BLADESMAN 8 TO THE 7 CAN I GET A WUT WUT

wait he took blades off... who's the other HOFer?

What say you to CYOA? Is that satisfactory?

If not just throw a ****ing dart.





And not to single out wil; pick literally any post by juan, Tooth, or Carl in the last 1k posts or so.

No.

Christianity is bad, and anyone who takes it too seriously is pretty dumb, imo. Christians aren't all bad people though.

Scientology is bad....

Islam is bad....

Religion is bad, and some are worse than others.

Most people in this world follow one bad religion or another. This doesn't make them bad. People are complicated.

The USA consitution has many of the same features. Adherence to some old laws made by people revered as having some special insight centuries ago. You even have constitutional literalists. The only thing missing is god and he probably doesn't exist anyway.

I think God was in there somewhere.

Not certain but I think the english & french people who came up with the good philosophial ideas in the constitution were on the more aethesitic side, especially for the times.

Great minds who would no doubt be shocked to discover their ideas are 'worshipped' centuries later.

Nah, it's still me. He just replied to a post when it had been quoted by someone else.

Welcome to the exclusive club. We don't have any meetings organised but I did make some badges.

I see that this thread has now reached the Trumpian tactic of slandering an entire group of people and then ending with the minor caveat "and some, I assume, are good people". It's an advanced tactic. Most idiots will start with "I'm not racist but". The top bigots, like Trump and Wil, have figured out that throwing out your bigoted bile right from the start and then throwing in "I never said ALL" at the end really helps mix up the game plan.

Good ideas that have stood the scrutiny of time are the only things an enlightened mind "worships." But that doesn't stop him from trying to prove them wrong anyway just for kicks!

They trap you by saying a bunch of grotesquely myopic crap, and then when they lure you into saying "**** off, you bigoted moron", they gleefully declare, between mouthfuls of excrement, BUT I DIDN'T SAY ALL OF THEM!

It's the ultimate gotcha.

I already told you, a bimbo

you come back to the thread all hours of the day spamming petty and usesless snipes. you never articulate an actual idea or even attempt to. when i asked if you would have a problem with a mosque opening up in your neighborhood you gave a personal anecdote equivalent to "but i have a black friend". its all shallow and empty thoughts being spammed with some sort of bravado like youre clever or a big deal

I dont have a crystal ball. its just that things that are incredibly simple are also predictable. you spammed a map 3 times in this thread and i challenged you to explain how or why its important.....

The problem is there are really racists out there who hate brown people.

We could criticize Christianity all day long, and we do, but because it's mostly a white religion there is no confusion.

Let's do a thought experiment. Pretend Islam doesn't exist and there are no brown people. (Hold on far right bigot if you here, remember, this is not real life). Now pretend all other conditions remain the same in this world, except replace Islam with some sect of Christianity that follows Old Testament teachings very strictly, call them Moses' Witnesses.

While there are moderate MW's who get along with everyone pretty well, and most of them who have emmigrated have integrated into the West with no issue, alarming numbers of MW's think punishing women for adultry and gays for gaying is right, some even support stoning them. Very large numbers say they would prefer living under a theocracy to any form of secular rule. Plenty of other backwards stuff show up in the polls. There is a decent sized group of radical MW's who are trying to take over the middle east in pretty brutal fashion in order to fulfill an old testememt proficy. They like to blow themselves up along with infideles. Oh, and they're all white.

I think we can criticize this religion, and we can criticise those followers who take it too seriously (specifically those) without it being confused with any form of bigotry whatsoever.

We can do so in this world too, and we should. This criticism will help transform that religion into a modern version that is less backward. Problem is it is easily confused with bigotry, and that prevents otherwise decent people from doing so, it stifles progress and empowers the bigots who become the loudest critics, for often the wrong reasons.

They shoull neevr be defended on the basis 'that's what they said'

Where the ideas in the constitution are good then defend them because they are good ideas. Dont defend them because they are in the book.

The 'test of time' is a bad idea btw. You have no data

good and I hope that continues

the point is that there's people ignorantly calling others a bigot for having an issue with muslims moving int to their neighborhoods in large numbers. the recent relaxing of immigration laws that have allowed large numbers of muslims in europe has created a lot of very real problems

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2...to-defend-our/

Agreed.


Disagree.

you've seen it itt. thats just not how people think. the major reasons people shout down the critics of muslim culture is a lot of ignorance of what something like pew research will tell us and then their ego battles logic to tell themselves they were right all along. the other major population shouting down everyone as bigots is people with shallow thoughts that dont even care about the facts or learning them, they just want to think of themselves as morally superior and calling someone else a bigot feels pretty good to them

The problem is in how you're framing the issue. What's clear from polls is that there're a lot of modern thinking self identified muslims who're culturally more similar to what could be loosely be described as modern western sensibilities than a lot of Christians in the rural south.

To define it as a muslim problem both needlessly condemns modern thinking muslims, and gives a free pass to primitive people from other groups.

Filtering for cultural compatibility is important. Identifying the aspects of culture that're likely to cause conflict is also important.

You're still making a huge mistake. Nobody here is actually Islamic (or they haven't outed themselves if they are). 100% of people in this thread are critical of Islam as a religion. So yeah, criticising Islam while not being seen as a bigot is something mastered by a good portion of the field.

on the flip side

by shouting down, minimizing, or just ignoring all the problems you are letting the problem fester. you arent propping up and supporting the modern version of the religion that needs to prevail (baby steps)

opening the immigration flood gates was a clear demonstration of ignorance. its undeniable. if the critics were vocal and the masses educated, then leadership may have not made such a blunder. this has created yet another muslim vs the west conflict, but now in europe. is this conflict progression or a setback when it comes to an example for those watching from the middle east?

you have to look at both sides. unfortunately no matter what you do, somebody will be left unsatisfied. imo confronting reality can be painful but in the end its more productive

I'll give a real world example of Catholicism. I maintain that as long as the powers that be refuse to release their info on the paedophiles they've moved and protected and insisted are an internal Church matter, the Catholic Church is a grossly immoral institution. I wouldn't, however, make a statement like "Catholics protect paedophiles" without making it pretty damn clear exactly what I meant by that. And I wouldn't expect that occasional proclamations of "I never said ALL Catholics" would make a reasonable defence.

And, even further, I would never say that Catholicism is fundamentally incompatible with child protection laws unless I was going to do a shed load of work to prove it. And also because it would be a pretty insane argument.

But this is exactly the type of treatment people give Islam when they say things like Sharia is incompatible with democracy. As have been offered in this thread, there are plenty of Islamic scholars who argue that Sharia is a personal obligation that applies to Muslims and have done the work to defend this through scripture. And yet, this same tired oversimplification comes up time and time again.

I see the opposite, a lot of people refusing to criticize Islam for fear of being seen as a bigot. It's gotten pretty ridiculous. Even Muslim reformers like Maryam Nymazie and Azra Nomani, among many other Muslims and ex Muslims who speak out for womens rights in Islam are called bigots. Look them up, see for yourself. Maryam has been no platformed from some English universities.

But that idea is being presented as though people in this thread are afraid of being critical of Islam, which just isn't true. I would say atheism is much more common amongst the left, right? And an atheist is likely to be quite critical of not only islam but all religions.

Would you say I'm a bigot because I'm critical of all the religions? I don't believe I've been called a bigot by anybody here for my criticisms of Islam even though I've presented them multiple times. The question then is, why am I not being called a bigot for criticising islam, but others who say things like "Islam is incompatible with Western civilization" ARE being called bigots.

Think about it for a minute.

Because you're not being very critical of Islam, and you are one of the people calling others bigots for being critical of Islam? Best defense is a good offense I guess. There is nothing at all bigotted about saying Islam (a belief system) is incompatible with Western civilization. Even if that statement is incorrect, it is not bigotted.

It would be bigotted to say all Muslims (people) are incompatible with Western civilization. It would not be bigotted to be specific, however, and say that all Muslims who want to live under a theocracy are incompatible with Western civilization.

Foldn, what are you waiting for us to say? How much support for the Saudi government have you seen itt? The only person I ever remember defending regimes like that was thekid and he got ripped apart by everyone in both RGT, here, and I think the history forum as well.

Okay, theocracies are really bad. Who said they aren't? But nobody's discussing whether theocracies are bad. They're saying Islam is bad and using theocracies as examples. That muddies the water.