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Post by omaha on Nov 3, 2009 17:32:50 GMT -5
I think your comparing two different things.
You grew up in and continue to live in a culture that is (demographically at least), predominately of the Christian tradition. That's just the way it is.
My point is different. My point is that Western intellectuals/artists seem to me to have a unique antipathy to Christianity vis-a-vis other religious traditions (with the clear exception of Judaism). Frankly, I think that antipathy is really nothing more than an extension of every adolescent kid's desire to establish independence from his parents.
As you point out, the rituals found in other religions are often pretty bizarre as well, but those examples don't seem to concern Western intellectuals.
I believe that if Western intellectuals were to approach this topic from the perspective of intellectual and academic neutrality, starting with first principles and deriving their conclusions in a logically coherent manner, they would reach different conclusions than they do. As it stands, I believe they are acting as iconoclasts for iconoclasm's sake. And since the icons of Western culture are, for historical reasons, largely Christian, the Christian tradition becomes their target.
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Post by theevan on Nov 3, 2009 17:36:15 GMT -5
O-o-o-oh, hand raised!
I was an ardent atheist, raised by ardent atheists.
None of it really bothered me, except for the occasional glassy-eyed proseletyzer that wouldn't leave me alone. It's just where I live.
Damn, your characterizations are loaded and hostile. Perhaps if I'd remained atheist I'd feel the same way. We all deal with what's before us in our own way...
Not here...
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Post by bamfiles on Nov 3, 2009 17:53:57 GMT -5
I'm not an atheist, neither do I belong to any organized religion. Therefore I can't fully understand either experience. I consider myself an agnostic. I don't know. I don't believe in a God as defined by religions but on the other hand, I was falling off a mountain once and remember saying "Lord get me out of this" and during that adrenalin inspired moment of slow motion I saw a rock and grabbed it and held on. I had a similar experience with 2 blown tires at 80 miles-per-hour spinning me around in rush hour traffic in Providence R.I. once and remember saying the same thing as I watched the other cars, again in slow motion, avoid me until I was stopped sideways in the median strip on Rte.95 and nobody hit me. If I was an atheist, I suppose I'd have to chastise myself in some way but being agnostic I can hedge my bets and not feel too bad about it.
I think it's good that the constitution guaranty's "Freedom of Religion" rather than "Freedom from Religion". IMHO, and that's all it is, I find fundamentalist atheists too inflexible, just like fundamentalist any other religion. If they always get their way, they are imposing their beliefs on others and that's what I believe the Constitution was trying to prevent.
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 3, 2009 17:54:48 GMT -5
Western intellectuals/artists seem to me to have a unique antipathy to Christianity vis-a-vis other religious traditions (with the clear exception of Judaism). I believe that if Western intellectuals were to approach this topic from the perspective of intellectual and academic neutrality, starting with first principles and deriving their conclusions in a logically coherent manner, they would reach different conclusions than they do. As a midwestern intellectual (well, somebody called me an intellectual once, anyway) I have no problem rejecting any and all supernaturalist systems. But I also recognize that all kinds of religious systems meet the emotional and intellectual needs of other people and that there's no point in trying to evangelize for secular materialism. Would that they could return the favor. I did my own first-principles analysis more than four decades ago, noted the kinds of evidence that might lead me to change my conclusions, and have been waiting ever since. So far, no cigar, not even close. Attributing disagreement with some widely-held belief system to adolescent rebellion is condescending. There's nothing uniquely Western about rejection--even scornful rejection--of religion. What's unusual (but not unique) is being able to do so without being hauled before an ecclesiastical court or carried of by a pitchfork-waving mob. Despite which, I would never send this post as a letter to the editor of our local newspaper--I don't need hate mail or midnight phone calls or a brick through the living room window.
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Post by omaha on Nov 3, 2009 18:01:59 GMT -5
"Attributing disagreement with some widely-held belief system to adolescent rebellion is condescending. There's nothing uniquely Western about rejection--even scornful rejection--of religion."
It would be condescending if that had been my point. But it wasn't, although I'll leave it to your personal analysis if my point is still condescending.
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 3, 2009 18:25:11 GMT -5
Frankly, I think that antipathy is really nothing more than an extension of every adolescent kid's desire to establish independence from his parents. Sorry, I thought I was reading English.
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Post by omaha on Nov 3, 2009 18:33:48 GMT -5
You were.
But the antecedent, contained in the preceding sentence ("My point is that Western intellectuals/artists seem to me to have a unique antipathy to Christianity vis-a-vis other religious traditions") contradicts your interpretation.
My point isn't that Western intellectuals are antipathetic to religious tradition. My point is that Western intellectuals are selectively antipathetic to Christianity, and that intellectual consistency would suggest a similar level of antipathy toward other religious traditions.
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 3, 2009 19:07:13 GMT -5
I was reading a flawed, over-generalizing argument in English. Christopher Hitchens? Richard Dawkins? Any number of secular Jews raised in observant families? The various members of this on-line community who claim to be generally a-religious and not just non-Christian?
I see plenty of non-selective, systematic rejection of (or indifference to) religion in general. It would seem natural--perhaps inevitable--to reject one's original faith first, and to continue to focus on the particular excesses and abuses and unexamined assumptions of the local brands of religion even after following the logic chain from the local to the universal--should one be inclined to systematic consideration of metaphysical matters. (Not everyone cares enough to be systematic--it's possible to be a gut agnostic or atheist and see the whole thing as not worth worrying about.) The picture of "Western intellectuals" (all alike, doncha know) as uniquely hostile to Christianity while giving other faiths a pass is at best selective and at worst a cartoon.
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Post by omaha on Nov 3, 2009 19:11:46 GMT -5
Funny you should mention cartoons. That's where my argument started.
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 3, 2009 19:21:52 GMT -5
Western intellectuals take it as a mark of extreme disrespect to be portrayed in any manner in any medium.* Offend us at your peril. (Midwestern intellectuals are more lax on this point, but we have been known to get waspish if our asses are drawn too big.)
*Except in sitcoms, if we get the second-best-looking girl.
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Nov 3, 2009 21:59:43 GMT -5
You grew up in and continue to live in a culture that is (demographically at least), predominately of the Christian tradition. That's just the way it is. My point is different. My point is that Western intellectuals/artists seem to me to have a unique antipathy to Christianity vis-a-vis other religious traditions (with the clear exception of Judaism). . Your first paragraph does a lot to explain the second, IMHO. When folks grow up perpetually getting browbeat with the hell card, they can develop a lot of resentment towards the majority religion. There is some darn good evidence that middle eastern and Indian intellectuals/artists feel the same way about their respective cultural captors. The hypocrisy you know is easier to pick away at than the hypocrisy you don't.
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Post by epaul on Nov 4, 2009 0:51:28 GMT -5
All I can say is being the only Muslim kid in my small town wasn't easy. Other than me and Isaac Goldberg, every single kid in the school was Norwegian Lutheran. We had to pray to Odin every single morning. I still don't much care for Odin, but, by and large, Norwegians are all right.
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Post by RickW on Nov 4, 2009 1:00:36 GMT -5
It's when they force you to eat the pickled herring, Paul. Remember standing up in front of class, and having to gag that down every day? I mean, at least if you're Catholic you get some wine with your crappy little biscuit, but pickled herring? Some Aquavit might have helped it slide down.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2009 11:15:21 GMT -5
You were. But the antecedent, contained in the preceding sentence ("My point is that Western intellectuals/artists seem to me to have a unique antipathy to Christianity vis-a-vis other religious traditions") contradicts your interpretation. My point isn't that Western intellectuals are antipathetic to religious tradition. My point is that Western intellectuals are selectively antipathetic to Christianity, and that intellectual consistency would suggest a similar level of antipathy toward other religious traditions. Why would that surprise you at all, Omaha. I'll try again, with a simplistic analogy: Suppose you have a neighbor who, every day, bitch-slaps you, or calls you an asshole, at the mailbox. No big deal, doesn't HURT. Just annoying and invasive. Not even bad enough to keep you from continuing to retreive your mail. Meanwhile, across town, there's a serious sociopathic criminal. You are told, by your neighbor, that the criminal will kill you for no good reason. But, you never saw the guy, and don't feel particularly threatened by him. Does THAT make you feel better about the daily bitch-slap? Does the mere existance of the dangerous and unseen criminal make you feel better about your neighbor? When you talk with friends, are you more likely to express contempt for the unseen criminal, or the neighbor who bitch-slaps you every day? Mostly: What kind of stinking idiot spends all his time worrying about a remote, unlikely, threat, when a clear and present annoyance exists in his life? When you have the flu, do you spend much time worrying about contracting AIDS? One is a much deadlier disease, for sure, but isn't it seem LITTLE unusual to concern yourself with AIDS when you have a raging case of influenza? I'm not saying it's logical, or anything. maybe we should focus on things, people, threats we never see or experience. But, I think the reality is that the contemporaneous and familiar annoyance will probably trump the remotely threatening idea. not a hard concept to grasp, really. In fact, I think it would be extremely rare for an atheist in the US to focus much discussion on religious coersion in some country they will never visit.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2009 13:08:06 GMT -5
I'm not an atheist, neither do I belong to any organized religion. Therefore I can't fully understand either experience. I consider myself an agnostic. I don't know. I don't believe in a God as defined by religions but on the other hand, I was falling off a mountain once and remember saying "Lord get me out of this" and during that adrenalin inspired moment of slow motion I saw a rock and grabbed it and held on. I had a similar experience with 2 blown tires at 80 miles-per-hour spinning me around in rush hour traffic in Providence R.I. once and remember saying the same thing as I watched the other cars, again in slow motion, avoid me until I was stopped sideways in the median strip on Rte.95 and nobody hit me. If I was an atheist, I suppose I'd have to chastise myself in some way but being agnostic I can hedge my bets and not feel too bad about it. I think it's good that the constitution guaranty's "Freedom of Religion" rather than "Freedom from Religion". IMHO, and that's all it is, I find fundamentalist atheists too inflexible, just like fundamentalist any other religion. If they always get their way, they are imposing their beliefs on others and that's what I believe the Constitution was trying to prevent. Sounds familiar, to me. I can think of several times, in extremis, where i was trying to invoke the supernatural (or anything else) for a timely break. I always got it. Specifically, I recall being swept under a snag on the Blackfoot river one june day. Even had time to promise whatever god was listening that I would be his loyal servant for life IF YOU JUST GET ME OUT OF THIS. But, I guess I never made any kind of causal relationship after the fact. My excuse for the broken promise was pretty good: how would I know which god helped me out? Thor, Bael, Zuess? I mean, I didn't know where to send the thank-you card, you know? By then, of course, I was able to reflect on the probabilities life throws at us, and denied any supernatural assistance. But, i was sure looking for it when i was in the strainer. So, do you still think there was some kind of supernatural intervention in your cases?
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 4, 2009 13:23:47 GMT -5
"Lord, Lord, if you don't help me, please don't help that bear!"
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Post by Fingerplucked on Nov 4, 2009 14:28:01 GMT -5
This kind of fits: The One Place on Earth Not Destroyed in '2012' by Jonathan Crow ยท November 3, 2009
When I interviewed director Roland Emmerich a few months ago about his upcoming disaster flick "2012," the first question I asked was, "Why do you like killing the world?" His response: "It makes for a good story."
Over the past fifteen years, Emmerich has crafted some great tales about global doom, featuring some spectacular scenes of destruction. He had aliens zap the White House in "Independence Day," he let a massive lizard flatten New York City in "Godzilla," and he sent killer tornadoes through downtown Los Angeles in "The Day After Tomorrow."
For "2012," Emmerich set his sites on destroying the some biggest landmarks around the world, from Rome to Rio. But there's one place that Emmerich wanted to demolish but didn't: the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure located in the center of Mecca. It's the focus of prayers and the site of the Hajj, the biggest, most important pilgrimage in Islam.
"Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit," the filmmaker told scifiwire.com. "But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said, 'I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie.' And he was right."
Emmerich went on: "We have to all, in the western world, think about this. You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out." Traditionally, a fatwa has meant religious opinion by an Islamic scholar or imam. The term has gained currency in the West after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death sentence in the form of a fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemies in his book "The Satanic Verses" in 1989. As a result, the Indian-born writer was forced into hiding for most of the '90s. More movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-roland-emmerich-fatwa.html
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Post by Supertramp78 on Nov 4, 2009 14:48:11 GMT -5
Yup. If you really want your religion to be respected, just kill people that don't respect it.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Nov 4, 2009 14:52:53 GMT -5
Yup. If you really want your religion to be respected, just kill people that don't respect it. Works even better if your God smites . . . Ever notice how certain words go together? I didn't even know that I knew the word "smite". But if killing needs to be done and God's the one who's going to do the killing, "smite" seems like the most obvious choice. . . . the disrespectful.
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Post by TDR on Nov 4, 2009 15:03:28 GMT -5
I think you're fairly ignorant of what Islam is, and has been Paul. There's a good deal of beautiful, relevant, tolerant belief in Islam. And Christianity may, currently, not be so big on killing people for disagreement, does not mean that it was historically not done, or in the future might be. There are lots of very tolerant muslims, and a number of butt heads. The same thing can be said for Christians today. No, Rick, I am familiar with Islam. And I have read enough of the Quran to know it is a primitive, superstitious, tribal collection of largely war-ridden nonsense.
I have lost patience with the plucking of three or four poetic verses out of a book that is filled with a thousand pages of tribal-centric drivel and calling it a book of peace and beauty. It is a book of peace and beauty only if you ignore 90% of what is in it.
Nor am I particularly impressed with comparisons of the Koran to the Old Testament as a defense of the Koran as I have a dim view of the Old Testament as well. 10% beauty, 90% superstitious, tribal nonsense.
The saving grace of the Bible is very few westerners take it literally. Even those who say it is the literal word of God don't take the whole darn thing literally. All pick, choose, and sift, even those who decry the pickers, choosers, and sifters.
The trouble with the Koran is that most Muslims take the entire book literally, and it is a book filled with hate, fear, and general crap. Every so often, a westernized Muslim is put in front of a microphone or camera to offer up a nice, sweet, tolerant view, but they are oddities. And if they went the homeland and spouted such heresy, they would be stoned.
Islam is filled with ugliness. Pointing out the ugliness of other religions doesn't change the nature of Islam an inch or an ounce. It is tribal. It is narrow minded. There is no tolerance for any other faith. It is misogynistic. It suppresses knowledge. The Koran is a perfect reflection of the backwards, insular, mean-sprited, fear-ridden Bedouin culture that produced it.
If only the damn religion would go away. It is doing the world or its followers no favors.1. Boy are you gonna a get a raft of $h!t from Hanners when he sees this. 2. I tend to agree with a disturbing amount of what you said. 3. I don't feel comfortable with that. I rather think of myself as tolerant and non bigoted, and I'd much prefer to take a pov like Rick's. But the facts as we think we know them aren't supporting me in doing so. Are there some Muslims that believe in non violence and rational discourse? There must be. Are they representative of the whole and the tenets of the religion? Maybe we're getting a skewed view. Maybe we're being fed propaganda and demonization to support the wars. Maybe the hostility and intolerance and misogyny and fanaticism and backwardness are getting exaggerated. Or maybe not. From here it looks more than anything like a bizarre form of mass psychosis. And very unlikely to "run its course" and allow its victims to return to normalcy after it passes. How do you deal with something like that?
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