Test your savvy on Religion

Maybe you misunderstood my post or maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. I'm not suggesting you change your mind at all. I was simply suggesting that you may learn about other points of view. If you don't want to do that then of course that is entirely up to you, but I think you'll find that it's pretty hard to learn anything without picking up other bits along the way, intentionally or not.

Sound familiar?

 

Yes. I wrote it. I'm not sure how you think repeating it back to me here is a clever rhetorical device. I've already stated that I don't agree with Ms Rand and why: as I already pointed out, I find Singer's view more compelling and my actions with regards to charity are consistent with those views.

If you can shed any more light on why you find Rand's arguments more persuasive, please go ahead. She does not speak for all atheists. There is no Atheist Collective. You've called her a "real atheist" but I'm not sure what you mean by that. Does she have certification from the Atheist Accreditation Board? Her views on objective moralism are hers. They may co-exist with her atheism but they are not defined by it.

 

Uggggh!

 

The guy above is definitely suffering with MAV... I know that look and I feel his pain. LOL

 

No, as I wrote in my post, I posted as a curiosity, a tidbit. But if you think Chris ought to pick up your tidbits, seems like that ought to go a couple of ways. It's actually a very interesting and thought provoking read. I do not consider it authoritative. But it is well constructed, well derived, and very difficult to argue against because it is consistent through its derivations. This book provides much of the philosophical basis of the libertarian movement. Where I believe it falls off the track though, is in the premise. The premise is that all rights result from objective criteria, one criteria being the obvious feature of ownership. One own's one's body and the fruit of one's labors, etc. But what it leaves out is that there is an obvious step of creation behind that, and that is that all ownership is bestowed as a right, not a right through objective criteria. No, we have rights before we even assess the criteria. Otherwise we would not have the right to sit down and assess the criteria in the first place. There must be an original right in the first place, established, from which all others can be assessed.

That is my debunking of Rand.

 

Hank,

You have again misrepresented what I wrote. I never said Chris OUGHT to pick up my "tidbits". What I actually said was:

.

There's a difference. Yours, "ought" implies a judgement that one should do something whereas mine suggests that one may learn about different points of view. If one wants to.

Now we have cleared that up I am persuaded by you that Ms Rand's work does indeed sound like an interesting and thought provoking read. I will check her out (perhaps a Wikipedia summary, at least for starters as Atlas Shrug (sic?) does appear a rather weighty tome).

Based on what you've summarised however I think we can both say with 99% certainty that you and I will diverge over the issue of dominion over one's own body.

I don't think you can claim victory in "debunking" Ms Rand Hank, you've simply disagreed with her premise.

 

That's a bit harsh Sarita - the guy's hardly Chewbacca.

 

Does your guy have to be congenitally blonde and arm-hair-free? Chewbacca could wax and bleach.

 

Sarita I'd love to read your "must haves" and "must not haves" on a dating internet site - would make for very entertaining reading. LOL.

How has this thread gone from a religious quiz to discussions on match making and manscaping??

 

LOL. No, I'm not.

 

INS -- you have to fess up here. You are a hairy beast.

 

It's true I am. On the upside I'll never have to worry about male pattern baldness .

 

be very thankful--it is a curse only a notch below inner ear disorders in terms of human suffering

 

Hank -- so it looks like religion did just that for this Italian family and took the guess work away.

• Muslim woman killed for opposing an arranged marriage for her daughter
  October 13
  
  A woman of Pakistani origins has been killed, and her daughter gravely injured in Italy following a family row over an arranged marriage earlier this month.
  
  The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butt, was hospitalised with head injuries and a broken arm after her 19-year-old brother beat her with a stick in the courtyard of their building in Novi, near the northern city of Modena.
  
  According to Modena prosecutors’ initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butt, a 53-year-old construction worker, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother Umair attacked his sister. The father had been in Italy less that 10 years and was the owner of the local mosque.
  
  The victim did not want her daughter to have an unhappy relationship like the one that had been forced on her. The mother and the daughter were on the same side and this could be called a ‘cultural’ homicide because in addition to domestic violence there is the issue of the traditions that may have motivated the crime.

Doesn't this single incident alone argue against the necessity of religion to foster morality? I don't think you'd find an atheist beating his sister or wife to death because she didn't want to submit to an arranged marriage.

 

Scott,

Nothing to do with religion. The father is just A Mad Butt.

 

Not spelled out in the Koran but one can argue that honour killing is Islamic. An interesting argument here:

http://islam-watch.org/SyedKamranMirza/honor_killing.htm

 

Scott - you do get that I was making a pun (albeit a very lame one) on the father's name don't you?

I read that article you posted. I actually don't think they provide compelling evidence that the Qu'ran is the basis for honour killings. And given that the site is called "Islam Watch" and is written by ex-Muslims (so they're not fans) you'd think they'd have found the strongest evidence available. The verses they quote from the Qu'ran and other Islamic texts talk a lot of about fornication and adultery (why are so many religions so OBSESSED with people's sex lives? Dr Freud, paging Dr Freud!) and that the punishments are flogging and stoning. Those punishments applied equally to men and women and relate solely to sexual acts. Honour killiings apply exclusively to women and for a range of 'crimes' (not just sexual) which offend the family. And to be fair, the Qu'ran, as quoted in the article also allows for repentance.

I am no aplogist for Islamists and I am sickened by Honour Killings. But I think that while the killings may be done in the NAME of Islam I'm not convinced they are allowed BY Islam. In the same way that I don't think we can judge Christianity by the actions of that loathsome bigot Fred Phelps.

Anyway, why single out those peace loving Islamists? One of the Christian Ten Commandments is "Honour they father and thy mother". Nosheen would have been in breach of Christian "law" too.

 

So what if the article said:

Woman killed for whatever reason
October 13

A woman of whatever origins has been killed, and her daughter gravely injured in whatever country following a family disagreement earlier this month.

The daughter, 20-year-old Nosheen Butthead, an atheist, was hospitalised with head injuries and a broken arm after her 19-year-old brother, another atheist, beat her with a stick in the courtyard of their building in some city, near the northern city of Whatever.

According to that city's prosecutors’ initial findings, the father Ahmad Khan Butthead, a 53-year-old atheist, threw his wife to the ground and beat her with a brick while the brother Umair attacked his sister. The father, Butthead, had been in the country less that 10 years and was the owner of the local liquor store.

The victim did not want her daughter to have an unhappy relationship after marrying the likes of Butthead. The mother and the daughter were on the same side and this could be called a ‘sinceless and utterly stupid’ homicide because in addition to domestic violence there is the issue of the white trash traditions that may have motivated the crime.

Are you saying that atheists have never perpetrated like crimes? That atheists are above that sort of thing? Who knows, you might be right. I do not remember reading any newspaper article singling out that the perpetrator of a crime was an atheist. That just doesn't seem to happen. Maybe all atheists are model citizens and never even speed on the expressway. Well I suppose if an atheist did get written up for perpetrating a crime, at least no one would be able to later call him or her a hypocrite for having done so, perhaps only white trash.

I mean why do you even look this stuff up, Scott? What specific Google search did you have to employ to get this story, "butthead's son kills daughter with stick?" Do you just not have anything to do? I mean, just vacuum the house, man. Bring the clothes in off the line out the back. But searching to the end of the Internet to come up with stories that somehow justify that atheists are somehow superior morally to folks who believe in God, or purportedly do, come on Scott. Do something useful with that same time. Go help somebody.

 

Cheeses Hank,

Your misrepresenting of posts is getting old. Sarita, you're the psychologist in the family. Can you help us figure out whether Uncle Hank is doing this on purpose or is it, as you suggest above that he just spits the dummy when he's outplayed?

Hank - for the love Allah, the post by Scott and mine that followed made it ABUNDANTLY clear that these people have committed these crimes in the name of their religion. Get over your either/or absolutist nonsense - it is NOT the case that ANYONE has argued that because some people commit crimes in the name of their religion means that atheists don't commit crimes. OF COURSE they do. But has any atheist EVER done so in the NAME of atheism. Answer - no.

And before you launch a salvo of Pol Pots, Stalins or Maos remember, those people committed their atrocities in the NAME of a political belief, not in the name of or because of any atheism.