Post by Athans on Nov 10, 2014 21:20:28 GMT -6
Thank you for all of the replies and the videos. I hope you continue to read and respond. I will address your responses on my new forum. I am trying to create a forum about theism and atheism. I would love for you to be part of it if you enjoy debating and discussing these topics.
As far as the women in the pictures in the UAE…Are some of them tourists? I am sure they are. I am not sure if it shows it in all of those pictures but other pictures I have show women with either their hair covered or their entire body covered. In one of the pictures I have there is a family, the mother is covered, the daughter is wearing a two piece. Walking around at the malls there you see much diversity. There are women walking around is casual “Western” clothing as well as women that are totally covered. Either way there are not police sitting there policing the situation. Do they have to be more open and secular because of their tourist market? Of course, but a that shows that a Muslim country actively choose to adapt secular policies. It is also true that some places, such as Abu Dhabi are more conservative than Dubai, but even walking around there, they are very diverse. Here is a picture of some women in the UAE Air Force...
Once again very diverse.
You want to point to their judicial system and point out that it has aspects of religion or is based on religion. This leads to the single biggest point I try to make to people...Is it culture or religion.
You may answer it is religion because it says "Islam" or other things related to Islam. But let me ask you these two questions...
1. Why are there different branches of Islam?
2. What were their customs before Islam?
Why are their different branches of Islam, or any religion for that matter? It is quite simple...it is because of culture. People disagreed on things due to their culture or actively put things from their culture into religion. The Sunni-Shia is primarily a cultural battle. If you skim my blog here, I explain this...
stern2552.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/an-easy-way-to-understand-conflict-in-the-middle-east-and-iraq/
If religion is the driving force, why is there not only one word of God? Because people do not agree. They also added pagan beliefs into religions like Christianity. Christmas, Easter, and other holidays were pagan holidays that were included because it was easier to get populations to convert it they could keep their same traditions. You assume that because someone utters the word "God" religion is responsible. That leads to the second question...
What were the customs in that area of the world before Islam? I do not expect the average person to know this, because this is my field of study. I studied history of the Ancient Near East/Middle East (in the history major) and Ancient Near Eastern religions and the Abrahamic Religions, with a Jewish Studies minor (in my religious studies major.) This is my wheel-house and also a major reason I am a non-believer.
When I was starting my major I thought it made the most sense to start from the "beginning," so I started with Judaism, since both Christianity and Islam came out of it. From there I drifted over into Indo-European religions, which include the Greek and Roman religions, as well as Zoroastrianism (found in Ancient Iran or Persia.) I quickly knew that all of the things the Abrahamic religions claimed were false. If one studies Judaism, or more importantly the religions of the area and the people that predated it, one will find that nothing in Judaism is new or original. It is all the same stuff that was believed and practiced for thousands of years predating it, some of it word for word. When one compares Islam to Judaism and Christianity, Islam more closely resembles Judaism. They have the same laws and traditions, and also share a similar part of the world. This does not come as a surprise for two reasons...
First, both Hebrew and the Israelites, along with Arabic and Arabs, are Semitic peoples. They share a common language family and tradition, one that originated in Africa. This is the reason the Hebrew Bible and the Quran are very similar, they come out of the same culture. The late Hebrew Bible, from Isaiah on, has influence from Zoroastrianism, which was Indo-European. Christianity comes out of that tradition, as well as the Greek and Roman religions, which were also Indo-European. This leads to the big question...what did people in those parts of the world believe before Islam?
This is quite easy to figure out because Islam is fairly new. It turns out they share the same cultural values that you see in Judaism, and in the religions before that. Stoning and flogging were typical means of punishment in those days. The value and treatment of women is also the same. Nothing new was brought with Islam.
Are you familiar with Alexander the Great and Hellenism? Alexander spread the Greek culture and mixed it with the current cultures, this was Hellenism. The Islamic Empire had the same effect. It spread the Arab culture across the entire Middle East and into Asia where it both influenced and combined with existing traditions. This is why we have different denominations of Islam.
The problem we are dealing with is CULTURE, not RELIGION. It is the same as the caste system and arranged marriages in India, they are culturally based, not religiously based, even if one tries to combine them together. If you want to criticize their culture, be my guest, but culture is the problem, not religion. I have shown, and Muslims countries have shown, that they can be secular, that they can respect women, and that they can be moral and modern. Religion is not as much of a problem as Conservatives are.
Correction, one of the pictures you sent me was from Wikipedia. The Second was here...and they do not cite a source. Not that the second picture really tells us much of anything...I mean the death penalty? Let's look at the death penalty...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country
Some Muslim countries have abolished it, yet the United States still has it. The US is actually one of the better countries at killing people...
www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2014/mar/27/death-penalty-statistics-2013-by-country
Country Reported Executions 2013 2007-2013
China Thousands Thousands
Iran 369 2,032
Iraq 169 425
Japan 8 41
North Korea 70 70
Saudi Arabia 79 502
Somalia 34 57
Sudan 21 51
USA 39 259
Yemen 13 165
The US does a better job at killing people than a number of Muslim countries if you want to talk death penalty.
The point is that it is all very complicated and to say "Islam is the problem" is a shallow cop-out as far as reality goes.
Finally, your videos and moderate religion.
Are the videos disturbing? Yes. Shocking? Yes.
But are these the representatives of "moderates?"
To me, actions speak louder than words. People say a lot of stupid shit and are completely dishonest, or unknowingly dishonest about it. Just because ones says they are a moderate, does not make them a moderate. Hitler says he was a Christian, I do not buy it for one second. Republicans in the US say they are not racist or homophobic, their actions suggest otherwise. Just because a Conservative group calls themselves moderates does not make it so. It is just as likely to be two extremist groups going at each other.
The video of the Muslims in Norway is misleading, or at the very least, incomplete. Assuming it is the "Moderate Muslim Peace Conference," who is to say that is ALL Muslims? But the biggest red flag is the fact they are organized. Moderates do not organize, moderates do not have an agenda. My family is made up of moderate Christians and they barely go to church, let alone go to a conference about how they are moderate Christians, they could not care less. I have seen this with atheists as well. Moderate atheists are not the ones picking fights, talking about atheism and anti-theism on social media. They do not care, because they do not take it seriously, they simply lack a belief in god. This is like my parents. They believe in a God and Jesus was the son of God. It does not make them go to church or care what the Bible says. The very fact that these Muslims are organizing suggests they are more than just moderates, regardless of what they call themselves.
In addition to that, so they are okay with something. That does not mean the actively do it. You may say "what is the difference?" The support of it will make the problem consist. This is possible but has also been proven wrong in other cases. Look at the Civil Rights movements and specifically slavery in the United States. Being a Northerner I look to puff out my chest and say we weren't one of THOSE people, the kind that kept slaves. But if you look at the reality, the people in the North were just as racist and were not willing to give escaped slaves sanctuary. They did not like them either and the Civil War was actually NOT fought over slavery, the Union Declared war because the Confederate States seceded and Lincoln was trying to keep the Union in tact, regardless of slavery. Could you view be right? It is very possible, but I do know people here in American vote AGAINST things they agree with. We saw this with gay marriage. My state voted to legalize it. Many people said the same thing...I don't agree with gays getting married, but they should have that right.
And finally, how seriously to you take words compared to actions? Is simply speaking the act just as bad as participating in it?
I do not believe you have straight come out and said you were an atheist, but that is the impression I get. So let me ask you this...when I say who are some popular atheists? The typical responses are the Four Horsemen of the New Atheists, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens. Is it fair they represent atheists? They claim they are not radical, simply using science, logic, and reason. So if words are as bad as actions, let's look at some of Sam Harris' words. I will copy and paste this from another bit...
...one of his biggest complaints to critics is that people take what he says out of context. He points to a bit which Chris Hedges criticizes about preemptive nuclear war. I have also pointed this out in other blogs because it is one of the most troubling things he has ever written. Here is the bit, copied from the link I posted at the beginning…
“It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side.”
This is the first bit of his response…
“Clearly, I was describing a case in which a hostile regime that is avowedly suicidal acquires long-range nuclear weaponry (i.e. they can hit distant targets like Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, etc.). Of course, not every Muslim regime would fit this description.”
Once again, he is trying to throw in the “not all Muslims” but once again he fails to use language that would support that statement. In addition to that, he makes it seem as if he is talking about ANY hostile regime, not just a Muslim one. This is Sam Harris taking Sam Harris out of context. If the book, chapter, or even section was about US foreign policy, he might have an argument, but this bit has nothing to do with that. If one looks at his book, they will see this is in the chapter titled “The Problem with Islam,” in a section titled “Jihad and the Power of the Atom.” In this section there are two paragraphs before the bit I quoted above. This is not being taken out of context, it is purely about the problem with Islam and he justifies preemptive nuclear strikes.
Harris attempts to disguise his beliefs by saying something like this would be “horrible” and “insane,” but he said it, and he makes an excuse for it…
“I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely.”
So basically he is saying “you made us do it because you believe in a myth and are unreasonable?” Harris is admitting it may be acceptable to kill tens of millions of innocent people! This is sick. Once again, I call this Hitler type stuff. This is not being taken out of context, it is not about US foreign policy, this is about the problems with Islam. There is absolutely no reason for this bit in his book unless he believes this is a legitimate option to dealing with Muslims.
There you have Sam Harris justifying nuclear strikes on tens of millions of innocent people. The difference between him and the Muslim in that video is that he is validating it with "logic" and "reason" but not God. If this was in a forum with a bunch of "moderate atheists" how many do you think would raise their hand in agreement with Harris' statement? Probably all of them because the type of atheists that organize to hear atheists speak are not moderate atheists.
These atheists are exactly the same as these "moderate Muslims." The difference is they are pointing to "logic," "reason," and "science" to support their bigotry, which is what it is, and is the same way everyone defends their bigotry. If someone finds what Sam Harris had to say as troubling, let's hear it, because very few atheists have a problem with it. All I say is maybe people should look in the mirror.
As far as the women in the pictures in the UAE…Are some of them tourists? I am sure they are. I am not sure if it shows it in all of those pictures but other pictures I have show women with either their hair covered or their entire body covered. In one of the pictures I have there is a family, the mother is covered, the daughter is wearing a two piece. Walking around at the malls there you see much diversity. There are women walking around is casual “Western” clothing as well as women that are totally covered. Either way there are not police sitting there policing the situation. Do they have to be more open and secular because of their tourist market? Of course, but a that shows that a Muslim country actively choose to adapt secular policies. It is also true that some places, such as Abu Dhabi are more conservative than Dubai, but even walking around there, they are very diverse. Here is a picture of some women in the UAE Air Force...
Once again very diverse.
You want to point to their judicial system and point out that it has aspects of religion or is based on religion. This leads to the single biggest point I try to make to people...Is it culture or religion.
You may answer it is religion because it says "Islam" or other things related to Islam. But let me ask you these two questions...
1. Why are there different branches of Islam?
2. What were their customs before Islam?
Why are their different branches of Islam, or any religion for that matter? It is quite simple...it is because of culture. People disagreed on things due to their culture or actively put things from their culture into religion. The Sunni-Shia is primarily a cultural battle. If you skim my blog here, I explain this...
stern2552.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/an-easy-way-to-understand-conflict-in-the-middle-east-and-iraq/
If religion is the driving force, why is there not only one word of God? Because people do not agree. They also added pagan beliefs into religions like Christianity. Christmas, Easter, and other holidays were pagan holidays that were included because it was easier to get populations to convert it they could keep their same traditions. You assume that because someone utters the word "God" religion is responsible. That leads to the second question...
What were the customs in that area of the world before Islam? I do not expect the average person to know this, because this is my field of study. I studied history of the Ancient Near East/Middle East (in the history major) and Ancient Near Eastern religions and the Abrahamic Religions, with a Jewish Studies minor (in my religious studies major.) This is my wheel-house and also a major reason I am a non-believer.
When I was starting my major I thought it made the most sense to start from the "beginning," so I started with Judaism, since both Christianity and Islam came out of it. From there I drifted over into Indo-European religions, which include the Greek and Roman religions, as well as Zoroastrianism (found in Ancient Iran or Persia.) I quickly knew that all of the things the Abrahamic religions claimed were false. If one studies Judaism, or more importantly the religions of the area and the people that predated it, one will find that nothing in Judaism is new or original. It is all the same stuff that was believed and practiced for thousands of years predating it, some of it word for word. When one compares Islam to Judaism and Christianity, Islam more closely resembles Judaism. They have the same laws and traditions, and also share a similar part of the world. This does not come as a surprise for two reasons...
First, both Hebrew and the Israelites, along with Arabic and Arabs, are Semitic peoples. They share a common language family and tradition, one that originated in Africa. This is the reason the Hebrew Bible and the Quran are very similar, they come out of the same culture. The late Hebrew Bible, from Isaiah on, has influence from Zoroastrianism, which was Indo-European. Christianity comes out of that tradition, as well as the Greek and Roman religions, which were also Indo-European. This leads to the big question...what did people in those parts of the world believe before Islam?
This is quite easy to figure out because Islam is fairly new. It turns out they share the same cultural values that you see in Judaism, and in the religions before that. Stoning and flogging were typical means of punishment in those days. The value and treatment of women is also the same. Nothing new was brought with Islam.
Are you familiar with Alexander the Great and Hellenism? Alexander spread the Greek culture and mixed it with the current cultures, this was Hellenism. The Islamic Empire had the same effect. It spread the Arab culture across the entire Middle East and into Asia where it both influenced and combined with existing traditions. This is why we have different denominations of Islam.
The problem we are dealing with is CULTURE, not RELIGION. It is the same as the caste system and arranged marriages in India, they are culturally based, not religiously based, even if one tries to combine them together. If you want to criticize their culture, be my guest, but culture is the problem, not religion. I have shown, and Muslims countries have shown, that they can be secular, that they can respect women, and that they can be moral and modern. Religion is not as much of a problem as Conservatives are.
Correction, one of the pictures you sent me was from Wikipedia. The Second was here...and they do not cite a source. Not that the second picture really tells us much of anything...I mean the death penalty? Let's look at the death penalty...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country
Some Muslim countries have abolished it, yet the United States still has it. The US is actually one of the better countries at killing people...
www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2014/mar/27/death-penalty-statistics-2013-by-country
Country Reported Executions 2013 2007-2013
China Thousands Thousands
Iran 369 2,032
Iraq 169 425
Japan 8 41
North Korea 70 70
Saudi Arabia 79 502
Somalia 34 57
Sudan 21 51
USA 39 259
Yemen 13 165
The US does a better job at killing people than a number of Muslim countries if you want to talk death penalty.
The point is that it is all very complicated and to say "Islam is the problem" is a shallow cop-out as far as reality goes.
Finally, your videos and moderate religion.
Are the videos disturbing? Yes. Shocking? Yes.
But are these the representatives of "moderates?"
To me, actions speak louder than words. People say a lot of stupid shit and are completely dishonest, or unknowingly dishonest about it. Just because ones says they are a moderate, does not make them a moderate. Hitler says he was a Christian, I do not buy it for one second. Republicans in the US say they are not racist or homophobic, their actions suggest otherwise. Just because a Conservative group calls themselves moderates does not make it so. It is just as likely to be two extremist groups going at each other.
The video of the Muslims in Norway is misleading, or at the very least, incomplete. Assuming it is the "Moderate Muslim Peace Conference," who is to say that is ALL Muslims? But the biggest red flag is the fact they are organized. Moderates do not organize, moderates do not have an agenda. My family is made up of moderate Christians and they barely go to church, let alone go to a conference about how they are moderate Christians, they could not care less. I have seen this with atheists as well. Moderate atheists are not the ones picking fights, talking about atheism and anti-theism on social media. They do not care, because they do not take it seriously, they simply lack a belief in god. This is like my parents. They believe in a God and Jesus was the son of God. It does not make them go to church or care what the Bible says. The very fact that these Muslims are organizing suggests they are more than just moderates, regardless of what they call themselves.
In addition to that, so they are okay with something. That does not mean the actively do it. You may say "what is the difference?" The support of it will make the problem consist. This is possible but has also been proven wrong in other cases. Look at the Civil Rights movements and specifically slavery in the United States. Being a Northerner I look to puff out my chest and say we weren't one of THOSE people, the kind that kept slaves. But if you look at the reality, the people in the North were just as racist and were not willing to give escaped slaves sanctuary. They did not like them either and the Civil War was actually NOT fought over slavery, the Union Declared war because the Confederate States seceded and Lincoln was trying to keep the Union in tact, regardless of slavery. Could you view be right? It is very possible, but I do know people here in American vote AGAINST things they agree with. We saw this with gay marriage. My state voted to legalize it. Many people said the same thing...I don't agree with gays getting married, but they should have that right.
And finally, how seriously to you take words compared to actions? Is simply speaking the act just as bad as participating in it?
I do not believe you have straight come out and said you were an atheist, but that is the impression I get. So let me ask you this...when I say who are some popular atheists? The typical responses are the Four Horsemen of the New Atheists, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens. Is it fair they represent atheists? They claim they are not radical, simply using science, logic, and reason. So if words are as bad as actions, let's look at some of Sam Harris' words. I will copy and paste this from another bit...
...one of his biggest complaints to critics is that people take what he says out of context. He points to a bit which Chris Hedges criticizes about preemptive nuclear war. I have also pointed this out in other blogs because it is one of the most troubling things he has ever written. Here is the bit, copied from the link I posted at the beginning…
“It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side.”
This is the first bit of his response…
“Clearly, I was describing a case in which a hostile regime that is avowedly suicidal acquires long-range nuclear weaponry (i.e. they can hit distant targets like Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, etc.). Of course, not every Muslim regime would fit this description.”
Once again, he is trying to throw in the “not all Muslims” but once again he fails to use language that would support that statement. In addition to that, he makes it seem as if he is talking about ANY hostile regime, not just a Muslim one. This is Sam Harris taking Sam Harris out of context. If the book, chapter, or even section was about US foreign policy, he might have an argument, but this bit has nothing to do with that. If one looks at his book, they will see this is in the chapter titled “The Problem with Islam,” in a section titled “Jihad and the Power of the Atom.” In this section there are two paragraphs before the bit I quoted above. This is not being taken out of context, it is purely about the problem with Islam and he justifies preemptive nuclear strikes.
Harris attempts to disguise his beliefs by saying something like this would be “horrible” and “insane,” but he said it, and he makes an excuse for it…
“I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely.”
So basically he is saying “you made us do it because you believe in a myth and are unreasonable?” Harris is admitting it may be acceptable to kill tens of millions of innocent people! This is sick. Once again, I call this Hitler type stuff. This is not being taken out of context, it is not about US foreign policy, this is about the problems with Islam. There is absolutely no reason for this bit in his book unless he believes this is a legitimate option to dealing with Muslims.
There you have Sam Harris justifying nuclear strikes on tens of millions of innocent people. The difference between him and the Muslim in that video is that he is validating it with "logic" and "reason" but not God. If this was in a forum with a bunch of "moderate atheists" how many do you think would raise their hand in agreement with Harris' statement? Probably all of them because the type of atheists that organize to hear atheists speak are not moderate atheists.
These atheists are exactly the same as these "moderate Muslims." The difference is they are pointing to "logic," "reason," and "science" to support their bigotry, which is what it is, and is the same way everyone defends their bigotry. If someone finds what Sam Harris had to say as troubling, let's hear it, because very few atheists have a problem with it. All I say is maybe people should look in the mirror.
