catbarf on 15/12/2007 at 15:49
Quote Posted by fett
I think monkeys are flying out of my ass forthwith, but I wholeheartedly agree with everything in this post. You can't affirm a religion under the banner of tolerance, then prosecute the facets of that same religion that mandate breaking the law. I know it's broader than just the religious issue, but fundamentalism will be the death of democracy if we don't get some of this shit in check soon. Jerry Falwell died recently, so that's a good start.
I agree as well. It's just idiotic to accept something just because it falls under the banner of religion. Killing is still killing, no matter where it comes from.
DinkyDogg on 15/12/2007 at 16:29
Quote Posted by SD
The problem is we're told we should respect religious belief rather than acknowledge it as the mental illness that it is. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of murdering your own daughter, so far as this guy's belief system is concerned, he behaved appropriately. So how can we criticize him for acting according to his beliefs when we've told him his beliefs are okay?
I don't want to single out Islam here, because they're all, at root, as bad as each other, but this is, supposedly, a religion of peace - or at least that's what our government leaders tell us. Yet every single school of Islam mandates that a person who leaves the faith should be killed. This is an absolutely explicit, non-negotiable part of the faith. So why are we in the liberal West affording respect to this sort of thing in the first place? These faiths are utterly abhorrent and go against everything we hold dear.
So long as we pussyfoot around the issue and make the most heinous, medieval, unreconstructed religious belief systems into something to aspire to, rather than something to abhor, then our societies will continue to be afflicted by this sort of thing.
Well put.
Tocky on 15/12/2007 at 21:54
The problem with Islam is that it is as insular within our society as it is when we get beheaded in thiers. At least I can tell a southern baptist to kiss my round white when they want kids to genuflect in school. So far. It does tend to negate the hell out of my vote come election day though.
Aerothorn on 16/12/2007 at 05:19
Quote Posted by SD
The problem is we're told we should respect religious belief rather than acknowledge it as the mental illness that it is.
How can religion be a mental illness? Mental illness is, at its core, defined as deviating from the norm in one way or another - and since the vast majority of the world is religious, it can't be in any way construed as a mental illness.
aguywhoplaysthief on 16/12/2007 at 06:56
Don't worry, it's only Stronts listening to Dawkins' lectures again.
However, in response to your comment, it seems that depression is at least as common as religiosity (at least in the West), and I'm pretty sure that it is considered a mental illness.
SD on 16/12/2007 at 12:14
Quote Posted by paloalto90
Since it is against Islamic Law to force someone to become a muslim how can it be against Islamic law to allow one to leave or to be punishable by death?
People are born into the religion by virtue of their parents. The punishment proscribed for apostasy is death. So if your parents are Muslim, you are Muslim, and if you want to leave, good luck with that. All around the world, people are routinely persecuted and killed for rejecting their religion.
Quote Posted by paloalto90
Even in the cultures of different Islamic countries wearing head pieces is less strict than others.
Another idiotic interpretation of the Koran decided by men to keep control unless there is a direct passage that says a father can murder his own daughter.
The Koran is admirably clear and specific, way moreso than the Bible:
Quote Posted by (Quran 24:31)
And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear therof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, or their brothers’ sons or their sisters’ sons, or their women or the servants whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex, and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O you Believers, turn you all together towards Allah, that you may attain Bliss.
Quote Posted by (Quran 33:59)
O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close round them (when they go abroad). That will be better, so that they may be recognised and not annoyed. Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.
It almost goes without saying that harsh punishment is sanctioned for women who break these rules.
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
How can religion be a mental illness? Mental illness is, at its core, defined as deviating from the norm in one way or another - and since the vast majority of the world is religious, it can't be in any way construed as a mental illness.
That's a narrow view of the term. How could a sane, rational person define the strange, pointless rituals, the praying to fairies and the following of nonsensical rules as anything
but mental illness?
Dawkins' essay
(http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html) Viruses of the Mind is the classic text here.
Moi Dix Mois on 16/12/2007 at 12:27
Because, of course, Dawkins is utterly unbiased and objective and not at all a butthurt crybaby with an agenda to push.
Fingernail on 16/12/2007 at 12:33
Quote:
It almost goes without saying that harsh punishment is sanctioned for women who break these rules.
Sorry, where does it
actually say that?
Who says that? And why do they say it? Anyway, those passages are not specific about the hijab or burka or any other dress, just about the general principle of maintaining modesty.
catbarf on 16/12/2007 at 14:45
Quote Posted by Moi Dix Mois
Because, of course, Dawkins is utterly unbiased and objective and not at all a butthurt crybaby with an agenda to push.
You're biased too. Should we start ignoring you?
Moi Dix Mois on 16/12/2007 at 16:35
Maybe you should, but if you honestly can't see the difference between me (or almost anybody else for that matter) and somebody like Dawkins then you really are as big an idiot as everybody seems to think.
He's a known public figure who presents his opinions to the world as (poorly reasoned, by all accounts) scientific fact.
He has an axe to grind - that's fine, we all have our own stupid little prejudices. He could at least be honest about it, rather than trying to give his pet hate a veneer of scientific legitimacy by using big words to confound the stupid and easily led.
He's no less a proselytizing zealot than any Jehova's Witness (<<insert your chosen brand of God Botherer here), and for all his posturing his beliefs are ultimately built on as much faith as theirs.
It offends something deep inside me that someone who supposedly devotes himself to teaching people the 'dangers of /whatever/' can be so totally convinced of how correct he is and how people who disagree can be outright wrong, ignorant, stupid or actually mentally ill.
The language may be different, but the underlying message has always sounded suspiciously similar to something I would expect to hear from a particularly zealous or fundamentalist religious group.
The abyss gazes also into you... etc.
That's all I really have to say for my part. I always regret dipping my toe into these sorts of discussions, because of how fucking pointless they are.
(Just so you know where I'm arguing from: I'm agnostic.)
