The solution is to go burn stuff... Riiiight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCtD3OJ-_Es

I agree everyone should have a gun. :rock: Let there be anarchy.

So the new testament suddenly makes the old destament moot?

And I'd agree, religion is just a tool used to get people to act like complete arseheads. Sure there are others, but I would rather see a world without organized religion. Personal faith is fine, i think it is nonsensical, but fine.

As for the soviet remark, i was born a citizen of the soviet union, trust me, i know the horrors of that regime better than you probably ever could.

Yes, as far as Christianity is concerned.

It's called the "New Covenant", and if you actually understood the religion you're seeking to condemn, you'd be fully aware that Christianity specifically abandons concepts such as "eye for an eye" in favor of "turning the other cheek".I'm sure there are plenty of people just like yourself who'd rather see a world rid of (insert organization representing that which one doesn't believe in here). Thankfully people of your mindset aren't in charge, else we'd be at the whims and mercy of whatever ideas have the greatest traction at whatever time.

In fact, you should be equally thankful, because imagine a world where your wishes COULD feesibly come true. I suspect you wouldn't like that world at all, as its likely religious leaders would have eradicated organized science by now.

My rule regarding such things is simple: make sure your principles can't come back to bite you in the ass. As such, I choose freedom as a principle - freedom to agree, disagree, and join others in espousing both.You'd be suprised. But the question of who's perception of horrors is greater is another discussion for another time, and is not at all relevant to the topic at hand.

At Jesus' life times, there was no new testament and no "christian church". There was only Judaism and the Thora. and the old testament indeed compares more to the old Judaic entity Jahwe, and presents the same image of a revengening, tyrannic psychotic God who tortures his followers for fun to test them, and who commands and set up demands and threatens most unforgiving penalties and extinction if he is not obeyed. Jesus introduces a very different concept of "God", which transcended the level of literalism and the conept of the old "volcano-god", and put man in responsibility for his fate while also showing that he is already embedded in a greater context. In principle Jesus was a reformer of Judaism, and Christinity if a reformed version of Judaism, expressed in the NT. The OT compares to the old Thora. but there is no new thopra that could be compared to the NT.

A comparable historic developement in Islam never took place, there is no reformed Islam and not reformed version of the Quran. Islam thus remained on the level of orthodox Judaism and fundamentalists who focus more on the OT than the NT. It is my strong conviction that people who try to take the NT as literal as the OT (fanatic Jesus-lovers taking the NT literally), simply have so far missed the most important part of the message of Jesus, and that is: don't do like this anymore, for God is not like this.

In the end, Muhammeddans, orthodox Jews and fundamental Christians all share the same basic mindset - and thus they all compare in their level of intolerance, anti-intellectualism and readiness to bring barbary and backwardedness upon mankind. Do not burn the Quran only but the Thora and the OT as well. It's all the same poison murdering thought and claiming superiority where there is just an intellectual hole, and a void where there should be reason. It's all three just offsprings of one and the same mind, and if given the opportunity, the one will behave as barbabric and hateful as the other.

I know some people who accepted money as a payment to kill the enemy of the state but they were just used and have been convicted. They consider themselves very patriotic. Is this the fault of patriotism too?

It's the people not the teaching.

And replace them with intellectual, material arrogance and narcissism where there is just an intellectual and spiritual hole?

People will find whatever things or people to hate and when there's none they make them and create all kind of excuses to justify themselves. It's the people who are troubled and most likely don't even like themselves very much. I've come to believe that many people hate other people simply because they remind themselves of how bad they truly are and instead of being sorry and repentant they embrace hatred as a form of self defense and as a result of immaturity. From school bullies to despotic head of state . . . . . .and you would just blame religion or God even on all that? A bit unfair and even irrational isn't it?

I am not in favor of baning religion, but would rather prefer a world where people would be sensible ennough to abandon the concept and just accept that there are things in this universe we can not explain yet. There is no need to fill in the blanks with god did it. That does nothing to advance human understanding, and may even hinder it as a fallback for the mentally lazy. Why bother trying to figure something out when the answer s allready there?

Just so there are is no confusion, I detest organized religion of all kinds, don't see as any one being better or worse than the others. Same as my view on politicians.

It's not up to religion to claim something like this. That would mean to make the perpetrator the judge and the jury.

Religion and spirituality are mutually exclusive.
Belief and reason are mutually exclusive.
religion and belief, and knowing and learning are mutually exlcusive.

But reason is a basis for spirituality.
and science and spirituality go together most wonderfully.

I knew muhammeddans who turned, under great perosnal risk and sacrifice, tino apopstates, and I contributed a bit to that decision of theirs. I was not unfair to them, but you are unfair to reasonable people when you ignore that ideas and ideologies influence and educate people. The Quran preaches intolerance, it's own superiority, the inferiority of all others, and its demand to be in total control. and if your read the Quran correctly: in understanding of the historic sequence of the Sura's roots (the Quran just sorts them by length, not by time) and in awareness of the abrogation principle, you are left with little or no space for wide-ranging interpretations.

And that is what the world is getting from it. Since centuries, since over a millenia, and whole cultures got destroyed by it and whole people got subjugated by it, loosing the future that otherwise may have been theirs. And that is especially true for the Arabs themselves. they had so much better starting coinditions comoared to Europe, at the timemuhammad came. tjhen came muhammad, and the great stagnation and apathy began. If I were Arab, I would curse Muhammad's name over this cultural crime he has committed to my people.

Yeah, sure, if a greedy, hate-ridden, intolerant, surpemacist ideology causes people to bully other cultures and tolerate violence in the name of Islam, this ideology has nothing to do with it.

Do you even realise what you have said when you said it is like this, that it is not the ideology, but the people? You by that implied that people get not edcuated to be in rage or apathy, but that they are in rage by probably some defective genes, must supect, that they are like this because they are what they are and already got born like this, for "it is the people, not the religion". And that, different to a critical argument and view of Islam that is intellectually founded, is pure racism indeed. I never, nowhere, ever said something liked that all Arabs or Persians are dumb or untypically aggressive by nature and race. I said that their damn Islamic ideology teaches them how to be dumb and aggressive, and that the long stagnation of their countries has somethign to do with that way of edcuation, or better: indoctrination as well.

And that are two very different ways to view things.

Doesn't shock me in the least. I've seen church people do all sorts of crazy things.


When it comes to religion, our society went somewhere over the coo-coo's nest awhile ago. What do they expect to accomplish? Affirmation of their belief's while concurrently sending a political and "patriotic" message.


We're not all judeo christian evangelical fundamentalists, but there are a larger number who are. The rest of the world might be able to tell the difference, but the muslim world won't. To be fair, i cant tell the difference between muslims either. To me they're ALL whackjobs in my eyes, so im indifferent to our own judeo christian whackjobs burning the koran.

You got the wrong and hateful part right.


Christianity as an organization has always done this in one form or another, thoughout history. To Judeo christian evangelicals, their god is the one true god, their religion the one true religion, and everyone else must be converted, and brought to see "the light and the way."

FYI, my two favorite bumper stickers on this subject are:
- "It's not God i Have a problem with, it's his fan club"
- "Jesus save me from your followers".

One of these days i may have the balls to put them on my truck, but i tend to keep my beleifs to myself, less I become what i despise.

You can put those on your truck too. :03:

Saw a rust bucket of a Mustang with a blue pair yesterday. :roll:

Yeah i seen those. I laugh every time. But i figure the dangly bit trailer hitch is kinda like owning a hummer... compensation for something that's lacking. I don't have to prove my beliefs to the rest of the world, or feel the need to do so. That, and i don't need some whackjob keying my truck. :shifty:

Either that's a failure of perception or a depraved sense of "anything goes" relativism.

For one, I see the religion that sends out missionaries with medicine as far better than the one which sends out zealots with bombs strapped to their backs.

But it is the people who do that, not the religion. Their motivations may be religious, but religions are not sentient beings ordering anyone to do anything. Religion is just a convenient excuse to do either good or bad.

And yes, I do concider morals relative, hell, everything is relative, there are no real absolutes. Morals , for instance, are nothing more than a society deems acceptable at the time, sure it may be dressed up as divine orders, but it came from people. What I wouldnt say, though, is anything goes since humans are sentient and social beings, which means we should take eachother in to account when making our decisions, your freedom ends where my nose begins, or however that saying goes.

Wrong. Relgions may not be being, but ideologies, but they order very well what people have to do and what not. That kind of commanding people is whzat defines religion. you obey, than you are a beoiever, you do not, than you are a heretic or an infidel. Obedience is the essence of religion.

No, that are morals.

but still morals are not all of the same relative value. There are morals being more valuable than others, and since moral standards (and relgions) also define cultural standards, cultures also are not all of the same relative value - some are more humane and "good" than others. For example "do not do to others what you do not want to be done to you" is not really of the same moral standard and value like "obey, don't ask", or "it is acceptable to whip or kill a woman if she was disobedient to you, or got raped."

And then there are those missionaries who go out with medicine - but only give it to those in need if they submit.

In the end, when you think you must make your personal rerlation to your relgion a public affair, you are no onger baout releigon, but politics. Best thing is a missionary who gives help when he is asked for, and never loses a single word on religion and does not waste one day with building temples, just lives his life on the basis what his reason and thought have showed him to be good for the few and good for the many. If it is convincing, others will become aware of his way of life. If it is not, he should not try to talk people into something.

You must not believe in a religion in order to want to help people. ;) when you decide to help, do it for the people, not because your deity told you you should. Don't do it to collect some points on your heavenly banking account. Don't do it to raise attention for your ego. Just do it - that is good enough.