Saudi Arabia calls on world to ban criticism of religion

[Underseer]

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/saudi-arabia-calls-world-ban-criticism-religion

Sad, but predictable.

Theists know that their truth claims are unsupportable, so from their point of view the most reasonable thing to do is to prevent anyone from criticizing them or their truth claims.

 

[bilby]

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/saudi-arabia-calls-world-ban-criticism-religion

Sad, but predictable.

Theists know that their truth claims are unsupportable, so from their point of view the most reasonable thing to do is to prevent anyone from criticizing them or their truth claims.

If they are right, then criticism of their claims risks terrible consequences. The anger of God is not something we can afford to risk; no matter how remote the probability that God might be angered, risk is probability multiplied by severity, and the severity of His response is potentially infinite; therefore no risk of any kind is acceptable.

This is the same argument used by Anti-Vaxxers, Anti-GMOers, and the Anti-Nuclear Power lobby. The precautionary principle sounds completely reasonable, until you actually think it through to its logical conclusion, which is that under no circumstances should anyone ever be allowed to do anything.

 

[credoconsolans]

Is anyone going to listen to them besides their Muslim allies?

He argued these steps must be taken to prevent intolerance.

Of course, because we have to not tolerate criticism for intolerant religions because that would make people intolerant.

 

[Barbarian]

Is anyone going to listen to them besides their Muslim allies?

I can imagine the hopelessly orthodox - to wit, Russia and Greece - to support it. Muslim countries regularly try this in the U.N.

 

[Atheos]

Do they seriously believe the rest of the world is going to impose the death penalty for blasphemy like they do? I know religion can lead to insane positions but holy shit. Welcome back to the 8th century.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Do they seriously believe the rest of the world is going to impose the death penalty for blasphemy like they do? I know religion can lead to insane positions but holy shit. Welcome back to the 8th century.

To doubt they are sincere is to err grievously. Religion at its core is a mental illness, and the inmates sincerely believe they should have authority to run human institutions.

I can imagine a time in human evolution when everyone was bipolar and mania was selected for. Think of the immediate benefits. Weeks without sleep. Hallucinations and delusions of grandiosity giving rise to religion. The compulsion to invent things and unquenchable energy. The fact that you died relatively young did not matter. So long as you successfully bred and raised your offspring to reproductive age is all that mattered. With every human a manic machine the species had a definite survival advantage. Eventually the behavior was selected against as populations increased and humans were forced to live and exist together.

Religion is a legacy and vestige of those times. Nature continues to offer up new recipes for survival and religion is therefore not completely gone. It is however, extremely dangerous in our relatively modern times. The article demonstrates that quite nicely.

 

[Keith&Co.]

http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/saudi-arabia-calls-world-ban-criticism-religion

Sad, but predictable.

Theists know that their truth claims are unsupportable, so from their point of view the most reasonable thing to do is to prevent anyone from criticizing them or their truth claims.

This must be a difficult question for the Conservative Christains. I mean, they've spent a lot of time and effort on the idea that being criticized for being a member of the faith actually validates their faith. But it's kinda obvious a lot of them would really rather everyone just shut up about it all.

And I expect Kirk "Crocoduck Porn" Cameron would love some sort of legal protection to shut up people criticizing creationism, but has anyone thought about evolution? So many creationists, of various faiths, have classified evolution as a religion, such protection would apply to it, too. Can't criticize evolution if it's a religion that was created to avoid God.

And Jack Chick would have to retire. Half his best titles are attacking religions that are not his own. If you cannot criticize religion, then Chick can't deliver to the faithful the evidence that the RCC is the great whore of Babylon, or that Islam is Satan's marketing tool, or that Halloween is pagan satanic devil worship.

There would be advantages, though. I, for one, could not string up the Christmas ribbon of bloody dismembered and beheaded babies in order to mock religion by concentrating on the babies that died while Jesus escaped Herod's wrath... But if I made this MY religion, then no one could criticize me as getting their religion wrong. It's my interpretation, my xmas tradition, the law says you cannot criticize it...

Figure the Christains who welcome it the loudest would be among the first to be suing to overturn it within a week....

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The words used:

“This requires everyone to intensify efforts to criminalize insulting heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols and places of worship.”

So, the idea that this is about banning criticism of religion is a little bit exaggerated based on the actual quote. The trouble, however is that "insulting heavenly religions" is a pretty vague term. And in that vagueness, things get out of hand very quickly.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The words used:

“This requires everyone to intensify efforts to criminalize insulting heavenly religions, prophets, holy books, religious symbols and places of worship.”

Ah.
Well, if we're going to criminalize it, I would want a lot more specificity. and evidence.
A 'prophet' for example. Is that anyone who CLAIMS to be speaking for God, or is that anyone who actually speaks for at least one god?

Can you prove that your prophet IS a prophet?
Can you prove which books are holy? Because the counter is proving which books are NOT holy, such as most of Christainity rejecting the Book of Mormon.... And the simple effort to decide which books are holy is going to start to insult heavenly religions by stating that they're not heavenly, or not heavenly enough.

This would work better as a reality TV show than legislation. Every week, members of three religions take a crack at writing a comprehensive list of what is and isn't protected by such legislation. Pick one member by the length of time spent in academic study, one by the amount of time with actual worldly experience and one mouth-frothing believer, just to get the ball rolling. They can choose to accept some or all of the previous week's results and go on from there. This thing'll never make it out of committee.



I mean, there was a guy on the Skeptics Annotated Bible that couldn't stand the fact that atheists don't take his word as gospel (No pun involved). He insisted that every religion should be respected AS a religion, even by unbelievers.
But he also insisted that evolution was a religion, but a dumb one.
In fact, his login was 'evolutionisstupid.' So his every single post insulted a religion he identified as a religion that deserved respect, just because it WAS a religion.
He flat out could NOT see that there was anything wrong in even trying to imagine how one might live by all of his statements.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Wait, why only 'heavenly' religions? What justifies that distinction?

 

[Barbarian]

Wait, why only 'heavenly' religions? What justifies that distinction?

AFAIK it's a muslim term, the three heavenly religions are Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

 

[J842P]

Eventually the behavior was selected against as populations increased and humans were forced to live and exist together.

Humans have always lived and existed together, usually as bands of related and unrelated individuals - humans are not nearly as insular as chimpanzees in that humans tolerate unrelated individuals much more than chimps.

 

[Shake]

We'll get right on that!

 

[Keith&Co.]

Wait, why only 'heavenly' religions? What justifies that distinction?

AFAIK it's a muslim term, the three heavenly religions are Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

So....legislation to protect MY religion, but allow me to continue to point fingers at the weirdoes.... That's such an unexpected stance.

 

[Underseer]

Is anyone going to listen to them besides their Muslim allies?

He argued these steps must be taken to prevent intolerance.

Of course, because we have to not tolerate criticism for intolerant religions because that would make people intolerant.

Anyone besides Muslims?

Plenty.

Ever notice how whenever Muslims riot because of a cartoon or novel, the pope usually chimes in and says "What these people did is terrible, but the cartoonist/novelist brought this on himself by criticizing religion, which is completely unacceptable." Ever notice how many Christians say similar things after a Muslim riot?

It's not just Muslims who think religion should never be criticized.

 

[fta]

I'm waiting for US shock writer Jim Goad to become the next Salman Rushdie.

 

[Barbarian]

AFAIK it's a muslim term, the three heavenly religions are Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

So....legislation to protect MY religion, but allow me to continue to point fingers at the weirdoes.... That's such an unexpected stance.

I'm sure they have the best intentions in mind.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So....legislation to protect MY religion, but allow me to continue to point fingers at the weirdoes.... That's such an unexpected stance.

I'm sure they have the best intentions in mind.

Oh, sure. Probably something like, once WE'RE safe from disrespect, we'll use our status to help protect everyone else.

 

[braces_for_impact]

If your faith needs government support to spread it's ideas, provide for it's protection and fund it's activities, perhaps it doesn't deserve to survive.

 

[bilby]

If anything I say or do upsets God in any way, he is welcome to inform me personally of this fact, and I shall gladly apologise and desist.

If it's not important enough to Him to be worthy of His personal attention, then His moronic fan clubs can just pull their fucking heads in.

I will take advice from the organ grinder, not his fucking monkeys.