Interesting quote

[Colleen Thomas]

Teen venus' post in the how fucked up is this thread caused me to almost quote this, but I decided it might be better in its own thread.

I saw an episode of Law & Order. The suspect in a murder is a fundamentalist muslim. He dismisses his court appointed counsel in favor of a muslim attorney. The accused is using the court room to rant about how the U.S. government is persecuting Islam. The Da is talking to the muslim lawyer and the lawyer said something so very profound. I have to paraphrase, but it was:

I am representing him because it's my job, but please don't confuse his politics with my faith.

Tv blames the hostage crisis in the Russian school on religion, but I begin to wonder. At what point does religion become indistinguishable from politics? And once you reach that point, are you pious or just another politician with an axe to grind? If you have twisted the dogma of your religion to the point that it demands political action, is it still religion? Or was it ever religion?

-Colly

 

[rgraham666]

Religions always almost always start off well.

They help explain how the universe works and how to be good to one another.

Unfortunately, no single system can explain and direct everything. So people who have studied the religion in depth have to help others not as skilled learn how to apply the religion to new and different circumstances.

This gives the people with the expert knowledge power.

Once the religion becomes big enough, that power becomes great and power itself becomes the goal of the experts.

At this point, the religion ceases to be an explanatory/ethical system and becomes an ideology.

And ideologies are not about being good, but about being right.

 

[matriarch]

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

And ideologies are not about being good, but about being right.

That is such an incisive observation, its almost terrifying in its simplicity.

And explains so much.

Mat

 

[cantdog]

Muslim theology calls the act of claiming God as a partisan of one's own human purposes a form of idolatry.

The idea is that you have set up an invented God wearing your team jersey, and then you proceed to claim he's the real item. True Islam is submission to God's will, not the other way around.

I bet the same is true for Christians, but everyone assumes the Almighty is on their own side, just the same, don't they?

cantdog

PS love the quote. Drama is so good for that. A character in a movie or a TV show or even a book will get to say just exactly the words that need to be said, sometimes. The definitive word, one you wish you could have been blessed with the wit to say.

c

 

[R. Richard]

TV blames the hostage crisis in the Russian school on religion, but I begin to wonder. At what point does religion become indistinguishable from politics? And once you reach that point, are you pious or just another politician with an axe to grind? If you have twisted the dogma of your religion to the point that it demands political action, is it still religion? Or was it ever religion?

-Colly

The problem with Islam is that the religion was intended to appeal to wandering nomads. Thus, there is no central authority and the entire religion is based upon the Qran. Unfortunately, it is possible to interpret the Qran to say that Islam is the only religion and that all others exist only to be converted to Islam. It is the last interpretation that the Islamists use. Thus, anything they do is OK, because it is done in the name of jihad or holy war.

As to the separation of Islamic state from Islamic religion, read the words of the Islamic fundamentalists. They say what they will do and add 'God willing.' If they did not add 'God willing,' they would be usurping the power of Allah, who alone decides what will happen and what will not. To usurp the power of Allah is a death offense under Islam.

Scary is it not?

 

[snooper]

Originally posted by rgraham666

And ideologies are not about being good, but about being right.

That is such an incisive observation, its almost terrifying in its simplicity.

And explains so much.

Mat

Remember that capitalist democracy is just as much and ideology as any other politicial system practised in the real world.

 

[maggot420]

I don't believe in God...but I'm still scared of him.

 

[Guest]

"Value-pluralism: ultimate human values are objective but irreducibly diverse, that they are conflicting and often uncombinable, and that sometimes when they come into conflict with one another they are incommensurable; that is, they are not comparable by any rational measure."

"The danger of American foreign policy is not that it is obsessed with evil but that it is based on the belief that evil can be abolished."

"The purpose of government was not to conduct us to the Promised Land but to stave off the recurrent evils to which human life is naturally prone."

"All the Enlightenment did was to promote religion by other means, and its belief in progress was the only Christian message emptied of transcendence and mystery."

"Our faith in progress - the Prozac of the thinking class - is the illusion that underlies the most egregiously mistaken political and social policies of the present day."

"There is such a thing as progress, but it is a fact only in the realm of science, while in ethics and politics it is a superstition."

"Human knowledge grows, but the human animal stays much the same."

 

[wishfulthinking]

Ignorant and naive as this may sound, I don't believe any faith can justify the killing of another living thing - rather the focus has to be on preservation. "Religion" may be the justification a person uses for their actions in killing another living thing, but it is the person committing the crime, the person who picks up the gun and shoots someone, the person who beats another to death with their fists - not the religion. Singular approach I know, but I firmly believe each is responsible for their own actions.

So to answer one of your questions Colly, I don't think it is religion. But I'm definitely not holding up any other religion as an ideal.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Ignorant and naive as this may sound, I don't believe any faith can justify the killing of another living thing - rather the focus has to be on preservation. "Religion" may be the justification a person uses for their actions in killing another living thing, but it is the person committing the crime, the person who picks up the gun and shoots someone, the person who beats another to death with their fists - not the religion. Singular approach I know, but I firmly believe each is responsible for their own actions.

So to answer one of your questions Colly, I don't think it is religion. But I'm definitely not holding up any other religion as an ideal.

I have never seen you post anything I would classify as ignorant. Religion has long been the cause of people killing people. Pagans have killed Christians. When Christians had the ability they returned the favor in spades. Catholics and protestants, Christians and Muslims, Hindis and Muslims, the list is apallingly long.

Sometimes religion was just window dressing, the excuse violent and rapacious men used to commit crimes when the real goal was power, land or money. Sometimes it really was religious fervor.

Few religions teach violence as a means to salvation. Yet religion has power, and like most anything else that has power it can be corrupted by the unscrupulous to further their ends.

-Colly