Islamist is neologism that has been created and now is in the common lexicon. It is usually associated most with the phrase ‘Islamic Terrorist’ to differentiate it from regular Muslims who, for the most part, aren’t terrorists.
The only good Politically correct person
is a properly cooked one.
:smack:There I go again! The Thought and Speech Control people are battering down my front door. Gotta go.
ORLY?
Ever been to the Middle East?
What you’'l find is hundreds of millions of people, regular people, simply going about their lives. Doctors, taxi drivers, homemakers, computer techs, farmers, peasants, whatever, all minding their own business and trying to make it in the world and trying to feed their families and not bothering anyone. Just like everywhere else.
Don’t be ridiculous.
Now this thread is fucked.
Of the 45 groups on the State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, 25 are Islamist groups. (There are a few more, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front, that primarily consist of Muslims or people of Muslim background but are nationalist or Marxist groups). That’s a majority, but I don’t know if it’s most. And even if it were most, the question would be, what of it? It still doesn’t tell you anything about the religion or what the majority of religious believers believe.
On the morning of June 5, 1995 I suffered from a traumatic brain injury due to an automobile accident when I was going to work. This is what I was told: “Sometime after the ambulance picked me up, my heart stopped and I was sustained via CPR. At the hospital I was entubated and put on a ventilator. Five days after I was entubated life support was discontinued. I continued to breathe.” On July 3, 1995, I became self aware. There was a point of time where I was literally clinically dead and I ceased to exist. If I had not been told, I would have no knowledge of anything that transpired in the month of June. I assume that had I not been revived I would have never known that I had died.
It’s possible with a plexidectomy.
The light keeps on going; a better analogy would be “What happens to the data on a hard drive if you drop it into molten steel ?” *
And you decided our fate in a microsecond, eh ? 
The acceptance that our lives have about as much meaning as mold growing on a piece of bread, seems to inspire nothing but a fatalistic nihilism. It’s not surprising that the world is looking so fucked at times, when the one thing that unites us is either feared or ignored in most cases.
Did the experience change the way you look at yourself and others? Did you have a change of perspective?
Where do you go when you die? I dunno, where were you before you were born? Do you remember any of it? Did you have any sense of the passage of time? Did you wander eternity in limbo?
Nope. Because you didn’t exist. After you die, you won’t exist.
The way I like to think about it is that I’m immortal. The universe began when I was able to perceive it, and it’ll be gone when I no longer can. I won’t be in some place hanging out in the dark or contemplating my navel for eternity or living in agony or bliss. There will be no concept of the passage of time. I will simply cease to be, and since I no longer exist, I obviously won’t care about it.
One question about those who believe that their ‘essence’ will carry on in some form, that they will be reunited with loved ones in an afterlife: Which ‘you’ will it be? Humans change all through their lives. My daughter was a radically different person when she was 3 - a person she can’t even remember or relate to. Is that 3 year old gone forever? My grandfather developed Alzheimers in the last decade of his life, and became a very different person than he was before. Old memories were erased, old patterns of behavior and emotion gone. The person I knew at the end was completely disconnected from the person I knew as a boy. He didn’t even have the continuity of memory left to define him. So, which one of my grandfathers makes it to the afterlife? Neither one of them wanted to die.
A more interesting question, posed by Dr. Frank Tipler, is what would happen if in some future time a supercomputer could be built which would randomly recreate every possible sequence of neurons and pathways in an artificial brain, and it happened to create an exact duplicate of my brain today. Would I ‘wake up’ as if I had been sleeping? Would that brain perceive itself as being a continuously alive version of me who had just been in a long coma?
It seems to me that this would probably be true. I don’t believe in a soul, so I have to think that what makes me ‘me’, is the sum total of my experiences, memories, brain structures, and unique physiological responses of my body (release of endorphins, etc). If I’m put under general anaesthesia and all that stops, when I wake up I still think of me as me, because all the connections are there. My brain just starts operating as it did before, and that gives me the perception of continuous existence.
If this is the case, then it’s entirely possible that you will ‘die’, and one day you will ‘wake up’ when your brain is recreated. In fact, all of the ‘you’s’ could wake up - if someone recreates your brain structure exactly as it existed when you were five, then the five year old ‘you’ will have gone to bed one night, and then become awake at some time in the far future, with no perception of any passage of time.
More than you can possibly imagine! I had a very long recovery, the most of five years. The first two I did not exist without full-time assistance. After four years I was able to go out into the world all by myself. The most stunning revelation was the fact that absolutely nothing I thought depended on me stopped due to my absence and I was humbled by the fact that most of the world never noticed I was gone.
When the rest of the world ceases to say your name, it is as if you have never existed at all.
Whenever a relative or celebrity dies I think of my own personal motto:
Death only affects the living.
The passing of a person affects the living (conscious beings) by triggering emotions; what would have been if they were still alive, who will I ask now that he/she is dead, etc. People say things like, “What would your relative say if they saw you do this/that?”
If I have a heart attack today, and someone rips my head off my corpse, will I be caring? I simply won’t be able to care, but the guests at an open casket funeral would. (!)
One of the things most people have a hard time accepting about death is just that: You are no longer able to care and neither are your friends/family members who have died. You want to believe they can see and watch over you and actually guide you.
I think that’s a normal “want” for everyone to have, but it’s also a bit self-centered, isn’t it? If you think someone is dead and can actually watch over you and guide you, well who the heck are you anyway? And why are you so important? And, if you believe in the heaven/hell deal, why is your friend or relative so righteous?
I only hope some nice flowers or a fruit-bearing tree can grow outta me when the worms come for my corpse’s ass. 
There are different kinds of blindness, it seems once again I have failed to get to the bottom of the Dope’s pedantic well.
Or do you think people born without eyeballs see black?
I am glad you are ok now, I was thinking that most people who experience a clinical death are changed for the better. Thanks for replying.
I have exactly the same theories of life and death–entirely materialistic. We are automatons made of flesh, our thoughts and dreams are chemical reactions in our brains, and when we get happy feelings from looking at the ones we love it is merely dopamine and serotonin activating the pleasure centers in our brains. When we die these chemical reactions stop and we cease to be as a self, and our bodies rot.
However–I am a decidedly sunny person. You don’t have to be deluded about the nature of self and life to enjoy those blasts of dopamine.
Even if someone is a believer, they can always read this and find peace with dying. As for me, I hope there is a heaven, I also hope that if there isn’t a heaven, somehow science can bring me back to life in a science made body ( couldn’t be someone elses as they would be brought back first ) when I was say 19 (I’m 19 now). And even if I don’t live longer, read the quoted sentence in bold.
I’d quibble a bit, but this is the wrong thread. Besides, someone like Tamerlane would be the go-to-guy to talk about the various strain of political-Islam.
That aside, I would like to say that it’s awesome to see someone learn from mistakes and clear up their ignorance. Kudos to you.
What happens to the flame when a candle is blown out? I imagine that’s pretty much what happens, until we found out otherwise.
You know, I’ve seen that argument a lot over the last few years, esp. those commercials from the US religious right that boil down to “if there’s no God, then I might as well kill you”, and an equation that godlessness means a- or immorality.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s absolute tosh.
I’m an extremely moral person, and kinder that any number of devout Christians I could name. Of course, when I stop to think about it and consider why I should be so when there’s really no consequences or judgment, I must conclude that it’s ultimately absurd of me - then again, as my dear Cyrano would say, “it’s all the greater and more beautiful for being pointless” (note : apparently, the official translation of that line is “I fought for lost cause and fruitless quest”, which just goes to show that faithfully translating verse is a bitch :p).
But when all is said and done, not being a jerk, or in your own words, not being a fatalistic nihilist is its own reward : we are kind, because it feels nice to be. We hope and dream and ignore the gaping void, because it’s the only way to function. And there’s no need for a Daddy in the sky to compel us to be united.
Whatever the hell tosh means, I’m pretty sure I agree with you. And in fact I’ve found quite the opposite to be true. Back when I was a Christian I was much more blase about this life and morality. The real reward was waiting for me after I die, and if I did anything bad, Jesus would forgive me as long as I kept praying to him. They won’t admit it in a direct confrontation, but through casual conversation I’ve found that nearly every Christian I’ve discussed this with feels pretty much the same way.