Why can't atheists just be wrong?

[Born_Believer]

Yeah, you missed it. Rather than explain the book, myself, I referred you to a Web site that does a better job than I could. It's just a few posts after yours.

I cant see hew

resend that link if you can. I dunno, I scrolled up but my eyes just get lost lol

 

[Pygoscelis]

Look at someone just before he dies. Then, look at him again when he is dead. Something is gone, no? Everybody can see that. The clearly visible difference, that it is gone now, was his soul. This is so obvious that absolutely nobody questions it. I wonder why you do ...

That is in your mind. Here's another macabre experiment. Put a living body and a fresh dead body next to one another, somehow stop the living body from breathing to give away who is who, and ask a volunteer to identify the living one for you by taking a quick glance at the two. It isn't as easy as you think. I personally once DID find the dead body of a room mate (who had died in his sleep) and I didn't know he was dead until I touched him and he was cold. THEN I could immediately sense something had changed, because my own mind gave me that sense.

Total sidebar, but interesting: Did you know that many of the old photographs from when photography was first invented are of dead people? It took too long for the exposure to take the photo and people would move and ruin it, and it was quite an ordeal to do right... so may people took keepsakes of their recently dead by posing them as living and taking that photo. It was hard to tell them apart from a live photo shoot. Many of those photos on the walls of fancy houses were actually of dead people.

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

Short of an actual and immediate call to violence, censorship is never a good idea. It only pushes the ideas underground and pushes counter-culture. The better idea is the free marketplace ideas. The answer to bad ideas is good ideas, not silencing people.

From what I have reviewed of our discussion, we were here specifically talking about political correctness which doesn't (necessarily) involve outside censorship but is about peer accountability and peer shunning of bad ideas that are put forward in the name of free marketplace of ideas because remember here we were talking about the liberal left that is now being asked to shunt political correctness in favor of "speaking it as it is." That said, let's talk about why you brought up the issue of censorship this early into the conversation; I think it's because you, as do others, feel that political correctness has become an exercise in absurdity and game about the sensitivities of the "perpetually offended." While I'd note that political correctness has become a derogatory catchphrase, I'd say that this is because this has been made so by those in our society that are not harmed in the least when politically incorrect statements are made and lead to a palpable hostile or unfriendly environment (in which any minority whether in terms of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or creed feel that they're again experiencing the repeat of long historical biases and mistreatment that included offensive words and discriminatory actions).

Colleges, for example, are part of that history, like it or not, that were once upon a time segregated and excluded certain groups either because they were not the right race, gender, religion, or ethnic background. For example, Yale University's policy was described by a former medical professor in the history of the school to selectively "[never] admit more than five Jews, take two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all." Recognizing this history and then realizing the present-day realities that can reactivate memories or stereotypes or outmoded views does not mean that a person has stepped into the role of the hare-brained "social justice warrior." Realize that without you or myself being a dark-skinned African-American male or female who has never had to walk into a store and been followed around for fear that you or I will show our color (pun intended!) and shoplift, you will not understand how African-Americans interpret microaggressions like the "Black face" with a jail suit for Halloween. Because you and I haven't had to live through a lens of knowing what blackness means in America and having this insidious fear that paralyzes you just realizing that neither your intellect nor your education might matter when it really could count in the face of an armed police officer because all that will be visible of you from the outside is the color of your skin; I know I certainly can't imagine having a black person's fear of knowing that his/her worth in the end might actually come down to skin color. Being a black person in America means you're likelier to be stopped and frisked, likelier to be shot dead when stopped, and likelier to be incarcerated, all in comparison to your white counterpart.

The 2004 movie Crash was just a small snippet and invitation into what being black might mean in a world that privileges the non-black majority. Prejudice and racism still exist whether you and I see it or not because we're not the ones that ultimately matter when it comes to "seeing" this because the ones experiencing it will always know better. It is in many ways the same with Islamophobia; the persons who I understand as the most vitriolic deniers of Islamophobia are those that have never really sat down to talk and tried to see what being a mainstream Muslim person today might mean in the globe from a mainstream Muslim person's eyes; they've not tried to understand what the day-to-day travails are shaping up to for the mainstream Muslim to be like hiding religious identity, double-checking that the person harassing you at the gas station doesn't result in a physical assault, and cringing any time news is given about some tragedy and just know that whatever violent act that anyone's committed anywhere is now suspected to have a Muslim culprit true or not in a developing story that still has not come out with all the facts; there's no hiding from the reality that a Muslim person's individuality as a human being has ceased to matter in everyday life because our identity is no longer ours to own but for others to prostitute (e.g. Islamophobic pundits) and/or criminalize/penalize (e.g. burkini bans, hijab bans, praying bans, beard bans, building mosque bans, eating halal/kosher bans in various countries around the globe).

Campus environments and societies should be about self-regulating in favor of political correctness to create a healthy apparatus trough which those who are obviously otherized can express themselves even if they're never afforded the privileges of the majority; self-regulating in this way means that they're at least not treated to intimidation; it's about giving "breathing room" so that those otherized can feel free to go about their daily lives without fearing being further stigmatized or maligned. Also, I agree that you are right that it might create a counterculture, and so I'll not deny that; that said, countercultures can only increase in fervor when they're shown to be in some way or light valuable or better as a movement; if a person is prepared to be open-minded and are taught about history with an emphasis on oppression's fruits and empathizing with those oppressed, then countercultures will never gain the momentum they need to be the "it" thing just as today talking about all-white suburbs is not an "it" thing just as today talking about how women cannot do or be certain things is not the "it" thing. There are people like Craig Cobbs who might still want all-white communities but their movement is so ostensibly small that the counterculture that they represent is analogous to a writhing snake in the throes of agony of death though never really dead. At its heart, this is and has never been about censorship though that element is there but the simple values that even an atheist and a theist on the opposite spectrum of understanding and life can share such as inclusion, respect, and empathy.

That said, since you've brought up the idea of censorship, I'd say that censorship is sometimes a good idea and sometimes a bad idea. I don't think we can ever categorically say that censorship is never a good idea because we actually do engage in censorship in myriad forms even within the expansive breadth and manners of freedom of expression we're afforded even though it may not seem so facially; for example, broadcasting television networks have to censor certain words and journalists sometimes can't report everything happening in war-zones.

And I can stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that; unless and until you switch from progressive to regressive and start making things up to put into the mouths of others that you refuse to actually hear. I am not saying you do that, but that is what regressives do. A classic example is this clip of Cenk Uygur interviewing an author, calling his book absurd, and telling him what the book says, having never read it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMzCitlbsh0 .

I do watch Cenk Uygur's show periodically, but since I am not familiar with this specific incident and controversy, I do not wish to comment either way; otherwise, I'd be doing what you've just accused Cenk Uygur of doing, which would be both a disservice to you and him both.

We have seen people like Reza Aslan do the same to Sam Harris. Sam Harris believes that we should "anti-profile" people, meaning not spend as much scrutiny of obvious non-threats like six year old girls as on people who look like himself and like middle easterners, as scrutiny is a limited resource. He can imagine a crazy scenerario where using torture and where using nuclear weapons could be acceptable. I disagree with him on each of these points, but I recognize and acknowledge that his is NOT saying that we should nuke the middle east or torture muslims.

Incidentally, I am not sure what the controversy here is specific to Reza Aslan because I've heard Sam Harris' words about Reza Aslan but I haven't as yet come across any defamatory statements made by Reza Aslan about Sam Harris; so, again, I don't know what the background to all this is and I'd rather not hear one side of this issue and make any judgment. What I do know, however, is that I disagree with Sam Harris just like you and specifically on many issues concerning Islam. Also, I'd note that he has in the past consistently defended America even when confronted with Noam Chomsky disagreeing with him on issues like drone attacks in the Middle East and nuking Japan in WWII. Sam Harris has also talked about intervening in Middle Eastern affairs to bring the people there democracy, an act which I have long been an opponent even when I was an atheist in college (though I'd never then heard of Sam Harris) because as a cultural relativist I have always been very skeptical of interfering in places wherein the cultural and situational demands of the people is not met with our interference and really all peoples requires of themselves to determine their own political landscape and leadership. So, in this, I'd, for example, agree with Dan Carlin as I did in the podcast that had been broadcasted by Sam Harris on his own blog.

Words are words. Not magical powers. They have the power we give them and only that. There was a time when Moron, and Idiot were not negative words, but instead descriptive words. Then we had Retarded people, which also later became a negative word. We had Gay as a very negative word back in the 80s, and now that word has been claimed by the homosexual community and isn't a slur anymore except among extreme anti-homosexual bigots. You can say "Gay" to a homosexual and nobody will blink. The "N-word", and I only call it that because I sense the mods will censor me otherwise, has a toxic connotation because of the history of extreme bigotry against blacks to the point of slavery, but even that word CAN be used in some very limited cases without any bigotry at all. You can see black people using it while joking around, and George Carlin, a white comedian, dared to use it and did so in a not at all bigoted way. I really miss George Carlin. His "words you can't say on TV" routine is a bit out dated now, but still a classic.

From a metaphysical and spiritual perspective, that is certainly not true.

However, even from a worldly perspective, that is not true. Words behind them carry specific intentions, history, and contexts and known conscious interpretations that you go on later to mention; we cannot divorce the words from these things within society and then believe that they have some power born only of subjective view because subjective view is itself hostage to processes and associations in the objective world; even when these words are reinterpreted by the minority like you go on to mention with blacks using the N-word amongst themselves, historical facts like N-word being used in the pejorative for black people are not erased in the minds of the black people and therefore these words remain taboo and in my view should remain taboo for people to use because they're not funny to people from those considered outsiders because they know that white supremacists and Neo-Nazi groups still favor that term.

A ridiculous abuse of power for a man imagined to be liberal. I don't think I have ever mentioned it, because it is rarely relevant, but I am Asian. I take no offence whatsoever to anybody calling me "Oriental" unless it is said with malice.

I think you're projecting onto him your vision of what being a liberal means and then precluding him from orienting and defining himself on the thought scale that would allow him to be a liberal yet also believe himself to hold to an ideal that allows for some exceptions in some cases.

Cartoons about the death and torture of holocaust victims are certainly in bad taste; as are cartoons about doing the same to Muslims. But what of other cartoons? Much of what Charlie Hebdo drew isn't all that offensive, and some of it is even anti-discrimination oriented. Jesus & Mo is a comic strip where Jesus and Mohammed are depicted sitting around chatting and making some puns. Do you consider that hate speech? I know your religion forbids you from drawing Mohammed, but why can't I? Why should I have to restrict my behaviour based on your religion, especially if I am not directing it at you? I will do what I want, and if you decide to get offended, that is your problem.

While a Muslim is not allowed to draw Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him), from what I understand, that proscription does not apply to non-Muslims. For example, on the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court, law-givers are depicted from whom we owe some of our modern understanding of law, and who else do you find there apart from Moses (peace be upon him) and Confucius and Napoleon? We find in there Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him). And just in case you're wondering, I'm not offended.

(I have never seen the comic strip which you're referencing, and therefore I don't think it would be wise for me to make any comment specific to that cartoon strip.)

That said, I'm specifically here talking about cartoons that are offensive to a community - Jews or Muslims - because they embody the highest disrespect. Holocaust cartoons embody the highest disrespect to the Jewish community because antisemitism took the worst form possible in history in trying to extinguish all the lives of Jewish people who had simply had a different faith than the majority. In that same way, depicting Prophet Muhammad :saws: (blessings be upon him) when Charlie Hebdo did it was about showing the highest disrespect to the Muslim community because it's taking in the background of clear historical and present-day French discrimination against the Muslim community in France and against the backdrop of global extinguishing of Muslim lives that has claimed in the Global War on Terror aftermath 4 million lives in Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and an unknown quantity of Muslim civilians that have been killed in Syria and are still being killed and a conspiracy of global silence on the subject of historical and present-day Israeli state-sponsored terrorism against Palestine.

Also, I do think the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are offensive. They showed, for example, Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him), a known revered figure and symbol of "mercy to the worlds," as a caricature of a terrorist with a bomb which is factually inaccurate (as there were no bombs then!), a complete misrepresentation and distortion of historical reality of what he :saws: sought to do in Arabia, a clear-cut demonization of Islam, and a clear-cut effort at demoralization of the Muslim community. If we're going to be honest here though it may be hard for non-Muslims in France to be so with themselves or their political leaders due to radical secularism having taken a stronghold in the political and social arena with draconian measures like banning of religious symbols in public places including hijabs and crosses having happened, burqas banned, burkinis becoming banned and now Sarkozy saying that anyone who's ever come into contact with a radical person to be placed in detention centers reminiscent of concentration camps built for Japanese in WWII, I'd recommend the non-Muslim French populace look at their own bloody history of what is known as French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" with Robespierre as the architect that would seem to look like brothers of Daesh and also how poorly they have treated Muslims in France which have been ghettoized and constantly otherized.

In my view, it's a gross injustice to think that the French Muslim terrorists, though wrong to have committed the Charlie Hebdo attack, were doing singularly motivated out of religion because clearly they have interpreted the intentions of the cartoonists not in any vacuum but in the backdrop of all the realities that I've mentioned which incidentally also underscore an appetite for hypocrisy encapsulated in Noam Chomsky's book called On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare for which there seems an avoidance specific to making a peep in most people.

Now, to answer your question: "Why should I have to restrict my behaviour based on your religion, especially if I am not directing it at you? I will do what I want, and if you decide to get offended, that is your problem." Anyone can do anything that anyone wants. For example, a person can point a toy gun at an old person as a prank and a person can decide to sleep with his/her best friend's wife if he/she wants and a person can call a black person a "monkey" if a person wants. However, for any of these actions, for me the question is not whether anyone or in this case you can but whether you should. See, for me, all actions ultimately come down to ethics, morals, and values and knowing ramifications that each choice represents. The old person may suffer a heart attack or fall and hurt himself/herself; the best friend's marriage may break up; and the black person may feel angry, hurt, and upset. To say that this is "your" problem is to be absolving oneself from accepting to act as an ethical person who understands that our actions affect others and self-modulating our actions in accordance with that spirit of ethics and empathy and acting responsibly in the vein of common sense and human psychology. If we care about someone or some people, we will do things in our power to avoid hurting said person(s) deliberately; only when we don't care about some people will we commit to courses of actions that don't take into account their sentiments or feelings (and Muslims are not so naive that they don't understand this basic human psychology).

And of hate speech itself, without a threat of violence, would you ban it? How about blasphemy laws? In favour or against?

Well, we'd have to define first what hate speech is. However, I'd note that in the U.S. we have enacted in some places cyberbullying laws and in Europe we have laws against Holocaust denials; I'd note that these bans are not about threats of violence but about avoiding creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear and xenophobia. In Europe wherein there's Holocaust denials laws, right to free speech is seen to be about balancing against the right of others to not to be subjected to racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and a potential revival of Nazism. So, yes, I'm cautiously in favor of regulating speech in specific instances as exceptions to right of free speech.

Self-determination is the right of any nation and its peoples, and this is something I believed in also as an atheist and specifically still do as a cultural relativist; therefore, nations that have blasphemy laws have a right to have them. However, I'd also note then that such nations then have a weighty and unique responsibility in protecting persons from abuses being perpetrated under guise of these laws and therefore they must err in caution about how specific acts of speech are interpreted. Also, I'd note that while we perhaps only think immediately of Muslim majority nations as having blasphemy laws, that's an erroneous assumption. We have blasphemy laws in Austria, Canada, Australia, Brazil. Just Google blasphemy laws and read the Wikipedia page.

I would like to point out that form an atheist's viewpoint, the Bible and Quran and their religions can be easily seen as hate speech. These are books that say things like kill the unbeleiver where you find him, don't suffer a witch to live, etc. And these are religions that often conflate obedience for morality and often state belief as essential for morality. They also often say it is justice for anybody who doesn't believe in and follow their God to suffer eternally in hellfire. Hate speech? Yes. Ban it? No.

Well, again, I'd say we'd have to firstly define hate speech, and I'd venture to guess that we would come to different understandings of what hate speech is. And secondly, I'd note that specifically the verses of which you're speaking in the Quran were mentioned in the context of war or have specific contexts from which they cannot be withdrawn. Also, hate speech at its heart is about inciting prejudicial action or violence against a group that doesn't own the absolute benefit or immediate forum space in the wider society of being able to counter such speech.

What he is saying there is that either the typical Muslim really is that fragile and volatile (which he says he thinks isn't the case), or the regressive left is doing a huge disservice to Muslims in imagining them to be like that. Comedians, TV shows, pretty much everybody can talk about, draw, make jokes about any other religion, but when it comes to Islam and Mohamed people walk on eggshells. I would like to see more prominent Muslims simply laugh off Charlie Hebdo or stuff like Jesus & Mo, showing they have a thicker than paper-thin skin and showing that they have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. It would help undo that thin skinned volatile image the islamists and regressive left have created for the religion. The Mormons don't react to the "Book of Mormon" broadway musical by screaming for blood or protesting in the streets. They took an add out in the show's program, using it as a way to invite people to what real Mormonism is. Now that's awesome.

Well, I can only laugh at things that I find personally funny; I don't think it would be right of anyone to expect that I'd engage in forced laughter at things that I don't find funny. I frequently laugh at myself; and as a product of American culture, I'd say I find a great many things funny. However, I don't find certain things funny. For example, there are men of various religions, creed, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity around the globe who like to joke about rape or make catcalls at a lone women walking down the street; I don't find jokes about rape funny and I certainly don't find sexual harassment funny. I doubt I'm ever going to start laughing at such things. Some may see this as evidence of my thin skin but I see it as evidence of a wider culture of gender intimidation and inequity and weaponizing the penis. Rape is real, not a joke, and it happens to actual women. In that same way, Charlie Hebdo cartoons represent to me the palpable currents of Islamophobia that I see around me in the globe that are now taking draconian forms like burkini bans, burka bans, banning of prayer during school, calls for deportation of Muslims, asking of nuking Muslim lands against the backdrop of more heinous forms around the globe extant already like drone attacks with increasing civilian deaths and injuries in Syria as the world watches and then forgets the wounded boy in Aleppo sitting shocked and still notwithstanding the Global War on Terror with an aftermath of 4 million deaths.

As for truly hateful stuff like the "Burn a Quran" guy or people attacking mosques, etc, that needs to be called out and marginalized based on what it actually is and what these people actually say. Remember Fred Phelps, the "God Hate Fags" preacher? He used to stand outside the funerals of homosexuals with a megaphone shouting out how they were burning in hell, etc. A biker gang got involved in response. But they didn't rough him up or have him put in jail or anything. No, they counter protested and blocked the funeral off and revved their bikes up so the people at the funeral didn't have to hear Phelps. Remember the North Carolina anti-gay and anti-transgender law not too long ago? The action taken in response was to boycott. Banks, musicians, tons of businesses simply refused to do business there. The same sort of reaction works well against shop owners who are bigoted against gays, and it would work against those bigoted against Muslims too if we got enough people doing a boycott. This is how liberals operate. Leave banning free speech to the conservatives.

I believe in the right to free speech, but I also believe in making exceptions in some cases. Freedom of speech has never been absolute or meant to be an absolute in any country in any part of the Western world historically or in the present-day. In the U.S. For example, freedom of speech does not cover the right of a person to engage in selling a miracle paleo diet in the books as a cure to cancer; clearly, here, that's because we've identified a potential problem of allowing misleading or false advertising that can cause harm to the public and so we restrict such speeches as not promoting the cause of free speech.

Speech has some unintended and some intended consequences, and it is this fundamental understanding that has lead and leads us even today in free societies to criminalize things like child pornography. At its core, the matter is not and never has been about liberals or conservatives but about our own values, ethics, and morals.

Shutting down free speech and the free marketplace of ideas is completely anti-liberal, and that is why we call it regressive instead of progressive. Bad ideas can be fought with good ideas; and indeed that is the only way good ideas can triumph. Otherwise the bad will just go underground and fester there bringing people to them. You want to fight bigotry? That is great. Let's do it by you and I holding hands and standing back to back against it, in all of its forms. Pretty much everybody has felt it against them in one way or another at least to some extent. The fact that there are homophobic black men and racist homosexuals boggles my mind, and if we could only get them to focus on the feeling of bigotry against themselves, they may be able to recognize it coming from themselves and put an end to it.

Check this out. THIS Is what we need more of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYpwzUrF80M

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_qhlRN0L8 by the same people being extremely brave and awesome. Note how they didn't cut out the negative reactions, and how heart warming the positive ones are in contrast.

This is the world and not any Utopia imagined or otherwise, and therefore, I understand what you're saying about bad ideas going underground and festering. However, I don't think the practical solution is ever to let the bad ideas duke it out the good ideas because I note that ultimately it becomes about who do you believe and trust more and who is more effective in making its case rather than the objective value of a thing as good or bad; and really, therefore, what will happen is that bad ideas win out over good ideas many, many, many times. Pragmatically the on-ground truth is that we need to regulate bad ideas otherwise we'll see more of them gaining traction in legal and horrific ways that I'd note led to the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany; imagine if antisemitism laws had existed then and regulated free speech in specific ways that didn't allow for undermining of Jews as a race or religion, do you think Hitler and Nazism would have been able to rise to power? Because Hitler's rise is directly tied to and the fruit of propagandizing hatred of Jews; and that only was able to happen directly under the auspices of free speech and freedom of expression. I'm not saying, by the way, that we need to ban hate speech always, but we should clearly at least sometimes not allow abuses of free speech to occur under the guise of free speech.

Guilt for who and for what? Should you feel guilty because you are a Muslim and islamists exist? Should every white person feel guilty for what happened to the native populations Europeans of that era eradicated? Should modern day Germans feel guilty for the holocaust? Why? The former in each case is not in any way responsible for the latter.

My point of guilt is so much bigger than history though that's part of it because I'm saying that injustices are still being perpetrated on minorities and history is being defined and rewritten in ways that are made to look as if the minorities are the villains and the majority is the innocent bystander when that is a complete and utter delusional distortion of the world's realities.

Cameron Russell, in a TEDTalk she'd delivered, had honestly said she owed her success to genetic lottery because being white, thin, and tall. She was and is and will remain infinitely more desirable than her non-white counterparts in the modeling world. In 2007, a New York University p.h.D student counted all the models that were hired on the runway and less than 4% were white. In that same way, being non-black that we're benefiting from the privilege of being neither of those things in a world that has privileged/does privilege certain races/ethnicity or types of faces above others. When a Black-sounding named applicant is passed over so that a White-sounding named applicant or based on a stigmatized address of belonging to majority black neighborhoods over majority white neighborhood or a black person's voice linguistically profiled, that's discrimination and we know this. When a black person is more likely to be stopped and frisked in a society that is overwhelmingly white and more likely to be killed in/during those stops than white counterparts, we shouldn't just blame "criminality" of blacks but look into how conscious and unconscious biases are playing a role into what's happening in our society that's leading up to this undesirable outcome. When public schools don't receive the same funds or have the same opportunities in black majority cities or suburbs, we can no longer ignore the fact that we're a part of the system that is operating in a way that's problematic and we should be feeling guilt for all those things and because that guilt serves as a reminder and an opportunity for us to work to correct all these inequities that's working to keep blacks on the lower totem pole of the social, economic, and political ladder. This is what is known as institutional racism and we can't afford to just say oh why should we feel any guilt because the truth is we're benefiting unequally from the system, and that's an injustice that should concern all of us. Also, slavery in historical terms had meant that already blacks never had the power or privilege that whites in society have had for generations in their favor and so we know things had from the get-go not meant to support their rise on the social ladder; and by the way, "white flight" is a real phenomena that continues to take place in our society to present-day.

Also, for example, in France, we know the following from the article written by Jim House called "The colonial and post-colonial dimensions of Algerian migration to France": "The migration of colonised Arab-Berbers from Algeria to mainland France was the earliest and the most extensive of all colonial migrations to Western Europe before the 1960s. Initiated in the late nineteenth century, accelerated by the presence of Algerians in French factories and the army during World War I, male labour migration became an established component of the colonial economy from the early 1920s. Algeria was France's major settler colony: migration there from mainland France, Italy, Spain and Malta involved a policy of land expropriation of the indigenous population that slowly wore down the traditional economic, social and cultural structures of the Algerian peasantry, and existing patterns of labour migration within Algeria were extended to mainland France."

Similarly, Algerian immigrants make up the majority of the French Muslim population, and unsurprisingly French similarly have a pattern of otherizing based on classism and undoubtedly racial identity and dislike of multiculturalism playing a part. For example, the 1973 novel Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail had inspired both xenophobic hysteria and acts of violence against the Algerian population in France after its release. Yet when any attack like the Charlie Hebdo attacks happen, Islam is blamed without taking into account these extant realities that have shaped the Muslims living in France against the backdrop of wider Islamophobia rising in the globe.

I see no reason to invite them. I see no reason to forbid them an invitation either. The only reason I wouldn't bringing them in is because there are better speakers to bring in. That said, I wouldn't mind listening to what Farid Mortazavi has to say and why he thinks holocaust cartoons are important, if he can do it in a calm manner. I may learn something. I may get an insight into why he thinks what he does and what may break him out of it.

I'm a supporter of political correctness, and therefore I see disinvitations as a small way of self-regulating as persons in vein of peer accountability and positive peer pressure in a society wanting to stand up for equality and justice, especially in learning institutions which have a unique and special interest in fostering a healthy environment specific to inclusion, respect, and empathy. Students in my opinion are right to protest instances of offense or insensitivity in school settings because the right to free speech must be weighed against potential for abuse, discrimination, and safety, all of which are serious concerns and affect everyone's ability to equally participate in the school setting and may hampers specific persons' ability to feel they are free to be who they are when they're made to feel the "other," the unwanted, the unacceptable.

In the article, "The truth about 'political correctness' is that it doesn't actually exist," Amanda Taub says, "[T]he charge of 'political correctness' is often used by those in a position of privilege to silence debates raised by marginalized people—to say that their concerns don't deserve to be voiced, much less addressed." She then writes, "[T]heir arguments are fundamentally the same: that marginalized people's demands for inclusion are just a bunch of annoying whining, and that efforts to address their concerns are unnecessary. They also betray the deeper concern: that listening to the demands of marginalized groups is dangerous, because doing so could potentially burden the lives, or at least change the speech, of more privileged people."

So, the Craig Cobbs and Farid Mortazavis of our world are right to not be invited in our school settings because they'd only sow seeds of learned prejudice, antipathy, or division; whereas I note learning in pedagogical institutions should first and foremost be about understanding as a starting point what Maya Angelou said which is, "[P]eople will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Ideas can only be challenged in the best ways possible if people understand that there are feelings attached to ideas, and these ideas can be good or bad, but they're in the end stemming from people about people and in treating it as such we're allowing for human psychology to be taken into account.

That would be ironic, but that isn't what I am doing. You can disagree with people all you want and it doesn't make you regressive.

Regressive is about forbidding people to speak and then pretending you know what they meant to say, like Cenk telling an author of a book he he hasn't read what it really says. Regressive is about "Safe Spaces" where your ideas won't be challenged, and "Trigger Warnings", and the search for "Micro-Aggressions" to be offended over. Regressive is about Identity Politics and the Oppression Olympics, where people compete to be or find groups more oppressed than other groups, and then treat individuals within them as if they are all the same and give them the exclusive right to speak with impunity. If you're not doing this, you are not part of the regressive left.

I am a liberal. I don't think trigger warnings stifle free speech because using the provision of content warnings doesn't mean that that will somehow curtail discussion or result in student avoidance or lack of participation. On the contrary, I think creating a space in which we treat safety as an important concern means we're engaging in the creation of a supportive and open environment for people who are both historical survivors of oppression and also present-day recipients of abuses, discrimination, and institutional racism to equally speak their mind. All of the above is simply about recognizing that we may make a key difference when we work towards creating spaces in which people feel safe so that people who might otherwise never speak up are not shy about lending their own voices to conversations on difficult subjects and issues that concern them about our societies around the globe. Also, to be honest, I don't get why we have to choose between "safe spaces" and free speech because I don't see them as competing things as they are not mutually inclusive and certainly don't have to be in practical terms.

Also, I disagree that we're hearing engaging in searches for microaggressions but instead recognizing that our thoughts and actions have consequences that might be given unintended interpretations and we should be cautious and use our common sense to think about what we're doing or saying before we do or say things; in other words, we can and should call things like this simply being "thoughtful" and "street-smart."

While I don't think we should be should ever have anyone competing for who's had it worse or seek to defend on automatic an injustice just because someone's had it worse once or belongs to the group that's had it worse, the truth is that we can sometimes evaluate history and know that some groups have definitely had it worse than others; I don't think recognition of it is about Oppression Olympics but simply the truth that being colored in the globe to whatever shade that is not white has meant certain things at certain times to certain people and so has being gendered. To deny this is to spit on inconvenient truths and ignore the memory of such still remaining with people. By the way, I don't treat any individuals from any group as having any impunity when they behave badly and that includes me because I'd like to stand up for justice in the name of justice and want others to do the same as is called for in the Quran.

Hey, sorry for the delayed response; I got busy, but I'm so glad that you're back on IB; that said, I also know we might/will disagree on specifics of this matter.

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

Why is it, after 10,000 years of recorded gods, the best argument theists have is, "You'll find out when you die"?

And who said that's the best argument?

I'd say first and foremost start reading the Qur'an; I'd say usually Muslims point that out as one of the best arguments (though we also accept that translations of the Arabic Quran can never compare to the original of reading and understanding of the Arabic Qur'an in Arabic). I've already linked you to an easy-to-read Qur'an translation in one of the earlier posts. You can't say where's the evidence if once you're given a chance to review the evidence you don't begin to do so. In fact, I think if you're bored and have time, you can start a thread on IB wherein you read each chapter and then write your thoughts and feelings down on what you're reading.

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

The Messiah, as played by Keanu Reeves?

Again with the waiting! Gotta wait for the Rapture, gotta wait for the 2nd Coming, gotta wait for Doomsday... Why is God such a procrastinator? Is he trying to build dramatic tension, or what?

I'd say the question would be why do learning institutions give exams at the end of the term in a class. Why not in the beginning? Are teachers being procrastinators? Are teachers trying to build dramatic tension, or what?

That, my friend, is your answer.

 

[Pygoscelis]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)



And who said that's the best argument?

I'd say first and foremost start reading the Qur'an; I'd say usually Muslims point that out as one of the best arguments (though we also accept that translations of the Arabic Quran can never compare to the original of reading and understanding of the Arabic Qur'an in Arabic). I've already linked you to an easy-to-read Qur'an translation in one of the earlier posts. You can't say where's the evidence if once you're given a chance to review the evidence you don't begin to do so. In fact, I think if you're bored and have time, you can start a thread on IB wherein you read each chapter and then write your thoughts and feelings down on what you're reading.

Don't have time right now and tapping into my phone, so won't write a long response to your post to me above until maybe later, but wanted to say that this could be an interesting experiment. Which version of the Quran would you suggest using for it?

And what Hadith if any would you include? And would you include an account of the life of Mohammed? Emulating him is as much of it as anything else, yes?

 

[kritikvernunft]

Personally, I never really considered the possibility that you religious folk were somehow demented (with some specific exceptions), just mistaken. Why can't you return the favor?

Well, as you know, religious people disagree with atheists about one important issue: Unlike the atheists, we do not wish to appoint politicians for them to invent new laws. Religious people are happy with Divine Law as it is, and as far as we are concerned, there is no need for politicians to invent "fixes" to it. In that sense, the conflict is mostly political. If there were only a few atheists, I think that nobody would care much about the problem.

However, for historical reasons, the spectacular implosion of Christianity as a religion has produced train loads of atheists rejecting not just Christianity, but religion in general. These atheists have now appointed politicians who forcibly insist that they can overrule Divine Law, and forcibly insist that the laws that they have newly invented, would also apply to religious people. So, what we have now, are moderately-religious people trying to contain the political problem by negotiating with the atheists and their politicians, but if the negotiations fail, we all know that it is the Von Clausewitz doctrine that will kick in: War is the continuation of the political negotiations but then by other means.

I believe that atheists are not demented, but rather delusional. Atheists really believe that religious people would give a flying fart about what exactly atheists "vote" for. Atheists are somehow deluded into believing that they will be able to avoid proving that they are willing to risk their lives and die for they believe in, while that is clearly not how it works. So, no, atheists are not demented. They are naive and delusional.

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

Hey, hope you're doing awesome. I was just watching the Hillary-Trump debate with which I'm now done which has been an interesting watch.

Yes, sure; I don't personally like the translations that I had used when I'd started reading the English translation of the Arabic Qur'an when I was an atheist; so, honestly, apart from recognizing that the Arabic Qur'an has no substitute, I certainly think that some translations are worse than others in terms of posing a reading difficulty because they're harder to get through and especially with our modern attention spans (which are short); in fact, one of the things that made a huge difference in my being able to understand the Qur'an when I'd embraced Islam after my atheism was not simply relying on translations but hearing the exegesis on podcasts on verses of the Quran with Arabic explained from Bayinnah Institute. So, while I hesitate to endorse one version of the translation over the other, I'll say I'd heard some good things about M.A.S. Haleem's translation of the Qur'an which is why I'm linking you to that translation within this post.

My friend, I can do better - there are classes entirely free of charge taught by Islamic scholars meant for Muslims that are about to open up for any person wanting to sign up on Seekershub.org; and while I note these classes are geared towards a Muslim audience, they've not said that non-Muslims can't sign up. So, for example, I've encouraged @czgibson to sign up and would do the same here with you. Please, by all means, sign up, because I'm going to be signing up too to maybe take some classes God-willing that I hadn't had a chance to take last time. I'd recommend for you the courses called "Meccan Dawn: The Life of the Beloved Prophet Muhammad :saws: (Part I)" and "Medinan Nights: The Life of the Beloved Prophet Muhammad :saws: (Part II)" because they do present the life of Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him).

The life of Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him) is extremely important to understanding the Qur'an. The reason I say this is because the Arabic Qur'an was actually just Recitation which is what the word "Qur'an" means. So, this Revelation wasn't in a book form that we know today; the Recitation would come in the form of specific verses at specific times to deal with specific situations in which Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him) and his :saws: Companions :ra: found themselves in Arabia. If you don't have time to take those courses, I'd recommend you to read Martin Lings' book called Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. I read this book myself and I loved it.

To be honest, if you're asking me, I actually took a very offbeat path when I was an atheist and with some interest came upon/started studying Islam; usually, I note that people you know fall in love with the Qur'an; however, I actually had at that time taken time off from going directly to law school. And I have always been the type of person who loves quotes because I consider them meaningful tidbits of wisdom from which I could learn, and in fact I'd research ones that I liked and I'd put them on a Word Document to inspire me and sometimes I'd find ones that I really liked when I was in middle school on my school-provided personal calendar book which I'd fold or highlight. So, anyway, I had a phone that enabled me to use the Internet (which I later learned was a glitch!) and I actually ended up on a college site in which hadiths (prophetic traditions) were searchable, and I started searching the database entering specific words (whatever came to my mind!), and I was very, very, very moved by what I'd be reading. That actually I'd say really started my journey to Islam because I became really curious about Islam. Also, weirdly, I'd note that I'd read a lot of material from anti-Islam sites even as I was learning fully Islam from proper sources; that's probably not the typical pathway I imagine most people take when they study Islam and it's certainly not one that I'd recommend to any seeker because for an uninformed person it can "poison the well" so-to-speak but it's just the way that things happened and instead I became more convinced of Islam as I'd certainly learned enough to be able to see with an unbiased filter that they were sensationalizing and distorting and engaging in half-truths. So, anyway, I actually really love hadiths; that said, I'd say you should start probably with the Qur'an because from what I understand that's the thing that works with/for most people as the best argument for Islam. I have other arguments as well that I can make, but I think they're really things to be dealt with later when you want to engage with me after you've started reading the Qur'an. I'd also note that a wonderful non-Muslim member @DanEdge had started reading the Qur'an as well and you can actually compare once you start reading what you're finding with what he'd been finding, and his thread is titled, "Non-Muslim Reading the Qur'an." I'd love to actually see you posting about what you're learning/reading once you start so with the Qu'ran; it'd be really interesting.

Wishing you awesomeness, and best wishes,:statisfie

Don't have time right now and tapping into my phone, so won't write a long response to your post to me above until maybe later, but wanted to say that this could be an interesting experiment. Which version of the Quran would you suggest using for it?

And what Hadith if any would you include? And would you include an account of the life of Mohammed? Emulating him is as much of it as anything else, yes?

 

[noraina]

Wa alaykum assalam,

The suggestions of sister Search are ones I would definitely recommend.

The Bayinnah institute is perfect for anyone wishing to understand the Qur'an, Nouman Ali Khan is an amazing teacher with a huge depth of knowledge which he explains so simply.

As far as translations of the Qur'an go, everyone has their personal favourites and mine is the one by Abdul Haleem. I was around 14 when I first read the English translation of the Qur'an, it was the one by Pickthall and I admit for myself the language was slightly awkward. The one I lend to other people has generally been the one by Abdul Haleem - a very eloquent yet precise translation.

 

[Al Sultan]

Mashallah sister,you simply didn't give up,you kept fighting until you discovered the truth! Emmmm......what English translation do you recommend me to read? I read the English Quran with tafseer aswell,so I can understand it,but idk,i wanna find the best English translation for the quran,so what is it?

 

[Pygoscelis]

I think it's because you, as do others, feel that political correctness has become an exercise in absurdity and game about the sensitivities of the "perpetually offended."

Indeed. But not just for themselves. This is people going out of their way to find others to be offended on behalf of. And it does reach levels of absurdity. Blacks can't be called black and have to be called "African American" despite many never having set foot in Africa and many people actually in Africa and coming to America not being black. Can't call them "Coloured people".... gotta call them "People of Colour".... what? And don't tell black lives matter people that all lives matter. Gay used to be no good but is ok now. Still don't say fag. Homo is no good, but homosexual is fine. My mail man is now a letter carrier, or should I call him a person-person? Be careful when talking to or about transexuals. Call him her, no wait call him him? No wait, he/she is gender fluid and may be male or female at any given time. lol.

I am actually probably far more liberal than your religion can allow you to be, and I have no problem with any of these people, but it gets ridiculous sometimes and people DO go out of their way looking for reasons to be offended. That is what "micro-aggerssions" are. They are such minor aggressions that you need a microscope to see them. All this PC hypersensitivity is like the story of the boy who cried wolf, and makes it harder for REAL prejudice and REAL racism/homophobia/sexism, etc to be taken seriously and addressed appropriately.

Colleges, for example, are part of that history, like it or not, that were once upon a time segregated and excluded certain groups either because they were not the right race, gender, religion, or ethnic background.

They still do. Try being Asian and applying for university, like I and many of my friends have. Unless you have top grades (which luckily I did), you will basically be told "we have enough of your kind already", as applications of blacks and latino and native applicants are preferred to yours for "affirmative action" or "cultural diversity" reasons.

Campus environments and societies should be about self-regulating in favor of political correctness to create a healthy apparatus trough which those who are obviously otherized can express themselves even if they're never afforded the privileges of the majority

Campus environments are not about "building a home" as the one regressive social justice warrior famously declared. Campus environments are about education, learning, and opening up to a wide variety of disparate views, some of them unpleasant or even shocking to your pre-existing paradigm. Yes, bigotry should be held in check as best we can, but that doesn't mean shutting down free speech or giving special rights or preference to anyone.

That said, since you've brought up the idea of censorship, I'd say that censorship is sometimes a good idea and sometimes a bad idea. I don't think we can ever categorically say that censorship is never a good idea because we actually do engage in censorship in myriad forms even within the expansive breadth and manners of freedom of expression we're afforded even though it may not seem so facially; for example, broadcasting television networks have to censor certain words and journalists sometimes can't report everything happening in war-zones.

Journalists may not say certain words or report certain details or show dead bodies on camera for example because the network doesn't want to. I'm ok with that. That's up to the network since it is the network that is speaking. What I oppose is the censorship imposed by government. This includes censorship boards imposing rules on the networks and on us as individuals or creators of other media. And it also includes Universities and other bodies funded through tax payer dollars.

I do watch Cenk Uygur's show periodically, but since I am not familiar with this specific incident and controversy, I do not wish to comment either way; otherwise, I'd be doing what you've just accused Cenk Uygur of doing, which would be both a disservice to you and him both.

I provided the link. You can watch the video for yourself. It is a great example of the behaviour I was referring to.

when Charlie Hebdo did it was about showing the highest disrespect to the Muslim community because it's taking in the background of clear historical and present-day French discrimination against the Muslim community in France and against the backdrop of global extinguishing of Muslim lives that has claimed in the Global War on Terror aftermath 4 million lives in Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and an unknown quantity of Muslim civilians that have been killed in Syria and are still being killed and a conspiracy of global silence on the subject of historical and present-day Israeli state-sponsored terrorism against Palestine.

A lot of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are actually making points AGAINST discrimination. Though my personal favourite (which you will find offensive, but is awesome and brave) was the cover after the attack/slaughter happened, which showed Mohammed simply saying "Tous est parodonne" (all is forgiven) and holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign. What a contrast to the madmen who killed their colleagues. They stood strong, by showing another cartoon of Mohammed, and yet explicitly forgave the radical militant islamists fort he slaughter of their colleagues.

Also, I do think the Charlie Hebdo cartoons are offensive. They showed, for example, Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him), a known revered figure and symbol of "mercy to the worlds," as a caricature of a terrorist with a bomb which is factually inaccurate

That cartoon didn't originate with Charlie Hebdo, though they did reprint it. I support why they did so after the violence following its first printing in another magazine. They did it to show the islamists that bullying and violence will not win the day. At first, a cartoon like this is just rude and offensive, and I'd rather not see it printed (though I wouldn't censor it). But once somebody has reacted to it by slaughtering people.... it actually becomes an important symbol, and I then WOULD go out of my way to print it, as did Charlie Hebdo.

The massive outcry and call for censorship of the cartoon you are speaking of dwarfed any concern we heard from Muslims and the regressive left about the attack itself. They very much blamed the victims; ironic given how they always talk about not doing that when it comes to western rape (rape by Muslim immigrants gets excused because Muslim trumps woman in the oppression olympics).

Now, to answer your question: "Why should I have to restrict my behaviour based on your religion, especially if I am not directing it at you? I will do what I want, and if you decide to get offended, that is your problem." Anyone can do anything that anyone wants. For example, a person can point a toy gun at an old person as a prank and a person can decide to sleep with his/her best friend's wife if he/she wants and a person can call a black person a "monkey" if a person wants. However, for any of these actions, for me the question is not whether anyone or in this case you can but whether you should. See, for me, all actions ultimately come down to ethics, morals, and values and knowing ramifications that each choice represents. The old person may suffer a heart attack or fall and hurt himself/herself; the best friend's marriage may break up; and the black person may feel angry, hurt, and upset. To say that this is "your" problem is to be absolving oneself from accepting to act as an ethical person who understands that our actions affect others and self-modulating our actions in accordance with that spirit of ethics and empathy and acting responsibly in the vein of common sense and human psychology.

Your analogies hinge on physical characteristics of people themselves and not ideologies that they hold. I respect Muslims, Christians, Jews, Mormons, Hindus, Scientiologists, etc. I don't respect Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Scientology, etc. I have no legal, moral, or ethical obligation to. I in fact find them to be delusions, viruses of the mind, potentially dangerous, and often rather funny. I see no reason not to ridicule them in the way that Charlie Hebdo or Jesus & Mo sometimes do. And I don't demand a double standard. People can criticize, and ridicule atheism or any other ideological position I may hold on any topic all they want. II note that what I have seen in Charlie Hebdo certainly falls way short of what religious people and doctrine has had to say about non-believers. I don't see them saying "kill the Muslims" or that Muslims deserve severe punishment or to be tortured in hell etc.

Seriously, I would like to see somebody try to make the case that the holy books and religions themselves are not hate speech against non-believers. We simply assume they are not, but I don't think it would be that easy a case to make.

Well, again, I'd say we'd have to firstly define hate speech, and I'd venture to guess that we would come to different understandings of what hate speech is. And secondly, I'd note that specifically the verses of which you're speaking in the Quran were mentioned in the context of war or have specific contexts from which they cannot be withdrawn.

I don't believe you. But we shall see as I explore the Quran as you advised. It certainly isn't true in regard to Christianity, which I have thoroughly read, so we'd at the very least have to ban the bible under the hate speech laws you seem to advocate for. Or we can just let them preach their Bible and expose it for what it is, and let people see it and reject it for what it is, as we can do with all bad ideas.

Also, hate speech at its heart is about inciting prejudicial action or violence against a group that doesn't own the absolute benefit or immediate forum space in the wider society of being able to counter such speech.

Who says you can't counter such speech? If we defend freedom of speech as I am advocating, you most certainly can counter such speech. You have your immediate forum space. Your using part of it right now, and here you are even in the majority speaking to somebody in the minority. And you can set up a youtube channel for free and millions of people may start watching and listening to you. You can publish your own magazine etc. We have an easier time of doing that than pretty much ever before in history. And until the regressive left get their way, you can do this even if people think you have an agenda of hate (because they don't trust Muslims) and want to censor you without actually listening to you (because they assume you are an islamist with a secret agenda pretending not to be). I have met people on the far right who think exactly that way; and it is identical to how the regressive left has now started to think, only the other way around. Cenk in that interview I pointed you does exactly this. Never read the book; insists to the author what the book says.

Self-determination is the right of any nation and its peoples, and this is something I believed in also as an atheist and specifically still do as a cultural relativist; therefore, nations that have blasphemy laws have a right to have them.

Just how far would you go with this cultural relativism you speak of? Had Hitler not been out for world domination, would you have considered the holocaust an "internal German matter", and as a cultural relativist not for you to judge and something Germany has a right to? How about slavery in the US before abolition? Was it okay to enslave black people back then because it was a different time and culture and mindset? How about female genital mutilation today in Africa? Or how about forbidding women to drive or to be educated in many parts of the world? This seems to be a balancing of your empathy for a culture vs the empathy for oppressed individuals within that culture.

However, I'd also note then that such nations then have a weighty and unique responsibility in protecting persons from abuses being perpetrated under guise of these laws

Good, but do you judge them for it if they do abuse their citizens or do you lean on cultural relativism? I say that blasphemy laws are abusive. Some of the penalties are barbaric.

Also, I'd note that while we perhaps only think immediately of Muslim majority nations as having blasphemy laws, that's an erroneous assumption. We have blasphemy laws in Austria, Canada, Australia, Brazil. Just Google blasphemy laws and read the Wikipedia page.

And did you know that in Boston it is illegal for women to cut their hair without their husband's permission? Some laws are old and antiquated and no longer enforced and need to be taken off the books.

I believe in the right to free speech, but I also believe in making exceptions in some cases. Freedom of speech has never been absolute or meant to be an absolute in any country in any part of the Western world historically or in the present-day. In the U.S. For example, freedom of speech does not cover the right of a person to engage in selling a miracle paleo diet in the books as a cure to cancer; clearly, here, that's because we've identified a potential problem of allowing misleading or false advertising that can cause harm to the public and so we restrict such speeches as not promoting the cause of free speech.

That is fraud. I advocate for free speech so long as it doesn't harm others. Selling homeopathy "pills" or magic beans or rain dances or religion (televangelists, tithes, etc) does actual harm to people. Challenging ideology (including religion) does not. You don't have a right not to have your ideology challenged. And this goes both ways. I have no right to stop a Christian or Muslim from calling atheism foolish, blind, delusional, etc. I do have a right no to be physically attacked or censored (or burned at the stake) because I don't buy into their religion.

This is the world and not any Utopia imagined or otherwise, and therefore, I understand what you're saying about bad ideas going underground and festering. However, I don't think the practical solution is ever to let the bad ideas duke it out the good ideas because I note that ultimately it becomes about who do you believe and trust more and who is more effective in making its case rather than the objective value of a thing as good or bad; and really, therefore, what will happen is that bad ideas win out over good ideas many, many, many times.

The battle for hearts and minds isn't won with force of arms. It isn't won by invading countries (as George W. Bush found out). It isn't won by jailing people. It isn't won by stopping people form speaking. It is won by example and by argument. The only way for good ideas to triumph over bad ideas is for good ideas to defeat bad ideas. They have to do battle in the hearts and minds of the people. By shutting people up you are not fixing anything. You are not stopping people from having the bad ideas; indeed you are leaving them unchallenged and making them attractive through the taboo - which will seem arbitrary if the bad ideas are not shown to be bad ideas by the good ideas.

Pragmatically the on-ground truth is that we need to regulate bad ideas otherwise we'll see more of them gaining traction in legal and horrific ways that I'd note led to the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany; imagine if antisemitism laws had existed then and regulated free speech in specific ways that didn't allow for undermining of Jews as a race or religion, do you think Hitler and Nazism would have been able to rise to power?

Absolutely. And faster. Do you know why the Germans hated the Jews? It wasn't just some arbitrary group Hitler chose. It goes back for centuries within Christianity (again, yay religion). Jews were thought to be insidious, to control governments with shadow cabinets, etc. Antisemites still today push this narrative. Any laws against antisemitism would have been looked at by antisemites as proof that the Jews are out to control the world, etc.

Because Hitler's rise is directly tied to and the fruit of propagandizing hatred of Jews; and that only was able to happen directly under the auspices of free speech and freedom of expression.

Hitler was not pushing for free speech. He was shutting it down.

When a Black-sounding named applicant is passed over so that a White-sounding named applicant or based on a stigmatized address of belonging to majority black neighborhoods over majority white neighborhood or a black person's voice linguistically profiled, that's discrimination and we know this. When a black person is more likely to be stopped and frisked in a society that is overwhelmingly white and more likely to be killed in/during those stops than white counterparts, we shouldn't just blame "criminality" of blacks but look into how conscious and unconscious biases are playing a role into what's happening in our society that's leading up to this undesirable outcome.

And this is something we can try to do something about. That something shouldn't be to create even more stigma and prejudice through pushing identity politics like regressives do. We should be pushing AGAINST identity politics and prejudice.

When public schools don't receive the same funds or have the same opportunities in black majority cities or suburbs, we can no longer ignore the fact that we're a part of the system that is operating in a way that's problematic and we should be feeling guilt for all those things and because that guilt serves as a reminder and an opportunity for us to work to correct all these inequities that's working to keep blacks on the lower totem pole of the social, economic, and political ladder.

This can and should also be addressed. The mere fact that there ARE "black suburbs" speaks volumes. We need to be working in a direction away from segregation. But again, you're not going to get enough people on board to reach critical mass if you push identity group politics instead of individual rights.

This is what is known as institutional racism and we can't afford to just say oh why should we feel any guilt because the truth is we're benefiting unequally from the system, and that's an injustice that should concern all of us.

We should not feel guilt. We should change the system as best we can. White privilege is a real thing in the USA. I've seen it as an Asian person too. But should random white lady feel GUILTY for it? No. She didn't created it. She was just born into it just like we were.

I'm a supporter of political correctness, and therefore I see disinvitations as a small way of self-regulating as persons in vein of peer accountability and positive peer pressure in a society wanting to stand up for equality and justice, especially in learning institutions which have a unique and special interest in fostering a healthy environment specific to inclusion, respect, and empathy. Students in my opinion are right to protest instances of offense or insensitivity in school settings because the right to free speech must be weighed against potential for abuse, discrimination, and safety, all of which are serious concerns and affect everyone's ability to equally participate in the school setting and may hampers specific persons' ability to feel they are free to be who they are when they're made to feel the "other," the unwanted, the unacceptable.

A lot of flowery language but essentially I read that as little different from somebody on the right saying we should ban Muslims from speaking on campus, because Islam threatens "good Christian Values" and Muslims will come in and corrupt the minds of our youth, force our women to cover their heads in bags, etc etc etc. In both cases it is a concern that some outside view the speaker doesn't like will come into their "safe space" and ... do what exactly? Provide something to laugh at? Or maybe change our minds a little or give a different perspective because they may actually have some good points and may not the charicatures that they are made out to be?

In the article, "The truth about 'political correctness' is that it doesn't actually exist," Amanda Taub says, "[T]he charge of 'political correctness' is often used by those in a position of privilege to silence debates raised by marginalized people—to say that their concerns don't deserve to be voiced, much less addressed."

So ironic coming from an argument wanting censorship and political correctness ACTUALLY seeking to silence people from speaking their minds. You have been arguing for censorship, remember?

She then writes, "[T]heir arguments are fundamentally the same: that marginalized people's demands for inclusion are just a bunch of annoying whining, and that efforts to address their concerns are unnecessary. They also betray the deeper concern: that listening to the demands of marginalized groups is dangerous, because doing so could potentially burden the lives, or at least change the speech, of more privileged people."

The irony to that is that the more absurd and draconian political correctness gets ("How dare you suggest the store clerk may know where the rice is! He's Asian!") the more bigots can use it as an excuse to exclude and ignore the othered and get away with it. The regressive left has gotten to a point where people are simply rolling their eyes and ACTUAL prejudice is going unchecked. The regressive left created the alt-right, and stupid bigots like Donald Trump rising up with easy answers like building a giant wall on the Mexican border. And more sensible people with nuanced more workable but still not politically correct views are afraid to speak them, knowing the regressive left will equate them to Trump.

Also, to be honest, I don't get why we have to choose between "safe spaces" and free speech because I don't see them as competing things as they are not mutually inclusive and certainly don't have to be in practical terms.

Can white people fully and openly talk about black on black crime without violating the "safe space" of black people there? Can you make the moral case for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan in the second world war without violating the "safe space" of the Japanese students who lost their grandparents that day? Can we talk openly about holocaust data and how some of it may be over-exagerated or make a case for how Israel is built on holocaust guilt and that this has stopped criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, without violating the "safe space" of Jews? Can we so much as draw Mohammed without violating the "safe space" of Muslims?

And I'd love to see a gender fluid nudist try to have a discussion with a conservative burqa clad Muslima without them violating each other's "safe spaces". That would actually make a great comedy sketch.

 

[Pygoscelis]

Well, as you know, religious people disagree with atheists about one important issue: Unlike the atheists, we do not wish to appoint politicians for them to invent new laws. Religious people are happy with Divine Law as it is, and as far as we are concerned, there is no need for politicians to invent "fixes" to it.

Yes, you don't want us to democratically create laws to govern ourselves. You want some people who imagined or pretended that they spoke for God to dictate to us how we must live.

I believe that atheists are not demented, but rather delusional.

I find your honesty refreshing. I likewise find religious people not demented or mentally ill, but delusional.

Atheists are somehow deluded into believing that they will be able to avoid proving that they are willing to risk their lives and die for they believe in, while that is clearly not how it works.

I don't understand what you are trying to say with this. Is this a rephrasing of the standard "you will be punished and suffer for not believing what I do" line?

 

[Karl]

Greetings,

Based off the following rule of IB governance, I have infracted your account with the below-mentioned amount of points resulting in its being disabled.

Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed... (Surah 53, verses 2 - 4)

Good for you. The religion of Pygoscelis is Liberalism. A One World Order religion sponsored by Rockefeller and co. It's purpose is to destroy all faith in divine beings and to only serve the State. These Liberals are cultural Marxist fanatics and the most zealous of faiths. They cannot stop criticising other faiths. They generally turn to violence when they don't get their own way. Blow up countries, false flag wars etc. And proselytize their faith using mass media which they own and the UN. But I suppose this is obvious?

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

(Peace be upon you)

Brother, I respectfully read Pygocelis's line differently.

Pygoscelis has noted that our brother kritikvernunft has listed his religion as "other" and so in this conversation Pygoscelis is generally talking to him on behalf of different persons who could have claimed to be talking to God as Bible is notoriously read as being written by hands inspired by men, which from an Islamic perspective is a true accusation and one which the Qur'an makes as well in talking about how hands have corrupted the Scripture.

Also, brother najimuddin, Pygoscelis has said that he's going to be reading the Qur'an and I'd love to read his input and thoughts on the Qur'an as he reads it.

Also, brother najimuddin, even if any member had said that Prophet Muhammad :saws: (peace and blessings be upon him) said this out of some imagination or pretense, these and other accusations are enumerated in the Qur'an and then answered in the Qur'an. So, even if Pygoscelis had done such a thing which I really don't think he did, it is from Islam for him to be able to do so because then we have an opportunity to show him the reasons why this is not true but if we shut down the discussion we shall not be able to do so.

Therefore, I please request that you reverse this infraction and ban. Thank you for your consideration and patience.

:wa: (And peace be upon you)

Greetings,

Based off the following rule of IB governance, I have infracted your account with the below-mentioned amount of points resulting in its being disabled.

Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed... (Surah 53, verses 2 - 4)

 

[Search]

:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

(Peace be upon you)

Brother, these are the following accusations in the Qur'an that non-Muslims make and indeed we have in the Qur'an a reminder to proclaim the Message and allow others speak their mind because in so doing we have the best opportunity to declare the Truth, and truly, Allah is with us :

"[...]when they hear the Reminder (the Quran), and they say: “Verily, he (Muhammad SAW) is a madman!” But it is nothing else than a Reminder to all the Alameen (mankind, jinns and all that exists). (Quran, Surah Al-Qalam:51-52)”

And if he (Muhammad SAW) had forged a false saying concerning Us (Allah), We surely should have seized him by his right hand (or with power and might), And then certainly should have cut off his life artery (Aorta), And none of you could withhold Us from (punishing) him. (Quran, Surah Al-Haqqah:44-47)

“And when Our Clear Verses are recited unto them, those who hope not for their meeting with Us, say: Bring us a Quran other than this, or change it.”Say (O Muhammad SAW): “It is not for me to change it on my own accord; I only follow that which is revealed unto me. Verily, I fear if I were to disobey my Lord, the torment of the Great Day (i.e. the Day of Resurrection). (Quran, Surah Yunus:15).

“Say (O Muhammad SAW): “I don’t tell you that with me are the treasures of Allah, nor (that) I know the unseen; nor I tell you that I am an angel. I but follow what is revealed to me by inspiration. Say: Are the blind and the one who sees equal? Will you not then take thought? (Quran, Surah Al An’aam, 50)”

“O Messenger (Muhammad SAW)! Proclaim (the Message) which has been sent down to you from your Lord. And if you do not, then you have not conveyed His Message. Allah will protect you from mankind. Verily, Allah guides not the people who disbelieve” (Quran, Surah Al-Maeda:67).

Greetings,

Based off the following rule of IB governance, I have infracted your account with the below-mentioned amount of points resulting in its being disabled.

Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed... (Surah 53, verses 2 - 4)

:wa: (And peace be upon you)

 

[Scimitar]

I keep wanting to report the thread due to the title - I find it offensive on behalf of the atheist membership... then I recall, Thread made by atheist member of forum.

And a part of me giggles, and a part of me feels like an olive branch opportunity is being afforded us here.

So, why can't atheists just be wrong?

Do they have to be?

I, for one, do not care what you believe, as long as common courtesy, respect and mutual good will is afforded between me and the next bro, and it's all savvy.

I like the atheists who've hung around on this forum - they got a good sense of humour and have made the occasional remark which forced me to stop - and think - love it when that happens, don't you?

I'm sure we've done the same for them - and I hate to have to use the "we" and "them" words in this post because I see our atheist brothers in humanity, as exactly that - brothers regardless.

Wrong or right - how we conduct ourselves is far more important than the points we make.

Scimi

 

[MohammedK]

Many atheists are hate filled bigots that maybe why they are called insane and crazy. I made a poem directed for hate filled bigots - it was only intended for hate filled bigoted atheists which are most I have dealt with. Have a watch it's a funny poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJUvhqoLXAs

 

[Scimitar]

I must admit, that was a goodun !!!

Scimi

 

[Scimitar]

 

[Al Sultan]

I've seen that video,but a lot of people got triggered and started hating on it...lol