Bingo. If you have a somewhat more philosophical take on this,
1.) first you a grouped with the religious crowd 2.) then, next comes the hammer of the epistemolgical argument, which again reduces religion to it's stone age origin. ---In [email protected], <noozguru@...> wrote : We lampoon religions all the time in the US. I'm a "equal opportunity religion basher." I feel that all religions probably belong in a museum. But we have people here who think that Buddhism and Hinduism are religions when they are philosophies. I seem to recall that Zoroasterism is also a philosophy (very much an advaite offshoot) but people have made it into a religion too. I first took a look at Islam after taking my SCI course and my rationalization was the Mohamed wanted to set things we saw as natural laws as rules in a religion because people weren't observing them otherwise. Actually what happened was Mohamed, seeing the ongoing wars between the war lords at the time invented the religion to put an end to it. We have better ways of dealing with war lords these days. And we need to do it rather than letting them continue to run amok. On 01/07/2015 12:55 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: ---In [email protected] mailto:[email protected], <[email protected]> mailto:[email protected] wrote : Ah, the bravery of the liberals who think they have a perfect right to insult anyone's cherished beliefs just because they want to. Brave for sure. They just paid with their lives. Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to insult other people's religion. They don't like it and it is not helpful to the situation. You should have learned that in grade school. Lampooning others' beliefs is a time-honoured tradition in the West. ---In [email protected] mailto:[email protected], <turquoiseb@...> mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote : From: "s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife]" mailto:s3raphita@...[FairfieldLife] <[email protected]> mailto:[email protected] It's an odd kind of duty to publish cartoons that mock the founder of one of the world's largest religions in the way that is plainly meant to be deeply offensive to adherents of that faith. You say things cut both ways, and the matter of respecting the faith of others does also. Why should anyone *respect* a faith they regard as intolerant of gays or women or free speech? Respect has to be earned. I support anyone's right to criticize Islam as robustly and satirically as they wish; just as I support someone's right to argue that liberal attitudes to sexuality are repugnant. Let everyone say what they wish; we can listen to their claims and come to our own conclusions. What are you afraid of? Thank you for saying this. There is this terrible meme we have inherited for centuries -- both in the East and in the West -- that says, "If we call it 'religious', it's *protected*. You can't say bad stuff about it or criticize it." During many of these centuries, the people saying this were IN CHARGE. Their religion *ran* things. So if anyone *did* say anything critical of their "religious" beliefs, they just killed their asses. Simple as that. What we're seeing today in radical Islam and in the fundamentalist extremes of religion such as Hindu Supremacy is a bunch of religious people wishing that the world still worked that way. They'd really *like* to KILL anyone who doesn't believe the way they think they should. Currently on planet Earth, only one major religion is actually consistently claiming to be PROUD of doing that -- killing anyone who doesn't believe the way they think they should. ---In [email protected] mailto:[email protected], <[email protected]> mailto:[email protected] wrote : It's an odd kind of duty to publish cartoons that mock the founder of one of the world's largest religions in the way that is plainly meant to be deeply offensive to adherents of that faith. You say things cut both ways, and the matter of respecting the faith of others does also. ---In [email protected] mailto:[email protected], <s3raphita@...> mailto:s3raphita@... wrote : Re "That other people don't see the world the same way you do should be the first thing they have to teach at these "faith" schools.": Well, yes. But can you imagine a state, secular school teaching kids that some people regard homosexuality as an abomination, or that women's place is in the home, etc, etc? It cuts both ways. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty argued that we should always have some private (non-state) schools otherwise the state would simply use its monopoly to push the ideology of the ruling Establishment. He was right then; he's right now. The problem is we have two opposing fundamentalisms: religious versus new atheist/PC thinking. I don't subscribe to either as I want people to question all authority. But you don't learn to question authority in school! I suspect you don't *learn* it at all - you either have an enquiring mind or you don't. Anyway, salutations to those killed at Charlie Hebdo. They died in the line of duty.
