tuco wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

tuco wrote:How about defining "fuckedup", or "religion" for that matter, before talking of reasoning? After all, the right to freedom of religion is human right.

People have the right to have fuck-up beliefs. In private. In public, If they make a public claim that something to do with their beliefs is fact, then anyone has the right to challenge their fuck-ed up opinion, demand evidence, etc. In other words the religious [or any other fucked-up wankery ] does not enjoy special privilege in the public square.

Did I claim otherwise? See my last post.

The point I am making is that in my opinion what is sometimes being called militant attitude towards religion, on this board and elsewhere, is counter-productive. To me, its not about privilege, its about most efficient way to deal with stuff we do not approve of and would like to see changed. Check any of the "anti-gun" threads. Do you really believe that being aggressive towards people who believe in their right to bear arms, and use them, is the most efficient way to make them to abandon such believe? Because I do not. Sure, we can argue senseless over this, because I doubt anyone can provide relevant evidence.

I'd rather have people who supposedly have fucked up believes around than not, because if they are around we can have discussion. And even there is no discussion, maybe they can read and learn. However, I can hardly imagine anyone staying around in lets say toxic environment. Where are all those religious nuts to be convinced of the truth? This board is in my opinion preoccupied with religious fuckwitery but there is nobody, who matters, to listen to it. All there is is moaning, bitching, crying, shouting at those who are not here.

I should stick to my commitment not to get involved in these discussions. But since its one of those things which bothers me about this community since I came here, sometimes I just cant stand it no more.

I think this is getting out of hand. I agree with you.

But what is wrong with having a place where you can bitch about religious nonsense?

Nothing but my own ideas about rational skepticism. To be honest, I usually feel bad after I bitch about bitching. /shrugs

tuco wrote:The point I am making is that in my opinion what is sometimes being called militant attitude towards religion, on this board and elsewhere, is counter-productive. To me, its not about privilege, its about most efficient way to deal with stuff we do not approve of and would like to see changed.

I've heard this a lot. I've also asked people why they believe this. I haven't gotten a good answer that doesn't boil down to politics in the general sense, matters of policy. It simply turns out to be just a feeling, a general idea that if we were all just nice, things would be peachy. Perhaps you can give a better reason; I have yet to hear one.

It seems, emotionally, very pleasant. Just be nice. Very enlightenment and civilized and democratic. I have, however, come to distrust such emotions, because they fail a lot. I could go into the Cognitive Science aspect, but I won't yet. For now, I'll stick to simple empiricism.

Set the wabak machine to the late 1970s. It had its own problems, such as disco and bad hair, but the US was a pretty secular place. Birth control seemed safe; the Christians had not set their sights even on abortion as a politically divisive issue. Evolution was taught everywhere without any fuss. The Moral Majority had yet to be formed explicitly. If people thought about Islam, they generally thought about it in positive terms. There was some concern with Iran, and the hostage crisis worsened it, and there were some murmurings about the oil embargo, but it was very low key compared to now.

Most atheists were nice. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was the primary exception, and most atheists thought she was an embarrassment. Prominent atheists like Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan were gentlemanly. Richard Dawkins ignored religion, as largely did Christopher Hitchens. James Randi hadn't even come out as an atheist (which he did before coming out as gay).

The next two decades saw an unbelievable amount of religious encroachment into the public sphere and an amount of threat by religion that people thought had gone away decades prior. It's important to note that no President before Jimmy Carter made a big deal about their religion, and all Presidents after have. The last event was some trouble about Kennedy's catholicism. Eisenhower's religiosity, as exemplified by the change to the national motto and the Pledge of Allegiance, was pretty low key.

Then, of course, 9/11 happened. The so-called New Atheists got angry and came out.

My conclusion, though I vacillate, is that being nice and respectful, however many warm fuzzes it may give, simply did not work.

Since then, in polls, the number of admitted atheists has been growing. The number of the very religious also has, but this is a continuation of a trend that had been going on since the 1970s, as the Baby Boomers tired of vague spiritualism and wanted something with more teeth in it.

The more aggressive atheism is doing something. I'm not sure it will work, but I am sure that the niceness did not.

I do recognize the notion epepke :

Sure, we can argue senseless over this, because I doubt anyone can provide relevant evidence.

and do not claim to be holding any truths. Open society is, well, open. Opinions, individualities, clash and something comes out of it.

9/11, for example, is interesting as I was in NYC at the time and like today I remember two reporters in total disbelief on roof of a tall building with the second tower behind them going down saying: Why would someone do this to us? Maybe we should review our (US) foreign policy. What followed was invasion to Iraq.

I tell you what. I recognize sugar, whip not so much. To me, authority does not come from power but truth. The other factor is my background. Nobody where I come from would suggest creationism to be taught at school, no atheist would feel abnormal.

You know the sayin about fighting monsters.

I kinda like Islam. But only the more liberal, sufist varieties of Islam. Also interested in alevism.

tuco wrote:I tell you what. I recognize sugar, whip not so much. To me, authority does not come from power but truth. The other factor is my background. Nobody where I come from would suggest creationism to be taught at school, no atheist would feel abnormal.

What does whether one likes or dislikes something have to do with truth? My background is science, and actual working scientists get excited and even pretty nasty all the time. It sometimes gets out of hand, but most of the time it gets the ideas flowing. I prefer it over the previous few score thousand years, when people were so afraid of offending dogma that they didn't say anything new. When push comes to shove, I'd rather see a bit of pushing and shoving than heretics being burnt at the stake.

You know the sayin about fighting monsters.

The quote is something like, "When you grapple with monsters, beware lest you become a monster, for when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks at you." It urges caution, not avoidance.

Goldenmane wrote:

mralstoner wrote:

Goldenmane wrote:Second time you've posted this.

I've posted this on other forums, but I don't recall posting it here.

Did you think to check? I mean, you're logged in with the same account you used last year to post the same thing, and that was the only post you made, so it's not like it was difficult for you to check. You signed in with the same fucking password.

What are you trying to achieve?

I trusted my memory i.e. that I have not posted this message here before, and my memory was proved right i.e. I did NOT post this material before. There's a 5-10% OVERLAP in content with my other post. Whoopdeedo.

That's not a duplicate post in anyone's language.

I have posted the recent message on OTHER WEBSITES, but not here.

Alas, the DUMBASS moderator went and merged my post. Go figure.

It's the blind leading the blind here on this forum.

epepke wrote:

tuco wrote:I tell you what. I recognize sugar, whip not so much. To me, authority does not come from power but truth. The other factor is my background. Nobody where I come from would suggest creationism to be taught at school, no atheist would feel abnormal.

What does whether one likes or dislikes something have to do with truth? My background is science, and actual working scientists get excited and even pretty nasty all the time. It sometimes gets out of hand, but most of the time it gets the ideas flowing. I prefer it over the previous few score thousand years, when people were so afraid of offending dogma that they didn't say anything new. When push comes to shove, I'd rather see a bit of pushing and shoving than heretics being burnt at the stake.

You know the sayin about fighting monsters.

The quote is something like, "When you grapple with monsters, beware lest you become a monster, for when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks at you." It urges caution, not avoidance.

Nowhere I requested avoidance of anything, especially enforced via law. I do believe in freedom of speech and expression much greater than FUA here, for example, allows for.

Perhaps we do not understand each other and perhaps I am not making myself clear enough. You were trying(?) to explain to me why you believe your approach is, to your goals, appropriate. I was trying to explain to you why I believe my approach is more efficient, hence sugar and whip metaphor. In other words, if you will be aggressive to me I will turn my back on you and go elsewhere simply because you are not the only one who can contribute to my lets say wisdom.

Glad to hear you have background in science. I have soft spot for natural sciences and those who popularize it, make it understandable, for me. I have yet to see, however, one popularizer of science who would use "militant" method, who would state something like "I think I hate ignorance". Since you like science, perhaps venture into science of teaching and learning could prove useful.

Arjan Dirkse wrote:I kinda like Islam. But only the more liberal, sufist varieties of Islam. Also interested in alevism.

Yes, it's hard to reconcile the peacefulness of the Sufi mystic & whirling dervishes, with the wild-eyed, murderous fanaticism of the AK47-weilding jihadist. But then Christianity has it's murderers of abortion doctors on one side, and Quakers on another. I think religion just gives bad people an excuse to be bad.

As far as dangerous loonies with profile go it's hard to go past the ones who claim to be Islamic.
Not much analysis required IYAM.

I mean some of these guys seriously make Fred-Phelps style loonies look cuddlly-soft.

mralstoner wrote:

Goldenmane wrote:

mralstoner wrote:

Goldenmane wrote:Second time you've posted this.

I've posted this on other forums, but I don't recall posting it here.

Did you think to check? I mean, you're logged in with the same account you used last year to post the same thing, and that was the only post you made, so it's not like it was difficult for you to check. You signed in with the same fucking password.

What are you trying to achieve?

I trusted my memory i.e. that I have not posted this message here before, and my memory was proved right i.e. I did NOT post this material before. There's a 5-10% OVERLAP in content with my other post. Whoopdeedo.

That's not a duplicate post in anyone's language.

I have posted the recent message on OTHER WEBSITES, but not here.

Alas, the DUMBASS moderator went and merged my post. Go figure.

It's the blind leading the blind here on this forum.

Are you trying to get yourself sanctioned?

I haven't seen the OP supply any information whatsoever about what the teachings of Islam actually are.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Are you trying to get yourself sanctioned?

I'm just talking from the facts. And the facts are ... my post "Physicist analyses Islamic doctrine" has already been "sanctioned" by burying it in an unrelated post.

It's a dumbass decision, so that's what it should be called, come what may.

If the moderator had any integrity he'd admit that he didn't read my posts, but rather took his cues from some other member who mistakenly labelled my post a "duplicate".

That's why I said it was the "blind leading the blind". Facts are facts. Dumb decisions are dumb decisions.

mralstoner wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Are you trying to get yourself sanctioned?

I'm just talking from the facts. And the facts are ... my post "Physicist analyses Islamic doctrine" has already been "sanctioned" by burying it in an unrelated post.

So did a post get buried in another post, or were two threads merged?

tolman wrote:So did a post get buried in another post, or were two threads merged?

I hit the New Topic button and wrote a message titled "Physicist analyses Islamic doctrine". But before you could say "boo" someone labelled my message a "duplicate" (which it was not) and hence the moderator merged my message into this thread (titled "I think I hate Islam").

But (a) this is not my thread and (b) it's only thinly related to my Physicist message because it contains a previous comment of mine which contains about 10% overlap with my Physicist post.

It's a classic case of System 1, fast, unreflective thinking. The member took his cues from a quote which was contained in both my posts and mistakenly thought the whole message was a duplicate. The moderator then took his cues from the member who labelled my post a "duplicate".

It's easily solved by swallowing one's pride, saying "oops sorry", restoring my Physicist post, and moving on. No big deal. Everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone can swallow their pride and admit them. More to the point, probably neither offender wants to read both my messages and see for themselves they are not duplicates, because that takes a little System 2 effort.

I'd suggest that going off on a rant and calling people dumbasses is probably not the best approach if you want them to change their minds, whatever your opinion of the sense of what they have done.

As for thread merging, I don't think much attention is paid to who 'owns' the thread, so I'm not sure point a) is relevant.

I wouldn't say the posts are identical (or even near identical), but identity of posts isn't the criterion for thread merging, similarity of topics is.
Given that the more recent post refers to a different youtube video of the physicist you had already mentioned, and to politicalislam.com which you had also given links to in the previous post, it does seem like a fairly good fit for the old thread, even if describing the posts as identical does seem incorrect.
My personal call would be fair decision, not well described.

You aren't allowed to post duplicate posts from other websites either. That's a rule here.

The internet is serious business.

Imagination Theory wrote:You aren't allowed to post duplicate posts from other websites either. That's a rule here.

If it were, GreatestIAm would be long gone.

Instead of all this hating, why not really upset folks by placing Islam in its real context of the late Antiquity on the Mediterranean coast area, with huge Jewish, Samaritan, true gods, local gods and various Christian influences - very different from the authorised version?