Although I realise the 72 virgins is a mistranslation from “”72 white grapes” I was always concerned that for an eternity in Paradise 72 virgins, or white grapes, wasn’t going to be nearly enough.

Isn’t this the sort of question theologians should be debating ?

“Would you think this applies to one of those muslim preachers who may now say anything, anywhere, anyhow? Nope, it is used on a “liberal” blog about an atheist!
Islamophilia (episode 2580)”

Traditionally, when one asks a question, one waits for an answer.

Also, criticising an atheist makes you an Islamophile? Pretty weird definitions you’re using there.

“Incidentally, I tried the word “Chaise” in a rhyming dictionary online and it suggested “verb phrase”, a perverse incident of recursion.”

OK, that was pretty good.

To be fair, we’ve dialed the sniping way back in the last couple of posts (and to be REALLY fair, 90% of the sniping was on my end, not Damon’s).

Please may I gently collide your heads. You are two non-party political contributors on LC and your free thinking makes this a good place to debate. So please cut out the sniping.

Incidentally, I tried the word “Chaise” in a rhyming dictionary online and it suggested “verb phrase”, a perverse incident of recursion.

I can’t say I’ve been following it intently. But this spat has been going on for four months. This is what Hasan said about it before Christmas 2012: http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2012/12/god-best-answer-why-there-something-rather-nothing

And in April 2013, Dawkins pops up saying exactly the same as before in the hope of getting a bigger reaction second time around.

@134. Shatterface: “Not a good example because if Hobsbawm’s faith in Stalin lead him to ‘miss things out’ – inconvenient details like genocide – then Hasan’s faith might lead him to ‘leave things out’ too.”

There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ historian or journalist or scientist because all have blind spots. That’s why we have processes such as peer review or editing. Hobsbawm is a great historian if you want to study 19th century capitalism; as you say, you read somebody else to learn about the USSR.

“Hasan’s not just a Muslim, he’s a fundamentalist with a track record of dehumanising non-Muslims.”

I thought the jury was still out on that. Hasan is certainly guilty of being an arsehole when talking about his faith but everything else is debatable.

“There are ”religious nutters” walking around in public wearing clothes that mark them out as such. Nuns and priests included.
You could take that view if you were very strong in your atheism – like Dawkinns. It’s a logical follow-on from his line of logic.”

To be honest, presupposing you’re an atheist, what determines when religious people fall into your “nutter” category is where you set the boundaries for insanity. If you think any irrational thinking makes one insane, then religious people are crazy… but so is absolutely everyone else.

“But our modern multi-cultral idea is that no one is meant to really notice or especially comment on this.”

I’m always suspicious of the word “meant” in sentences like this. What does it mean? Which agent is doing the meaning? C.f “allowed”.

Generally it indicates that the claim being made is either completely untrue (“you’re not meant to say blackboard”) or massively exaggerated, as I believe yours is.

“That’s what you can end up with. People resenting the fact that you don’t RESPECT their religion, because it’s such an important part of who they are.”

I can’t comment on that particular case, due to ignorance, but I certainly accept that such people exist. That’s the cause of your campus Muslims demanding special treatment for Islamic activities, and of the Daily Mail doing its nut every time it sees a non-Christian looking celebratory (or failing to look celebratory) during December.

So if we didn’t have a religiously tolerant society, this wouldn’t happen as often. Because Christians would have everything their way, and if anyone else piped up they’d be persecuted the hell out of. This isn’t a good thing.

So if you’re commenting on and lamenting the tendency of some people to throw a wobbler when they see their religion being “disrespected”, then I agree with you. If, however, your subtext is “and therefore a tolerant society isn’t worth the price” (and that’s what I’m hearing), then I decidedly don’t.

“Chaise the chaste.”

Not quite the word I’d use. I admit to being one of LC’s preachier regulars, but “Chaise the preachy” doesn’t alliterate/rhyme/whatever.

All religion depends upon revelation. All revelation is supernatural. If you wish to be a hard rock empiricist, then you should not entertain any religious doctrine whatsoever.

–Harold Bloom

Actually I apply the same reasoning process to everything

Then you are an idiot.

vimothy:

There’s nothing about miracles that is shocking from the point of view of religious belief. There’s no “reasonable” level of religious belief that includes belief in God but restricts God’s actions to those things that can be proven “scientifically”.

Essentially, what you object to is that people believe in God. People who believe in God cannot be rational — instead they’re fundamentalists, regardless of how reasonable their actual beliefs
are or aren’t.

You’ve just admitted that people who believe in God are free to discount the laws of physics when the feel like – so why would I want to engage with someoneone who can discount evolution because it contradicts his brlief no matter what evidence I supply? Why discuss climate change with someone who thinks it is God’s wrath at gay marriage or that if things get really bad God will simply snap him up to Heaven?

But our modern multi-cultral idea is that no one is meant to really notice or especially comment on this.
So we get to the situation where you get a practicing Muslim rising to the very hights of the Metopolitan police like Tarique Ghaffur – who then complained of racism and Islamophobia amongst his fellow top officers – and who took out a discrimination case agaist them. He said he was made to feel like an outsider and that his ”face didn’t fit”. Even though he’d made it to the number three position the Met police.

So now the problem wasn’t that he had been discriminated in the Met police and stopped from rising within it, but he felt like other (non muslim officers) thought he was not ”one of them” so to speak. And why should they if he was a practicing Muslim – and never drank and observed Ramadam, whose wife wore a hijab or whatever? He was mostly accepted as a fellow officer, but not 100% IN HIS OPINION.

That’s what you can end up with. People resenting the fact that you don’t RESPECT their religion, because it’s such an important part of who they are.

As for having a dig at you, no really CG, you are usually quite fair and astute … but you do come across as a bit ”chaste” sometimes.
Chaise the chaste.
You said you’d never looked at the Harry’s Place website for example.
I don’t particularly like them, but they do raise some important issues (about this kind of thing).

I agree with pretty much everything you said there. And incidentally, the bit about “the Arab world feeling left out” is, as I understand it, the reason Islam was created in the first place. Monotheism was doing really well, and Mohammed wanted in.

But this thread is not called Why Religion Sucks. I’m explaining to Damon that screaming abuse at random brown people in the street is not, in fact, the best way to react to 9/11. If you agree with me on that, we don’t need a sidebar on the irrational and damaging nature of religion. If you disagree, I guess we’re gonna have an argument.

For the record, even though I agree with Hitch’s axiom, ‘religion poisons everything’ I think people should be entitled to follow their faith free from secular harassment.

At the same time secularists should have equal freedom to point out that certain groups are drinking from the same poisoned well while using their doctrine to rationalize all manner of violence, from burying homosexuals alive to blowing up crowds at a sporting event.

It goes without saying that followers of islam (since we are discussing Hasan) interpret their book in any way they see fit, often to justify their own particular agenda.
But what do you expect when an illiterate was entrusted with gods purpose and it took another hundred years before the first version of the quran was knocked out, a book that can only be understood in arabic.
Presumably the arab world must have been feeling a bit left out after god already had a quiet word with the christians and jews before finally pitching up in the desert?
At any rate the sunni and shia were at each others throats then, and have been ever since.

Still if people want to believe such stuff, then that is a matter for them, presumably the emotional need for a device like religion must go deeper than intellect?

“when you heard about the bomb in boston did you wonder if the act might be connected to islamic nutters – if you didn’t I suspect you were in a minority?”

Course I did. There’s a far cry between that, and blaming everyone who’s a Muslim or looks a bit like one and saying we should abuse them all in the street.

@ 125 damon

“What I mean ‘Oh Chaise one’, is that it’s not really polite and the done thing to do that.”

Indeed. Most people frown on bigots who go around throwing insults at strangers. Could you explain why that’s a bad thing?

Also, I’m guessing “Oh Chaise one” is meant to be some kind of dig, but it’s over my head.

There’s nothing about miracles that is shocking from the point of view of religious belief. There’s no “reasonable” level of religious belief that includes belief in God but restricts God’s actions to those things that can be proven “scientifically”.

Essentially, what you object to is that people believe in God. People who believe in God cannot be rational — instead they’re fundamentalists, regardless of how reasonable their actual beliefs
are or aren’t.

What can we say about this dismissal of the beliefs of the majority of human kind? It is at least pleasingly ironic. The Ancient Greeks thought that only the Gods and the Sages were truly wise. Philosophers, as lovers of wisdom could not be /truly/ wise — love being the desire for that which one lacks. Not being wise, they must be ignorant and senseless.

Now, wisdom is absolute. Either one is wise or one is not. But ignorance admits degrees of variation. The philosopher — think of the the figure of Socrates — is one who, knowing he is ignorant, wants to be wise. The truly ignorant, being ignorant, think that they are wise
already.

do you mean this Gödel?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof

His mathematical hypotheses did result in some people asking whether he proved the lack of the existence of god.

That isn’t the problem however. It is a matter of faith, and “faith” has all to frequently been used to justify actions that directly contradict the self proclaimed morality of all the worlds religions – and ideologies, which is where you should be looking when religion crops up.

Religion is ideology – at times even idolatry. None of the words religions escape that assessment.

Well said, all your posts. Why are “religious” people sooooo touchy. Is it their delusion that something they were indoctrinated into when they were weak? Most people become religious through childhood indoctrination – the rest through serious trauma in adulthood.