OH MY GOD WE'RE BURNING THE KORAN [Politics]

[CatharzGodfoot]

If you measure evil by murder count and suffering then, Islam is the most evil religion; if you only count that a specific evil action was ever done at least once by a religion then, all religions are more or less equally evil. If you measure by murder count and suffering caused only by specifically religious organizations/nations then, Islam is by far the worst and Christianity isn't much worse than Atheism, not to say that both aren't both detestably horrible by this rubric; under this measurement Hinduism is pretty evil too.

Care to back that claim up?

[Prak]

Please, PLEASE, measure the evil of a religion by how many death's it's caused. That'd give me great amusement when it turns out that even Buddhism is more evil than Satanism.

Catharz:
I completely agree with Kaelik's areligious stance. There are a lot of people who see religion as inherently harmful. I personally believe that a certain number of problems would be solved if we could make dumb, superstitious, draconian idiots of all colours realize their traditions and beliefs are dumb and archaic. Christians need to learn sex isn't evil, regardless of who your partner is, muslims need to learn women aren't inherently inferior and evil, tribal douchebags in elephantfuck africa need to learn that female genital mutilation is cruel.

[Kaelik]

Placing the blame for religious sentiment on one side of the conflict is misguided. President Bush II claimed divine inspiration and guidance in both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, as well as in many other aspects of his presidency. Al Qaeda's greatest claim to legitimacy isn't that Allah hates the U.S.. It's that the U.S. hates Allah.

I'm not the blame for religious sentiment anywhere, because religious sentiment, no matter how stupid, isn't what I'm talking about.

If I want to convince someone not to be an asshat to Muslims, or to stop supporting stupid foreign policies that fuck with Muslims, I can do that without either shattering their religious beliefs, or convincing them that God wants X not Y. I can appeal to secular principles, and in the US, that can convince more than 50% of the people. So it is possible to actually get the US to stop being retarded while still being religious.

Obviously, because this is me, if I think it's easier to crush someone's religious beliefs than to convince them without doing so, I do that, because I don't value false religious beliefs. But that's beside the point.

If I want to convince a Muslim not to hate America, I have to either convince them that Allah specifically wants them to try a different method, or I have to crush their religion. Less than 30% of all US Christians when faced with an argument that X is a better way of accomplishing goal Y, tell me that God wants them to do it by method X. Many Muslims use this argument when facing issues of women's rights, or blasphemy laws, even normally liberal ones. Most Muslims haven't gotten around to the whole "The Koran is a beautiful metaphor, so 'Beat your wife if you feel like it' is really code for 'Women are equal.'"

So yes, it's an important difference. Most of America doesn't hate Allah. Most of America doesn't give two shits about Allah. Or at least didn't before they started getting told every day that Allah is going to kill them.

America is not a Christian Nation, and besides the fact that this gives people in the country a right to be pissed when stupid Christians act like no one else exists, it also means that we are pissy enough that Christians have learned not to do things because God told them too, and so they have to convince us based on some other shit, but Muslims still get away with "Allah says so."

All that is quite apart from the fact that if I felt it was actually a worthwhile argument, I could convince Christians to stop being dicks by quoting the Bible, and then they might change, but you can't do the same with Koran, because unlike the Bible, the Koran is not a hodge podge of contradictory statements, it's a violent assholish attack on decency that is very monolithic about the important things: Killing most unbelievers, being real shits to the rest, and generally being a dick to women.

Mostly that's not important because even nice religions become about dickery anyway.

Fine. From you, criticism of any religion should come as no surprise. However, I doubt that you'll win many converts to your ideology, Muslim or otherwise. The idea that Americans should telling primarily Muslim nations that their religion is false will accomplish anything positive is absurd. If there's anything irrational faith thrives on, it's a sense of persecution. Campaigning against the abuse of women is a great thing, but the solution to conflict is not instructing the teapot to call the kettle black.

Did I say that Americans should be telling anyone anything? No, because unlike you and PL, I don't think Americans as an entity agree about anything.

I am telling you people that you should probably not spend all your time criticizing everyone who criticizes Islam, because, hey, turns out, Islam is full of shit, and dickery. And your time would be better spent criticizing Islam for it's dickery, or Christianity for it's dickery, than defending the poor helpless Muslims from their evil oppressive attackers.

I also, when I am dealing with sane atheists, aka not you and PL, encourage them to criticize Islam for it's bad qualities, like being an institution that persecutes and justifies barbarity towards women, and to defend people who criticize it, and actually deserve defense, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, instead of criticizing her for being a bad person and not understanding enough, as many liberals have.

Then she wouldn't have to side with politically conservative religious douchebags to get support for the absurdly obvious goal of preventing women from being treated like inferiors, just because it happens to be brown people who are doing the treating, and people like PL are incapable of seeing that people of religious "minorities" (aka, minorities where PL is from, even if they actually outnumber any other religion) can still be, as a whole, in the wrong.

So let me fix that for you PL.

Arabs are white people.

In their countries, they are the most populous, the richest, the best access to schools, the majority who always gets it's way, and they persecute non Arabs. They are the White people of the Middle East. Go hate them like you hate the evil White American.

[Calibron]

Care to back that claim up?

Not particularly, but here are two of the more lucid sites I looked at to get my information. Christian Body Count, Muslim Body Count. I had to look at a lot more to get anywhere near a reasonable guess.

[Username17]

Care to back that claim up?

Not particularly, but here are two of the more lucid sites I looked at to get my information. Christian Body Count, Muslim Body Count. I had to look at a lot more to get anywhere near a reasonable guess.

Those are both pretty damn shaky of course, the latter even more so than the former. The "Muslim Boy Count" is counting everyone who died in the wars between Delhi and Assam against "the Jihad" - which is pretty weird since the Moghuls were an empire and at many points during their formation had Hindu soldiers.

In any case, while the Nazis did stamp "Gott Mit Uns" on all their Concentration Camps, and Hitler did proclaim that he had always been and would always be motivated by his Catholic faith to cleanse Europe of The Jew - the fact of the matter is that even though the bloody purging of heretics by Islam and Christianity is astounding and appalling, it's actually still bullshit tiny compare to their actual mass murder spree: holding back sanitation and medicine.

Yes, the missions were a set of brutal concentration camps where the population of a good chunk of a continent was systematically worked to death. But all of that pales in comparison to the increases in plague deaths and starvation caused by bad Christian hygiene and farming practices.

For fuck's sake, Christians decided that everyone needed to live on bread and wine because that's what Jesus blessed - even people living in fucking Iceland. And entire tribes of people died of malnourishment and disease. These numbers are pretty much completely incalculable, because there isn't an available "control" to compare it to. But the numbers are titanic and tremendous. And yes, until fairly recently Christians were way more backward than Muslims were. I mean shit, the whole burkha thing wasn't even a thing at the turn of the 20th century.

No amount of running around stabbing fools with a spear or shooting them with guns could ever compete against the awe inspiring body counts of convincing everyone that bathing more than once a month was a sign of vanity and witchcraft.

-Username17

[Calibron]

True, I didn't consider disease when I made my statement. Though I don't think it works to blame the entirety of the ignorance of middle ages on Christianity, Christianity was a tool used to powerfully oppress and placate the peasants. Your argument is probably valid enough to push the Christian Body Count/Suffering up to or beyond the Muslim one, though there's no way to know in an accurate fashion.

Nice new descriptor btw, Frank.

[Zinegata]

*sigh*

People are still talking about this troll on places like CNN ahead of more important stuff.

Like the million or so people made homeless in Pakistan.

Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Stop feeding this real-life troll.

[Kaelik]

*sigh*

People are still talking about this troll on places like CNN ahead of more important stuff.

Like the million or so people made homeless in Pakistan.

Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Stop feeding this real-life troll.

Nothing I say matters to people outside this forum. If I choose to feed PL, that's my business not yours.

[Zinegata]

I am referring to people in general, as I did say "People are still taking about this troll in places like CNN".

I am not aware you were being specifically targeted, Kaelik, unless you've been on CNN recently.

[Calibron]

I do believe Zin is addressing the American news media, not us.

[Kaelik]

I am referring to people in general, as I did say "People are still taking about this troll in places like CNN".

I am not aware you were being specifically targeted, Kaelik, unless you've been on CNN recently.

I just wanted to insert a joke about PL being a troll.

[Zinegata]

The Pastor dude just lied through his teeth and claimed the book-burning is off because the 9-11 Mosque is going to get moved now.

(Well, okay, apparently he talked to a imam, who promised to talked to the imam doing the 9-11 Mosque. And the fucking pastor had no idea he wasn't talking to the guy who was building the NY mosque)

And it's being reported by fucking Anderson Cooper.

This is stuff that should be reported by fucking Jason Jones, not Anderson Cooper!

[CatharzGodfoot]

Placing the blame for religious sentiment on one side of the conflict is misguided. President Bush II claimed divine inspiration and guidance in both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, as well as in many other aspects of his presidency. Al Qaeda's greatest claim to legitimacy isn't that Allah hates the U.S.. It's that the U.S. hates Allah.

I'm not the blame for religious sentiment anywhere, because religious sentiment, no matter how stupid, isn't what I'm talking about.

If I want to convince someone not to be an asshat to Muslims, or to stop supporting stupid foreign policies that fuck with Muslims, I can do that without either shattering their religious beliefs, or convincing them that God wants X not Y. I can appeal to secular principles, and in the US, that can convince more than 50% of the people. So it is possible to actually get the US to stop being retarded while still being religious.

Obviously, because this is me, if I think it's easier to crush someone's religious beliefs than to convince them without doing so, I do that, because I don't value false religious beliefs. But that's beside the point.

If I want to convince a Muslim not to hate America, I have to either convince them that Allah specifically wants them to try a different method, or I have to crush their religion. Less than 30% of all US Christians when faced with an argument that X is a better way of accomplishing goal Y, tell me that God wants them to do it by method X. Many Muslims use this argument when facing issues of women's rights, or blasphemy laws, even normally liberal ones. Most Muslims haven't gotten around to the whole "The Koran is a beautiful metaphor, so 'Beat your wife if you feel like it' is really code for 'Women are equal.'"

So yes, it's an important difference. Most of America doesn't hate Allah. Most of America doesn't give two shits about Allah. Or at least didn't before they started getting told every day that Allah is going to kill them.

America is not a Christian Nation, and besides the fact that this gives people in the country a right to be pissed when stupid Christians act like no one else exists, it also means that we are pissy enough that Christians have learned not to do things because God told them too, and so they have to convince us based on some other shit, but Muslims still get away with "Allah says so."

All that is quite apart from the fact that if I felt it was actually a worthwhile argument, I could convince Christians to stop being dicks by quoting the Bible, and then they might change, but you can't do the same with Koran, because unlike the Bible, the Koran is not a hodge podge of contradictory statements, it's a violent assholish attack on decency that is very monolithic about the important things: Killing most unbelievers, being real shits to the rest, and generally being a dick to women.

Mostly that's not important because even nice religions become about dickery anyway.

Fine. From you, criticism of any religion should come as no surprise. However, I doubt that you'll win many converts to your ideology, Muslim or otherwise. The idea that Americans should telling primarily Muslim nations that their religion is false will accomplish anything positive is absurd. If there's anything irrational faith thrives on, it's a sense of persecution. Campaigning against the abuse of women is a great thing, but the solution to conflict is not instructing the teapot to call the kettle black.

Did I say that Americans should be telling anyone anything? No, because unlike you and PL, I don't think Americans as an entity agree about anything.

I am telling you people that you should probably not spend all your time criticizing everyone who criticizes Islam, because, hey, turns out, Islam is full of shit, and dickery. And your time would be better spent criticizing Islam for it's dickery, or Christianity for it's dickery, than defending the poor helpless Muslims from their evil oppressive attackers.

I also, when I am dealing with sane atheists, aka not you and PL, encourage them to criticize Islam for it's bad qualities, like being an institution that persecutes and justifies barbarity towards women, and to defend people who criticize it, and actually deserve defense, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, instead of criticizing her for being a bad person and not understanding enough, as many liberals have.

Then she wouldn't have to side with politically conservative religious douchebags to get support for the absurdly obvious goal of preventing women from being treated like inferiors, just because it happens to be brown people who are doing the treating, and people like PL are incapable of seeing that people of religious "minorities" (aka, minorities where PL is from, even if they actually outnumber any other religion) can still be, as a whole, in the wrong.

So let me fix that for you PL.

Arabs are white people.

In their countries, they are the most populous, the richest, the best access to schools, the majority who always gets it's way, and they persecute non Arabs. They are the White people of the Middle East. Go hate them like you hate the evil White American.

OK.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Please, PLEASE, measure the evil of a religion by how many death's it's caused. That'd give me great amusement when it turns out that even Buddhism is more evil than Satanism.

From my understanding, the rate of murder linked to Satanism in America is 1. Not 1 per year, 1 since they started recording crime statistics.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Though I don't think it works to blame the entirety of the ignorance of middle ages on Christianity

Maybe not everything, but the "not bathing" thing is a purely Christian thing. The pagan Romans bathed as often as we do today, and even the Vikings bathed a couple times a week.

[For Valor]

... I bathe a couple times a week...
>.>
<.<

PLUS FIVE.

Also, I own a Qur'an, and I remember very little encouragement of shit and dickery. About as much as the Bible... it's just filled with a lot of crap about "Allah is the Mighty and the Powerful, and also the Wise. And did we mention the Powerful?"

[For Valor]

Double Post:

Apparently it's cancelled.

[Zinegata]

No it's not. He's just rethinking it now. Just heard on CNN.

Oh, and remember Pakistan? Muslim nation with a million new homeless people because of the floods? (which are no longer being covered due to this lunatic). Mighty pissed off at America right now to the point they're turning to fucking Interpol to stop this.

For fuck's sake. Stop feeding the troll everyone. This is Glenn Beck levels of media insanity and stupidity.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

That's pretty much how America operates. If you're paying attention to some attention whore like Kim Cardassian or whoever the fuck this guy is (Pastor McFuckenWhore?), you're not paying attention to legit things.

I would like to believe it's not on purpose that the American people are being distracted like this, but...

[Maj]

Where did the whole foreclosure angle come from on this thread?

Really, though... Zinegata's right. The fact that this stuff dominates the media just leads to greater polarization in our country. It sucks.

[Zinegata]

The first article linked noted that in addition to having like 50 people in the church (and shrinking), it had a $140K mortgage that the bank is telling the pastor to pay up.

The pastor claims the bank started bugging him for the money after he started the Koran-burning idea, but I'm guessing it's actually the reverse.

[Maj]

Thanks, Zinegata. I didn't remember from my first read-through, then went back and did a search for the word "foreclosure" (not present).

[Prak]

Please, PLEASE, measure the evil of a religion by how many death's it's caused. That'd give me great amusement when it turns out that even Buddhism is more evil than Satanism.

From my understanding, the rate of murder linked to Satanism in America is 1. Not 1 per year, 1 since they started recording crime statistics.

Well, it's a question of how you're counting satanic murders. If you're counting any murder "done in Satan's name" then it's a bit higher, especially if you expand out of the US and count all the swedish death metal idiots. If you're just counting people who actually follow something vaguely resembling the tenants of Satanism and use the term satanist to describe themselves, yeah, it's 1 or so.

Either way I'm pretty sure the rate is something south of 20 since the beginning of recording this kind of thing.

[PhoneLobster]

Did I say that Americans should be telling anyone anything? No, because unlike you and PL, I don't think Americans as an entity agree about anything.

First of all Catharz, please don't quote this idiot in full (or at all). I have him on ignore for a reason.
Hell the only reason I started posting here again recently is because I heard he was FINALLY banned.

As for Kaelik, who appears to have been having some sort of extensive one sided conversation with me...

Man. You are too stupid to breath.

Stop spamming this forum and degrading it's quality and driving off it's members. The only reason we even got political threads back was because YOU had your mouth forcibly shut for a short time.

And what a brief but much NICER time it was on this forum.

I'm sad that it is over.

[RobbyPants]

Double Post:

Apparently it's cancelled.

The last I heard, Jones was considering holding the event anyway, because he felt he was lied to.