Charlie Hebdo Paris shooting: 12 dead after gunmen storm newspaper's HQ

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  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,307
    BS44325 wrote: »
    France has supported the creation of a free Palestine and yet...

    One is about brutal oppression the other ignorant fearmongering.
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  • badbrains
    badbrains Posts: 10,255
    Oh and France has outlawed any pro-Palestinian protests. Guess bibi's visit to France actually had a purpose to it.
  • rr165892
    rr165892 Posts: 5,697
    Great,now Yemen is about to get shitty.Fuck tards shooting at out embassy vehicles,and the Rockstar media darling IS terrorists are threatening to lop off 2 Japenese guys heads unless Jap government dishes out 200mil.
    Just another joyous day for human rights and peace at the hands of Islamic Jihadists.
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    rgambs wrote: »
    You make twice as many assumptions as valid points. I didn't claim to be more civilized than all religious people, if you reread my posts with a clear head rather than a defensive zeal, you will see I claimed superiority to the founders and leaders, not the adherents
    Oh give me a break, as if you consider those who follow "less civilized" people as your equal. Your statement was very clear -- attacking the founders of religions is akin to attacking the people who are less enlightened than yourself and happen to follow them. I also think it is incredibly unfortunate that you think it's so plainly obvious that we as a community are more civilized than another simply because they came before us. The idea that time and progress both move upward in a single linear form is absolutely ridiculous and is only a recent phenomenon. You might measure civilizational progress simply by how many days you've crossed off on your calendar, how many neat little UN organizations have been formed which supposedly espouse universalist values that are applied unequally, or how many satellites we sent up into space, but part of being a "civilized" individual I think is acknowledging -- and respecting the fact -- that not everyone thinks like that. For instance, Gandhi is reported to have said that “the measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members." Can I say that our society treats its weakest members better than many societies of the past? Definitely not. To use the "civilized" term as a form of superiority over those who came before us, and the founders of ideas that many follow is simply arrogant, and ironically implicitly claims to ignore the very formation of the ideas past that led you to claim your own.
    rgambs wrote: »
    ...but, while I am all riled, I will go ahead and assert my superiority over anyone who condones any sort of torture, violence, stoning, selling of children as wives, subjugation of women, bigotry towards homosexuals and all the other backwards assed byproducts of the holy books. I was not, and am not singling out Islam, again your defensive zeal has lead you to assumptions. Since you wont be bothered to see for yourself you can ask anyone familiar with my posting history and they can tell you I am equally critical of all religions.
    Fair enough that you claim you aren't singling out Islam in a post in a thread that has been largely about Islam -- I'll accept that -- but it doesn't change how awful it is to reduce religion (all religions) to this. I could reduce atheism and secularism to the Soviet Union's policies but unfortunately I'd be well aware of what an injustice I'd be doing to the majority of atheists and secularists who would not condone such brutal criminal acts.

    Look. My point isn't that you have to accept that religious founders or whatever are more or equally civilized to you. My point is that you shouldn't blindly accept what you've been taught all your life either. The idea that we are better than those before us, the idea that we are more progressive, the idea that we are correcting all those mistakes of the past and that religion is just another mistake that will soon be corrected too -- these are myths that were created by modern civilization using a very faulty thing that is subject to our humanity: our reason. Our reason can lead us to think that there is a God or that there isn't, and it will always do that, for as long as humanity is here. But when we hold reason up as God itself (there is no God, and our awesome brains told us so because we were able to achieve so much through science), then we are being just as dogmatic as those who claim that God told them to spread the message throughout civilizations until all adhere to their faith system. That's just wrong, in my opinion, and will not lead to a peaceful pluralist society.
    rgambs wrote: »
    Locking a terrorist in jail for life is seclusion for the protection of society, not torture, and I DON'T SUPPORT TORTURE OR THE DEATH PENALTY EVER, another false assumption of yours.
    Interesting. It goes to show that you can't see the flip side. Locking up a terrorist can be for the protection of society AND ALSO be a form of torture. There is a plenty of literature out there about why this constitutes torture. The point is that we shouldn't stop questioning everything. Torture is still torture even if it is applied to someone you don't like, supposedly for the "greater good". Let's not act as if some people don't feel torture the same way you would just because they happen to be bad people. Also, I never accused you of supporting torture or the death penalty, if you read closely and calmed down then you'd see I wrote "many of you here have no sympathy for terrorists being imprisoned for their lives or shot in cold blood". It's funny, you even quoted this in your own post and yet disregarded it.
    rgambs wrote: »
    Your "nuanced" dancing and "context" still amount to a sentence of fire torture for people like me, who fight religion peacefully, according to the way y o u explained it anyways, but I am sure you can find some other way to translate or interpret it to exclude all but violent offenders. That's the whole game. Or you won't, and you will tacitly accept eternal torture for a person like myself who never hurt, or sought to hurt, anyone in their life.
    No, you clearly just didn't read my post closely. You don't have to believe in religion to at least acknowledge the vast history of different (and overwhelmingly peaceful) interpretations regarding scripture. You just have to be willing to accept other worldviews.
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    dignin wrote: »
    I'm going to post this again because I don't think anyone read it
    Greenwald already took that idea to task (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/14/days-hosting-massive-free-speech-march-france-arrests-comedian-facebook-comments/) and cited "Olivier Cyran, a former writer at the magazine who resigned in 2001, wrote a powerful 2013 letter with ample documentation condemning Charlie Hebdo for descending in the post-9/11 era into full-scale, obsessive anti-Muslim bigotry" (http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article 11.htm)

    Charlie Hebdo is plain racist and bigoted, and there's no dancing around it.
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    chebdo600.png

    Except this ignores the hundreds of years of colonialism imposed by Western powers in Muslim countries, the discrimination and disenfranchisement they felt there and now in the Western countries many of them reside, as well as living under the brutal post-colonial dictatorships placed there and supported by these same Western countries -- which is THE underlying issue here. ignoring the political sphere is not addressing the root problem. When Libyan protesters demonstrating against the Danish cartoons in 2006 died at the Italian embassy in Libya, is it a coincidence that it was at the embassy of their former colonial power??
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    paulonious wrote: »
    Aafke wrote: »
    Atheism is as much a belief system as any other, you can not without doubt proof that God does not exicist... So it is a certain view on the world.... If you say atheists are smarter than people who belief in any God, you do classify you own belief system as better than others, so in my point of view the only thing that is different between you and these terrorists is the violence, yet. And even there you could have doubts... But in the way of thinking I see, someone who claims to know and understand an entire religion, by some extreme examples. which do NOT exemplary for the religion as a whole. These are similar examples as saying all atheists go to hell, or are witches who have to be slaughtered. The easy way to assume things without a real search if you assumptions are true, to check your facts who does belief in such a religion, is dangerous. It will divide us only more, instead of uniting us

    atheism is not a belief system any more than non-communism is a political affiliation. I don't even call myself an atheist/agnostic anymore. Why identify with something you are NOT? they are a scientist, a naturalist, a humanist, etc.

    proving something in the negative is backwards. that's not how it works. the onus to prove something is on those wishing to prove a positive result.

    yes, while it is true that many people who do not believe in a supreme being have beliefs that they are more intelligent and/or stronger-willed than those who do believe, there are just as many theists who believe the opposite; they are more enlightened, they feel sorry for the non-believer, etc. that's not a trait of a belief system; that's a trait of an individual human.

    I find atheism particularly fascinating, because people who define themselves as such like to pretend that they live outside the concept of living under an all-powerful God, etc. And yet, they define themselves entirely in relationship to the idea of "God" itself. This is still very much a world in which God is present, both among those who believe in God as well as among those who don't.

    As for your last paragraph, I agree with you that humans often think of themselves as superior in general. The ironic thing is that those outside of religion often blame religion for the ills of human society, including this false sense of superiority due to a belief system, without realizing that they themselves are employing this very same logic. Interestingly enough, atheists often leave religions (or live outside of it their whole lives) without realizing how heavily influenced they are by some of its most dogmatic concepts.
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    rr165892 wrote: »
    As I'm watching the stunning Erin Burnett this evening ,I am seeing a story of 100,000s Muslim protesters in Niger,Pakistan,Russia and Gaza and other locations protesting the CH.
    Some are burning down Churches and Bibles,rioting and being anything but peaceful.I realize this is a small minority of those who want their voice heard,but it seems quite hypocritical to voice opinions on a injustice while committing injustices to others and their faith.What the fuck is wrong here?
    This nonsense is not going to get better and I feel a greater divide is being created.Very sad.

    I've heard about Niger but haven't followed the whole coverage of the other places. Either way, just looking at these countries, think about it: what is unique here?? These are post-colonial (or still colonial in some cases) societies living under brutal occupation, drone attacks, etc. This is always a political issue, not a religious one.
  • fuck
    fuck Posts: 4,069
    jeffbr wrote: »
    Aafke wrote: »
    As long as we classify belief systems, the radical terrorism will win, instead of letting ourselves get more and more defied, why can't we learn from our different belief systems, and learn to listen to others?

    I have no interest in listening to mythologies which cause people to believe it is OK to kill people because of cartoons they draw, or have clerics issuing fatwas on snowmen, or parents who think it is OK to disown children because they're gay, or people who can't eat meat and dairy on the same plates. You talk about belief systems, and the problem is, many of us aren't interested in suspending disbelief and looking for some mythological road to salvation. Belief systems are just that - one must believe in something they can never actually know. I'd rather be informed by reality, science, logic and reason as opposed to old books and fairy tales. When something isn't known, there's no reason to make up fantastic stories to fill in the blanks.

    What's interesting to me is that people so often reduce science to the realm of reason and religion to the realm of the imagination and "fairy tales" without realizing that the two are more connected than one thinks.

    The logic employed by those like you is that you base reality and imagination only on what we can perceive through the senses. And yet, we know that scientists did not, for instance, discover electrons with their eyes. Electrons were discovered through rational deduction. They witnessed a phenomenon in the lab, they saw something do something without cause, so they deduced that there must be invisible sub-atomic particles that caused it. And through thousands of experiments, with the same results, we now believe that electrons exist, even though until this very day, no one ever saw an electron.

    Or better yet, when we consider black holes, which science has accepted as "fact" but actually is only a reality because it satisfies all our other realities. In order to hold onto the logic of gravity, we have to give up all other logic. So in order to explain why a visible star is orbiting something invisible (when we know that smaller things orbit bigger things, not the other way around), in order to maintain the laws of gravity, we have to imagine that a star swallowed itself by its gravity force (collapsed into itself), and we're willing to imagine that it became as small as a non-dimensional dot. You want to believe that something that has no dimensions actually exists because science told you to. So something that doesn't exist, exists, and we have to believe in it to be true until this theory is proven otherwise. And yet this is the very concept of faith itself. To believe in the unbelievable through sense perception.

    Or consider mathematics, a part of science, which we say proves beyond doubt "reality". But to mathematically prove something, all you need to do is to plug in the numbers, and when the equation works itself out, you claim that you discovered the correct value for the unknown variables. In the equation y + 5 = 2, you naturally deduce that y is equal to -3, a number that only exists in our imagination, like all numbers do.

    What people like you want others to believe is that in order to prove that something is truly real or not, we must use a language of numbers and signs that we created with our heads, based on our human logic. We're talking about a system that's so faulty, that we had to create the concept of "unreal numbers" in order to give answers to equations that cannot produce an answer, like the square root of negative six. Plus, let's not ignore the fact that math can be used to manipulate facts. Economists, for example, have used mathematics to prove that a certain policy is good or bad for society. The math comes out right, but the results are so divorced from reality it's embarrassing to call it scientific.

    It's incredible that we can question so many things in our society (religion, etc.) and yet hold up other ideals in such dogmatic ways without questioning them as well!
  • Aafke
    Aafke Posts: 1,219
    edited January 2015
    To go a step further than Fuck just did... Science is the new religion! It's also just as dogmatic as many other forms of religion. It also does have many worshipers or true believers, and as many other religions, it has proven itself to be the one and only right way to explain the world! As I stated before and so did Fuck, it is just an other view on the world... People have for centuries tried to explain the world, and all its mysteries. Often when they couldn't explain them, they called it a divine intervention, from one God or the other, now we call it an assumption in science.

    But there are so many mysteries remaining in this world (luckily) In a few centuries maybe, probable, science will be viewed, as outdated as your view on religion, right now. As long as we don't know who is right, but just believe we are, any worldview in my opinion is equal to any other. Stop classifying and start listen to one another! Who knows, maybe it is possible to learn something if you step out of your dogmas.
    Post edited by Aafke on
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    "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed".- Carl Jung.
    "Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."- Paul Klee
  • caifan82
    caifan82 Mexico City Posts: 321
    fuck wrote: »
    It's incredible that we can question so many things in our society (religion, etc.) and yet hold up other ideals in such dogmatic ways without questioning them as well!

    Just a comment: that's the thing with science...It IS ALWAYS QUESTIONED. As you said it yourself, it's all theories.
    Theories get disproven and new ones are formulated all the time. Evolution and gravity for example, even though they SEEM to be correct and have been around for a long time, are still theories.
    No one knows how the universe works, and yeah, I guess I prefer science's theories to religion's stories... but that's because science never settles with anything. It IS flawed. Yet it keeps striving to get better.
    Maybe tomorrow some dude in India will find that imaginary numbers are a load of crap... And that's fine! We will have a new theory to work on. But to settle on something, written thousands of years ago as gospel? I could never accept that…
    Mexico City - July 17th 2003
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  • callen
    callen Posts: 6,388
    edited January 2015
    Science is not a religion. Oh where to start but does it really matter. If one truly believes this then there is no convincing.

    Biggy, Science actively seeks challenges and will evolve to new evidence.

    Yes there are many unanswered questions but answers are not found in religious texts written by relatively ignorant humans reinterpreted by many more and now used as gospel.

    The comparison is silly at best.

    Allow science to work the facts and use golden rule for our morals and laws.
    Post edited by callen on
    10-18-2000 Houston, 04-06-2003 Houston, 6-25-2003 Toronto, 10-8-2004 Kissimmee, 9-4-2005 Calgary, 12-3-05 Sao Paulo, 7-2-2006 Denver, 7-22-06 Gorge, 7-23-2006 Gorge, 9-13-2006 Bern, 6-22-2008 DC, 6-24-2008 MSG, 6-25-2008 MSG
  • HughFreakingDillon
    HughFreakingDillon Winnipeg Posts: 39,449
    fuck wrote: »
    paulonious wrote: »
    Aafke wrote: »
    Atheism is as much a belief system as any other, you can not without doubt proof that God does not exicist... So it is a certain view on the world.... If you say atheists are smarter than people who belief in any God, you do classify you own belief system as better than others, so in my point of view the only thing that is different between you and these terrorists is the violence, yet. And even there you could have doubts... But in the way of thinking I see, someone who claims to know and understand an entire religion, by some extreme examples. which do NOT exemplary for the religion as a whole. These are similar examples as saying all atheists go to hell, or are witches who have to be slaughtered. The easy way to assume things without a real search if you assumptions are true, to check your facts who does belief in such a religion, is dangerous. It will divide us only more, instead of uniting us

    atheism is not a belief system any more than non-communism is a political affiliation. I don't even call myself an atheist/agnostic anymore. Why identify with something you are NOT? they are a scientist, a naturalist, a humanist, etc.

    proving something in the negative is backwards. that's not how it works. the onus to prove something is on those wishing to prove a positive result.

    yes, while it is true that many people who do not believe in a supreme being have beliefs that they are more intelligent and/or stronger-willed than those who do believe, there are just as many theists who believe the opposite; they are more enlightened, they feel sorry for the non-believer, etc. that's not a trait of a belief system; that's a trait of an individual human.

    I find atheism particularly fascinating, because people who define themselves as such like to pretend that they live outside the concept of living under an all-powerful God, etc. And yet, they define themselves entirely in relationship to the idea of "God" itself. This is still very much a world in which God is present, both among those who believe in God as well as among those who don't.

    As for your last paragraph, I agree with you that humans often think of themselves as superior in general. The ironic thing is that those outside of religion often blame religion for the ills of human society, including this false sense of superiority due to a belief system, without realizing that they themselves are employing this very same logic. Interestingly enough, atheists often leave religions (or live outside of it their whole lives) without realizing how heavily influenced they are by some of its most dogmatic concepts.

    exactly why I no longer identify myself as such. it doesn't make any sense to me to identify myself by a belief I do not hold.

    I think anyone who blames religion as the sole reason for any ill on society is simplifying the matter way too much. in essense, most religions have morals and ethics that are generally good in nature. it's the false interpretation and/or bastardization of the texts and of these guidelines by stupid humans that leads to injustices in the world. and this is what lead to the happenings in France.

    Hugh Freaking Dillon is currently out of the office, returning sometime in the fall




  • callen
    callen Posts: 6,388
    But why keep up this charade. Let's kill this religion disease.
    10-18-2000 Houston, 04-06-2003 Houston, 6-25-2003 Toronto, 10-8-2004 Kissimmee, 9-4-2005 Calgary, 12-3-05 Sao Paulo, 7-2-2006 Denver, 7-22-06 Gorge, 7-23-2006 Gorge, 9-13-2006 Bern, 6-22-2008 DC, 6-24-2008 MSG, 6-25-2008 MSG
  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,657
    callen wrote: »
    Science is not a religion. Oh where to start but does it really matter. If one truly believes this then there is no convincing.

    Biggy, Science actively seeks challenges and will evolve to new evidence.

    Yes there are many unanswered questions but answers are not found in religious texts written by relatively ignorant humans reinterpreted by many more and now used as gospel.

    The comparison is silly at best.

    Allow science to work the facts and use golden rule for our morals and laws.

    We're getting off topic a bit here but, yeah, calling science a religion is like calling a dog a toaster oven. There seems to be a plethora of books out there now that try to marry science and religion but to confuse the two is nonsense. Science is science, religion is religion.

    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni











  • Aafke
    Aafke Posts: 1,219
    edited January 2015
    No science isn't a religion, but the belief system of science has so much resemblance with the belief systems of religions... We do not know that many facts, and science can overrule facts as it has done many times in the past. (Earth the center of the universe and the sun revolving around earth, a flat world, etc,) all those facts have been proven wrong, but why is it so challenging for us, to give in to the fact that we do by fare not know all there is, and do just belief most scientific theories. It is just an other belief, I do do BELIEF most scientific theories, but I'm a child of my time. I do NOT belief in a GOD, but I don't say that my beliefs aren't any better than someone elses. They are just different.
    Post edited by Aafke on
    Waves_zps6b028461.jpg
    "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed".- Carl Jung.
    "Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."- Paul Klee
  • jeffbr
    jeffbr Seattle Posts: 7,177
    fuck wrote: »
    jeffbr wrote: »
    Aafke wrote: »
    As long as we classify belief systems, the radical terrorism will win, instead of letting ourselves get more and more defied, why can't we learn from our different belief systems, and learn to listen to others?

    I have no interest in listening to mythologies which cause people to believe it is OK to kill people because of cartoons they draw, or have clerics issuing fatwas on snowmen, or parents who think it is OK to disown children because they're gay, or people who can't eat meat and dairy on the same plates. You talk about belief systems, and the problem is, many of us aren't interested in suspending disbelief and looking for some mythological road to salvation. Belief systems are just that - one must believe in something they can never actually know. I'd rather be informed by reality, science, logic and reason as opposed to old books and fairy tales. When something isn't known, there's no reason to make up fantastic stories to fill in the blanks.

    What's interesting to me is that people so often reduce science to the realm of reason and religion to the realm of the imagination and "fairy tales" without realizing that the two are more connected than one thinks.

    Well, I don't really want to pile onto what caifan82 and callen have already pointed out, but I think you've completely missed the mark. Everything that follows your premise above did nothing to lend credence to that premise. Science and religion/mythology could not be more different. There are certainly things which can't be known or proven. The approach with science is to postulate or theorize, and then attempt to prove or disprove. If disproved, a new theory will be published with the new data. Data is always being considered, and theories are always being tested and revised if necessary. With religion, some man wrote something in a book and others will then follow along. Any attempts to disprove or refute what is written is not condoned, and is often punished. Adherents are taught to have "faith", not question. There are plenty of fundies in southern states who try to pass laws to teach creationism alongside evolution because after all, they're both theories. That sounds like an argument you'd embrace, since you see science and religion as "more connected than one thinks." That is an argument that reason doesn't allow, since one "theory" is something one has to learn and believe from holy texts, and the other is something which science continues to question and evaluate.
    "I'll use the magic word - let's just shut the fuck up, please." EV, 04/13/08
  • benjs
    benjs Toronto, ON Posts: 9,359
    fuck wrote: »
    jeffbr wrote: »
    Aafke wrote: »
    As long as we classify belief systems, the radical terrorism will win, instead of letting ourselves get more and more defied, why can't we learn from our different belief systems, and learn to listen to others?

    I have no interest in listening to mythologies which cause people to believe it is OK to kill people because of cartoons they draw, or have clerics issuing fatwas on snowmen, or parents who think it is OK to disown children because they're gay, or people who can't eat meat and dairy on the same plates. You talk about belief systems, and the problem is, many of us aren't interested in suspending disbelief and looking for some mythological road to salvation. Belief systems are just that - one must believe in something they can never actually know. I'd rather be informed by reality, science, logic and reason as opposed to old books and fairy tales. When something isn't known, there's no reason to make up fantastic stories to fill in the blanks.

    What's interesting to me is that people so often reduce science to the realm of reason and religion to the realm of the imagination and "fairy tales" without realizing that the two are more connected than one thinks.

    The logic employed by those like you is that you base reality and imagination only on what we can perceive through the senses. And yet, we know that scientists did not, for instance, discover electrons with their eyes. Electrons were discovered through rational deduction. They witnessed a phenomenon in the lab, they saw something do something without cause, so they deduced that there must be invisible sub-atomic particles that caused it. And through thousands of experiments, with the same results, we now believe that electrons exist, even though until this very day, no one ever saw an electron.

    Or better yet, when we consider black holes, which science has accepted as "fact" but actually is only a reality because it satisfies all our other realities. In order to hold onto the logic of gravity, we have to give up all other logic. So in order to explain why a visible star is orbiting something invisible (when we know that smaller things orbit bigger things, not the other way around), in order to maintain the laws of gravity, we have to imagine that a star swallowed itself by its gravity force (collapsed into itself), and we're willing to imagine that it became as small as a non-dimensional dot. You want to believe that something that has no dimensions actually exists because science told you to. So something that doesn't exist, exists, and we have to believe in it to be true until this theory is proven otherwise. And yet this is the very concept of faith itself. To believe in the unbelievable through sense perception.

    Or consider mathematics, a part of science, which we say proves beyond doubt "reality". But to mathematically prove something, all you need to do is to plug in the numbers, and when the equation works itself out, you claim that you discovered the correct value for the unknown variables. In the equation y + 5 = 2, you naturally deduce that y is equal to -3, a number that only exists in our imagination, like all numbers do.

    What people like you want others to believe is that in order to prove that something is truly real or not, we must use a language of numbers and signs that we created with our heads, based on our human logic. We're talking about a system that's so faulty, that we had to create the concept of "unreal numbers" in order to give answers to equations that cannot produce an answer, like the square root of negative six. Plus, let's not ignore the fact that math can be used to manipulate facts. Economists, for example, have used mathematics to prove that a certain policy is good or bad for society. The math comes out right, but the results are so divorced from reality it's embarrassing to call it scientific.

    It's incredible that we can question so many things in our society (religion, etc.) and yet hold up other ideals in such dogmatic ways without questioning them as well!

    fuck, I agree and disagree with various parts of what you've written.

    I think one of the major differences between science and modern religion is that science posits hypotheses, and works towards finding empirical evidence. It's also notorious within most facets of science that those who research a theory's feasibility are looking to a disproportionate degree for the things which will in fact break and invalidate the theory. Many modern religions seems to be designed in an opposite way. It posits a deity's responsibility for the way things are, and when empirical evidence is sought after to validate these notions (i.e. a search for logic from a foreign non-religious set of framework deductions), the search itself is snuffed, and the seeker of knowledge is often condemned. Just ask Galileo.

    This isn't the case in all religions, by any means, and perhaps you've witnessed the opposite in Islam. Regrettably, I've seen very little that amounts to anything more than hocus-pocus in Judaism, as without a belief in the Jewish god (that is, a conscious god who "gifted" the Torah), the absolutism of the words of "holy" texts is reduced to the subjective will of men.

    On the other hand in the war of science vs. religion, another ancient group saw things differently. Back in Incan culture, in most South American nations, there was a near-obsession with astrology. Understanding the cycle of the moon and sun - the gods of the time - was rewarded by an understanding of agricultural seasons, and the agricultural success which came with it. This was not the case, however, in the Ecuadorean region, where the weather is nearly consistent year-round, and hence the agricultural season is consistent year-round. This didn't stop the Incas of the region from studying astrology: this was scientific inquiry whose sole benefit was an empirical approach to finding faith and strengthening belief their religion. I quite loved when I learnt that, as it really demonstrated to me how we could be using science to ground one's faith as opposed to letting science and religion be at war.

    I agree with you that there's a major disconnect between self-proclaimed atheists and self-proclaimed followers of a religion. Both recognize a framework that their governing laws of ethics, morality, and natural phenomenon all reside within, both seem incapable of comprehending the other's framework, and thus write the other off entirely (this seems to be the case most of the time, although there are times when people try to see if there is overlap, as in the example of the Incas).

    1) Both are based on a framework, and only with religion is the framework potentially absolute: otherwise, they can be assumed to have been invented by mankind. Religion promotes that life can be explained through a god, science promotes that life can be explained numerically. It's debatable whether we invented the framework of religion, it's undeniable that we invented the framework of science (i.e. numerical systems).
    2) We go to great lengths to explain each with logic relevant within each framework. By this I mean that, typically, we do not seek to explain science through mythology or allegory, similarly we don't quantitively observe religion to validate or invalidate it, but rather debate within the framework of which ever religion being focused on. Who are we, seriously, to say that one human construct is more valid than another?

    I see no reason to hold science on a higher pedestal than religion, and that's as someone who calls himself spiritual (not religious), and who typically follows quantitive deductions to bring about conclusions.

    I'm sorry about the disorganization of this post, it's been a while since my head's been in a cogent space.
    '05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2

    EV
    Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
  • dignin
    dignin Posts: 9,478
    Great posts....I like the way this thread has evolved.
  • HughFreakingDillon
    HughFreakingDillon Winnipeg Posts: 39,449
    Aafke wrote: »
    No science isn't a religion, but the belief system of science has so much resemblance with the belief systems of religions... We do not know that many facts, and science can overrule facts as it has done many times in the past. (Earth the center of the universe and the sun revolving around earth, a flat world, etc,) all those facts have been proven wrong, but why is it so challenging for us, to give in to the fact that we do by fare not know all there is, and do just belief most scientific theories. It is just an other belief, I do do BELIEF most scientific theories, but I'm a child of my time. I do NOT belief in a GOD, but I don't say that my beliefs are any better than someone elses. They are just different.

    science doesn't resemble religion at all. one evolves with new information, the other does not.

    Hugh Freaking Dillon is currently out of the office, returning sometime in the fall