Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
- Start date
He didn't say that at all. He said if somebody kills for a religion, then the religion is partially to blame. And in some cases I agree with him.
Whether it's Muslims blowing themselves up to become martyrs or Christians killing people at abortion clinics in America, to claim that religion is in no way responsible is to be willfully ignorant of what motivates people.
How is this different from what I said?!
You said if you killed someone you could blame him. When he didn't call for violence.
Nor am I an ideological entity, making the whole comparison beyond moronic.
Nobody denied you your right to criticize. We're actually merely answering your criticism, based on logic, history, and a few facts..
You have a very loose definition of the word fact.
Show me where did he mention "the religion calling for violence" as a condition for his conclusion?
Your understanding is completely wrong. A lot of these terrorist organisations are born out of nationalistic or political issues, and are more secular in their make-up than religious.
Is 'interpretation' a swear word in this thread?
No that's not true. The degree of violence depends a lot on what technology was available at the time for instance, on the power of other empires etc... You certainly agree that it is easier to cause more damage with firearms, bombs compared to swords right ? And that it is easier to conquer more territory when your enemy is significantly weaker (say for instance europeans vs native americans/africans). If people are naturally violent, why give them a reason to fight and express their violence ? This is what Islam provided in those days, a reason to hate people that have different views. Then came smart politicians who used instrumentalized this in order to serve other interests. I don't care whether Islam pushed any harder towards violence, what bothers me is that it pushed to violence. I don't compare between violence displayed by different groups. The fact is the "Islam is a religion of peace" speech is flawed. Again, this concerns the original Islamic message that people now distance themselves from without realizing it.
Besides the fact that Quran can be attacked and proven to be flawed, I don't see why Muhammad's life would not be also considered as part of the assessment of Islam. He was handpicked by God and is presented as an ideal man worthy of delivering the message of Islam. A careful reading of Muhammad's biography (Ibn Ishaq's for instance) is as important as reading the Quran. Also, there are hadiths which are agreed on by the vast majority of the muslim community so those are also valid. When you start picking which sources to be used for the assessment, you lose some credibility.
Again, you are making me say things I did not say. I didn't pretend that Islam was against science but that it contained factual errors. The islamic empire had its golden age same as every other empire. Generally, when you are doing science, you leave your religious beliefs aside. Now, when your findings contradict what your religion says (see the case of Darwin for instance), you start having doubts about its validity. You need to understand that the two fields should be separated. Quran attempted to cross the boundaries and failed. As have failed the other Abrahamic religions. It's as simple as that.
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Muhammad died soon after the conquest of Mecca, so he did not have the opportunity to lead major battles. However, the imperialism intention was clear. First of all from the letters sent to several head of states which I exposed in a previous post. Second, from the raids that were done on some of the Arabic tribes in order to force them to join Islam (lead by Khalid-Ibn-AlWalid). Here is an example :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_of_Ukasha_bin_Al-Mihsan_(Udhrah_and_Baliy)
Another example :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_of_Usama_bin_Zayd
Show me the exact post where I said this.
WWII started by Hitler being the worst disaster in the modern era is not a fact?
What does it matter? When someone murders somebody else for religious reasons, religion is at least partially responsible. Are you claiming otherwise?
What the feck does that have to do with anything?
What if the religion had nothing to do with his actions? What if he's just nuts, who wants to blame somebody/something else for his crimes?
When I was Jakes age I wanted to change the world. I was convinced I was right. As I age, I now think I need to change.
I used it in my arguments in one of my previous posts, read it to understand the context.
Then he wouldn't be doing it for religious reason, he'd be doing it because he was nuts. Not everyone who commits a murder for religious reasons is a psychopath though, or are we going to pretend that honor killings don't exist?
When I was 13 I used to play FIFA instead of Football Manager. What of it? Don't try to condescend me because of my age.
It's a ridiculously arbitrary test of wrongdoings, in my lifetime for example the worst single event that has happened has arguably been the 9/11 attacks. Would you think it fair of me to extrapolate from that it's therefore the only thing that we can measure wrongdoings against?
The fact that the Islamic state was very advanced in science?
The systems worn you down man
Let me try to get this in a clear (and short) way.. Are you saying that:
1- Islam is not more violent that other religions.
2- Islam is not against science.
3- Do you think that all the battles Muhammad fought were justified?
I've long since realised we're just going round a revolving door.
Indeed, because we're talking about the original "real" Islam, not the "false one" we're trying to pretend to be the real one now.. So it has to be "was" for my argument to be meaningful.
So Islams been wrong since the 7th century then?
Dannys a weird one, he's effectively telling us that the Quran is open to interpretations but that only his is correct.
1- It depends on the power of the people that become passionate about Islam and follow it in its original form
2- Islam does not say : "Kill scientists". However, the Quran contains major factual errors which have been exposed by science. Religions are based on faith which does not mix well with logic and rationality
3 - No I don't think so (I gave you examples). I don't even think the original intention is justified as in "Here I have this new religion so let me impose it on my people because I think it is the true one".
Yeah, Wikipedia is a great source...
Can we list the scientific errors, please?
Generally, yeah. The distrust of wikipedia is unwarranted, wikipedia is no less trustworthy than anything else you read, assuming you're not susceptible to what crap is on there.
Humans created from clay.
It might give the indication that some things have gone wrong indeed, but that doesn't mean that "Islam has gone wrong".. It means some Muslims might have made wrong decisions.