OT: Jibjab, Politics, the Big Bang and more!

[Arryn]

Spirokeat,

Boron is from Germany, not the U.S., as you believe. Chastising him as if he were an American is hardly fair. He's arguably more European than you are.

[spirokeat]

You have Bush right now, so that practically invalidates any arguement the US has for not being right at the top of psuedo-nutjob leaders list be they religious or not.

Best change that to

The US has bush right now, so that practically invalidates any arguement the US has for not being right at the top of pseudo-nutjob arrogant leaders list, be they religious or not.

Spiro.

[Boron]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
Fan of the sweeping generalisation are we old bean ?

Spiro

i also posted that :

Originally posted by Boron :
so my view of the catholics is perhaps a bit biased by own expierience

and after that i declared that every group has its own black sheeps but that the catholic group has the longest and bloodiest history in doing crimes in the name of god .
my main disagree with the catholic church is the institution of the pope .
as i have stated before that is blasphemy nowhere in the bible can be found legitimation for the office of the pope .

i come from bavaria and we have here some maria worshipping sects that are really intolerant .
they are only one step away from suicide bombers . most bavarians are very intolerant .
catholic and csu-voters ( csu means christian social union , it is one of the 2 major german parties ) .
i am a confident protestant spd-voting bavarian .
with that attitude my attitude differs greatly towards the bavarian majority .
bavaria is germans most conservative country .
only with catholic csu-voters with high education you can discuss fairly but with 90% of the not so educated people discussion will follow that simple pattern :
if you say anything against csu ( they are almost like the SED in bavaria ruled from 1949 until now alone always with 50%+ majority ) they just say you are a public enemy and go to prussia if you wanna complain .
whether or not kohl is mainly responsible for our great state deficit doesn't interest them .
they simply neglect despite it is true .

Originally posted by Arryn :

Spirokeat,

Boron is from Germany, not the U.S., as you believe. Chastising him as if he were an American is hardly fair. He's arguably more European than you are.

thnx arryn

yeah britain is the sole major european country left that's not in the eu .

oh and ps : isn't britain protestant ?
henry VIII dissociated from the pope .
so i don't get why you attack me complaining about the pope ?

[ July 28, 2004, 14:12: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
On the other hand, there is at most one distinct religious belief that is true. And many Groups (not just the Catholic church) claim that theirs is it. If anyone finds this offensive, they can count on being offended rather a lot.

Untrue - there are several religions (even major ones) whose belief system doesn't exclude the validity of others. Buddhism, Hinduism - blood and bone, even the Islamic faith originally had the view that Judaism and Christianity were true religions whose worhshippers could eventually get to heaven, but that Mohammed was the Last, most authoritative prophet.

(Keep in mind that even most Muslims expect some suffering in the afterlife before they get to their heaven, as each who didn't die a martyr has to cross a bridge that is razor thin / sharp, in bare feet.)

[Boron]

Originally posted by Arryn:

Only practicioners of Islam have this reprehensible practice today. The rest of the world became, more or less, civilized and ceased such things as crusades, inquisitions (if we ignore the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security), and burnings-at-stakes. Despite all that you can say about Islam being a peaceful religion, a far larger percentage of its followers remain stuck in medieval barbarism than do the followers of any other religion. Please explain why this is so ...

yeah that's a really interesting question .
i heard from moderate muslims with which i discussed myself and from many other sources that mohammed is often misunderstood too but if you look close to the koran you find nothing which legitimates suicide attacks and killing of nonmuslims .

a source is poverty .
the islam is a 700-800 year younger religion than the catholic one .
so you could say history repeats sometimes .
now the islam exists for about 1200-1300 years .
the catholic belief existed 1200-1300 years exactly in 1200-1300 . in that time they made some of their biggest crimes : the inquisition and the crusades .

now expect the hardcore ira as you mentioned before i agree that fortunately there is no other religious group that is that dangerous .
expect some muslim fanatics .

but in both cases poverty is a main cause :
irish people were ( perhaps still are i am not very informed on that topic ) the poor and disadvantaged group in northern ireland .

same with the muslim fanatics .

poverty is one of the things demagogists exploit most . in most extremist e.g. muslim splinter Groups the leader is not much more than a demagogist like saddam or hitler who just abuses the popularity of church for his own claims .

if you can't combat poverty and especially discrimination of certain Groups unfortunately i know no solution against demagogists

[spirokeat]

I'm not attacking you Boron, my apologies if you felt that. Aside of that, the point I wanted to make is that the US is no less culpable in its ownership of fringe extremists than most european countries, hence my sweeping generalisation comment.

And as for England being Protestant, well, the church of england may be (i have no idea), but to be honest standard christian religion plays very little role in many peoples lives here despite us hosting a highly multicultural populous, which I say with some experience having lived in Bradford for many years, probably the largest population of Musilms in the UK.

Though I wouldn't deny that many traits and traditions within English society were born of christian values.

Spiro

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Boron:
a source is poverty .
the islam is a 700-800 year younger religion than the catholic one .
so you could say history repeats sometimes.

Well, given the level of destructiveness of today's technology, this planet, and we humans, cannot afford to wait another 500-600 years until Muslims mellow out, become civilized, and abandon the path of the sword. A martyr-wannabe with a gene-tailored virus, who cares not who or how many die with him, is the most scary thing imaginable. And it's all too possible. Forget stolen nukes or home-grown ones. They can, at most, kill a few million. Some psychopath, funded by Saudi oil money, with the help of any of the many ex-Soviet unemployed bioweapons scientists, could end all human life. And unlike nukes, there's no technology that can be invented to detect such a thing at a port/airport. Hell, they could release the doomsday bug in their own country and let their own people, totally unknowing civilians, spread it around the world.

Cheery thought, eh?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
And as for England being Protestant, well, the church of england may be (i have no idea)

The Anglican Church (the Church of England) is a Protestant Christian sect.

EDIT: quote formatting

[ July 28, 2004, 15:08: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Arryn]

Boron,

That all religious conflicts (wars) have 'poverty' as their root cause (if you use a very loose definition of the term 'poverty') is true. Religion is an excuse that people use to justify aggression used to achieve other goals. The Crusades weren't about faith. They were about land-grabbing abroad, and political maneuvering at home. The Holocaust wasn't about a difference of faith between Nazis and Jews. It was about a redistribution of wealth and the elimination of ideological threats. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about faith, but about controlling land and revenge.

If you eliminate greed, vengeance, and true poverty, then you remove the excuses used for religious intolerance. But you have to get rid of all three. Curing poverty is not enough. Though it would take care of 99% of the problem, probably making the rest manageable.

EDIT: typo

[ July 28, 2004, 15:20: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
I'm not attacking you Boron, my apologies if you felt that. Aside of that, the point I wanted to make is that the US is no less culpable in its ownership of fringe extremists than most european countries, hence my sweeping generalisation comment.

And as for England being Protestant, well, the church of england may be (i have no idea), but to be honest standard christian religion plays very little role in many peoples lives here despite us hosting a highly multicultural populous, which I say with some experience having lived in Bradford for many years, probably the largest population of Musilms in the UK.

Though I wouldn't deny that many traits and traditions within English society were born of christian values.

Spiro

yeah i was a bit surprised that you thought i am an american . so i wasn't quite sure if you are attacking me thnx for the clarification
we share the same view about generalisation . i think i am a very tolerant person .
that was why i felt a bit attacked because i thought i had pointed it out clearly that i am in no way against the catholic church in general only against some popes which made faults and because of that against the office of the pope anyways .
perhaps it was impossible to understand because i wrote "black sheeps" . that is a well known german figure of speech i guessed that it is in english simply black sheeps .
is this correct ? because if that means something completely different in english or is even nonsense then half of my post where i wrote that may be very hard to understand

church plays no great role here either at least not for the protestants in bavaria most catholics are a bit conservativer here though .
i think having a honorary office in the catholic church and beeing seen as a good catholic still would help you if you aim for becoming a politician here .