Post: #101

There is a theory that Jesus was just high as fuck. That would explain all the "miracles" Jesus had.

Post: #102

(10-14-2013 03:57 AM)Tailgunner Wrote:  Hmmm....so Muslims would take a book tour by a man claiming Muhammed was a confection of a group of Romans rather than an actual person well would they Sargon?

The average, random Muslim on the street is going to bust out a machete and murder you if you mock his religion in real life? I take it you, too, don't know any Muslims outside of what you see on CNN.

Quote:Wonder what Salman Rusdie or Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Theo Van Gogh would think of your view of "The Religion of Peace"?

God, I love false dichotomies.

So if the general Muslim population isn't made up of murdering sociopaths then they're all pacifist hippies who turn the other cheek and sing Kumbayah while feeding homless puppies. If Islam isn't the Evil Death-Worshiping Cult of Cthulu it must be the ultimate Religion of Peace.

Quote:Remember the crappy film about Islam last year? Caused hundreds of deaths around the world. And a rally in Sydney had the charming vision of a 6 yo hoy holding a sign saying "Behead all those who insult the Prophet".
A series of cartoons about religion in a Danish newspaper was fine til it was the turn of Islam- then the credible death threats began.
Christians are definitely a soft target for critics. This Atwell cat wouldn't have the balls to have a go at Islam in the same way.

Oh for fuck's sakes. That there are (currently) more violent individuals among Muslim extremists than there are among (modern) Christian extremists isn't what's being disputed. Believing that they constitute the general population of Muslims represents the type of simplistic black and white thinking a five year old. Edmund Dantes seemed to imply that mocking the religion of a random-ass Muslim off the street in "real life" would get you beheaded, a statement that's so vague and generalising it has practically no meaning. Which Muslims? Where? Some mountain dwellers in Afghanistan or a balding Turkish uncle working at a kebab stand in Europe?

Quote:Pretending Muslims would take this kind of criticism well is laughable.

Again, exactly how many Muslims have you encountered outside of CNN and the internet?

Ceterum censeo Ōsakam esse delendam

Post: #103

(10-14-2013 02:25 AM)Sargon of Akkad Wrote:  

(10-14-2013 12:14 AM)Edmund Dantes Wrote:  Honestly, America was founded upon Christian beliefs. Over time we started straying away from it and look where we are now.

The US was not founded upon "Christian beliefs".

Yes it was, at least partly. The US was founded by two distinct groups:

The puritans of Plymouth, super religious, all families,

and

The opportunists of Jamestown, totally amoral (they brought in slaves), all men.


Religion was always a major part of American culture, that's why the First Amendment includes freedom of religion, since the puritans came to America in order to escape religious persecution.

Most of the founding fathers weren't deists by the way. "God given rights" ring a bell?

And none were Atheists, because everyone knows that position is retarded:

Quote:When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

- Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson

Post: #104

(10-14-2013 12:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Most of the founding fathers weren't deists by the way. "God given rights" ring a bell?

Quote:When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"Laws of Nature" and "Nature's God" sound pretty Deist to me. I definitely don't see any Judeo-Christian references in that quote. Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, possibly Benjamin Franklin among others were known to be Deists. Culturally, the United States was always predominantly Christian, but the country was never founded as anything resembling a Christian state.

Quote:And none were Atheists, because everyone knows that position is retarded:

Yeah, not being convinced of something for which there's no empirical evidence is retarded.

Post: #105

(10-14-2013 12:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(10-14-2013 02:25 AM)Sargon of Akkad Wrote:  

(10-14-2013 12:14 AM)Edmund Dantes Wrote:  Honestly, America was founded upon Christian beliefs. Over time we started straying away from it and look where we are now.

The US was not founded upon "Christian beliefs".

Yes it was, at least partly. The US was founded by two distinct groups:

The puritans of Plymouth, super religious, all families,

and

The opportunists of Jamestown, totally amoral (they brought in slaves), all men.


Religion was always a major part of American culture, that's why the First Amendment includes freedom of religion, since the puritans came to America in order to escape religious persecution.

Most of the founding fathers weren't deists by the way. "God given rights" ring a bell?

And none were Atheists, because everyone knows that position is retarded:

Quote:When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

- Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson

Nah, not everyone. The opposite is true: believing in something that doesn't exist is retarded.

Post: #106

"The average, random Muslim on the street is going to bust out a machete and murder you if you mock his religion in real life? I take it you, too, don't know any Muslims outside of what you see on CNN. "
I'm suitably impressed that you personally know all the worlds Muslims Sargon...honestly I am.
And that every single one is accepting of mocking/criticism of their faith.Me? Hmmm...I know relatively few. I also get much information from professional news-gathering sources. I'm unable to fly to world hotspots to personally verify all news events with my own eyes. But who am I to trust- you, or my lying eyes?
Yet you didn't answer my question- if you replaced Jesus with Muhammed in the original story of this thread then Muslims would not cause mayhem? The book tour would go off without a hitch? The author would not be under credible death threat and require heavy police protection for years (if not for life)?
You live in a different world to me then son.
And you missed the central argument I made- that it would simply be too dangerous for a writer to even contemplate a similar dissection of the Prophet. Jesus- not so much.

Post: #107

(10-14-2013 12:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  And none were Atheists, because everyone knows that position is retarded.

Hahaha. I finally figured out what has been bothering you so much lately.
You have been flaked on by a fat atheist chick!



But really, why the heart-felt anger towards people that don't hold your belief about some aspect of how the universe is governed? I love the discussion, though there rarely is any actual debate (online or in real life), and I definitely feel it is a inferior intellectual position, but I am not angry to religious people as a group. Who cares? It's only bothersome when they wanna ruin the fun for others with their useless laws.

Anyway, I'm open for debate and would not mind answering your, or anyone else's, questions on abiogenesis and evolution.

Post: #108

(10-11-2013 10:48 PM)frenchie Wrote:  You guys know of the Holy Trinity right?

Post: #109

Ok, fuck all this.

I am god.

Post: #110

(10-13-2013 04:04 AM)soup Wrote:  Seriously, how many whiny atheists are on this forum?

Well, I'm here, so there's at least one.

Post: #111

(10-14-2013 03:55 PM)Tailgunner Wrote:  I'm suitably impressed that you personally know all the worlds Muslims Sargon...honestly I am.

So you're implying one needs to know *all* the world's Muslims in order to understand that their general population doesn't consist of violent sociopaths. This is silly. That I even need to explain this is telling.

Quote:And that every single one is accepting of mocking/criticism of their faith.

Again, false dichotomy, using the same poor two-dimensional reasoning as before. Once again, you make the assumption that if all 1 1/2 billion Muslims are not violent murdering sociopaths the only alternative is that every one of them accepts criticism mocking his/her faith. Also, either all Black men are crack addicts who will mug you on sight, or they are all Oxford educated musicians, either all Native Americans and Australian Aborigines are unemployed alcoholics or they're all sage-like hippy-shamans with peacepipes. As with most ideologues, your world view reduces grey issues into easily digestible black and white terms, where all members of one group are either universally one thing or universally the other, where no thinking is required.

Quote:Me? Hmmm...I know relatively few. I also get much information from professional news-gathering sources. I'm unable to fly to world hotspots to personally verify all news events with my own eyes. But who am I to trust- you, or my lying eyes?

(My God, how many more times am I going to read this ridiculous "Hmmmmm..." at the opening of every sentence?)

I have no doubt that you'd have more to worry about if you released a film depicting Muhammad in highheals, boobjobs and a miniskirt than you would if you did the same with Jesus. What you seem not to understand is that this isn't my concern, nor is it what's being discussed. We are talking about whether mocking an average ramdom Muslim on the street is likely to provoke homicide.

This is the problem with basing one's views of an entire demographic (or rather, a set of related groups who happen to share a common religion) on what you see in the media. I have no doubt that the violence and crazed protests you've seen on the news are real, nor do I doubt that most professional news agencies do a good job at covering them. However, like anyone with even the slightest capacity for critical thought, I have enough common sense to realise that news coverages of just about any issue anywhere are highly selective (and often lean towards sensationalism). Fact is, there is nothing from the reports on riots in the Middle East over the Danish cartoons to tell me how much of the general population of Islamdom these screaming bearded nutjobs represent.

Quote:Yet you didn't answer my question-

My post was directed at ED's comment that criticizing a random Muslim's faith in real life would get you killed. You were the one who dragged the discussion into the realm of cartoons and book tours.

Quote:if you replaced Jesus with Muhammed in the original story of this thread then Muslims would not cause mayhem?

Which Muslims?

Quote:The book tour would go off without a hitch? The author would not be under credible death threat and require heavy police protection for years (if not for life)?

You fail to say where exactly I implied that, or at which point I even mentioned book tours. I already told you in the last post that there were currently more individuals willing to resort to violence among Islamofascists than among (modern) Christian fanatics, and there are certainly more violent militants in Islamdome than in modern-day Christendom (*for a multitude of reasons, religion being the least of them). Of course there are more Muslim fanatics willing to make death threats towards critics than Christian fanatics. Who exactly is disputing this?

Quote:You live in a different world to me then son.

You seem to live in a world resembling a Saturday morning cartoon, 'son', where the world is easily divisible into black and white. According to this ideology of yours, any given group is either universally violent or universally peaceful.

Ceterum censeo Ōsakam esse delendam!

Post: #112

Tailgunner, I am going to do the same and ask you this question:
Which muslims are you talking about?

The ones who threaten and kills people of their own "religion", killing innocents to push their extremist ideologies ?

The million ones who leave peacefully with the other religions (like the land I come from, where 95% are muslims and 4% Christians yet not a single incident has happened in decades over there?) and just mind their own business?

The average guy who will just shake his head in disbelief(in the case of caricatures or anything else), pray in his heart God for punishing the infidels, then return to his business?

Or the relatively isolated guys (who are an extreme minority) , who will go and shoot some people in the streets, claiming they are doing it in the name of GOD ( by the way, singling out "Allah" every time you talk about Islam, is not really smart I think, given that He is the god of Muslims, Christians and Jews. Just call Him God please) ? Whereas they create terror and kill people within their own country and religion, like the Talibans? So you think the Talibans and the Ben-Laden likes represent all Muslims?

You look like someone who watches more the medias than he really interacted with some Muslims