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Just to clarify @Shardlake, I'm not American, although I've lived and worked there in the past and keep abreast of the politics there, as it affects us all - and it's beneficial for my work.
The gun culture that is prevalent in some parts of the US was the most shocking thing to me, as someone who grew up in the UK. I think many first generation immigrants are terrified by that aspect, especially those with young children.
I have family in L.A., and when I first visited many years ago I was shocked by the way they lived...in a state of fear almost about their kids going out at certain times of the night and about certain parts of the city. That was something that was indeed surprising to me. Now, I realize that inner city strife is common in some large US cities, and so it's a fact of life.
Correction: he meant he could fire a bullet with each trigger pull until he unloaded the clip.
I'm no more of a biblical scholar than a constitutional one, but the idea of using lethal force to defend a congregation does seem inconsistent with Jesus' example.
Why would you make this baseless assumption? Maybe take 5 minutes to learn the story before you attempt to hijack yet another thread as a platform for your obsessive anti-Christian bleatings. The guy was just hanging out with his targets, biding his time until he decided to make his move.
I guess the word "church" in the thread title though is catnip for you.
"The "good book" is not exactly a shining example of peace, love and understanding. So the killer embraced its sectarian aspects"
Again you are trying to derail yet another thread for your anti-Christian agenda which clearly obsesses you.
Just fyi, there are plenty of members here that would not ipso facto embrace your statement above as some sort of goes-without-saying observation. The mi6 message board, as much as you might want to make it so, is not some backwater board or platform for hammering away at a morally superior atheist world view.
Such triumphalism isn't consistent with our pluralistic western societies- actually more in stark opposition I would say. Heck it isn't even consistent with Ian Flemings writing.
Maybe such trite remarks are comforting to you, which speaks to an underlying immaturity or insecurity I think, on your part.
Most I realize, just ignore you in the interests of civility, as they are here to talk Bond, not lecture on their moral superiority.
However as you seem determined to derail yet another thread, let me just add that
re "The "good book" is not exactly a shining example of peace, love and understanding."
There are plenty on this board, not to mention the broader western world who would suggest the opposite is true.
Now here actually, I can agree with you but I would make the case much differently.
Capital punishment IMO is yes not an effective deterrent. But there is also the not-so-small matter of killing the wrongly accused, which does happen in America.
If the law is on the books, it can and will get abused. Innocents might be railroaded to the gallows.
There is no doubt of guilt in this case, however the law cannot be written so as to only accomodate the absolutely positively guilty.
Seeing as you have attempted to commandeer yet another thread to beat your anti-Christian drum (and this time with blissful ignorance of the actual details of the story) I will say I could make a religious argument against capital punishment, precisely a Catholic argument, but I won't. I don't think its helpful, as I can respect that others might be informed by their own beliefs, Christian, agnostic or otherwise to argue the case FOR capital punishment.
I don't think its helpful to assert a morally superior stance as you are want to do.
We are all entitled to throw our cards on the table.
Deal with it.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/20/dylann-roof-s-racist-manifesto-is-ignorant-and-chilling.html
While we don't know if he had religious motivations, one should not discount the fact that many of the white supremacist groups in the US (including the Council of Conservative Citizens, who influenced Roof) cloak their teachings/world view under an erroneous & convenient misinterpretation of Christian theology, including the "Christian Identity" movement. In this respect, they are similar to the Muslim extremists who have hijacked Islam for nefarious purposes.
So while we are not yet aware if a misunderstanding of religion played a part in these killings, it has definitely had a large impact on white supremacy in the US, along with Nazism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Christian_Identity
I have misread a previous comment hence my reaction. Beside I wouldn't be triumphalist over such a tragedy. Neither was I over the massacre at Charlie Hebdo. You can be right and not be happy about it.
Regarding capital punishment, I'm well aware that not only the Catholic Church, but also some very conservative Christians are against it and kudos to them.
You miss my point as usual particularly my use of the word triumphal.
You make it sound like I've been an atheist all my life. I was a Catholic and was educated as such.
I have read somewhere that in the 1960s, the Bond films got into trouble with the UK censors for too much violence (hence the quip) and from the US censors for sex (hence the nudity in DN and FRWL were not repeated)
While it certainly does not characterize every, or even most Americans, I believe this cultural phenomenon is a remnant of the Pilgrims, combined with the country's somewhat violent, wild formative years.
It's certainly a peculiar thing, when viewed from outside. The furor over Bill Clinton's relatively minor (from my perspective at least) personal indiscretions while in the Oval office comes to mind, although he should not have lied about it...
Right and your understanding of same is virtually nil. You prove it everytime you pontificate on your self-righteous superior world view.
The fact that you think an "education" in same is somehow what achieves an understanding of Christianity, is actually quite revealing.
A man of humble heart, with no formal education in anything, pushing a plough can have a better understanding of Christianity than you do. In fact, would.
Now who is pontificating? I was a believer. I read the Bible, prayed, loved God, been there done that got the t-shirt. I came to disbelief because I actually started questioning godly claims rather than accepting them out of blind faith. But hey you can claim righteousness and humility at the same time.
For the record I already said I was wrong about the killer being a Christian fundamentalist. Not all supremacists are although the KKK boasts to be a Christian organization.
Either way this is a real tragedy, and I think America definitely need stronger gun control laws regardless of what some amendment from a constitution drawn up hundreds of years ago (I like to think that society has become a lot more advanced since then, I mean the constitution was drawn up before slavery was abolished in America ffs) says. No offense to the yanks on here but the US gun control laws are ridiculous and in desperate need of reforming. And don't give me the whole "guns don't kill people" thing. Yes, people kill people. And guns make it much easier for people to kill people, especially if they're stupidly easy to get. I'm sorry but a country where any civilian can get their hands on an assault rifle, legally, is a country that's f***ed up in terms of gun control laws.
I don't think @Ludivico ever denied that there are people such as yourself who disagree with him, he's just giving his opinion on the subject and to be honest I agree with him. There has been a lot of hatred, atrocities and death throughout history because of the bibles teachings and can you honestly say that a book which, for example, calls homosexuality a sin, is a book full of peace, love and understanding?
I understand that there are positive messages (love thy neighbour and all the rest of it) in there, and I understand that religion is of great comfort to some people. But, and this also applies to the Quran and others, these teachings are outdated. They were written thousands of years ago ffs.
I'll say what I've said before on here, I think my adoptive mum, a lovely women who I look up to a lot, has the right idea about this. She's Catholic, not very religious, but she goes to church at Easter and she believes in God and Jesus and everything. But she doesn't have a problem with gay people, or abortion, or sex before marriage, or contraception, etc. She doesn't let her religion take away control her life or take away from her common sense or her basic human decency. She realizes that the bible was written thousands of years ago in a time that's very different to todays society and that a lot of its teachings are massively outdated and actually pretty horrible (saying being gay is wrong) and that some of it is just plain scientifically wrong (eg-Genesis, complete bollocks, there's proof that evolution is a fact). Same with my grandparents (although they're not Catholic Christians, they're Pentecostals, which I think are Protestants? I dunno but again it's the same idea, they don't blindly follow the bible because they know it's outdated).
I think that's the example all religious people should follow. By all means believe in a higher power if it offers comfort to you but don't blindly follow religion no matter what and recognize that your religion is based on teachings from thousands of years ago which means a lot of it will have since been proven wrong.
True. That's exactly what I said when the Boston bomber was sentenced to death recently, extremists like him are just gonna see him as a martyr for their messed up cause and it's just going to inspire more of them.
Well... Maybe because the Bible IS full of peace, love and understanding? If you og through it with a magnifying glass you will find certain statements condemning homosexuality, yet you will find hundreds of pages saying that every human being is "equal in God's eyes", "born in his picture" (I don't know the correct English translation of that :) ). The Bible is full of contradicitng statements. That does not make it a book "of evil".
Btw, wat do you think of Fleming and his views on homoexuality? ;)
Yes by todays standards he was homophobic (and racist) but that's not his fault. It's just the time he was alive in. Just like the bible. It was written thousands of years ago. But we as a society have moved on now and religious people should do too. James Bond doesn't go round claiming that gays and lesbians are "mixed up" people who only exist because we gave the vote to women anymore, because that's a ridiculously offensive and untrue view. James Bond has moved on from that, because 50 years have passed since then and people have realised that it's wrong. Christianity should move on from some of the bible teachings, because thousands of years have passed since then and people have realised that it's wrong.
I never said it was a book of evil. It's just a very outdated book that some people take way too literally and adhere far too closely too. But I'm sorry, any book that says this
"If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltness is upon them."
Is not a book of peace, love and understanding. As I said that's understandable, as it was thousands of years old, but still, it isn't and shouldn't be considered a book full of peace, love and understanding, because of some (not all, I recognize that there are positive messages in there, like you mentioned) of the things it teaches, and for all the death that's happened because of that (the Crusades for example). There's peace love and understanding in there, sure, but there's also hate, prejudice and massively outdated teachings that have no place in todays world. But like I said, I'm not singling out the bible here, the same applies to the Qur'an and other religious texts.
Many religious people do realize this and act accordingly. However there are always conservative, "outdated" people, like in ideologies.
But that this is a derailment of the thread I think no one can disagree with, so lets stop here before we get a new travesty like the CH-thread...
That's true, I know. That's why I gave my grandparents and adopted mum as examples. I just think that instead of some, it should be all religious people realizing this, that's all.
To be fair, CH turned into a debate about religion as a whole because of the nature of the attack.
In this case (and to come back to the topic), Christians were murdered in a church (and for those accusing me of going all atheistic here, I am fully conscious that the victims were theists and practicing ones, this is not in dispute). But it was not their faith that was attacked, whatever some Republican candidates are saying now. It was racial intolerance, not religious one (of course, both are not mutually exclusive).
Religion could very well be partially to blame in this instance as well, not just guns. As I mentioned earlier, there are very strong religious leanings among White supremacists in the US, particularly influenced by the Christian Identity belief system (the Council of Conservative Citizens, who influenced this killer, are believers in the Christian Identity). Here too, a bastardization of religion (among other things) is used to influence, motivate & mobilize many people to intolerant viewpoints.
So religion is relevant to these discussions. It does not appear out of nowhere. It is a part of the problem. That may be inconvenient for those who are religious or have religious leanings, but it is also an inconvenient fact, whether we like it or not and it must be confronted.
As in the case of the constitution, we have people leaning on and misunderstanding the overall concepts in outdated (I'm fully in agreement with @thelivingroyale here and congratulate his adoptive mum's outlook on the whole thing.....I wish more were like her actually) texts, which they continue to take as gospel.
This murderer's world view was a terrible one (see the link I posted earlier where he espouses his beliefs) and unfortunately he is not alone. There are more and more of these nutbags in the US and in Europe too (except they don't have such easy access to guns, thankfully).