Which scholars said that the war verses have been abrogated and which verses have been abrogated? Genuine question to learn btw, not bashing you.
Religion, what's the point?
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I just learned a new word, from rele. Maybe god does exist.
What if God exists, but that existence is so beyond our ability to comprehend that even if this God was standing right in front of us we would not realize it and therefore for all intents and purposes this God does not exist. I may either be drunk or just bored out of my mind right now. Or the CIA is messing with my head again.
Ibn Khuzaymah wrote a lot about it, war verses replaced with 9:5 and 9:29. But would say do your own research before coming to any conclusion.
Which one? Yahweh? Amaterasu? Thor? Zeus? Vishnu?
"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." L Ron Hubbard
A couple of interesting things here (despite the confrontational headline)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/14/religions-war-cause-responsible-evidence_n_6156878.html
Probably best to read the whole article in context though but thought it was interesting. Of course people argue about societal effects that religion has and whether thats backwards or not which is fair. In general, I find a lot of new atheist anti-theist dogma which presents its axiomatic polemics as coming from a rational/sciency POV doesn't always stand up to the admittedly little evidence we have (in terms of social sciences) when studying the effects religion has.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/11/14/religions-war-cause-responsible-evidence_n_6156878.html
Probably best to read the whole article in context though but thought it was interesting. Of course people argue about societal effects that religion has and whether thats backwards or not which is fair. In general, I find a lot of new atheist anti-theist dogma which presents its axiomatic polemics as coming from a rational/sciency POV doesn't always stand up to the admittedly little evidence we have (in terms of social sciences) when studying the effects religion has.
I hate the word 'atheist' - It's like you have to be labeled as something even if you want nothing to do with religion.
It's like labeling someone a 'anacropotist' - a word I've just made up for someone who doesn't like football.
It's like labeling someone a 'anacropotist' - a word I've just made up for someone who doesn't like football.
Which would be used in common language if it were a word for someone who doesn't like football and they were in conversation about football. People only get labelled 'atheist' when religion is the subject of choice and they want to identify themselves as having no religion. In that case they are atheist.
Like it or not, if you don't believe in any god, you are atheist.
I agree with most claims of the study, but this study also shows the limitation of social science when it comes to complex concepts like identitiy and culture.
e.g:
"Multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that, there are many factors, other than religious belief, which are more important for peace. These include corruption, political instability, political terror, gender and economic inequality and governance."
Social science supports the importance of gender equality for welfare. Its eventually one of the most underrated causalities in the world. Religion is one of the major obstacles for global gender equality and as a consequence for welfare, which itself has influence on violence. To close the circle: Welfare and violence influences religious believes. In the end following constructivist ideas, everything influences everything. Thats a problem for science, because its impossible to factor this in, especially when the basic concepts ifself (like identity) are almost impossible to messure.
THis study chose its outcome to a large part by design. I am not even saying that this is intentional, it eventually inevitable, but its important to know if you read such a study. Else you eventually misinterpretate the results. It would be fairly easy to show that this study is glorified guess-work.
e.g:
"Multivariate regression analysis demonstrates that, there are many factors, other than religious belief, which are more important for peace. These include corruption, political instability, political terror, gender and economic inequality and governance."
Social science supports the importance of gender equality for welfare. Its eventually one of the most underrated causalities in the world. Religion is one of the major obstacles for global gender equality and as a consequence for welfare, which itself has influence on violence. To close the circle: Welfare and violence influences religious believes. In the end following constructivist ideas, everything influences everything. Thats a problem for science, because its impossible to factor this in, especially when the basic concepts ifself (like identity) are almost impossible to messure.
THis study chose its outcome to a large part by design. I am not even saying that this is intentional, it eventually inevitable, but its important to know if you read such a study. Else you eventually misinterpretate the results. It would be fairly easy to show that this study is glorified guess-work.
Its an inconvenient word because it tends be misinterpreted as something its not; namely an ideological foil for religion, when in fact it really has no tangible ideology and is merely a rejection of one.
Ok, if i must have a label in a religious sense, I'm agnostic.
I hope there's an higher power, i believe there is but i believe religion what it teaches on this 'higher power' is a load of tosh and what it promotes for the good of humanity and progress of humanity is bad and backwards.
If people believed in a 'higher power' in their own way it would be a better world in my opinion with less hatred around.
I hope there's an higher power, i believe there is but i believe religion what it teaches on this 'higher power' is a load of tosh and what it promotes for the good of humanity and progress of humanity is bad and backwards.
If people believed in a 'higher power' in their own way it would be a better world in my opinion with less hatred around.
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you are not agnostic, if you believe in a higher power.
You can be an agnostic theist.
I know that this category exists, but it makes little sense to use it outside a philosophy seminar. It hardly applies to anyone in reality. If you want to sound like a second semester student, who wants to show off with his fancy new knowledge, go for it.
Maybe he has doubts some days.
Iyad Jamal-al-Din's a good man, I voted for his Ahrar Party in 2010. Too bad they got a measly vote percentage.
Sadly men and women of his reasonable ilk have their voices drowned out by sectarian charlatans.
and like abstinence is a sex position, not smoking is a habit, etc.
A fascinating read.....
What is religion and how is it explainable?
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/11/what-is-religion-and-how-is-it-explainable/
What is religion and how is it explainable?
https://richarddawkins.net/2014/11/what-is-religion-and-how-is-it-explainable/
So is the author saying that religious people are child-like to adolescent in their psychological developmental stage (Whatever that is)?
That they have not, in a way, "grown up" in their thinking of the world?
The other stuff seemed to me like just a chunk of data about low intelligence or modernity and its correlation with % of religious folks.
Meh. I think it's childish to think you understand the world in a way that can be boiled down to a handful of aphorisms. That applies to both Atheists and the religious.
The world is complicated, inconsistent and nuanced. You can't explain it away with generalisations. People who find comfort in a simple world are the real idiots.
The world is complicated, inconsistent and nuanced. You can't explain it away with generalisations. People who find comfort in a simple world are the real idiots.
I am an atheist, I dont believe that there is any divine/higher being who created or guided us. My 2c is that religion is used like a bit of a safety blanket - realistically the human race has fecked up this planet and we will be lucky to survive another few hundred years. Humanity is a ticking time bomb, its only a matter of time before nuclear war/run out of oil/global warming or some other man-made problem basically destroys the world and kills most of humanity. People find comfort in the notion that as long as they live their life right and follow whatever moral code they have set out, that things will be OK in the end, that they will find salvation or whatever else, because they dont want to believe that actually, the human race has made a complete mess of things and we are likely all screwed.
Bit bleak, but there you go.
Now, I actually also think that if you take some of the moral/ethical codes of religion, and just remove the whole "god" thing from it, you end up with quite a good way of life - like the old traditional Buddhist Monks in their temples, religion is their way of life, not simply a belief - THAT is the good side of religion.
I also think that on the off chance that there is a god, he isnt going to be quite so nihilistic that he decides your fate/afterlife based on whether you believe in him or not. Ergo, if you live your life right and arent a complete knob, if there IS an afterlife then you are probably still OK, even if you dont actually believe in all that malarky.
Bit bleak, but there you go.
Now, I actually also think that if you take some of the moral/ethical codes of religion, and just remove the whole "god" thing from it, you end up with quite a good way of life - like the old traditional Buddhist Monks in their temples, religion is their way of life, not simply a belief - THAT is the good side of religion.
I also think that on the off chance that there is a god, he isnt going to be quite so nihilistic that he decides your fate/afterlife based on whether you believe in him or not. Ergo, if you live your life right and arent a complete knob, if there IS an afterlife then you are probably still OK, even if you dont actually believe in all that malarky.
Religion might be a safety blanket for the individual - but its also a very effective way of controlling people when considered on a larger scale.
Saw this on twitter
No it doesn't. Atheists reject simple religious explanations for creation, morality etc etc etc.
I was brought up in a non-religious but religious-tolerant family - I was baptised, as virtually all kids were in the 1950s. Went to church through my childhood and teens, as I attended a C of E primary school which was attached to a church and my friends went there. Later in my teens, I must have tried every church denomination I could find, often on my own. Nothing felt right.
I drifted away in my 20s, couldn't see any connection anymore and never felt like I was involved - I felt like an observer, not a worshipper, although I always believed in God. This feeling stayed with me for just about 30 years, although I kept feeling a strong urge to attend Catholic churches, sometimes dropped into Mass and sat at the back, or just walked around Catholic churches. There are no Catholics in my family, so I wasn't influenced by anyone else.
I finally took the plunge last year, after trying (and being disappointed by) an Anglo-Catholic church - I kind of thought it might be an in-between step, but in actual fact it was a bit bizarre and I felt that the vicar lacked compassion. So, I went through a course of instruction with a few other people and became a Catholic at Easter. Now I feel I belong and I don't feel like an observer at church. I think it's something to do with the fact that this Catholic parish is a community of people who know each other, and there's so much good work going on. It's not just for Sundays.
I drifted away in my 20s, couldn't see any connection anymore and never felt like I was involved - I felt like an observer, not a worshipper, although I always believed in God. This feeling stayed with me for just about 30 years, although I kept feeling a strong urge to attend Catholic churches, sometimes dropped into Mass and sat at the back, or just walked around Catholic churches. There are no Catholics in my family, so I wasn't influenced by anyone else.
I finally took the plunge last year, after trying (and being disappointed by) an Anglo-Catholic church - I kind of thought it might be an in-between step, but in actual fact it was a bit bizarre and I felt that the vicar lacked compassion. So, I went through a course of instruction with a few other people and became a Catholic at Easter. Now I feel I belong and I don't feel like an observer at church. I think it's something to do with the fact that this Catholic parish is a community of people who know each other, and there's so much good work going on. It's not just for Sundays.
“It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.” - Richard Feynmann
"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion." - Sam Harris
There is a reason I take issue with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens...as opposed to Feynmann, Richard Webster, Bertrand Russell.
"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion." - Sam Harris
There is a reason I take issue with Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens...as opposed to Feynmann, Richard Webster, Bertrand Russell.
Took the liberty to google that one for context
Saltman: Your analogy between organized religion and rape is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional?
Harris: I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology. I would not say that all human conflict is born of religion or religious differences, but for the human community to be fractured on the basis of religious doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, in an age when nuclear weapons are proliferating, is a terrifying scenario. I think we do the world a disservice when we suggest that religions are generally benign and not fundamentally divisive.
But yeah, context is boring.
Also those two quotes are about completely different subjects. One is about whether religion is true or not (which I think, at this point, is an excrutiatingly boring subject, since the answer is so glaringly obvious), and the other is about its real world consequences (which is actually debatable).
Saltman: Your analogy between organized religion and rape is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional?
Harris: I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology. I would not say that all human conflict is born of religion or religious differences, but for the human community to be fractured on the basis of religious doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, in an age when nuclear weapons are proliferating, is a terrifying scenario. I think we do the world a disservice when we suggest that religions are generally benign and not fundamentally divisive.
But yeah, context is boring.
Also those two quotes are about completely different subjects. One is about whether religion is true or not (which I think, at this point, is an excrutiatingly boring subject, since the answer is so glaringly obvious), and the other is about its real world consequences (which is actually debatable).
I don't think I took it out of context. I should have posted the whole thing though, true. It shows his thought process at arriving to that conclusion which of course I don't agree with. That's Harris' problem, statements like that are very eloquent, and erudite. But debatable. But posited as coming from "rationalist", "empiricist" when in fact they are debatable as you said.
For what it's worth I don't believe religion is true either and is most certainly harmful culturally. But my point is more towards the previous picture with New Atheists speaking up and saying "no". The reality is that many of them actively want to push for a clash of civilisation because of a perceived cultural supremacy by exaggeration the perniciousness of religion and advocating counter-intuitive and illiberal means.
Neocolonialism but with a pseudointellectual polish. That's all it is for me. I don't doubt they think it's the right thing. But humanism it certainly is not. Which is what the majority of atheists, barring the brash reddit fanboy types, I think are or aspire to be.
The kind of stuff that will kill the world (nukes, global warming), much of it has nothing to do with religion. Not to say religion doesn't do harm, it does.
It is possible to have a form of atheism which is vociferous but doesn't needlessly fear-monger, keeps things in perspective, considers evidence, doesn't perpetuate caricatures, create reactionary moral panics, acknowledges the environment affecting religious minorities (e.g. Islamophobia in Europe) and therefore the need to not engage in overstated rhetoric.
Richard Dawkins said in a tweet that the "Islamic faith" was the greatest force for evil in the world today (you know, that pesky monolith practiced identically by a quarter of the globe). To which Stephen Fry added
Both get accused of islamophobia but never stop to wonder why they do, and not all atheists face the same accusations.
But of course that's might just be me being a sinister Muslim apologist along with my cowardly leftist buddies.
For what it's worth I don't believe religion is true either and is most certainly harmful culturally. But my point is more towards the previous picture with New Atheists speaking up and saying "no". The reality is that many of them actively want to push for a clash of civilisation because of a perceived cultural supremacy by exaggeration the perniciousness of religion and advocating counter-intuitive and illiberal means.
Neocolonialism but with a pseudointellectual polish. That's all it is for me. I don't doubt they think it's the right thing. But humanism it certainly is not. Which is what the majority of atheists, barring the brash reddit fanboy types, I think are or aspire to be.
The kind of stuff that will kill the world (nukes, global warming), much of it has nothing to do with religion. Not to say religion doesn't do harm, it does.
It is possible to have a form of atheism which is vociferous but doesn't needlessly fear-monger, keeps things in perspective, considers evidence, doesn't perpetuate caricatures, create reactionary moral panics, acknowledges the environment affecting religious minorities (e.g. Islamophobia in Europe) and therefore the need to not engage in overstated rhetoric.
Richard Dawkins said in a tweet that the "Islamic faith" was the greatest force for evil in the world today (you know, that pesky monolith practiced identically by a quarter of the globe). To which Stephen Fry added
Both get accused of islamophobia but never stop to wonder why they do, and not all atheists face the same accusations.
But of course that's might just be me being a sinister Muslim apologist along with my cowardly leftist buddies.
That something is debatable doesn't mean you can't have an opinion or make claims about it. Quite the opposite.
The rest of your post is, with all due respect, a bit of a mess. You're saying that nukes have nothing to do with religion, for example. Well, if jihadists were to get their hands on them they will. Which is the point.
And by your account Dawkins never said Islam was practiced identically by all Muslims. You need to be more careful in your reading and more precise in your writing. That Islam is the greatest force for evil is certainly a debatable claim, but it can be defended, and the only reason why people react to that tweet is because he's talking about Islam, and in recent years criticism of Islam has been constantly conflated with racism (in some cases intentionally in order to silence critics). Any other religion or ideology and people wouldn't bat an eyelid. It's a double standard, and I think you're unconciously engaging in it. When you hear "Islam" you seem to hear "all Muslims". If you could clear that bar a debate would be easier.
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Sure, of course I am not doubting or saying it can't be debated, but putting it as a talking point under rationalism is something I disagree with. Atheism is the rational position, some of the rhetoric new atheists and talking points however is not evidence-based at all.
Reg the point of nukes of course jihadists could use them, and we should stop them from doing so. But then so could non-jihadists. We could based upon fears of jihadists embark on wars in foreign lands which makes things worse. We've seen politics and myopic foreign policy that has resulted in deaths as well. Hundreds of thousands. Any ideology taken to extreme, is dangerous. Sectarianism is a huge problem in muslim majority countries, but in terms of religion being a hindrance, it has pretty strong competition from corruption, racism, tribalism, despotism, interference from external powers (none of which are linked to religion per se) who play realpolitik and result in damage in terms of life and culturally as well.
He mentioned the "Islamic faith" as being the greatest force for evil. Which is nonsense. To say it is more so than the factors listed above is that phrase new atheists love, intellectually dishonest. Polemics over empiricism.
Islam has so much variation in it, most of this stuff just isn't applicable in reality. But it's simple to criticise Muslims who engage in things that are wrong and those practices should be criticised, any culture which actively promotes those practices should be criticised.
But again the problem is that Dawkins sees apostates being stoned to death and sees that as the ultimate problem in the world..and perhaps doesn't consider collateral damage from drone strike as equally pernicious. Therein lies the problem. They feel they can quantify this stuff into whats worse, and whats less worse. What's more dangerous as an aggregate and what isn't.
And I will disagree with you regarding the scope of criticism of Islam. You'll get the commentators on salon, guardian, huffington post or on the blogosphere commenting on how singling out Islam for criticism might be racist, dangerous, hyperbolic, not helpful in the current climate but tabloids, newspapers, mainstream outlets regularly talk about halal meat, creeping sharia, burkhas etc etc
This is backed up by studies (not very scientifically robust ones admittedly) looking at Muslim portrayals in the media
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/nov/14/pressandpublishing.religion
http://www.livescience.com/25110-negative-messages-muslims-media.html
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6918485/the-overt-islamophobia-on-american-tv-news-is-out-of-control
"Research into one week's news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative."
There is of course a real danger that drawing a cartoon of the prophet or creating a film will get a jihadi on their case and is dangerous but criticism of Islam (as a violent religion, as being backwards, as being oppressive to women) is a constant in the press/blogosphere. And since 9/11 it has created a climate of fear for muslim diaspora and second generation who were born to immigrant Muslim families. With no distinction made with regards to the sociopolitical inclinations of that person. And this is reflected in how Muslims are viewed in the west post-9/11. And this hostility is exploited to justify invasions, sell books.
I have found Islamophobia to be much more oppressive in my life than Islam. And it's the case for many young Muslims growing up in the West as well.
What are you talking about? Which parts aren't evidence-based? What talking point?
Lazy cop-out. By that logic there's no need to criticize Nazism or other violent and oppressive ideologies either, because "any ideology taken to extreme, is dangerous" (which self-evidently isn't true. A truly non-violent, pacifist ideology will never be dangerous, no matter what extremes it's taken to). Neither Harris, Dawkins nor any other serious person has denied that there are other variables at play in the Middle-East, so that's just a straw man. They're just drawing a straight line from certain Islamic dogmas to certain types of behavior, which really isn't that controversial.
How is it nonsense? ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Hamas and dozens of other violent groups are explicitly Islamic. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in recent years by people explicitly motivated by Islam. Millions of women, gays, Christians and atheists/free-thinkers are systematically persecuted, oppressed and/or killed in dozens of Muslim majority countries for explicitly Islamic reasons. It's the only religion/ideology that's combustible on a worldwide basis, and reliably produces violent acts in response to trivial things like cartoons and youtube videos. It's a claim that can be easily defended, and to write it off as nonsense says a lot about your agenda here.
You sound like Karen Armstrong, attempting to link this to culture and let religion off the hook.
Or perhaps he does. Strange how so many Muslims and apologists for Islam seem so incredibly concerned about collateral damage from drone strikes, which accounts for a (relatively speaking) very small percentage of deaths compared to Islamic terror and violence, yet the latter does not seem to interest them much. Some people seem to think wars can be fought without civilians casualties, which is delusional. But drones aren't targetting civilians, as opposed to Islamic terrorism, that's the key difference.
Not quite sure what your point is here. Those are all softball issues. And again, criticizing (or covering) halal, sharia, burkhas etc. does not amount to "negative publicity about Muslims". I'm too busy (and lazy) to dissect those studies but they reek of agenda-journalism. And you know, there could be a reason why there are so many negative news reports on Islam, and that it doesn't all stem from racist xenophobic redneckry, like the hundreds, if not thousands of people that die every week as a result of Islamic inspired violence.
Good for you. But presumably you're not a woman/homosexual/atheist/apostate/Christian/Yazidi etc. living in Iran/Saudi-Arabia/Pakistan/Afghanistan/Iraq/Egypt etc.
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Rest of your post is good but that is an absurd statement to make. A Muslim in a western country is million times better off than any kind of minority in a country like Iran, Saudi Arabia etc and even better off than minorities in other Muslim majority countries.
I kind of feel sorry for all religious people and I'm really happy I haven't been raised as one. The way religion oppresses the human mind is unbelievably sad. I keep thinking about the billions of children throughout the human history who were brainwashed with the same BS - for every inquiring question they asked they were fed the same stupefying answer - God/Allah/BongoBongo/etc. made it so. After a while they would just stop asking questions - things are the way they are, because this is His will... There were probably countless geniuses whose minds were smothered this way. Who knows what humanity could have achieved already if they were allowed to look for real answers instead of being made to memorize meaningless verses from senseless books written ages ago by some primitive ignoramus. Clean energy, cure for cancer, world peace, colonization of the solar system - all these and more might have been achieved if we had all these people thinking instead of praying...
Fortunately things are slowly drifting away from religion. Many of the arguments regarding atheism and other ideas that question religion have gone more mainstream in recent years, probably due to information being more readily available during the internet era.
I reject simple humanist explanations for psychology of religion, groupthink etc etc etc. Kind of like Dawkins has just pulled out of his arse.
Saw this fecking hilarious thing on twitter so I will post it now stoopidchristians#
Sorry but thats a pile of BS. The biggest impediment to scientific and mathematical development in the western world in the last few centuries has been the elitist educational system we had, where Universities are the repositories of knowledge and remained largely the domain of a financial elite. Just because education now is largely accessible for most in the west doesn't mean it always was.