The Refuge of the Toads

Old subthreads
InfraRedBucket
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47761

Post by InfraRedBucket »

Shatterface wrote:If Myers 'The ______ Atheist' hasn't been tweeted to Hemant is ought to be.

I'm a novice Twatter: I don't know how to link a pic to a retwat but that 'What would you call me?' has to be linked to the 'horrible alt-right' tweet.
I'm not on Twitter other wise I would do it.

Here's an archive link of the page for posterity.
http://archive.is/nGqOx

MarcusAu
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47762

Post by MarcusAu »

During WWI there were plenty of examples of ill feeling towards the German people and culture.

German Sausage became Luncheon Sausage, and German Shepards, Alsations.

Also there were many cases where outright violence was committed against people of German or Japanese decent, living in Allied countries.

Perhaps things have not gotten that bad yet (though I don't live in France or Germany, so I can't really tell) - but with people living in fear, and not trusting anything their governments tell them - I could see violence escalating in rather a short space of time.

Kirbmarc
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47763

Post by Kirbmarc »

Steersman wrote:
Wonder if you ever looked at that MEMRI TV video clip from a woman Saudi journalist who kind of knocked into a cocked hat the idea that "moderates" aren't culpable, to a not insignificant degree, for the depredations of the "extremists":
Nadine Al-Budair: Whenever terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecks and the hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not represent Islam or the Muslims. Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims.

We witness people competing in an attempt to be the first to prove that everything that is happening has nothing to do with the Muslims, and that the terrorists are highway robbers and homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. We all know that the number of the homeless in Europe is very high. They sleep in the streets and beg for alms, and some of them are alcoholics or drug addicts, but we do not expect these addicts or criminals to even consider coming here and blowing up a mosque or a street in our city. It is we who blow ourselves up. It is we who blow up others.

Why do we shed our own conscience? Why do the sheikhs, the pundits, the journalists, and all the Arab officials insist upon [not] using their conscience when they point to the perpetrators? Don't these perpetrators emerge from our environment? Don't their families belong to our society? Didn't anyone you know - someone from your city, a neighbor, someone from your street, a relative, a nephew, a grandson, a father, or a mother - go to Syria or Iraq to wage Jihad? ....
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5436.htm
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/5436.htm

Delenda est
Listen closely. Read again. She's arguing against the idiots who say that "terrorism has nothing to do with Islam" and that "ISIS aren't real Muslims". Which is idiocy indeed. Terrorism has a lot to do with Islam: it's inspired by literal readings of the Quran. And terrorism has a lot to do with Saudi Arabia and the "sheiks and pundits and journalists". Saudi Arabia is basically ISIS with international recognition.

What she's saying is that Muslims need to acknowledge the many issues with Islam and stop blaming the West, which is exactly right. There's no neat distinction between "moderates" and "extremists", and even if we wanted to make such an imprecise distinction all Salafis/Wahabis would be "extremists".

I don't see what her argument has to do with your support for anti-burkini laws, unless you think that going after women in burkinis is somehow going to make Muslims acknowledge the issues within Islam...

Gumby
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47764

Post by Gumby »

Really? wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
I'm sorry about your sister-in-law. It's not guaranteed to cheer you up, but here's something that always makes me forget my troubles for a minute or two.

[yo.utube][/youtube]
The funniest part to me is that the three people he's dancing with never look at him. not once.

Also, condolences, Brive. :(

Really?
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47765

Post by Really? »

I love how PZ and his publisher had the blog post book in 2011, when atheism was everywhere! Hitchens and the other Four Horsemen were selling shitloads of books! Pharyngula was on the rise and with no end in sight!

Then Rebecca decided not to take the stairs in an Irish hotel and he had to make a choice...

Keating
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47766

Post by Keating »

I don't support burkini-bans, but I do support summary executions for anyone wearing a Thawb.

Kirbmarc
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47767

Post by Kirbmarc »

MarcusAu wrote:During WWI there were plenty of examples of ill feeling towards the German people and culture.

German Sausage became Luncheon Sausage, and German Shepards, Alsations.

Also there were many cases where outright violence was committed against people of German or Japanese decent, living in Allied countries.

Perhaps things have not gotten that bad yet (though I don't live in France or Germany, so I can't really tell) - but with people living in fear, and not trusting anything their governments tell them - I could see violence escalating in rather a short space of time.
Yeah, those things happened. And they didn't help the Allies to win the war one bit. The Japanese-American were interned and this didn't help the war effort, it only violated the civil rights of innocent people who happened to be of Japanese descent. It wasn't the US' proudest moment.

Ronald Reagan (hardly a bleeding heart liberal) admitted that the internment was a mistake and offered reparations.

Gumby
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47768

Post by Gumby »

Shatterface wrote:If Myers 'The ______ Atheist' hasn't been tweeted to Hemant is ought to be.

I'm a novice Twatter: I don't know how to link a pic to a retwat but that 'What would you call me?' has to be linked to the 'horrible alt-right' tweet.
I threw a screenshot and a link Hemant's way.

free thoughtpolice
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47769

Post by free thoughtpolice »

Some poetry even I can like:
[youtube][/youtube]

Steersman
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47770

Post by Steersman »

Kirbmarc wrote:
MarcusAu wrote:During WWI there were plenty of examples of ill feeling towards the German people and culture.

German Sausage became Luncheon Sausage, and German Shepards, Alsations.

Also there were many cases where outright violence was committed against people of German or Japanese decent, living in Allied countries.

Perhaps things have not gotten that bad yet (though I don't live in France or Germany, so I can't really tell) - but with people living in fear, and not trusting anything their governments tell them - I could see violence escalating in rather a short space of time.
Yeah, those things happened. And they didn't help the Allies to win the war one bit. The Japanese-American were interned and this didn't help the war effort, it only violated the civil rights of innocent people who happened to be of Japanese descent. It wasn't the US' proudest moment.

Ronald Reagan (hardly a bleeding heart liberal) admitted that the internment was a mistake and offered reparations.
Hardly the same kettles of fish - don't think those Japanese-Americans were out flying the Rising Sun flag on their front porches. Which seems more less exactly what wearing a burkini is.

And while I don't know if this held with the Japanese-American group, Intrepid described more than a few cases of German-Americans engaged in espionage and, if I'm not mistaken, sabotage. War kind of changes the rules somewhat.

katamari Damassi
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47771

Post by katamari Damassi »

Gumby wrote:
The funniest part to me is that the three people he's dancing with never look at him. not once.

Also, condolences, Brive. :(
I imagine his poly encounters are very much like that too.

katamari Damassi
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47772

Post by katamari Damassi »

Gumby wrote:
The funniest part to me is that the three people he's dancing with never look at him. not once.

Also, condolences, Brive. :(
I imagine his poly encounters are very much like that too.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47773

Post by Brive1987 »

Ape+lust wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
Aw, fuck.

I'm sorry, Brive, that's terrible.

Sad days :(
Thanks, also Steers, Gumby, Really?

While the circles of grief roll out in wave pattern, it is an achingly beautiful morning without a cloud in the sky.

And then there's Myers.

What an absurdly wonderful world.

Shatterface
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47774

Post by Shatterface »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
Commiserations.


Easy J
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47776

Post by Easy J »

Mister Metokur livestream:

[youtube][/youtube]

A debate with a BLM supporter

Easy J
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47777

Post by Easy J »

Shatterface wrote:If Myers 'The ______ Atheist' hasn't been tweeted to Hemant is ought to be.

I'm a novice Twatter: I don't know how to link a pic to a retwat but that 'What would you call me?' has to be linked to the 'horrible alt-right' tweet.
I twatted it at the Irish Wanker. PZ somehow blocked me before I had a Twitter account.

VickyCaramel
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47778

Post by VickyCaramel »

Kirbmarc wrote:
Steersman wrote:
Wonder if you ever looked at that MEMRI TV video clip from a woman Saudi journalist who kind of knocked into a cocked hat the idea that "moderates" aren't culpable, to a not insignificant degree, for the depredations of the "extremists":
Nadine Al-Budair: Whenever terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecks and the hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not represent Islam or the Muslims. Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims.

We witness people competing in an attempt to be the first to prove that everything that is happening has nothing to do with the Muslims, and that the terrorists are highway robbers and homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. We all know that the number of the homeless in Europe is very high. They sleep in the streets and beg for alms, and some of them are alcoholics or drug addicts, but we do not expect these addicts or criminals to even consider coming here and blowing up a mosque or a street in our city. It is we who blow ourselves up. It is we who blow up others.

Why do we shed our own conscience? Why do the sheikhs, the pundits, the journalists, and all the Arab officials insist upon [not] using their conscience when they point to the perpetrators? Don't these perpetrators emerge from our environment? Don't their families belong to our society? Didn't anyone you know - someone from your city, a neighbor, someone from your street, a relative, a nephew, a grandson, a father, or a mother - go to Syria or Iraq to wage Jihad? ....
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5436.htm
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/5436.htm

Delenda est
Listen closely. Read again. She's arguing against the idiots who say that "terrorism has nothing to do with Islam" and that "ISIS aren't real Muslims". Which is idiocy indeed. Terrorism has a lot to do with Islam: it's inspired by literal readings of the Quran. And terrorism has a lot to do with Saudi Arabia and the "sheiks and pundits and journalists". Saudi Arabia is basically ISIS with international recognition.

What she's saying is that Muslims need to acknowledge the many issues with Islam and stop blaming the West, which is exactly right. There's no neat distinction between "moderates" and "extremists", and even if we wanted to make such an imprecise distinction all Salafis/Wahabis would be "extremists".

I don't see what her argument has to do with your support for anti-burkini laws, unless you think that going after women in burkinis is somehow going to make Muslims acknowledge the issues within Islam...
There are actually two problems, with probably two contradictory answers.

I have been saying this for years and nobody ever listens, but I'll give it another go. When it comes to terrorism, we cannot just blame islam. Terrorism has been around a lot longer than Islam, but technology has really given us what we would recognize as terrorism since the 1880s. Modern guns, bombs and things like molotov cocktails have given a single person the firepower to be an effective weapon for about the last 125 years. And yet Islamic terror has not been with us for 125 years, even though some of the recent attacks have relied on knives and swords which were around longer than Islam.
If Islam caused terrorism, we would have seen Islamic terror since Islam's inception. We would also see it more uniformly spread, but we are not seeing it from the Shia. We have to conclude that it is not Islam alone, but Islam and something else which causes terrorism.

Furthermore, as far as I am aware the data still says that a LIFELONG Islamic upbringing is a strong negative indicator for terrorism. The terrorists tend to be born again Muslims who self radicalize with bullshit they find on the internet which is strong on political rhetoric and weak on religion. Those that are captured alive tend to have very little religious knowledge.

As to the answer to the problem, there is a whole load of it I will not repeat, but a couple of points which I think are relevant, is that it should be contained without compromising our values. History shows us that whenever we step outside the law and bring in 'special measures' it is counterproductive.
Much of counter terrorist strategy is counter intuitive. The hardest thing for people to swallow is the idea that terrorism is normalized. I think it was a French Policeman who recently caused outrage when he said that we should get used to it. He is not only right, but it is inevitable that we get used to it. I suspect most of us have already lost the feeling of surprise when a attack happens, we are beginning to expect it. This is important because at this point terrorism has lost, we are not longer terrified, we get on with our daily lives regardless of the risks (which statistically are far smaller than dying in a traffic accident). This is doubly important because normally the strategy is to contain terrorism while political solutions are sought.... in this case it is hard to see any political solutions we could pursue.

We have actually been at this point for a while now, I stopped worrying about this stuff at least a year ago. However, as a European we have a whole new problem brought about by the complete destabilization of the muslim world and by mass Muslim immigration. It is not the terrorism that worries me but the Islamification of Europe. Issues like the muslim rape gangs are completely separate from the terrorism.
Something like 65% of the millions of recent migrants to enter Europe are illiterate. They have no job prospects, no real future, and they have a culture and religion which is completely incompatible with western society. I am sure I don't need to lay out the problem. They are savages and if we can't civilize them or drive them away. Frankly I don't think the former is any longer an option.

It was only a few years ago that I was seeing plenty of evidence that Muslims were westernizing within a couple of generations within my area and i wasn't too worried. But I now see that even in England where there are large muslim populations, not necessarily recent immigrants, they are actually going backwards.

While the best strategy for combatting terrorism is to stick to your values and the rule of law, I can only see that if we do this Islam will overrun us. The only way I can see us dealing with this would be to react in a similar way to how the US reacted to communism. I don't want to see a re-run of McCarthyism, but it should be remembered that the reason socialism is still a dirty work in the US was the cold war propaganda which directed the nation's hated to anything remotely pink. We cannot rely on Islam having an reformation, we have to teach the west to hate Islam and to be completely intolerant of it. The trick is to be like America of the 1950s and not like Germany of the 1930s.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47779

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Billie from Ockham wrote:
VickyCaramel wrote:I would like to suggest that Slympit add Nugent's face to the smilies.
Wouldn't it be better to Photoshop a red polo shirt onto a sea-lion?
Seconded. Nugent may not appreciate his face appearing here.

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47780

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
Sad year. Condolences. How's your wife holding up?

CaptainFluffyBunny
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47781

Post by CaptainFluffyBunny »

Kirbmarc wrote:
Steersman wrote:
Wonder if you ever looked at that MEMRI TV video clip from a woman Saudi journalist who kind of knocked into a cocked hat the idea that "moderates" aren't culpable, to a not insignificant degree, for the depredations of the "extremists":
Nadine Al-Budair: Whenever terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecks and the hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not represent Islam or the Muslims. Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims.

We witness people competing in an attempt to be the first to prove that everything that is happening has nothing to do with the Muslims, and that the terrorists are highway robbers and homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. We all know that the number of the homeless in Europe is very high. They sleep in the streets and beg for alms, and some of them are alcoholics or drug addicts, but we do not expect these addicts or criminals to even consider coming here and blowing up a mosque or a street in our city. It is we who blow ourselves up. It is we who blow up others.

Why do we shed our own conscience? Why do the sheikhs, the pundits, the journalists, and all the Arab officials insist upon [not] using their conscience when they point to the perpetrators? Don't these perpetrators emerge from our environment? Don't their families belong to our society? Didn't anyone you know - someone from your city, a neighbor, someone from your street, a relative, a nephew, a grandson, a father, or a mother - go to Syria or Iraq to wage Jihad? ....
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5436.htm
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/5436.htm

Delenda est
Listen closely. Read again. She's arguing against the idiots who say that "terrorism has nothing to do with Islam" and that "ISIS aren't real Muslims". Which is idiocy indeed. Terrorism has a lot to do with Islam: it's inspired by literal readings of the Quran. And terrorism has a lot to do with Saudi Arabia and the "sheiks and pundits and journalists". Saudi Arabia is basically ISIS with international recognition.

What she's saying is that Muslims need to acknowledge the many issues with Islam and stop blaming the West, which is exactly right. There's no neat distinction between "moderates" and "extremists", and even if we wanted to make such an imprecise distinction all Salafis/Wahabis would be "extremists".

I don't see what her argument has to do with your support for anti-burkini laws, unless you think that going after women in burkinis is somehow going to make Muslims acknowledge the issues within Islam...
I wonder if Steers endorses executing the family and friends of jihadists as a preventive? He seems pretty scornful of halfway measures.

Sunder
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47782

Post by Sunder »

The funny thing about PZ embarrassing himself on Twitter is that the person he got so defensive over was paying him a compliment.

Wonder if they got a block for their trouble.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47783

Post by Brive1987 »

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:
Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
Sad year. Condolences. How's your wife holding up?
Thanks.

The 5.00am phone call, lots of hugs and talks - and a light lunch at the swish French Cafe place sitting out in the sun.

She'd lost a niece before to suicide but not an immediate family member. So the void is unexpected and incomprehensible. Problem is it gets worse down the track once the shock passes. Oh well.

It's the contract of life.

Brive1987
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47784

Post by Brive1987 »


pro-boxing-fan
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47785

Post by pro-boxing-fan »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.

Sorry to hear that Brive. Condolence to you and the wife.

Skep tickle
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47786

Post by Skep tickle »

Brive - condolences to you, your wife, & family on your sister-in-law's passing.

Jan Steen
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47787

Post by Jan Steen »

Really? wrote:I love how PZ and his publisher had the blog post book in 2011, when atheism was everywhere! Hitchens and the other Four Horsemen were selling shitloads of books! Pharyngula was on the rise and with no end in sight!

Then Rebecca decided not to take the stairs in an Irish hotel and he had to make a choice...
I think the defining moment was when his publisher rejected the original manuscript that Myers had been working on for years. This was going to be his God Delusion, the book that would make him famous. I'd love to see the publisher's letter declining Peezus' magnum opus. His publisher was probably also behind the idea to put together a collection of blog posts instead. That's how the Happy Atheist became the Bitter Asshole.

feathers
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47788

Post by feathers »

Gumby wrote:So not only did PZ lazily slap together his book out of recycled blog posts, but he didn't even come up with the name? Don't authors generally get to name their books? I understand reporters generally don't write their own headlines, but book titles? Does Stephen King get to name his books?

Or is PZ just trying to wriggle out of Hemant's brilliant slam? :think:
I think PZ's publisher, after several years without a book in sight, finally ordered him to "Write something. Anything. You know what, we'll give you a title, you fill it with content. You have till March."

Thus making it into a high school essay assignment.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47789

Post by Jan Steen »

I still think Myers is a fraud for urging his fans to pre-order his book, without disclosing that the plan for an original work had already been discarded.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47790

Post by Jan Steen »

feathers wrote:
Gumby wrote:So not only did PZ lazily slap together his book out of recycled blog posts, but he didn't even come up with the name? Don't authors generally get to name their books? I understand reporters generally don't write their own headlines, but book titles? Does Stephen King get to name his books?

Or is PZ just trying to wriggle out of Hemant's brilliant slam? :think:
I think PZ's publisher, after several years without a book in sight, finally ordered him to "Write something. Anything. You know what, we'll give you a title, you fill it with content. You have till March."

Thus making it into a high school essay assignment.
Yeah, it's possible that there never was a manuscript in the first place. But my current theory is that Greg Laden had seen that manuscript when he wrote his infamous 'review' of the Happy Atheist. Otherwise I don't see how Laden could maintain that it's not a collection of blog posts.

Myers then had the nerve to endorse this review on his blog, even though he knew it was rubbish. His dishonesty is truly Carrieresque.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47791

Post by Phil_Giordana_FCD »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
All my sympathies Brive :(

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47792

Post by HunnyBunny »

Sorry to hear about the sister-in-law Brive. Did they have any idea in the end what was causing her to be so ill?

feathers
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47793

Post by feathers »

Kirbmarc wrote:
InfraRedBucket wrote:He got the Horde to suggest a title.
http://i.imgur.com/AbladJF.jpg

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... u-call-me/
But he still proposed a "The <blank> atheist" template. There's no wiggling out of this one: PZ Myers admitted that he's secretly an alt-right goon! :lol:
Well, that backfired faster than... this

[youtube][/youtube]

Ape+lust
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47794

Post by Ape+lust »

Jan Steen wrote:
feathers wrote:
Gumby wrote:So not only did PZ lazily slap together his book out of recycled blog posts, but he didn't even come up with the name? Don't authors generally get to name their books? I understand reporters generally don't write their own headlines, but book titles? Does Stephen King get to name his books?

Or is PZ just trying to wriggle out of Hemant's brilliant slam? :think:
I think PZ's publisher, after several years without a book in sight, finally ordered him to "Write something. Anything. You know what, we'll give you a title, you fill it with content. You have till March."

Thus making it into a high school essay assignment.
Yeah, it's possible that there never was a manuscript in the first place. But my current theory is that Greg Laden had seen that manuscript when he wrote his infamous 'review' of the Happy Atheist. Otherwise I don't see how Laden could maintain that it's not a collection of blog posts.

Myers then had the nerve to endorse this review on his blog, even though he knew it was rubbish. His dishonesty is truly Carrieresque.
I'm sure you're right, there was a book. I doubt even Peez would try to get away with just tugging his dick during a sabbatical he took specifically to write it.

Which brings us right back to his editor rejecting it. I too would love to see the correspondence telling him his work was unsalvageable :D

Or maybe it wasn't. Remember, Peez drove his first editor insane. Literally. Could be the house editor decided he wanted to be rid of the troublesome prick, but offered only to print the blog posts to satisfy contractual obligations.

http://imgur.com/ucqTDCV.jpg

http://imgur.com/Pc1cVQc.jpg

http://thehumanist.com/magazine/novembe ... a-horseman

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47795

Post by feathers »

Kirbmarc wrote:Yeah, those things happened. And they didn't help the Allies to win the war one bit. The Japanese-American were interned and this didn't help the war effort, it only violated the civil rights of innocent people who happened to be of Japanese descent.
We don't know that. We don't know if there were any Japanese immigrants who were sufficiently sympathetic to the Emperor to commit acts of espionage or sabotage- because they were safely locked up.

Flash forward to 2016, I'm very certain there are muslims sufficiently sympathetic to radical islamic viewpoints to commit acts of political intrigue and terrorism.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47796

Post by ffs »

Hunt wrote:PZ's post about the U of C letter is kind of amusing. Someone shows up saying he will post a request for debate over at WEIT since Coyne takes the opposing view. PZ's response:
Coyne despise me, and the commentariat on his blog even more so, so you’re not going to get a sympathetic response. I’d rather you didn’t, because his oh-so-civil commenters will just start sneering.

And reading that post…no, there isn’t an iota of agreement between us on this subject. Ick.
It reminds me of that quote from Casablanca:
Ugarte: You despise me don't you?
Rick Blaine: Well if I gave you any thought I probably would.
Has he considered not being despicable?

ffs
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47797

Post by ffs »

d4m10n wrote:
It's been just over a year, no lawsuits in sight. Any idea what happened to the legal defense fund?
Magically transformed into booze, as if by jesus!

biblia
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47798

Post by biblia »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
I'm sorry, Brive. Family death is crap.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47799

Post by ffs »

Easy J wrote:
Shatterface wrote:If Myers 'The ______ Atheist' hasn't been tweeted to Hemant is ought to be.

I'm a novice Twatter: I don't know how to link a pic to a retwat but that 'What would you call me?' has to be linked to the 'horrible alt-right' tweet.
I twatted it at the Irish Wanker. PZ somehow blocked me before I had a Twitter account.
Competing with shives I suppose

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47800

Post by Jan Steen »

But he never aspired to be one of the horsemen. Absolutely not.

And imagine Carrier as one of the horsemen. That would have been a monumental PR catastrophe for atheism. :lol:

feathers
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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47801

Post by feathers »

Jan Steen wrote:
Really? wrote:I love how PZ and his publisher had the blog post book in 2011, when atheism was everywhere! Hitchens and the other Four Horsemen were selling shitloads of books! Pharyngula was on the rise and with no end in sight!

Then Rebecca decided not to take the stairs in an Irish hotel and he had to make a choice...
I think the defining moment was when his publisher rejected the original manuscript that Myers had been working on for years. This was going to be his God Delusion, the book that would make him famous. I'd love to see the publisher's letter declining Peezus' magnum opus. His publisher was probably also behind the idea to put together a collection of blog posts instead. That's how the Happy Atheist became the Bitter Asshole.
To freshen your memory:
http://archive.is/Qi1RM
He even took a sabbatical to work in it.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47802

Post by Steersman »

Kirbmarc wrote:
Steersman wrote:
Wonder if you ever looked at that MEMRI TV video clip from a woman Saudi journalist who kind of knocked into a cocked hat the idea that "moderates" aren't culpable, to a not insignificant degree, for the depredations of the "extremists":
Nadine Al-Budair: Whenever terrorism massacres peaceful civilians, the smart alecks and the hypocrites vie with one another in saying that these people do not represent Islam or the Muslims. Perhaps one of them could tell us who does represent Islam and the Muslims. ....
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5436.htm
http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/5436.htm

Delenda est
Listen closely. Read again. She's arguing against the idiots who say that "terrorism has nothing to do with Islam" and that "ISIS aren't real Muslims". Which is idiocy indeed. Terrorism has a lot to do with Islam: it's inspired by literal readings of the Quran.
And you don't seem to get the idea that most if not almost all Muslims read the Quran literally. Shadi Hamid in a Slate article:
Christianity without Christ loses its meaning; you can be culturally Christian or nominally Christian, but the theological content isn’t really there. It’s the same thing with Islam, and that leads to the other factor that I talk about in the book in regards to exceptionalism: Muslims don’t just believe that the Quran is the word of God; they believe it is God’s actual speech. That might sound like a semantic difference, but I think it’s actually really important.
And our very own Islamic godbot, jimhabegger, insists that the Quran is "the words of God Himself". And many other observers and ex-Muslims have emphasized and reiterated the same point - hardly something I'm pulling out of my nether regions.

And it is that fundamental commonality that justifies the argument that those "moderates" - those who only peddle the barbarisms and savagery of Islam, and all its odious trappings in rituals and accoutrements, without actually acting on them - who are also culpable, to some degree, for those who do so. You said that "what [Nadine Al-Budair is] saying is that Muslims need to acknowledge the many issues with Islam and stop blaming the West, which is exactly right". Which is true but simply "acknowledging" that is hardly sufficient - words are cheap; if wishes were horses then beggars would ride - something which she at least alludes to:
After the abominable Brussels bombings, it's time for us to feel shame and to stop acting as if the terrorists are a rarity. We must admit that they are present everywhere, that their nationality is Arab, and that they adhere to the religion of Islam. We must acknowledge that we are the ones who gave birth to them, and who have made them memorize the teachings of all the Salafi books. We must admit that it is the schools and universities that we established that told them the others are infidels.

We must admit that we all - our different sects and faiths, the Sunnis and the Shia - adhere to one school and one school only: the "freezing of the mind" school. Don't ask! Don't think! Don't resist orders! Welcome to the Arab Mashriq.
Tall order as to the specifics of what can be done about unfreezing a collective mind still locked in the 7th century, but the burkini issue seems to be one of the problematic points where the rubber meets the road. You said later:
Kirbmarc wrote:I don't see what her argument has to do with your support for anti-burkini laws, unless you think that going after women in burkinis is somehow going to make Muslims acknowledge the issues within Islam...
But you apparently don't see that connection because you seem to insist on ignoring the pretext. Consider this from an article that Matt Cavanaugh linked to recently:
The burkini is a toxic ideology, not a dress choice
By Hala Arafa, contributor

Civilized nations worked very hard for centuries to achieve the freedoms we enjoy today. The clothes worn by Muslim fundamentalist women are based on seventh century beliefs. They say that a woman’s honor is directly tied to her clothes and a man is not responsible for his actions if he is tempted by a woman. This is an ideology that absolves men from any responsibility of committing the crime of rape and blames the victim for not protecting her honor by covering up.

This old ideology was revived in the early 1980s by the introduction of hijab, a seemingly innocuous piece of cloth, under the guise of modesty and piety. It revived ideas of women’s servitude, promoted a rape culture and led to the political and social instability we witness today.

The hijab ideology is why young Muslims today think they have the right to sexually assault uncovered women. This was demonstrated by Muslim immigrants gang assaults in Cologne, Germany, last January. Similar attacks happened in March in Sweden and other European countries that took in Muslim immigrants.

To say the burkini ban stifles cultural diversity is to focus on the superficial garment, not the rape ideology it promotes. That also ignores the deterioration in every aspect of social & political life in the Muslim world since the introduction of this extremist ideology. This isn’t a choice of dress. This is a choice of a very specific ideology that has proven harmful to society. ....

The burkini ban is an act of a socially conscious, morally courageous and responsible government with extreme prudence and futuristic foresight.
To allow an egregious manifestation of the odious imposition of "seventh century beliefs" is to be complicit in all of the attendent barbarisms from FGM to Sharia to child-marriage to husbands having the right to "lightly beat" their wives:

You really think that allowing all that under your vaunted "principles of liberal democracy" is acceptable? That the only reasonable response isn't to ban the entire religion and close the borders to its besotted devotees?

But impressing upon the Muslim community that those beliefs have no credence, no level of acceptance, in a civilized and secular society is the only way, short of deporting the whole fucking lot of them or more draconian solutions, that they're ever going actually address the consequences and implications of those beliefs, the only way they're ever going to embark on that "unfreezing of the mind" that Al-Budair referred to.

Moot point though whether that is even possible. Vicky Caramel said something rather cogent, to the point, and I think generally quite accurate on that:
VickyCaramel wrote:We cannot rely on Islam having an reformation, we have to teach the west to hate Islam and to be completely intolerant of it. The trick is to be like America of the 1950s and not like Germany of the 1930s.
Indeed. Delenda est as T.H. Huxley said relative to "bibliolatry" and "the pretension to infallibility", the hallmarks of both Christianity and Islam. But Hamid, among many others, also alludes to that same impossibility of Islam ever having that reformation: it's kind of like a molecule of "Buckminsterfullerene" in being locked into a hermetic structure that's virtually impervious to outside influences. Hamid again from an Atlantic article:
Animating the caliphate—the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition—was the idea that, in the words of the historian Reza Pankhurst, the “spiritual unity of the Muslim community requires political expression.” For the better part of 13 centuries, there had been a continuous lineage of widely accepted “Islamic” politics.
And from the Slate article again:
I’m essentially arguing that Islam is fundamentally different from other religions in a very specific way: its relationship to law and politics and governance. I wanted to use “exceptionalism” because I felt, at least for me, that it was value-neutral: It can be either good or bad depending on the context. I also wanted to challenge the assumption—very common in the bastions of Northeastern liberal elitism—that religion playing a role in public life is always or necessarily a bad thing. That’s the idea of the title, and what that means in practice is that Islam has proven to be resistant to secularism, and I would argue will continue to be resistant to secularism and secularization really for the rest of our lives.
Christianity accepts, more or less - as Hamid argues, the separation of church and state - a foundational principle of your "liberal democracy" and of laïcité. But in Islam they're an indivisible whole, and one underwritten by the bedrock belief that the Quran is "God’s actual speech". 'Rots of 'ruck trying to thaw that "frozen mind". That’s theocracy, a particularly odious and barbarian totalitarianism, that’s intrinsically antithetical to every last element of your “principles of liberal democracy”. Hard not to be completely "intolerant" of it and every last one of its manifestations including mosques and madrasas - and uniforms like the burkini: Delenda est.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47803

Post by feathers »

Sort of ninja'ed by the timezone privileged shitlords.

Well then I'll repost a shop from the top 5 of funniest & most cutting ever on the Slymepit.

http://i.imgur.com/lODAS.jpg

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47804

Post by Jan Steen »

Jan Steen wrote:
But he never aspired to be one of the horsemen. Absolutely not.

And imagine Carrier as one of the horsemen. That would have been a monumental PR catastrophe for atheism. :lol:
PZ Myers wrote:
"Stop being bitter that you didn’t have the merit to become one of the Four Horseman"
Ah. Sure sign that someone has been infected by the Slymepit. Sorry, guy, but if you were to actually read what I’ve written in the past you’d know I’ve disliked the idea of personifying an imaginary atheist ‘leadership’ as just 4 people, and over the years I’ve become increasingly convinced that it was a PR disaster.

Not only could I not imagine ever being one of the “four horsemen”, but I would recoil in horror at the thought of it.
Sure you would, PZ, sure you would.

For more laughs, go to 3.47 in this video:

[youtube][/youtube]

Q: "What book would you suggest?"
Dawkins: "Next May [2012, JS], PeeZed's book is to be published. What's the title?"
PZ: "Oh, we're fighting over the title."
Dawkins: "Oh, okay. So..."
PZ: "Just look for my name. Big letters: PeeZee."
Dawkins: "So, obviously, that would be one excellent suggestion. As for any other suggestions, erm, I think modesty forbids, really."

:lol: :lol: :lol:

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47805

Post by Jan Steen »

feathers wrote:
To freshen your memory:
http://archive.is/Qi1RM
He even took a sabbatical to work in it.
In that photo, Dawkins and Peezus look like a professor with his not very bright amanuensis.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47806

Post by rayshul »

Shit, Brive, I'm sorry.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47807

Post by Kirbmarc »

VickyCaramel wrote:As to the answer to the problem, there is a whole load of it I will not repeat, but a couple of points which I think are relevant, is that it should be contained without compromising our values. History shows us that whenever we step outside the law and bring in 'special measures' it is counterproductive.
Much of counter terrorist strategy is counter intuitive. The hardest thing for people to swallow is the idea that terrorism is normalized. I think it was a French Policeman who recently caused outrage when he said that we should get used to it. He is not only right, but it is inevitable that we get used to it. I suspect most of us have already lost the feeling of surprise when a attack happens, we are beginning to expect it. This is important because at this point terrorism has lost, we are not longer terrified, we get on with our daily lives regardless of the risks (which statistically are far smaller than dying in a traffic accident). This is doubly important because normally the strategy is to contain terrorism while political solutions are sought.... in this case it is hard to see any political solutions we could pursue.
By and large I agree (although it has to be said that authority figures need to pay more attention to the people they're dealing with).
We have actually been at this point for a while now, I stopped worrying about this stuff at least a year ago. However, as a European we have a whole new problem brought about by the complete destabilization of the muslim world and by mass Muslim immigration. It is not the terrorism that worries me but the Islamification of Europe. Issues like the muslim rape gangs are completely separate from the terrorism.
Something like 65% of the millions of recent migrants to enter Europe are illiterate. They have no job prospects, no real future, and they have a culture and religion which is completely incompatible with western society. I am sure I don't need to lay out the problem. They are savages and if we can't civilize them or drive them away. Frankly I don't think the former is any longer an option.
This is why we need immigration reform. I'm in favor of expelling those who don't have job prospects or are in the country illegally, to admit only people who already have a clear pathway to integration and to put quotas on immigration from certain countries.
It was only a few years ago that I was seeing plenty of evidence that Muslims were westernizing within a couple of generations within my area and i wasn't too worried. But I now see that even in England where there are large muslim populations, not necessarily recent immigrants, they are actually going backwards.
The key factor which, IMHO, you're missing is one of the reasons why this is happened in these recent years, namely an obscene amount of privileges and funding to the Salafi clerics over other kinds of imams. Average Sunni Muslims were left to be easy pickings for Salafi propaganda, and Salafi institutions like Muslim councils or Sharia courts have been recognized, promoted and left free to diffuse Muslim supremacist propaganda. Nobody countered their ideas, in part because the Regressive Left (i.e. in the UK, the majority of the Labour party) defended them as "part of the Muslim cultural identity".

Westernization can't happen if someone is actively preaching against it and we reward them with positions of power recognized by our country's institutions.
While the best strategy for combatting terrorism is to stick to your values and the rule of law, I can only see that if we do this Islam will overrun us. The only way I can see us dealing with this would be to react in a similar way to how the US reacted to communism. I don't want to see a re-run of McCarthyism, but it should be remembered that the reason socialism is still a dirty work in the US was the cold war propaganda which directed the nation's hated to anything remotely pink. We cannot rely on Islam having an reformation, we have to teach the west to hate Islam and to be completely intolerant of it. The trick is to be like America of the 1950s and not like Germany of the 1930s.
I agree that socially speaking more and more people need to wake up to the ugly side of Islam, and I think that the biggest obstacle to this process is political correctness and the notion that criticizing Islam and its defense of rape, pedophilia, misogyny, etc. is "racism".

I also don't think that we should rely on Islam having a reformation on their, we should fight against those who preach against modernity and promote those who don't. We should get them when they're young: close madrassas and secularize children through a thoroughly secular education. We should make this reformation happen.

I think that what we need to rely the most is to smash the Regressive Left to bits, which probably means, as a collateral, to destroy any chance of leftist parties in general to influence politics. I think that this is what's already happening, and more and more countries in Europe are drifting to the right. Soon enough leftist parties will implode like it's happening to the UK Labour, and they will be replaced by center-right to rightist parties. More and more people are getting sick of the Regressive Left.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47808

Post by Hunt »

Brive1987 wrote:Sister in Law died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Not even PZ-LOLcow is cheering me up.

Oh well.
My condolences to you and your wife. I think PZ has more in store for us, so perhaps the medicine will work yet.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47809

Post by Brive1987 »

HunnyBunny wrote:Sorry to hear about the sister-in-law Brive. Did they have any idea in the end what was causing her to be so ill?
Thanks again everybody. :?

Trigger warning for too much information ....

...............


No diagnosis. She had lumbar, MRI, skin ultra sound, skin samples and heaps of blood work

She went in with malnutrition / scurvy. Very low albumin levels and bloating. Skin rash and very bad open ulcers (described by my wife as "like Ebola").

Oedema was mentioned, as was vasculitis and Sweets Syndrome. Low oxygen capacity probably from smoking. Then internal bleeds in bowel.

Finally descent mental illness led her to pull out her Anti B lines and oxygen plugs.

All in all a perfect storm of mess.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47810

Post by jg64 »

Sorry for your loss, Brive. Condolences to your family.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47811

Post by Kirbmarc »

Steersman wrote: And our very own Islamic godbot, jimhabegger, insists that the Quran is "the words of God Himself". And many other observers and ex-Muslims have emphasized and reiterated the same point - hardly something I'm pulling out of my nether regions.
This is true, but ask yourself one question: if the "literal word of god" had one and only one interpretation, how comes that there are so many sects in Islam and why Muslims so often kill other Muslims over doctrinal differences?

Nobody is a perfect literalist. Religious texts have always been subjected to different interpretations. The whole point of the sacerdotal classes is to portray themselves as the interpreters of the will of god. Most average believers rarely actually sit down and read their Holy Books: in Islam they often don't even touch them.

People rely on what their clerics tell them, and clerics tell them what they believe is true due to their training, financing and ultimately due to the interests they want to protect. Most people know very little about the religion they claim to believe in: they let their clerics do the thinking for them. And clerics adapt the Holy Books to the teachings of their leaders or educators, who in turn offer interpretations due to what is socially, economically and politically convenient.

If you get the clerics to change their tune you get a gradual change within the "religious communities". This, however, is a slow process which can be promoted from the outside but largely needs to happen on the inside. And it plainly can't happen if traditionalists are the richest and most influential people in the "community".
But you apparently don't see that connection because you seem to insist on ignoring the pretext. Consider this from an article that Matt Cavanaugh linked to recently:
All true, but again it ignores one specific fact: the reintroduction of the hijab in the Muslim communities in the 1980s didn't come from nowhere. It wasn't an arbitrary obligation forced upon people by a governmental authority. It was a socio-political move motivated by the interests I've written about (Salafis and the their financers for the Sunnis, Iran for the Shias). It was a gradual process of religious revivalism financed by petro-dollars.

Such a process cannot be countered simply by authoritarian bans. Cultural processes are never stopped by censorship and criminalization. Prohibiting something which has been associated to identity isn't going to reverse the preaching of those who promoted it. It's simply going to alienate people from their country's institutions.

We need to fight against Muslim rape culture, which exists and is highly harmful, but this needs to be done on a cultural basis, not through banning. People don't change their mind just because you try to force them to do it. Prohibitionism never really works.
Christianity accepts, more or less - as Hamid argues, the separation of church and state - a foundational principle of your "liberal democracy" and of laïcité. But in Islam they're an indivisible whole, and one underwritten by the bedrock belief that the Quran is "God’s actual speech". 'Rots of 'ruck trying to thaw that "frozen mind". That’s theocracy, a particularly odious and barbarian totalitarianism, that’s intrinsically antithetical to every last element of your “principles of liberal democracy”. Hard not to be completely "intolerant" of it and every last one of its manifestations including mosques and madrasas - and uniforms like the burkini: Delenda est.
Christianity accepted the separation of church and state very grudgingly and much more recently than you'd think. It used to be no different from Islam, and in some cases (like many religious sects in the US) it still preaches the idea of an "indivisible whole" of church and state.

Islam is far worse than Christianity today. This is because of a long series of historical and political reasons. I don't think that a process of secularization of Islam is going to happen quickly or easily. There are many obstacles to overcome to ensure such a process, and in the meantime I'm in favor of limiting Muslim immigration, of expelling Salafi imams and of teaching integration actively instead of waiting for it passively.

But unless such a process ultimately happens any restriction on immigration or "ban on Islam" isn't going to matter in the long run. There are roughly 1,6 billion Muslims in the world. There is at least one county with a Muslim majority which has nuclear weapons (Pakistan). Unless a process of secularization happens then sooner or later Muslim supremacy is going to cause an all-out religious war, and if that happens then no amount of burkini bans or of Quran pissing tests is going to stop it.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47812

Post by Kirbmarc »

I'm also sorry for your loss, Brive, and I offer my condolences to you and your family.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47813

Post by Phil_Giordana_FCD »

Kirbmarc wrote:
This is true, but ask yourself one question: if the "literal word of god" had one and only one interpretation, how comes that there are so many sects in Islam and why Muslims so often kill other Muslims over doctrinal differences?
Ah, that one's easy: the hadiths and how much importance and different interpretations are given to them by different sects, all the way back to the schism between the followers of Ali and the followers of Abu.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47814

Post by Kirbmarc »

Phil_Giordana_FCD wrote:
Kirbmarc wrote:
This is true, but ask yourself one question: if the "literal word of god" had one and only one interpretation, how comes that there are so many sects in Islam and why Muslims so often kill other Muslims over doctrinal differences?
Ah, that one's easy: the hadiths and how much importance and different interpretations are given to them by different sects, all the way back to the schism between the followers of Ali and the followers of Abu.
Correct, but that's not all. Different interpretations of the Quran have also played a role.

Pure literalism is a myth, a fig leaf that hides the works of many different interpreters. It's a myth made especially popular by the Muslim revivalism of these last twenty-thirty years, and it's part of the idea of Muslim "purity" and "superiority" contrasted with the "degeneracy" of Christianity.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47815

Post by Phil_Giordana_FCD »

But in both those schools, you cannot have an interpretation that is too divergent or in contradiction with the literal reading of the quran. Again, it's the hadiths that make all the difference. It's right there in both articles you've posted.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47816

Post by gurugeorge »

VickyCaramel wrote: If Islam caused terrorism, we would have seen Islamic terror since Islam's inception.
But we did. Right from the get-go, when Muhammad started terrorising Meccan caravans once he'd established a foothold in Medina. The Meccans' reaction, which was to protect their caravans militarily, was then spun by Mohammed as aggression, and he was then able to persuade the Medina tribes to form a coalition against the Meccans.

Historically, Islam was a terror machine on a vast scale, the only thing that beat Islam in terms of the fear it instilled in surrounding cultures was the Mongols, who terrified even the Muslims.

The more I've been looking into the history of Islam, the more frightened I am. We have a false impression of what Islam-in-power looks like due to the fact that it was beaten back militarily by the West and other powers during the 19th century, partly as a result of weakening due to internal strife. But that was after centuries of continued, aggressive, imperialist expansion.

Did you know that almost the entirety of Afghanistan, Kashmir, India and Malaysia were Buddhist at one point? All that survived of the great Buddhist monasteries from that period were the texts that had already filtered through to translation in China, and the texts a few enterprising Tibetans had managed to squirrel away in Tibet. An entire religious culture, completely wiped out of its heartland. It's worth pondering that.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47817

Post by Hunt »

The reason PZ tried but never actually wrote a book is that he's not the book writing type. He's into immediate gratification and reaction, preferably controversial and outrage reaction. I would recommend calming meditation to look inwardly, but PZ debunks meditation as "spirituality", which he loathes. Harris was right about one thing, those who lambaste meditation are often the ones who could most benefit from it.

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47818

Post by Couch »

On a lighter note, I'm in intermission at Fawlty Tours on Stage at Roslyn Packer theatre in The Rocks. I was a bit nervous they'd balls it up, but it's great. Three episodes scripted into one two hour production. Same dialogue pretty much, maybe a couple of tweaks and new gags. Loving it! Back in now - rumour is the Germans are next!

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47819

Post by InfraRedBucket »

Jan Steen wrote:
But he never aspired to be one of the horsemen. Absolutely not.

And imagine Carrier as one of the horsemen. That would have been a monumental PR catastrophe for atheism. :lol:

http://i.imgur.com/kG37aPX.jpg

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Re: The Refuge of the Toads

#47820

Post by Phil_Giordana_FCD »

Couch wrote:On a lighter note, I'm in intermission at Fawlty Tours on Stage at Roslyn Packer theatre in The Rocks. I was a bit nervous they'd balls it up, but it's great. Three episodes scripted into one two hour production. Same dialogue pretty much, maybe a couple of tweaks and new gags. Loving it! Back in now - rumour is the Germans are next!
Great!

Don't mention the war!

"You started it!"

"We didn't!"

"Yes, you invaded Poland!"

Have fun, lucky bastard.

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