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Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

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Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#71

Post by powerslacker »

nitrogen wrote: post #44
powerslacker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The differences between those 'last few prophets' are major. You could say the same thing about Mormonism. Further, Jews, Muslims, and Christians are not monoliths in and of themselves. There are vast divides within those groups. I do wish we would all get along better though. Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.

we have far similar values with each other than with atheists. I would describe the values of the altruistic modern atheism of people I know, which has a lot in common with Christianity and Judaism at the big picture level, as "be good, do good." One needn't believe in God or gods to believe in good.

Values concerning sexual purity, obscenity, drug use, the transcendence of the almighty God, the material and immaterial parts of mankind, and the complementary roles of men and women are inherent in Biblical teaching. Some of these can be present among atheists, and they may be regarded as good. The difference is these values (and more) are present and regarded as good in varying degrees in every Abrahamic religion.

Sure there are atheists who are altruistic. But fundamentally there is little common ground, because an atheist does not believe in a divine being who is the source of all morality.

The question I would ask an atheist is: what is good and who defines it?

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#72

Post by 1over137 »

nassimsoftware wrote: post #43
tomohawk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

What are you talking about. In Islam the Quran is considered the final revelation of God that is to remain preserved until the day of judgement. The previous prophets like Moses and Jesus (Peace be upon them) came with revelation too but they were corrupted by man who ascribed things to Allah by adding stuff up to the books. Look how many version of the bibles there is. However, there is only one Quran. 114 chapters.…

>However, there is only one Quran

Nope. Although the Quran is very well preserved for such an old document, there are multiple variants. Muslims often claim it's perfectly preserved, but it's just not. See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYwwX5lc_ww (start 8 minutes in).

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#73

Post by danamit »

throwaway49374 wrote: post #46
danamit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure you are Christian. Ask Jews personally about Islam vs Christianity.

See Surah Ar-Rum in the Quran,it foretells Roman Christian victory over the Persians.

What? it says Romans lost, then they gonna win after. What it has to do with anything?

Also I don't believe Rum means Roman Christians, it simply means Byzantines.

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#74

Post by dragonwriter »

tomohawk wrote: post #67
getcrunk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, many Christians and Jews were murdered or enslaved at his command because they refused to follow him. That is false. The prophet Muhammad never killed Jews or Christians for not following Islam. The Jews he fought with and killed were due to political reasons. In most cases, treachery. One group he had a treaty with tried to assassinate him, for example. This is a common islamaphobic trope.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Is there a distinction between government and religion in Islam?

No more or less than there is in Christianity.

There are Muslims who distinguish the role of each, just as there are Christians who do.

> In the west, there is this distinction

Not largely from within institutional Christianity, where both theocracy (wherein government is viewed as subordinated to religious institutions, rather than the two being separate) and caesaropapism (wherein religious institutions are subordinated to government rather than the two being separate) have been common institutional power and legitimate government power is frequently portrayed as having a divine religious origin.

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#75

Post by tomohawk »

1over137 wrote: post #57
tomohawk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

But did they do these things because they were atheist? In the name of atheist philosophy? No. There's no causal link there. Contrast with say ISIS, where they do their evil because of (their interpretation of) their religion.

[flagged]

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#76

Post by JetAlone »

nautilius wrote: post #41
rmatt2000 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mao and Stalin might disagree.

Would they? What's that god they killed for?

In the case of Mao and Stalin? That would be the idol of Ideological purity. It is presented as the one true ideal variant of humanistic utilitarianism, and conveniently because they are the glorious leader through whom it is to be enacted, they are basically the prophet of this god. It is an impersonal god, a "force" or natural economic/social principle whose pseudo-personhood emerges from collective humanity. It uses its adherents to oppress outsiders for resisting. It holds itself together by using its adherents to watch and keep each other in line. It callously punishes insiders to demonstrate that this god doesn't need any of the individual humans it supposedly serves, since they are so much like animals in the first place.

Materialist don't get to make a smug escape from the stigma of "killing in the name of god". Anything you place at the top of your value hierarchy is, for all intents and purposes, your god.

It's a little on the cheesy side but I think this clip from They Live illustrates simply the idolatrous place capital can take in our day-to-day lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8WttFoF3Og

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#77

Post by pokey00 »

1over137 wrote: post #61
jleyank wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being Muslim, I can't state the relationship between the Koran and the Old Testament, but any contradiction in the former would be taken in preference I assume. I thought the New Testament was a replacement for the Old - certainly the teachings disagree with what you include. Although between "them" and worshipping money it's hard to find people who actually follow New Testament dogma. Hard for people to "turn th…

>I thought the New Testament was a replacement for the Old Nope. Otherwise why is the Old Testament still in the bible?

Context? Different Christian religions and people have varying ways of reconciling the two. I (raised Catholic) was taught essentially that with Jesus's death, the old rules went out the window; all that goofy shit God used to command the Israelites to do didn't need to happen anymore because Jesus's death made up for it. So the Old Testament isn't super relevant outside of providing the context for the New Testament.

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#78

Post by 1over137 »

tomohawk wrote: post #75
1over137 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But did they do these things because they were atheist? In the name of atheist philosophy? No. There's no causal link there. Contrast with say ISIS, where they do their evil because of (their interpretation of) their religion.

[flagged]

>Conversely, where in atheism does it say to love your neighbor as yourself or anything similar?

Nowhere. Why would it? We must have different definitions of atheism. It's merely the absence of belief in the existence of deities. It's not some kind of complete life philosophy.

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

powerslacker wrote: post #6
jleyank wrote: post #5

Quoted post unavailable.

The differences between those 'last few prophets' are major. You could say the same thing about Mormonism. Further, Jews, Muslims, and Christians are not monoliths in and of themselves. There are vast divides within those groups. I do wish we would all get along better though. Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.

> Despite the differences between the various Abrahamic faiths, we have far similar values with each other than with atheists.

The space of values within the Abrahamic faiths (which are more than Jews, Muslims, and Christians, though those are the largest groups), or even within any one of those three large Abrahamic faiths, is not significantly narrower than the space of values within all of humanity.

Personally, I find that many of the people farthest from me in values are not only within the big Abrahamic tent with me, but also within the smaller tent of Western Christianity with me.

(And I find that us vs. them appeals with “us” being Christianity, “Judeo-Christianity“, or Abrahamic religion [almost always intended to exclusively refer to the big 3], is a pretty good sign that someone is on that other side.)

Re: Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

#80

Post by motohagiography »

t_mann wrote: post #65
motohagiography wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to snark that this was done by a polling firm who works for political parties whose main opposition are also faith based, but as a finding to say 2/3 of people can be appealed to based on their faith in something, that's an important and valuable number. The people who believe nothing are indeed in a minority, and they are also in power, so the tone of the article was likely to make believers of any faith…

I don't wanna take any sides here, I just point out when someone reports their data in a questionable way.

Wasn't my intent to suggest your comment had. Re-reading, I may have unfairly levered it into something more partisan than it seemed as well. Harder to maintain charity in Canada lately.
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