A little background first. A guy named Nick Gisburne has recently been banned from YouTube. Gisburne had been posting videos with logical arguments against Christian beliefs; but when he turned his attention to Islam, he got banned.
Apparently it was ok to criticize the Christian religion, but not the Moslem religion.
In defense of free speech, a lot of people have been uploading the video he was banned for to YouTube. Here it is:
So, what did you think of the content? There are only quotes from the Quran, no commentary. I don't know about you guys, but I feel like that's quite an awful punishment for being a disbeliever. It's probably better to become a Moslem, rather than face the wrath of Allah. What if I'm wrong? The consequences would be terrible!
There are 31 "doom's", so basically we are all doomed. And its going to be painfull. But at least we get something hot and cold to drink, hell ain't that bad afterall.
- Not all those who wander are lost -- J.R.R. Tolkien
That's a lot of Dooms, Fires and Pain. Sure am glad I'm not a Muslim and don't believe in Allah and Muhammed. I would be burning forever then.
Muslims are very strange to me (and probably to a lot of us).
Our perception of them , and of their ways, surely must seem as strange, as theirs are of us and our ways. How can one bridge such a gap?
My suggestion is to be tolerant of each others view, however different it may seem, and try to find a common ground "in between".
This newspost from "Ekstra-bladet" shows some of the difference in marital status in the Muslim world.
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Ikke fin nok til sin kone
Et par i Saudi-Arabien er blevet skilt af en domstol, fordi kvindens familie mente, at manden ikke var fin nok til kvinden
Derimod havde kvindens familie lagt sag an for at få ægteparret tvangsskilt. Efter deres mening var manden nemlig slet ikke fin nok til at være gift med sin kone. Familien hævdede, at manden havde givet sig ud for at være af en finere slægt, end det var tilfældet. Derfor skulle ægteskabet annulleres.
Retten gav familien medhold i anklagen og tvang parret til at lade sig skille. Kvinden nægtede imidlertid at forlade sin husbond og tage hjem til familien, så hun blev arresteret og fængslet, mens en ankesag blev kørt.
I går blev dommen dog stadfæstet af Saudi-Arabiens højeste domstol. Mandens 'upassende slægt' var ifølge dommen årsag til tvangskilsmissen.
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My suggestion is to be tolerant of each others view, however different it may seem, and try to find a common ground "in between".
OR we could respect each other as persons while at the same time being critical of each other's views. That way we could actually learn some things, get rid of misunderstandings and grow as individuals. I mean, if I say 'the quality of BMW cars is horrible' I would presumably be wrong, you would correct me and I would learn something. Is this not a good way to go about views and opinions whatever the subject matter is?
Tolerance is all fun and games until someone blows himself and a bus load of children into a million pieces. Or a woman gets stoned because she got raped. Or a child gets mindraped.
The same goes for respect. No way am I going to respect some asshole that says that gay people are sick and should be cured because he read it in some 500 year old book. Or some asshole who wants to stop the intellectual evolution of the world by replacing science with dogma. Or some asshole who says that I and most of the world's population will burn in Hell in eternal torment and is happy about it. Seriously!
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As far as the Quran goes, does anyone think the Bible is any better? In fact, if you've read the Bible, a lot of the verses in the Quran clip should ring familiar to you. As we all know, the Jews, Moslems, and Christians share a large part of their dogma. The Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament are virtually identical, and the Quran borrows heavily from these.
Let's take a look at what the Bible tells us. And don't worry, nothing is quoted from the Old Testament (which some Christians (wrongly) claim is defunct). Actually only the four gospels are quoted, so this is exactly WJWD:
When someone blankly refuses to even hear your opinion, because they are convinced you are wrong, even before they know what you are about to say. F.x. Vuzman tries to tell us his view on the whole eclestical matter, but if he dismisses any argument from the "opposition" as superstitious garbage, before he even knows what they are about to say, then he is a fundamentalist. If, no matter what the "opposition" says, he blankly refuses to hear it, because he is right, and no matter what they say or do, then he is convinced he will be right anyway, then his opinion is fundamentalist.
(Sorry, Vuz. Needed someone to be the example)
Legal disclaimer: All statements regarding Vuzman's status as a fundamentalist are not to be taken as fact proven by me, as he was just the one who started this thread!
So a fundamentalist opinion is when you won't listen to counter arguments?
This is news to me. I always thought a fundamentalist opinion was one founded on the fundament. For example a literal interpretation of a holy book as opposed to a liberal (fundies would maybe say 'soft' or 'hypocritical') interpretation.
Is it opposite day today? Have I been magically transported to Bizarro World?
When have I not listened to people? When have you tried to tell me something and I didn't listen? When have I entered a conversation just to provoke people that hold different views than my own? Actually I don't do that, you do that.
Seriously, if I have ever not listened to anyone's point of view, it's because I recognized it as an argument I had heard a hundred times before, and I already knew what was wrong with it.
I am always open to other people's opinion, I am always ready to challenge my own point of view, and I am also ready to change when I find my views to be wrong. In fact, those of you who know me should know that I have changed many of my beliefs and actions during my life.
Calling me, of all people, a fundamentalist is a fucking insult, and I know you're just doing it to provoke me, so I won't take any more offense than I usually do when it comes from you
The Old Testament of the Bible and the Koran (I don't care how it's spelled), share many "letters" if you will. These are very violent in nature, and are (in my view) written to the people of the age. (See, I'm a liberal in interpreting the Bible ) The New Testament is more about foregiveness and coexistance, and is useful in many a way (again, in my view) as a "guide" to how best to behave and act towards my fellow inhabitants on this planet (and other planets, if that happens to be the case).
Now, as the world evolves, and the people on it become more and more confused, as to their place in the world, I think this makes a growing number of people go on a search for something to believe in, and to try to make sense of it all. This is where it starts to become dangerous. As more and more people, in search of a belief, fall in to the hands of those who yell the loudest (wich we all know to be the Fundamentalists of all denominations), more and more people get a "distorted" view (in our sense of the being Fanatical) of the religions. That is when religion becomes a danger to society. Religion in moderate forms, does not hold any danger to the well-being of society, or the inhabitants therein.
This is my view on the subject. Everyone is free to believe what they will. But, when someone tries to ridicule my beliefs or tries to "press" their beliefs on me, then I've got a big problem with those individuals.
Regarding the original subject, do you think that tolerance would work against Moslem terrorists? As I see it, we have already tried that, and it didn't work. We have also tried war and crusading, but that, of course, didn't work either. Invading someone's country and killing his friends and family rarely made anyone more sympathetic to your views.
We need to look at the root of the problem, and that root is religion. We could say that no, it's their culture, or there are socio-economic reasons, but as I see it, those are just the symptoms of the disease. Their culture is strongly tied to their religion, in fact, their culture was vastly different before they invented their religion. The socio-economic status of these countries is also due to their religion. The only reason some of these countries are wealthy is because they have oil, and that wealth is reserved for a select few, making the social divide a veritable chasm of inequity. Baghdad (mainly) was the origin of so much of our foundational science; our numbers are Arabic, our basic math was invented there (algebra is an Arabic word), and several hundreds of the stars in the sky have Arabic names.
This all stopped in the 12th century, when some Moslem teacher said that science was the work of the devil. This plunged the Moslem countries into a Dark Age which they are still struggling with today. Virtually all of the scientific knowledge and expertise in these countries has been imported from the western world. We also experienced a Dark Age (also caused by religion), but got out of it thanks to the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, etc., which definitely was not brought on by religion, in fact many of the forerunners were atheists or "secularly atheist".
I think that history makes it blindingly clear that religion is the speed bumps of progress (to be nice), and the root of all the evil perpetrated by man (to be not so nice).
It's nice that you're liberal about the contents and origin of the Bible, but I've never thought that you were a fundamentalist.
The New Testament does have some positive things in it, and Jesus said a lot of nice things, and I'm sure even I could find some rules to live by if I looked in the New Testament... (in fact many historians believe that Jesus would have been vegetarian, and several ancient manuscripts confirm this).
But there are also some less flattering things in the New Testament, and Jesus also said some not so nice things. Just take a look at the second clip in this thread. Not so many rules to live by there, are there? Something nice, something not so nice, spiced with a little crazy. Actually that's true of the Quran as well. And the Vedas, and Dianetics, and Mao's little red book. Hey, if you're going to pick and choose the rules you yourself wish to live by, why limit yourself to the Bible? And if you're looking for a "guide" to how best to behave and act towards your fellow inhabitants, that is all about forgiveness and coexistence, maybe you should take a look at Buddha's teachings, instead of the Bible.
To jogvanth and whoever else might be following this thread regarding the tolerate others issue:
I care for the truth. I really do. I am sure the world has only one state. Either you are right or you are wrong. To me, being tolerant of other people's opinion is to say 'this is your truth and that is ok, I have mine'.
But I can't live that way. If I am deluded, stupid or in other ways wrong I want to know about it, instead of stumbling around in the darkness of my own delusions, while people who know the truth watch me and say 'let us respect his right to believe what we know is a lie'.
If I am the only one who is passionate about the truth then let me know. I don't want to waste my time making arguments to someone who doesn't care about truth.
