patrick.net

How does someone "dislike" that ?

marcus says

How does someone "dislike" that ?

It's yet more of your NAMALT non-argument. If a tobacco shill points to George Burns smoking at 100, that doesn't negate the fact smoking kills. If you understood logic, you would know this.

curious2 says

If you understood logic, you would know this.

If you understood logic, you would know I wasn't making an argument. I was answering Patricks question - and pointing out a highly religious Islamic man that is a better man than I.

Any argument you infer from that is your own doing.

marcus says

I was answering Patricks question

No, that is a lie. He asked you a question about the Koran, which you failed to answer, probably because you have not read it. You can read it online, instead of merely trolling.

curious2 says

No, that is a lie.

Leave your emotions out of it. I was answering Patricks question. If you didn't understand my very clear answer, it doesn't make it a lie.

marcus says

rando says

Does the moderate part of Islam use the moderate Koran, or the radical Koran that the terrorist know and love so well?

I don't know Patrick. Have them use the parts of the Koran that this guy uses.

Implied in Patricks question is that the parts of the Koran that terrorist use to justify their hate and violence will be in the Koran that moderates use. Implied in my answer is that religious people use small fractions of ancient religious texts. And that moderate Muslims should focus on the better parts of the Koran (just as Christians don't focus on the ugliest parts of the bible). Obviously that guy in the video probably focuses on parts of the Koran that focus on values and behavior that I respect.

marcus says

I don't know Patrick. Have them use the parts of the Koran that this guy uses.

It would be interesting to know if he cares for non-Muslim children, or only Muslim ones. I don't see any children's names in the articles, so it's hard to tell.

Traditionally, Muslims give no charity or help to non-Muslims. And this makes sense, given the Koran's incessant disparagement of non-Muslims.

marcus says

I don't really get this.

For one thing, medical care is expensive, so publishing price lists might scare people that need care away from taking care of what they need to.

Medical care is expensive partly because people don't know what it costs and don't shop around.

Market forces can do a lot to bring prices down. This is why the medical establishment resists publishing prices.

rando says

Specific instructions, such as "Kill the unbelievers where ever you find them" do actually matter a lot though.

Then explains this. For 1800 years, Christians raped, pillaged, committed genocide, tortured, and killed the unbelievers by burning them at the stake. The instructions in the Bible haven't changed over the past 200 years. So either the instructions of Christianity aren't materially different from the instructions of Islam, or it's not the instructions that matter.

It is invalid to say that Christianity 2000 years after its inception is better than Islam 1470 years after its inception, therefore Christianity is inherently better than Islam or Christianity is better than Islam because the former's teachings are better than the latter's. The teachings of the Bible have changed no more in the past 1000 years than the teachings of the Quran.

Also, you really should be comparing the two family of religions at the same point in their development. So you should be comparing Islam today with Christianity in 1470. Both come out completely barbaric.

So what has really changed in the Christian world over the past 400, and especially the past 200, years? It wasn't that new pages of the Bible were found. It wasn't the return of Jesus. It wasn't that the mythology or stories changed. No. The real answer is that over the past few centuries the power of Christian faith and Christian churches has diminished almost entirely. It used to be that a Christian's entire life revolved around the faith and the church. Today, with damn few exceptions, Christians only pay lip service to their faith, and then only because their social status in their community requires them to do so. Yes, the few nuts are dangerous because when elected they do things that compromise our safety like opposing climate change mitigation policies, but since Christianity is largely a joke in America and Europe today, it's not nearly as dangerous as it was.

It's not that Christianity is inherently less dangerous than Islam. History proves that it is absolutely as dangerous. It is only that faith has been all but extinguished from the western world. Yeah, you can tolerate any religion, including Islam, if the followers don't have real faith and don't act on their faith. It's still a bad thing, but it's a small evil. The danger is that faith once diminished can return with vigor. We saw this happen in the second half of the 20th century with Islam. It could also happen with Christianity, and if it does, you can expect Christians to return to their Medieval behavior. And then we'd be hearing about gays and atheists burned at the stake on a daily basis.

Patrick, I take it that you don't actually believe in the bullshit about Jesus being divine and rising from the dead. You seem to rational for that nonsense. So I have to ask, why defend Christianity at all? What is the up side to it? Do you really believe in the Useful Lie Hypothesis?

marcus says

Our religion is better than your religion, nya nya nya nya nya.

Some religions are better than others in that they are less dangerous and less evil. However, they all suffer from the exact same root problem, faith. Faith is completely and utterly evil. It serves absolutely no good purpose, causes people to do evil things, hold back moral development, and endangers the world. There is no up side to faith. There is nothing that faith, even in principle, could accomplish that could not be accomplished more easily and without such evil side effect without faith.

The belief that faith in a false god causes people to behave better to each other is the Useful Lie Hypothesis. It is wrong. History has proven it to be wrong time and time again.

Useful lies can be twisted to cause people to commit atrocities. In contrast, honesty coupled with rationality cannot.

rando says

I'm saying that Islam is exceptionally violent, far beyond any other religion, and we should be honest about that fact because it has real consequences.

To be honest you can only say that Islam at this particular arbitrary moment we call the present is exceptionally more violent than other religions. That was not true in the past, and may very well not be true in the future. Sure, we live in the present and have to deal with that time rather than the past or future. However, it is very important to acknowledge this fact because how we can effectively deal with Islam is entirely determined by understanding that Islam is inherently no different than any other religion. The only way to kill the evil of Islam is the same method that kills the evil of all religions. That method is not to convert Muslims to Christians, but rather to eliminate faith altogether.

The modern Muslim in the Middle East is exactly like the Medieval European Christian. Convert that Muslim to Christianity and I guarantee you he will still behead people, just in the name of Jesus instead of in the name of Mohamed. He will still call the Christian god allah because allah literally is "god" in Arabic. It's the same damn word. The Muslim does not have to change at all to be a devote Christian.

Converting 100% of Muslims to Christians would not change the Middle East at all. Muslims have no problem murdering other Muslims who aren't in the same tribe as them or following the same cleric as they are. The newly converted Christians would simply murder other Christians who are in other tribes or following other priests and bishops. It would be like the Anglicans and Catholics slaughtering each other again.

Swapping religions does not change the culture of death and dominance. The only thing that can stop this madness is to kill faith itself.

Onvacation says

We are a secular society.

We are a mostly secular society. That has not always been the case, and even today, when Christianity rears its ugly head, it corrupts our laws and our courts. Even more so, Christianity corrupts our elections. People vote for politicians who give lip service to the Christian god. This causes us to elect corrupt politicians who pass bad laws and policies that harm us.

Ultimately, to be completely secular, we must get rid of all religion and all faith. It's not a no harm, no foul situation.

bob2356 says

rando says

Lots of people die from things other than cancer. So by your logic, cancer is not bad.

by your logic cancer kills people so everything that kills people is cancer.

Clearly Patrick did not say anything remotely close to this. Patrick has states that Islam is bad, not that Islam is the only thing bad.

Where Patrick goes wrong is in thinking that Islam is somehow inherently different than other religions, particularly Christianity.

rando says

Actually, the Irish were more violent and more alcoholic than most other immigrant groups.

Brenda O'Malley is home making dinner as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door. "Brenda, may I come in?" he asks. "I've somethin' to tell ya."

"Of course you can come in. You're always welcome, Tim. But where's my husband?"

"That's what I'm here to be tellin' ya, Brenda. There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery."

"Oh, God no!" cries Brenda. "Please don't tell me, "

"I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I'm sorry."

Finally, she looked up at Tim. "How did it happen, Tim?"

"It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned."

"Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?"

"Well, no Brenda, no."

"No?"

"You see, he got out three times to pee."

curious2 says

marcus says

How does someone "dislike" that ?

It's yet more of your NAMALT non-argument.

NAMALT? What color pill do you have to take to go Muslims Going Their Own Way?

Two Irishmen walk out of a bar.

Dan8267 says

Then explains this. For 1800 years, Christians raped, pillaged, committed genocide, tortured, and killed the unbelievers by burning them at the stake

Where does the new testament tell Christians to do that?

Onvacation says

Where does the new testament tell Christians to do that?

It doesn't, which proves the point that the teachings don't matter. The New Testament is, however, pro-slavery, thus proving that it is morally bankrupt.

Furthermore, Judaism has been nonviolent during the entire existence of Christianity. All the rape, pillage, genocide, torture, and murders were committed by Christians, not Jews. Yet, the Old Testament is the Jewish testament. So the touchy-feely hippie shit of the New Testament doesn't matter for jack diddly shit.

Case proved. The teachings of the Bible don't mean shit. It's all about faith. The more faith people have, the more evil they are. Faith in what is irrelevant.

Dan8267 says

you really should be comparing the two family of religions at the same point in their development. So you should be comparing Islam today with Christianity in 1470. Both come out completely barbaric.

That sounds like an argument for extending President Trump's travel ban to all Muslims for the next 300 years.

curious2 says

That sounds like an argument for extending President Trump's travel ban to all Muslims for the next 300 years.

My position on that ban has always been...
1. It's Unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment protections of religion.
2. Therefore we should repeal the First Amendment protections of religion.

My position is entirely self-consistent. In contrast, people who oppose such protections for Islam but demand them for Christianity are, by definition, hypocrites. At the heart of every hypocrisy is a contradiction.

Dan8267 says

My position on that ban has always been...
1. It's Unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment protections of religion.
2. Therefore we should repeal the First Amendment protections of religion.

Assertion 1 (your premise) is false per SCOTUS. If SCOTUS reverses itself and endorses your premise, then that will become a powerful argument for 2 (your conclusion). Meanwhile, your premise being false implies nothing about your conclusion.

curious2 says

Assertion 1 (your premise) is false per SCOTUS.

Sometimes the Supreme Court is just wrong. The Supreme Court could say raping people to death doesn't violate the Fifth Amendment, and that would be in effect the law, but that does not make it the truth.

I'm not concerned with what the corrupt -- and yes, it is corrupt -- Supreme Court says is Unconstitutional as much as I'm concerned with what actually is Unconstitutional. I'm talking from an engineering, not political or legal, perspective. If we abandon hypocrisy and simply maintain complete honesty, then we would have to say the travel ban is Unconstitutional precisely because it targets Islam. That is the entire intention. That intention, as well as the effect of the ban, most certainly is an attack on Islam.

Now continuing with honesty, we both agree that attacking Islam is a good thing. This premise contradicts the premise that attacks on religions should not be allowed. Therefore, to avoid hypocrisy we must reject the intent of the First Amendment to protect religions. This part of the First Amendment is clearly wrong, and we're force to face that fact by the war with Islam.

The founding fathers experienced a time when different Christian religions were murdering each other with impunity, especially in England with the Catholics and Anglicans. The founding fathers foolishly thought the solution was for all religions to coexist. It is not. The solution is for no religion to exist. The founding fathers made a mistake. They made many mistakes. This is clearly one of them.

The protection of religions and religious beliefs, elevating them above any other belief, action, or association, is a mistake. There are two ways to correct that mistake. Either become completely hypocritical and selectively enforce those protections while blatantly violating them other times or revoke those protections. The former approach invites both corruption and great atrocities. The later requires abandoning a delusion that never served any good.

The fact is that, by definition, freedom of religion requires freedom to commit Jihad religion that demands Jihad.

Why should religion be the one evil with privileges? Why should religion have a higher priority than law and human rights? Why should there be any special protections for religion? And why must we endure such hypocrisy about which religions and which religious practices get these privileges?

rando says

Medical care is expensive partly because people don't know what it costs and don't shop around.

Also, it would allow transparency and competition. People would start asking questions like "If the Operator only makes $45k/year, the machine is paid off, it uses only X/Watts on average, how the FUCK could you charge $2000 per scan?"... "If you're paying the cleaner $10/hr with no benefits... and lysol isn't expensive esp if brought in institutional quantities... how can you charge $200/day for cleaning a room?" Questions that Porsche-driving Hospital Admins and Insurance Companies (who benefit from higher prices because it justifies them raising premiums) executives don't wanted asked.

Only those who seek to exploit the consumer support obscurantism in pricing.//

My favorite of all: If the Insurers got smacked so hard under Obamacare, and are barely operating, why do they hold their annual Meetings in Hawaii and Palm Springs instead of Alberqueque or Milwaukee?

Dan8267 says

bob2356 says

rando says

Lots of people die from things other than cancer. So by your logic, cancer is not bad.

by your logic cancer kills people so everything that kills people is cancer.

Clearly Patrick did not say anything remotely close to this. Patrick has states that Islam is bad, not that Islam is the only thing bad.

Where Patrick goes wrong is in thinking that Islam is somehow inherently different than other religions, particularly Christianity.

No, that is exactly what he is saying. Patrick believes since a very small percentage of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people then it means all of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people.

bob2356 says

Patrick believes since a very small percentage of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people then it means all of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people.

I sincerely doubt that Patrick thinks only a "very small percentage" of Muslims want to wage war. That's your assessment, not his.

Dan8267 says

bob2356 says

Patrick believes since a very small percentage of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people then it means all of islam is batshit crazy wanting to kill people.

I sincerely doubt that Patrick thinks only a "very small percentage" of Muslims want to wage war. That's your assessment, not his.

Let me reword this. The word since wasn't clear obviously.
Patrick believes all muslims are batshit crazy wanting to kill people despite the fact that only a very very small percentage ( an inconvenient fact the dogma regurgitating xenophobics like patrick aren't willing to engage their brains to think about) of muslims are batshit crazy wanting to kill people.

Which is exactly like believing all deaths are cancer because some people die of cancer.

All of which leads me to wonder if there is some type of grander plan (not necessarily coordinated, just a push in the general direction) by the oil, military/industrial, security etc. complex. Like the war on drugs there is a lot of money to be made convincing the population (apparently very successfully based on patnet comments) there is a dire threat that needs pretty much unlimited government money thrown at it for an unlimited amount of time without ever improving the situation.

Dan8267 says

Case proved. The teachings of the Bible don't mean shit. It's all about faith. The more faith people have, the more evil they are. Faith in what is irrelevant.

You have proved nothing.

bob2356 says

Patrick believes all muslims are batshit crazy wanting to kill people despite

I sincerely doubt that Patrick thinks all Muslims want to kill people. How about you ask him directly? I suspect his response will be that a large percentage, perhaps even a majority, of Muslims support Jihad even if they do not participate in it themselves kind of like how the majority of the American South supported the KKK by not turning them into the police and not convicting them while on juries even though most weren't KKK members themselves.

bob2356 says

despite the fact that only a very very small percentage

This is the problem with your argument. It's purely subjective, not factual. What exactly is a very, very small percentage? 3%?

If 3% of planes crashed, would the public consider this a very, very small percentage? I think not. If 3% of popcorn kernels didn't pop, would this be a very small percentage? Most people would say yes.

Neither you nor Patrick want to get pinned down to a percentage of Muslims who support Jihad because it opens you up to being disproved. But this also means that you could even agree on the facts and still argue about the wording of those facts. It's a non-argument.

What is undeniable is that the lower limit on the number of supporters of Jihad in the world is in the tens of millions. It might be in the hundreds of millions depending on the threshold of support that you measure. What is also undeniable is that those who support Jihad do so because of religion, by definition. No matter how you slice it, this is a terrible, terrible effect of religion. What is so good as to outweigh even this one evil consequence of religion? Unless there's something damn good to counterbalance the evils of religion, the world should simply stop tolerating religion altogether.

Dan8267 says

I'm talking from an engineering, not political or legal, perspective.

Dan, respectfully, even from an engineering perspective, you overlook a founding difference between Christianity and Islam. Islam was designed, fabricated, and refined by the charlatan Mohamed and his Arab followers for the express purpose of killing and subjugating as many people as possible. Equating Christianity and Islam is like equating a kitchen knife and an AK-47: either can be used to kill people, but only one was designed, built, and optimized for that purpose.

You mention the first amendment in isolation, but you misread it. Islam says to kill you, but that does not give Muslims a first amendment right to kill you. Consider the Second Amendment for comparison, which says that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That does not mean everyone can walk around bearing nuclear arms, nor even a fully automatic AK-47. You ignore the Constitutional role of judgment. It's as if you looked at a sophisticated machine, took out all the parts you didn't immediately understand, and then expected it to work better. Even most engineers would not make that mistake.

The first amendment does not give non-resident aliens a Constitutional right to wage hijrah against the USA, nor even to cross our borders, even if their religion commands them to wage holy war against us. To the contrary, the Constitution authorizes the President to defend the republic. Nothing prohibits the President from banning inbound travel and immigration by people who advocate a totalitarian doctrine that commands the violent overthrow of our government, especially when its adherents have murdered thousands of Americans in the name of that doctrine, even if that doctrine commands a religion in addition to everyting else.

bob2356 says

dogma regurgitating xenophobics

It's interesting to watch those in deep denial about Islam slide into cognitive dissonance. They fail to read, and instead they hallucinate straw men, and then (in Bob's case) imagine paranoid conspiracies. They fail utterly to analyze what Islam says and does across the Islamic world including from the MENA to Pakistan. Instead, they re-imagine Churchill and Patton (for example) as "xenophobics".

That's almost as funny as when Bob called me an insurance salesman.

BTW, for an actual insurance salesman, consider the Mujahideen and Taliban supporting dad of Omar Mateen, financed by CIA in the 1980s, imported to America where he raised a jihadi son as per Islam, supporting now the Taliban on YouTube (financed by GOOG). A former Acting DCI said openly on PBS that America should finance jihadis to kill Russians in Syria as in Afghanistan. President Trump has reportedly ended that program, in which the US had been spending up to $1bn/yr, but the Saudis and Turks can continue financing the same Islamic carnage. That conspiracy happens in plain sight, is widely reported, but Bob cannot even see it. He remains so slavishly devoted to defending the dead charlatan Mohamed's hateful fraud that he imagines the conspiracy must be somewhere else. Hint: Islam itself was designed, fabricated, and refined by the charlatan Mohamed and his followers to conquer and subjugate as many people as possible. That was a seriously problematic conspiracy, but Petrodollar hypnosis and dementia accelerated by the effects of opiate and opioid drugs seems to prevent Bob from seeing it.

Dan8267 says

What is undeniable is that the lower limit on the number of supporters of Jihad in the world is in the tens of millions.

Dan8267 says

This is the problem with your argument. It's purely subjective, not factual

Well thanks for clearing that up. So 10 million believers (thanks for all the supporting documentation on that number, I''m impressed by your detailed research on the subject. It's certainly undeniable) in jihad is 1.6% of muslims. I would call that a small percentage. Want to also document at least equally as well how many of those believers actually go out and do something about jihad?

Dan8267 says

American South supported the KKK by not turning them into the police and not convicting them while on juries even though most weren't KKK members themselves.

So you are saying the majority of the american south were (what does patrick call it?) excessively violent and should have been barred from moving to the north because their churches taught them blacks were inferior? Same exact argument.

Dan8267 says

I sincerely doubt that Patrick thinks all Muslims want to kill people. How about you ask him directly? I suspect his response will be that a large percentage, perhaps even a majority, of Muslims support Jihad even if they do not participate in it themselves

Thank you Dan, it's nice for someone to state the reasonable and correct interpretation of my remarks, instead of exaggerating and creating straw men to knock down.

bob2356 says

Patrick believes all muslims are batshit crazy wanting to kill people

Bob, you're wrong.

Where did I ever say "all Muslims"?

I simply said that the Koran commands Muslims to subjugate or murder non-Muslims, and that the more devout a Muslim is, the more he necessarily agrees with those commands.

ThreeBays says

So Trump supporters are like Jihadis you say?

Yes, to some degree. They don't want to murder anyone, and in fact are clearly much more tolerant of others' viewpoints than Hillary supporters, but some of the mechanism is the same. Deep dissatisfaction with the present, hope in a glorious future (MAGA or the Caliphate), and someone who will tell them how to get there.

A lot of it is just basic human psychology. Read the book! It's pretty short.

Looking at empirical data, consider the comparison between Freedom House country scores and Muslim population. If a country has allowed itself to become more than 20% Muslim, you can predict with 95% certainty that country is no longer free:

Muslims less than 20% of the population, 62% free
Muslims more than 20% of the population, 5% free

That dramatic disparity reflects what I call the Weimar threshold: when Nazis got to be more than 20% of the German population, they achieved critical mass and took over. The combination of vigilante violence, plus outnumbering and permeating the police and military and government, proved too powerful to resist. You can say that not all Nazis were personally committing violence, but that does not change the outcome: when 20% support such a repressive doctrine that commands believers to kill disbelievers, you are 95% certain to lose your freedom and maybe your life.

As Milo and others have observed, the "left" have abandoned and betrayed liberalism by embracing Islam. Many are too idealistic and naïve to see how easily and thoroughly their preferred institutions and candidates were corrupted by Petrodollar baksheesh. Remember the Islamic murders of cartoonists, and the mass riots across the Muslim world in favor of the murderers and against the cartoonists. If you believe in freedom, then you must oppose Islam including especially hijrah.

curious2 says

Looking at empirical data, consider the comparison between Freedom House country scores and Muslim population: if a country has allowed itself to become more than 20% Muslim, you can predict with 95% certainty that country is no longer free:

Muslims less than 20% of the population, 62% free

Muslims more than 20% of the population, 5% free

Thanks, I really appreciate research to back up opinions! It helps put debates on more solid footing.

It's likely that if and when the U.S becomes an absolute dictatorship, fundamentalist numbers would go way up and the government would use religion in ways that it doesn't use it now.

And sure, having a large fundamentalist population probably makes us more vulnerable to a dictatorship just as having a lot of nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies in the population and emanating from a right wing media does. There are many ways to manipulate the masses.

We need a daddy figure to protect us from the evil Muslims and Mexicans. Amiright ?

curious2 says

Islam says to kill you, but that does not give Muslims a first amendment right to kill you.

Yes, but that doesn't make the travel ban in compliance with freedom of religion. After all there are millions of Muslims who don't want to kill you, even if they are in the minority.

curious2 says

The first amendment does not give non-resident aliens a Constitutional right to wage hijrah against the USA

No, it doesn't. But it does forbid the government from banning people from the country because of their religion, which is exactly what the travel ban does. It's a very thin veil.

bob2356 says

Well thanks for clearing that up. So 10 million believers (thanks for all the supporting documentation on that number,

It is easily tens of millions of Muslims that support Jihad. That's a damn conservative estimate.

bob2356 says

1.6% of muslims. I would call that a small percentage.

Most people would not call 1.6% small when life in on the line. If 1.6% of plane flights crashed killing everyone on board, would you ever fly?
bob2356 says

So you are saying the majority of the american south were (what does patrick call it?) excessively violent and should have been barred from moving to the north because their churches taught them blacks were inferior? Same exact argument.

I am in favor of banning Christianity. Yes, it is the same argument. Religions cause evil, and they have zero up side. If the government can ban drugs that make people crazy, then it should ban religion for the same damn reason.

rando says

I simply said that the Koran commands Muslims to subjugate or murder non-Muslims, and that the more devout a Muslim is, the more he necessarily agrees with those commands.

Precisely. Faith is what makes people do evil and irrational things.

Dan8267 says

it does forbid the government from

No, it does not. Please read what the Constitution says, rather than relying on the false proclamations of paid advocates who lost unanimously at SCOTUS. You can certainly find paid advocates claiming what you wrote, but they had zero precedents, zero support in the Constitution itself, and zero votes at SCOTUS. It reminds me of the paid rapefugee advocates who claimed that no rapefugees had become terrorists, when TL/2Scoops and I found at least five who had been convicted, plus another who was killed while committing a terrorist attack. Advocates of hijrah lie (including Islamic taqiya) and mislead people into becoming useful idiots. Please, don't be an idiot, useful or otherwise.