THIS is what it takes to get them rioting, murdering, and comitting violence in general. A simple movie, or a few years ago it was a cartoon. This is a whacky,violent, sadistic religion. To be fair, so are the other two abrahamic religions but not to the extant this one is. maybe we ultimately are incompatible with them.
__________________ There are more humans in the world than rats.
Well, that depends on what you mean. It's not a religion of peace in the sense that Christianity is with turning the other cheek and whatnot. But it doesn't condone violence, with a few exceptions.
Look, I can understand if someone is bombing their cities and invading their lands but this kind of reaction over a movie (and a few years ago a political cartoon) is a bit much.
__________________ There are more humans in the world than rats.
Religious fanatics suck. But have you ever considered that it's the fanatic part that's problematic, not the religious part?
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
It's much harder to create a homicidal fanatic outside of religion. Not impossible, of course, but anything lacking eternal salvation and blind faith won't really create the same fervor of irrational passion.
There's also a point about this that I've long struggled to put into words, and it has to do with creating a cultural climate in which fanaticism can occur. The so-called "moderate" religious adherents are still believers in their God. This is still based on faith instead of evidence, and they maintain certain things follow from this belief (God having an invisible plan, eternal life and salvation, sins and sinners, etc.). This very approach to a worldview is culturally damaging, because it creates sin where none exists, it creates a divide between believers and non-believers and, depending on sect, between the saved and the damned. The road to extremism, at that point, is only a matter of degree. The beliefs that create fanaticism are already ingrained in the culture. The fact that some are able to overcome this is a testament to their inherent decency and ability to assimilate into their world...it is NOT a credit to their religion, which only creates the "acceptance-hurdles" for them to overcome.
There are examples of this outside of religion, some more analogous than others, and the principle is the same: it is easier for an extreme version of a belief to exist when a much more moderate version of the belief is already widespread.
So no, I can't only fault the "fanatic" and not the "religious" when it comes to extremism. I see the latter as the root cause of the former, even if most of any religion will denounce extremism.
So the countless religious people who aren't fanatics mean... nothing? Religion (some more than others) makes fanaticism easy for some people. As can political ideology, philosophy, or pop culture. It's not religion-exclusive. What all those have in common is their origin in humanity. Simply put, humans are the root of fanaticism and religion. Some indulge, some don't. But taken by themselves, fanaticism is what is damaging and harmful--not religion. They're not synonymous and one can lead to the other, but it's not a guarantee. Hell it's not even common today.
No, the religious people aren't what's problematic. It's the fanatics, the zealots, the moral crusaders among them that need to be... dealt with. Among the non-aligned too.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
it's also worth mentioning, in this situation, like with the Mohammed cartoons, powerful interest groups are exploiting this for their own end. In Libya, for instance, there is a lot of speculation that Al Qaeda used the protests as a cover to hit the embassy. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is encouraging more protests. Many people protesting think the film is a huge hit in the West and that we are all sitting around insulting them.
Not to justify any violence, but this situation is not just about angry Muslims.
Hyperbole is hyperbole, yes. Talking about root cultural causes isn't throwing every good person and good act under the bus. I shouldn't have to make a distinction between these.
Well:
...so I kinda said that exact thing. Though I'd challenge you to find the same level of widespread, culturally-ingrained prejudice, penchant for violence, etc. in any of those other fields. Politics comes close, because - and Nietzsche smiles - patriotic xenophobia can act as nearly as strong a deterrent to other cultures as religion. Though - perhaps tellingly - at least in this country such undue patriotism is usually paired with religious intolerance as well.
However, it should be just as clear that widespread hatred in the name of other institutions doesn't excuse that of religion.
Also however, your argument is a slippery one, because ascribing everything to simply "human" instead of "institution/trend/organization/etc." ignores the vast amount of influence our world and peers have on our behavior. Institutions can and do create both good and evil where none would exist if the humans involved were left to their own devices. I doubt you would defend an obviously cult-ish organization that encouraged negative tendencies, even if it didn't result in overt violence (bombings, etc.).
Now, of course, religion is more complex, because you have huge amounts of both good and bad, both obvious (charity, bombings) and more subtle (fun social groups, preventing the spread of birth control in third world countries). So at this point it becomes a bit subjective. How much of the good would be removed if you removed religion? How much bad? How much of either would remain? The answer defies absolute statements. However, it's my contention that there's only a handful of ideas/causes strong enough to ingrain violence on an institutional level, and religious faith is one of them. Obviously, individually, things like poverty, fractured psyche, philosophy, music or other cultural influences, etc. can create violence on an individual level. But we're talking trends in society, not individual tragedies.
So. Some of the good that religion creates would go away, as would some of the bad. But I haven't seen a compelling argument for why more wrongdoing would occur if religion didn't exist. This can also be anecdotally reinforced by the numerous studies that actually show strength of religious adherence tends to make people more prejudice, less honest, less moral, etc. by several non-controversial standards.
So I suppose it's the ideas of faith-based belief and an afterlife for adherence to your God that I'm opposed to, since I see those as the root of a lot of this. Individual people can still of course do good in the name of religion. But there's a popular quote that I'll paraphrase: "Good men do good and evil men do evil, but for a good man to do evil, that takes religion." There's maybe 1-2 institutions that could complete that quote with the same force, but it's doubtful even they have nearly as much influence over human beings and their actions.
And again, I'll go back to my original point. Without the idea of belief based on faith, which is championed by nearly ALL monotheistic religious adherents, the violent extremists could not exist in nearly the same severity. The idea is unnecessary for human decency and is ultimately destructive as a cultural institute because of this (not to mention the other reasons faith-based belief undermines progress, but I digress...)
You can look across any culture and see groups spring up because they exist in a culture that allows them to crop up. Violent irrational patriotism can't exist without first having benign irrational patriotism. Religious extremism can't exist without first having the ideas being present in the culture, even if they are not acted upon. And sans an absolute belief in an afterlife and the absolute veracity of one's own interpretation of a holy text, there are few other intellectual forces strong enough to create such fanaticism.
Like, how do you quell political unrest? Create a peaceful state. How do you cut down on crime? Reduce poverty. How do you convince a religious zealot you aren't going to hell? ...see the difference?
I don't want this to turn into an attack on Granny Good-faith, who goes to church every Sunday and volunteers at the soup kitchen. She's cool. But it's hard for me not to see an overarching problem with the ideas that religion espouses, and I don't think the world would be any worse off without them. This is of course speculative, but what little potentially-applicable evidence we have seems to support my position.
So it's the fundamentalists, aka "THE ONES WHO ADHERE TO THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THEIR FAITH", that go up into murderous rampages?
The lukewarm Muslims don't because they don't ahere to the fundamentals of their faith. The supposed "religion of peace" is actually soaked in violence.
Quarn 5:33 "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"
I live in Australia & last weekend, a simple trip to the city...I nearly got caught up in the riots.
Yes, it's about fanatics fuelling hatred, an anonymous text message randomly sent out to gather & start a protest against a perceived insult.
I'd like to think that I'm not racist but the violence that happened is very typical of the Middle Eastern attitude of a pack mentality.
Any reason is an excuse to fight because they feel you've offended them or shown disrespect.
I've witnessed numerous fights break out because an innocent bystander just happened to glance in the direction of a group of Middle Eastern men. One man steps up to confront the hapless bystander, the bystander has no clue he's done something wrong & the next moment the entire group is pounding on him. There's no fair fight nor is there justification for the violence that ensues...only for the simple fact that it's a pack group mentality.
There's no reasoning to a group that simply gets together for the sake of wanting to commit violence...that fact that the alleged "insult" came from another country, so many months ago, proves this.
Lol, ok. I don't have enough time properly respond at work, but my subsequent post elaborates on my point a bit. I'm sure you'll disagree with it too, but it will have to fill in for me until I get some more time.
KMC Community Forums
Sep 15th, 2012 08:57 PM
