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New Not at all.
My point is that a cult is a cult is a cult. The government cannot possibly defend treating one cult - like the one in Waco, differently from the Islamic cult.
New Tell me where we draw the cult/not-a-cult line, and we'll talk.
What would we do with Keith Ellison and Andre' Carson? What would we do with Dave Chappelle?

Cheers,
Scott.
New They can choose, Islam or here.
If those guys are decent human beings (and I've no reason to doubt that) then they aren't really Muslims in the first place. Much as sane Christians aren't really Christians. I mean, nobody actually believes a nice, young Jewish boy dead for over 2,000 years can really "save" them. I couldn't swallow that at age 9, and I'm confident no one really swallows that today. They're just afraid to say so. Pull out one of the more onerous stories in the New Testament and ask today's sane Christian if s/he actually believes the story. They'll say, "Well, we don't believe that anymore." Well, then man up and admit you know it's all a fairy tale.

Edit:
I just realized I didn't answer your question. If it's a religion, it's a cult.
Expand Edited by mmoffitt Jan. 12, 2015, 04:45:48 PM EST
New That's half of it
The other half is, now what do we do with them?

You're saying religions are cults, so we should treat religions the same way we treat cults. Got it.

Now how should we treat cults?
--

Drew
New 504c of coure, how else are you going to make money?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New "Treat [them] with ridicule, hatred and contempt." - Chris Hitchens.
More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY8fjFKAC5k

IOW, repeal that tiny portion of Amendment 1 that still stands. Strip them of their tax-exemptions, remove their idiotic texts from all schools, and so on.
New Hitch would disagree with you, I think...
Readers Digest:

[...]

Almost all the celebrated free speech cases in the human record involve the strange concept of blasphemy, which is actually the simple concept that certain things just cannot be said or heard. The trial of Socrates involved the charge that his way of thinking caused young people to disrespect the gods. During the trial of Galileo, his findings about astronomy were held to subvert the religious dogma that our earth was the center and object of creation. The Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, involved the charge that Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was profane and immoral as well as untrue. We look back on these moments when the authorities, and often the mob as well, decided to blind and deafen themselves and others, and we shake our heads. But with what right? There are many contemporary threats to the principle and the practice of free expression. I would nominate the theocratic one as the most immediately dangerous.

Ever since the religious dictator of Iran sponsored a murder campaign against a British-Indian novelist named Salman Rushdie, this time for authoring a work of fiction, there has been a perceptible constraint on the way people discuss the Islamic faith in public. For instance, when a newspaper in Denmark published some caricatures of the prophet Mohammed a few years ago, there was such an atmosphere of violence and intimidation that not a single mainstream media outlet in the United States felt able to reproduce the images so that people could form their own view. Some of this was simple fear. But some of it took a “softer” form of censorship. It was argued that tender sensibilities were involved — things like good community relations were at stake, and a diverse society requires that certain people not be offended.

Democracy and pluralism do indeed demand a certain commitment to good manners, but Islam is a religion that makes very large claims for itself and can hardly demand that such claims be immune from criticism. Besides, it’s much too easy to see how open-ended such a self-censorship would have to be. If I, for example, were to declare myself terribly wounded and upset by any dilution of the First Amendment (as indeed I am), I hope nobody would concede that this conferred any special privileges on me, especially if my claim of privilege were to be implicitly backed by a credible threat of violence.

Other attempts at abridging free expression also come dressed up in superficially attractive packaging. As an example, surely we should forbid child pornography? In a sense this is a red herring: Anybody involved in any way in using children for sex is already prosecutable for a multitude of extremely grave crimes. Free expression doesn’t really come into it. The censor is more likely to prosecute a book like Nabokov’s Lolita and yet have no power to challenge porn czars. And surely the spending of money isn’t a form of free speech, as our Supreme Court has more than once held it is, most recently, as pertaining to political campaign contributions.

I’m not so sure: The most impressive grassroots campaign of my lifetime — Senator Eugene McCarthy’s primary challenge to President Johnson in 1968 — was made possible by a few rich individuals who told him to go ahead and not worry about a slender war chest. And who is entitled to make the call about who may spend how much? Again, I haven’t been able to discover anybody to whom I would entrust that job.

The same objection applies to what is called hate speech. Here, again, there is no known way of gauging the influence of rhetoric on action. Try a thought experiment. Go back in time and force Sarah Palin, by law, to remove the “target” or “crosshair” symbols from certain electoral districts. Now are you confident that you will have soothed the churning mind of a youthful schizophrenic in Tucson, Arizona? I didn’t think so. Sane people can take a lot of militant rhetoric about politics. Insane people can be motivated by believing themselves to be characters in The Catcher in the Rye, a book I am glad is not banned.

“National security” is one of the oldest arguments here, for the good reason that it is always disputable. The purloining and dissemination of private documents written by other people, for example, is not always necessarily free expression, let alone free speech. It can also involve the exposure of third parties to danger, as appears to have been the case in the downloading of classified documents by Army private Bradley Manning and their use by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

We are all hypocrites here: I have myself written several articles based on Assange’s disclosures, while publicly disapproving of his tactics in acquiring the material in the first place. (And I didn’t need to read the list of terrorist-vulnerable facilities, including vaccine factories, that he dumped before me and who knows who else.) But in this age of ultrahacking, no law would have prevented these leaks, nor do such laws have much effect, and they never have. In a more slow-moving epoch, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and subjected certain editors to military censorship, though I have never seen it argued that he helped the war effort much by doing so.

The claim to possess exclusive truth is a vain one. And, as with other markets, the ones in ideas and information are damaged by distortion and don’t respond well to clumsy ad hoc manipulation. And speaking of markets, consider the work of the Indian economist Amartya Sen, who demonstrated that no substantial famine has ever occurred in a country that has uncensored information. Famines are almost invariably caused not by shortage of food but by stupid hoarding in times of crisis, practiced by governments that can disregard public opinion. Bear this in mind whenever you hear free expression described as a luxury.

In my career, I have visited dozens of countries undergoing crises of war or hardship or sectarian strife. I can say with as much certainty as is possible that, wherever the light of free debate and expression is extinguished, the darkness is very much deeper, more palpable, and more protracted. But the urge to shut out bad news or unwelcome opinions will always be a very strong one, which is why the battle to reaffirm freedom of speech needs to be refought in every generation.


(Emphasis added.)

Hitch didn't want any ideas censored.

Taxing religion is something lots of us could get behind, though.

FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Probably.
But if we allow Islam (and more broadly any of the medieval superstitious religions of fear) to dictate what can and cannot be said, we are, de facto, allowing the "free exercise" clause trump "the freedom of speech" clause. Thus, the first amendment is lost in any case. With religion, and in particular Islam, it's time to choose our poison.
New Berkeley '60s: curb your Dogma.. Hey! many did (did they regress?)
Is this not the circle-jerk which spins on frictionless bearings? (so favored in all elementary physics test problems.) The God-debate surely er, Christ-ened the accretion of IWE, in those bucolic years before the Shogunate's War on All Wisdom (and most just-plain Goodness.) But it keeps coming baaaack.

It's not about cerebral induction/deduction. NPR today: an OCD-guy on Fresh Air, wrote book re his own obsessive compulsion disorder, has studied same (as well as the studiers.) At geek-level etc. He be as 'rational' as my own nit-pickery levels can discern. Has made some progress, but.. it lurks still.
Not saying these afflicted are equivalent to the religious impetus, but we are still in infancy about brain-mapping and in even worse ignorance re consciousness, (IMO the #1 unanswerable riddle, via any mere logic.)

Further, there are esoteric levels where most religios never venture (look at all the Christians who never read enough Bible to See the effects of homo-sap tinkering, invention and the n Contradictions as resulted.) These care-not about such Referents as [The Absolute] nor would these comprehend (nor care to try) what it means to say, The Absolute is without attributes (as means: you could not possibly imagine What such an Overview would entail.) Forget yer anthropomorphic, gendered==hoary-old-Men.

But you Can postulate the existence of [Absolute], without wishful thinking or projection: "IT" was present "before!" T=0, in that: our local cosmology; equally so in the Steady-state-eternal previous model. That there is mathematics (all those processes) does not follow from any random thought-events: 'Laws' are 'Legislated'. We only discover them: whence came the Legislator(s)?

So the millions are all un-read amateurs (or worse: stuck in childhood) at the religio trade: just running on early-rote inculcation, which was quite enough. At age 5. Only they stayed there. And will.
(The real 'Arrested Development'? near species-wide), though the silliest are closing shop. Crap shoot.

(To me the longest running Cosmic-joke remains our total inability to comprehend consciousness: its origins, its How?s let alone Why?s), nor can we see Information Theory explain the presence of 'thought-bits?' without which: there would be nothing to communicate. (Let alone: how/why mathematics came to create/or-reveal itself.) Those are just a few.. of the unKnowable Questions which persist, will do so unless/until consciousness-itself creates that New-level which AE referred to in, Problems created at one level of thinking ... ... That was a metaphysical statement, by definition. AE's thoughts on 'god' were all worth parsing, I thought. He certainly eschewed the im-person-ation shtick.

We grok the physics of the material aspects of this goldfish bowl, each principle being testable. As to the realm of the conscious mind, the Reality of (or not) of thought-creation and all the rest: those demand many more Answers than the Big Bang brings to the table. We who 'do Science' fall into an easy conceit, in believing (at all levels of sci. education) that, our efforts are necessary of pursuit (for being incomplete) and: its method is all ye need to know to finally get a glimpse of Reality. That view almost-defines 'Western culture', no?

Ergo: religiosity shall never go away; it cannot be slain via rules of the physical universe, just as [Reality] utterly escapes representation--thus far--in the mental realms: as are also "in Existence: in any full-Cosmology" worth trying to map.
(And the impulse Shouldn't disappear.. at least not to any who crave to get near as possible to Truthiness ABOUT that "complete-Cosmos.") I wot. Why settle for the piker's version of the Game, just because it's popular because so easy.


My own proof-of-concept derives from Cosmic Humor: were there no such thing (?) I should have to invent it ... as did The Bard
... or begin sacrificing something.. to Something. ie I cannot live with this *shame © Shogun
* of our deliberate, infantile choosing of static-ignorance, worship-because-ƒeare (Dying or the other hobgoblins.)
Carrion ;^>
New You've been away from believers for too long.
There *are* people who definitely and passionately believe a nice Jewish boy who died 2000 years ago (note the change of tense, or you'll get arguments from them) can "save" them. Millions of them. Likewise, there are millions of people convinced that the words written down that claim to be from The Prophet are divine truth and not to be argued with.

Wade.
New I don't believe it. I believe they're lying.
I cannot accept that anyone is that gullible. If what you're saying is true, then all that is left to do is cheer for an oncoming comet. A big one. With proper aim at this little insignificant planet orbiting and even less significant yellow dwarf.
New How's that faith-based life treating you?
Once, people couldn't accept that the earth wasn't the center of the universe, despite mountains of evidence.

Some people can't accept that other races are fully human, despite mountains of evidence.

Some people can't accept that man's activities affect climate, despite mountains of evidence.

You can't accept that people actually believe the tenets of their religion ...
--

Drew
New What exists in your first 3 that doesn't in the last? A: Evidence.
New Missing my point (intentionally?)
I'm not saying there's evidence in support of their beliefs. I'm saying there's evidence that they believe it. You've stated clearly you "don't accept" that they actually believe it.

* They say they believe it.
* They take actions that can only be explained by the fact they believe it.
* They're willing to kill or die to defend it.

This isn't about their faith, it's about yours. You refuse the evidence in front of you because it doesn't fit with your worldview. You can't engage rationally with a reality you deny.
--

Drew
New If they actually believe it, they've been conned.
Protesting that they believe it and/or taking actions to suggest they believe it could be driven by fear. Religions are great at instilling fear.
New Religious education starts at age 0.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New why do you care?
did a hot blonde xian turn you down in your misspent yout?
You can believe anything you want, its fine with me as long as you stay out of my wallet and bedroom.
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New Because Islam is teaching the lesser minds that if somebody draws a picture, you should kill them.
And while there is plenty-o-support for violence in the Xian bibbles, most of them don't actually act upon it.
Expand Edited by mmoffitt Jan. 13, 2015, 11:40:40 AM EST
New no, islam is not teaching that, Nut jobs are teaching that to poorly educated muslims
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New Really? Even at Oxford?
We have to make it clear that—there should be no confusion—Islamophobia is the racism, is the—but it’s only as citizens, it’s only in the critical debate, it’s only with all the forces and all the trends within our societies that are against any type of racism, that we are going to resist and reform the minds and the hearts of our fellow citizens. And it could never be accepted, never be supported, such actions that are now instrumentalizing some of the frustrations that we have in the West as to, you know, equal citizenship and racism, and using this to support what is in fact not acceptable and has to be condemned.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/7/leading_muslim_scholar_tariq_ramadan_attack

Let me understand this. If I criticize Islam, I am a racist Islamophobe. And because of that, these poor, downtrodden Muslims are resorting to unacceptable means of "instrumentalizing some of the frustrations that we[they] have in the West." If we'd only be kinder to these fascists, they'd behave for us. That about it?

It cannot be "racism" to have deep hatred of Islam for the simple reason that religion != race. You can change your religion, but, ... oh, that's right, if you are a Muslim you can't, else you'll be killed. Yes, he's right. What an enlightened group of fucking people. Why wouldn't we want to sit down and discuss with them any number of topics?
New " this is just a pure betrayal of our religion and our principles, that that’s not acceptable"
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New Right. Followed by, "But ..."
New "But by any, any standard, we have to condemn what was done, and say it clearly: "
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New He claims to understand why they did it in my quote. He's equally culpable. Platitudes aside.
New So then, having seen the vid. of Tariq Ramadan -vs-HItchens,
and maybe Harris -vs- Craig (?)--and the number of nested conditional-clauses within every sentence, tip-toeing around the Islam predicament du jou--aren't we left with:

Teachers of Islam Fix-it, in their curriculum, in clear direct language and act to curb their own extremist killers OR !=Muslims everywhere are apt to act in the manner reliably chosen in similar clusterfucks, after all debates fail.

Of course too, Islam is not alone in the vast r e s t r a i n t of Robed-leaders in most religions, ever to expel? or otherwise punish significantly: their homicidal %small. But Techno has rendered that %small of THIS religion universally active and in increasingly bestial ways. Acts which directly attack all the basic concepts of any social order (including: attacks within and on, their own culture, of the acid in child's face level.)

On far less provocation than these-all, in recent years: n other States have gone to war with others. Now, it is not State -vs-State, but a sufficient %Islamics-vs-Every-State (as promulgated in their very-own Screed, with human-inscribed Words attributed to [The Only God evah! worth killing everyone-else Over.]
(Nor is there even an escape-clause for those sect-members who'd like to flee Islam: Death seems #1 through #100 of the top bestial punishments for quite more than apostasy. Catch 22)

W.T.F. do *you* think ... is Next?


Turned on KDFC: Dickie Wagner playing. From the Götterdammerung. Coincidence?
..depends upon one's view of Cosmic Humor, I guess. Wagner really knows how to 'play a slapstick-Act off the stage', though: swell to ƒƒƒƒ

I think I'm hearing prescient echoes for that Next.. more C. Humor? the ancient, now Corporate sects originated in the caves we are possibly loping towards.
Expand Edited by Ashton Jan. 13, 2015, 04:51:38 PM EST
New What Drew said.
There is mountains of evidence that there are billions of people who believe in their religious convictions. The Hajj. The Catholic Church. Westboro Baptists.

Wade.
     the moderate muslim - (boxley) - (58)
         Succinct and.. simply Astounding! ..while so Very-long overdue. - (Ashton) - (2)
             Re: exceptions to the first amendment - (drook) - (1)
                 Delayed incitement isn't. - (Another Scott)
         Pointing to Egypt's al-Sisi as a good guy is a stretch... - (Another Scott) - (16)
             So if Nixon told Billy Graham to tone down anti gay rhetoric, it would be a bad thing? -NT - (boxley) - (14)
                 So, if Nixon locked up all the Democratic leaders and told them to be nice... -NT - (Another Scott) - (13)
                     So if Clinton locked up all the repos leaders and told them to be nice - (boxley) - (12)
                         al-Sisi locked up his opponents then told them to play nice. HTH. -NT - (Another Scott) - (11)
                             ah so Sisi is a bad guy, people who like jews published his statement on Islam - (boxley) - (10)
                                 No. That's not my view. - (Another Scott) - (9)
                                     I will address 3, 1&2 are not part of Islam - (boxley) - (8)
                                         That's fine as far as it goes. - (Another Scott) - (7)
                                             well since I invoked Godwin my last post :-) besides Obama has a nobel why not sisi? -NT - (boxley) - (3)
                                                 How do you "invoke" Godwin's Law? - (pwhysall) - (2)
                                                     "Pedant" is just a nice word grammar Nazis use to describe themselves -NT - (drook) - (1)
                                                         I see what you did there... -NT - (malraux)
                                             Think you're missing the salient point. - (Ashton) - (2)
                                                 Maybe. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                                     No, I share that POV (also too..) - (Ashton)
             He doesn't get a free pass just because he said something utterly-Sane, once - (Ashton)
         Along the lines of, "Hitch was right all along". - (mmoffitt) - (34)
             OK.. gantlet sorta run.. ... weird species, overall. - (Ashton) - (30)
                 Friday's Invisibilia - The Locked-in Man - (Another Scott) - (29)
                     I think that many have had that Wondering.. - (Ashton)
                     Religion precludes treatment. - (mmoffitt) - (27)
                         Are you say Waco was handled well for what was going on? -NT - (drook) - (26)
                             Not at all. - (mmoffitt) - (25)
                                 Tell me where we draw the cult/not-a-cult line, and we'll talk. - (Another Scott) - (24)
                                     They can choose, Islam or here. - (mmoffitt) - (23)
                                         That's half of it - (drook) - (5)
                                             504c of coure, how else are you going to make money? -NT - (boxley)
                                             "Treat [them] with ridicule, hatred and contempt." - Chris Hitchens. - (mmoffitt) - (3)
                                                 Hitch would disagree with you, I think... - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                                     Probably. - (mmoffitt)
                                                 Berkeley '60s: curb your Dogma.. Hey! many did (did they regress?) - (Ashton)
                                         You've been away from believers for too long. - (static) - (16)
                                             I don't believe it. I believe they're lying. - (mmoffitt) - (15)
                                                 How's that faith-based life treating you? - (drook) - (13)
                                                     What exists in your first 3 that doesn't in the last? A: Evidence. -NT - (mmoffitt) - (12)
                                                         Missing my point (intentionally?) - (drook) - (2)
                                                             If they actually believe it, they've been conned. - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                                                                 Religious education starts at age 0. -NT - (malraux)
                                                         why do you care? - (boxley) - (8)
                                                             Because Islam is teaching the lesser minds that if somebody draws a picture, you should kill them. - (mmoffitt) - (7)
                                                                 no, islam is not teaching that, Nut jobs are teaching that to poorly educated muslims -NT - (boxley) - (6)
                                                                     Really? Even at Oxford? - (mmoffitt) - (5)
                                                                         " this is just a pure betrayal of our religion and our principles, that that’s not acceptable" -NT - (boxley) - (4)
                                                                             Right. Followed by, "But ..." -NT - (mmoffitt) - (3)
                                                                                 "But by any, any standard, we have to condemn what was done, and say it clearly: " -NT - (boxley) - (2)
                                                                                     He claims to understand why they did it in my quote. He's equally culpable. Platitudes aside. -NT - (mmoffitt)
                                                                                     So then, having seen the vid. of Tariq Ramadan -vs-HItchens, - (Ashton)
                                                 What Drew said. - (static)
             Lawyers call it "leading the witness". - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
                 Isn't that what all religions and their adherents do? -NT - (mmoffitt)
             "What Normal Muslims Think -..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim... - (CRConrad)
         What Atrios said. - (Another Scott) - (1)
             Yes, that too.. but as one poster replied: - (Ashton)
         Two more "moderate" Muslims. - (mmoffitt)

I have neither space nor cash nor latitude to adorn my house with any more things with CPUs in them.
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