Says the pot to the kettle.Quote:
Originally Posted by El Nino
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Says the pot to the kettle.Quote:
Originally Posted by El Nino
Those big words throwing you off again, eh?
The question is: am I right?
Mandy wondered earlier if she could use this thread to discuss, as she put it, the barbarisms that were committed in the name of sanctifying lands in the name of Christ? Cutting off the hands of Arawak Indians for failing to find gold for the church? The inquisition? The witch trials? Manifest destiny? Colonialism? Slavery? All done in the name of Christ ... the violence and callousness of Christianity compares when it comes to sheer brutality. (Compares to what? Well, we all know the answer to that question, but let's not say it out loud.) Mandy also criticised Christianity because "they" command the largest nuclear arsenal on earth, have a military budget that exceeds every other nation on earth, and have a record of bombing the shit out of any nation that might pose a threat. She asserted that US foreign policy has an "Orwellian nature" and claims that those who have (italics mine) occupied key positions in the Bush administration and the US Congress are committed Christian Zionists, who support Israel because they believe that an ethnically cleansed Jewish state is necessary for Armageddon to occur.
I was under the impression that George W. Bush was out the door, and that there is a new sherriff in town. So what's all the panic about people who are supposed to have held key positions in the Bush administration?
Are we still supposed to worry that "they" might ... er, what is is we're supposed to be worrying about again? Witch trials, is it? Maybe the Obama administration are going to have witch trials? That must be it. Of course it is, he spoke about that during his campaign, didn't he? How could I forget the day when Obama said they were going to start dunking young women who bore the mark of the devil into the nearest river, and if they float to the surface, then they're guilty, and it's off to Gitmo for them! Oh how the crowd cheered!
Mandy isn't the first person to criticise Christians for their behaviour, or their beliefs. One can't help thinking of Christopher Hitchens' comments on Fox News when he was asked by Sean Hannity to give his opinion of Jerry Falwell. Hitchens had already ripped into Falwell in an article on Slate, saying that the discovery of Falwell's carcass on his office floor was of zero significance, unless you were a credulous idiot who either believed what he preached, or gave him air time to do so. He added that it was a shame there is no hell for Falwell to go to. Rounding off his spot on Hannity and Colmes, Hitchens had the last word on the overweight Reverend: "If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox."
No matter how virulent the comment then, no matter how irrelevant or unlikely any of Mandy's ideas are in real life, and we all know that the likelihood of Barack Obama inviting Tim LaHaye into the Oval Office to play with the nuclear football is vanishingly small, this is all seen as legitimate criticism of an organised religion.
One sees again the double standards in operation here. The most perfervid outburst, citing the most irrelevant event, making the most incredible claim; all this is just fine and dandy, so long as one is attacking Christianity. Apparently one can criticise a religion without being a racist!
As soon as one criticises Islam though, one is attacked personally for doing so. Anyone who talks about factual events from history, or quotes the Islamic holy texts, and portrays Islam in a way which is not in complete accordance with the multiculturalist worldview, is immediately told that they are arrogant, ignorant, racist, et cetera. Christopher Hitchens, an avowed antitheist who maintains that "all religions are versions of the same untruth", is suddenly declared by Mandy to be "a whiney little shit screaming about the dangers of Islam."
Mandy apparently believes that after the fall of communism, there was a great conspiracy, and whoever was involved in it decided to spend lots of money on ... well, on something, after they had first of all declared Islam to be the new enemy of the West. States throughout Europe, and intellectuals in universities everywhere, all got together as part of this well funded movement, in order to lay down the law and sort these Muslims out. Apparently. This kind of "thinking" would almost be funny, if the situation we're in wasn't so damned serious.
The truth of the matter is that throughout Europe, Islam is on the rise, both demographically and politically. Our governments appear toothless in the face of what's sometimes called "creeping shariah." There is a long list of people who have criticised Islam, only to be persecuted, and on one occasion murdered, for their trouble. Salman Rushdie, Michel Houellebecq, Robert Redeker, Oriana Fallaci, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh, to name but a few. And let's not forget the Islamic reaction to those Danish cartoons. (Seriously, let's never forget that.) Astonishingly, the Dutch MP Geert Wilders is currently being prosecuted by the Dutch authorities for speaking in an unapproved way about Islam. If the dhimmis within the Dutch political system have their way, then freedom of speech will soon be a thing of the past throughout Europe.
Pat Condell - Shame on The Netherlands.
Yeah, the world would be better off if the big three monotheistic religions just disappeared (not that the others are wonderful). Down with all religious states. God didn’t promise any land to anyone at any time. Why? Because there are no gods. The squabble in the Middle East is a political conflict born of religious fantasies. We can all see right now in Gaza the atrocities that are committed in the name of Judaism and just across the border we can all witness the havoc created in name of Islam. Meanwhile, Christians in Kansas, Texas and elsewhere endeavor to keep children ignorant and women pregnant. It’s time to close those Torahs, Bibles and Korans; time to put them in the shelves and let a little dust gather. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are superstitious roadblocks to intellectual integrity and political stability. Sadly, nobody’s going to give up the long held superstitions on which they were weaned. So sadly people will continue to make excuses, point fingers, shoot mortars and bomb[] the shit out of ignorant (the human equivalent of innocent) people and children.
[edited for grammar]
Trish-Hit-Nail-On-Head....Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
There's a pretty good series showing on Channel 4 just now, you can watch it on "catch up" at their website. The programme is "Christianity: A History."
www.channel4.com
Here's a trailer on youtube:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hnXwgMS23sw
Why Should I Respect These Oppressive Religions?
Whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents say they're victims of 'prejudice' by Johann Hari.
The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism - giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds - are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we "respect" religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten - to put him on the side of the religious censors.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that "a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people". It was a Magna Carta for mankind - and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it "Western", Robert Mugabe calls it "colonialist", and Dick Cheney calls it "outdated". The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it - but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.
Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to "respect" the "unique sensitivities" of the religious, they decided - so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within "the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community".
In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.
Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN's Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech - including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets". The council agreed - so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.
Anything which can be deemed "religious" is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN - and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah "will not happen" and "Islam will not be crucified in this council" - and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.
Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest - but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.
To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's - or their oppressors'?
As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: "The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom."
Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.
Underpinning these "reforms" is a notion seeping even into democratic societies - that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of "prejudice" - and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.
All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.
I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.
When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.
But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.
But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has "faith" that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It's easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.
But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs - but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.
Yet this idea - at the heart of the Universal Declaration - is being lost. To the right, it thwacks into apologists for religious censorship; to the left, it dissolves in multiculturalism. The hijacking of the UN Special Rapporteur by religious fanatics should jolt us into rescuing the simple, battered idea disintegrating in the middle: the equal, indivisible human right to speak freely.
Johann Hari, writing for The Independent. Article also available at CommonDreams dot org.
I thought I would post this article so that any rational people happening upon this thread - and that may be a small group, but it may have some members - could compare the attitudes of some people here (and on HD as well) who just can't handle anyone criticising Islam, with certain other people in the world who, well, just can't handle anyone criticising Islam.
Dennis Overbye has a somewhat relevant editorial in this week's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/sc...essa.html?_r=2
He's a bit too syrupy when it comes to his praise for Obama, but he's on target when he deals with the values science shares with democracy, suggesting that it was not by mere chance that the two of them evolved together.
Here is a link to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Niccolo refers above:
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Nice article, I'll check to see if they already have it, but if not then I think I'll pass that link along to Richard Dawkins' site.
In fact they do have it on that site already. While I was on there though, I came across this, which you might find interesting:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,35...g-God,Guardian
I had a look on Pat Condell's website as well, it's worth reading his "feedback" page:
http://www.patcondell.net/page4/page4.html