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Is religion a memetic disease?


sigurdV

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Therefore Eudoxus, what was your point in the first place? Try to avoid ignoratio elenchi. Remember that The Capital by Karl Marx is a book too, and BTW how could you expect the entire planet to be homogenous?

 

Craig, you are missing my points at least as much as Modest did. For example:

I don’t believe that the discriminate killing of people who are doing you no harm is much better or worse than their indiscriminate killing.

True, but nobody told Eudoxus that when he said:
If I were defending my peoples' way of life with violence, I would not use so indiscriminate a killing tool as a bomb. I would use a rifle. And every accidental civilian death would weigh enormously on my conscience. I do not try to justify the killing of innocent civilians.

He was of course implying that Islam is exactly so (unlike himself). Believing this is just like believing that all soccer fans are hooligans. :shrug:

 

the common insidious meme at play is that people can supernatural sources; everything else is window dressing.
Certainly. But the sadder thing is that we are always just as unable to effectively receive information from each other.

 

As expected, this thread has become pointless chaotic chatter.

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Remember that The Capital by Karl Marx is a book too

And don't forget Mein Kampf.

 

Keep in mind, I'm not saying that religions cause violent impulses in humans. Religions simply, in some circumstances, provide a way to justify violence and remove inhibition. Religion won't make you want to burn a woman at the stake. But if you already don't like her, and your religion gives you an philosophical justification for it

I actually agree with this. By the same token, it can be said that religions provide motivation for charity, love, and overall goodness. And one must be blind or prejudiced not to see that, if religion is a force in society, it is by far and large a force for good.

 

I understand how people can have the desire to eradicate religion. Problem is, no one knows what kind of society we would get as a result. The only documented cases we have were disasters of a monumental scale. At a social level atheism seems far more dangerous than any religion.

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You are not showing where it preaches the indiscriminate killing of civilians

The following, that I quoted, preaches the indiscriminate killing of civilians:

 

Then, when the sacred months have passed,
slay the idolaters wherever ye find them
, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

 

9.5

here are a couple others:

 

..wage war on
all
of the idolaters as they are waging war on all of you.... (this is sometimes translated "fight the idolaters utterly")

 

9:36

They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and
kill them wherever you find them
and take not from among them any ally or helper.

 

4:89

Unfortunately, forced conversions and indiscriminate killings of non-believers are main themes of the book.

 

Wasn't that about the idolaters something which had been discussed in some thread a while back? Did it not refer to a specific tribe that was an acrid enemy of the first Muslims?

I'm unfamiliar with the thread.

 

No, like the chapter says (you can read the first 10 verses for a solid footing), these are non-Muslims with whom Muhammad had made peace treaties.

 

What happened was that Muhammad made agreements and treaties with non-Muslims while he was conquering Arabia. He needed allies. Part of the agreement was that certain groups were allowed to practice their own religion so long as they payed for the right to do so. After Arabia was conquered Muhammad no longer needed to put up with the little mushriks.

 

Chapter 9 is what happened next. It is a public proclamation that Muhammad gives saying that non-Muslims need to leave Arabia and other Muslim lands. They are given so much time to do so or they will are immediately and indiscriminately killed (i.e. "slayed wherever they are found").

 

Hopefully those quotes sufficiently answer the question of where in the Quran one is instructed to indiscriminately kill civilians.

 

A side note... it is fashionable to say that Islam is peaceful, and it is never good manners to insult someone else's religion. But, it would be a shame for politically fashionable good-mannered portrayals to be a substitute for truth. They conceal the truth.

 

I guess I don't begrudge the BBC for trying to spread BS in the name of tolerance and progress, but nothing in those articles should be trusted as factual. A random example:

 

When an enemy is defeated he should be made prisoner rather than be killed:

 

In at least the Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali schools (fiqh) of Sunni jurisprudence, and Shia's Ja'fari school; adult male non-Muslim prisoners *can* be executed. Earlier sources were combined into the "The Rules of Warfare" section of Ahmad Ibnnaqib Al-Misri's "Reliance of the Traveler":

 

When an adult male is taken captive, the caliph (def: o25) considers the interests (O: of Islam and the Muslims) and decides between the prisoner's death, slavery, release without paying anything, or ransoming himself in exchange for money or for a Muslim captive held by the enemy. If the prisoner becomes a Muslim (O: before the caliph chooses any of the four alternatives) then he may not be killed, and one of the other three alternatives is chosen.

 

Reliance of the Traveler — The Rules of Warfare — 9.14

 

~modest

 

:phones:

"never is it for a believer to kill a *believer* except by mistake".

 

"to go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it".

 

"fighting is also prescribed for you even though it may seem detestable"

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“Evil” seems a loaded and unhelpful word to me, but if I were a cultural Muslim who became an atheist, that this verse existed, and might be taken literally by some people, would worry me dreadfully.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a good example of a US citizen who has to live in fear of Muslim retaliation for her admitted loss of faith. Luckily, Sam Harris and some other free thinkers helped raise enough money to pay for her security detail.

 

Today apostasy is illegal in most Muslim countries, and subject in some to the death penalty.

 

Wikipedia — Apostasy — Islam

 

It is very unfortunate :(

 

Being a cultural Christian who became an atheist, and being pretty well Bible educated, I’m relieved that no equivalent verse exists in it.

Hopefully with the Arab spring we can put some of this behind us. A while back I remember hearing that someone was being charged with apostasy in Afghanistan, but that he was found not to be competent to stand trial and released — I think because of the international media coverage.

 

Prisons there are full of people convicted of adultery. Children living in shame in prison with their parents... stultified. I'm not one to think that religion in general is evil. I think it can be good or evil like Eudoxus was just saying.

 

But, the quotes from the Quran at the end of my last post... I think they do have a different ethos from Christianity or Buddhism.

 

Perhaps I am biased. My best friend's girlfriend in high school came at a young age from India where, when she was a baby, her Muslim family mutilated her genitals for Allah. I think I mentioned this previously on Hypography.

 

If it isn't evil — I don't know what to call it. In my mind the only way I can understand flying planes into buildings or mutilating the genitals of baby girls is pure evil... a step beyond psychopathy.

 

~modest

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The Bible does indeed demand the killing of non believers, sometimes whole nations, and while it is not asserted as such in the New Testament Jesus clearly states he believed in following the Old Testament... and Christians have used those passages as an excuse to kill people who believed differently than they did, even other Christians. It was the separation of Government from religion that slowly brought these practices to an end. A Theocracy is always a dangerous thing, far more dangerous than religion it's self...

 

In modern times Christians tend to ignore the parts of the bible that the government keeps them from enforcing but the sentiment that non believers or blasphemers should be killed is not far below the surface in some believers. Given free reign these people would start up the whole kill the unbelievers thing again i am sure...

 

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It seems there is no use reasoning here. So, religion is the actual cause of evil?

 

Perhaps I am biased. My best friend's girlfriend in high school came at a young age from India where, when she was a baby, her Muslim family mutilated her genitals for Allah.
Yeah, it seems like your bias is opposite to that of Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad:

If the Islamic law does not mandate female genital mutilation and tolerates only the most mild form of circumcision (and that only if it produces no adverse effects in the child), then how does it come about that so many people from certain countries with large Muslim populations insist that savage acts which exceed these limits are not only permitted, but required by Islamic law? The answer becomes obvious when one realizes that Christians from many of these countries also insist that the tradition is mandated by their religion as well.
People often confuse traditions rooted in local culture with religious requirements.

The part I bolded is the way I see it for several things which anti-Islam ranters point there finger at. Where I disagree with this guy is about male circumcision being beneficial. My disagreement with this is very strong, for the very fact that it is reccomended not only by Islam and not only by religions; I wish North American doctors hadn't reccomended it when I was born. All these genital mutations are ancient tribal practices and Goodness only knows why the male one is still so widespread.

 

If it isn't evil — I don't know what to call it. In my mind the only way I can understand flying planes into buildings or mutilating the genitals of baby girls is pure evil... a step beyond psychopathy.
So, just like FGM, you attribute 911 to Islam too? I attribute it to criminals with whom most Muslims disagree. Those nearest to Palestinians and Lebanese hardly criticized it, but you might imagine why.
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Religion is just an excuse, if there is a god he must weep when people use belief in god to justify such atrocities...

 

If there is a god then he is indifferent to man. For if he is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient there is no way he would allow such evil acts. So remove the omnibenevolence and replace it with either indifference or malevolence.

 

Deism is a tenable philosophical position; theism is not.

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The Bible does indeed demand the killing of non believers, sometimes whole nations, and while it is not asserted as such in the New Testament Jesus clearly states he believed in following the Old Testament... and Christians have used those passages as an excuse to kill people who believed differently than they did, even other Christians.

Yeah, I certainly believe, and didn't mean to imply otherwise, that both christianity and islam have the same potential for malfeasance. Right now the latter is the greater threat to free society which may be related to Islam's founder being a warrior king and christianity's founder being a liberal hippie, or it may not.

 

~modest

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So, just like FGM, you attribute 911 to Islam too?

In both cases, that's why they say they do it. They claim to do it in the name of their God for religious reasons. Disagreeing with them isn't a move that is up to you.

 

When a religious sect commits a terrorist attack claiming to do it in the name of God you don't get to say it's unrelated to their religion.

 

I attribute it to criminals with whom most Muslims disagree.

Because it's a minority it isn't Muslim? Is that what you're implying?

 

You're smarter than this.

 

Only a small minority of racists burn down black churches (or agree with their being burned). Does this mean a white supremacist burning down a black church isn't a racist thing to do?

 

Those nearest to Palestinians and Lebanese hardly criticized it, but you might imagine why.

No, I can't imagine why. I can't imagine why one wouldn't criticize the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Maybe you can. Maybe you can see why burning 3000 people alive sounds sensible to people in a certain geographic location.

 

I'll never understand it.

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When a religious sect commits a terrorist attack claiming to do it in the name of God you don't get to say it's unrelated to their religion.
Who, me? I don't? Did I not just do so?

 

Trying to tell them is certainly no use, even in circumstances where they can't just shoot you for daring to say it, it is still plain no use, just like with any fanaticism that rests on shaky grounds. When have you ever had a discussion with a real live Iranian Pasdaran, before telling me that "you don't get to" and that I "can't disagree with them"? Mind, it was long before 911 so we didn't talk about that. Know what? While he was making bogus claims about the Kurds and saying the South Tyrol is the same thing, I finally got in that my ex was from there. Do you believe that he pricked his ears up and was eager to listen to me about her and her folks? He did, and he began to look somewhat lost on hearing that apparently his government's propaganda was false about something. He's a guy that had been spying on other Iranian students and he had signs of a right bashing they once gave him for it.

 

Only a small minority of racists burn down black churches (or agree with their being burned). Does this mean a white supremacist burning down a black church isn't a racist thing to do?
Man this ain't a fair comparison. 911 is not related to the very definition of Islam by a long shot and burning darker people's churches, houses or even killing them is among the more extreme forms of racism; it certainly isn't against any tenet of any "Holy Book of Racism". It doesn't wash. What does make sense is to say that racism doesn't always, nor is the only, cause of violence. Just like religion.

 

No, I can't imagine why. I can't imagine why one wouldn't criticize the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Maybe you can. Maybe you can see why burning 3000 people alive sounds sensible to people in a certain geographic location.
You are confusing the issue, I said they hardly criticized it. If you can't imagine why so, you can't be thinking about it at all. Probably few of them think it was a good idea but, if many of them had a first reaction of intense Schadenfreude, you could scarcely find it surprising. After that, many of them probably started to think OMG, what are they gonna do to us next?
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I can't imagine why one wouldn't criticize the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Maybe you can. Maybe you can see why burning 3000 people alive sounds sensible to people in a certain geographic location.

It's not sensible, but it is just one form of mass murder. Like the thousands of Iraqi civilians who died recently. Or those forty people in that wedding in Afghanistan. Or those 100,000 in Hiroshima. Or those 6,000,000 in Germany and Poland. Or...

 

Whether you call it terrorism or war, it's just a play with words. Somewhere in the world there is always someone thinking mass murder is necessary to achieve some imaginary greater good. Everywhere else you have powerless people watching the whole madness in disbelief.

 

When I watched the towers crumbling, I didn't think "God, please save us from those crazy murderers". I thought "God, please save us from ourselves".

 

I'll never understand it.

Indeed, so long as you don't open your mind.

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At least I strive to avoid missing peoples points.

 

Eudoxus was placing religion as being The cause of violence and then made it especially Islam. I addressed this and the place rapidly filled up with red herrings. :shrug:

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the common insidious meme at play is that people can receive information from supernatural sources; everything else is window dressing.

Well and succinctly put as is your usual, Turtle, and in a nice font, to boot.

 

The back-and-forth about Muslims, Christians, criminals, murder, governments, and so on – which seems at first glance off-topic, but appears to me at close glance to be right on – leaves me with the impression that, while your “people can receive information from supernatural sources” is an important and insidious meme, it’s not the most pertinent one to an explanation of hijackers kill thousands with impromptu repurposed airliners, governments and militaries killing tens of thousands with state-of-the art weapons of war, or genocidal atrocities carried out with anything from rough forged machetes to precisely engineered gas chambers.

 

Supernaturalists who kill because they believe a demon or a god has instructed them to, are rare, aberrant people, who I suspect are nearly all psychotic due to some underlying neuropathology. You might find yourself on the wrong end of a gun or worse from such a poor individual, but you won’t find a gang of 19 of them, or a national army lead such people, killing on a large scale. Further, I think that even the most dogmatically indoctrinated groups of religionists are, on some level, skeptical of the “god tells a prophet, prophet tells me what to do” meme, when the prophet or his apostle is a living person, and what he’s telling me to do is something I really don’t want to do.

 

I think the meme that allows people to justify most acts of “killing for the greater good”, regardless of who or what sanctions them, is

There’s not enough stuff for all of us, and if I and my friends don’t get it first, our enemies will, and we’ll be miserable.

This has an obvious corollary, found in the memomes of even many non-human animals:

The surest way to assure our enemies don’t get stuff is to kill them.

 

An implication of the assertions that “religion is a memetic disease”, and killing is one of the direst symptoms of the disease, is that if we can eradicate or inoculate enough people against religion, this and other dire symptoms will be reduced. I’m skeptical of this conclusion, because, as others have noted, people can find justification for violence and killing in whatever is handy.

 

In my heartfelt opinion, the various woes of being human we inflict on one another can ultimately be curtailed only by eradicating the “there’s not enough stuff” meme. This is a tough meme to squelch, because, without proper management and technology, and even with them at various periods of human history, it is and has been true.

 

What the world needs is not, I think, ubiquitous naturalistic worldviews (the antithesis of superturalism in its many forms, including religous), but a ubiquitous sense of security. Once a sufficient fraction of humans believe they won’t die cold and starving, or on the end of some enemy’s implement of death dealing, all of our lives and the lives of our descendants will be much better.

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When I watched the towers crumbling... I thought "God, please save us from ourselves".

Now we see how far the termites have spread and how well they've dined. If you have 5 minutes of your time to spare, I'll post this video rather than getting myself in trouble typing out a response,

 

 

:phones:

 

If you want to avoid upsetting these people, you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor, otherwise they’ll be upset with you. You’ll have made an enemy. If you tell them they can’t throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi, they will be annoyed with you. If you say we insist, we think cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Mohammad, you’ve just made an enemy. You’ve brought it on. You’re encouraging it to happen.

 

So unless you are willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture, get used to the compromises you will have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you. But bloody well don’t do that in my name because I’m not doing it. You surrender in your own name. Leave me out of it.

 

I am going to fight these people and every other theocrat ALL … THE … WAY. All the way. For free expression, for women’s rights, for self-determination of small peoples, for the right of Iraqis to federate and have their own show, for the right of the Lebanese to not be bullied by Hezbollah and to have a multi-cultural democracy.

 

Yes, I’ll fight for this and I think the 82nd Airborne is brave to be fighting for it too. I think you should be ashamed for sneering at people who guard you while you sleep. Thanks.

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Trying to tell them is certainly no use, even in circumstances where they can't just shoot you for daring to say it, it is still plain no use, just like with any fanaticism that rests on shaky grounds.

It doesn't rest on shaky grounds. Do you remember asking where the Quran endorses the murder of civilians and getting the quotes? That is what it says. If al Qaeda says they are killing non-believers because their Quran tells them to then they're right. I don't feel the need to pretend.

 

Man this ain't a fair comparison. 911 is not related to the very definition of Islam by a long shot and burning darker people's churches, houses or even killing them is among the more extreme forms of racism; it certainly isn't against any tenet of any "Holy Book of Racism".

If you are not a Muslim then you need to accept, as a point of fact, the Quran calls for your subjugation as a slave to the nation of Islam. If you will not submit then it calls for your death at the hand of Muslims who are commanded to fight you. Those are the "tenets" of the book you're talking about.

 

Why would you want to apologize for such a book or the actions of those who follow it?

 

and to top if off I think you just said that burning churches is too extreme to be compared to 9/11.

 

You are confusing the issue, I said they hardly criticized it. If you can't imagine why so, you can't be thinking about it at all. Probably few of them think it was a good idea but, if many of them had a first reaction of intense Schadenfreude, you could scarcely find it surprising. After that, many of them probably started to think OMG, what are they gonna do to us next?

Who is "they" in "what are they gonna do to us next?"

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