RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (Full Version)

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tweakabelle -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:02:43 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

No one was denying anything. Read the article.

Actually both articles quoted contradict your claim that “I think the writer makes a compelling argument against the religious ties surrounding 9/11” and support the view I advanced that religion is part of the motivational mix.

Pape does it explicitly nominating “religious difference” and “foreign occupation” as the two necessary pre-conditions for suicide bombings. Clearly for Pape, religion is one factor in the mix.

The Washington Post's religious correspondent's piece argues that bin Laden’s interpretation of the Quran is invalid. Therefore, it claims, his ideas must be non-religious. Is this anything more than a theological dispute?

Obviously this argument acknowledges OBL’s own assertion of religion as a motivation for his behaviour. It disagrees with OBL's assertions for theological reasons, preferring to find a “primarily” political “underlying motivation”. "Primarily" not totally. One finds no elimination of religion being “in the mix”. It even acknowledges OBL’s claim that he acts in defence of “Muslim lands”, specifically naming Chechyna, Palestine and Iraq ie areas sharing a common religion and suffering foreign occupation. Clearly religion is “in the mix” here.

Whether OBL’s theological position viz-a-viz the Koran is sound or unsound I care not a whit. What is relevant is that many (albeit a tiny minority overall) of his co-religionists in many lands find it persuasive. AFAIK membership of Al-Quada is not open to non-Muslims. Those facts alone are sufficient to put religion in the mix.

Ultimately, IMHO, it is the Washington Post piece's failure to appreciate that for many Muslims, especially those of a more fundamentalist persuasion, the separation of the ‘political’ from the ‘religious’ is not only completely rejected but often seen as incomprehensible, that devalues it's analysis.*

Please read what is there, not what you would like to be there.



* If this concept is alien, check out the work of Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), an Egyptian Islamic scholar generally credited with being the theoretical and intellectual inspiration for Al-Quada. A start can be made here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
It should also be emphasised that many Muslims disagree with his views.



Moonhead -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:28:36 AM)

Al Queda isn't even open to all muslims, come to that. It's a shi'ite organisation, just like the Saudi royal family. They aren't having sunnis or sufis any more than they're having jews.

That said, I would tend to agree with the Washington post argument that the religious aspect is more of a justification for OBL's activities than a cause in itself. As any revolutionary can tell you, you won't get anywhere without an ideological excuse to hide behind, and a pariah scapegoat to blame for all the world's ills that your revolution will solve.



tweakabelle -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:41:28 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

Al Queda isn't even open to all muslims, come to that. It's a shi'ite organisation, just like the Saudi royal family. They aren't having sunnis or sufis any more than they're having jews.

That said, I would tend to agree with the Washington post argument that the religious aspect is more of a justification for OBL's activities than a cause in itself. As any revolutionary can tell you, you won't get anywhere without an ideological excuse to hide behind, and a pariah scapegoat to blame for all the world's ills that your revolution will solve.


Your view may well be valid. However that is not what is being disputed here.

The issue here is whether religion is a factor in the mix or whether there is "a compelling argument against the religious ties" surrounding 9/11.

From where I sit, it's clear that religion is one factor in the mix of motivations surrounding 9/11.

Please pardon my being pedantic, but, for what it's worth, AQ is a Sunni Muslim organisation. There is a school of thought that asserts a close connection between sufism and AQ. I don't know enough about it to form a view. You can check it out here if you like:
http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57614



anthrosub -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:48:28 AM)

I want to make a couple observations about Sam Harris that deserve mention.

When he writes or talks he qualifies his statements with terms like "apparently", "suggests", "it appears", and so forth.

He does not attack every single Christian on the face of the planet but rather the concepts contained in the text that many (according to carefully conducted surveys) believe. Examples would be a talking snake in a garden, crackers transforming into the flesh of Christ, heaven, hell, and a person rising from the dead (there are of course many others).

His main point is that as long as people allow such things to be considered acceptable by society at large, it opens the door for unstable people to use such irrational reasoning to manifest equally irrational ideas and act on them (burning witches, believing that the devil is behind a person's behavior, flying planes into buildings or blowing yourself up in the name of a God gets you into paradise with 72 virgins waiting to greet you).

The bible has a lot of good things to say but also a lot of ridiculous ideas mixed in with it. Harris is saying that it's time to retire the fantasy aspects at the very least. He also maintains that religion is not necessary for the good points it makes to flourish in society. There are alternatives such as common sense and sound reasoning which are not divorced from being spiritual. I think it's also relevant to add that in this day and age, religion (particulary western religion) has become institutionalized over the centuries.

If you look at religion and government in a historical context, you can see that religion was the "first" authority established by humankind. As civilization developed and grew along with the population, government became a second layer of authority and initially derived its authenticity and authority from the religion being practiced by the culture in question. This lasted for centuries if not millenia. When science came along and started pointing out indisputable observations about the nature of the world that conflicts with the religious world view, there was resistance...even violent resistance to science. There are people who are alive today who still hold to the literal understanding of religion.

Regarding the fact that most Christian people believe only certain parts of the bible while dismissing the rest raises another point of contention. How can a person who believes in God as an omniscient, all powerful creator and holds the bible to be his sacred word take it upon themselves to decide what is valid and what can be dismissed (rhetorical question)? Either the bible is the word of God and must be fully accepted or it is an ordinary book and you can believe what you will.

Most people are not educated in all fields of knowledge, so it's no surprise that the bible is what people rely on for understanding when they do not have access to alternative information that would lead them to a different understanding. When I speak of ignorant people, I'm pointing to those who have this information available to them but refuse to look at it or deny it in spite of having reviewed it. They are "ignoring" that information which is the root of the word ignorant. They are intellectually dishonest.



Moonhead -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:50:21 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

quote:

ORIGINAL: Moonhead

Al Queda isn't even open to all muslims, come to that. It's a shi'ite organisation, just like the Saudi royal family. They aren't having sunnis or sufis any more than they're having jews.

That said, I would tend to agree with the Washington post argument that the religious aspect is more of a justification for OBL's activities than a cause in itself. As any revolutionary can tell you, you won't get anywhere without an ideological excuse to hide behind, and a pariah scapegoat to blame for all the world's ills that your revolution will solve.


Your view may well be valid. However that is not what is being disputed here.

The issue here is whether religion is a factor in the mix or whether there is "a compelling argument against the religious ties" surrounding 9/11.

From where I sit, it's clear that religion is one factor in the mix of motivations surrounding 9/11.

Please pardon my being pedantic, but, for what it's worth, AQ is a Sunni Muslim organisation.

Bugger. It's sunni only, then. I knew it was one of the two.



tazzygirl -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 10:12:15 AM)

quote:

“I think the writer makes a compelling argument against the religious ties surrounding 9/11”


You are correct. I meant to write only religious ties.



willbeurdaddy -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 10:19:02 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

I think the writer makes a compelling argument against the religious ties surrounding 9/11


Im not surprised you would think that.

Her argument isnt the least bit compelling. While she is right to lament the lack of outreach by Muslim Americans, she has 2 arguments that 9/11 wasnt religiously motivated.

"Muslims worked at the WTC" Big fucking deal, suicide bombers attack market places/hotels and use human shields all the time. They could care less about collateral damage.

"attacks were a violation of Islam" Not according to dozens of Muslim clerics and academics.

hogwash, as usual




tazzygirl -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 10:35:57 AM)

Try keeping up with the thread.



willbeurdaddy -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 3:04:46 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Try keeping up with the thread.


Try understanding the real world outside the limits of your narrow ideology.



philosophy -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 4:06:31 PM)

quote:



"Muslims worked at the WTC" Big fucking deal, suicide bombers attack market places/hotels and use human shields all the time. They could care less about collateral damage.


....actually i agree. The fact that Muslims were killed by Muslims does not contradict the branch of Islamic thought that supports those terrible actions.

quote:

"attacks were a violation of Islam" Not according to dozens of Muslim clerics and academics.


....less clear cut. While it is true that there have been Muslim clerics who have attempted to provide a religious justification for these acts, it is also true that there have been voices from the Muslim community that have condemned them and pointed out how the Koran also condemns them.

If we're going to be fair, we have to accept that the same dynamic has occured in Christian theosophy. Most Christian clerics roundly condemned the violence in northern Ireland, however priests and vicars on both sides provided support.

All this adds up to is the idea that all the world mega-religions have enough schismatic groups, obscure sects and downright loonies to argue over just about any given theological position.

Calamitysandra recently posted a thread about how Muslims in Egypt provided a human shield to Coptic Christians there in order to protect them from Islamic extremists. Clearly sweeping statements about Islamic thought is doomed to inaccuracy, just as the same sort of sweeping statements would be inaccurate as regards Christians.


ETA a link to Calamitysandra's original thread
http://www.collarchat.com/m_3527648/tm.htm



GotSteel -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 6:36:24 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: anthrosub
crackers transforming into the flesh of Christ


You beat me to it, cracker cannibalism, yet another ridiculous idea.



GotSteel -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 6:40:41 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel
Another example would be that the Flinstones are historically accurate


[sm=doh.gif] My picture didn't show up.


That's better.



[image]local://upfiles/566126/BE12A09638F145678B6D215282B65658.jpg[/image]



GotSteel -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 7:19:21 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
According to the first two points, its intellectual dishonesty Harris portrays.


I certainly disagree with your opinion of Sam Harris, but regardless of whether he's intellectually honest or dishonest you still brought him up specificity to attack him personally. This statement of yours is false:

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
Attacking the idea, not Harris. Huge difference.



tazzygirl -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 9:45:29 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
According to the first two points, its intellectual dishonesty Harris portrays.


I certainly disagree with your opinion of Sam Harris, but regardless of whether he's intellectually honest or dishonest you still brought him up specificity to attack him personally. This statement of yours is false:

quote:

ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
Attacking the idea, not Harris. Huge difference.



I didnt bring him up, anthrosub did, asking me a direct question about something he said.

Here, let me show you what you obviously missed.


quote:

ORIGINAL: anthrosub

Since I mentioned Sam Harris in one of my posts, I thought I would tell everyone here they can hear what the man has to say on Youtube. The entire book is there to listen to with Sam Harris reading it. But for the purposes of this thread you can listen to the segment, "Sam Harris: Letter to A Christian Nation (Entire Book) Pt. 1" which includes a note to the listener in which Sam Harris summarizes his points. The segment is 10 minutes long. I agree with what he has to say and had worked out in my own mind many of his points long before I ever heard of him.

Although meant to be funny, you can also watch the movie, "Religilous" by Bill Maher. This film focuses primarily on some of the more extreme examples of how people interpret religion but is still worth watching. It is funny but also a bit frightening when you see just how skewed people can become in their beliefs.


http://www.collarchat.com/fb.asp?m=3525291

quote:

While often defined as an atheist, Harris asserts that the term is not necessary. His position is that "atheism" is not a worldview or a philosophy, but the "destruction of bad ideas." He states that religion is especially rife with bad ideas, calling it "one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised." He compares modern religious beliefs to the myths of the Ancient Greeks, which were once accepted as fact but which are obsolete today. In a January 2007 interview with PBS, Harris said, "We don't have a word for not believing in Zeus, which is to say we are all atheists in respect to Zeus. And we don't have a word for not being an astrologer." He goes on to say that the term will be retired only when "we all just achieve a level of intellectual honesty where we are no longer going to pretend to be certain about things we are not certain about."


http://www.collarchat.com/fb.asp?m=3525737

quote:

On to Harris. Okay you don't like him. It's your impression "...he feels the need to be superior by way of telling others how inferior they are." It is not necessarily what he is doing. But what do you think of what he said? What do you think of his reference to "intellectual honesty" as it applies to the current state of religion in the modern world? Or do you simply decline to comment?


http://www.collarchat.com/fb.asp?m=3526198

You dont have to like my answer. But it is still my answer.

As far as your comment....

you still brought him up specificity to attack him personally

Who brought him up?



tazzygirl -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 10:10:38 PM)

quote:

Regarding the fact that most Christian people believe only certain parts of the bible while dismissing the rest raises another point of contention. How can a person who believes in God as an omniscient, all powerful creator and holds the bible to be his sacred word take it upon themselves to decide what is valid and what can be dismissed (rhetorical question)? Either the bible is the word of God and must be fully accepted or it is an ordinary book and you can believe what you will.


Because, and here is the crux of the problem with your argument, not all people believe as you wish, or Harris wishes, them to believe. I dont see your question as rhetorical at all. But you have already dismissed the possibility of any other answer that doesnt agree with yours, or Harris' belief.



Kirata -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/12/2011 10:59:28 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

You beat me to it, cracker cannibalism, yet another ridiculous idea.

Transubstantiation (Council of Trent) is, "that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood -- the species only of the bread and wine remaining." The ecclesiastical meaning of substance accords with essence, in the same sense that a doctor giving a patient a sugar pill and saying, "Take this, it will cure you," changes the essence of (transubstantiates) the placebo into a curative medicine -- the "species only" of the sugar pill remaining.

It is always helpful, when people want to ridicule something, for them to know what they're talking about. Otherwise, they just end up looking like pestilent idiots who imagine that people think they're smart when they mouth off.

K.



Kirata -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/13/2011 12:59:53 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

You beat me to it, cracker cannibalism, yet another ridiculous idea.

I apologize for omitting to address your specific reference to "cannibalism" in my previous response. Transubstantiation confuses many people, and at first I took that as the focus of your ridicule. But I had forgotten about your impairment.

The text does not mention the disciples hacking up Christ to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He was speaking of his body and blood symbolically, as representing the presence and love of God.

Only someone afflicted by an inability to think in anything other than literalistic concrete terms could see cannibalism in that, and I find it difficult to get used to that kind of batshit thinking in someone who is not an evangelical Bible-thumper.

K.



Kirata -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/13/2011 1:05:10 AM)

.



tweakabelle -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/13/2011 1:33:16 AM)

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it seems theocracy is not a Muslim monopoly. And zealots continue to force their narrow twisted views on the rest of society whenever they can get away with it ......

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2011/jan/09/michael-clifford-its-time-society-stopped-genuflec/



Kirata -> RE: Pope Says God is Behind the Big Bang (1/13/2011 1:47:59 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: anthrosub

Hey there you are. I thought you had abandoned this thread and was missing you.

The word "religion" comes from the Latin, re + ligio, and means to bind together, to reconnect, the particular with the Universal. Our current definition, which of course reflects how we use the word, misses that essential point entirely, as does much of what passes for "religion" these days. Up until around the 1500s, to speak of your religion meant what you practiced, not what you "believed". Without practice, without discipline, no religion can be understood, because that which is universal cannot, by definition, be defined in terms of the particulars it subsumes.

All religion is symbolic, and symbolism is excluded from religion only when religion itself perishes. ~Radhakrishnan

To believe in the literal truth of some book is, in religious terms, idolatry. Only the practice of a religious discipline can lead to an understanding of that which is embodied in the varied symbologies of our religions. A study comparing Carmelite nuns, who practice contemplative prayer, with practitioners of Buddhist meditation found the same patterns of brain activation in both groups. The apparently irreconcilable differences between theistic and non-theistic traditions are meaningless from the point of view of an absolute that is simultaneously both and beyond both.

K.



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