Organized Religion Discussion Thread

[Twin-Skies]

From an argumentative standpoint, you're making the mistake of lumping all Muslims into the terrorist stereotype, which is exactly what makes so many hate America. Muslims make up 1/5 of the world's population. You seem to be arguing that 1/5 of the global population are closet terrorists. I know you're not doing it on purpose and it should seem obvious to people, but to most, it won't. This distinction is important.

What the cartoonist woman did just added up to the daily bias and misconceptions Muslims get about their faith. Even the most moderate people have their boiling points, and actions like this do nothing to help it. If anything, it only preaches to the crowd and gives fuel to actual terrorists to initiate the less educated into their brand of Islam. I get your line of reasoning, I see it repeated by mass media pundits on a daily basis and to date, no one's ever given a clear plan towards how to actually resolve this issue with the Muslim world.

My mistake then. I should have specified that criticism is targetted at fundamentalists. Moving on, however, I do believe that moderates should speak up a lot more, and be more vocal as well that these death threats are not something they would endorse themselves, if not outright denounce them. Their silence in this incident only aggravates the notion that they condone the threats.

Not that I support flaming anti-Islamists either. I don't like Islam, but I do believe a person has a right to their religion. At least until the point that they use it as an excuse to be an asshole, or to hurt people.

On free speech, try to see it as a normative structure, separate from very human and real world considerations. All ideas seem noble at first but turn ugly when put into practice. It's quite easy for someone sitting behind a keyboard to argue on the importance of the principle of free speech, but in practice it's extremely difficult to draw workable guidelines without offending anyone because occasionally, there are idiots like this woman that abuse the principle and then hide behind the law as if she did nothing wrong. To put it in a more extreme context; the Muslims who called for her death could argue in court that they were simply exercising their right to free speech as well, at least until someone actually kills her.

The reality is that several people of criticism against Islam have been attacked and threatened, much like the woman in question. Their only crime being that they decided to speak their mind about the religion. So if these fundies do try to justify their case by invoking their right to free speech, they're going to be fighting an uphill battle in light of their group's track record. Now let me ask you - did the woman directly, threaten anybody?

I will say this - the real cowards here are the dumbfucks who resort to death threats against people they don't agree with.

You need to see the bigger picture and realize that some people will never be able to think the same as you, and make considerations for that. Intellectual criticism/Logically destroying their arguments might make you satisfied for a little while but it won't change the way they think. It's simply not the best way to engage others.

And what is? Shutting up and letting them invoke the "blasphemy" card whenever anybody even hints at criticism against their faith?

The other reality is that somewhere along the way, whatever one says will offend somebody. And that's perfectly fine. So is voicing out your disagreement over it. Threatening people with death just because you don't like them should never be a justifiable reply.

And in the same way, non-Muslims should just realize that unless they fully understand it, they should just shut the fuck up.

One of my favorite bloggers put it better than I can. Jen Mcreight:

A religion that reacts in such a way does not deserve respect or politeness. People have every right to believe whatever nonsense they want, but they do not have the right to force those beliefs on others. Muslims should not expect everyone to refrain from drawing Mohammed just because they don't want to. Hindus should not expect everyone to stop eating beef. Jews should not expect people to stop working on the sabbath. Catholics should not expect people to treat their crackers like they're the body of Jesus.

Now, I don't go out looking to start confrontations, so I'm polite to an extent. If my Jewish friend is coming over for dinner, I'll take their dietary needs into consideration. But the second Jews start threatening and murdering human beings for eating pork, I will not blink an eye before organizing a national Bacon Week.

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In other news...

Pope Benedict XVI goes to war with 'atheist extremism'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep...-extremism

Benedict was more explicit in his condemnation of militant atheism, noting that Britain had fought the atheistic evil embodied by Adolf Hitler.

"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live," he said.

His pronouncements brought immediate condemnation from humanists and secularists, and some other religious groups. Terry Sanderson, the president of the National Secular Society, said the pope had hardly waited to get off the plane before attacking secularism.

History FAIL *facepalm*

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows . For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

–Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord

Mein Kampf, page 60.