Moslem sects

[arauca]

One thing that I find unnerving is that they actually beiliev what they say they believe. They believe they would go to heaven for their deeds just as we believe the sun to be bigger than the moon. I mean, if our enterprising ancestors could see these people, they would be so disappointed that they would kill themselves out of shame.

Who are we to say they are wrong and we are wright . They must have some bases to believe so strong .

Our ancestor > who are our ancestors ?

 

[aaqucnaona]

Who are we to say they are wrong and we are wright .

We are indeed the ones to say they are wrong when they kill people in cities, bring down buildings and undermine the education system.

They must have some bases to believe so strong.

Oh yes they do, they believe it coz they are told to believe it in their childhood when children are vulnerable to such crap [as they have the primary task of taking in information and growing up at this age {around 1-4 years}].

Our ancestor > who are our ancestors ?

Lucy and other hominides, the majority of homo and astrolopithicus.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

For better or worse, all religions (as far as I know) are based on unprovable beliefs.

To be precise, they're based on belief in the existence of an invisible, illogical supernatural universe, from which incredibly powerful creatures and other forces emerge at random and whimsically (and often angrily) perturb the behavior of the natural universe.

This belief could be unprovable, except for the fact that they all claim that at least some of the appearances of these creatures and some of these perturbations have been staged so that people were able to observe them. They have supposedly continued into fairly recent times when records were routinely kept. Yet no respectable records of these creatures and events exist. The legend of Jesus, for example is claimed to have taken place at a time when the Roman Empire was fairly well governed by a regime of consummate recordkeepers and when Christians were not yet persecuted (because there were none) so there would have been no suppression of accounts of his "miracles." Yet there are no contemporary accounts.

I understand that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but this glaring lack of evidence certainly puts the assertions of the religionists in the category of "extraordinary," and therefore subject to the Rule of Laplace: Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect.

So the next time one of your supernaturalist friends whines at you for not giving his religion the same respect that you give to the Big Bang, abiogenesis or string theory, tell him that just this once, just specially for him, you'll waive the Rule of Laplace and merely request from him some ordinary evidence to support his assertions. You may have to explain to him that a scorch mark on a tortilla (one of billions cooked every decade) said to resemble a biblical personality, of whom no portraits exist against which to compare it, does not qualify as "ordinary evidence."

Who are we to say they are wrong and we are wright . They must have some bases to believe so strong.

Jung tells us that the motifs that comprise religions are archetypes, instinctive beliefs pre-programmed into our synapses by our DNA like all instincts, such as the desire to run away from a large animal with both eyes in front of its face, or the reluctance to step off the edge of a cliff.

Why we have these instincts is a difficult question. Perhaps, like my two examples, they were survival aids in an era whose dangers we can't imagine. More likely they're just random mutations that were passed down through one of our species's genetic bottlenecks.

The problem with instinctive beliefs is that they're extremely hard to eradicate. Something you have "known" since birth feels more true than any knowledge you acquire later in life through reasoning and learning. It's hard to talk religionists out of their bull-pucky because they have an underlying sense that somewhere during the course of their life they simply must have been presented with evidence that corroborated these beliefs, because none of them regard themselves as stupid.

But even if you can "cure" one of them, then you have to deal with the fact that the next generation of children will be born with these same instincts and you have to start over. Not the specific mythology of Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, Mithra, Joseph Smith, Ras Tafari, etc., but the general belief that there's more to the universe than we can observe.

But there is hope. Not all of us have this DNA. My family have been atheists for three generations and none of us has ever been tempted to start believing in bull-pucky. I didn't know what "religion" was until I was seven, and when another little boy began telling me about it I thought it was just a great story he made up and I laughed myself silly. I never understood why he didn't appreciate my reaction.

We are indeed the ones to say they are wrong when they kill people in cities, bring down buildings and undermine the education system.

People have done those things for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. But they do an exceptionally thorough job of it when it is motivated by religion.

Christians have been slaughtering each other for centuries over dogmatic trivia that you and I couldn't possibly comprehend. But they never burned each other's libraries or melted down their art. When the Christian armies under the blessings of Pope Urban occupied the New World, they did just that: burned the Aztec libraries and melted down the Inca art, because they were heathen books and pagan art.

Look at what the Muslim leaders of Afghanistan did just a few years ago: they used modern military explosives to destroy gigantic statues of Buddha carved into the side of a mountain. Even their own people were outraged because those were national treasures. The Swiss and the Japanese are mounting an effort to restore them--bless their hearts!

Oh, and did I forget to mention the violent antisemitism that virtually defined European Christendom for a thousand years, culminating in a concerted attempt to annihilate the Jews completely during my own lifetime, an attempt that actually killed half of them. It's a real head-scratcher that today the Jews consider the Christians their friends rather than the Muslims, who at their worst never treated them that badly.

Lucy and other hominids, the majority of homo and australopithecus.

Don't forget Ardi. Ardipithecus was discovered just a couple of years ago. She goes back more than five million years, greatly extending our understanding of our own timeline. She was clearly fully bipedal, allowing her to gather food and carry it back to the tribe, yet she had a prehensile toe on each foot that made her a much more nimble tree-climber than any more recent hominid, allowing her tribe to evade predators by simply vanishing upwards. She was also a forest-dweller, disproving the hypothesis that we evolved on the savannah. Her anatomical legacy from the chimpanzee is unmistakeable, yet she was well on her way to our body type.

 

[kx000]

To be precise, they're based on belief in the existence of an invisible, illogical supernatural universe, from which incredibly powerful creatures and other forces emerge at random and whimsically (and often angrily) perturb the behavior of the natural universe.

My faith is that the universe was once empty and there was a single great conciseness that learned of self and other, and named itself YHWH. It then proceeded to test life, and nature with the help of its randomly generated angels, which represent emotions, or natures of YHWH.

This belief could be unprovable, except for the fact that they all claim that at least some of the appearances of these creatures and some of these perturbations have been staged so that people were able to observe them.

Angels are but men, and only the faithful remember where they came from.

They have supposedly continued into fairly recent times when records were routinely kept. Yet no respectable records of these creatures and events exist.

True. I have a greater account of Genesis, ancient Egypt, the Exodus and the life of Jesus, and the formation of the Catholic church stored in my eternal mind.

The legend of Jesus, for example is claimed to have taken place at a time when the Roman Empire was fairly well governed by a regime of consummate recordkeepers and when Christians were not yet persecuted (because there were none) so there would have been no suppression of accounts of his "miracles." Yet there are no contemporary accounts.

My account of Jesus is that there is a cloud of deep dark deception surrounding that entire time in history.

I understand that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but this glaring lack of evidence certainly puts the assertions of the religionists in the category of "extraordinary," and therefore subject to the Rule of Laplace: Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect.

I have likeness to Jude in appearance and mind. Oh, and I talk to Jesus.

The problem with instinctive beliefs is that they're extremely hard to eradicate. Something you have "known" since birth feels more true than any knowledge you acquire later in life through reasoning and learning. It's hard to talk religionists out of their bull-pucky because they have an underlying sense that somewhere during the course of their life they simply must have been presented with evidence that corroborated these beliefs, because none of them regard themselves as stupid.

Faith is unwavering, get over that truth.

But even if you can "cure" one of them, then you have to deal with the fact that the next generation of children will be born with these same instincts and you have to start over. Not the specific mythology of Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, Mithra, Joseph Smith, Ras Tafari, etc., but the general belief that there's more to the universe than we can observe.

If you try and "cure" a Lion of being a lion, then the lion will eat your fucking head.

Christians have been slaughtering each other for centuries over dogmatic trivia that you and I couldn't possibly comprehend.

I can. Atheist (unbelievers) + Heathens + Christians killing Muslims, and Judens being slaughtered by the buss load + Whores and thieves equals the end of times. All we need is that last social cataclysm.

But they never burned each other's libraries or melted down their art. When the Christian armies under the blessings of Pope Urban occupied the New World, they did just that: burned the Aztec libraries and melted down the Inca art, because they were heathen books and pagan art.

The Aztecs, and Incans are where I would have hid my evidence, or in a tomb, funny the Christian army would impose on these un heathenistic lands, but not America.

Look at what the Muslim leaders of Afghanistan did just a few years ago: they used modern military explosives to destroy gigantic statues of Buddha carved into the side of a mountain. Even their own people were outraged because those were national treasures. The Swiss and the Japanese are mounting an effort to restore them--bless their hearts!

Bigotry. According to my FAITH Buddha went straight up.