patrick.net

freak80 says

Of course, my experience with "angy atheists" often drives me back toward religion.

It's weird: religion drives me toward atheism, but atheism drives me back toward religion.

I've felt a similar type of reaction on political subjects. Your comments about marriage equality made me forgive Obama for ObamneyCare and decide to vote for him again, but then Homeboy's harangues drove me away again. Of course you'll probably ignore my comment because you have me on Ignore, which I didn't understand before but now maybe I do. (Marcus is the other user who Ignores me, but then he uses a separate browser to follow me, which I really don't understand. It's a little creepy, but also kind of flattering, I have my very own creep.)

One question though, in case you do happen to see this comment, why the double standard on marriage? I understand and respect your view that government shouldn't be involved in marriage, but why do you tolerate government recognition of opposite-sex marriage while saying that equal recognition for same-sex marriage would be like slitting your own throat? (You actually used those words, btw.) If it isn't "biblical inerrency" or papal bull, what is it?

It remains something of a mystery to my why Muslim crowds have apoplectic fits when someone burns the Koran.

I often wonder the same thing when crowds of people set fires and overturn cars after a sports game. Maybe it's because they can. Usually I wonder, why do they do that, and why is it tolerated; maybe they do that because it is tolerated, and they are expressing a component of their nature that is usually repressed. I watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001 again recently, and the scenes where the apes are fighting reminded me of some of the exchanges on online comment forums (especially newspapers, where I think they pay trolls to generate page views) and even PatNet. The urge to brawl, the urge to war, to exterminate the other side and take their resources, may have conferred an evolutionary advantage. Moslem countries are more testosterone-driven than most, angry young men have access to power, and polygamy means many of them are single. Maybe they have to be more aggressive to compete for wives the way polygamous apes compete to be the alpha male. (Also maybe that's why Muslim countries don't allow same-sex marriage, though Iran allows it if one has a sex change, which the government pays for.) Anyway I suspect it's an underlying component of human nature that their culture amplifies in multiple ways.

An ultra-conservative Islamist cleric in Egypt faces charges of blasphemy after he allegedly tore up and burned copies of the New Testament at a protest in front of the American Embassy in Cairo.

Oh, the irony. I haven't chuckled so loudly about such a matter since...

http://www.youtube.com/embed/4HX5-ulcdXc

That was interesting. Didn't know about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries

Selling indulgences (literally selling the forgiveness of sins) is relatively benign in comparison, isn't it?

And it was the selling of indulgences that enraged Martin Luther (not to be confused with MLK jr) and sparked the Protestant Reformation.

Witch hunts, public torture and heresay were all parts of the Christian nations for a long time. Then science and rationality took hold and they progressed to the rational world of today. Fundamentalists are almost a joke-though Sarah Palin came this close to the White House.

But Muslim nations seemed to have skipped that altogether. They seem to be steeped in traditon, violence .

Indonesia and even Malaysia seem relatively peaceful, when compared to the rest of the Muslim nations-I don't see these kinds of riots over there.

Pakistan seems to be the hotbed of extremism . But the other stans -Kazakhstan Uzbekistan seem rather peaceful-though I don't know the Muslim composition. Afghanistan has always had a violent history.

The middle east has always been a tinder box-with the shias and the sunnis and other divisions. Though that could be said of the Protestans and Catholics and the frequent European wars before World War II.

The western world seems to have outgrown that kind of behaviour. But a few centruies ago, the Church would order people to be burnt alive and other such atrocities and the crowds just watched. I wonder how they would have reacted if they had Youtube. heresay was punishable by death.

The Islamists though seem to have never entered the modern age-in material stuff yes, but otherwise seem to be stuck in the dark ages.

lostand confused says

Indonesia and even Malaysia seem relatively peaceful.... Pakistan seems to be the hotbed of extremism

It happens in Indonesia too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/world/asia/unrest-protests-over-mohammed-film.html?_r=0

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-27/an-indon-mob-attack/4226526

...and what many observers call the genocidal occupation of East Timor.

Also Malaysia:

http://islamizationwatch.blogspot.com/2010/01/religious-violence-escalates-in.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/6963436/Religious-violence-in-Malaysia-escalates-as-more-churches-attacked.html

I would be interested to know though if there is any place where religion has not been used to divide people against each other to the extent of killing each other.

lostand confused says

The middle east has always been a tinder box-with the shias and the sunnis and other divisions. Though that could be said of the Protestans and Catholics and the frequent European wars before World War II.

Extremism happens in all places and with all religions. I am Catholic. However, as both Catholic and Muslim extremism has been pointed out around the world there are plenty of reports just look them up of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

The BBC has covered the issue
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16342327

It remains something of a mystery to my why Muslim crowds have apoplectic fits when someone burns the Koran.

The simplest explanation seems to be that the cleverer hands at the top encourage/allow types of violent behavior by the brutish young in order to distract them from concluding the truth about who the real oppressors are. I have yet to see a wealthy old Muslim blow themselves up.

Reader says

as both Catholic and Muslim extremism has been pointed out around the world there are plenty of reports just look them up of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremists.

True, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, and afterwards widow Leah Rabin said the extremists who supported the assassin ended up getting all the power in government. BTW, Yitzhak and Leah met when they were both soldiers in the infantry, risking their lives to create a Jewish state after the Holocaust. Today, the Haredim refuse to allow Israeli police into their neighborhoods even for murder investigations, and denounce them as Nazis. The extremists also vote for and pursue warlike policies, while refusing to serve in the military because women are also allowed to serve. As with Pakistan, this is another example of a state where the worst elements are enabled by American "aid", which benefits mainly the military-industrial complex by promoting more war.

Looks like Islamists are at it again. I wonder what will it take to bring them into the modern world-in terms of mindset??

http://news.yahoo.com/muslim-protesters-torch-buddhist-temples-homes-bangladesh-081616609.html

lostand confused says

Looks like Islamists are at it again. I wonder what will it take to bring them into the modern world-in terms of mindset??

The same thing it took to bring the Christian world into the modern world: a weakening of religious beliefs, trust in clergy, and faith in any god.

I think the Internet helps a lot too.

Just to know that there are reasonable people who don't believe in Islam and to be able to converse with them anonymously is a huge step forward.

Of course there is still a big language barrier, and the fact that lots of fundamentalists probably don't have Internet access.

tearing up religious books, jeez so old school. no one cares! if you do, you shouldn't.

Just to know that there are reasonable people who don't believe in Islam and to be able to converse with them anonymously is a huge step forward.

For some, perhaps, but the experience of Romney's cult shows the opposite: countless members admit they had real doubts about their doctrine until the "missionary" experience confirmed them in their beliefs. Their "mission" isn't about teaching people to dig wells for clean water, it's only about recruiting for the cult, so the people they talk with are by definition people who don't already share their beliefs. Of course, those aren't anonymous conversations; the recruiters are paired so that everything each says can be reported back by the other. Yet, even on this forum, people have stated (and I have experienced) how exchanges with people who disagree can push people away and cause them to retreat into their previous belief. Romney's cult calls itself a Christian denomination, but its growth rate exceeds all of the 10 largest Christian denominations.

Dan8267 says

lostand confused says

Looks like Islamists are at it again. I wonder what will it take to bring them into the modern world-in terms of mindset??

The same thing it took to bring the Christian world into the modern world: a weakening of religious beliefs, trust in clergy, and faith in any god.

It took criticism and force to bring the Christian world into the modern world.
Now the modern world refuses to use criticism and force to bring Islam into the modern world.
I feel it it is us who are being dragged into their medieval world.

I think the Internet helps a lot too.

Just to know that there are reasonable people who don't believe in Islam and to be able to converse with them anonymously is a huge step forward.

Of course there is still a big language barrier, and the fact that lots of fundamentalists probably don't have Internet access.

The internet is a form of communication that is almost impossible to stop. A hundred years from now people will look back and credit the internet to bringing Islam to it's knees.
Maybe some of the criticism we indulge in right here could end up in the history books.

I think that SOPA and PIPA had less to do with copyright than with providing a "legitimate" means for censoring the internet.

They still might succeed at it.

Reader says

Extremism happens in all places and with all religions. I am Catholic.

I don't have any beef with rank-and-file Catholics. Just the shenanigans that go on "at the top."

That Laundry shit was interesting.

Funny how no matter how bad these kinds of facilities are (BOTH secular and religious), and their general failure in rahabbing even a fraction of their inmates, we keep thinking they work.

Like Sheriff's Boot Camps for Juvis, etc.

Raw says

It took criticism and force to bring the Christian world into the modern world.
Now the modern world refuses to use criticism and force to bring Islam into the modern world.

Look no further than the arguments that Marcus and I have had on this site. There's a reason I've fought against the position that we should accept the evils of religion by pretending they don't exist and aren't a fundamental property of religion itself. There's a purpose to atheists and rationalists being vocal. As I've quoted MLK many times, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal.".

Still, I think the Islamic world can be modernized without force. The Internet is a powerful tool for spreading information. If the Middle East had unrestricted Internet access -- at least unrestricted in some places -- then the culture will change.

freak80 says

I don't have any beef with rank-and-file Catholics. Just the shenanigans that go on "at the top."

Some of those rank-and-file Catholics don't believe people should have access to birth control or fertility treatment and think that homosexuality is a sin.