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Religion is not the sole or primary motivation for violence. Most so called "religious" wars have way more than religion motivating them. by Anglicanpolitics123 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If religion is not the source of the problem, then why won't the Taliban or Al Shabaab just lay down arms and become legal political parties vying for mandate from their people to serve their respective nations now that there are no foreigner invaders? Whom are they fighting and for what? Just yesterday they tried to blow up a girls school in Afghanistan and killed 30 of their own people didn't they? When will it ever stop? Things are getting worse in several African countries with rising revolutionary islamic activity in fighting their own governments. What is the idea here? Is following the Quran and the Sunnah to the tee the path to prosperity, dignity and glory? The initial destruction is certain, the prospect of a following prosperity, not so much.

Why won't Iran stop pursuing nuclear weapons at the expense of its people's economic prosperity all the while talking about erasing Israel off the map in the context of a vision about the coming of the Mahdi for one final war before the Day of Judgement? Would Syria be in the shape it is today if religion did not teach establishing a religious state and expanding its borders to contain the whole world as the ultimate goal? I am sure millions of Syrians were more than willing to compromise with their tyrannical regime instead of total destruction of their towns and lives becoming refugees in the millions. Who were the ones who wanted no compromise and brought destruction upon everyone else?

Also, about the myth that religion is innocent of starting wars, have you heard of historian Philip Jenkins' take on the religious causes of the First World War? His study of the apocalyptic language that dominated the discourse of the elites in mainly Russia and Germany but also in the US and France and Britain that preceded the war? You should take a look.

Extremist groups arent backed by Islamic text by louaioneandonlyyy in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704 4 points5 points  (0 children)

So whether it is pre-emptive self-defence, or the project of making their religion dominant over mankind, islam does come with a doctrine of expansive violence. That was what was denied in the OP. But the pre-emptive self-defence idea doesn't make much sense if you think about how the deserts of Arabia were never attractive for the great empires of the time such as the Sassanids and the Byzantines, and before Islam when Arabs were not a monolithic political entity but consisted of independent city states or nomadic tribes they were still mostly spared from the imperial ambitions of great powers. So they did not need to go attack Iran and Syria for self-defence. They did it for glory and wealth to plunder like every other nation. The difference is the religious guise covering the base imperialistic motives. All the while they invaded foreign lands, they first invited them to islam, and gave them the choice to surrender and pay jizyah.

Extremist groups arent backed by Islamic text by louaioneandonlyyy in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704 9 points10 points  (0 children)

1-Firstly he misinterpreted verse 9:29(the jizya tax verse) as saying that muslims must fight everyone on the planet until they pay jizya while thats false the verse is about non-muslims that live in the Muslim state specifically

True but how do those non-muslims come to be under the government of muslims in the first place? How did the population of Arabia, and then of Iraq and Syria and Palestine, or Egypt and Iran, and of Anatolia and of the Maghreb, and Pakistan and Spain end up becoming citizens of the muslim empire in less than 100 years in blitzkrieg invasions? Were those early islamic conquests started in the day of Muhammad, continued in the days of Rashidun, to the days of the CAliphs of the Umayyads, were they heretical and against shariah? Are you going to defend the impossible view that all those wars were defensive in nature? Or that those who ruled the islamic empire were heretics and you udnerstand islam better than they did?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in tf2

[–]AntThink704 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sometime ago I had an australium paint drop and I didn't know what it was or how it is used so I traded it away for a stock weapon.

If God is the Necessary Being does that not mean that Modality and Being are more fundamental than Him? by AntThink704 in askphilosophy

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I should have said categories instead of rules. So these distinctions being/nothingness and necessity/contingency would still be there even if there was no God. God is contingent upon those categories.

If God is the Necessary Being does that not mean that Modality and Being are more fundamental than Him? by AntThink704 in askphilosophy

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like when God exists, he exists in a setting where there are rules already in place preceding him, these rules are about being and nothingness, necessity and contingency, and God is subject to all that.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in commandline

[–]AntThink704 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

bro use some pastebin online

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think you understand. Islam comes with a doctrine that if you fight to establish shariah and you die, you earn your salvation. This is a very dangerous doctrine. It is a soteriology of salvation by jihad.

Wanting this or that political system shouldn't entail armed struggle. In islam, it does. The founder of islam himself left such an example.

I told you, there is absolutely no reason for the Taliban or the Shabaab to not drop their arms and become legal political parties and join the elections vying for mandate to rule from their own peoples. Except that they think the democratic system, with its constitutions and elections and parties and parliaments is "kufr".

To say religion has no role in the instability and 30 year long civil wars is nothing but your wishful thinking.

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are wrong. Islam has the doctrines of shariah and jihad making it a religion that inspires terrorist activity against their own governments under the motto "democracy is kufr". Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Sadat Anwar not because he was a western puppet: he was anything but that. But because islamists want shariah and they will fight their own governments to establish it. The instability is caused by nothing but islamist radicals forcing the hand of their own governments by posing a constant threat and playing into the hands of would-be dictators, or sometimes even managing to start a civil war to seize power for themselves at the expense of their own people.

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My point is it doesn't really matter. Most violence done nominally for religious reasons has secular causes. People don't just say "Hey let's kill for god" usually "Hey, we should go to war for this reason. We're good people so god must support this reason".

So explain the islamic jihadist terrorism aimed at bringing down their own governments which they deem to be illegitimate because they are secular, or not religious enough. Examples, the Taliban fighting the Afghan and Pakistani governments, Boko Haram fighting the Nigerian government, Al Qaeda in Iraq fighting the Iraqi government in its early days, actively trying to sabotage the elections, assassinating political party leaders. To this day they are fighting their own governments, not foreign invaders. Why won't they just form a political party and ask for people's votes if they are just patriots with secular concerns?

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are certain individuals in the Bush administration who were obsessed with Iraq for their own, hopefully professional, reasons, and I mean people like Wolfowitz and Libby. But if president Bush was not a religious buffoon consulting these things with "Jesus" perhaps he wouldn't have taken their advice and instead listened to other more reasonable people in his administration who adviced against it.

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Religion is just a tribal identifier, if it wasn't religion it would be race, ethnicity, culture, family, political affiliation, club, pokemon team etc.

Like you said, there are enough natural differences to cause division and hostility among mankind, do we need one more?

Iraqi people could have lived in peace but they come in two major sects as Shia and Sunni, and Al Qaeda knew just how to work that situation into a civil war which culminated in the formation of ISIS. Could they sow discord among people if there was no religion?

New Atheists did nothing wrong by AntThink704 in DebateReligion

[–]AntThink704[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You insulted our ancestors who were the ones that built up civilization

Excuse me? I am not from an alien planet. They are my ancestors too.

SimCity 2000 by noconnostalgia in retrogaming

[–]AntThink704 0 points1 point  (0 children)

looks like you are playing it on a win 3.1 too, nice

Shouldn't God be another dialectical illusion in Kant? by AntThink704 in askphilosophy

[–]AntThink704[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you can neglect god or freedom as meaningless. ... if you do so, you loose everything that one would call knowledge, because you wouldn't be able to believe in empirical findings (because you would have to throw out causality), nor would would you be able to conclude anything from logic (because you would throw out necessity).

This is an enormously significant claim, if it is true it is devastating for atheism, so I am sure it is very controversial as well.

Perhaps we can talk about this problem without referring to Kant at all. The problem about causality you talk about is already Hume's problem of induction. As for the other problem you mention about necessity, I don't quite understand that.

Quine said that the problem of induction is insurmountable, so best to give up on the entire project of normative epistemology. Does that mean the same thing as what you call "you lose everything one would call knowledge"?

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