agressive fashion you target Christianism, you might get beaten up by hordes of angry muslims, or worse.
If you attack Judaism in the same agressive fashion you target Christianism, you might be labelled as a dangerous anti-semite. (even if most of Old Testament material is common to both Christianism and Judaism, so by critizing one means you critize the other, but better to avoid being labelled as anti semite just in case, so just mention Christianism. Also Judaism is the parent of both Christianism and Islam)
So they choose the easiest and friendlist and most forgiving target: Christianism
Last edited by fkizz; January 15, 2013 at 07:46 PM.
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
-George Orwell
Oh I see now…
I agree with you about Islam by the way. That stereotype seems to be largely based on modern forms of fundamentalist Islam which are reactionary invented traditions. There was a time when Islam was quite progressive. Many Jews and Non-Chalcedonian Christians passively supported the Muslim conquests because of the greater degree of tolerance Islam offered them.
Well I am not an expert on Judaism in the great scheme of things, though the anthropology of religion is one of my professional specializations and I’ve done a great deal of graduate work in the Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible & Ancient Near Eastern Studies departments at UW. My old prof I quoted is Martin S. Jaffee, who is certainly one of the most knowledgeable secular scholars on historical Judaism. He’s published something like ten peer-reviewed books and forty articles on the topic.
I’m not trying to attempt to support any of my arguments with an appeal to authority, just pointing out why when I make a generalization about a historical trend within Judaism and support it with a bit of evidence and you counter by saying you “have ‘Jewish’ friends who would beg to differ”, well that makes me lose interest in the conversation. Two Jews, three opinions, so what?
The false dichotomy you presented (as I understand it) was that religious people need to take the Bible literally or are stuck with having to explain why they take only certain parts metaphorically, however there are other options for a lot of religious Jews. Why would Jews who don’t believe in a supernatural God have to explain the immoral actions of a fictional God presented in a story? Furthermore, the belief that God is inherently good is not a universal belief of Jews. You can even see this perspective in the Bible as I quoted earlier “All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know.” Lurianc Kabbalists believe God is the source of both good and evil, evil being the result of the universe (which is God) being out of balance.
If you read the traditional sources without a Christian lens, you’ll see this is often the case.Why does Torah present so many ideas about God? Because it was composed by different authors who preserved fifteen hundred years of oral tradition that expressed perspectives about the universe that changed over time. Our ancestors generally agreed that a mighty and impersonal Will governed the cosmos through intermediaries such as angels, messengers, and spirits. God acted on the universe and demanded unquestioned obedience so as not to disrupt natural forces. ~ Mordecai Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion
When you meet Jews with traditional theistic conceptions of God similar to the Christian view, you have to realize that is largely the result of Christian influence, especial on Modern Orthodoxy, though it was never a universal view and doesn’t accurately reflect the ancient beliefs as Kaplan describes, nor does it reflect the views of a huge percentage of modern Jews. Even those raised in that sort of tradition can still reject the idea that God is completely good.
What God Can Learn from Us: A Conversation with Jack BloomJust like God, we humans can be intolerant of imperfection (our own and others), judgmental, quick to anger when things don’t go our way, and prone to act abusively and destructively. In short, being modeled after God reflects both what is positive and negative about us. ~Rabbi Jack H Bloom
OK, I ignore your appeal
Two things;
Stating something is over- generalizing by citing an extreme exception doesn't make a statement false.
If you remove the stories, the inaccurate history, the insane rules, the incessant magic and magical creatures, and the pleading of the prophets, what is there left to call yourself a Jew?
I'll tell you; fragments of a philosophy, not a religion.
If you all you have is "stories" and there is not even an underpinning of morality or value being taught, then what is the point of the story?
Forgive me but this sounds a lot like other sects who claims that other sects are not following the true faith.
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What I've cited is neither extreme nor uncommon within modern Judaism. In fact it is your generalization that doesn’t fit any of the highly influential post-Enlightenment Jewish thinkers – Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Mordecai Kaplan, Solomon Formstecher, Leo Baeck, Franz Rosenzweig, Richard Rubenstein, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kushner, Roland B. Gittelsohn, Harold M. Schulweis, Alvin Reines, Erich Fromm. Read any of their work and see. Give or take a few percentage points, 78% of observant Jews are involved the denominations associated with these perspectives.
I don’t know, maybe your point holds if you think a sizable portion of Jews are extreme among religious people in general, but then I don’t know how you quantify extreme.
You realize no religion is static, most just pretend they are. There’s no need to throw out the stories or the traditions, why would you throw out the literature of a culture or anything else that’s not deemed harmful?
No, you also have ritual, identity, tradition, and community cohesiveness. From an anthropological perspective, philosophies don’t function as religions do, except for some political ideologies which come very close to being religions. By your definition Buddhism would be a philosophy.
The stories are foundational, as in they were the foundational literature of the community, the living tradition has just evolved over time finding new ways to use or understand the stories. Modern Jews are just aware of this, and so don’t pretend that they aren’t doing so. It helps that everyone knows the same stories.
Here’s an example of how they’re often used:
This may look like Strassfeld’s just making up a story, but it’s a midrash, an interpretive tradition that goes back to antiquity. It’s the same as Rabbi Akiva finding halachot in the crowns.Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
No, it’s just diversity of personal and/or community opinion. Judaism has been traditionally more concerned with actions than belief. I think only the Orthodox make strong claims to that effect, but the criticism would be more about “correct” practice than “true” faith.
Or maybe you were talking about what I said about Christian influence. Well, I was speaking from a historical perspective. Obviously whatever any Jews believe has become a Jewish belief, but the idea about a God who is completely good came into Jewish community through Christian and maybe Muslim influence, and there is historical evidence for that. It’s not really reflected in the early Jewish literature, at least not broadly. It’s certainly not how God is depicted in most of the Hebrew Bible, which becomes clear when you compare it to non-Biblical literature of the period.
Either way, for Jews who don’t believe in God as an existent being, it’s irrelevant. God is good for some Jews, because to them “he” is an ethical ideal (and, no they don’t think the God depicted in the Bible is an ethical ideal). Anyway, God as conceived of typically by Christians is not a dominant view among Jews.
No. We criticize everyone as has already been demonstrated in this thread. There are just more Christians, so it happens to them a lot more often. Also, I would ask everyone stop using words like "attack" and "target" in this thread. It's absurd. We're not launching drone strikes on cathedrals. We're just pointing out flaws in certain claims (or learning things that invalidate those claims).
And yet at the same time, what is wrong with attacking crappy arguments and crappy concepts. What does attack mean? To start work on with purpose and vigour? An expression of strong criticism? Attacking it is a good thing.
Is it really so hard to defend? Of course it is. Have the biggest go against Buddhism you can think of, really go to town onto Humanism and while you are at it take a knife to pacifism. Some philosophies aren't so defensive and easily sent to ground.