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Our conversation and our actions should have finesse and understanding in order to win the right hearts and minds and prevent new radicals from forming. They have to solve this problem from the inside out. We can't bomb them into submission and we can't reason with radicals, but we surely can do our best to stop new ones from forming.
No one is going to agree with you if you humiliate them. They will get defensive. Then you're in a worse position than before.
I agree with @jobo's point above and with Obama before he lost the plot sometime in 2013.
Satire is not the right way.
Indeed.
But CH did not stereotyped all Muslims. As for being a bigot against Islam... can't you be against Islam or indeed any faith and not be a bigot? I find all religions wrong to the core. Because they are unsustained by evidence. Because they are at best morally dubious.
God figured you'd be a great choice, to deconstruct all those scribblings, attestings to his existence. The authors seem pretty convinced, so he needs a real defiant sort to get the dissenting view.
The pesky seekers, would just lap it all up. God likes to put our talents to work.
:)) Just kidding of course. Prolific posters keep the site vibrant.
As for hell, I don't think any of the persons who have been assigned there in this thread, would be actually there. Especially not David Gilmour. The others don't interest me that much, actually, but to go to that place with No, Ernst, Bunt and Auric, they would have to choose that fate. They would have to very deliberately make that bed.
But anyone making effort to do the "good" even a wee bit, would receive their perfect judgement and processing, I humbly believe.
If pointed in the right direction already, even unsteadily, it would only be merciful, sporting even, to be re-booted, cleaned up, and pushed along.
Actually, consigning No and Ernst is, strictly speaking, presumptious. None of us have competence to judge but from what Fleming told us, some of his characters did seem to be decidedly without compassion or mercy and possessing little to no regard, for the wellbeing of fellow man.
At least thats the gist of the theology being kicked about in those many tomes, ludivico has been asked to critique, or actually maybe just those penned in the last century give or take.
In ludovico world apparently, Aquinas or Augustine or whomever's innate powers of reason and intellectual discourse, might be hampered by not being born in the right century.
This of course would hamper, if developing scientific theorems or such, that required prior findings to build on, but not for such timeless matters as philosophy or theology.
I do hope the brilliance that we post on these boards, doesn't get dismissed out of hand, centuries from now, due to our own unfortunate accidents of birth.
Capacity for wisdom, and rational thought is not the preserve of any singular point in time in the history of man. That should be obvious I think.
Wisdom is fueled by humilty first and foremost. Its raw. It's innate.
It's accessible to any person, that isn't burdened by hubris.
The guy pushing the plough, can be be the wisest guy in the room even if he can't spell feeld.
As for the yo momma, dilemma, I defer to Sean. Maybe he can overrule, when he's filling in on the chair.
Sean overruling Pierce, I don't think thats a tough sell.
Just kidding draggers. We value whatever you churn out.
Can' have too much good Bond critique.
For me the line between criticism and bigotry is were prejudice and generalization starts. When you deliberately portray an entire group of people belonging to a certain faith as behaving in the same way, based on false presumptions, it is not healthy. Earlier in this thread we have presumed that religion only survives thanks people's cowardly fear for death. Go figure...
As for your claim that religion is "at best morally dubious" I tend to differ. Religion "at its best" preaches the idea that every single person on earth are "alike in the eyes of God", they are all as important, they all have the same rights. Religion "at its best" is all about compation and and charity. Religion "at its best" helps people in their seek for inner peace. Religion at its best helps people overcome personel difficulties and crisis, and give them a new meaning in life. But if you are only willing to concentrate on the bad stuff and boil it all down to a share matter of "bad science", well, fair game...
Of course there are problems with religious texts. They are in principle jungles of contradicting statements (which I make sure to confront my religious friends about). They are completely dependent on the reader's interpretation, and were always meant to be that. That make them basically open to any kind of behaviour in their name. But reading the Bible literaly (like the fundamentalists love to do) and extract their most violent messages and highlight them as the "central message" of the faith (like fundamentalists love to do), well... is neither intelligent nor healthy. (Yes, I am looking at you Sam Harris and Cristopher Hitchens... as well as other fundamentalists of course...)
Regarding the Bible's literalism, what are the parts that are meant to be followed and those that are meant to be disregarded? Couldn't God get rid of the barbaric parts? You give me a text and you tell me it is a moral book on which I should guide my life... except this part and that part and this other part... If Harris and Hitchens judge the value of a book by its content, that doesn't make them fundamentalist... Only Biblical literate. But I guess it is easy to label them as fundies instead of addressing their argument.
I mean, why do religious people constantly debate and wonder about how to practice their faith? Its all there in the text, isn't it?
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/04/officer-and-two-suspects-reportedly-shot-at-draw-the-prophet-contest-in-texas
@bondjames you will be glad to hear that even I think that this is provocative. But only because no doubt a lot of the people attending this stupid event thinking they are defending free speech would likely be outraged if someone were to organise a 'draw a cartoon of Jesus giving St Peter a blowjob' contest which would cause a similar level of offence to Christians as this does to Muslims.
Free speech is all well and good but you need to have something to say. Charlie Hebdo use the cartoons to make satirical and political points but this pointless exercise is offence for offence's sake and was done for no other reason to inflame Muslims, who, assuming the guys who have been killed are Muslim (details are still scant at this stage), reacted completely predictably as usual.
That said these people are breaking no law in drawing the prophet so the shooting of the people who attacked them is entirely justified.
One idiot said "the war is here". I'm quite certain that was the intention. There are several armed nutbags in the US who are chomping at the bit for a holy war on American shores so they can exercise their Second Amendment rights to the fullest.
As I have said before, I'm not condoning violence, but is it really necessary to keep having these 'free speech' events taking the piss out of Muhammad? Should this be the primary concern when it comes to free speech right now? Is this really getting the point across to the muslim masses who are currently under bombing campaigns (ostensibly to root out terrorists who ironically are using arms supplied by the US of A) or is it rather ensuring more 'jihadis' join the ranks of the committed and become more motivated to create chaos, including potentially detonating a mass incendiary device on American or European shores one day? I wonder.
There are indeed better ways to get your point about religion across to muslims than having a 'cartoon contest' re: Muhammad, when one knows that is considered insulting to the faith. This is what I mean about finesse. An intelligent panel debate (attended by clerics from all faiths) might have been a suitable alternative, that likely would not have necessitated a shootout. I personally would leave the cartoon contests to the primary school kids.
Errr... I dont think youve thought that one through. We are talking about the state that elected Dubya time and again after all.
However I'm not really losing much sleep over this. People exercising their democratic right to do what they want and two nutters who got more than they bargained for because the organisers had paid $10,000 for police and private security to be there waiting for them when they inevitably turned up frothing at the mouth over a few pencil drawings. As that well known philosopher Vincent Jones said in Snatch 'You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity'.
Well said. I agree. It all worked out well enough this time around.
However, this is round 1. It's going to get ugly before it gets better because one day some of these jihadi's are going to get smarter about how they go about responding to provocation - they will choose to martyr themselves in more extravagant ways, rather than going down to a predictable hail of inevitable bullets.
You'd be surprised about Texas. The Atheist Community of Austin and their show The Atheist Experience have gained international fame. A community is not a state, let alone a country, but there are voices of dissent, and in that case voices of reason, that are not afraid to talk intelligently but firmly about atheism, secular values, the separation of Church and State.
Well I dont have any evidence to argue you that youre wrong but my faith is enough for me to state that that those dissenting voices are a pretty tiny minority. (Do you see what I did there?)
Oh and this from Dubya's wiki entry:
'In 1998, Bush won re-election with a record 69 percent of the vote. He became the first governor in Texas history to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms. For most of Texas history, governors served two-year terms; a constitutional amendment extended those terms to four years starting in 1975. In his second term, Bush promoted faith-based organizations and enjoyed high approval ratings. He proclaimed June 10, 2000 to be Jesus Day in Texas'
Thumping election wins for a guy that declares Jesus Day? Jesus! And when it says he 'promoted faith-based organizations' I wonder precisely how many of said organisations weren't Christian? Can you imagine the headlines if tomorrow Milliband or Cameron as a last desperate pitch said 'If elected I will make sure every June 10th is Jesus Day'?
Just saw this update on the Guardian website which is priceless (and I'm not talking about his pitiful grammar - perhaps your are right @bondjames; maybe education is the key because this retard clearly needs to go back to school):
'In the minutes following the attack, Junaid Hussain, from Birmingham, who now goes by the alias Abu Hussain al-Britani, wrote a message under the hashtag #TexasAttack saying: “They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State.”'
Err well yeah they were right to think that weren't they moron because in case you haven't noticed the Soldiers of Islamic State got slaughtered.
That said, I envy the Americans for one thing: their atheist communities are generally more vocal, more assertive than in other Western countries, including the UK. Atheism is still a taboo word in Québec where I come from, in England we still have a state Church and very militant Islamists.
Yeah but the Church of England has zero power and influence. These days for the vast majority its just a place for marriages and funerals. Same cant be said about Church groups in the US who have a lot of political clout. America is so riddled with fundamentalism it scares me as much as Iran.
I'm always reminded of this tragic episode during the 2008 presidential campaign. Although McCain's response was admirable, he did not say what I though he should have said, which was, "so what if he is?"
Bishops stills eat in the House of Lords. I don't call this zero power and influence. They kicked a fuss about gay marriage, if I'm not mistaken. More importantly, the Constitution gives vicars the right to talk at school assemblies and prayers in said school assemblies are compulsory... even in state schools! I know, I have seen it when I was working. I honestly doubt a British version of Jessica Ahlquist would have the same success here. By law and in many ways, UK is far more religious than the US, which has many religious lobbies and wackos, but on the other hand a completely secular state founded on secular values (whatever the religious wackos may think). And the American fundamentalists are losing ground, not to mention that they lost their credibility in many issues (same sex marriage for instance).
Well the Queen is the head of the C of E and if she tried to exert any political influence there would be a constitutional crisis and the government of the day would be duty bound to demand her abdication.
The Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally feels the need to spout off about some topic du jour and does anyone ever take any notice? If its a slow news day he gets about 2 minutes coverage on the telly right before the heartwarming-cat-getting-stuck-up a tree story at the end.
I'll grant you successive UK government's notion that 'faith' schools are a good thing is disturbing but I dont recall any cases of creationism being taught in the UK to compare with the many I have heard of in the US. Not to mention that someone who openly advocated creationism like Sarah Palin would struggle get elected on the local council let alone be put forward for a position that would put her a heart attack away from having her finger on the button.
Yes the UK has a lot of archaic practices that grants religion to much leeway but these are the residue of old legislation when the church was important but we having nothing as terrifying as the bible belt where whole swathes of the population fervently believe in utter garbage. Then again we seem to have a bigger tolerance of Sharia Law than I've heard of in the US, not to mention the problem we have with home grown terrorists and sympathisers which is close to being out of control so I guess both countries have their cross (or crescent) to bear.
If it is this difficult to eradicate religion from civilised, liberal countries what hope is there for the Islamic world where they still stone people to death?
The best we can hope for in our lifetimes I fear is that by the time we die the religious are seen as cranks like conspiracy theorists and people who believe they've been abducted by aliens. It will take many more centuries of enlightenment before the whole planet is able to shake off the shackles of this rubbish left to us by generations gone by who thought it sounded credible at the time.
Yes, let's make light of a bit of attempted murder, shall we?
Why not, what nutters do go to a congress center with such security due to Geertjes appearance and in the state of Texas where the only unarmed living creatures are members of the animal kingdom, and them packing would not even surprise me.
To me the responses of Al Qaeda & IS claiming responsibility is a classic example of claiming to be bigger than they actually are, you should laugh at them and make a mockery of them instead of reacting in anger because that is what they want.
Well, fair enough. Satire from satire, if you will. I like it. :)