Author : ProGod (IP: 119.11.26.59 , 119.11.26.59)
E-mail : Stephen.dowling.au@gmail.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=119.11.26.59
Comment:
I wonder if you have ever thought that your attack on creation is a direct attack on Allah and makes you a kafir. Islam believes that Muslims defending Allah by eliminating kafirs, go to heaven. So please be advised that attacks on Allah will not be received well in the new world order.
This threat (if it’s not just a joke) could come only from a religious person, and among those only from a Muslim. Three comments:
1. This gives the lie to the view that Islam is a peaceful faith. In fact, what this guy (and I assume it’s a guy) is saying is true: he has a duty to kill me. This is not the first time I’ve been threatened as a kafir: the same thing happened to me when I lectured last year in Ankara on the evidence for evolution.
2. Has an atheist ever threatened a religious person with death for spreading faith? If morality goes down the tubes without religion, this should happen all the time.
3. If anybody can help me report this dude, let me know. An IP lookup yielded nothing.
Actually it sounds like – not a joke exactly, but a somewhat gratuitous ‘watch out for Da Muslims’ kind of thing. Not a threat so much as a heavily facetious ‘warning.’
That’s what I thought.
Fatwa Envy.
But I may just be biased by the name. I tend to be a bigot with preconceived notions.
Try a lookup here:
http://wq.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois.pl
You’ll get a lot more.
Watch out!; that comment might have come from Allah. Check the IP address and see if the server is located near Mecca.
If you do the APNIC lookup as ScottH suggested, it seems that the IP address is a user on the Hutchinson 3G network in Australia, and it gives you some contact details for the network. I bet they can look up the user behind that IP address at that time.
Atheists have killed plenty of proselytizing religionists. There’s this:
“Proof” it’s not, but it’s hardly unbelievable. And no, I don’t really play the “communism is a religion” game, even if it’s “another god that failed” in a meaningful sense.
Agreed with the part that it “should happen all the time” if atheism entails morality going down the tubes.
A few excuses are used, including the wonderful effect of past and present religionists upon atheists, that god is supposedly safe-guarding religionists from us evil godless communists or what-not, and that god may yet be working to “save” us.
No evidence necessary. You’ve seen ID/creationism.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
I agree that communism is not religion, what is going on in North Korea certainly is a form of religion.
Look up “cult of personality”
North Korea is only nominally communist. Primary, it is a dictatorship built to literally worship their ‘dear’ leaders.
Most countries with an indigenous communist revolution have been governed largely as a continuation of the quasi-religious dictators of their recent past, in Korea, China, and the Soviet Union.
But I think that goes back to the fact that simply giving up god and religion is not proof against nonsense, oppression, etc. We’re not suddenly above “doing bad things” if we’re neither religious nor “bad people,” whatever Steven Weinberg thinks.
Nonetheless, communism’s various cults of personality are a warning that religious rituals and forms are a concern, with or without religion. These provoke devotion and loyalty without cause or reason.
I wonder if sometimes the Enlightenment and atheism get too much intertwined, so that good Enlightenment thought (which, seriously, would dispense with god today when pursued its proper end), a stance that is quite benign and tending toward inclusion, is thought to be what atheism is. Atheism can easily co-exist with much less benign ideas, however.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Atheism is not a philosphy, it is merely the lack of belief.
I think it is much more fair to equate theism as an enemy of ‘the Enlightment’ than atheism as its ally.
I came to my non-belief through aquiring critical thinking skills. While I already had a general interst in science, I can’t say that I truly understood it. But, reading “Demon Haunted World” began a mental/worldview transformation that will likely continue until I die.
I was quite dissappointed to discover than many atheists I later met had little better reasons for not believing as believers have for believing. I expected on average much better critical thinking skills than I actaully encountered.
So, I try to push critical thinking and the understanding of science (particularly the scientific method) much more fervantly than atheism itself. I’d rather give someone the tools to convince themselves that there is no god, than do the convincing for them. With the tools to shed their own belief, they are proof against further indoctrination. Teach a man to fish, and all that.
Well, in the most meaningful senses, Communism does share all the meaningful hallmarks of religion. Or if you prefer, I can use the term “fundamentalism” if that distances all of the “bad” -isms enough to make you feel better and sufficiently solicitous to all of the “good religion” out there.
For example, Communism and monotheistic fundamentalisms all share the unquestionable authority vested in a single source. All are consumed with supporting that authority to the exclusion of rational inquiry if necessary, including science (think Lysenkoism). Also, in both fundamental religion and authoritarian government, rigid adherence to a protean dogma overrides most issues.
Another thing that is certain is that, while certainly there are regimes that have been murderous that are also anti-religious, it is only because religion was competition to their authority. Christian and Muslim regimes have also been highly anti-religious as well. It just happens that they make an exception for their own particular brand and rejected everything else on more or less the same grounds as Communism rejected religion.
So, in very meaningful ways, yes, Communism share much more with fundamental religion than it does with any type of atheism that is even remotely connected to the type that Jerry has promulgated.
In North Korea as in communistic China or former Russia etc. the governments persecute religious groups not because they are religious but they are difficult to keep in line. This is just regular fight for power. It just makes no much difference if we have communists fighting religious or vice versa. The difference is in power of ideology which excuses oppression.
I’m sure P.Z. Meyers has a few ways of tracking these ‘people’ down as I’m sure he gets these all the time too. Have you asked him what he does with these?
If Prof. Coyne is really concerned about this email, turn it over to the FBI. That’s what they’re there for.
This. Don’t bother tracking him down yourself. Find the people to report this to: Google, FBI, police, whatever.
It does look like he accidentally included his real name in the email headers unintentionally, unless that’s fake too. But really, let somebody else handle it in an official capacity.
Report it to Google????
When did they become a UN sanctioned nation?
The email is from gmail.com… that’s google. The host of the email seems a reasonable place to complain to me.
This reads more like a case of Fatwa envy to me. I doubt a Muslim would invoke the phrase “new world order” to describe the spread of Islam, but that’s exactly the type of paranoia espoused crazy fundies who are terrified by the spread of Islam. He’s merely “warning” you out of the kindness of his heart that Islamic terrorists pose a larger threat than Xian terrorists.
Tend to agree, Jerry. It doesn’t read to me like its from a Muslim, more like an islamophobe trying to stir up trouble. Either way, you should complain to Google, who handle his e-mail.
I agree with some of the commenters, from the “new world order” comment it looks like he is probably a nutjob of the paranoid conspiratist kind, and not the religious kind. And his intentions might just have been an honest attempt at a warning, and not a “warning” in the deaththreat sense.
Anders wrote: I agree with some of the commenters, from the “new world order” comment it looks like he is probably a nutjob of the paranoid conspiratist kind, and not the religious kind.
Actually, those two things usually go together. Creationists already believe scientists have colluded to suppress the evidence for creationism and advance the Satanic theory of evolution, so it really isn’t that big of a leap to start believing in Illuminati or NWO conspiracies. Kent Hovind used to warn of the day UN troops would invade America to impose a one world government order. The Religious Right continues to push the lie that Obama is a “secret” Muslim and birthers continue to claim that Obama is an illegitimate president because he’s not a US citizen. Fundies actively foster an atmosphere of paranoia. Fear and ignorance are their primary motivators. The world is a scary place and everyone is out to get them. Of course, that constant projection and inability to be introspective is precisely why they can very often be dangerous.
P.S. An ability to preview comments would be a very nice feature to add to this blog.
Stalin, leader of the atheist Soviet Union, killed over 35 million of his own people, to say nothing of what he and Hitler did between the two of them in World War 2.
All humans are bloodthirsty idiots. Only a few will rise above their animal natures. The rest will worship anything that spooks them.