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United States43627 Posts
On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history.
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
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On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. This is some of the trashiest Islamic apologist claptrap as ever appears on this forum. If your defense is to call on examples some 700-years old to establish moral equivalency, then you have a serious evidence issue. I'll try to keep this short since you probably already know where I'm going with it. Barely an eyebrow is raised when you read some news headline about a muslim terrorist, belonging to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, PLO, blowing up a bomb and destroys a building and/or killing innocent civilians. The news stories you don't hear is a radical evangelical sect committing similar acts of terrorism against a civilian population. It isn't normal to hear Protestants kidnapping Jews and Muslims, destabilizing governments, and taking control of territory via a religious-political state. You'll have to update your examples to this century, and examine yourself for excusing barbarism, terrorism, torture, and murder done in the name of Allah simply because of ingrained hatred of Christianity.
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On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
You should try drinking water, it's healthier. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim 'fundamentalists' all have the same destructive tendencies and have conducted genocides/ethnic cleansings in the last century. True, in the past half century muslims in the middle east have been one of the more violent factions on the planet. Unfortunately you seem to latch on to religion as the common cause of this, rather than an extreme hate for the western nations which have repeatedly exploited them and/or fucked them in the ass. You can see how ridiculously powerful nationalism and religion can be when combined, as is the case for Israel. The same Israel where the reigning political party killed more jews in the last two months than have died in the last five years and were applauded for it, because fuck the brown people. The same Israel that has been the bully in the middle east for the past 50 years. If Israel can go that bad without Judaism being considered fundamentally violent, then you can probably understand why the people on the receiving end of the abuse are slightly angrier about it.
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On September 12 2014 08:57 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. This is some of the trashiest Islamic apologist claptrap as ever appears on this forum. If your defense is to call on examples some 700-years old to establish moral equivalency, then you have a serious evidence issue. I'll try to keep this short since you probably already know where I'm going with it. Barely an eyebrow is raised when you read some news headline about a muslim terrorist, belonging to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, PLO, blowing up a bomb and destroys a building and/or killing innocent civilians. The news stories you don't hear is a radical evangelical sect committing similar acts of terrorism against a civilian population. It isn't normal to hear Protestants kidnapping Jews and Muslims, destabilizing governments, and taking control of territory via a religious-political state. You'll have to update your examples to this century, and examine yourself for excusing barbarism, terrorism, torture, and murder done in the name of Allah simply because of ingrained hatred of Christianity.
Pretty sure we don't have to guess the religion when we hear about abortion clinic bombings.
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On September 12 2014 08:25 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 06:50 xDaunt wrote:On September 12 2014 06:41 coverpunch wrote:
Are we seriously trying to argue an equivalency between ISIS and Christian fundamentalism?
I would also point out that saying Islamism is more violent and oppressive than other religious governments is not repeat NOT the same as saying all Muslims are violent and oppressive.
And that's the problem that I have with people on the left. They'd rather trip over themselves to deflect the issue rather than have a serious, adult conversation about the problems with modern-day Islam. We're going on four pages of this nonsense in this thread. Religion in general has a lot of problems, specifically the whole irrationality of it. However, a lot of people have learned that there is just no point in telling that to religious people. They will not accept it, and they will not change. Furthermore, a lot of religious people manage to skip the negative aspects of their faith, so if they want to believe something irrational, why should i interfere? The problem only appears once people try to push some irrational agenda based on that faith. You want to tell people that Islam is a bad religion, but ignore the fact that pretty much any religion is more or less the same to a nonbeliever. Weird irrational rules that make no sense whatsoever, usually discriminating against someone or other, and the absurd belief that you are better than others because you believe in that specific faith. Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. The average western christian is just a lot less serious about his religion.
Of course it would be better if people would realize how insane the whole concept of religion in general is, but baring that, it is usually a better choice to just let them believe what they want and try to stop if from affecting other people. Religion is acceptable in a secularized society where it doesn't actually effect other people. Any sort of religious state is not a good idea. Sadly, a lot of middle eastern muslims appear to want their theocracies. I do not understand that, but i generally do not understand the appeal of religion at all. Also, this is not something a western power can reasonably influence. So the reasonable reaction is to go after the most insane theocrats, the ones so crazy that even their fellow religious monarchies hate them. And then hope that at some point, hopefully rather soon, the middle east will have the same developement as europe had to basically get rid of christianity as a major factor. And for their own sake it is to hope that they are faster than europe was. But that is something they need to do on their own, not something someone on the outside can force upon them. So the problem is not Islam as a specific religion, it is people taking religion serious. And that is something that is very hard to influence.
Haha, please. Which religion has members who are regularly beheading people? Which religion has members who blow themselves up in public places? Which religion has members who are indiscriminately slaughtering non-believers? And which religion has members who are doing all of this shit in the name of their religion?
Quit pretending that all religions are the same and equally problematic. Among all religions today, there is a clear leader in the clubhouse when it comes to the number and severity of assholes in that religion.
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United States43627 Posts
On September 12 2014 08:57 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. This is some of the trashiest Islamic apologist claptrap as ever appears on this forum. If your defense is to call on examples some 700-years old to establish moral equivalency, then you have a serious evidence issue. I'll try to keep this short since you probably already know where I'm going with it. Barely an eyebrow is raised when you read some news headline about a muslim terrorist, belonging to Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, PLO, blowing up a bomb and destroys a building and/or killing innocent civilians. The news stories you don't hear is a radical evangelical sect committing similar acts of terrorism against a civilian population. It isn't normal to hear Protestants kidnapping Jews and Muslims, destabilizing governments, and taking control of territory via a religious-political state. You'll have to update your examples to this century, and examine yourself for excusing barbarism, terrorism, torture, and murder done in the name of Allah simply because of ingrained hatred of Christianity.
I don't deny that a fuckload of Muslims are stone age morons. What I object to is the idea that they do stone age moron things because they're Muslim given the long, long history of Christians doing stone age moron things when they were stone age morons. Stone age morons do stone age moron things because they're stone age morons. Stone age Christian morons did stone age moron shit the same as stone age Muslims did and a bunch of Christians acting like they're somehow better than Muslims due to religion, and not due to the fact that their society stopped being stone age morons, is idiotic.
Christianity is no more virtuous. I don't hate Christianity and I certainly don't like Islam. I just think Christians acting as if they're somehow superior due to an enlightenment that Christianity actively fought is ridiculously hypocritical. Secular humanists made Christians into better people against their will and now suddenly you're acting like you were always that way and looking down on other religions, give me a break.
also lol @ I like Islam and hate Christianity, clearly that was what my post meant
and clearly I'm okay with murder because I condemn it without condemning the religion of the people doing it
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On September 12 2014 09:06 KwarK wrote:
I don't deny that a fuckload of Muslims are stone age morons. What I object to is the idea that they do stone age moron things because they're Muslim given the long, long history of Christians doing stone age moron things when they were stone age morons. Stone age morons do stone age moron things because they're stone age morons. Stone age Christian morons did stone age moron shit the same as stone age Muslims did and a bunch of Christians acting like they're somehow better than Muslims due to religion, and not due to the fact that their society stopped being stone age morons, is idiotic.
Christianity is no more virtuous. I don't hate Christianity and I certainly don't like Islam. I just think Christians acting as if they're somehow superior due to an enlightenment that Christianity actively fought is ridiculously hypocritical. Secular humanists made Christians into better people against their will and now suddenly you're acting like you were always that way and looking down on other religions, give me a break. I didn't accuse you of denying a fuckload of Muslims existing as stone age morons.
On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. You choose to excuse the current actions of Muslims because the Crusades hundreds of years ago happened and were bad. Even if I didn't challenge your allegation that its secular humanists that somehow purify or pacify religious practice, you still have chosen an indefensible position in the current age. Your belief that Muslims will be model world citizens in 500-700 years once smart people intervene (in humanistic fashion) cannot justify your own hypocrisy drawing false parallels today. The jihad and terrorism today cannot be assuaged by blind faith that it will follow a PapalCrusades->ModernChristianity progression, despite blanket assertions that religious faith only profits from secular humanist involvement. It is tantamount to excusing dictators because every great republic has that origin, and we were no worse in that age. You cannot rewind from modern times to make a point, and fast forward to modern and presume the arcs of religion are all the same ho hum.
Edit in response to your edit: You seem more concerned with separating the actions from the religion than condemning both the ideology/religious interpretation that spawned it. The terrorists, who coincidentally happened to ascribe to the Muslim Faith, of course in opposition to its mainstream interpretations, and nowhere sanctioned by vocal and prominent Conservative Muslim voices, did x. Don't bury your head in the sand, don't draw moral equivalence, with or without historicist treatments, unless you're prepared to say the two religions are just as likely to spawn the same storms we see today.
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United States43627 Posts
I don't excuse shit. You seem to think I'm somehow pro murder, pro IS, pro torture, I'm really not and nothing I've said suggests that.
I absolutely believe that IS are a bunch of murdering cunts and the world would be better off if they all got dick cancer. I just think they'd be equally murderous and cuntish if they had a different religion and that blaming Islam for their being backwards is not seeing the forest for the trees. Christianity stopped being backwards when the congregation stopped being backwards and decided that a God that endorsed rape and murder wasn't one they wanted. Religions adapt to match the beliefs of their congregations, or they die. We see this happening now with gay rights, western Christianity is a mirror of civilised western society, just as barbaric Arabic Islam is a mirror of barbaric Arabic society.
What you're doing is looking at the reflection of an ugly person in one mirror and that of a handsome person in another and concluding that the first mirror is broken while the second one is working properly. And because somehow the true conclusion isn't obvious enough I pointed out the long, long history of the second mirror showing an ugly person looking ugly (that'd be the point of the crusade examples) to show why your conclusion is wrong.
I don't use the crusades because I think they're relevant to modern Christianity. I don't apologise for Islam today. My point is that neither mirror is better than the other, they're just reflections, they show ugly images of ugly things. Blaming a mirror for showing an ugly reflection is missing the point and praising another mirror for showing a handsome reflection of a handsome thing is easily disproved when you realise that it used to show an ugly reflection of an ugly thing.
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The real problem is that Christianity got subsumed into modern capitalism and was integrated into an American hegemonic order, while Islam was not. Islam is the flavor of crazy that is driving an emotional, and in many ways justified, reaction to Western oppression. Islam was born in a barren land at the borders between two mighty empires, and still stands at the fringes of liberal democracy today.
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United States43627 Posts
Writing it out with a simple metaphor in the hope that people will stop accusing me of liking Islam, hating Christianity or apologising for terrorists.
"Mirror A shows an ugly reflection, mirror A is a bad mirror."
"But it is reflecting an ugly thing, it is not the mirror that is bad but rather the thing it reflects."
"But mirror B shows a good reflection, clearly not all reflections are equal, mirror B is a good mirror, not like bad mirror A."
"Yes, but mirror B is reflecting a good thing, mirror B is no more virtuous than mirror A, it simply generates reflections, nothing more."
"If that is true then how come the image in B is so much better than that in A?"
"Because the enlightenment, a process opposed by mirrors everywhere, happened to the thing that B reflects. If you examine the time before the enlightenment the reflection in B was actually ugly. If your premise of good mirror and bad mirror was true then this would make B a bad mirror and fail to explain why it now shows a good reflection. As the mirror cannot be both bad and good we must conclude that it is neither, and that the image it shows is dictated by the thing it reflects."
"....the crusades happened a long time ago.... you like terrorists...."
My point is simply that Christians getting mad about Obama trying not to make an attack on terrorists sound like an attack on every Muslim or getting all haughty about how they don't bomb as many civilians as Muslims is as dumb as bragging about how your mirror works better than someone else's. Christianity didn't achieve the good reflection in mirror B, Christianity did everything it could to stop the thing the mirror reflects from being handsome and continues to fight it to this day on issues such as gay rights. It was achieved in spite of Christianity, not because of it, and acting like you're better than Muslims because of it is idiotic and hypocritical. You're better than the uncivilised people raping and murdering because you know raping and murdering is wrong. You don't know that because you're Christian, and they don't not know that because they're Muslims, you know it because you've been influenced by humanistic values and they haven't. If the deciding factor was religion then you have a lot of Christian atrocities and Islamic tolerance to explain.
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Interesting Opinion piece by Matthew Harwood:
When American politicians and commentators discuss inequality and poverty, they do so almost exclusively in ways that do little to empower workers. Instead the debates typically focus on what government can do in a top-down fashion to either diminish inequality or discipline the poor.
Take, for example, French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling “Capital in the 21st Century” or U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan. Both offer paternalistic solutions with little to no chance of success. Piketty suggests the absurd and unworkable solution of a global wealth tax, which would be impossible to coordinate among sovereign states controlled by wealthy interests always looking for economic advantage against competitors. Ryan, on the other hand, wants to assign caseworkers to monitor people receiving public assistance, turning government into the expensive nanny state conservatives say they so despise. Despite these obvious shortcomings, such ideas garner the lion’s share of attention in the public discussion on correcting inequality.
Yet there are bottom-up solutions to America’s economic insecurity that have proven records of success. What’s more, they come off as ideologically American, rooted in the idea of working for oneself rather renting oneself out to a boss. The more modest approach is worker ownership, which attempts to blur the distinction between worker and capitalist by sharing the wealth and making antagonistic business relations more harmonious. The more radical and democratic option is direct worker management, which tries to destroy such distinctions and give workers a fuller share of their labor, if not the entire share.
Source
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On September 12 2014 09:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Interesting Opinion piece by Matthew Harwood: Show nested quote +When American politicians and commentators discuss inequality and poverty, they do so almost exclusively in ways that do little to empower workers. Instead the debates typically focus on what government can do in a top-down fashion to either diminish inequality or discipline the poor.
Take, for example, French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling “Capital in the 21st Century” or U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s anti-poverty plan. Both offer paternalistic solutions with little to no chance of success. Piketty suggests the absurd and unworkable solution of a global wealth tax, which would be impossible to coordinate among sovereign states controlled by wealthy interests always looking for economic advantage against competitors. Ryan, on the other hand, wants to assign caseworkers to monitor people receiving public assistance, turning government into the expensive nanny state conservatives say they so despise. Despite these obvious shortcomings, such ideas garner the lion’s share of attention in the public discussion on correcting inequality.
Yet there are bottom-up solutions to America’s economic insecurity that have proven records of success. What’s more, they come off as ideologically American, rooted in the idea of working for oneself rather renting oneself out to a boss. The more modest approach is worker ownership, which attempts to blur the distinction between worker and capitalist by sharing the wealth and making antagonistic business relations more harmonious. The more radical and democratic option is direct worker management, which tries to destroy such distinctions and give workers a fuller share of their labor, if not the entire share. Source
The only real criticism I have is that expanding co-ops, ESOPs and the like, are something that will take a long time to roll out in a meaningful capacity. There are some limitations and pitfalls as well, some of which the article mentions, but I'd say they're largely manageable.
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On September 12 2014 09:24 KwarK wrote:
I don't excuse shit. You seem to think I'm somehow pro murder, pro IS, pro torture, I'm really not and nothing I've said suggests that.
I absolutely believe that IS are a bunch of murdering cunts and the world would be better off if they all got dick cancer. I just think they'd be equally murderous and cuntish if they had a different religion and that blaming Islam for their being backwards is not seeing the forest for the trees. Christianity stopped being backwards when the congregation stopped being backwards and decided that a God that endorsed rape and murder wasn't one they wanted. Religions adapt to match the beliefs of their congregations, or they die. We see this happening now with gay rights, western Christianity is a mirror of civilised western society, just as barbaric Arabic Islam is a mirror of barbaric Arabic society.
What you're doing is looking at the reflection of an ugly person in one mirror and that of a handsome person in another and concluding that the first mirror is broken while the second one is working properly. And because somehow the true conclusion isn't obvious enough I pointed out the long, long history of the second mirror showing an ugly person looking ugly (that'd be the point of the crusade examples) to show why your conclusion is wrong.
I don't use the crusades because I think they're relevant to modern Christianity. I don't apologise for Islam today. My point is that neither mirror is better than the other, they're just reflections, they show ugly images of ugly things. Blaming a mirror for showing an ugly reflection is missing the point and praising another mirror for showing a handsome reflection of a handsome thing is easily disproved when you realise that it used to show an ugly reflection of an ugly thing. On September 12 2014 09:47 KwarK wrote:
Writing it out with a simple metaphor in the hope that people will stop accusing me of liking Islam, hating Christianity or apologising for terrorists.
"Mirror A shows an ugly reflection, mirror A is a bad mirror."
"But it is reflecting an ugly thing, it is not the mirror that is bad but rather the thing it reflects."
"But mirror B shows a good reflection, clearly not all reflections are equal, mirror B is a good mirror, not like bad mirror A."
"Yes, but mirror B is reflecting a good thing, mirror B is no more virtuous than mirror A, it simply generates reflections, nothing more."
"If that is true then how come the image in B is so much better than that in A?"
"Because the enlightenment, a process opposed by mirrors everywhere, happened to the thing that B reflects. If you examine the time before the enlightenment the reflection in B was actually ugly. If your premise of good mirror and bad mirror was true then this would make B a bad mirror and fail to explain why it now shows a good reflection. As the mirror cannot be both bad and good we must conclude that it is neither, and that the image it shows is dictated by the thing it reflects."
"....the crusades happened a long time ago.... you like terrorists...." You continue to deny the plain meaning of what you wrote, so I'll have to quit my efforts after this one.
On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Let me rephrase your post, using your favored imagery, but in the context of your plain intention:
Religions are only a reflection of something other than religion--the collective societal character of its people, and they're only created as a convenience, betraying nothing of truth beyond visible reality, but just like customs reflect the traits of the people. Back in the day, a dominant segment of Catholic Christianity authorized some pretty bad stuff, the religion just functioning as a papal backdrop to kinda goad them on. Nowadays, a second mirror with bigger longer whiskers, is just doing the same thing as back then. It's a religion, it's a mirror, and the people-group is using it conveniently just like last time, and since mirrors are timeless, it doesn't matter the manufacture date.
But you see, it doesn't matter that one of these mirrors now shows beautiful things. It is something beautiful its reflecting. I'm declaring it to be the case that there in fact can be no defects in workmanship, and no bad mirror-makers. They will always just reflect. In fact, I know it to be impossible that if a mirror were to be made of two different materials, you never would be able to tell, because all reflecting media are the same. I've seen some mirrors in the circus that some claim enlarge the body dimensions ... but they are actually regular mirrors, they just reflect people with wavy bodies and sometimes tall bodies. Its a 8 foot tall person in that mirror, not a 5 foot tall person with a strange mirror. The only people that think circus mirrors act like that are hypocrites, and also have no knowledge of history. I know this, because I have already declared it, and that one should never consider the quality of a mirror, only the changing views you can see in it. It will always be the case that bad reflections are the case of bad things being reflected and good reflections likewise.
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United States43627 Posts
Neither mirror is curved relative to the other, nor different in workmanship. I know this because when Christians were massacring Christian heretics it showed them being total assholes and when Sunnis were massacring Shiites it showed them being total assholes. I don't take it as an act of faith, I can compare the two directly due to the large number of very comparable atrocities committed. That was the meaning of the crusades example. We can examine the same inputs and outputs across both and find them to be comparable and then conclude that the reason the output on mirror B has changed is because the input has changed, for when they both had the same input they both produced the same output. Your premise of a good mirror than only shows things looking handsome and a bad mirror that only shows things looking ugly is disproved by the evidence of the good mirror showing ugly things and the bad mirror showing comparably (for the time) handsome things.
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On September 12 2014 09:37 IgnE wrote:
The real problem is that Christianity got subsumed into modern capitalism and was integrated into an American hegemonic order, while Islam was not. Islam is the flavor of crazy that is driving an emotional, and in many ways justified, reaction to Western oppression. Islam was born in a barren land at the borders between two mighty empires, and still stands at the fringes of liberal democracy today.
If I'm not mistaken it was the reverse for a long time. In the middle ages Islam was expanding into Europe and Islamic math and science was ahead of derpy Europe.
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United States43627 Posts
On September 12 2014 10:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 09:37 IgnE wrote:
The real problem is that Christianity got subsumed into modern capitalism and was integrated into an American hegemonic order, while Islam was not. Islam is the flavor of crazy that is driving an emotional, and in many ways justified, reaction to Western oppression. Islam was born in a barren land at the borders between two mighty empires, and still stands at the fringes of liberal democracy today. If I'm not mistaken it was the reverse for a long time. In the middle ages Islam was expanding into Europe and Islamic math and science was ahead of derpy Europe.
Until the 1600s or so, sure. But Islamic rules on banking prevented the emergence of a capitalist economy, one of many factors that caused them to be rapidly left behind by the surge forwards in the western world. Islamic banking is still a clusterfuck because of very strict rules against usury. The same rules exist in Christianity but there is a very interesting history of solutions to them with the banking and merchant class negotiating with an extremely corrupt clergy in Medieval Italy. You have things like currency exchanges in which an English merchant arriving in Italy could exchange the Florins from the sale of his cargo for a greater number of Stirling than it ought to have commanded in exchange for an agreement to only convert his Stirling back into Florins at a set unfavourable rate with the Italian partner working in London. This was permissable, after all it was just a currency exchange, even if the result was that the merchant was provided with capital for six months but had to pay more. However if you set up a pair of such exchanges, in which you agreed to go on a round trip, exchanging Stirling now for a greater number of Stirling later, but in the same port, then that was a serious sin, for currency had been created out of currency, gold had sprouted from air, and that was too close to God's realm. But if you exchange in Florence to be repaid in London, hand promisary notes to the London factor of the Florentine bank and he accepts this as payment and then you take out a second agreement with him to be repaid in Florence then that is okay, as long as they really are two exchanges. Thus, to borrow money in Florence you must first exchange your money, then send a man with a promisary note to London before he returns with a second note to Florence with which you can repay the Florentine bank what is owed. For the Florentine bank to forge such a note for you would be a grave sin, the currency must be exchanged, even if it exchanged twice.
If you ever want a good laugh at human cynicism and ingenuity study Christian banking in Medieval Italy.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
oil sheiks reacting to western oppression? the islamic fundies are not from places with a legit gripe for western oppression.
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On September 12 2014 08:48 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 08:39 Roswell wrote:
"Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity..." This post of yours was really good besides that. Be politically correct as you want, but learn some history when it comes to the two faiths roots, and main beliefs. Islam has conducted jihad like acts since its formation. IS. Is the Islamic State. I completely agree with the majority of your post though, the way this ends is not through western acts, at least not the way weve been doing things. All we need now is someone to say Islam is the religion of peace to take the cake.
Islam is not fundamentally worse than Christianity. You all look equally evil when viewed from the outside, for all your crying of "their sins are worse than ours". The actions of IS to Shia groups are no different to the systematic rape, torture and mass executions of the Holy Crusades against the heretical sects in the Middle Ages. They're still doing dumb shit now because the rational humanist people haven't got to them yet but that doesn't make their religion worse than yours, it means smarter people than you intervened with you earlier and made you stop doing evil in the name of your God. Stop taking credit for the humanism of other people and acting like it makes you better than others. You're a hypocrite with no knowledge of your history. Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.
Christianity did kinda invent humanism as we know it. It's not exactly unreasonable to give them at least some credit for it... the humanists were overwhelmingly influenced by Christian ethics. And let's be real; the Sermon on the Mount is the foundation of Christian ethics (not the OT) just as Sharia is the basis of Muslim ethics. You can't actually draw an equivalency because one of these systems is very similar to humanist ethics, and was their origin, and the other is a brutal legal system.
That said, the mindless bashing of Islam is irritating to say the least. I really hate being in debates where people are so polarized as to utterly ignore a moderated opinion and engage with it, preferring to instead take up usual battle positions.
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On September 12 2014 10:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2014 09:37 IgnE wrote:
The real problem is that Christianity got subsumed into modern capitalism and was integrated into an American hegemonic order, while Islam was not. Islam is the flavor of crazy that is driving an emotional, and in many ways justified, reaction to Western oppression. Islam was born in a barren land at the borders between two mighty empires, and still stands at the fringes of liberal democracy today. If I'm not mistaken it was the reverse for a long time. In the middle ages Islam was expanding into Europe and Islamic math and science was ahead of derpy Europe.
And now it's the same again. And you have the return of violent jihad, expansionism, and fundamentalism.
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On September 12 2014 10:39 oneofthem wrote:
oil sheiks reacting to western oppression? the islamic fundies are not from places with a legit gripe for western oppression.
Oil sheiks aren't the ones calling for jihad. It's the people who aren't reaping the benefits of the oil wealth in their nation that are the fundamentalists. Give a fundamentalist a billion dollars and control of a nation and see how fundamentalist he remains. It's precisely the oil sheiks that benefit from, and are a symbol of, western oppression.
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EPT
