But would Sudan suddenly be a better country if religion got out of the courts? Seems to me what we’re lamenting here is simply that there are countries which aren’t democracies. That some of them are Islamic is basically a red herring.
Oh come on, **Der Trihs ** is that crazy relative that comes to a holiday dinner, expounds yet another crazy thing and to the amazement of a new family member or guest is largely ignored by the all the members of the family that have been around for past diatribes. We come to expect these little gems of his and largely allow the conversation just to move on.
I feel as though **Sal ** or **Priceguy ** and I can exchange ideas and maybe learn from each other. Do you expect to learn anything from Der Trihs in these debates at this point?
The only thing I learn from him is a little more about him occasionally. This is different in the Café, so it would be like enjoying his company for the football game on the same day of the dinner. I had an Great Uncle like him, except he was a crazy old bigot instead. We were fine talking sports and stuff, but watch out for anything that smacked of foreign policy or history.
tagos, your cites basically make my point. Imperfect though Jordan’s treatment of women may be, it is still light years ahead of Saudi Arabia’s or Iran’s. That’s my basic point – that “sharia” covers a very wide variety of legal arrangements. Whether in Jordan sharia trumps the constitution or the reverse, I’m unable to say. Suffice it to say that the existence of sharia has not ruled out a constitution that stresses the equality of persons.
But is it really the fault of the religion itself? Did Muhammed specifically address what were acceptable names for teddy bears? Is it written in the Q’ran? My guess is that it’s the practicioners of the religion that are to blame.
I never made the claim that Hinduism was a “pacifist” religion. That was Liberal’s assertion. However, given the context of the discussion we were having, I wanted to draw a disctinction between the historical (and current) track record of predominantly Hindu societies as contrasted with Christian or Islamic ones. My point was that, as contrasted with those two religions, Hindu societies have a far better record of tolerance and non-aggression (not pacifism, per se) with regards to non-coreligionists. And your equivalence of the bloodiness of Indian and Mongol history is simply asinine.
Yes - a literal reading. However, your calumny against Hinduism was predicated not on the literal text, but rather:
If you really think that this is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, then I again re-iterate that your understanding of it is quite shallow and ill-informed.
As I said earlier, Hinduism is not a pacifist religion, and the Bhagavad Gita is not a pacifist text. However, going back to my original point about Hinduism being less intolerant than Christianity or Islam, can you find an equivalent to the verse I quoted to Der Trihs (post #56) in the Bible or the Koran?
Well, in Judaism there is the concept of the “Noahide laws” - in essence, any non-Jew who obeys cetain limited moral rules (no murder or stealing, that sort of thing) is considered ‘equally righteous’ to an observent Jew.
The term comes from the fact that Noah was righteous, and he wasn’t a Jew (Jews didn’t exist in his day, nor had the Jewish laws been handed down). There are certain commandments God gave to Noah in the OT, and they are binding on everyone - whereas the whole litany of commandments mentioned in the OT is only binding on Jews.
So the Old Testiment, filled with blood and thunder, is also the font of equality - at least, potentially. The larger point is that one can usually pick out bits good and bad from religious works; religious people who are good focus on the good bits, and religious people who are bad focus on the bad bits.
The whole argument strikes me as highly silly. Naturally, religion is not the equivalent of “athiesm”, as athiesm isn’t, by itself, a positive program for anything - it is merely a negation of belief in a diety. However, no-one is only an athiest alone, everyone has, in addition to athiesm, other beliefs in how society ought to be run, the relationship of the individual to society and to other individuals, etc. In these other beliefs, the athiest is just as likely to support measures kind or cruel, moral or immoral, as the theist. The theist who is into wahhabism is as likely to support atrocious acts as the athiest who is into communism.
And this is a mug’s game. What is a “Hindu” society? Is it a country that is officially a Hindu state? Well, there’s only one of those (Nepal). Do we look at the history of such countries only since 1947 or do we get to go back centuries? Even if we stay within those borders, the idea that you can label Indian society as a whole, as a societal characteristic as tolerant and non-aggressive is bizarre (what do you get to call “aggression” anyway?). Maybe you could conclude that the Indian government has been more tolerant and less aggressive towards minority groups (“non-aggression” would still be bizarre).
That’s a rather interesting thing to say. So you can prove conclusively that throughout millenia of history, Mongols spilled more blood than Indians? How shall we measure? By numbers of individuals killed or by gallons of blood? Any serious student of human history can only conclude that people have always been equally bloody, regardless of what “society’s” label you can put on them.
Which I argue is a perfectly legitimate approach to take to a text.
Calumny! Calumny! Dire calumny! You make it very hard to take anything you say seriously.
And I’m sure you’re the master of textural and philosophical understanding.
And how interesting is it exactly to trade scriptural quotations? What does it prove? Does that verse change the essential nature of a person just because he labels himself a Hindu and the Bhagavad Gita is recognized as a Hindu text? People are people, and an honest understanding of history would show you that people aren’t really altered on a fundamental level just because of their local sky-god myths.
The idea that a society is somehow fundamentally altered because of a book that individuals regard as magical is really rather dubious. Societal conditions have to do with economics, politics, environmental factors, trade, and other concrete factors. The magic books are praised by all, but if what they say becomes inconvenient, impractical, impossible, or unpopular, well-informed and non-shallow understandings are easily discovered.
Seems like the Islamic world is about 400 years behind the West wrt human rights. Since that religion is about 600 years newer than Christianity, maybe things will shape up sometime in the next 200 years. God willing, of course.
Actually, I should have said “300 years behind”. We were still burning witches 400 years ago. It might take another 300 years to catch up (when Islam is ~1700 years old).
Hmm, so what you want is a coherent argument that things wouldn’t be better in your hypothetical fantasy reality?
I’m sorry I’m at a loss. I’m pretty certain that things will go the way you want them to in your hypothetical fantasy reality. I can’t come up with a coherent argument to the contrary.
Oh, come on! You might just as well say that 60 years ago, the West was 2,000 years behind the West with regard to human rights. Try to figure out the math on that one.
I wasn’t completely serious, but there is some truth to this. There is no reason to assume that all cultures “advance” wrt human rights at the same time. The West went through a period of enlightenment that spawned a revolution in Democracy and Human Rights. With hope, the Islamic world will have something similar happen. Only God knows when, though. But there isn’t anything inherent in Islam that makes the subjugation of women inevitable.
No. If you understand me correctly, the atheists need show only one good atheist organization to invalidate the claim that atheism is inherently violent or evil or what have you.
