No cease-fire and here's why (politics)

[cantdog]

Franklin Graham sent out a letter in late July, a few days ago. Speaking of Lebanon, he writes:

We have all seen and read about the recent fighting that has broken out across the country following attacks on Israel.

It should come as no surprise to believers that this region of the world continues to dominate world news, since the Bible speaks clearly of the pivotal role Israel plays in the last days. No matter how many new peace initiatives are presented, the Bible says that hostilities toward Israel will only gather momentum as Christ's return nears.

These people are looking forward to Armageddon like it was Disneyland. And evidently there is no sense in calling for any peace initiatives. Bummer.

Clarence Darrow wrote the quote below in 1932. There were powerful forces of unreason abroad in the world then, but this is the turn of the millenium. Our president cites Jesus as his chief political adviser now.

The number of people on the borderline of insanity in a big country is simply appalling, and these seem especially addicted to believing themselves saviors and prophets. It takes only a slight stimulus to throw them entirely off their balance.

 

[rgraham666]

Read something similar recently.

Televangelist Jim Robison was delivering the opening prayer at a Republican National Convention. Here's part of what he said.

There will be no peace until Jesus comes. Any preaching of peace prior to this return is heresy. It is against the word of God. It is anti-Christ.

Makes me proud to be a heretic it does.

 

[cantdog]

I am prevented from being a heretic by my atheism. So I am not preaching peace, just calling for it.

 

[Guest]

I am prevented from being a heretic by my atheism. So I am not preaching peace, just calling for it.

how fucking much i wish we could just call for it and have 'it' be.
the world is going insane.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Read something similar recently.

Televangelist Jim Robison was delivering the opening prayer at a Republican National Convention. Here's part of what he said.

Quote:
There will be no peace until Jesus comes. Any preaching of peace prior to this return is heresy. It is against the word of God. It is anti-Christ


Makes me proud to be a heretic it does.

If that's the kind of person that is going to Heaven, I'm glad I'm going to Hell.

 

[Guest]

If that's the kind of person that is going to Heaven, I'm glad I'm going to Hell.

hey! im paving my way. i've a condo on the lake of lava promised to me. you'll have to come jam with us.

 

[cantdog]

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence.

Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. We are nearly all atheists with respect to Zeus, Cybele, and Thor. Does anyone feel the lack?

The perpetrators of the 9-11 hijackings were middle class and educated. They even had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

-- Sam Harris (link)

 

[Boxlicker101]

When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence.

Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. We are nearly all atheists with respect to Zeus, Cybele, and Thor. Does anyone feel the lack?

The perpetrators of the 9-11 hijackings were middle class and educated. They even had no discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics? The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion. Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.

-- Sam Harris (link)

I totally agree, and it isn't only Muslims although their lunatic fringe seems to be wider than most, at least now. There are self-professing Christians who would see nothing wrong with killing anybody who disagrees with them, or who suggests that the Bible isn't the literal truth. A few hundred years ago, such persons had great authority and tortured, raped, enslaved and did basically anything they wanted to unbelievers.

 

[rgraham666]

I'm afraid I find atheists the obverse of believers.

There is no more evidence of the non-existence of God than there is of His existence. And atheists can be just as extreme and deadly certain as believers.

It's why I refer to myself as an agnostic. I don't know one way or another and I don't have the faith to come down on one side of the question or another. Although I'm sure there are extremist agnostics as well.

The main problem is integration. People have a lot of trouble integrating their beliefs. They can believe that 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' as well as 'All Unbelievers Must Die' simultaneously. They can't link the two and realise the dichotomy of these thoughts. It's double-think as George Orwell put it.

The important question a person should always ask themselves is, "Are my beliefs an guideline for the way I should act? Or an excuse for the way I want to act?"

 

[cantdog]

quite so, Rob...

And yet, when the massive Ten Commandments sculpture was removed, Bible kissers showed up by the busload, wailing and publicly praying. The defenders of the action had only cool and dispassionate reason. The fundies were galvanized to further outrages in the future. Emotional appeals keep people in the fight.

Once in a while, someone has to point out, and do so with a bit of passion, that erecting a theocratic state in the place of our democratic republic is NOT acceptable. Most of those Commandments, for example, are NOT the "basis of law," but parochial statements concerning a God. No equivalents to them exist in secular law, and none ought to.

With the constitution we kicked God out of the government business. Our kings are not ordained by a god, but our representatives and our executives are elected by human beings. That's supposed to be the source of their legitimacy-- the people.

It's fashionable to say, as Box did, that religion was a source of criminal violence in the past, but it is pretty clear in downtown Manhattan that religion remains as much a wellspring of mayhem today. The problem isn't religion as a spiritual force but religion as a political force, binding fanatics with ties of shared hatred, trumpeting as their motivation utterly irrational statements from books of religious fiction. Cool, cerebral presentations of facts do not seem to prevent this shit.