Sunday School

[_Robert_Participant]

I don’t see how Antony Flew could have even accepted evolutionary biology with his “complexity” argument. Is it really that difficult to comprehend random chromosomal variation selected to propagate by surviving environmental conditions?

I will admit that his wishy-washy deist god is at least possible, unlike the storied gods in the books.

 

[_Robert_Participant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Robert,

And yeah, excluding Harris and a few others, many atheists don’t exactly get the big picture.

The problem, of course, is not a God-shaped hole. The problem is that both Believers and Unbelievers can have a brain-shaped hole. Atheism is no guarantor of good sense on any other subject. There has to be a larger respect for Reason and Objective Reality for that to happen.

True, but on the average, I would think the mentality that gives rise to atheism should also be a bit more immune to rhetoric that postulates that Islam as written (and practiced) can coexist within the framework of a liberal democracy.

[StregaModerator]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Strega, Here lately, I’ve found I can only log in at the bottom of the main page but not the top.

well that’s a handy thing to know!

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Yep, Anthony Flew over the cuckoo’s nest too.

[UnseenParticipant]

Strega wrote:

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Strega, Here lately, I’ve found I can only log in at the bottom of the main page but not the top.

well that’s a handy thing to know!

Assuming “the main page” means the bottom of the home page, I can’t see where one would log in there. Explain, please.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Not sure about that login option myself. I mostly access the site from my pc, on a 27″ screen. I think a login might appear towards the bottom of the page if you access the site from a cellphone or tablet….the Pope should know!

[StregaModerator]

Yes, I’m using an iPhone and if I scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page, I see an option to log out – which is inevitably switched to log in, if you aren’t.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Christian now

In a totally unsurprising announcement, Ayaan Hirsi Ali renounces atheism and declares herself a Christian. I half-expected this to happen — she’s been working at the Hoover Institute with a lot of wealthy conservative Republicans, it was just going to take time to realize who was buttering her bread. I’ve read her autobiography, and it was clear that what drove her was in large part a resentment of the terrible Islamic authoritarians who controlled her life for so long. Well, now she’s come full circle and is identifying with a different set of terrible authoritarians.

As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.

So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

Oh. So she has bought into the conspiratorial anti-woke nonsense, and the usual fear-based bullshit that is the foundation of most conservative thought. The communists are coming to get us! Our only hope is to follow a different authoritarian ideology!

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

That phrase judeo-christian always sets off alarm bells in my head. Misrepresenting what atheism is about also doesn’t help.

That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

It’s Jeeeesus. Good luck with that, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

By the way, nowhere in her long essay does she say a word about why Christianity is a good philosophy, other than that it’s a platform for fighting against Muslims and woke atheists.

Somebody else wrote the scribbles above. It is super hard to believe that she is gonna in good faith suck up to JC as her lord and savior along with the other mythological insanity. And when she looks at the history of Christianity and realizes it is as bad or worse than her own Islamic background & that the good shit that happened is in spite of Christianity and because Christianity was no longer the most powerful institution and influencer she will reconsider. Further when she realizes that imperialism and slavery were enabled by the poisoned minds of her chosen cult dehumanizing indigenous peoples she will have additional reason to abjure Christianity. Then add the direct crimes of Christianity.

But wait. She is an educated woman. And she has hung out with luminaries of intellectual life and anti theists. She knows all about the history of Christianity. She is selling a book. She is promoting a cause. She is preparing to announce she was not genuinely converting and has some motive. She is not genuinely a theist. A Christian. No way.

[DavisModerator]

 that Islam as written (and practiced) can coexist within the framework of a liberal democracy.

No Abrahamic religions as written can coexist with liberal democracy. I cannot understand this obsession with singling out Islam. Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as written in their books, are ALL entirely incompatible with liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is a direct reaction to Christianity sticking its tentacles into the state and every facet of a citizens life. There is nothing unique about Christianity that makes it more prone to liberal democracy, these countries have simply secularised faster.

One need only look at Albania to see a secularised Muslim country with a liberal democracy. One I might add, that is a lot more healthy than Hungary or Poland at the moment. I mean, even secular Turkey has a healthier liberal democracy than Poland and Hungary right now.

Azerbaijan, not the healthiest democracy, is still more liberal and democratic at the moment (far less corrupt and shaky) than neighbouring Christian Armenia and Georgia.

No Abrahamic religion is more or less prone to sickening violence or serious instability. One need only look at Nigeria to see how the Christian South is just as violent, fanatical, mobbish, cruel and prone to terrorism as the Muslim North (and equally practice genital mutilation, ferocious religious based punishments and executions) and spill over their extremism into neighbouring countries.

While Islamic extreemism is far more problematic for the average European, Christian extreemism is without a doubt the most serious and deadly threat to human rights, human dignity and human safety for the near billion people in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is secularism, in combination with stability, prosperity and lack of several barriers that allow liberal democracy. There are a LOT more failed or instable Christian countries in the world than Muslim ones, and in Europe itself, the most recent interreligious conflict (one between a faith, not branches) was for the most part, Christians committing genocide against Muslims (not even a generation ago).

Things aren’t as simple as Islamophobes make them sound. Islam is problematic, these problems don’t justify inserting hyper-overgeneralisations, demonising over a billion adherents and saying some of the vilest things I’ve read on this forum.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Being stochastic and inelastic ain’t fantastic. Disrobe the islamophobe. Dial back the vile smack.

[_Robert_Participant]

Davis, what is the penalty for leaving Islam, as compared to any other religion in the world? What Chistian nations do you know practice ancient religious law as their legal system? Do Christians cut off the hand of a thief, take an eye for an eye or stone an adulteress to death. Do ministers issue Fatwas to kill authors?

Davis, you all about feminism, right? Do Christian women have to look like this just so men don’t rape them?

Mohammed was a warlord. His instructions are clear. Use whatever means to spread Islam, including war. Islam is to be the last and only religion.

Mohammed had his men torture a Jew (named Kinana) by building a fire on his chest, then cut of his head and then big Mo raped and took the dead man’s wife for himself. Maybe he was bored with his 8-year old.

I don’t remember Jesus doing anything like that.

The Prophet gave orders concerning Kenana to Zubayr, saying, ‘Torture him until you root out and extract what he has. So Zubayr kindled a fire on Kenana’s chest, twirling it with his firestick until Kenana was near death. Then the Messenger gave him to Maslamah, who beheaded him. — Al-Tabari, Vol. 8, p. 122

You probably could organize a pride parade in Jackson, Mississippi and survive the week, but try that in Iran, Saudi, Syria or Mogadishu?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Oh. So she has bought into the conspiratorial anti-woke nonsense, and the usual fear-based bullshit that is the foundation of most conservative thought. The communists are coming to get us! Our only hope is to follow a different authoritarian ideology!

Jake, Wokeism doesn’t regard Jews or Israel as one of the “oppressed” in the Intersectional hierachy of oppression and in fact regards them both as “oppressors.” You and Robert just got supersoaked by a big batch of Wokeism in the thread on the Gaza-Israeli War and the soaking will no doubt continue until Mecca-facing morale improves… And you don’t think Wokeism is a threat?

And you deny the threat of a Red China and Revanchist Russia that both hate Israel and support Israel’s enemies, as well as North Korea, who is a potential nuclear threat to the whole world?

Sorry, Jake. If you want to piss down your own back and tell yourself it’s raining, there’s nothing I or anyone else can do to help you. Just don’t aim the tube of the catheter my way is all I ask.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not wrong about the threats the world faces. Where she is terribly wrong is her assumption that Christianity provides any solution to these threats.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Closing a tag
• This reply was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco, ya ever write a bunch of shit and it all disappears? That just happened to me so i am gonna respond with celerity and alacrity and risk butchering or compromising my thoughts.

First i did not write the things you responded to. That was somebody else. I gave my thoughts in the last paragraph or two. That was just copy pasted by me.

Wokeism? I have an overall negative impression. I would not however write someone off who describes themself as woke. I assume wokesters do not have unanimity of ideology. So i gotta know what they think before i can offer an opinion.

I don’t know if the Anti-Israel opinion expressed here is wokeism. I will say i greatly resent the racism of the far left. The attack on Israel was greeted with immediate antisemitism spike and that was before Israel did anything. I think the far left in large measure is responsible for that reaction. I am waiting for the far left to label the states who shit upside down on Palestinians as apartheid or whatever other nonsense. I am waiting for the outcry for the victims of the incipient genocide in Rwanda. The hypocrisy is so stenchy you can’t breathe the air.

China and Russia could pose a threat but a lot depends on how hawkish their enemies are. I think there is a fear of overstepping in terms of territorial aggression beyond what is in sphere of influence to use a broad term. Nucs change the game. We are not in the 1940s any longer.

North Korea is indeed a wild card. That man is fucking insane and he has created a state cult. And it is a crying shame that the far left or for that matter any group or political movement does nothing to help the victims of that cult.

A catheter is something i can only hope to never experience. I have however pissed inadvertently on another but that is not proper topic of conversation here.

I despise Christianity. I don’t believer Ayan’s head is that far up her ass to believe what she professes. Nor do i even believe her putative search for meaning is something she thinks she can find in Christianity.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

Sorry for any confusion, Jake, but please, use the Quote button above the text box before and after the words of whomever you quote. That way we all know whose words to address. Or at least use quotation marks if HTML tag buttons are too much trouble.

As for my own words, they do address anyone who thinks that Wokeism, Communism, and Antisemitism of all kinds are not actual threats. Those people are as delusional as any Theist.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

Jew-haters are so eat-up in their own hatred that they are now eating each other up, like The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat:

For any not familiar with “The Duel” by Eugene Field:

If it didn’t involve children and if it were confined to an isolated dirt track, it might make great pay-per-view or 24-7 car crash streaming channel entertainment. Otherwise, it’s just damn disgusting!

[Author]

Posts