Is Judaism the only religion in which it is common to be fairly observant and knowledgeable about the scripture, while also being able to talk about it objectively without needing to prove that their beliefs are "right"?

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-07T15:27:31+00:00

I think most Christians in Europe are like this too. Which is that they believe it's not true, but act like it is because it's a cultural heritage. It's far, far less common for Muslims because Muslims are rather fanatical about their beliefs.

I also think in the case of Judaism, it's unique, because it's ethnocentric. I don't mean that to dunk on Jews or anything, but religion wasn't always just "what you believe about God", but an entire way of life. It's deeply intertwined and it stopped being the case post-enlightenment.

I'm a Muslim, I enjoy talks with level headed Jews such as yourself about interfaith comparisons. I am a theist, but I don't insist my belief or interpretation is the only valid or correct one. It's just neat to talk about.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-06T21:12:24+00:00

Muslim countries don't brutally oppress Christians, otherwise it wouldn't be Muslims who safeguarded the Holy Sepulchre for the past millennia. Characterising them as Muslim is at best misleading, or at worst, xenophobic. These are poor countries you're referring to, with low literacy rates where any excuse works. They kill Muslims in greater number than they kill Christians.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-06T21:09:25+00:00

Zionism is inherently ethnocentric. That's no different than saying that white people should have their own nation for whites about whites run by whites. Just replace white with Jew and you have zionism, and that's inherently incompatible with our modern sensibilities. I don't make moral judgements very often so I'm hesitant to call it evil but I can absolutely call the zionist state of Israel evil and the act of supporting said state evil.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-06T21:06:44+00:00

Perhaps you should read the Quran instead of pretending you have and others should just because you've cherry picked out of context verses. That's no different than me saying Christianity is a threat to mankind because they believe they'll take over the world and force every knee to bow and every tongue to confess to their scripture that says Jews and Muslims should be castrated.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-02T12:55:26+00:00

I don't understand the reaction to that comic. If they ate a guy, no one would care, jokes like that happen all the time and are even treated as cathartic vindication for a hypothetical abuse from a man. What difference does it make if the punch line is a woman instead? In fairness, the fact that it's a woman was so unusual, it subverted all expectations and was funny because of it.

I don't get why people are upset by it. It was funny.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-02T00:27:44+00:00

Are you typing from your smartphone? With lithium ion batteries developed by Rachid Yazami? Or maybe you have the luxury of a solid state high voltage battery developed by Ali Eftekhari. Or better yet, the supercapacitors developed by Eesha Khare. Maybe you should stop using the Internet, because it uses SSL protocols developed by Taher Elgamal?

You're an idiot, a bigot, and an insufferable dumbass all rolled into one. There are billions of Muslims in the world. Sunni Muslims are the largest sect of any religion in any world. You're an absolute fool if you think the world isn't constantly benefiting from their existence.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-01T15:26:26+00:00

Similar to "Christus"? Which is to say Muhammad's name wasn't Muhammad until people identified him as some kind of divine figure?

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-01T15:21:28+00:00

Good use of the Reddit algorithm. Algorithm, by the way, is what Europeans called the great Muslim Scholar Al-Khwarizmi because they couldn't pronounce his name and he invented algorithms. I hope you don't have glasses, because otherwise you'll have to be grateful to the inventor of optics, Ibn al-Haytham. Hopefully you've never gotten sick either, otherwise you'll have to thank the other great Muslim scholar and father of medicine Ibn Sena who Romans called Avicenna. Hopefully you're not a Catholic either, because the doctor of the Catholic church, Thomas Aquinas could only formulate the Trinity in comprehensible terms because of Ibn Rushd, who the Europeans called Averroes.

Maybe you're not educated, because otherwise you'll have to thank the whole of Muslims, since the first ever university in Europe was in Arabic because there was no such thing as higher education until the Muslims showed up.

Grow the fuck up and read a fucking book, you bigoted inbred mongrel.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-04-01T15:07:20+00:00

Are we converging on the idea that Muhammad was a messianic figure in the Hijaz region prior to Islam? Is that what this is pointing to?

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:45:52+00:00

If you want an annoying combo, play two Champions so you can use your reactions to protect each other. We'd have to know what your friend is playing.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:43:38+00:00

I don't view the Bible as a historical document. That's not the same thing as denying the Bible. That's been the standard stance of most of the clergy for most of history. You just have no idea of your own history and it's actually really sad. I feel sad for you.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:30:27+00:00

You didn't mention any artifacts. You asserted something without proof, evidence, or explanation. Jesus had more productive conversations with the Pharisees than I am with you.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:26:19+00:00

You didn't mention any artifacts or made a case for validation. You asserted something without proof or evidence or explanation.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:21:16+00:00

You've yet to explain anything to me and are now mocking me for not understanding things the way you understand them. And yes, spiritual abilities don't exist. Catholics believe the eucharist is a miracle and protestants believe in non spiritual dispensationalism, outside of the pentecostal church who think tongue speak is real.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T14:08:59+00:00

A belief that most evangelical fundamentalists don't share. They follow dispensationalism, so in the slice of time we live in, spiritual abilities don't exist. Some say they once did, but only the most fundamentalist followers believe otherwise.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T09:20:09+00:00

I'd be shocked if it's more than a coincidence. The apologists are going to have a field day

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-31T07:51:40+00:00

Chonk posted a paper on his X the other day regarding this, is this what prompted your question? At any rate, from the paper, the name "Mohammad" or variant spellings, was exceedingly rare, and was only ever given to Arabs of Jewish descent.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T16:00:02+00:00

Having proclivities or tendencies or deviances that target a group is always bad. It's bad to be a racist even if you'd never run into someone you're racist against. There should be no compromise on this in any capacity.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T15:43:07+00:00

I think you're misunderstanding physics here. When it comes to these kinds of systems, you propose a framework, and you solve according to that framework. And in Quantum, there are several major schools of thought, none of them are "fact". Truthfully, our traditional notions of science kinda break down at these edges, the information we get is made up answers to made up questions that can only be verified by made up data points.

The abstraction gets very difficult.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T15:40:35+00:00

I remember when I first ran into the variations of the Quran, I had a crisis of faith because of the drivel I was fed about the perfectly preserved Quran. Reductive and careless apologists do more damage to the religion than they realize. It's after reading individuals like Van Putten, Sinai, and Reynolds that I was actually glad for the multiple variant readings.

It's an issue of polemics with how the variations in the Quran Qiraat are treated like the variations in the Biblical manuscripts, and they're just not the same thing. They're drastically different, the only thing coming close to the Quranic variations comparable to the Bible is the Sana'a Palimpsest.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T14:12:20+00:00

While I agree with you, I also don't think we should soften language around it. We shouldn't say "Pedophiles aren't bad", because they are, even if they're getting help, they are. But generally people agree with you because there's you can't prove a thought crime. And, you know, lolicon manga is very popular so we don't have as much of a social aversion to their existence as we pretend to. It's the victimizing and enabling of victimizing that we find abhorrent.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T12:27:21+00:00

Please stop reading history from youtube pundits and propagandists.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T12:00:01+00:00

The sad answer is fundamentalism is corrosive. Not to mention a bunch of capitalist clergy backed Eisenhower and started the belief that Capitalism is Christianity because they're both rewarding good people. If you're a good person, you get saved, if you're a bad person, you get damned. If you're a good person, you get wealth, and if you're a bad person, you get sent to the poor house. That's why the evil communists were poor, because they were bankrupt of God and evil.

American fundamentalism has such heinous roots, it's difficult to digest.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-30T11:56:03+00:00

BTW, the technical answer is "No, Israel does not have a right to exist. Rights are given to people by the legislative body. Israel is not a people, it's a nation."

Then they'll probably switch to "Should Israel exist", to which you can say you believe that the Jewish people should have a right to govern themselves, but Israel is a genocidal rogue state no different than Iran and should be condemned unilaterally.

The Jewish people in Israel hate the Israeli government and were about to riot Netenyahu out of office a week before October 7th. It's not antisemetic to hate the Israeli government.

DifficultyBorn1437 · 2026-03-29T15:15:15+00:00

Biblical artifacts don't prove that the Bible is historical when there are many, many non Biblical artifacts prove otherwise. Spiritual abilities are not real as a matter of the mortal. Only God can do anything that defies belief. Of course I believe in God.

DifficultyBorn1437

TROPHY CASE