Have a go at Islam already

[Omen]

why be so focused on Christianity? Why not poke some fun at Islam and Mohammad?

The analogy is like asking someone why they aren't racist to all racial minorities.  The problem is your assumption that just because we do not believe that that means that we by necessity need to argue against any/every position.  The answer is the most obvious one; there are no muslims on this forum ( and rarely are ), most of us are americans and christianity is the primary threat in the US, and arguments against one abrahamic god claim are equally valid against another abrahamic god claim because they for the most part claim the same myth.  As for other religious belief systems, not all religious belief systems are as psychotically xenophobic as others.  When I oppose christianity I find myself arguing in defense of human rights, education, science, and the free exchange of ideas.  If your religion doesn't do any of those things, then why would I bother?

[ParkingPlaces]

Was it Christians who flew into your towers?

Legitimate question. First of all, we've had a couple of batshit crazy muslims in my two and half years here. We weren't any nicer to them then we have been to Olivianus, thought we should not have been. They weren't quite that bad.

And we had a batshit crazy president tell us that god told him to attack Iraq in response, an action that eventually killed over 4,400 servicemen and women, along with almost 1,500 foreign contractors, close to 350 journalists, and at least 600,000 Iraqi's, many of them innocent bystanders.

So we concentrate on the crazy white guys. It keeps our adrenaline running.

Without a doubt, the muslim god is included on our list of unbelievable characters. But apparently most of them are so busy praying five times a day or something that they don't have time for us.

Besides, our "What are you listening to now?" threads would be full of guys saying "Oh, we've got a great muezzin and he's up on the tower singing a sonorous tune right now, and it's got a real catchy beat." Not what we want to hear.

[velkyn]

wow, MM has managed to get TrueChristiantm claims in, managed to ignore that we do address Islam, managed to ignore that the same rebuttals of Islam apply just as well to Christianity, and forget that Christains are the ones trying to force tehir religion on us in the US.  Let's see, Muslims ran planes into towers,  Christians have bombed clinics, shot doctors,

poor Christian, feeling "persecuted"? It's a pity that you have to virtually claim this and in so doing devalue people who really are persecuted.  "But but, why don't you pick on them?" yeesh 

[flapdoodle64]

Islam is indeed a pretty silly religion, as silly as Christianity and perhaps more so.

But the USA, the most weaponized nation in the world is dominated by Xians, and the military itself is strongly dominated by Xians.  The President of the USA routinely orders military strikes and has the power (post 9/11) to unilaterally declare defacto war against other nations and to cause summary executions w/o no trial and no judicial oversight.  (The same President is allowed to hold prisoners in his gulags indefinitely with no limits.)

The Presidents of the USA all claim to be Xian, and candidates for the office are compelled to debate before megachurches if they hope to be elected.  Many citizens of the USA claim that the USA is in fact a Xian nation and that Xianity is the basis for the USA's superiority to other nations.  The USA prints the motto 'In God We Trust' on it's money, which certainly implies the god of the Xians.

Since 1991, the USA has been in a state of almost constant low level war with a variety of Muslim nations.  Even after the War in Iraq of 1991, the USA flew occasional bombing missions and blocked food and medicine from the nation.  Also in the 1990's, the USA conducted military operations in several African countries with large numbers of Muslims.  Since fall 2001, the USA has been in a state of very active war (though sometimes undeclared) against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Yeman...all Muslim nations.

The USA has vastly superior armaments to the Muslim nations it attacks, and the USA is always the aggressor nation, always throughing the first punch.  Three thousand or so people in the USA were killed by terrorists who allegedly were Muslim, yet the number of Muslims killed by the USA is certainly somewhere in excess of 100,000...the USA, a Xian nation, does not bother to count the Muslims it kills. 

Nor will the USA provide an official count of the Muslim held indefinitely in its gulags, scattered from Gitmo across Europe and Asia, although the USA does claim the right to hold these people indefinitely and without habeas corpus. 

To aid the USA, the nation employs military 'contractors,' mercenary armies not bound even by the loose laws of war.  The biggest of these, Xe, formerly Blackwater, is run by a Xian named Eric Prince who believes it is his duty to kill Muslims.

Certainly Islam is a silly religion, and certainly it has some violent rhetoric, but in the modern era I have to give props to Christianity for its aggressive power, supremacist thought, and unrivalled bloodlust.  Next to the Christians, the Muslims are amatuers.

[Ambassador Pony]

Sounds like someone is looking for a job.

MM, I can find you a spot in our muslim affairs department. How does, "head of the having a go at Islam ministry of WWGHA" sound?

Let me know, and I will print up the business cards.

[magicmiles]

Would i have to move to the USA? Because that would be a deal breaker.

[velkyn]

why both are silly  http://www.jesusandmo.net/ 

the current one

[Ambassador Pony]

Would i have to move to the USA? Because that would be a deal breaker.

No. We use the internet on this forum.

BTW, I recently read an article that is semi-related to the ideas in this topic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/the-fall-of-foolish-faith_b_1333412.html?ref=science

[jaimehlers]

What I meant when I said that churches don't have internal checks and balances is that they are ultimately based on God's (or YHWH's, or Allah's, etc) authority.  This authority ultimately depends on church leaders to interpret it, because there isn't a non-subjective way to ask God what he intends.  Therefore, the church leaders can claim that they're speaking for God, and there's no way for someone else to go ask God to make sure that was his actual message.  The most anyone can do is go meditate and pray, and maybe they'll come to a different conclusion, but they can't prove that it's God giving them that second conclusion anymore than the church leaders could prove it was God giving them the first.

Imagine a Constitution[1] which, instead of being clear and concise, was confusing and internally contradictory, and in order to resolve those contradictions, a person had to mentally commune with the Constitution's writers, who there was no other historical record of besides the Constitution itself, in order to get their opinions and assertions about it.  Now, imagine the President, or maybe Prime Minister, asserted that his commune with the writers led him to certain conclusions, which he explained to everyone else.  How many people would accept that simply because he's the country's leader, provided his explanations meshed reasonably well with the parts of the Constitution he was using?

That is how many atheists see religion and prayer - communing with someone who's never been proven to exist in order to understand writings in a book that, to them, is less clear than a muddy pond would be.

1.	Whether it's American or Australian doesn't matter

[Historicity]

Imagine a Constitution which, instead of being clear and concise, was confusing and internally contradictory, and in order to resolve those contradictions, a person had to mentally commune with the Constitution's writers, who there was no other historical record of besides the Constitution itself, in order to get their opinions and assertions about it.

Such a person is not hard to imagine:

[magicmiles]

poor Christian, feeling "persecuted"? It's a pity that you have to virtually claim this and in so doing devalue people who really are persecuted.  "But but, why don't you pick on them?" yeesh 

If I felt persecured I'd find another forum to amuse myself on. I hear the folks over at IGI play nice...

I actually enjoy conversing with most of you. My OP was a touch flippant, I concede...but if nothing else it has opened up some interesting discussion. And some of the responses I want to consider in depth when I have time.

[Aspie]

The arguments really don't differ much from theistic religion to theistic religion. They all appeal to the unverifiable, emphasize faith, and claim a higher level of knowledge. The only tangible difference is the claim that all evidence and logic points to their god as depicted in their holy books. Even the popular apologetics circulated through Christian communities are used for other religions - "The Man in the Red Underpants" makes use of C.S. Lewis' "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" trilemma, except instead of "Lord" it's "True prophet of Allah".

[Willie]

The search algorithms on this site have no way to search an individual member's messages.  I had  one on Mohammed's pedophilia documenting his comments on the subject from the 2 Moslem biographies of him that are considered official.  I thought it was good, but now I can't find it.

Is this the thread you're thinking of: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/forums/index.php?topic=17149.0

Google can sometimes be better for searching the forum than the forum's own search tool. It can't limit the search to an individual member's posts, but it can find pages of posts that contain an individual user's name, along with whatever other terms your looking for, which is better than nothing. It's also fast.

[magicmiles]

then why not simply ask yourself why you, like us, reject islam?

I've never actually set eyes on the Qu'ran, let alone read it. So I rely on the common knowledge that Islam holds Jesus to be merely a phrophet, whereas I am convicted that He was God the Son.

[magicmiles]

all over the place like a wild womans whiskers.

Did you just make that up? I certainly haven't heard it before.

It should read "all over the place like a mad woman's shit". That one, I've heard hundreds of times.

I heard it somewhere once years ago, I think it's an amusing image.

[magicmiles]

Given you don't believe in anydeity, why be so focused on Christianity? Why not poke some fun at Islam and Mohammad?

In my case, at least, two reasons:

1)  I am far more familiar with Christianity than I am with Islam.

2)  In the country that I live in (the United States), it is not the Muslims who:
   a.  Are in the 75-80% majority;
   b.  Have millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal; and
   c.  Are working like dogs to turn our nation into a theocracy and largely succeeding at it.

At a risk of evoking the 'one true scotsman' response, I'd have thought that if Christians really did make up 75-80% of the USA Population then you'd have been living in a theocracy for many years already. Having said that, I don't have a good handle on how your democracy functions.

How's the job hunting, btw?

[magicmiles]

I have to wonder, and I am not trying to be an asshole, but what exactly makes the Westboro Baptist church "bona-fide nutjobs" as opposed to the Australian Presbyterian Church?

To my knowledge none of our congregations go about preaching that God hates homosexuals. The folk at WBC somehow read the bible and come up with a message of hate rather than a messgae of love, and redemption for those that seek it. They seem to be ignorant of the fact that without the death of Jesus on the cross they have the same chance as anyone of living with God - zero.
I know that opens the bible up to much skepticism, but I think its unjustified.

What objection can one believer have to another, if both base their beliefs off of the same scriptures? In what way has the Westboro Baptist church behaved in a way that is NOT supported by the Bible?

See above. Picketing funerals of deceased soldiers..it just takes the message of the bible and craps all over it. Jesus went and loved the outcasts of society. He didn't condone sin, but he didn't condemn sinners. He told them to repent. Thw WBC folk seem to just condemn without trying to even explain the message of the cross. And it's not as though they aren't aware of it...their website appears to have links to the Westminster Confession of Faith ( I couldn't confirm as my adobe is stuffed ). They seem to cherry pick bible pasages with no regard for context and use them to preach a horrible message of hate.

I agree that they are nutjobs, but in all honesty, I don't know how a believer can protest. If your objection is that they make other believers look bad, I would say that is actually unfair to them, since they are just doing what their Bible tells them to.

No...they're not doing what the bible tells them to. Not even close.

It's the book itself that contains many of the hateful proclamations spewed by WBC. Unless you are willing to admit that the parts of the Bible which would lend support to their statements are in fact wrong, I'm not sure where you have any room to object. If you are in fact willing to reject parts of the Bible that you feel are wrong, then I have to ask, why would you accept any of it? On what basis can a believer determine which parts of the word of God are not true?

Perhaps you can specify which passages you have in mind, and I'll be happy to give my perspective.

 Unless your Bible does not include any rape, murder, theft, slavery, racism, sexism, ethnic cleansing, human/animal sacrifice, or global genocide, all done on God's command, I'm not sure you really have any room to criticize the WBC. You believe in the same wicked book and worship the same heartless God they do.

Again...lets look at some specific stories, events, and discuss them. So long as you don't mind that I can take a while to respond to posts.

[magicmiles]

I detect the initial symptoms of Fatwa Envy (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fatwa_envy)

Now here is a question for you. Why don't you have a dig at Islam? They are just one god away from being total atheists.

It's only Christianity I believe, and therefore I am interested in discussing my faith. Whereas atheists believe in no Gods, but seem to attack mostly the God of the JC bible. But since my OP I have gotten some good perspective on why that is.

[magicmiles]

I’ll take a stab at it.

I live in a community with a significant Muslim population, and a significant Christian population and a solid Jewish community and a growing Buddhist community. 

Most of the Christians and Muslims who I know in my neighborhood are people busy with their lives.  They work and raise their families and support their kids in school.  They lobby our (openly gay) City Council member for more green space and the expansion of a local playground for our kids.  They celebrate their holidays with extended family.  Some Christians eat the body of Christ on a weekly basis, while others wave their arms in the air and clap their hands and sing during their times of worship.  Some Muslims I know feel that they need to pray at very specific times of the day, while others feel that if they get their five prayers in, the specifics times don’t matter.  And those with busy schedules sometimes double up on prayers.  I live in a progressive community, so I don’t really know many fundamentalist Christians who want to assassinate doctors who practice abortion, and I don’t know any Muslims who want to punish the infidels.  I don’t personally know any Westboro Baptist types, and I don’t know any Al Qaida types. 

I don’t really see a lot of difference in the communities that I know.  There is so much diversity within both Christianity and Islam, that any stereotype of either group would represent only a small portion of adherents.   But I see a lot of overlap in terms of practice.  I mean, they both draw from the same set of texts, and the same set of stories.  And I generally don’t begrudge anyone their festivals and traditions. 

But I have to admit that Eid al-Adha makes me squeamish on multiple levels.  First of all, there are a bunch of Halal meat stores in my neighborhood, and there are few things that I enjoy less than watching men walking down the sidewalk carrying dead goats (with faces) over their shoulders to bring home for the family feasts.  I don’t eat meat, but I admit I am not nearly as offended by watching Thanksgiving shoppers buying wrapped up butterball turkeys. 

But it is not just the dead goats.  It is the reason for the celebration. 

So Abraham was told by God to go and kill his son. (Christians and Muslims differ on which son it was.  Muslims believe it was the son of Hagar, while Christians believe it was the son of Sara.  But other than that, it is the same story.)  So Abraham, who wanted kids so much, and supposedly loved them greatly, follows God’s instructions, and gets all set to sacrifice one of his sons.  Then, as we all know, at the last minute, God, in his great mercy, lets him off the hook and lets him kill a goat instead. 

Christians and Muslims and Jews all incorporate this story into their faith, but for some reason Jews and Muslims have special holidays around it. 

Most Christians cherry pick the Bible, and don’t make as big a deal out of the story as their other Abrahamic counterparts.  As a matter of fact, it seems to me that even most Christians get kind of squeamish about the story, and don’t emphasize it a lot.   But for Muslims, it is the biggest example of God’s mercy, and one of the biggest holidays of the year. 

Off to work.  Wont’ get to respond to anything here until this evening.  So if you address me and I don’t respond, please don’t be offended.

Thanks for taking the time to respond in such depth. And don't worry, I am rarely offended. ( I did have a dummy spit on here last year but that was rare for me )

[magicmiles]

Mm,
Can you explain why you think Muslim irrational thought is more dangerous than Christianity?

Perhaps you are confusing secular societies vs nonsecular so cities.....not a difference in holy books as a source of danger

Hi there

Quite simply, I see the opposite of danger in Christianity, eternally speaking. Any other worldview has terrible eternal consequences.

In the current world, I cannot speak from any real knowledge as I haven't read the Qu'ran.

[magicmiles]

Muslims have 7 levels of heaven, so you can be sure you will get to the lowest one, if you are nice to orphans.

Christianity doesn't know its tits from its arse.

You can talk, your kangaravatar isn't even up the right way

[sun_king]

It's only Christianity I believe, and therefore I am interested in discussing my faith. Whereas atheists believe in no Gods, but seem to attack mostly the God of the JC bible. But since my OP I have gotten some good perspective on why that is.

Can you give a link to any recent posts where you had felt that Islam was let off easily? By recent, I mean since about the time you joined this forum.

And I stand by my statement, a muslim is just one god away from being an atheist. If you wish to convince only us, it would be discrimination, after all they are about 99.99903825% atheists and may appreciate some efforts from you.

[magicmiles]

Islam does get slammed here when it appears, but just coincidentally, the overwhelmingly obvious  geographical and cultural basis for faith (so necessarily denied by theists in classic cognitive dissonance) that virtually guarantees a beautifully obvious correlation between where you are born and what faith you are likely to believe, also comes into play in that few posters are from countries that breed islamics.

I see we have a recent Indonesian poster..he gave an interesting perspective earlier in the thread.

Which theist can absolutely say the man/woman who murders their family kids friends neighbours etc  "because god commanded them to" is wrong? 

Interesting question. I don't really have an answer. Based on everything I know of God and what is in the bible I would never bel;ieve it personally.

because jesus decided to come again here, and anyone chosing to come to save the world via Kingaroy Qld is an idiot and definitely not a saviour.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387903/John-Miller-Mary-Suzanne-Luck-claim-Jesus-Mary-Magdalene.html

He is the charismatic preacher who claims to be Jesus Christ returned to Earth.
She, meanwhile, tells followers she is the repentant prostitute Mary Magdalene, the woman who first saw the risen Messiah standing by the empty tomb.

 

Just up the road from me as it happens...there will be no doubt about the return of Jesus, according to the bible. Every knee shall bow and tongue confess.

[magicmiles]

It's only Christianity I believe, and therefore I am interested in discussing my faith. Whereas atheists believe in no Gods, but seem to attack mostly the God of the JC bible. But since my OP I have gotten some good perspective on why that is.

Can you give a link to any recent posts where you had felt that Islam was let off easily? By recent, I mean since about the time you joined this forum.

And I stand by my statement, a muslim is just one god away from being an atheist. If you wish to convince only us, it would be discrimination, after all they are about 99.99903825% atheists and may appreciate some efforts from you.

It's more that I don't recall seeing Islam discussed on any posts, but I certainly don't read them all.

[magicmiles]

MagicMiles, have a look at this page:

Topic: Proof of Islam, Last message

The search algorithms on this site have no way to search an individual member's messages.  I had  one on Mohammed's pedophilia documenting his comments on the subject from the 2 Moslem biographies of him that are considered official.  I thought it was good, but now I can't find it.

cheers

[magicmiles]

Was it Christians who flew into your towers?

Legitimate question. First of all, we've had a couple of batshit crazy muslims in my two and half years here. We weren't any nicer to them then we have been to Olivianus, thought we should not have been. They weren't quite that bad.

And we had a batshit crazy president tell us that god told him to attack Iraq in response, an action that eventually killed over 4,400 servicemen and women, along with almost 1,500 foreign contractors, close to 350 journalists, and at least 600,000 Iraqi's, many of them innocent bystanders.

So we concentrate on the crazy white guys. It keeps our adrenaline running.

Without a doubt, the muslim god is included on our list of unbelievable characters. But apparently most of them are so busy praying five times a day or something that they don't have time for us.

Besides, our "What are you listening to now?" threads would be full of guys saying "Oh, we've got a great muezzin and he's up on the tower singing a sonorous tune right now, and it's got a real catchy beat." Not what we want to hear.

always enjoy your posts, PP, thankyou for contributing

[Fiji]

It's only Christianity I believe, and therefore I am interested in discussing my faith. Whereas atheists believe in no Gods, but seem to attack mostly the God of the JC bible. But since my OP I have gotten some good perspective on why that is.

If it makes you feel any better, Allah does claim authorship of the bible, so, by pointing out crazy stuff in the bible we're technically attacking islam as well. Though islam does have one up on christianity in that respect. There's a verse that says that later verses trump earlier ones. So, a contradiction in the bible is a problem for a christian but a muslim can just shrug and ignore the earlier verse.

[sun_king]

MagicMiles, have a look at this page:

Topic: Proof of Islam, Last message

cheers

Are you saying that it was not sufficently mocked?

[magicmiles]

MagicMiles, have a look at this page:

Topic: Proof of Islam, Last message

cheers

Are you saying that it was not sufficently mocked?

lol, no. 'Cheers' just means 'thanks' ( in Australia )