Sadly, nobody's listening. They don't seem to think standing at some poor soldier's grave as close to his grieving family as you can and exulting over his death, and praying for more, is evil for some reason. Go figure. :banghead: Guess it might be different if it happened to be someone they knew.
He probably shoots them in the face. Isn't it all "Happy Holidays" now anyway?

I don't say happy holidays or merry christmas or goodbye even. That's too fake for me. Most of the time I opt for "you're going to die alone and your other fears will probably come true too" as a send off.

Prejudice is a terrible thing, because it means that you can't say sensible things against a religion without unintentionally taking sides in a cultural war represented mostly by *******s. Islam is garbage for many reasons, such as it being nonsense just like any religion, not to mention that pretty much any religion also codifies backwards beliefs from centuries or millennia ago. I'd kill all the Republicans if it meant I could **** on a religion that deserves to be **** on as much as any other.

Thank God you don't have kids! Imagine telling them that every time you see them off at school!
Imagine .... a world without organised religion!
http://i.imgur.com/ywOpPB7.gif

I'm with you. I find Islam morally repugnant. Even more so than Christianity. At its core, Christianity preaches that to love God is to serve God. There's a bunch of other stuff too, but Jesus gave two commandments and, at least the second one, is an ethically admirable thing, if impossible (love thy neighbor as yourself). At its core is love, or at least, the Christian conception of that. They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as love.

Islam, at its core, preaches obedience to the word of God/Allah. It's a religion built on submission to divinity, and through submission one finds peace (the concept of inshallah). They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as fear.

I'm totally in agreement with most people here that Islam is, from a humanist perspective, the more objectionable faith. THANK GOD/ALLAH/SCIENCE that the overwhelming, truly gigantic, brobdingnagian (there's an SAT word for ya), majority of practitioners DON'T follow the words as written. They take the parts that work for them and skip or ignore the rest. LIKE EVERY OTHER BELIEF SYSTEM.

Hell, humanism has some objectionable elements. I was turned on to the writing of Michel Foucault a couple months ago when a similar topic was raised in my friend group - he put forth the notion that a universal definition of 'human' or 'human nature' or 'human morality' necessarily will exclude some elements of humanity and can therefore provide a justification for war, prejudice, etc. if certain groups don't comport with our established definitions.

It's sad that we don't extend the complexity of human experience much further than ourselves or our 'tribe'.

I'd agree that Islam is probably worse than Christianity, but I don't know that it's worse than Judaism, which is pretty repulsive. It does gall me to admit that Christianity is probably the best Abrahamic religion, but Jesus really was a pretty okay guy as far as Biblical figures go. Too bad Christians have historically done their hardest to be just as disgusting as any other religious ****s. Kind of the point about religious extremism I suppose. No matter what the actual texts say, it will not really make any of the sociopathic adherents be any better or worse than the others. Sociopaths will sociopath.

I don't know much about humanism, but I doubt that any philosophy that becomes a philosophy that a significant amount of people practice will be immune from human douchebaggery. This is why I refuse to align with any ideology of any kind as much as possible. Even the best ideologies (religious or otherwise) are just screaming to be abused.

Yeah. Have you seen my neighbour? Hawt hawt hawt! :tramp:

It's a good point about Christianity though. Christianity, though I don't follow it, does allow for "unbelievers" (gentiles?) to go their own way. They can be brought into "the light of God" if they wish, but nobody is going to force them, unlike Islam, where if you don't follow Allah you're an infidel and to be killed, apparently. Of course, there's the Spanish Inquisition, various corrupt popes, but we won't go there. Yet. At its heart, it would have to be argued that Christianity is quite a tolerant religion, and one of peace.

It's the interpretations of it that ****s everything up.
As usual.

Note: Not everyone has read Machiavelli, so maybe you might want to explain what "the question in The Prince" is?

No. He's saying that this...

...does not happen in the United States or anywhere in the world as much as is portrayed in the media.

Christianity like every other religion preaches the same thing that if you don't believe in that particular faith you are going to die/go to hell. Christians job is to convince others just like every other religion. The most that you get to actually verging on trying to force people are the JW consistently knocking on your door and pass out their pamphlets.

Jesus was an okay guy in the New Testament but God was a vengeful ******* all throughout the Old Testament. There are some ****ed up things in Revelations as well but I don't dare read it. I was too scared ****less when I was younger to venture into those chapters and refuse to now as an adult.

Is it better for a ruler to be feared or loved. Machiavelli came down on the side of fear (I happen to think he was right for the time in which he lived).

I'm not familiar with objectionable practices in Judaism outside things like circumcision. From what I understand the ultra-Orthodox are very insular. What makes Judaism repulsive to you?

The Book of Revelation was the only thing that kept me awake in church. Best. Fever Dream. Ever.

Granted, some people take the rantings of a (and I'm just speculating here) syphilitic lunatic, known to have drifted across Judea with a recently executed preacher who claimed to be the literal son of God and ultimate arbiter of morality, seriously. But c'mon, we got The Ninth Gate out of it, right?