Good video... the first guy pissed me off.. I have to however say that I have also been on the receiving end of prejudice from several muslims, christians, hindu, jews, buddhists, satanists and unknown religious adherences from all races and colors of ppl. This is but one reason why I consider myself an agnostic.

This type of selective behavior knows no bounds of race and creed unfortunately.

There is good and bad everywhere.

"I don't give a shit if he's Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, Satanist, Hindu or atheist."

I would love to see a Wiccan make a serious run for Pres. The news coverage would be Hilarious.

>> ^Zonbie:
Its really annoys me when you hear people saying they will vote for McCain instead of ther Democratic Nominee because "He is Muslim"

It annoys me even more that the retort to this statement is "That's not true! He's Protestant!" rather than "So what if he was?". I don't give a shit if he's Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, Satanist, Hindu or atheist. If he has a 3-digit IQ and cares about the country, it's already a big step in the right direction.

Like most tomes of information, most religious texts do contain some pretty solid truth. The biggest beef lies from this vantage point, with people's apparatus being an amalgam of imprint and poor habits, which render them incapable of deriving meaning from datum. (Duuuhhhh, some folks kin read a book and derive no real meaning from it, save the reality of subjective/selective conclusions via filtration through their corrupted hard-drives.....)

Like I have always maintained with the atheist's baby-out-with-the-bathwater tunnel realities.
The Bible, The Koran,Zoroastrian-Gnostic-Hindu-Jainist-Sufi-texts, Urantia, Crowleyan, Sikh, Shinto,Tibetan and Zen.....take yer pick, it's up to the discerning reader, to find the gold-Oh, what?? You think that universal truths are simply handed out like a fucking wine and wafer???!! Think again, monkey boy!!!

Dang, dude, downvote for incorrectly recalling Hindu deities?

In reply to this comment by marinara:
dances not like vishnu but more like kali IMHO

The difference is your opinion that the world was created in seven days isn't supported by a single shred of evidence, and that your argument for believing the Bible rather than any other book because "everyone here is Christian" suggests that if we moved to a Hindu community we should suddenly believe the universe is eternal and uncreated... VERY SCIENTIFIC!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'oppenheimer, atomic, bomb, hindu' to 'oppenheimer, atomic, bomb, nuclear, weapon, hindu, vishnu, death' - edited by calvados

If a man (or woman, from any party) says that his (or her) faith drives the decisions they make, aren't voters entitled to ask those questions and expect that they'll be answered?

apparently Romeny doesn't think non believers should be treated the same way as he discluded them from his speech.

check out how 9 state constitutions discriminate against non believers

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutions.htm

While those states that have laws that deny public office to atheists can't enforce those laws, (at least for now). Whether an atheist (because of nonbelief) could get elected is another question.

Atheists are the last, true minority, in the sense of the socio-political world. The prejudices and unfounded stereotypes that beset them can be overcome only by becoming a visible presence among the theist majority. Gays and lesnians did it by coming out of the closet, blacks by working against segregation to gain access to a heretofore all white world, and women by using their civil rights activism as a model to achieve some measure of equality politically and economically.

In reply to this comment by deedub81:
Don't you think I should look over the fact that you're an Atheist and treat you the same as I would a Christian? If there was a Hindu running for president, should that effect the way I vote?

Should I accept Hilary as a woman and overlook that fact in my decision making process, or should I use gender as a pro or con when deciding?

THAT's what I meant. I didn't mean: Should Christians accept Mormons as Christians.



In reply to this comment by qruel:
deedub. sheesh. when you ask question such as this.

Don't you think that Christians SHOULD overlook his Mormon roots?

then it leaves that question open to debate and it was certainly a generalized question open to many types of responses.

Norwegian Marxists.
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17480/26/

*latenight FTW, again.

Around 2:30 you've got the *lies overdrive. LMFAO @ "is the Pope Hindu?"

And Stewart NAILED Hannity on the 'terrorism award to the army' - wow. Hil-ari-ous!

He looks like an eighties George Michael.

"I'd like to see you pee on us tonight"
"You know the hole to put it"
"I like to swim in it, I like to swim in his" (Ok, this needs a bit of pushing, but still)
"Beeeeejaaaaayyy"
"I put papaya there, you love me inside there.."


A very dirty mind, coupled with insane hindu/ninja dancemoves is videosift goodness. If only there was a cute hamster in there as well.

Backstory:

Africanized killer bees, far from the southern hemisphere, hear of a party in the land of Hindu Kush, but upon arriving, find nothing but low Db emissions, coming from opposite the direction of a giant eyeball, with no segmentation.
Attack!

"Natural selection" by definition "selects" genes "naturally" (as explained above), so if you say it selects genes because a god put his finger there you're not talking about "natural selection".

I don't know if you're a Muslim, a follower of Hindu gods, or whatever, but simply stating a phenomenon is caused by Vishnu is not a useful explanation.

Science created the modern world of computers and medicine because it doesn't default to those kinds of conversation-stoppers.

whoa, whoa, whoa... i never said that YOU said that the us aided the taliban - read more carefully -- i also was not the first to bring it up... jon did with his graphic innuendo at 3:25 in the vid - when my correction of this misinformation was subsequently challenged by nebosuke, i reiterated the mistakes in the initial premise - then you came in chiding me for not providing references

but if you check carefully, you'll see that what i said to you in regards to the taliban was prefaced with:

'your cites also continue to claim...'

and

'basically what your skewed sources are claiming...'

so, am i offbase? not at all - your cites did indeed misrepresent...

'Backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence, which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests.'

'These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment “opposition to Uncle Sam” in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America’s broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.'

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm

so either you don't read your own sources, or you don't believe them -- nice

a. your cites, my cites - yeah, who cares? i at least carefully read both mine and yours -- what follows in this post should satisfy your need for a higher (both in number and quality) degree of sourcing than you've provided - speaking of which, bergen doesn't provide his sources because HE is the primary source -- your cites' quotings from the likes of abdel monem said ali and ahmed rashid are what are called secondary and tertiary sources -- finally, i think when you fully peruse the citations i'll provide, you'll see that the sourcing of the state dept webpage belies your opinion of it

b. lol - if you think i agree with you, then you are pretty dense -- you probably blame hurricanes on butterfly wings

c. 'And prior history notwithstanding, without the ISI's, and through them the US, insistance on bringing in Arabs to fight with the mujahideen there would LIKELY be no Al Qaeda.'

lol, again - what makes you think that the us and isi insisted on bringing in arabs to fight? you're very misinformed -- first of all, if they did insist, then why the hell didn't the arabs fight? heh --- what both the us and isi DID want was SUPPORT, re. cash and logistics

unfortunately, along with the cash, the arab states sent us their fundamentalist troublemakers and criminals given early parole to fight for islam in afghanistan, e.g. the folks who assassinated anwar sadat, etc -- the trouble came about after the afghans won and the arab states didn't want their 'jihadists' back - lol

but anyway, here are the cites and sources for you...

'Assess for me the role of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan Arabs in the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Arab element of the ten year engagement in Afghanistan was fundamental to its success, but within the context of fund-raiser.'

'The Saudi Arabian government, and rich, wealthy princes ... contributed and matched dollar for dollar the US government's money in the Afghan war?

That was within the context of the program that CIA was managing. And that's the way it was funded. And that is known. Beyond that, you had Saudi Red Crescent and all forms of Gulf Arab organizations who were drawn to the only operative jihad at the time, a very major event within the world of Islam. And they were fund-raisers. And they brought additional moneys into the Afghan program, into the resistance from their own sources, and did good works.

They built orphanages, they built homes for widows of martyrs, and brought in, after the war turned to the advantage of the mujahedeen, some ... 20 to 25 million dollars a month. ... So in that regard, they played a very major role. Now, part of your question is what about the combat role. Minimal. There were some Arabs that fought with some mujahedeen groups, but not many. At any given time, inside Afghanistan, [there were] maybe 2,000 Arabs. ... But the people of Afghanistan fought that war, they bled, they died, they were driven out of their country. To suggest that others were engaged in the combat activity to any extent is just simply wrong.'

'Who were the Afghan Arabs?

Muslims from all over the world: North Africa, Persian Gulf, but from all over the world. Other than that, you had a rag tag bunch of Muslims that were taken from one jail or another, whether it's in Cairo or in Algiers or any other country in the Gulf, and put on an airplane and flown to go do the jihad with the fondest hope that they not come back. They didn't die in great numbers. They died in tiny numbers, and they did come back. And my bet is that even the Saudis were terribly happy to see the son Osama bin Laden go off to war. And some might have thought wouldn't it be nice if he didn't return.'

'Because so much of what we hear about Osama bin Laden comes out of his Afghanistan experience, I'm trying to get this straight, he was mostly a philanthropist and a financial contributor, and a minor combat figure, who happened to dabble in combat?

... I can possibly give him credit for having been present and accounted for at one major battle in ... Baktia Province in 1987. Beyond that, I simply cannot say that there is any war record at all. What I can say is that the hype that surrounds Osama bin Laden--most of it generated by the US media and backed up by statements that verge on hyperbole from the United States government--that this man was literally swinging through the valleys of the Hindu Kush with a dagger in his teeth and single-handedly driving out the Soviet army, this did not happen. The Afghan people did that. The Arab role in the combat situation on the ground was minimal to nonexistent, period. And to suggest otherwise is simply to either gloss over history or to create history for your own reasons.

I can imagine someone out there watching saying. "This is the CIA talking." You're not going to admit that you created the most dangerous public enemy in the world.

You bet I would. If I could look you in the eye and say, "Trust me, Osama bin Laden was my guy. If it wasn't for the CIA he wouldn't be anything then, he wouldn't be anything today," if I could say that with a straight face, I think that would speed up the process of removing Mr. bin Laden as a source of great, great concern for the United States. I can't say that because it's simply not true. You can find nobody who is familiar with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those years that would say bin Laden played any role other than the fund-raiser.'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/bearden.html

'MILTON BEARDEN, AUTHOR; FORMER STATION CHIEF, CIA: That's what it was. It was a jihad, and it was a jihad for ten years. There were a million Afghans killed, a million-and-a-half wounded or maimed, and five million driven into exile. That's -- it's awfully close to 50 percent of the population of the country. So it was in fact a jihad, and our role was pretty much tandential to what everybody else was doing. The Afghans were doing the dying and the fighting. The Saudis and the Americans were paying the freight. The Chinese were ordinance. They provided an awful lot of weaponry. The Egyptians provided a lot of weaponry. And bin Laden and a lot of young Gulf Arabs and other Arabs came to do the jihad.

ADAMS: It was quite a cause for them.

BEARDEN: Of course, it was.

ADAMS: Did you meet bin Laden then?

BEARDEN: No, no. Bin Laden was one of many. Bin Laden is becoming a myth that I'm a little uncomfortable with. When bin Laden was in Peshawar in Pakistan where he spent almost all of the war, but he was a fundraiser. We are talking about money that came from Gulf Arabs in a given month could have been $20, 25 million in a given month.

ADAMS: Had you heard about this man, though, that had $250 million of his father's money from Saudi Arabia to bring to the cause?

BEARDEN: Had I heard of him? I knew bin Laden was out there. I knew that the Saudi Red Crescent was out there. I knew that all of the Red Crescent organizations of the Gulf Arab states were out there. But did I take a look and say that this tall thin ascetic-looking Saudi was special? No. To be perfectly frank, the money that they brought in relieved the United States and Saudi Arabia of going deeper into their own national treasuries for more money.'

'ADAMS: When the Gulf War starts and bin Laden says never has Islam suffered a greater disaster than this invasion, meaning the presence of U.S. forces there to defend Kuwait and to support Saudi Arabia, and you hear this, and you know these are the guys that you helped -- the CIA helped fight against the Soviet Union -- what do you think? What's your reaction at that time?

BEARDEN: Well, a couple of reactions. One, CIA, CIA as the executive instrument of the United States government, you know, three presidents beginning with Jimmy Carter were helping the Afghan people resist the Soviet invasion. It's a real stretch in my opinion to say we helped bin Laden or even cared about him. That he participated in it most certainly -- it was OK with us. It was his business and all that.

Now on the one hand, it was fundamentalist Islam that defeated the Soviet Union, and it set in play or set in motion the history that played out through 1989. November 9th, the Berlin Wall is breached, and it's all over.

Now that some of the Arabs that went to that jihad have remained problematic, sure. Am I shocked? Not really. You know, war brings strange allies together, doesn't it? I mean, if you had to worry about unintended consequences, then would we have ever helped Joseph Stalin deal with that other great acute evil, Adolph Hitler? Sure we would, even though 200 million people get subjugated for 50 years; and we spend our nation's treasure for half a century dealing with the Soviet Union.'

http://www.asms.net/facultymanaged/srou/osamabinladen/real%20Articles/Interview%20with%20CIA%20agaent.htm

'Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan.'

http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/Understanding-Terror-Networks-Sageman.asp

'REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, tell us about your experience during the Afghan war and what did you do during that jihad?

BIN LADIN: Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, that He made it possible for us to aid the Mujahidin in Afghanistan without any declaration for jihad. It was rather the news that was broadcast by radio stations that the Soviet Union invaded a Muslim country. This was a sufficient motivation for me to start to aid our brothers in Afghanistan. I have benefited so greatly from the jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such a benefit from any other chance and this cannot be measured by tens of years but rather more than that, Praise and Gratitude be to God. In spite of the Soviet power, we used to move with confidence and God conferred favors on us so that we transported heavy equipment from the country of the Two Holy Places (Arabia) estimated at hundreds of tons altogether that included bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks and equipment for digging trenches. When we saw the brutality of the Russians bombing Mujahidins' positions, by the grace of God, we dug a good number of huge tunnels and built in them some storage places and in some others we built a hospital.'

http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

'Was this the origin of al Qaeda?

Yes. al Qaeda wasn't an outgrowth of Adbullah Azaam's "Office of Services," as has been suggested elsewhere. al Qaeda grew in opposition to Azzam's organization, not out of it. Azzam's organization had been becoming something like an NGO, which provided education and the like. Bin Laden didn't want to do that. He wanted to fight the Soviets by forming his own group. But this is also an early example of an interesting trait of bin Laden's: He acts on impulse and doesn't follow good advice. Azzam didn't think the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan were all that important to the anti-Soviet effort. So Azzam wanted to pepper them among different Afghan units and use them as morale-boosters. Bin Laden didn't listen. And at the end of the day Azzam was right: It was the blood of Afghans that won the war against the Soviets, along with lots of money from the United States and Saudi Arabia.'

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/31205/

'Peter, what is the--you talk a little bit in the book about this notion of blowback, the fact that the CIA really created al-Qaeda or the entire--this sort of Muslim fundamentalism network that we're now facing and more or less put lie to that, or at least minimized the impact of the CIA and say that Osama bin Laden had a bigger part in that.

Mr. BERGEN: Well, I mean, I--just for clarity's purposes, the CIA, you know, obviously had a big role in the Afghan resistance, $3 billion they supplied, but they were basically signing checks. And it's interesting--it's a widely held view on the left that somehow CIA was involved in the founding of al-Qaeda or helped bin Laden, and conspiracy theorists around the world believe this, but there's just no evidence for it. Surprisingly, there are very few things that the US government and bin Laden agree upon, but Ayman al-Zawahiri has released statements that there was no backing from the United States. Other people within al-Qaeda--there really is just simply no evidence for that. The real story is not that the CIA knew who--you know, was helping out bin Laden 'cause they had no idea who he was until about 1995 when they first set up a unit in--specially looking at him directly in January of 1996. So really the story is not one of CIA complicity in the rise of bin Laden; it's actually ignoring the problem before it was too late.'

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5151657

d. i have a very open mind, but it's also quite critical - i try to check the facts that i choose to believe very carefully, and if i ever see a source that intentionally tries to deceive, well, they lose all credibility with me - that's why all these CT nuts with their tongue-in-cheek logical fallacies and faulty syllogisms hold no truck with me -- if that means i have a closed mind, in your opinion, so be it - i'm more than fine with that

" It's hard to understand the subject matter if you haven't read anything on the subject. This video only covers one of the letters. Hardly a reason to judge a whole book by."

Like I said my criticisms still apply to this particular letter. It exploits the basest fears that we are all susceptible to. At some point I plan to read this book as it seems to be a creative take on the age old problem of proselytizing. If the reading changes my mind on the tactics employed by Mr. Lewis you will be the first to know.

"Basing an argument off one church that seems to be all encompassing for examples is a bit naive and harsh to group other religions,or organizations along with it."

The example wasn't meant to be as sweeping as you seem to suggest. At the same time, let's not forget the "one church" we are talking about here encompasses around 50% of the Christians today and is the largest organized body of any world religion:
(source) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church
We are also talking about an easy to prove concept like Heliocentrism which the church took 300 hundred years to come to grips with in the face of overwhelming evidence. This is also a church that now claims that "other denominations not true churches."
(source) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19692094/
Surely the actions of a church of such prominence is partly indicative of the current state of religious affairs.


"Not all religions exploit people. People exploit people, sadly it's done in the name of the church that person uses as a tool. The organization of a church does not necessarily make it an organization for evil intents."

People exploit people. Agreed. But so do religions. Institutions have to be judged on the principles they subscribe too. If a religion subscribes to the concept of eternal damnation then in my opinion it is exploitative. It is human tendency to exploit others. A decent institution tries to safe guard its member from such exploitation by subscribing to principles that lead to fair play in general. Not that the scientific institution is free of its foibles but there is a reason why science is able to sustain (even celebrate) major blows to its most cherished beliefs even though scientists can be just as flawed a people as the religious. I imagine if science subscribed to the religious principles of dogma, faith, and revelation then Gödel would have been crucified for his incompleteness theorem; or at the very least denied tenure which I'm told hurts worse than a crucifixion.

"I'm curious what is the basis of your faith pro?"

Not exactly sure what this question means. I was raised in a hindu family which lead to a moderately religious outlook on life until early adolescence. I guess I have grown to become what you might call a tooth-fairy agnostic.

Actually, in Hindu society, the lot of widows is pretty akin to that of lepers . [NOTE: I am not making disparaging remarks on Hindu society/beliefs/customs. No flame wars please.]

I recently watched the movie Water, by Deepa Mehta, and it tells the story of prejudice against widows in conservative Hindu society. This story was set in colonial era India, so I'm not sure if this is still a prevalent practice in India. However, looking at the controversies generated by the filming of this movie, it's probably still practiced in the more rural areas.

Here are a few links for those interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_(2005_film)
http://water.mahiram.com/