Responsibility of the Theist

[CptBork]

The Word of God contradicts you:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us...

It's your 'word' against His, you might say...

No, it's NeverFly's word against the words you chose out of a book that was given to you by fallible humans.

 

[Doreen]

Hard to say. I've been confronted by far more missionary types than you seem to have.

And they start off with 'My God is real'?

 

[Photizo]

No, it's NeverFly's word against the words you chose out of a book that was given to you by fallible humans.

It's true, you're doing the best you can...it's why pity is so often shown on my part rather than utter disdain. And know this, I could wreak havoc if I had a mind too.

 

[kira]

That sort of attitude (by the Indonesian government) contributes a great deal to the friction between atheists/westerners and Muslims. If people won't let you criticize their ideas and beliefs, it means they're insecure, because they know their beliefs are founded on weak principles and are afraid of seeing them challenged by rational thinking. As I've said before, good ideas don't need violence and discrimination to defeat bad ideas, they win based on merit alone.

I'm a bit surprised with seeing what you wrote, because SAM's always told us how Indonesia represents a particularly enlightened, pacifist sect of Islam that doesn't compel anyone to follow it by force. I complained that we in the west welcome and tolerate immigrants and visitors from every corner of the globe along with their unique traditions and cultures, and that few if any Muslim countries reciprocate with equal openness. Indonesia was the counterexample she attempted to use.

Actually the insecurity of the goverment stem from the country's dark history. In 1965, the Communist Party in Indonesia (PKI, which previously wanted to change the country into Soviet Republic of Indonesia) did coup which involved the killing of army generals and their families. They wanted to change the Republic into an atheistic communist country. I have posted something about it in another thread:

In 1965, there was a kudeta (I don't know how the English spelling of that, also I think it was a French word), where a communist party (it's called PKI = Partai Komunis Indonesia) rebelling the government by kidnapping and killing 6 army generals, taking control of the mass media and communication, and caught the President of the Republic as weel. They thrown the bodies of the six general into a crocodile well (dude, there wasn't really crocodile there, but it was an empty well which name is "lobang buaya" (crocodile well)), besides killing also the whole families of the army generals. The event was known as Gestapo 30 S PKI (means 30th September (1965) PKI rebellion, more or less).

PKI was a communist AND the only ATHEIST political party, and was in close relation with the Soviet communism leaders. The PKI wanted to change the country into an atheist communist society. Therefroe, shortly after the army took back the control from the PKI (involving the chaos of mass killing of nearly half million PKI members), the government officially ban PKI and atheism. The goevernment also only allow the 6 religions (Islam, protestan, catholic, buddhism, hinduism, and konghucu) as the only religions that can be practiced in the country. There is a constituion related with that, issued in 1965 (article 39 of the 1965 consitutiion).

Most of the older generations are still traumatized with the PKI Gestapo. Also, each year, every 30 September night, whole national televisions will air the same program about the gestapo video. So, hope that explains it.

p.s..: oh, btw, if you happened to visit my country, it's better you avoid the topic of PKI or atheism with strangers. It's like discussing Nazism in Germany. Kinda taboo.

This is why the people in my country are afraid of atheism and communism (although I think these two are mutually exclusive). The laws which regulate the religious practices specifically ban certain religious activities. The Law on the prevention of religion abuse 1/PNPS/1965, for example, specifies that the official acceptable faiths to be practiced in the countries are: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (sorry, that wiki link is written in Indonesian, and as I switch to the English version, it isn't about the same topic).

Then, there is also Undang-Undang Nomor 23 Tahun 2006 (it is a pdf, in Indonesian) about the citizenship administration, which basically says that citizens who doesn't belong to the official religions can't apply for citizen ID (in citizen ID, your religion is written). You know what happened when you have no citizen ID, means you can't apply for bank account, driving license, passport, etc. There is no "none" option in the religion part of the citizen ID application form, and you aren't allowed to leave it blank either So if you are an atheist by faith, just pick one religion randomly There is no following consequences by stating that you are muslim, christian, or whatever. That's just it.

There are a number of cases of imprisonment of vocal figures which questioning this situation. For example, HB Jassin publish a short novel (1968) whose character was an atheist (the character in the novel, not himself, is an atheist), and he is jailed for that. Then, Arswendo Atmowiloto (1999) making questionnaire about the most admired figures (I wasn't sure what's wrong with the questionnaire, but this was seen as against religious law), he was also jailed for that. One guy, Yusman Roy (2005) introducing how to pray in bilingual way (Indonesian and Arabic) and the Lia Eden mocking the Quran (2006, 2008), both are currently in jail also for those activities.

This doesn't mean that our country is extremely oppresive though. Our democracy is only 12 years old, because from 1965-1998, we have only one same president (reign for 33 years) which established those religious laws. He was however quite respected, because during his regime the country is kind of peaceful and economically stronger. When he reigned, 1 USD ~ 2000 Rupiah, after he left we had this inflation up to 1 USD ~ 10000 Rupiah; the current level is 1 USD ~ 9000 Rupiah (current government is doing good job each and everyday). Or maybe it's the USD that is weakening.....

There was an ongoing discussion in the constitutional court (this time the link is in English, see below) to remove some discriminative religious laws, but I think it's going to be a long way (it has been rejected by the court). Our soceity is quite conservative.

Indonesia rejects religions law review
By Karishma Vaswani
BBC News, Jakarta
Monday, 19 April 2010

Human Rights groups have criticised Indonesia's decision to uphold the controversial 1967 blasphemy law.

They say it threatens religious freedom in the most populous Muslim nation.

On Monday, Indonesia's constitutional court decided in favour of the law, thwarting hopes it would be reviewed to allow new religions and sects.

Only six faiths are officially recognised in Indonesia - Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism.

The international rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch says Indonesia's Constitutional court has dealt a blow to religious freedom with its decision to uphold the blasphemy law.

Limits to freedom

"The Constitutional Court's decision on the blasphemy law poses a real threat to the beliefs of Indonesia's religious minorities," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"If President Yudhoyono is serious about promoting religious pluralism in Indonesia, he should work to have this law and others like it taken off the books," she said.

The group added that the decision could threaten the rights of minorities in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

According to reports the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said that blasphemy laws often cause tension between religious communities.

If Indonesia's constitutional court had overturned the law, other religions would have been allowed to practice freely here.

Conservative groups feared this would open the door to liberal interpretations of Islam being recognised.

In Indonesia both the Sunni and Shia forms of Islam are accepted, but opponents say the law remains unfair and vague.

They say that in its current form it can be used to discriminate against religious groups that fundamentalist Muslim groups dislike.

The majority of Indonesia's 235 million strong population are moderate Sunni Muslims, with a reputation for tolerance.​

Omg, this has to be the longest post I have ever written

 

[iceaura]

Thread relevance at the bottom.

Generally speaking, whenever Abrahamic fundamentalists - almost all Muslims by upbringing seem to be fundamentalists - start talking about "atheists", what they say should be taken warily by the inexperienced.

In this case, maybe the following would be right place to lodge the first questions:

This is why the people in my country are afraid of atheism and communism (although I think these two are mutually exclusive).

So what is why? You suffered one of the worst massacres of the 20th century at the hands of non-atheist non-communists, lived under oppressive non-atheist non-communist strongman military rule for decades afterwards, never suffered a day under bad rule by atheists or communists, and you are afraid of atheism and communism?

The viewpoint from the other side of the "Indonesian holocaust" was somewhat different:
http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/2005vol15no06/2464/

In Jakarta in 2004, while making the documentary film Terlena—Breaking of a Nation, we conducted a series of interviews in conjunction with the elections. We asked several men and women ranging in age from about 20 to 50 at one office compound containing a number of large and small businesses their opinion about the Communist Party of Indonesia, or Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI): "Should it be legal again; should it be allowed to participate in elections?" All of the answers were identical: "The party should not be legal, and it should not even come close to the voting booths." When asked why, we were told that the PKI had been involved in terrible deeds in 1965, that it had staged the coup on Sept. 30 that year and had killed six generals and one other high-ranking military officer.

There was no mention, however, of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of Indonesians killed in just one year after the coup or about tens of thousands of men and women who were sent to prisons and concentration camps. No one noted that the 1965 coup may have been performed by the military itself. Instead, everyone spoke only about the generals and their alleged PKI killers. They simply did not know any other version of the country's history or pretended not to be aware of other interpretations.
- - - - - -
This frame of mind, of course, is one of the results of intensive propaganda designed by the masterminds of the coup and applied for several decades on the entire population, but it is also a result of the silent acceptance of this propaganda by the majority of Indonesians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_September_Movemen
http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/india/indonesia1965.htm

In a series of papers written after the coup and published in 1971, Cornell University scholars Benedict R.O'G. Anderson and Ruth T. McVey argued that it was an "internal army affair" and that the PKI was not involved. There was, they argued, no reason for the PKI to attempt to overthrow the regime when it had been steadily gaining power on the local level. More radical scenarios allege significant United States involvement. United States military assistance programs to Indonesia were substantial even during the Guided Democracy period and allegedly were designed to establish a pro-United States, anticommunist constituency within the armed forces.

http://www.namebase.org/scott.html

And yet, after all this has been said, the complex and ambiguous story of the Indonesian bloodbath is also in essence simpler and easier to believe than the public version inspired by President Suharto and U.S. government sources. Their problematic claim is that in the so-called Gestapu (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) coup attempt of September 30, 1965 (when six senior army generals were murdered), the left attacked the right, leading to a restoration of power, and punitive purge of the left, by the center.1 This article argues instead that, by inducing, or at a minimum helping to induce, the Gestapu "coup," the right in the Indonesian Army eliminated its rivals at the army's center, thus paving the way to a long-planned elimination of the civilian left, and eventually to the establishment of a military dictatorship.2 Gestapu, in other words, was only the first phase of a three-phase right-wing coup -- one which had been both publicly encouraged and secretly assisted by U.S. spokesmen and officials.3

- - -
- - - U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials.
- - -
The purge of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) was part of a U.S. drive to ensure that Communists did not come to power in the largest country in Southeast Asia, where the United States was already fighting an undeclared war in Vietnam. Indonesia is the fifth most-populous country in the world.
- - - - -
"It really was a big help to the army," said Robert J. Martens, a former member of the U.S. Embassy's political section who is now a consultant to the State Department. "They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment."
- - - -
Martens, an experienced analyst of communist affairs, headed an embassy group of State Department and CIA officers that spent two years compiling the lists

A Letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, April 10, 1997

To the Editors:

I very much admired Ms. Laber's piece on Indonesian politics and the origins of the Soeharto regime. In connection with her assertion that little is known about a CIA (or US) role in the 1965 coup and the army massacre that followed, I would like to make your readers aware of a compelling body of evidence about this that is publicly available, but the public access to it is little known.

It consists of a series of on-the-record, taped interviews with the men who headed the US embassy in Jakarta or were at high levels in Washington agencies in 1965. I published a news story based on the interviews in The Washington Post ("U.S. Officials' Lists Aided Indonesian Bloodbath in '60s," May 21, 1990), and have since transferred the tapes, my notes, and a small collection of documents, including a few declassified cables on which the story was based, to the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. The Archive is a nongovernmental research institute and library, located at the George Washington University.

The former officials interviewed included Ambassador Marshall Green, Deputy Chief of Mission Jack Lydman, Political Counsellor (later Ambassador) Edward E. Masters, Robert Martens (an analyst of the Indonesian left working under Masters' supervision), and (then) director of the Central Intelligence Agency's Far East division, William Colby.

The tapes, along with notes of conversations, show that the United States furnished critical intelligence -- the names of thousands of leftist activists, both Communist and non-Communist -- to the Indonesian Army that were then used in the bloody manhunt.

There were other details - - - For example, the US provided key logistical equipment, hastily shipped in at the last minute as Soeharto weighed the risky decision to attack. Jeeps were supplied by the Pentagon to speed troops over Indonesia's notoriously bad roads, along with "dozens and dozens" of field radios that the Army lacked. As Ms. Laber noted, the US (namely, the Pentagon) also supplied "arms." Cables show these were small arms, used for killing at close range.

The supply of radios is perhaps the most telling detail. They served not only as field communications but also became an element of a broad, US intelligence-gathering operation constructed as the manhunt went forward. According to a former embassy official, the Central Intelligence Agency hastily provided the radios -- state-of-the-art Collins KWM-2s, high-frequency single-sideband transceivers, the highest-powered mobile unit available at that time to the civilian and commercial market. The radios, stored at Clark Field in the Philippines, were secretly flown by the US Air Force into Indonesia. They were then distributed directly to Soeharto's headquarters -- called by its acronym KOSTRAD -- by Pentagon representatives. The radios plugged a major hole in Army communications: at that critical moment, there were no means for troops on Java and the out-islands to talk directly with Jakarta.

And the takeaway is: we have another example of the tendency of theists to gloss over, overlook, or even hide, their own beliefs and actions; not comparing different belief systems or belief-associated behaviors, which would begin by acknowledging what their defended system holds and does.

 

[jayleew]

i say that this in not a very humble message, and that humility, in my experience, is what you need to experience god. experience is the true root of knowledge.

i have come to know god through experience, and i could share that with you if you wanted me to.

but i don't think you want me to do that.

No, wisdom comes from experience. Knowledge comes from study and testing. This is one of my issues with theists, many are wise, but they lack in knowledge or are just ignorant of what is not the truth because of faith.

 

[jayleew]

Can I PROVE I saw him?
I can't. See, that is how Science works. Proofs only exist in mathematics.
Evidence is the standard in science. So while the evidence that the current president exists is 99.99% conclusive, I cannot prove it was NOT an alien Elvis clone with plastic surgery and make up doing an impersonation.

This is the curse of knowledge, coupled with wisdom. It's tiring at times to continue to keep an open mind. I'm afraid though that in all this worrying about having 100% proof that we might miss something. Yes, we have to accept that we won't have 100% proof of anything. Whether or not it is reasonable to go with the 99% depends on so many things. THis is a problem with me and my beliefs in a god. It is because I can't do what so many theists do. They don't commit when the going gets tough. What one of the disciples did not deny Jesus Christ in the story? People are no different today. I was that way, but now I choose to not be so wishy-washy. God exists or he doesn't. If I ever get that 100%, then I will die for what I believe in. As it is now, I'm not willing to die for it. How much value is something that you aren't willing to die for? If you follow Christ, you are commanded to give up your life and follow him. I won't do that unless Christ exists. Anything less would be false.

 

[CptBork]

It's true, you're doing the best you can...it's why pity is so often shown on my part rather than utter disdain. And know this, I could wreak havoc if I had a mind too.

Well then why don't you go ahead and wreak havoc instead of just sitting there yapping about it?

 

[Photizo]

Well then why don't you go ahead and wreak havoc instead of just sitting there yapping about it?

You're kidding right? Do you not know why--or are you feigning ignorance?

 

[CptBork]

You're kidding right? Do you not know why--or are you feigning ignorance?

I honestly have no idea what kind of havoc you're even talking about, so please inform me. Then I'll probably ask you to put your money where your mouth is and demonstrate it, but I'll wait for you to describe it first.

 

[Photizo]

Of you course you don't...the fact of the matter is, you're not paying attention...you've wandered down a rabbit trail i.e. the notion of 'wreaking havoc'; this incidental reference occupies your attention to the exclusion of the substance of my comments. Confound it Watson, lose the blinders!... re-read through the exchange and ferret out the meaning of what I've said.

I honestly have no idea what kind of havoc you're even talking about, so please inform me. Then I'll probably ask you to put your money where your mouth is and demonstrate it, but I'll wait for you to describe it first.

 

[CptBork]

Here's my understanding of your comments: You're saying we should take you for a divine messenger, and I'm saying my neighbour is as close to being a prophet as you are. You said you could wreak havoc if you "had a mind too [sic]", and I assume you said that to try and back your point, so now I'm asking you to elaborate on what this "havoc" is and why it has any relevance to the topic.

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

On the contrary, if you can't even evidence the president through the same means as you call for evidencing god, small wonder you are pushing crap uphill
:shrug:

It`s the crap no sane individual could ever digest so I wish you would quit throwing it at us down here at the bottom of the hill.

Still I like it each time God gets more mysterious. You seem to have a penchant for making sure that is the case. C`mon admit it, wouldn`t you love for God to actually prove His existence to us? That I told you so moment that you`re longing to experience just isn`t happening, is it? So close and yet getting so much farther away.

 

[lightgigantic]

It`s the crap no sane individual could ever digest so I wish you would quit throwing it at us down here at the bottom of the hill.

Its the same crap argument you have on offer.
I'm just trying to help you recognize the aroma

Still I like it each time God gets more mysterious. You seem to have a penchant for making sure that is the case. C`mon admit it, wouldn`t you love for God to actually prove His existence to us? That I told you so moment that you`re longing to experience just isn`t happening, is it? So close and yet getting so much farther away.

Don't worry.
Ignorance is not a permanent quality of the soul.
You're a work in progress.

 

[Neverfly]

Don't worry.
Ignorance is not a permanent quality of the soul.
You're a work in progress.

As are you. Perhaps someday, you will move beyond the primitive need for fairy tales.

 

[wynn]

As are you. Perhaps someday, you will move beyond the primitive need for fairy tales.

Yes, and instead realize that this

is how things really are, right?



I mean really, this forum is filled with failed yogis!

 

[iceaura]

Yes, and instead realize that this

is how things really are, right?

They're flat, fuzzy, and made of pixels?

 

[lightgigantic]

As are you. Perhaps someday, you will move beyond the primitive need for fairy tales.

Actually its the needs of an industrial society that are primitive ... and it becomes a fairytale when one believes it is sustainable ....

 

[Neverfly]

Actually its the needs of an industrial society that are primitive ... and it becomes a fairytale when one believes it is sustainable ....

This has some truth in it.

However, how does a blind belief in superstition outweigh faith in technology?
At least technology is falsifiable.

 

[jessc]

To abide by the given feidistic / (theistic) position until the proven testomony of the new belief system is proven as confirmist to the religion in position which is taken as valid and completely cogent?