The dangers of exaggerating the evils of Islam

[J842P]

There's no authority over YOU, either, Syed. Thinking that anyone but YOU is your moral authority is the same as throwing your own conscience out the window.

i do have authority over me, my authority is my god, my parents, my family, my community, my government , my boss

for atheists NO authority over you, you do what you like, you served yourselves

The only difference between atheist Syed and theist Syed is that atheist Syed doesn't believe in gods. There are still plenty of authorities left, as you yourself enumerated.

 

[bilby]

''no, atheism is a result of rebellious mentality who dont like authority figure like god''

I have never met an authority figure like 'god'

I never met him, but I understand that Joe Stalin was very much that kind of authority figure; to the point where there are sects in the former Soviet Union that consider him a deity even to this day.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Oh, please. If Stalin's a god, why doesn't he use his so-called divine powers to have the Russian government install an incompetent puppet as President of his hated United States?

Until someone can show me something like that, I'm not going to give much credence to their silly little cult.

 

[Keith&Co.]

trust me atheists dont like any authority even their parents

What a terribly surprising surprise...Syed talking out his ass about something he knows fuck-all about.
I was an atheist for my entire 20-year enlistment in the Navy, Syed. A long string of authority figures over me the whole time.

atheists like to do what ever makes them feel good

Everyone does what makes them feel good, Syed. Even if 'what makes you feel good' is pompously denying yourself physical pleasures because it makes you feel like your skybuddy will like you better.

atheists philosophy '' if its feel good just do it '' there is no authority over us

Wrong again, Syed. There is no 'atheist philosophy.'
Ask 20 atheists about sensual pleasures and authority, you'll probably get 23 answers.

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i do have authority over me, my authority is my god, my parents, my family, my community, my government , my boss

for atheists NO authority over you, you do what you like, you served yourselves

I see none of those authorities ever commanded you to avoid telling untruths as if they were facts...

 

[Angry Floof]

There's no authority over YOU, either, Syed. Thinking that anyone but YOU is your moral authority is the same as throwing your own conscience out the window.

i do have authority over me, my authority is my god, my parents, my family, my community, my government , my boss

for atheists NO authority over you, you do what you like, you served yourselves

We are capable of thinking for ourselves. The source of morality is humans. We are the source of religious belief just as we are the source of art and literature and science and philosophy. Religion is our creation. Not the other way around.

The religious allow ignorance and fear and inhumane beliefs to drive their contribution to society. The rest of us are free to exercise our own consciences and we are not owned or controlled by religious dogma. We tend to create secular societies and we value humans over ideological identity.

Once you've seen how a trick is done, you can no longer be fooled by it.

 

[DBT]

Syed, I think you like say whatever suits your needs. You say that god has authority over you, yet I doubt that you have ever met god or taken instructions directly from god.

 

[Syed]

Syed, I think you like say whatever suits your needs. You say that god has authority over you, yet I doubt that you have ever met god or taken instructions directly from god.

quran is direct words of god, so yes i do take instructions directly from god

 

[DrZoidberg]

let me tell you, science dont create civilization, people create civilization, religious moral teaching UNITED all people under one moral code and that moral code create civil society and civil society built school, college, university and hospitals

Yes, people create civilization. They created science and they created religion. Humanity has a number of tools in the toolbox of civilization. We're constantly combining aspects and trying new stuff.

I am not anti-religion. I think that religion should be and can be a positive force in the world. But right now science is the most powerful civilizing tool humanity has at the moment, and if religions doesn't get out of science's way they are going to be destroyed. That's just a fact.

no, atheism is a result of rebellious mentality who dont like authority figure like god

god hate atheists because atheism cant civilize human

God is the worst manager ever.

Here's a list of qualities we associate with good leadership:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/270486

God has none of these. God sucks.

The biggest problem with God is the inability to communicate clearly. Making it impossible to know what is information from God and what is just stuff people made up. Every major brand constantly manages the brand to avoid confusion. This is done by clear communication.

The world is full of various religions and an endless array of versions of each religion. God has done nothing to sort it out. God is the epitome of an absent and passive leadership style. When people do this for any length of time they get replaced. When is God going to be replaced with a manager who actually manages?

If God wants to be an authority figure God has to step up to the plate and take command. Until then God is a total joke as an authority.

 

[DBT]

Syed, I think you like say whatever suits your needs. You say that god has authority over you, yet I doubt that you have ever met god or taken instructions directly from god.

quran is direct words of god, so yes i do take instructions directly from god

It hasn't been established that the Quran is the word of God. That is just a belief based on faith. The writers of the Quran were human. Therefore the Quran is the work of humans, not God

 

[Angry Floof]

Syed doesn't know how the trick is done. He doesn't know his own mind works. I think he spends so much time here engaging us because underneath his convoluted zealotry, he's really curious.

 

[abaddon]

I have never met an authority figure like 'god'

trust me atheists dont like any authority even their parents

atheists like to do what ever makes them feel good

atheists philosophy '' if its feel good just do it '' there is no authority over us

Pretty good description of me! As an anarchist...

There is no virtue in submission. People in power manipulate that out of you, using con artist tricks, and persuade you that submission to authority is virtue. They do it because it's an advantage to them if you're subservient and slave-like. There's no honor in that at all, but they make it seem like it's so. You're in compliance with the "will of God", they say, and thus a good Muslim. Though, as an unthinking automated subservient type, you can't know if that's really true or not. You end up having to trust others and not yourself.

 

[Bomb#20]

Syed, I think you like say whatever suits your needs. You say that god has authority over you, yet I doubt that you have ever met god or taken instructions directly from god.

quran is direct words of god, so yes i do take instructions directly from god

The quran you read is the direct words of some typesetter, who wrote the words of some proofreader, who copied the words of some other typesetter and some other proofreader, in a chain leading back to some scribe at the end of another chain of scribes manually copying manuscripts laboriously written out by earlier scribes, ultimately copying the words of some 9th- or 11th-century scholar who decided for himself which words to put in the quran -- a man who only guessed which words had been meant, a man who introduced tashkil and i'jaam of his own choosing, because he was working from a manuscript written in the old style before such clarifications became customary. And the unclear manuscripts that man worked from had been altered from earlier versions at the orders of some official who heard a student recite a quran differently from his own memory of what Muhammad had dictated.

So if quran is direct words of god, that means your god is that chain of many humans. Congratulations. You are an idolater.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There is no virtue in submission. People in power manipulate that out of you, using con artist tricks, and persuade you that submission to authority is virtue.

Don't agree. Submitting can be psychologically powerful. There's something to be said for letting go of one's ego. There's also a mind body connection. Letting go and allowing yourself to be dominated can be a source of strength. This is at the core of all religions and which they all train.

What I'm trying to get at is that there's a time to dominate, and a time to submit. I work in big IT teams. Those would never function unless whatever side lost the arguments didn't submit afterwards.

I think the secular world have forgotten to value this aspect, and I think it needs reintroducing. We need to train it. Anyhoo.. training submission is something I've always admired about religion. It takes a lot of bravery for somebody powerful to submit. I wish more would learn to do it. To learn that submitting isn't being humiliated, losing or weakness.

They do it because it's an advantage to them if you're subservient and slave-like. There's no honor in that at all, but they make it seem like it's so. You're in compliance with the "will of God", they say, and thus a good Muslim. Though, as an unthinking automated subservient type, you can't know if that's really true or not. You end up having to trust others and not yourself.

If you never submit, how aren't you just as much a slave to your ego? Learning to trust others is the most valuable gift we can ever receive, and to learn that you must make yourself vulnerable, to submit. There's nothing unthinking about submitting. Submission can be liberating. Which I'm sure is why so many do.

Sorry for the rant. This is just the one thing where I think secularists are just wrong. This is a virtue.

 

[Angry Floof]

Submit to what, though? If you're working in an IT team, you are hardly submitting your conscience to an external moral authority. That work environment is not the central context of your life (I would hope you leave the office from time to time). Your world view and core beliefs about yourself and your nature might be influenced by people you spend time around, but that hardly constitutes a religious identity. It's easy to let go of anything when you know it's temporary office behavior and you'll go back to your regular life without a scratch afterward. The worst fear you have really for not complying is that you might lose your job, not your life or your soul. If so, I'd say that's one cut-throat IT company!

These things have cognitive significance. Also note that masochism serves a very similar purpose for those who engage in it. Group identity, structured belief system, and rules of social behavior are not required for that experience. That's just one way people find to experience the letting go of ego you speak of. Organized religion is never necessary to that. It might be incidental to that experience or provide context for it, and maybe some religions have captured a bit of wisdom in this regard, but religion itself is not in the least bit necessary for transcendent experiences.

No story is needed, no list of rules or principles, no names, no lore, none of that is required for such experiences beyond serving as attempts to articulate something after the fact. Articulation is useful and can be inspiring, but it becomes religion when we mistake the articulation as the thing of value rather than an experience that is hard to describe. Seems a human tendency more than a religious person tendency, but you can see how belief systems that lack the mitigators of cognitive error would easily assimilate this kind of thinking.

 

[abaddon]

DrZ,

I wouldn't disagree with you if it wasn't your poor choice of a word to defend. I never meant to advocate an all-out egocentricity in what I said. My secular version of "God's will" would be recognition of our being a facet of nature, of our status as earth-animals and not superior beings. Humanity's choice is fit in with the ecology or they ruin a lot of lives including their own. But that's not "submission" at all, which is the talk of hierarchies, of superior beings and inferior beings. Rather it's mutuality, a relation of gift and receive (not of give and take).

Setting aside one's own wants for the good of a group is not admitting the others are a superior force or superior beings, as submission connotes. Describing a team having a disagreement in terms of war, where one side dominates and the other submits, is some medieval thinking. The war metaphors for human inter-relationships endorse a crap attitude. There are better words, without the ugly connotations of submission, for what you're trying to say.

I agree with your hope to rehabilitate religion instead of eradicate it. But that doesn't involve re-introductions of any of their concepts/metaphors unchanged. It involves a revaluation of all the old metaphors so they don't continue to hurt people and earth's life.

----

Oh, and now that I see Angry Floof's post,

 

[DrZoidberg]

Submit to what, though? If you're working in an IT team, you are hardly submitting your conscience to an external moral authority. That work environment is not the central context of your life (I would hope you leave the office from time to time). Your world view and core beliefs about yourself and your nature might be influenced by people you spend time around, but that hardly constitutes a religious identity. It's easy to let go of anything when you know it's temporary office behavior and you'll go back to your regular life without a scratch afterward. The worst fear you have really for not complying is that you might lose your job, not your life or your soul. If so, I'd say that's one cut-throat IT company!

These things have cognitive significance. Also note that masochism serves a very similar purpose for those who engage in it. Group identity, structured belief system, and rules of social behavior are not required for that experience. That's just one way people find to experience the letting go of ego you speak of. Organized religion is never necessary to that. It might be incidental to that experience or provide context for it, and maybe some religions have captured a bit of wisdom in this regard, but religion itself is not in the least bit necessary for transcendent experiences.

No story is needed, no list of rules or principles, no names, no lore, none of that is required for such experiences beyond serving as attempts to articulate something after the fact. Articulation is useful and can be inspiring, but it becomes religion when we mistake the articulation as the thing of value rather than an experience that is hard to describe. Seems a human tendency more than a religious person tendency, but you can see how belief systems that lack the mitigators of cognitive error would easily assimilate this kind of thinking.

You hit the nail, right on the head. I never said religion was necessary. Or rather, until we've managed to pluck the stuff that's good about religion and found secular equivalents, then religion will be necessary.

But to answer the question, to submit to whatever is in your best interest to submit to. Western society is very focused on inflating the ego and denying weakness. These are not good qualities if we want to be happy. It'll just lead to insecurity, since we obviously have no way of living up to a massive over-inflated ego. It's good to remind ourselves that most of the things happening in our lives is outside of our control.

Which is another Western aspect I really hate. The idea that we're the master of our fate. And if we're successful, that must mean that we're awesome. This one, perhaps is not exclusively Western, but this is where I live. And it's apparent here. It's good to submit to the random forces of the world, and not try so hard. It'll make you less anxious? Do you really need that car brand in particular? Won't a cheaper car with a weaker motor be just as fine?

I hope this wasn't too incoherent. But submit to the universe, and accept whatever it throws at us.

 

[bilby]

Syed, I think you like say whatever suits your needs. You say that god has authority over you, yet I doubt that you have ever met god or taken instructions directly from god.

quran is direct words of god, so yes i do take instructions directly from god

How do you know this?

 

[Syed]

DrZoidberg

I am not anti-religion. I think that religion should be and can be a positive force in the world. But right now science is the most powerful civilizing tool humanity has at the moment, and if religions doesn't get out of science's way they are going to be destroyed. That's just a fact.

do you mean religious people dont believe in science?

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quran is direct words of god, so yes i do take instructions directly from god

How do you know this?

i studied i believe

 

[DrZoidberg]

do you mean religious people dont believe in science?

Some do. Some don't. But since scientific literacy is only becoming increasingly important. People who reject science will become increasingly unemployable and populate our slums. Already now we can see a correlation between how religious a person is and wealth. Very religious people are more often poor. I think this will only become increasingly pronounced.

Money matters. I think only liberal religion can exist in the future. I think fundamentalist religion will be destroyed because it keeps their believers poor and ignorant. They will become increasingly irrelevant. And eventually disappear. History is full of dead religions, where there followers weren't able or willing to adapt to new trends.

 

[Syed]

do you mean religious people dont believe in science?

Some do. Some don't. .

what i know is ONLY religious institutions started building schools, colleges, universities and hospitals

i dont know any school built by an atheist, maybe because atheists hates science?


why dont atheists built a school, a college, a university, a hospital to honor charles darwin?

is he not worth it to honor him?