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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 10:40:29 [Permalink]
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Seriously?
That's the argument for cutting off freedom to practice a religion, that a few extremist loonies will take over? If that were true, we should pass a law saying no building christian churches within ten blocks of Oklahoma City.
I'm in favor of eliminating the extremist element in a lot of groups, but not this particular way, because then there'll be an excuse to go after the skeptics. You know that Dawkins and Hitchens are way too strident for some people's taste. |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 08/18/2010 : 11:21:51 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by dglas
As for freedom to practice religion, there must be limits. |
There are limits, just as with all other rights: one's right to do something ends when it interferes with someone else's rights.| otherwise we can look forward to parents letting their children die by using faith healing and prayer instead of medical resources. |
They already do. It's horrible that people's right to practice their religion allows them to treat children like chattel instead of as people, and I'd like to think that our courts will wake up to that reality sometime soon.| You are going to have to face this, like it or not, because islam will force you to. Your "live and let live" principle will be be broken, by islam's "convert or die" absolutism. |
That won't "break" the principle, it will collide with it. And I don't see Muslims as a whole being any more or less absolutist than any other religion: most adherents pick-and-choose which parts of the "holy" books to follow and which to ignore.
Islam is a relatively young religion. Judaism and Christianity have both been through bloody stages. Islam is 700 years behind Catholicism. A few dozen more schisms, and Islam will be as fractured as any other religion, with most groups being pretty moderate.| The only choice you get is whether most of the principle will remain. You will either suspend your Constitution, or limit its application, or you will see it utterly decimated. |
It's already limited. But as soon as someone tries to apply Sharia Law (for example) to anyone who doesn't agree to it before-hand, the courts will smack them down. Except in the case of children (stupidly), the First Amendment has never been a defense for murder.
So no, we don't have to choose between Islam and the Constitution. Muslims have to choose between violence and tolerance, and many of them have already picked the latter.| The problem in this thread is the knee-jerk reaction to the tea party and the GOP. If something is true, it is true regardless of who says it - even if it's the tea party. |
What is it that the right has been saying that's true? That building a mosque on "hallowed ground" is an abomination? That the Imam is an extremist? That we shouldn't have to stand on a principle if Saudi Arabia won't? Everything else is simply implied, the cowards allowing their audience to fill in the blanks, because they know it's political suicide to state outright that all Muslims are terrorists (for example).
You don't even do so, dglas. You say "a dogma" without being explicit about which dogma that is. Is it a dogma that all Muslims embrace? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 18:40:01 [Permalink]
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OK.
What I know about the Park51 project.
The Muslim community wants a Mosque/community center near where they work. It is two blocks from the WTC site. The Imam proposing the building is a moderate cleric who assisted the Feds in every way he could to find and report the extremists within his community.
He did say some unfortunate things bourne out of frustration due to conservative zenophobic pundits making false accusations against him. Included in that stream of falsehoods is that it was going to be used as a recruiting ground for Hammas.
This is yet another manufactured insult/crisis for political gain. Problem is that it is beginning to backfire. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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dglas
Skeptic Friend
Canada
397 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 19:15:00 [Permalink]
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Apparently, it is going to be ridiculously difficult to sort through the bigotry of the right and the accusations of bigotry by the left to get to the point of actually examining the functions, intent, and results of prescriptive absolutism.
It is as if the left is so desperate to level the charge of "bigotry" against the right that their brains have seized in an obliviousness gear.
It's astonishingly sad. Otherwise smart people are actually buying the equating of the people with the dogma. News flash: it is possible to critique a religion without being a bigot. Skeptics should not have to be told this. |
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- dglas (In the hell of 1000 unresolved subplots...)
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The Presupposition of Intrinsic Evil
+ A Self-Justificatory Framework
= The "Heart of Darkness"
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 19:25:42 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by dglas
We lock up murderers. Does this make us anti-freedom. Of course not.
When a pacifist physically defends his/her family, is the principle of pacifism betrayed? Of course not.
No principle stands up to extremes.
You will have to make a choice between islam and your Constitution. The question is when do you make it.
This is not a bigotry issue - ideas don't get human rights.
This is not a partisan political issue - your political partisanship matters not at all to islam.
Islam will exploit the Constitution's guarantee of freedom in order to push its social upheaval. Just like it has in Europe.
It's not any kind of supposition. It's not any kind of guess-work.
It is the dogma. It is the doctrine.
Anyone heard of the OIC's anti-blasphemy mandate? Anyone notice the separate Sharia legal systems rising in Europe? Anyone remember the implied death threats that caused South Park to self-censor?
It's not about freedom, islam will rip that from you at its first opportunity; it's about dogma. And it's about waking up.
As for freedom to practice religion, there must be limits. otherwise we can look forward to parents letting their children die by using faith healing and prayer instead of medical resources. Kara, people learned, it seems, absolutely nothing from your death.
You are going to have to face this, like it or not, because islam will force you to. Your "live and let live" principle will be be broken, by islam's "convert or die" absolutism. The only choice you get is whether most of the principle will remain. You will either suspend your Constitution, or limit its application, or you will see it utterly decimated. Those are your choices; if you think otherwise, you are living in a dream world. You had better get acclimated to that and started thinking with some clarity.
The problem in this thread is the knee-jerk reaction to the tea party and the GOP. If something is true, it is true regardless of who says it - even if it's the tea party. Now the radical right in America is trying to turn it into a religious war of competing dogmas. But you don't have to be in the grips of a religious dogma to realize a dogma is dangerous, anti-freedom, totalitarianist and vicious.
That makes about as much sense as refusing to vote Democrat because of one issue and letting the Republicans win by default.
And if you are that stupid, you deserve what you get. Sadly, none of the rest of the world does.
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Islam is not more powerful than the system of rights we have established in the US. I have to call you a complete moron if you think our choices are to suspend or limit our constitution lest we see it "decimated". Some European countries are having problems with islam, sure. But just because they are in no way means we will have the same problems. Our laws are quite clear, and in no way will those sharia courts be tolerated here. They might appear, but once they are known about they will be shut down with prejudice.
You may need to sit down and rethink the rest of your inane little rant there as well dglas.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 19:28:13 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by dglas
Apparently, it is going to be ridiculously difficult to sort through the bigotry of the right and the accusations of bigotry by the left to get to the point of actually examining the functions, intent, and results of prescriptive absolutism.
It is as if the left is so desperate to level the charge of "bigotry" against the right that their brains have seized in an obliviousness gear.
It's astonishingly sad. Otherwise smart people are actually buying the equating of the people with the dogma. News flash: it is possible to critique a religion without being a bigot. Skeptics should not have to be told this.
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So when gingrich is on TV comparing the entirety of Islam to Nazi Germany, we can't call him a bigot? Seriously?
Grip, you, get, now, please.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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dglas
Skeptic Friend
Canada
397 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 19:32:12 [Permalink]
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I would like to take this opportunity to clarify what I said in my last post, just in case there is any confusion. When I spoke of "otherwise smart people," Dude wasn't among them.
As evidence:
"So when gingrich is on TV comparing the entirety of Islam to Nazi Germany, we can't call him a bigot? Seriously?
Grip, you, get, now, please."
Yawn.
Did I say I agreed with Gingrich? It is only someone desperately in need of half a clue, such as Dude, that would make that connection.
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- dglas (In the hell of 1000 unresolved subplots...)
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The Presupposition of Intrinsic Evil
+ A Self-Justificatory Framework
= The "Heart of Darkness"
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| Edited by - dglas on 08/18/2010 19:35:10 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 19:40:31 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by dglas
It's astonishingly sad. Otherwise smart people are actually buying the equating of the people with the dogma. |
Actually, dglas, from where I'm sitting, that seems to be exactly what you're doing. You're equating the dogma held by groups of militant extremists like Al Qaeda with the New Yorkers who want to update their community center. How is that not naked bigotry?
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/18/2010 19:41:33 |
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 20:07:07 [Permalink]
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| It is clear to me that they have every right to build the building where they choose as long as it is legal. However, to dismiss peoples concern over it as bigoted is ridiculous. The people that have a concern are objecting based on emotion and their sense of decency and not any legal position. They think that just as it would be insensitive to build a Nazi museum next to a Jewish synagogue it is equally insensitive to build a mosque next to ground zero. They want to apply public pressure not government involvement to get them to move the building which is totally an American way of doing things. I think that it is worth discussing although I do not agree. |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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dglas
Skeptic Friend
Canada
397 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 20:18:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Originally posted by dglas
It's astonishingly sad. Otherwise smart people are actually buying the equating of the people with the dogma. |
Actually, dglas, from where I'm sitting, that seems to be exactly what you're doing. You're equating the dogma held by groups of militant extremists like Al Qaeda with the New Yorkers who want to update their community center. How is that not naked bigotry?
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Well, sit bolt upright in that straight-back chair, button that top button, and try again. Sorry, a little Laurie Anderson is good for one. ;)
If I were to critique the concept of sin and the prescribed beliefs that accompany that, including the detrimental effects like self-loathing and fear it may have on people, you would understand that as a critique of ideas. In that case you would be perfectly capable of distinguishing the ideas from the people who hold them.
If I were to critique the idea of faith-healing or prayer as a substitute for medical care, you would understand that it was a critique of ideas. In that case you would be perfectly capable of distinguishing the ideas from the people who hold them.
The list could go infinitely on.
The real question is: Why is it so hard in the case of islam?
Is it because you've been told that to critique the ideas is to conduct personal attacks? Who told you that? People from all religions with a "self-identifying with the philosophy mentality" will tell you they are being personally attacked if you dare question their beliefs.
When I say that an prescribed idea is contradictory to some portion of the Constitution, how in the world can anyone possibly shoe-horn that into the concept of bigotry? It is a simple statement of fact. These two ideas are contradictory. Why is this hard? |
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- dglas (In the hell of 1000 unresolved subplots...)
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The Presupposition of Intrinsic Evil
+ A Self-Justificatory Framework
= The "Heart of Darkness"
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 20:43:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Funniest analogy ever: John Oliver on The Daily Show:There is a difference between what you can do, and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic church next to a playground. Should you?
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If opposing the mosque is bigoted then how is this not as well? |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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podcat
Skeptic Friend
435 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 20:49:25 [Permalink]
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Yes, extremism is contradictory to the Constitution. There seems to be the misconception that extreme Islam is representative of Islam. You can't paint all Muslims with the same brush.
That said, I wish that moderates of all faiths would condemn the extremist elements. It would go some way toward dispelling the appearance of the moderates accepting what the extremists do. |
“In a modern...society, everybody has the absolute right to believe whatever they damn well please, but they don't have the same right to be taken seriously”.
-Barry Williams, co-founder, Australian Skeptics |
| Edited by - podcat on 08/18/2010 21:02:27 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 21:02:01 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Robb
Originally posted by Dave W.
Funniest analogy ever: John Oliver on The Daily Show:There is a difference between what you can do, and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic church next to a playground. Should you?
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If opposing the mosque is bigoted then how is this not as well?
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Because that is two comedians engaging in satire Robb.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/18/2010 : 21:04:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by dglas
I would like to take this opportunity to clarify what I said in my last post, just in case there is any confusion. When I spoke of "otherwise smart people," Dude wasn't among them.
As evidence:
"So when gingrich is on TV comparing the entirety of Islam to Nazi Germany, we can't call him a bigot? Seriously?
Grip, you, get, now, please."
Yawn.
Did I say I agreed with Gingrich? It is only someone desperately in need of half a clue, such as Dude, that would make that connection.
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You said I can't call him a bigot, and please point out to me where I in any way said you agree with him. Apparently English isn't your first language since you are having so much trouble parsing simple sentences. You should go ahead and get over yourself now, before your stupidity causes your further harm.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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I… WTF…?
