When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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Greatest I am
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:12 pm The reference you gave is from a fundamentalist Christian organization leader. They want Islam annihilated for their own theological reasons; they aren't particularly interested in pragmatic peace.
Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 1:50 pm I hear you on divisions, but this lady says the majority do not really matter and that is why, if they fly the star and crescent, they are all facilitating the existence of the bad ones.
Quite a claim. 1. That they're all flying that symbol (they aren't), and 2. That doing so when in radical opposition to violence and terrorism isn't actually in competition with the bad ones but supporting them (WTF?).
Most people killed by violent Jihadists ARE Muslims of other sects or practices. Sufis get a lot of hate and violence from other sects. Sectarian violence comes from the understanding that there IS competition with respect to which ideologies hold title to the True Islam. The extremists know this.
Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 1:50 pm It is not for outsiders to divide the good Muslims from the bad ones. It is to good Muslims to denounce Islam all together and stop flying their flag.
This is like the difference in fighting an infection with antibiotics vs probiotics.
Were Islam a small enough movement that it could just be crushed and eliminated in any practical way, you might make the argument that they need to reform themselves or have their faith annihilated. But that's not the world we live in; Islam is huge and closely tied into the culture of billions.
Inserting and promoting better memes is probably a more viable way to fight extremism and violence. Particularly when those memes already exist as a substantive portion of followers.
It's potentially much easier to convert somebody to Ibadi or Sufi Islam, or Qur'anism, than to convert them to atheism.
I am all in for changing Muslim memes.

You might have noted that they are not interested or even forming conferences to do so. Vatican !! tried to bring Islam to the table and failed.

I am sure that there were good S S soldiers as well as the evil ones, but a Jew could not tell the difference when they were all flying the same flag.

Regards
DL
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:23 pm You might have noted that they are not interested or even forming conferences to do so. Vatican !! tried to bring Islam to the table and failed.
What the hell are you talking about? Did you spend thirty seconds looking to fact check that claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Ulema_and_Mashaikh_Board

Please fact check in the future.
That one is enormous, but there are numerous anti-terrorism and reformist conferences of Muslims of various size and denomination.
Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:23 pm
I am sure that there were good S S soldiers as well as the evil ones, but a Jew could not tell the difference when they were all flying the same flag.
These people are literally not flying the same flags. There are many different flags and symbols from different denominations.
Please fact check these claims or provide actual supporting evidence; the unevidenced assertions of a right wing fundamentalist Christian organization with clear anti-anything unchristian bias doesn't cut it.
Jamie in Chile
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:17 am I think for the most part the scale is probably tipped toward the immoral; but it's a clumsy and inconsistent immorality, since there's good and bad mixed together. It's not a very devoted immorality, because it's not trying to be immoral.

I agree with Sam Harris in that what demonstrates this overall trend is those who practice the faith (of the largest denominations anyway) with the most fervency/extremism (not necessarily the ones who cherry pick or barely practice).
Islamic (Sunni or Shia) or Christian flavored Deists who interpret things metaphorically or in modern context are a very different kind of thing, but there's a strong argument to be made that these are cases of having less of the substance in question present (the dogma/religion).

Compared to Extremist Christians and Muslims who both can tend to terrorism and violence, extremist Jains sweep the ground in front of them to avoid crushing insects. More Jainism doesn't create more violence, but more fundamentalist religions of other sort tend to.

Of course, Islam is not one thing; there are many different sects and offshoots, and they can't all be measured by the same implications of extremist Shia and Sunni practices.
For example, there are strong historical arguments to be made that, in truth, Ibadi is the most authentic Islam, and it isn't associated with terrorism at all.
And then there are very strong theological and esoteric arguments to be made for Sufism being the most authentic Islam, it's leaders being almost radically anti-terrorism.

I think our best argument against radical Islam is theological support of alternative branches that don't have such inherent problems with terrorism and violent extremism. Recognizing these as the True Islam™ rather than referencing Sunni and Shia traditions as Harris does and lending them more credibility is probably the path of least resistance.
Or just leave everybody to be Qur'anists in a new protestant revolution and find a way to end reliance on Hadith.
Some good points here, especially "there's a strong argument to be made that these are cases of having less of the substance in question present."

It might be said, and you are touching on this in the rest of the above, that moving to a more moderate, less literal version of your religion (e.g. don't actually go to church or give money to church but see it is a private belief, and willing to reject illiberal aspects of your own religion such as sexism and homophobia) is actually a half-rejection of the religion itself and a good half way step to fully rejecting religion.

Even though people doing this they might not realise it or ever take the second step to complete athiesm, but their kids might.
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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Jamie in Chile wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:57 pm Even though people doing this they might not realise it or ever take the second step to complete athiesm, but their kids might.
Right, and the fundamentalists realize this too, where the moderates are blind to it.
This is why I think it's more useful to promote sects that are fundamentally less violent because they have radically different interpretations and even use different scripture, rather than a mere watering down of religiosity among the followers of sects that ARE prone to violence.

Moderates of a fundamentally violent faith will inevitably foster extremists among them who answer the call to revival, and the very attempt to promote moderation may in itself poke the hornet's nest more.

It's safer to promote interpretations where extremism means meditating and studying esoteric knowledge all day and expanding spiritual horizons by listening to other faiths too -- and even fighting the violent extremists -- not blowing yourself up in pursuit of illusory dogmatic purity.

http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/25/mystical_power/
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:50 pm
Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:23 pm You might have noted that they are not interested or even forming conferences to do so. Vatican !! tried to bring Islam to the table and failed.
What the hell are you talking about? Did you spend thirty seconds looking to fact check that claim?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Ulema_and_Mashaikh_Board

Please fact check in the future.
That one is enormous, but there are numerous anti-terrorism and reformist conferences of Muslims of various size and denomination.
Greatest I am wrote: Sat Jun 17, 2017 3:23 pm
I am sure that there were good S S soldiers as well as the evil ones, but a Jew could not tell the difference when they were all flying the same flag.
These people are literally not flying the same flags. There are many different flags and symbols from different denominations.
Please fact check these claims or provide actual supporting evidence; the unevidenced assertions of a right wing fundamentalist Christian organization with clear anti-anything unchristian bias doesn't cut it.
All Muslims fly the same star and crescent to represent their religion, as far as I know. I will let you search out the other flags you allude to.

As to your fact check. You might fact check for yourself.

Name any worthy reforms passed by all those conferences you allude to.

Regards
DL
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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Greatest I am wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:07 pm All Muslims fly the same star and crescent to represent their religion, as far as I know. I will let you search out the other flags you allude to.
1. You're the one who made the claim they all use the same flag. YOU need to provide evidence of that. The one who makes the claim has the burden of proof.

2. Because it's easy enough (despite it not being my job to do your homework for you):

Can you use Google Image search?
Search "ISIS flag", that should be the most notable example.
You should have already seen some of these flags, it's common knowledge that not all Islamic groups or countries fly flags with that motif.
Good ones and bad ones use the star and crescent in some variation, and good ones and bad ones don't use it.
United Arab Emirates comes to mind too, the state religion is Islam but it has no symbols on it at all (just colored bands).
Here are some others from Islamic states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_flags
Some use the motif, some don't. This should be incredibly obvious to anybody with the most basic knowledge of geography and countries.

There are many sects and Islamic groups that do not use the star and crescent in their flags. Some because they think it's idolatrous, some because they didn't adopt the "Ottoman" symbol as many later states from the region did for whatever reason.
The star and crescent is only an unofficial symbol of lslam to some, which stems from the Ottoman empire (although it's older than that). It's not used by all Muslims, and even those who use it (mainly states from that region) use many variations on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent#Contemporary_use
Note the variation in design on some of these flags. Various numbers of stars, orientations of the crescent, and different numbers of points on the stars.
Even for those who use stars or crescents, it's not the SAME star and crescent, it's significantly different, it would be hard to confuse some of these with the others.

Greatest I am wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:07 pm Name any worthy reforms passed by all those conferences you allude to.
Now you're moving the goal posts. Your claim was that there were no conferences. YOU WERE WRONG. Why can you not admit this?
You were wrong about the flags too. So very wrong.

Have the honesty to admit when you've made a mistake.

It's not my job to defend Islam, I'm just telling you that you're misrepresenting them and spreading lies. It's perfectly possible to be very critical of Islam without lying to do it.
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Re: When you reach the age of reason, will you reject supernatural religion?

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Thanks for this.

Regards
DL
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