UPDATE: Uncle Eric MacDonald has a longer take on these videos—and on Islam—in his new post, “Islam is not a respectable religion and it does not deserve our respect.” A snippet:
This is a religion that deserves to be criticised and condemned for its manifold offences against humanity. Its record of defending and upholding human rights is troublingly poor, and, if we take the so-called academics in the collection of video clips from which I took the clip above [JAC: same as the collection below] as any indication of the mind if Islam, then this is not something that is likely to end soon. Notice, for example, how many people in the audience clapped when the Muslim scholar highlighted above made his stupid remark that he would want to be stoned if he sinned. It simply took my breath away. That in itself was so chillingly disturbing that it demands enquiry. We have to remember that these are people who have come to live amongst us in the West, and that they are making claims for a kind of recognition and freedom from criticism which would imprison all of us.
____________
Here’s another enlightening video created and posted by neurosurgeon Jonathan Pararajasingham. (I’ve previously posted videos by Pararajasingham on 30 famous writers speaking about God, 20 academics and theologians speaking about their belief in God, and 100 academics explaining their atheism.) This one speaks for itself, and frankly scares the hell out of me.
Here are the speakers, in order, taken from the YouTube description. The description of what the speaker says, in italics, is mine.
1. Yasir Qadhi is an American Muslim writer and Islamic instructor for the AlMaghrib Institute. He has written a number of books and spoken in lectures about Islam and contemporary issues on Muslims. Qadhi shows why the love of music and Islam are completely incompatible. A true lover of the Qur’an, he says, finds music repugnant, and a true lover of music could never love the Qur’an. I’ll take music any day.
2. Hamza Yusuf Hanson is one of the most influential Islamic scholars in the West. He is co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States. Hanson says that Islam deplores not only homosexuality, but anal intercourse between males and females.
3. Dr Zakir Naik is an Islamic public speaker and writer on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF). Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a medical doctor. I listened hard, but I really can’t make out what Naik is saying.
4. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an Egyptian Islamic theologian. He is best known for his programme, ash-Shariah wal-Hayat broadcast on Al Jazeera, which has an estimated audience of 40 million worldwide. He has published more than 80 books, has received eight international prizes for his contributions to Islamic scholarship, and is considered one of the most influential scholars living today. al-Qaradawi’s message to women is “Don’t masturbate: it’s “risky” because you may break your hymen and expose yourself to ‘accusations’!” This guy won international prizes and is influential???
5. Dr Bilal Philips is a contemporary Islamic scholar, teacher, speaker, and author, resident in Qatar. He appears on Peace TV, a 24-hour Islamic channel broadcasting to many countries around the world. Dr. Philips reiterates the Islamic dictate that the depiction and worship of images of religious figures is “idolatry,” creating an impression that there is something greater than Allah himself.
6. Dr Zahid Ahmad Khan is an Islamic Public Speaker and president of the Kaza board of the Global satellite television network Muslim Television Ahmadiyya. Dr. Khan explains why pigs are worse than any other animal, so their consumption is forbidden by Islamic custom. For one thing, some pigs are gay! And you become what you eat! This one is really funny.
7. Imam Karim Abuzaid is the imam of Colorado Muslim Society (CMS). He is a PhD candidate in Islamic Studies with the American Open University of Alexandria, VA. Abuzaid explains why it’s highly recommended under Qur’anic dictates for men to urinate sitting down, although under certain circumstances standing is permissible.
8. Dr Sumaya Alyusuf is director and headteacher of the King Fahad Academy in London. Dr. Alyusuf explains how the denigrations of Jews in the Qur’an are only metaphorical, and taken out of context.
9. Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem is one of the prominent propagators of Islam in English in Saudi Arabia. He is active in delivering Islamic programs for the Media in both Arabic & English. Al-Hakeem tells us that a woman who rejects the sexual blandishments of her husband is sinful and cursed by the angels, for there is no legitimate reason for such rejection. The husband needs his “discharge” because he’s been tempted by other women all day, and any rejection of that “discharge” is unjustified. This is a pretty graphic portrayal of women in Islam as mere vessels for their husbands’ needs.
10. Professor Sherman A. Jackson is Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and has authored several books. Jackson asserts that homosexuality is forbidden by the Qur’an.
11. Abdul Ghani Jahangeer is an Islamic scholar and head of the French desk of the Global satellite television network Muslim Television Ahmadiyya. Jahangeer explains one unappreciated advantage of Islam: Muslims use one hand for eating and doing “clean” jobs, the other (the left, I believe), for cleaning one’s butt after defecating. Thus, when a Muslim extends you his hand, you know it’s a clean one, but “the hand of a non-Muslim could have been anywhere.”
12. Dr Muhammad Wahdan is a lecturer on Islamic religious law at Al Azhar university in Egypt. Here he defends female circumcision. You must listen to this one!
13. Uthman Badar is the Australian spokesman for the international Islamist group Hizb Ut- Tahrir, an international Sunni pan-Islamic political organisation. They are commonly associated with the goal of all Muslim countries unifying as an Islamic state. Here he engages in an one-on-one with Lawrence Krauss about religious law, and Krauss pwns him.
14. Haras Rafiq is co-founder and Executive Director of the Sufi Muslim Council in Britain. He is also a director of CENTRI, an organization focused on countering extremism at the operational level. Here Rafiq defends the practice of stoning women for adultery—but only if they ask to be stoned. Then it becomes okay.
15. Hussain Yee is a Malaysian national of Chinese descent, a scholar of Islam and former Buddhist who lectures regularly in the Asia-Pacific region. His lectures on Islam are frequently aired on Peace TV. Yee decries women who dress like men and men who dress like women (e.g., wearing an earring).
16. Imam Shabir Ally is the president of the Islamic Information & Dawah Centre International in Toronto, Canada. He is a Muslim activist, preacher and speaker on Islam and Muslims. He is also a debater engaging in regular debates in different parts of the world. Taking up evolution, Ally maintains that the theory of evolution does not say that humans descended from apes, while admitting that humans and modern apes had a common ancestor.
17. Dr Abdul Majid Ali is a minister of religion in the UK and a religious teacher who initially gained prominence within the Middle East. He studied under the guidance of Sh. Bilal Philips, one of the most respected scholars in the world. Dr. Ali maintains that men can be allowed to marry at age 12, and even a girl of 9 can be a wife if she is “physically ready to handle that relationship.”
18. Dr Israr Ahmed was a Pakistani Islamic theologian followed particularly in South Asia and also among the South Asian diaspora in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America. He is the founder of the Tanzeem-e-islami, an off-shoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami. He spent more than 50 years teaching Quraan and preaching Islam. Dr. Ahmed explains why drawings of humans and animals are forbidden by Islam, and photography only under special circumstances that furthers the needs of the government or the faith.
19. Kamal El Mekki is a well-known Islamic speaker and lecturer in the United states. He has studied with numerous scholars from around the world and served as the Imam of George Mason University and has also served as a radio talk show host for a large Islamic radio station in America. El Meeki explains why music is pernicious to Muslims, and that rather than use it to calm down or soothe their nerves they should instead run and supplicate themselves to Allah.
20. Shaykh Haitham al-Haddad is a London-based Islamic scholar. He sits on the boards of advisors for Islamic organisations in the United Kingdom, including the Islamic Sharia Council, and is the chair and operations advisor for the Muslim Research and Development Foundation. He is also a trustee for the Muslim Research and Development Foundation in the United Kingdom. al-Haddad explains why stoning is an appropriate punishment for certain crimes, including adultery. He maintains that those people who get stoned actually want to be stoned! He says he receives many requests from Western women who have committed adultery, asking how they can find their way to a Muslim country so that they may be stoned to death. Yeah, right!
What is most frightening—and enlightening—about this, is that it shows how sincerely these people—eloquent and educated people—actually believe in the ludicrous dictates of Islam. That’s often forgotten by those who excuse terrorists by claiming that the terrorists’ motivations are not religious but political. See what these people really believe! (Sam Harris is always asking us to pay attention to this.)
It is hard to believe that educated people can believe in the claptrap uttered by these 19 men and one woman, but it’s palpably obvious that they do. It would be hard to find, say, 20 academic Christians or Jews who would defend stoning or female genital mutilation.
h/t: Michael
Frankly scary – I would agree, especially some of the comments about female circumcision and mens “rights” with respect to their wives.
But also quite funny – how on earth can grown men believe some of these preposterous things?
Concerning the female circumcision, the supreme court of Egypt banned it, partly because Muhammad condemned it. This didn’t stop self-appointed spokesmen for God from rioting in protest, claiming that if it was a tradition it must be Islamic.
Also to be noted, that female veiling of the face was a Persian tradition, only adopted by Islam when the seat of power (Caliphate) was established in Baghdad. Once the desert tribesmen took over Baghdad, they succumbed to the “cosmopolitans” way of life, and adopted it for themselves.
IIRC, Mohammed’s followers even had a female officer (general?) in the early years of warfare against competing tribes.
That happens in all religions. After all, regardless of the many claims, “purity” is not what religions are after. What they are after is getting more (paying) members. God may be all powerful, but it needs your arms and legs and above all, your money.
In Christianity, we have the Christmas tree. For some reason, this is now seen by many as a fundamental Christian symbol. Yet, it is not mentioned even once in the New Testament. For good reason. It is a German tradition that was integrated into Christianity, just a ploy to get more members with less effort.
I totally agree with your views in this matter. There are cooks, crazies and loonies among all belief systems (geloofstelsels, world views, levensbeschouwingen, religions, godsdiensten, or whatever you want to call them)–even among scientific materialists. Need I quote a few Nazi scientists? Or Stalinists? Or Cataholic nuts? or Evangleical idiots? So why should anyone be surprised that there is a lunatic fringe among our Muslim brethern. We are all human beings, and nothing human is alien to any one of us. Our fragile human species needs to come together at this most precarious time in our evolutionary history–not provoke more anger, alienation and apartheid.
Well, there’s always the Jeremiah 10 verses 🙂
10:2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.
10:3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.
10:4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.
Some apologists will sidestep that with “well, don’t worship like the pagans do”, but it’s still funny that the only mention of something like a Christmas tree in the bible is, well, a bit “anti” 🙂
Well done! I love it.
I hear that the Quran verse saying women should cover their “heads” actually says they should cover their “breasts.”
Veiling was a form of hiding from warlord raiders who were rampant in the ancient Middle East. If a woman let her beauty be seen in public, the “evil eye” of the warlord might fall upon her, and she’d get plundered. Her family’s men would feel shamed that they failed to defend her, so to protect their honor they’d insist that “their” women must hide from the cruel world.
All my life I’ve seen assorted Christians or Muslims claiming in public that their personal hatreds and prejudices were fundamental to their religion. And for decades, I believed their claims. That is, I believed that these bigots were the definers of their respective civilizations.
But now I don’t believe them. I don’t believe their hates and bigotries are the defining fundamentals of their cultures. My question is what I think is good or stupid about my culture, or nation, or religion. And nobody can convince me that I’m supposed to believe in bigotry because a bigot claims to speak for me.
You might want to read up on the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Also, the bigotry and other nastinesses are to be found in the Qur’an, the source material itself. It’s not a matter of some fringe crazies trying to speak for others.
So, does that mean you deny that Islam entails a subordinate role for women? Your second paragraph seems to be suggesting that we should willfully ignore all negative aspects of religions, societies, nations, etc., when we evaluate them. This seems pretty silly. If this is not what you meant, then please clarify.
Many Islamic feminists such as Fatima Mernissi, Irshad Manji, Aisha Abd al-Rahman, Sihem Habchi, Fadela Amara, Arsa Normani, or Fatima Thompson, have insisted that Islam actually stands for equality between human beings, and that an early spirit of equality was corrupted by later bigots who reimposed ancient prejudice, as happened with early Christianity.
The sexist Muslims claim all this is false. Which side do I believe? Well, I like the feminists argument better, and don’t feel like trying to prove them wrong.
It is intellectually dishonest to suggest that the misogynist interpretation and the feminist interpretations of the Quran are equally valid. Here are three pages of quotations from the Quran that pertain to women’s roles:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/women/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/sex/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/fv/long.html
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris gives a superficially-plausible mystical interpretation to a recipe in a cookbook. This was meant to demonstrate the principle that just because all texts (because of the vagaries of language) can lend themselves to multiple interpretations, some interpretations are manifestly more plausible. Similarly, I think it’s clear that the misogynist interpretation of the Quran is more plausible than the feminist one.
Try reading the feminist Muslims’ books and see if you think they’re wrong. You might start with Fatima Mernissi, and then go for Irshad Manji.
As Darelle pointed out, you’re thinking in fallacious binary terms.
It’s not that one interpretation is correct and the other wrong.
Nobody here is supporting one interpretation over the other, much less supporting the bigotry one of those interpretations entails.
We’re condemning the whole enchilada. Trusting faith/authority while ignoring evidence (or the lack thereof) is not good for humanity. It is dangerous for myriad reasons, just one of which is that it leads to the kind if divisiveness and violence we see in Islam (and xianity, for that matter) as practiced by many Muslims. It doesn’t matter if there’s an abstract version of Islam that is benign. What matters is how it’s actually practiced!
Okay. You try convincing those women that they should dump their whole enchilada (in favor of ours) rather than trying to make their culture what they feel it’s meant to be.
My, aren’t we just a bit superiorly condescending today?
What has you so convinced that these poor stupid brown women can’t handle the truth?
Alternatively, what makes you so sure that thees lies you’re telling them for their own good aren’t just for your own benefit?
b&
I didn’t tell them anything. I read their books and they told me what they think. Okay?
Also, I am admittedly not familiar with those authors’ work, but I’d wager they’re pretty heavily engaged in eisegesis, just as are their liberal xian analogues.
You might be surprised how much they draw on Muslim tradition for their views.
So, you don’t think that identifying which is a more accurate account of reality is important? And you don’t think it should be important to anybody else?
Those women have their interpretations of their tradition, and they are making their own choices of what is good or bad in their culture. If you want to try proving that the male bigots have the correct interpretation, go ahead and fight that fight.
So, is that a yes? Why do you conflate determining what really occurred with support for one or another group? You make it sound like this is limited to whatever binary solution set you have determined. Because of that you continue to attribute reasons and motivations to other people that are just way off base.
Because it’s a matter of these women’s opinions as to which views or values in their culture seem most valid and right to them.
We could apply the same questions to Christian history. Does Christianity endorse slavery? Does it call for freedom? Does it endorse women’s subordination to men, or the equality of all souls? Does it support racism? These are questions for each Christian to decide, according to which voices in their culture they see as the best.
What do you mean by “These are questions for each christian to decide, according to which voices in their culture they see as the best.“?
Do you mean that it should be their right to do so? That they should not be prevented, by law or other individuals, from doing so? I am pretty sure the large majority of people around here agree with that.
Do you mean that other people should be required to respect whatever individual religious believers decide to believe? Regardless of whether their beliefs have any correlation with reality or not? Regardless of how their beliefs may impact the society that I cohabit with them? If so, that is a problem. That, frankly, is bullshit. And I am capable of holding that view and treating said religious believers, and even accommodationists, with the same respect I feel all human beings should be treated with. Including my wife, children and myself. And in my experience my standards are significantly higher than the typical dedicated believer.
You have not let on whether or not you yourself are a believer. If you are, fine. If you are not, then your attitude + arguments come off as patronizing towards religious believers and that seems more disrespectful to me than straightforward opposition to their beliefs.
So when I affirm Muslim women for saying they have a right to make their own choices on what is good or bad in their tradition, you are worried that this means the denial of other people’s freedom?
Brian Griffith wrote:
So when I affirm Muslim women for saying they have a right to make their own choices on what is good or bad in their tradition, you are worried that this means the denial of other people’s freedom?
That’s exactly what it means. Muslim women don’t have the right to make choices, they must submit as the law and religion require them to. Some places they cannot drive, they must cover themselves from head to toe, and so on. The sad thing is, if these restrictions were not in place, women would still have the choice to obey these religious doctrines, but they would also have the choice not to obey them. I don’t see what objection you would have to that.
I’m afraid that Irshad Manji, Shirin Ebadi, or Fatima Mernissi would not agree with you. Maybe you should contact them and see if you can convince them that they are not free to think for themselves.
Are there some Muslims who have tried shoehorning modern, enlightened values I to their religious worldview? Well, good for them. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to do anything about the remaining majority that wreak all sorts of havoc and woe in the world?
What an odd position to take. Why should we ignore the folks like those who appear in the video above? All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
And even benign religion is still false! It still hampers our ability to ascertain reality, and thereby improve the world. Religion, even the not-explicitly-violent kind, needs to go.
So if Chinese people argue that justice and freedom are actually long-popular Chinese values, should we reply that they are clearly wrong, and that the answer is for them to dump their silly Chinese heritage?
Seems to me that affirming Muslims who want fairness and equality in Islam is pretty much the opposite of refusing to criticize Islamic bigots.
The answer would be to show them that genuine values are not nationalistic or tribalistic in nature; that they are derivable by and available to all humanity (and that deriving genuine values is promoted by looking at evidence, and getting rid of faith).
You could correct their notion that some genuinely good concept is “Chinese” without telling them to “dump it.”
Gee, if I hear Americans or Chinese, or Muslims in Egypt claiming that their nation and religion stands for equality between men and women, I think I’ll just respond by saying “Good for you.”
Well let’s see. You have built a hyperbolic strawman argument that misrepresents your opponent. You have shifted the goal posts. And you appear to be trying to spin recent history around at least 180 degrees.
You started by criticizing people here for criticizing Islamic bigots. Now you are saying that you are criticizing Islamic bigots.
Nice.
I pointed out that there’s many feminist Muslims who claim that their religion properly stands for equality. I’m personally glad to hear of Muslim women who feel this way, and can’t understand why that would offend you.
As you know, there’s been a long history of bigotry against women in Christianity. But some women insisted that their religion properly stood for equality rather than bigotry. It’s a good thing they did.
There you go lying again. No one here, certainly not me, expressed offense at the idea of muslim women trying to combat bigotry against woman in their societies.
You are the one that started by expressing offense that other people might actually think that it would be better to have an accurate understanding of the history of female oppression in Islam. You are the one that made up out of thin air that those people must therefore want to disparage the efforts of the women you speak of because they believe their motivating belief is inaccurate. You made up all kinds of crap no one here said or implied.
It is interesting, typical but still interesting, that many of the negative ethical behaviors that you are falsely accusing others of, you are the one demonstrating them here.
Good. If you are not offended by the notion that Muslim feminists exist, and don’t presume that affirming them means denying that Muslim bigots exist (Who, after all are the Muslim feminists arguing with?), then it would seem we agree.
Speaker 3. is talking about corporal punishment. I can only barely make out a few words.
\
That is right. more exactly he is talking about wife-beating. He is comparing wife beating with beating your kids. He does say that one should admonish kids before beating them and the same for kids.
There is a fair bit of hindi in there too.
The evil Zakir Naik has his own immensely popular channel, Peace.TV where he hosts “Dare To Ask” ~ which allows the audience to put questions to him about the correct interpretation of the Qur’an & how it applies in everyday life.
The full video on the wife beating question in Islamic Law is around 8 minutes long & here’s a complete transcript where it isn’t inaudible:-
Ah, I see. It’s okay to just touch her up a bit, but not to seriously beat her. Allah is truly merciful.
In addition to the post above, Speaker #3 mentions at the very end that the Quran allows something called “beating lightly”, but it’s not with the intention of hurting the wife for breaking a rule or something. Earlier when talking about disciplining a son, from his hand gesticulation, he *might* have been saying to use an open hand (perhaps a light slap?? Anyone can shed light on this?)as well as words to admonish, because you love him. So since you wouldn’t hit your son, he says to do similarly to the wife. Some of it I couldn’t make out, as it’s in his native tongue.
(I meant the post by Subramanya.) Thanks, Michael… missed your post while I was typing mine. That helps a lot!
While that is true, it would unfortunately be ridiculously easy to find 20 academic Christians or Jews who would defend male genital mutilation or arresting people walking naked along Main Street.
The difference between Muslims and our “secular” west is, unfortunately, one of degree, nothing more.
Well, if you think that beheading people and stoning them or hanging them for crimes like adultery of homosexuality is only a matter of “degree,” so be it. In that case you’re saying nothing, because EVERYTHING is a matter of degree.
That is actually not what I said. I said that the *difference* is a matter of degree. Do not forget that the premises we decry in Islam also exist in Christianity and Judaism. Jews and Christians have generally been domesticated a bit more, but the moment they get an opportunity, that domestication is cast off.
I am not talking “philosophy” here, but about the harsh reality I have lived through myself. My father was a failed Trappist monk, and he did not hesitate to administer savage beatings and near-drownings to me, his son. And why? Read the Bible. It’s all there. Worse still, he was proud of his behaviour.
And he is not alone. Just look at the US where insane people such as William Lane Craig use the Bible to defend the most hideous crimes.
The difference of degree here, is that there are MORE people in the Islamic world who behave like barbarians, holy books in hand, than there are in the West. But this is indeed nothing more than a difference of degree, i.e. the issue is not one of us (Christianity, Judaism) versus them (Islam), but one of atheists versus religionists.
Islam *may* currently be the most dangerous of the faiths, but even that can be questioned. We all saw what happened when Bush was in power, and we all heard the cries for holy wars during the last election. What will happen IF Romney comes to power? Let’s not forget that the US has been more aggressive and more barbaric towards other countries in the past decades than any other. It does not bode well. Christianity is not as innocent as it is often depicted.
I think this is an important point that many overlook.
I believe a fair equation may be made between state violence perpetrated by Muslims and by Christians.
The Muslims have suicide bombers and IEDs. The Christians have drones and tanks (and ICBMs).
Many will rush to point out that the United States is a secular nation, that we have the Establishment Clause, and so on.
But we also have very heavy-handed Christian evangelization on the part of US military officers, we have Bible verses inscribed on rifle sights, and we had a president whose heavenly father told him to fight a crusade. And, for every Muslim cleric calling for jihad on America, we’ve got a Pat Robertson or a Terry Jones. How many sermons delivered from the pulpit include prayers for the troops overseas?
Depressing as the video above is, it’s not at all hard to find equally-popular Christian leaders calling for many of the same things (FGM generally excepted). Pastors don’t call for the stoning of adulterers, but many are vociferous proponents of the death penalty. Homophobia is just as rampant. Misogyny isn’t quite as bad, but who can ignore the Southern Baptists’s call for wives to submit to their husbands? Mainstream Moronism is at least as misogynistic as the Baptists. Many Christians are very outspoken against masturbation. The Q’ran “metaphorically” calls Jews pigs, and Jesus “metaphorically” called for the mass slaughter of all non-Christians. The muslims have their silly ideas about how eating pork makes you Teh Ghey, but that’s nothing compared with Christian idiocy with respect to Young Earth Creationism — and the one Muslim in the video to speak on that topic got the science right (though I’d suspect he’s a rather rare exception).
So, yes. I’d agree that the problems are one of degree. Islam is the more pressing threat, yes, but not by all that much. The Christian threat is ultimately even worse…there’re all those Fundagellical Air Force generals in charge of nuclear bombers, remember? If we ever did have a Christian coup…well, that’d be all she wrote.
Cheers,
b&
That simply has to be the scariest part, on a societal level. I took a little heart, when I was inside the war room in NORAD (when they were still doing tours), that a significant fraction of the Air Force personnel were Canadian Air Force. Perhaps that offered a little more secular balance… 😉
Unfortunately, the Canadians are wavering as well, since we have Stephen Harper leading the country.
And where the death penalty is concerned:
The death penalty ought to be imposed against all capital crimes; guilt must be established by two witnesses. Capital crimes include: murder, adultery, incest, bestiality, homoerotic acts, cursing a parent, sorcery, blasphemy/treason.
Source: Michael Bray, a “Reverend”.
He seems to be a little fixated on one particular category. Wonder why that is?
Many religions, including most versions of Christianity, see the body as dirty and disgusting. They also abhor joy, fun, pleasure. Since evolution has given us an (almost) irresistible urge to make babies by giving us pleasure, it seems logical that Christians will resist bodily pleasures as much as possible.
I think it is intended as a means of control. By demanding that the “faithful” have sexless lives, they continuously remind those faithful that they are hopelessly weak and undeserving and very much in need of guidance. Guidance the sex maniac bully at the top will gladly provide, while enjoying the increased availability of virgins as a result of the enforced taboos.
Bart I think your attack on religious views on sex is a bit weak. The religions don’t “abhor joy, fun, pleasure.”
Put your self back at the origins of religion. Understanding of conception and contraception was almost nonexistent. So indulging in the pleasures of sex almost invariably led to pregnancies. For more reasons than I care to list, getting pregnant out of wedlock was a very bad thing. So how else do you control these almost irresistible urges that we find ourselves having at adolescence? Demonize sexual desire. I don’t advocate that point of view, but I do have understanding of it’s origins. To call the religious joyless prudes is to sink to level of those who would call non believers immoral.
I think there is some misunderstanding here. I am not claiming that the religious are prudes, just look at all the paedophilia scandals of the last decade. I *am* claiming that vilifying certain sexual acts is a method, one of many, to keep the faithful ‘humble’.
If you read the Bible, you will see that reproduction is very much encouraged in many different ways, which indirectly means that sex is encouraged, not for pleasure or fun, but simply as a breeding function. Of course, those in power are treated differently than the populace.
The same is true for the other pleasures life has to offer. While the faithful are told to abstain from worldly pleasures, the hierarchy is almost never held to these restrictions. Jesus himself had no qualms enjoying the greatest luxuries people brought to him, even though he was harsh to the extreme for others.
Bart, thanks for this quote from Rev Bray. That’s the first time I have actually seen somebody advocate killing kids for cursing their parent. The New Testament seems to be very clear about that: “Whoever curses father or mother shall die” Bible, Mark 7:10, though I suppose there could be translation errors. I used to point this quote out to Christians, and they would laugh uncomfortably and say this must be metaphorical, but here we have the good Rev Bray going to bat for the literal interpretation. Amazing what some religions do to people’s brains!!
Although I realise that personal anecdotes are not precisely the strongest evidence, I can confirm that there is more than only this “reverend” who believes this and wants to practice it.
As a child, my perspective was obviously different, but I can’t help but still being amazed that I survived my childhood. It is possible that the savage beatings I got from my parents were not as bad as they seemed at the time, due to that perspective, but I do remember being held head under the tap, mouth and nose in the draining water until I started to vomit. I vividly remember the pain, the headaches, the sheer terror, and I also remember that my father never forgot to quote the famous “spare the rod, spoil the child”.
I also remember my parents boasting that they were better parents than most others because they told my teachers in junior high school to give me a beating when I was “disobedient”. Fortunately for me, they nodded politely and did not follow through, even though they certainly managed to make my life less than pleasant.
Needless to say that this has helped motivate me to study the Bible in some depth. To me, it just a book of fiction, but because it is being shoved down people’s throats as a source of morality and a guide for how to conduct one’s life, it is arguably one of the most vile books ever written.
–Osama bin Laden
I thought this was just a peccadillo of bin Laden’s, but evidently it is mainstream Islamic doctrine.
This is reason for hope.
I mean, in the long run, can a mere religion win against music?
Fat chance.
This is completely bizarre! How is it possible for people to think like this? The teachings are so chilling, and yet coming as they do from supposedly respected “scholars” of Islam, they discredit Islam completely. Listening to this, one is not at all surprised at the idiocy being displayed in the “Muslim world” over the stupid video which “insults” their prophet. It is hard to see how anything could insult a prophet whose words come to the conclusions enunciated by these so-called “scholars”! Madness, utter madeness, and we are supposed to show respect to this kind of nonsense?!
But Eric, as Bart B. Van Bockstaele says in comment 4, you could find 20 (probably much more) academics that would defend equally absurd and immoral beliefs. Why do you swallow propaganda hook line and sinker?
And we should not show respect for those 20 either, right?
I would certainly not advise anyone to show them any respect.
I of course agree, but do we have Egbert on board yet? Is he going to let the existence of Christian loonies block our criticism of Muslims promoting inhuman ideas?
Equally absurd? As stoning? As FGM?
Find ONE… just ONE academic Christian defending such beliefs.
William Lane Craig – he defends genocide.
…which is truly disgusting, to be sure. However, he not only waffles, but also takes the safe position of putting this forward as a kind of historical argument, and a hypothetical. (e.g., IF God commanded me to slaughter every XXX man, woman, and child, then it would be moral. Kind of like saying “if I am lying right now, God will strike me dead!” Not very impressive, as God continues to be unlikely to appear to command or to strike, to say the least.)
On the other hand, people ordered to do very real-world things… by very real-world authorities… things that happen every day (stoning, FGM)? Things quite removed from the hypothetical? Still seems like a huge difference, in real-world terms.
Nice link. It seems that at least one person does not think Craig waffles:
Oxford Inter-collegiate Christian Union President Robbie Strachan praised Craig’s speech, saying it contained convincing philosophical arguments.
My point: Craig has lots of friends and that makes him a very dangerous man indeed.
Many fine upstanding Christians, including pastors of all types, are very vocal supporters of the death penalty — though, granted, not for adultery.
I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I have a hard time getting worked up about the method the state uses to murder its citizens.
b&
Very true. And quite sickening. It’s why I dread the false accusation and subsequent trial by a jury of my “peers” in this country. My peers are generally God-soaked nitwits with very poor abilities to evaluate evidence. (not to mention too ignorant of their rights, and prone to suggestion by authority, i.e. the judge)
That’s why I think it’s important for us to understand all the forces at work here.
I think we can safely dismiss genetics as a significant contributor, which leaves us with something that fits under the very broad category of “culture.”
Religion certainly plays a significant role, but we know that there’s something more than just the holy texts. The Tanach and the New Testament are both quite horrific. One can make arguments that the one is more or less horrific than the other, but I really don’t see the point in that sort of exercise. We also see, historically, Christians and Muslims perpetuating global-scale atrocities…and the Jews in Israel have a lot to answer for on a local scale over the past few decades.
So, religion may well be a catalyst, and it may have a causative role. But whatever that role may be, it’s not specific to one of the religions.
The West is still basking in the afterglow of its Enlightenment. The Muslim world turned their backs on theirs many centuries ago. Understanding why would help a great deal in understanding the situation today.
And then there’s geopolitics, especially in the aftermath of British and American imperialism. Personally, I think this is the principal driving force, with religion just being a bit more fuel poured on the flames.
b&
What we also should take into account is that the “Enlightenment” was actually a “Diet Christianity” issued from Christianity, the equivalent of Diet Coke in comparison to the original Coke.
Why, for example, are there only TWO public nude beaches in Canada? Because the vast majority of the population does not accept public nudity. Why? Because Christianity is opposed to it, and even those of us who consider themselves staunch atheists very often oppose it, without knowing why they oppose it. The obvious truth is that there is no reason, only a cause (Christianity).
Well Ben, I agree with you on that.
Ben “Many fine upstanding Christians, including pastors of all types, are very vocal supporters of the death penalty — though, granted, not for adultery.”
The more fundamentalist/reconstructionist types do advocate death for adultery, along with stoning unruly children and anything else they find in their Bibles.
“I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I have a hard time getting worked up about the method the state uses to murder its citizens.”
Stoning is a form of torturing someone to death, and I do think that’s much more barbaric than giving them a shot of drugs that puts them into a sleep from which they won’t awake. But, capital punishment is still wrong, and especially so for relatively trivial crimes like apostasy, irreligious tweeting, or sexual “impurity”. Islam is particularly immoral in its regular resort to killing for objectively minor offenses.
There’s good reason to think that the current forms of lethal injection are every bit as torturous as stoning. It’s certainly as horrific — you’re strapped to a table like an Aztec sacrifice. A shaman performs a final shaming ritual, followed by an actual licensed medical doctor performing a twisted parody of a surgical procedure. The first drugs paralyze you; they don’t sedate you. Then the actual heart-stopping drugs are, apparently, excruciatingly painful. And, all in all, you take a lot longer to die than those on the firing line or in a guillotine.
But that’s irrelevant. As horrifically opposed as I am to torture, it’s not the torture inherent in legislated murder that I object to; it’s the murder.
Capital punishment is evil, full stop, no exceptions. Even the Nazis at Nuremberg shouldn’t have been hanged.
b&
Capital punishment is evil, full stop, no exceptions. Even the Nazis at Nuremberg shouldn’t have been hanged.
I agree wholeheartedly.
>>Even the Nazis at Nuremberg shouldn’t have been hanged.
If the victims (survivors) of their crimes wanted to hang them I wouldn’t object.
Amongst civilized peoples, crimes are committed against and prosecuted by the State. This is because the horrors of vigilantes extracting revenge from their enemies drive many of the ills of the uncivilized.
Thus, the opinions of victims are, and ever must be, utterly irrelevant to the courts. The victims may have their say before their legislators, but not before the jurors.
b&
We could find a whole lot more than one.
The fundie xians actually debate how disobedient a child has to be before you stone it to death.
Rushdooney, the only real theologian the fundies ever produced and the founder of xian Dominionist, the leading fundie philosophy, advocated biblical law. It’s estimated that under biblical law, 99% of the US population would end up dead under a pile of stones, 297 million people.
I stand corrected and appalled. I didn’t know the fundagelicals went quite that far.
But on the bright side, wouldn’t that likely help out the polar bears?
Right you are, Ken!
http://a3.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/116/f8997cf19842487abedee6b7714e2beb/l.jpg
I notice that Rushdooney graduated from Berkeley. You are therefore guilty by association, Scott. Or nearly guilty, anyway.
Rushdoony was hardly the only theologian the fundies produced. And though in their way the Kingdom Now folks tend to agree with Rushdoony’s Theonomists and Reconstructionists politically, they start from different theological bases.
Fundamentalist theologians like G. Gresham Machen were worlds apart from where folks like Rushdoony are today, both culturally and intellectually.
Egbert, I’m not quite sure I get your criticism. Sure, there are lots of crazies out there, even Christian crazies, but we have examples here of very prominent Muslims putting the case for their beliefs, and they’re all barking mad. Don’t forget the Taliban when you listen to them, for they wouldn’t allow music, used stoning and other cruel sorts of punishment, and believed (so far as I know) that women should be “circumcised” (presumably to keep them from breaking their hymens and making others think that they’re sluts!). And if all you’re going on is Bockstaele’s comment, then I would give you Jerry’s response too:
Yes, you can no doubt find some fringe Christian who is willing to support the stoning of homosexuals or adulterers, but I doubt you can find very many with the status of the men quoted in these 20 videos, who are quite so crazy. If you can, Christianity is in worse condition than I thought. But I still won’t withdraw my criticism of these men, and of the Islam they claim to represent. Some, like Craig, will defend the Bible when it comes to genocide, but I doubt you can get him to defend genocide today (although I admit he’s a bit of a nut, so it might just be possible).
How many Muslims have died or been humiliated, tortured and injured in all the various wars done in the name of America and Britain or Israel over the last decades?
Let’s put things in perspective, and let’s not start blaming others as the barbarians and evil ones, when our own house is filled with blood.
Feel free to see how good people can do evil things (often called the banality of evil):
Good point. We hear a lot about Muslim/Christian hatred over the Crusader wars. But actually, most bad memories are a lot more recent. From about 1850 to 1950, the Western powers conquered most of the Muslim world. And when France recently condemned Turkey for the genocide of killing over a million Armenians in WWI, Turkey shot back that France killed well over two million Algerians to suppress their anti-colonial revolts. To Middle Easterners, the recent Western interventions in the region seem to come on top of fresh wounds.
Is it not equally easy to find hate-spouting christians on you-tube or poop-throwing ultra-orthodox jews in Israel making a real bad name for their religions? I’m not sure why we’re setting aside a few days for ‘muslim days of rage.’ Idiocy reigns supreme, and it’s a sad day when we can look to the Vatican for a modicum of sensibillity and reserved speech.
Hate-spouting, yeah. Poop-throwing, sure, OK.
Defending stoning? FGM? Literal stoning? Among academics? Who are these people?
This has been partially answered above.
We could post the names all day of fundie leaders advocating murder of one group or another. Willis, a creationist, wants to murder all evolutionary biologists in slave labor camps. He once wrote the science standards for Kansas.
Fundie xianity is based on pure hate.
Just because you are ignorant and unable to use a search engine, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
Spoken like a Pharyngulite.
raven:-
Unnecessary & as SQM says infra WEIT
That’s us they are talking about.
I know what the fundies want to do to me. They want to kill me. They say so themselves and quite often.
Like a lot of scientists, I’ve been getting death threats from fundies for over a decade.
The link, for those who’d rather not Google:
http://www.cafemom.com/group/99198/forums/read/15928706/Christians_Openly_Advocate_Killing_Atheists_on_FOX_News_Facebook_Page
b&
What I wonder, though, is how many of these are recognized as “academics” by the mainstream. (as opposed to the twits who get their pieces of paper out of a mail-in degree mill) That was my original bit of bewilderment.
About as academic as the muslim nutcasas above. Doesn’t K. Hovind have some sort of cereal box phd?And most christians see him as a scientist.
Hovind is a degree-mill case in point. Degreed out of an unaccredited “University”, which is actually a shoebox in Del Norte CO, about 3 hours SE of me, in the boonies.
I didn’t check the credentials of the so-called academics who are Muslim, above though, before posting. Am doing a few of them now:
Yasir Qadhi: Valedictorian in Saudi, Engineering BS from U Houston, currently going for his Doctorate from Yale, Islamic Sciences. (must be a short course). Landed a TEACHING job at Rhodes College in April this year.
…hmmm I’ll pick the douchebag making some of what I consider to be the most warped theological opinions… no I won’t. Jerry already has done most of that lifting in the above post. They seem to hail from accredited institutions. However, we have a light description of Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem, who maintains wives are to be dutiful cum-dumpsters:
Seems a bit cagey on degree(s) conferred, but hails from Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi. Seems to be accredited by the Ministry of Higher Ed. in Saudi w/ +45,000 students and 2000-2500 faculty. (the institution includes a school of engineering, school of medicine, but mostly centers on education. brrr.)
SO, I dunno… still seems to be some kind of educational distances between these dipsticks and their Christian counterparts. Checking “Raven’s” example of William O. Einwechter – no wiki on him, “biography” and “education” come up with some spare entries, except to say that his sect is a fringe off the evangelicals (Reformationist movement), of which Einwechter is a VP of Nat. Reform Assoc, drawing criticism for wanting to adhere to Deuteronomy. Only thing I can find on him is his association with the “Reformation Bible Institute, Eastlake, Ohio.”, which seems to be a shoebox founded in the 80s by a handful of like-minded bumpkins.
The only thing I can find out about the honorable and most Reverend Bray, besides his conspiracy and explosives possession convictions (and that even Randall Terry thinks he’s a “whacko”) is that he was once a Midshipman at the Naval Academy. So I presume he not only graduated from high school, but was probably nominated to the Academy by some muckety-muck, perhaps a member of Congress. Not too much of a stretch there, considering the holes we have in Congress. But at least he seems well-connected.
Oh well. I did my Googledoody for the day. Still seems like thin gruel, compared to the accolades heaped on the dirty twenty, above.
Still trying to find Curtis Knapp’s academic credentials. My Google-fu must not be as finely-honed as Raven’s, seeing as I’m an ignoranus. I did find a link to an association of Baptists distancing themselves from his hate speech, in-between all the noise generated.
Only thing I’m finding is that “Curtis F Knapp” (I’ll leave it to the gentle reader to guess what the F stands for) currently hails from Concordia KS, but has also lived in Lawrence, Seneca and Topeka. Oh wait… here it is: he has also lived in Apopka Florida, which I understand to be a huge University town. Just kidding. Perhaps he did attend the International Seminary there, which seems to be a shoebox. But I’m just guessing.
Seems to me if he had any kind of illustrious bio, it would be trumpeted all over the odious podcasts he makes, and he would of course plaster “Dr.” in front of his name. Stands for “Durrrr”. Seems like another uneducated bumpkin to me.
Why not? By comparison this website spends far more time criticizing christianity and judaism, and even religion in general terms. It is silly to imply that “we” are spending an inappropriate amount of time on criticizing Islam. You imply that “we” are unmindful of the fact that christians can be as hateful and barbaric as muslims, and that is an inaccurate characterization, at best. You also seem to be suggesting that because other religions can be / have been just as bad that it is unfair to single out Islam for criticism. That is irrational.
Are you uncomfortable with “our” criticisms of christianity? If not, why are you uncomfortable with “our” criticisms of Islam?
I think this, and my own, reaction was caused by the following statement:
It would be hard to find, say, 20 academic Christians or Jews who would defend stoning or female genital mutilation.
While it is almost certainly true as formulated, it is almost certainly untrue when making room for other absurd, but not less cruel, practices.
The difference is that a lot of these guys are the face of liberal or moderate Islam in the West. These are not the “poop-throwing ultra-orthodox ” – there are thousands upon thousands examples of those Muslims to see as well.
The statistics that come out of the polling that has been done represent, as far as I can tell, the only objective data that we have. And the statistics show that the beliefs of Muslims – even many so-called mainstream liberal to moderate Western Muslims – are extreme compared to their Jewish and Christian counterparts.
So, it not too hard for this observer, at least, to understand why mainstream Islam does not stop or repudiate Islamic extremism more than they do. And the reason is because they are sympathetic to it.
Darelle…We’re on the same side, take a deep breath. If I had a magic wand and could wish away one religion, it would be Islam without question.
My point was (supposed to be, sorry I’m not as erudite as necessary) that there seems to be a fair amount of (justifiable) Islam-bashing lately. I’m not concerned that Jews and Christians are getting off easy.
But a video posting that is all ‘ZOMG! look at how crazy and backwoods islamists are’ is concentrating our focus on one little corner of the big problem.
No offense meant anywhere. Carry on.
I saw a picture today, in my local paper – I don’t have it in front of me at the moment – of an Orthodox Jewish gentleman swinging a chicken through the air over his head as part of a ritual slaughter. The idea is that sin is somehow transferred to the chicken.
Reminds me of Jesus transferring an evil spirit from a man to a herd of pigs. Why not just banish the spirits to some other realm, and leave the poor swine alone?
We know that pigs’ heart valves are used in humans. Would a good Muslim rather die than have his life saved using such valves? After all, what is eating pork compared to permanently incorporating it in ones heart?
Ah, noble humanity.
I have no desire to diminish the degree to which this video shows disgusting and reprehensible opinions. But I do suspect that Coyne’s recoil at this is partly because these guys are supposed to be ‘respected scholars’ in some sense. We all know that these opinions are quite common among other adult Muslims not just in remote Afghanistan.
But perhaps a fairly big part of what is bad about this is also the mechanisms which lead people to believe that some individual is a “respected scholar”, people in the West. And we people in academia are partly responsible for that. More of us should stand up and say ‘the emperor has no clothes’ when that is the case. Among other things, distinct from this (sorry to change the subject), postmodern bullshit might not have got such a hold on departments of literature and other places in Western universities if more of us had called a spade a spade. That stuff is little better than most of what comes out of departments of theology.
“Among other things, distinct from this (sorry to change the subject), postmodern bullshit might not have got such a hold on departments of literature and other places in Western universities if more of us had called a spade a spade. That stuff is little better than most of what comes out of departments of theology.”
Hear, hear!
I’m currently in a university in Canada and can’t wait to get out. The politicization of “truth” is out-of-control.
This posting initially struck me as a bit like the Salafist TV station that deliberately sought out the stupid anti-Islamic film and broadcast it so that everyone could get angry about it. In fact a lot of this didn’t make me angry at all (though some did).
Surely there’s a difference between a) fundamentally unkind and immoral acts that cause suffering to others (female circumcision, homophobia, under-age marriage – aka rapa – or stoning for example), and rules that people choose to live but that you or I may happen to disagree with (most of the rest).
There’s nothing immoral about living by a rule forbidding depictions of people and animals, for example, provided you don’t impose it on those of us who don’t share your beliefs. (In fact that rule has resulted in some wonderful Islamic art.) Similarly, the point about music – which anyone who has visited Islamic countries knows is not widely shared – is, I think, a great loss to the person who adheres to it, but isn’t threatening anyone else unless someone starts smashing up music stations or stores selling CDs.
Let’s not fall into the “everything Islamic is bad” trap. That’s exactly where the extremists want us to be.
How about “everything religious is bad.” That’s my attitude, no discrimination.
The vast majority of the world’s population are, to one degree or another, religious. All bad then?
Does “no religion” mean one of the ideologies that profess to be non-religious rather than having their own set of beliefs? I mean, everybody believes something, and “non-religion” could mean Ayn Rand’s virtuous selfishness, communistic altruism, free-market fundamentalism, or whatever. We gotta think harder about what’s good or wrong than just condemning anything associated with a historic religious tradition.
I mean, everybody believes something, and “non-religion” could mean Ayn Rand’s virtuous selfishness, communistic altruism, free-market fundamentalism, or whatever. We gotta think harder about what’s good or wrong than just condemning anything associated with a historic religious tradition.
Why? This sounds like there needs to be a replacement for religion before it should be eliminated or even condemned. I disagree. Eliminate it now and worry about what replaces it (if anything) later.
Well, the Maoist Red Guards seemed to think that just getting rid of everything old would do the trick.
It’s just that saying “no religion” is about as meaningless as saying “no beliefs” — except whatever I think is “true.”
Well, the Maoist Red Guards seemed to think that just getting rid of everything old would do the trick.
What the Maoist Red Guards seemed to think has nothing to do with anything. Who is talking about getting rid of everything old? I’m talking about current, modern religion, as exemplified in this video, and as exemplified in the stranglehold that modern religion has on the US legal system, which affects the well-being of every American citizen.
I don’t much care about the philosophical underpinnings of belief, to me what’s important are the practical effects on people, which are tragic. Whether it’s religious exemptions from US laws for everything from vaccinations to taxes to zoning and everything in between, or it’s sick children dying because religious leaders convince parents to use prayer instead of medicine, religion affects everyone, and a multitude of problems would be solved if it were eliminated.
Well I wouldn’t want to stand in your way of eliminating every opinion you disagree with. Fire ahead.
Brian Griffith,
You keep strawmanning every argument you don’t agree with. tomh made some very specific points that you have simply ignored, and that don’t comport with the strawman position you are attributing to him.
You mean the straw man of judging that other people’s cultures are nothing but idiocy and we should eliminate them? Seems to me I’ve heard this argument from both religious and supposedly secular quarters.
Seems we have different strategies for influencing people according to whether we have any respect for them. If we basically respect other people, we try to influence them mainly by affirming what we like in them. But if we have little but contempt for them, then we just try to insult them into being more like ourselves. And it doesn’t work.
You sure don’t have any qualms about being offensive when it suits you, do you? I of course can’t know whether you really believe everything you have written in your comments here regarding your interpretations of other peoples positions. Then again perhaps you are being disingenuous and have no problems with that.
Just in case let me point out that you are displaying either willful ignorance, or contempt for other people here by dishonestly attributing to them characteristics and positions that they have not given good reason to believe apply to them, whether by gross exaggeration or hyperbolic and inaccurate analogy.
I would also like to point out that if you actually believe this, . . .
. . . then the only reasonably conclusion is that you are contemptuous of the people you have been arguing against here, and your goal has been simply to be insulting for the sake of being insulting. I don’t have any problems with that if that is what you like to do. But I do have issues with people dishonestly misrepresenting other people. It is annoying. From what I understand many people feel the same way. So if you are feeling like you just aren’t getting the respect you think you should, that is a likely reason why.
I’m puzzled by all the insults for bringing up the beliefs of feminist Muslims. I guess these women violate expectations, and therefore it seems fraudulent to approve of them.
Come on. You don’t really think anyone who has read these comments is going to believe that do you?
You mean they won’t believe you are uttering the bullshit word and making personal attacks? In response to someone saying that there are Muslim feminists who oppose bigotry and who argue that their religion properly stands for equality rather than supremacy of some people over others?
I think their argument is just as plausible as the arguments some Christians have made against racism or sexism, even though we all know that the Bible contains both arguments for equality and statements of bigotry.
You seem to be arguing some imaginary opponent, because virtually nothing you attribute to me is accurate.
Do you really think the odd curse word, used for emphasis, not even personal attack, is more insulting or offensive than what you have been throwing around here? Do you really think that because you have not used any curse words while insulting others, directly and by implication, and misrepresenting what people have said (i.e., lying about what people have said) that you have the moral high ground? How cliche.
Let me disabuse you of any such silly notion. It is quite easy to be gratuitously insulting and offensive without using any curse words.
What have you taken as an attack on you? I’ve been talking about the difference between affirming Muslims I agree with rather than condemning them all as guilty by association with the featured list of Muslim bigots.
So, Tom, I assume you would therefore reject much of J. S. Bach’s work.
There you remind me of something. When I was in art school, I was scolded by a friar who wanted me to stop playing profane music when he heard me practice pieces of J.S. Bach on the church organ. He wasn’t wrong either. After all, Bach was a protestant, and the friar a Catholic, i.e. Bach’s music was not merely bad, it was blasphemous and would plunge myself and all who heard it into the eternal lake of brimstone…
Correct me if I’m (only slightly at most) wrong, but Bach’s Mass in b Minor, considered very close to his greatest work, or even anybody’s, is a complete Roman Catholic setting, not just the Lutheran Mass. So the friar, or somebody here, could use a bit of musical education. Bach was a Lutheran, not a Catholic. He lived and died long before Darwin. That makes me feel better, because when I have the silly impulse to do even worse than the above in unprofitable comparison of works and people, I’d be forced to class Bach as the greatest genius I know about, period.
As I said, Bach was a Protestant, not a Catholic. That Catholic friar considered profane the works of a non-believer. What’s the problem, except that it is nice example of religious bigotry?
Also, just because much, but far from all, Bach’s music is written for religious (regardless of the brand) purposes doesn’t make his music bad, does it?
Robert Griffin wrote:
I assume you would therefore reject much of J. S. Bach’s work.
I assume you think that without religion Bach never would have written music.
The Brandenburg Concerti have no religious content of which I am aware. However many of Bach’s works are arrangements of hymns, thus I am assuming that you would reject his arrangements of hymns and not The Art of The Fugue or other secular works.
I am assuming that you would reject his arrangements of hymns
If I had any idea what you are talking about when you say I would “reject” them, perhaps I would. Just how would I go about rejecting them? Refuse to listen to them? That’s easy, I don’t listen to them now. Censor them? I would censor nothing. You’ll have to be more specific.
It’s actually quite remarkable what petty god these (alleged) educated people believe in.
It is as if they still live in that small snow-globe universe of yore supervised by a deity that seems to have escaped from a Star Trek episode.
For the life of me, I simply cannot understand how an individual with at least two brain cells to rub together and who is aware of our current astronomical knowledge, can look at this vast universe (e.g. HUDF) and still conclude that the being that created all this has such a strange interest in a species of naked bipedal mammals on a remote speck of dust.
Understand this: these people want immortality, and that is what these religions promise. And, not only immortality, but happiness and bliss, all the time, forever.
Once you believe this as a child, and it is reinforced in all sorts of ways by strangers and family all the time (it’s prayers five times a day that make Islam very reinforced), why would dropping all this make any sense? There is no alternative thinking coming from anyone around you. It’s all reinforcement and confirmation bias: you hear -nothing- that contradicts what you believe, and -always- dismiss out of hand, quickly, ideas from any media or person, that are contrary to the religion. After all, the Devil is always, tirelessly at work, attempting to deprive you of an immortal afterlife. Look how clever the Devil is!!! He uses agents, pictures, etc.
The chief cleric (blind man, can’t recall his name) of Saudi Arabia always believed the earth was flat, and was quite reluctant to accept the communication from the first Saudi astronaut that, yes, the astronaut was looking down, and yes, the earth was definitely a sphere.
A fundamentalist is a believer that his own culture and nation are superior to all others, and all criticism of his own people is invalid. Basically, there is one right way to do everything, and that way is the way my grandpa and grandma did it.
I’m certainly aware of all this but I’m not talking about the average (relatively uninformed wrt science) believer but individuals who are supposed to be well-educated.
Heck, some of them are even western converts, who came to Islam only later in life.
And it’s not only the Muslim version of this god that looks so provincial. Even the god-concept of western liberal Jews and Christians is still way too anthropomorphic for the creator of this universe (assuming arguendo it exists).
It seems that at least on an intuitive level, even the most sophisticated theist still believes in some big-man-in-the-sky deity (even if they vehemently deny it) who watches us 24/7 and is really interested in their daily life as well as every one else’s on this planet.
What is enlightening is this story in New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/16/120416fa_fact_peer
We all know about the pilgrimage to Mecca, but inside this New Yorker story are all sorts of “folklore” that has arisen way out away from Arabia, yet is passed along, generation after generation, as true as the force of gravity. There is only one test of “truthfulness” that such folklore must pass: Does it align and reinforce the goal of immortality and bliss in the afterlife?
Nothing more. Nothing.
Then I guess this gentleman doesn’t see the need to wash his hands after taking a dump?
I mean the one hand is still clean and the other one is dirty anyway. *Yuck*
Desert religion, indeed. Maybe someone should let him in on the secret powers of water and soap.
That’s often forgotten by those who excuse terrorists by claiming that the terrorists’ motivations are not religious but political. See what these people really believe!
Well, I think there’s a middle ground where people see religion as one factor among many, including geopolitical events, history, culture, struggles for resources, education, group identities, levels of tribalism, and so on. It seems that there must be a complex interplay and feedback among these factors. Of course, when struggling to overcome past resentments and tribalism, some schools of thought are going to be more conducive than others towards moving forward in a positive way. Thinking that stresses revenge over forgiveness, for example, is probably going to create a feedback loop that just exacerbates problems and leads to a renewed, continued cycle of problems.
In the end, if anyone could definitively figure out what moves a society from tribalism and all its associated features (because when you get right down to it, they’re usually pretty similar – the oppression of women, the violence, the honor codes, the extreme punishments, the hatred of out-groups, the rigid rules often accompanied by senseless dogma, etc.)we should bestow every honor possible upon them. I just don’t think anyone knows for sure at this point how that cultural progression works. Why are / have some struggling countries moved towards becoming industrialized and prosperous while others are locked in a seemingly never-ending cycle of strife? What accounts for that? Again, I think religion plays a part, but I suspect there are a myriad of factors involved.
It is interesting that these men represent a group of well-educated people with an income that is presumably middle class or above. I think that does go to show that once a culture or system of thinking is in place, simple exposure (within a generation) to education, resources, so on, is not necessarily going to change a system of beliefs.
Also, shame on me for being uninformed, I didn’t know the Qur’an said anything about Jewish people. By denigration I assume you mean some sort of good hearted objection to the taste of matzo ball soup, yes? Wait…
The Jews were the definite major force in Mecca and Medina when Mohammed began Islam and his army. The animists and polytheists were rather disorganized compared to the Jews. So, of course, Mohammed had plenty of specifics against Jews.
INSANE.
Just sayin’ that I’m horrified and agree that its insane (beyond rationality). I’ve sent this video of the wonderful Neil deGrasse Tyson looking at the relationship between science and Islam.
PS I meant to say that I had sent this video to many people, and now posting it here.
I’ll take dancing any day. But it’s true, I could never love a religious text.
Except there is no such thing.
Biologists and feminists here in Sweden is promoting an alternate term for the mucous tissue that is involved. Sw: slidkrans :~ en: vagina sheath. Poetically reminding of a ‘wreath (of flowers) := (blomster)krans’ in the local lingo.
Enough already!
No HYMEN?!? Oh. Sorry. Wrong Hyman.
The 2nd speaker Hamza Yusuf Hanson has the modest merit of being the most outspoken American Muslim to condemn 9/11 and was an advisor to Bush as to what to do about it. His writings advocate tolerance of Western culture to a degree that many Muslims condemn him as a collaborator with the enemy.
He also (oddly) has ties to the ultra-liberal Graduate Theological Union (GTU) which tends to be gay-friendly, and has even spoken at one of their member schools (Pacific School of Religion) which is very very overtly gay-friendly.
Clearly, there is some sort of implicit agree-to-disagree dont-ask pact going on here, between Hanson and the GTU. I wonder how many of his colleagues at the GTU are aware of the anti-gay remarks he has made here.
hmm, who knew that some “good” Christians are just like “good” Muslims?
Don’t mean to get off topic here, but I’m new to this forum and have seen a few references to “xianity”. Maybe I’m come off as ignorant but what does that term refer to?
xianity = Christianity
x represents the Cross & is short for “Christ”
P.S. as in xmas = Christmas
Thanks
Don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet, but the Doctor whom you cannot understand was telling men why it’s OK to beat their wives, after giving them fair warning. “This beating is not for physically hurting them.” Gag.
It’s impossible to deny that mainstream Islam is orders of magnitude crazier than mainstream Christianity.
Americans can be unimaginably cruel; the front page of Wikipedia describes a particularly horrific lynching from 1911, but that’s nothing compared to the casual, even negligent brutality we’ve unleashed in our last few wars. We don’t celebrate our cruelty, though. In fact, we condemn other nations when they acted as we have.
The treatment of women in Muslim communities is not only deplorable but bizarre in its variation. From same vague statements in the Koran are derived the abbaya in Saudi Arabia, the burqa in Afghanistan and the chador in Iran. Female genital mutilation is not as far as I know commanded by scripture but in some societies is treated as though it were. The more extreme forms of Christianity and Judaism are also thoroughly misogynistic, but they’re practically feminist by comparison.
Maybe they just need a drink.
It would be hard to find, say, 20 academic Christians or Jews who would defend stoning or female genital mutilation.
I dunno, all you have to do is walk a few centuries into the past to find tens of thousands of Christians willing to stone women as witches, burn heretics in autos-da-fe, and trek around the Mediterranean to slaughter Muslims. Does a handful of generations of hibernation really make you feel that comfortable around them? Not me, I think.
The Muslims haven’t had The Enlightenment that the Western world did. So, there is a difference in terms of development of secular ethics and behaviour. A few hundred years makes a huge difference. As a female, I would not like to live in an Islamic culture, however, I now live in an open society where I can object, organise, and …vote.
Seems to me that all parts of the world have been moving through an “age of ideology,” according to when public education gets widely available, and vast numbers of people get involved in ideological controversies. In the West, the age of ideology was extremely war prone, stretching roughly from the French Revolution to the Cold War, with 2 world wars in between. And now we have a Middle Eastern age of warring ideologies going on in the streets. We’ll see if it gets anything like as bloodthirsty as WWII.
You have drawn a very long bow, based on a personal theory, linking WW1 and WW11 to your theory – whew!
I think we are discussing the ability for a whole religion to attempt to incorporate science and and secular politics into their way of being. You are also talking about the intrapolitical issues in Islam from that which is occurring between Islam and the West. So you didn’t really answer any of my points, rather you stated your own.
True. All my own views are personal.
“It is hard to believe that educated people can believe in the claptrap uttered by these 19 men and one woman, but it’s palpably obvious that they do.”
Not all 20, actually. Take #16, Imam Shabir Ally: “Taking up evolution, Ally maintains that the theory of evolution does not say that humans descended from apes, while admitting that humans and modern apes had a common ancestor.” Errm, I thought that’s correct?
Most of the others are fairly nutty though. A few are unexceptionable: “Abuzaid explains why it’s highly recommended under Qur’anic dictates for men to urinate sitting down, although under certain circumstances standing is permissible.” That seems harmless, more a matter of custom, I’m sure I recall a (non-religious) debate about whether it’s actually medically preferable, but I’m sure it can’t be considered objectionable.
But this one – “the love of music and Islam are completely incompatible” – makes me wonder how they get any recruits at all. That’s a sure-fire loser.
Seems to me reading these posts that there are people out there who would be quite happy to “eliminate religion”. How exactly? As a humanist I like evidence-based policy-making. And all the evidence suggests that religious beliefs bring immense personal rewards for some people, and for many are a core part of their identity, both personally and as members of their society. People getting angry on websites isn’t going to make Islam or Christianity disappear.
Surely what those of us who worry about the growth of religious extremism should be doing is not attacking the whole of Islam or Christianity in an indiscriminate way, when we ought to know that they’re both very complex with many different strands. All that does is make it harder for the moderate Muslims – of whom there are many – to fight the battle for enlightenment. Why not support and encourage them?
I would happily eliminate religion. Heck, I don’t even need the quotes marks!
I don’t think that this is quite possible, however. Nevertheless, the best way I know of is to relentlessly point out how religion makes no sense and is a source of unending misery on our little planet. And I see little to no value in pretending that some versions of make-believe are more true than others even if they may be less dangerous.
I don’t think there’s any more hope of eliminating religion than there is of eliminating the common cold.
Young children often take great pleasure in wetting their beds. That doesn’t mean that bed-wetting should be either encouraged or tolerated.
Even the most benign forms of Christianity are the same. They’d still have you think that there’s some great moral truth to be had in a third-rate zombie snuff pr0n horror story recorded in an anthology that opens with a story about an enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry giant that also features another story about the reluctant hero who gets magic wand lessons from a talking burning shrub.
If this were just a literature fan club, like Trekkies or a Shakespeare festival or even “Bronies,” I’d have no problem with it. But these are people who think that significant portion of this bullshit faery tale are true in some very real way — and these “true” bits generally include some truly fucked-up shit that they think is somehow noble and inspiring.
And how do I propose doing away with religion? Well, by writing posts such as these in places where I hope to have a reasonably-sized audience….
Cheers,
b&
Well said. Accommodationists seem to miss this important part of the argument.
Accommodationist is obviously meant as a perjorative term. What would you call someone who has spent most of the past 18 months leading a high-profile campaign against a proposal for a government-funded Catholic school with an admissions policy designed to ensure that only children of Catholics will get in?
And one of the main reasons why the campaign has become as big as it has is that it’s not pitched as “anti-religious” but “anti-religious-privilege” with the result that people of all sorts of beliefs, including open-minded Catholics, are supporting it.
We’re not at all saying that we should cut ourselves off from everybody who isn’t in strict agreement with us. That’s the Atheism+ movement’s schtick, not ours.
We’re just saying that it’s possible to work with people towards your common interests whilst simultaneously criticizing them on areas where your interests don’t overlap.
That used to be the rule in Congress, and is the idea behind the word, “comity.”
But I have no clue why it’s gone out of style of late.
b&
What would I say? I’d say “fine, that is a good thing”. But I wouldn’t stop saying that “open-minded” Catholics are still supporting an international criminal/pedophilia conspiracy. I wouldn’t pretend that the notion that priests turn wine and crackers into a cannibalistic feast is a respectable representation of reality.
One doesn’t need to ignore stupidity to support common goals.
Good for you, and I’d call you “inclusive” rather than “accommodationist.”
There are religious people who believe in respecting others, and these are quite different from “supremacists” who demand that their own people, religions, or nations must be on top.
Surely action is more important than belief (which is simply something inside someone’s head). Sure, if someone believes women are inferior to men (notable how few women there are on this site by the way) and they behave that way, that’s a bad thing, as it creates suffering for other people and should be contested. If they think that Jesus is the son of god who died to save us from our sins, then frankly – apart from finding it pretty incomprehensible – it doesn’t bother me one way or another, provided they don’t want to impose that belief on others.
The Church of England started through a combination of national politics and the Protestant Reformation. People died. It was suppressed. People died. It was revived and then went to crazy extremes. People died. Now no-one’s dying. They’ve got women priests and are tearing themselves apart because a lot of them want women to be bishops and discrimination against gay priests to be dropped. They still believe in god. You don’t need to eliminate a religion to eliminate the features of it that are unkind and damaging.
Of course.
But why are you so eager to keep believers deluded and primed for manipulation?
If somebody believes that there’s some sort of all-powerful super-whatever ultimately in charge of things, all it takes is for somebody else to convince the poor fool that the conman is the official spokesthing of the god. And who’re you to dare question the god?
Cheers,
b&
What action are you proposing?
Eh, didn’t you see my post upthread?
Some, such as Jerry, Richard, and others, have even bigger audiences.
Cheers,
b&
Yes, I guess writing web posts on a site where it looks as if everyone (including me) is an atheist is indeed action.
What, you’d rather have me, say, bombing churches?
First, it’s not only atheists who come here. Second, those of us who come here also have lives outside of WEIT and have been known to say a word or three in other appropriate settings.
And, most importantly, discussion is how civilized people persuade others to change their minds. There really aren’t a whole lot of other options — unless, of course, civilization isn’t your thing….
b&
Speaker #4 made me wonder how we got to the point where probably a majority of the world’s population allows old virgins in funny hats to dictate their sex lives. It’s just depressing.
A lot of people want a hopefully infallible authority to guide them. They don’t want to risk going by their own judgment and making a mistake. They’d rather have a great authority tell them what to do.
Maybe the popular demand to be guided is going down. Also, a lot of religious people are way more concerned about finding a better quality of human relations, than with establishing who is the big boss.
These people may be considered scholars of Islam, however they are totally ignorant as humanists and show a profound lack of knowledge of natural human needs, imperfections, and frailties. It seems more to be about exerting absolute control over other human beings lives and forcing them to believe in the designated faith. How ironic that religions view of good and evil has more to do with defining it based on folklore, superstition, and grandiose oppressive paternalism. I personally consider it’s ignorance as a true form of evil. I also personally find views from fundamentalists in all religions to be an utter waste of human intelligence which contributes nothing positive to human existence. IMO these people represent a dogmatic selfishness to the extreme. I can see the need for some people in need of a connection with the universe in a spiritual sense but tell me, has God’s existence ever been actually proven with any sort of empirical evidence and exactly which God is the only one ?
Fundamentalists are basically “supremists,” who believe that their own group should be supreme in the world. It’s a social form of egomania, and it’s ugly both in terms of personal relations and politics. The Muslims I know among the 400,000 or so Muslims in Toronto want nothing to do with supremism. They are concerned about having good business relations, being decent neighbors, or doing well in school. They want to be successful individuals, not hate mongers.
A scholar of Islam is someone who has spent his life reading and rereading his Koran while rocking to and fro. One should not expect one to know much about humanity or anything else on Planet Earth.
That’s true. “Expertise” can lead either to broader understanding or to narrow, arrogant nerdhood. Most laypeople can tell the difference.
that’s because there are secular laws against stoning in countries where xianity tends to the majority. it’s not that xianity forbids it, its that secular laws do, and we have gotten used to being ruled by secular laws.
if, OTOH, you looked for 20 academic Xians to defend forced birth, even if you were raped, or the firing of other academics who taught evolution, that would not be too hard a search, even in the US.
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