Off_White Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 wide brush stroke maybe, but I'd vote for Rob for Pope. Quote
Kimmo Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 maybe for pope, but not dalai lama (leader of one of those "terrible" religions). Quote
G-spotter Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 Surprised no one has called the corrupt Egyptian government a pyramid scheme yet. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 Gotta lovE the 'where was ur hope when we invaded Iraq?" line. Â Colonially taped together country dEstroyed by hated western emperial invasion = 6000 year old society. Both brown and Muslim tho! Â Bigotry n ignorance under the guise of 'creative analogy'. Lol. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 Yemen's Ali Abdullah Selah's not gonna run again. Â Get a few folks out the in street and suddenly the job of autocrat isn't so enticing... Quote
prole Posted February 2, 2011 Author Posted February 2, 2011 (edited) Not sure...the opportunity to build a life in a liberal democracy, etc is sufficient to significantly alter the core political, religious, and ethical convictions of all Muslims who practice their faith under those conditions. Â I wonder if the same could be said about our Christian Problem. Â I'll be a happy man if the total death toll from religious fanaticism in Muslim countries is 1-2 people per 300 million every 4-5 years, and they manage to institute an set of institutional safeguards for individual liberties that equals our own despite our "Christian Problem." Â The major unstated premise behind your comment is that all religions, and by extension, all sets of religious convictions are fundamentally the same, and thereby equally likely to arouse violent fanaticism in their adherents, and present equal obstacles to the advancement of liberal values. Â The logical correlate of this is that what people believe - their most fundamental and deeply held convictions - have absolutely no influence over how they understand the world and behave in response to what they experience in it. Â If you believe that, then I suppose you can believe that that a religion that has an extreme commitment to non-violence at it's core (let's take Harris's example of Jainism as an example), and a religion that has adopted the concept of holy-war in defense of the faith as a central duty of all believers are equally likely to produce suicide bombers. Â Crazy. Â As with every other debate we've had on this topic, you completely miss the point. Here it is: though all religions are not all the same, the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam (and others) share bloodthirsty texts and an historical proclivity towards violent conversion and expansion. If one has "outgrown" (or more likely, temporarily set aside) those tendencies, it's question of what kind of socio-political and economic conditions developed that swept aside fundamentalism and religiously-derived political authority. The existence of widespread religious fundamentalism in the Middle East cannot be explained simply by appealing to violent passages in the Koran or pointing to medieval Islamic crusades or essentializing Islam or Muslims but rather by the very real historical conditions that are currently giving immediate political meaning to those texts. Yes, the texts exist, people act on them, but the underlying social conditions are what make those texts important to people, identify with, and act upon them at particular points in time. Sorry if that hasn't jived with US geostrategic interests and their need to preserve repressive client regimes to protect the flow of cheap oil, fight the Commies (within those countries and the USSR), and protect the Israeli Outpost. Edited February 2, 2011 by prole Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 The human misery promoted by fundies comes in many forms. Death (the death penalty and wars in this country, both strongly supported by the Christian Right) is only one measure. Repression of women (does your rape qualify for an abortion? Being debated RIGHT NOW), gays, minorities, free thinking, science, and the arts - just a few areas under attack by the Christian right for, oh, the past 2 and half centuries or so. Â We are not a Christian nation, and we never were. We are a pluralistic, secular humanist nation - we wrote that down so its easy to remember. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 2, 2011 Posted February 2, 2011 We're not going to get rid of the fundies. I so wish we could, so we would progress unimpeded and face the challenges ahead armed with reason rather than superstition. But we're stuck with them. Â That's why we need to bolster our existing body of law to keep all religious belief completely out. No faith based initiatives. No religiously driven abortion restrictions. Nada. Our most fundamental amendment demands it. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 (edited) You gotta love a president who hires Pinkertons to do his dirty work in this day and age. Old school. Our kinda guy. Edited February 3, 2011 by tvashtarkatena Quote
billcoe Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Great post Prole. Great. I think we could get quite a few pages of speculation with answers to the questions you raise. We can all certainly look back on our Judeo-Christian history with plenty of revulsion on some of the (many) instances of Christian excess zealotry. Yet we did grow out of it ...for the most part, and the Islamacists (hopefully) will as well. Â Regards to all. Â Except you Pat, Dickhead. Quote
kevbone Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Regards to all. Â Except you Pat, Dickhead. Â Who is the dickhead? Quote
ivan Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Great post Prole. Great. I think we could get quite a few pages of speculation with answers to the questions you raise. We can all certainly look back on our Judeo-Christian history with plenty of revulsion on some of the (many) instances of Christian excess zealotry. Yet we did grow out of it ...for the most part, and the Islamacists (hopefully) will as well. Â Regards to all. Â Except you Pat, Dickhead. :lmao: Â Quote
Kimmo Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 We can all certainly look back on our Judeo-Christian history with plenty of revulsion  who is this "we" you are talking about? weird assumption. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Even weirder: "we grew out of it". Is the learned mr Coe, who diligently monitors so many blogs, unaware that christians are attempting to narrow the definition of rape to exclude sexual abuse, statutory and date rape in congress as we speak as part of their abortion funding bill? Â Grew out of what, exactly? Quote
Fairweather Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 We know how much you love Muslims, though. Â Nothing against Muslims, but I do loathe the set of ideas and ethical convictions that is at the heart of the strain of Islam that's been on the rise for the past 30-40 years. Â What is it that you like about fundamentalist Islam? How compatible is it - as it's understood and preached in Saudi funded Mosques, Pakistani Madrassas, Taliban encampments, and Hamas militia gatherings - with the institutional priorities of the ACLU? Â As it turns out, American leftists subscribe to the age-old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". I suspect this Islam fetish that ankle-grabbers like TTK, j_b, and Prole are currently a part of will fade when the Great American Empire (read: the Great Satan) crumbles to the ground--at which point they will deny they ever defended the "religion of peace". Quote
prole Posted February 3, 2011 Author Posted February 3, 2011 We know how much you love Muslims, though. Â Nothing against Muslims, but I do loathe the set of ideas and ethical convictions that is at the heart of the strain of Islam that's been on the rise for the past 30-40 years. Â What is it that you like about fundamentalist Islam? How compatible is it - as it's understood and preached in Saudi funded Mosques, Pakistani Madrassas, Taliban encampments, and Hamas militia gatherings - with the institutional priorities of the ACLU? Â As it turns out, American leftists subscribe to the age-old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". I suspect this Islam fetish that ankle-grabbers like TTK, j_b, and Prole are currently a part of will fade when the Great American Empire (read: the Great Satan) crumbles to the ground--at which point they will deny they ever defended the "religion of peace". Â I'm not sure how trying to better understand why fundamentalisms, all abhorrent, have become so prevalent in the last decades constitutes a defense. Certainly the anti-Commie freedom fighter turned "zey ah zuh duhzeze, we ah zee cure" hasn't worked out too good. Like the rest of your antique notions, it's time for a new reading of the situation. Not that the readings are necessarily new since the left has been saying "I told you so" for longer than anyone can remember. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 The influence of fundies waxes and wanes, but they've always been stalwart opponents of enlightenment principles as embodied in the bill of rights. The only way to minimize the harm they can do is to keep religion out of government. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 While the Jesus v mojo cage match may be interesting, egypt's revolution, by all accounts , is secular, as was tunisia's. As was ours. Quote
prole Posted February 3, 2011 Author Posted February 3, 2011 The influence of fundies waxes and wanes, but they've always been stalwart opponents of enlightenment principles as embodied in the bill of rights. The only way to minimize the harm they can do is to keep religion out of government. Â Yes, we know you're a legal fetishist. You can stop riding that hobby horse so hard. Quote
tvashtarkatena Posted February 3, 2011 Posted February 3, 2011 Not sure what a 'legal fetishist' is or what it implies, but I'll give your comment all the consideration its due. Â Mubarak has really shown himself as the thug that he is. His openly armed and violent supporters have been waved past all army and police checkpoints. Mubarak needs to go...now. Quote
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