Christian Love taking place in Nigeria !

[path]

Or do like the dumb americans did by changing the French fries into Freedom Fires !!

No, no, freedom fries taste soooo much better than french fries

 

[Tiassa]

What I said is only applicable to religion.

Why? Why not other identity politics?

What are you getting at?

That I would disagree that an atheist who believes in God is an atheist.

But, since he or she would claim to be an atheist ....

Your examples however are not very relevant to the issues of religious violence. For your examples uses physical objects. Things that don’t influence the mind.

Religion has largely served as a representation of reality and questions we don't understand. It is pre-scientific; though it must be interpreted, it does pertain to reality, and it's only in the last century or so that such a separation becomes applicable--and that due to the leisure of opulence.

It cycles into education; whereas you or I might see religion as something intangible compared to a sword or gun, this "idea" bears real weight among some believers; one can reasonably expect to encounter some aspect of that obstacle in dealing with African strife specifically because of the economic distress that makes education difficult in those environs.

Additionally, we can bridge that gap between the gun and the sword by introducing other effects on the mind: e.g. study of economy, study of natural sciences, or the study of human behavior and socialization for examples. Any of these can be reduced to an ideology instead of a tool.

A purely-rational humanity would behave like a colony of ants; a place for everything, everything in its place, and that place is understood by everything. A purely-rational humanity would be left unable to unexplore its own humanity, until that humanity within humanity was extinguished.

Perhaps. Depends on who does the educating.

The who or the what of education? The best-intended can still go awry by teaching superstition instead of rational relations with reality.

They wont be happier but they wont be as violent either, especially if they were Hindus & Buddhists instead. And as many examples in history nonviolent resistence always end in happy endings. Like the early Christians, Gandhi & Martin Luther King jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death by a racist whom this nation holds in ill repute. The Man with the Golden Dream was not struck down by a missile from a government helicopter.

Regarding the early Christians, though ... does agitating the authority in order to receive the death penalty count as nonviolence? Does a doctrinal obligation to look forward to death have any effect on the believer's perception of what is about to happen?

I disagree with including "early Christians" because the argument of their "nonviolence" is curiously paradoxical. While I generally appreciate suicide without the accompanying homicide, nothing about Ignatius' looking forward to the lions makes him smart. It's like a coin-flip in lieu of a rational decision. Sure, you might come up with heads often enough, but what's on the flip-side?

Religion is more of an ideology than a tool. You know the difference? A tool is something that submits to you. An ideology is something you submit into.

Again ... study of economy, natural sciences, human behavior.

I would recommend studying religion from a learning perspective instead of a condemning one. At least, that's how it appears.

People may not use the tool of religion for its best purposes these days, but that's symptomatic of the times. In the future, when Abramism has quieted to a mythical affinity, humans will still be prone to religion. Not until we answer certain unanswerable questions will humanity lose its religion. The only other alternative is to cease the search.

Personally, I think if we take the political aspect of redemptionism out of religion, it's much easier to see the utility of what religion does. Your arguments tend to look at religion in far too immediate a context for the sweeping generalizations you attempt.

And the asshole is Prophet Mohammed, eh?

Well that doesn't quite fit with the phallocentric theme. Unless we're in Sausalito.