Ever hear the phrase “God-King” ? “Personality cult” ? Mao and what’s-his-name in NK qualify.
There are plenty of religions without gods; a religion is a belief system based on faith instead of facts or logic, with a few other characteristics. Generally, a tendency towards ritual, authoritarianism, some other things.
Who is it who opposes condoms and vaccinations for cervical cancer ? That’s right; the religious. A truly religious person cares nothing for how much death and suffering they inflict on the world, what matters - ALL that matters - is his or her religion.
Where in this thread have I said “best”? I’ve been saying “only.” The only speculation here is on your behalf, in that, absent the Church, another organization would have taken over that role.
I can see how science benefits religion. Through science, churchs and hospitals are built, and through science doctors are trained. In what way does religion directly benefit science?
Actually, I speculate that, if the money had been more evenly distributed instead of being concentrated with one monolithic entity, there would have been many smaller benefactors with a more diverse range of ideas.
It has been argued that the obsession with Talmudic scholarship in Judaism is largely responsible for the disproportionate representation of Jews in the sciences, just for one example.
gum, I find you amusing. So you’re saying Muhammad had this planned all along. Right down to the Jewish colonisation of Palestine and the creation of Hamas…you think he was in with the Illuminati?
See, these ideas could have been really originial. Only if they had not been written some six hundred years earlier by a Muslim Arab known as Ibn Khaldun. Thing is, Ibn Khaldun did not pin the cause to Islam. He claimed that dynasties and empires follow such a pattern, and often use religion as a tool to forward their empirial aims.
Your first mistake is assuming that all what Muslims do is motivated by Islam. Your next mistake is to assume that all what Muslims do reflects the true nature of Islam, or stems from a uniform agreed upon interpretation of its true nature. You’re wrong on both counts. Muslims, like other human beings, take into account factors other than religion. And Muslims do not agree on the true meaning of Islam. Your post on murders committed by Muslims is a case in point. Most of those dead are Muslims, killed by other Muslims, who prefer a less-than-peace-loving version of Muhammad. Ibn Khaldun would have been quick to point out that those bastards are happy to profess Islam in justifying their actions.
Ahh, well allow me to make things as simple as possible.
Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine. More to the point, my guess is as good as yours. It’s not like we’re ever going to have an inkling one way or another.
The problem with your question is that religion never got added to humanity in the first place. The human race was born with a capacity–and a tendency–to believe in religion. Theoretically, you could introduce religion to the feline, canine, or plant world. You couldn’t introduce it to the human world, however, because it was there to start with, and far too much human history has been influenced by religion for either of us to step back and say, “Well what if it had never existed in the first place?”
Yeah, it should be four. I guess my Linguistics professor was right when he said, “I realize some of you have a math phobia; that’s why you’re majoring in Linguistics, after all.”
From the constitutional article cited above:
Zorastrians get one rep.
Assyrians and Chaldean Christians are represented by one rep.
Armenian Christians in the north get one rep.
Armenian Christians in the south get one rep.
Total reps: 4.
Indirectly, by providing inspiration and even material support to some scientists, who want to improve our understanding of God’s creation. Gregor Mendel was one so inspired, so for that matter were Averroes, Avicenna, and pretty much all of the early Muslim astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians to whom we owe so much.
But religion does not directly illuminate the scientific process, often actually obscuring it; you’re right.
Vatican Observatory(ies) in Italy and Arizona.
Some religious groups see Genesis in the Bible as allegory and have just as much curiousity in the sciences as non-religious scientists.
Bolding mine.
The Catholic Church has narrowed that 400 year gap considerably down to a negligible amount of time, once they took their blinders off. Morals and ethics based on scientific discovery though, are a total different ball of wax.
Brings up a good question. How long ago did we evolve the capacity for faith? If we had this capacity for faith for thousands, if not millions of years, why does this “faith gene” persist, and not recessed since many deem it “useless”? Could this be the beginning of a sixth sense, or just an extension of “gut instinct”?
An excellent point, and one could go even further with it, in that, if the human race had never developed religion, I don’t think it would still be the human race. Several fundamental attributes to the human character would have to be absent, among them curiosity and imagination - attributes that are vital to the advancement of science. A human race that had never imagined a god in the sky who made thunder and lightning would likely be equally unable to conceive of high pressure fronts and electrostatic discharge.
The Koran says violence is acceptable for defense, as opposed to Jesus’ saying to turn the other cheek.
The Koran also says the earth is a big place so couldn’t you have found someplace to live without fighting?
The more times I read the Koran the more it seems (to me) to say use your best judgment but God know what you’re thinking so you can’t cheat on the final exam.
P.S. Prior to 9/11 there were two Christian terrorist and one Muslim terrorist on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. But Eric Rudolph was never labeled a Christian terrorist.
Trying to use your own best judgement to interpret anything of the Koraan will lead you to be announced infidel as what happened to an ex-Professor in Cairo University (Professor Hamed Abo Nasr) couple of years ago when he tried to use his mind to interpret Koraan, and he was announced infidel and he had to ask for asylum in the Netherlands.
This is silly: proposing the existence of an instinct for something that can easily be explained without one. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors at some point realized that everybody dies, including them. The older ones really didn’t want to die, so they dreamed up this whole “life after death” thing and sold it to the rest of the tribe, which got them increased power and prestige in the group. Pretty soon it became a tradition, with the older tribesmen (and/or women) that made these claims called “preists” or whatever.
What religion is, is the longest-running, most successful scam in the history of the human race.
Which obviously would never happen because of Christian fundamentalists…
Gum you totally fail to understand the argument its not “no muslim has every done anything violent because of his faith”. Dredging up examples of Muslim Fundamentalists doing terrible things does not make your argument, for every example of Muslim Fundamentalists doing terrible things you can dredge up and example Christian, or Hindu, or Buddists Fundamentalists doing terrible things. The point is that there is nothing inherent violent about Islam anymore than any other religion, yes there are parts of the Koran that can be interpreted as condoning violence, but the same can be said of the Bible.
Bill Clinton said: ‘Our number-one threat abroad is fundamentalism, absolutism. Terror is their tactic, but it is their ideas, their hatred, their absolute certainty that they are so right that they can kill people who disagree with them — that is our enemy’
Now, I haven’t been threatened by another religion than islam.
My freedom of speech isn’t in danger by another religion than islam.
Furthermore: I’m an atheïst and I prefer * not* having to read through long, boring books like the bible and the koran.
But as someone or other said: ‘Know thy enemy’
So I’m getting to know them and I don’t like it, okay?
If you live in the states I’d say Christian Fundamentalism is a FAR bigger threat to your freedom than Islam. (Last time I checked the FCC wasn’t hiring any Muslim Fundamentalists spokesmen to control what we can and can’t watch and listen to). I mean, I know Bush and his buddies are running the war on terror pretty badly but I can’t really see Muslim Fundamentalists seizing control of the US government any time soon.
But that doesn’t change original point, saying Fundamentalism is the worst threat to U.S. interests abroad DOES not make Islam inherently more violent than any other religion (the question OP posed). If your an American living in Saudi Arabia, yeah, the main threat to you security comes from Muslims. But if your a Buddist living in certain parts of Sri Lanka then the main threat to your security comes from Hindus, if your a Muslim living in southern Nigeria you main threat is Christians, if your a catholic living certain parts N. Ireland your main threat is from protestants, …
The point is FUNDAMENTALISM in any religion is an inherently violent, intolerant, force in society. And unfortunatley it seems to be an inherent trait in humanity.