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I'll go even further to state that the only issue caused by our differences in religious beliefs was that she kept bringing it up because it bothered her. I never made any attempt to make her feel belittled or dumb for her beliefs. I respected them and did my best to find common ground. I mean, like I said, I kept seeing her for another like three weeks. She was a great person and I really enjoyed being around her.
But at the end of the day, she wanted kids (EDIT: as in, she knew she wanted kids one day and I don't know if I do, and that was basically a deal breaker) and kept hoping I would completely change my belief system, and I wasn't ever going to be able to fully connect with someone who couldn't understand that I didn't need religion to feel fulfilled.
Post by SupeЯfuЯЯyanimal on Mar 30, 2016 1:21:58 GMT -5
5. Again I just don't see the stats where Christians are doing as much harm in the world at this point in time. Are you saying our foreign policy on Christianity? Jake Jortles
No, I was simply pointing out that a culture doesn't lose it's ability to become violent or do awful things simply because it's people become less religious. No, our foreign policy isn't Christian at all. You could argue to what degree people's religious beliefs have had an effect but NO. There are plenty of people that think America is blessed by God, which gives them solace and an excuse to turn their head when we start unjustified wars. That certainly happens but it's not Christianity's fault and it's not why we start wars.
You brought up a hypothetical of modern Christians acting as they did in the past. I countered with an example of a country that would presumably be filled with these people and pointed out how they act regardless of your hypothetical. I gave a recent example of a war they started, based on lies and xenophobia, that cost half a million people their lives. I'm saying that maybe focusing on people's religion is losing site of the bigger picture.
To be absolutely clear, I'm in no way trying to argue that Christianity is doing as much harm as Islam or vice-versa. I don't even see the point of that.
I think we need to talk more about your last sentence. It promotes the talking point used a bunch here that "bad people do bad things." This implies that certain people are somehow inherently bad. What does that even mean? Do you think people come out of the womb "bad" and ready to blow up civilians.
People are conditioned in many, many ways. One major conditioner is Religion in my opinion. This idea of "bad people" is starting to make less and less sense to me the more I type. What about Nazis? Was every Nazi just randomly a bad person? Or were they influenced and conditioned by a dogmatic set of values and ideas? Surely, those people weren't just born bad.
I wasn't saying people were inherently bad. This all goes back to your idea of the evolution of Christianity. All I was pointing out was that people from predominately Christian nations have done plenty to justify shitty behavior without their religion being a dominant factor. That's all. It was comment on human nature in general. Nothing more.
Yes, I agree that religion plays a factor in conditioning people. That's obvious.
But socioeconomic factors and being raised in a cycle of violence leads people to extremities. They feel helpless, victimized, alienated. That's were propaganda and radical interpretation of Islam factors in the discussion. The same as a cult. You take people that are missing something and promise to fulfill it.
Even then, you're just talking in broad ideas, not personal motives or indeterminates like an individual's psychology.
Finally, if bad people are just doing bad shit, and more Muslims are currently doing the worst shit, wouldn't THAT be a tad bit racist. Before I go on, I understand you are going to clarify why I'm not understanding that viewpoint and am not calling you a racist at all. I'm just going through this in my head. But wouldn't you be saying that, at this moment, more Muslims are inherently bad people since they are carrying out most of the terror attacks? When the stats show that Christians and Muslims are far more likely to be anti-gay, are we saying that Atheists are just "good people" inherently, or that Atheists just don't have to struggle with being raised with an awful ideology?
If you want to have a debate about it, lets do it. If you misunderstand something I say, ask for clarification. But implying that my thought process is racist when most of what you are bringing up isn't even relevant to that section of my post is kinda shitty. This has nothing to do with predestination. Unless we want to have a philosophic discussion on brain abnormalities in serial killers or something.
I don't even think of things in the context of "who's doing the worst shit RIGHT NOW." That gets us nowhere. I look at the situation and try to understand the history of it. TRY being the key word there.
I'm not good at breaking up the conversation into quotes for some reason. Trust that I read everything you wrote, and I'm going to respond in order of importance to me.
1. I know that nothing about you is racist. I thought I put in enough disclaimers and also admitted that I was actively misunderstanding something you were saying. I think we agree that "bad people do bad shit" is not convincing. We disagree on how they are influenced.
2. I don't think Pakistani women and children are a symbol of the west. I consider this a major stretch. They told us exactly why they targeted those people. You can find rampant justification for the attacks in the Quran. You think this strapped up suicide bomber is looking at this as an act of symbolism? The interesting thing here is that if the terrorists came out and said, "we have been oppressed for years and are poor... this is why we are doing this" you would jump all over it. But of course that is not what they say.
Your claims of income and grievances make no sense. All of these variables can be knocked down one by one.
- Terrorists are well educated
- Terrorists have more opportunity
- Terrorists are not poor
Just look at the biography of the 19 Hijackers and tell me they are all poor, oppressed people.
Why are there no Pakistani Christian suicide bombers? They deal with the same grievances, right?
Explain a situation where ISIS is able to recruit a white male from California.
3. Criticizing faith based ideology is a good thing to me. That is my point. I think I'm going to remain stubborn on this one no matter what. I think its a real problem that goes further than terrorism.
4. I guess we disagree about history and the present. I care about what is happening now and in recent times. What the two religions were doing 500 years ago is largely irrelevant to today. Although, neither religion has much positive ground to stand on anyways.
Post by Jake Jortles on Mar 30, 2016 10:22:58 GMT -5
I just want to mention that it seems like we have come to a point where we both think that religion and geopolitical factors play a role, we just disagree on the weighting of each variable.
So say I think Islam/Religious Dogma deserves 70% and you say it deserves 30%. Maybe that's not fair, but if it is I think its clear that it shouldn't be so difficult for people to have this conversation. And I don't think this one has been so far, which is cool.
3. Criticizing faith based ideology is a good thing to me. That is my point. I think I'm going to remain stubborn on this one no matter what. I think its a real problem that goes further than terrorism.
4. I guess we disagree about history and the present. I care about what is happening now and in recent times. What the two religions were doing 500 years ago is largely irrelevant to today. Although, neither religion has much positive ground to stand on anyways.
I'm working and can't get into the longer points properly but I wanted to address these two real quick.
3. Read back over what I said about being critical about other people's faith. Let it sink in. You with me? Okay, now remember the times over the last couple of days that you were upset and felt people didn't want to discuss things with you? This is why. My main point was simply to have some common courtesy when your talking to people about their deeply held beliefs. If that's something you cannot do, then I don't know what to tell you. Again, this is were atheist run into problems and people get so sick of hearing them speak.
I never said don't criticize ideology. I didn't even say don't enter into debates with religious people. I said be respectful and don't say things like "jesus isn't a cracker, dumbass!" Because it will get you nowhere.
4. Where are you getting 500 years from that statement? Where are you getting that I was only talking about religion? Jubus, you're way to one-track minded. By "look at the history," I simply meant get an understanding of the events from a historical perspective. How you could bend that around and find away to disagree with is it bizarre to me.
3. Criticizing faith based ideology is a good thing to me. That is my point. I think I'm going to remain stubborn on this one no matter what. I think its a real problem that goes further than terrorism.
4. I guess we disagree about history and the present. I care about what is happening now and in recent times. What the two religions were doing 500 years ago is largely irrelevant to today. Although, neither religion has much positive ground to stand on anyways.
I'm working and can't get into the longer points properly but I wanted to address these two real quick.
3. Read back over what I said about being critical about other people's faith. Let it sink in. You with me? Okay, now remember the times over the last couple of days that you were upset and felt people didn't want to discuss things with you? This is why. My main point was simply to have some common courtesy when your talking to people about their deeply held beliefs. If that's something you cannot do, then I don't know what to tell you. Again, this is were atheist run into problems and people get so sick of hearing them speak.
I never said don't criticize ideology. I didn't even say don't enter into debates with religious people. I said be respectful and don't say things like "jesus isn't a cracker, dumbass!" Because it will get you nowhere.
4. Where are you getting 500 years from that statement? Where are you getting that I was only talking about religion? Jubus, you're way to one-track minded. By "look at the history," I simply meant get an understanding of the events from a historical perspective. How you could bend that around and find away to disagree with is it bizarre to me.
3. I'm fine with what you're saying here, parsing out the differences between making fun of the cracker and labeling someone a bigot/criticizing motives isn't important to me.
4. "look at the history" is usually used to say, "well the Christians were worse than Muslims x amount of years ago... explain that!" 500 years was just a placeholder, but I thought you were talking about the history of Islam, terrorism, problems of the middle east. Many people would prefer to go back a far time to understand the full processes that lead to the current problem. Relax with your "one-track minded" bs. We are responding to a lot of points per post. Was completely reasonable for me to misunderstand what you said the way that I did.