@BicycleRepairMan
i do not understand what you are arguing against.
you could have stuck with "no" and that would have sufficed,but you went off on a tirade about religion that had very little to do with what NDT was attempting to convey.

simply put:keep science and religion distinctively separate.that you could BE a scientist and still be a religious person.

he didnt get into the details because (and i am assuming here) he is full aware of the complexities of ones personal beliefs,religion being only a single facet.

to say religion has not produced a single novel or new idea,totally ignores the massive contributions in regards to:philosophy,math,astrology,physics.the list is pretty extensive.

you appear,and please correct me if i am wrong,to pigeon hole anybody who claims a religion as being a fundamentalist.this is not only staggeringly inaccurate but reveals a massive lack of understanding.

which is why NDT didnt even mention the fundamentalist,because the chances of a fundamentalist being a scientist hovers around 0%.

so why are you making an argument against fundamentalism when NDT did not even proceed from that assertion?

why do you care if a scientist also happens to hold a religious or spiritual philosophy?
are you suggesting that a scientist who DOES hold to these philosophies can no longer function properly as a scientist?

has it ever occurred to you that an intelligent person may hold a religious philosophy and keep that philosophy separate from their work?

or considered that a religious person may actually view their work as the continuing study of god/creator/universal consciousness? that by unraveling the mysteries of the known physical universe is their way of revealing god?there is a certain poetry to seeking and attempting to understand the mysteries of the universe.

i am totally with you in regards to fundamentalism,which brings a stagnation to the inquisitive mind and hampers the desire to know and seek those answers.the fundamentalist externalizes those questions in the form of scripture and in the process..stops asking the questions.

but to suggest that anybody who adheres to a religious or spiritual philosophy is somehow a fundamentalist,and therefore unworthy of consideration,is just plain inaccurate.

I have never understood why people would be satisfied with staying where they are. If they lived their entire lives in a forest and told to stay in the clearing, they'd wander out before long.

Why do people NOT want to wander out? What do we stand to gain from staying here? In 400 years time, should we still be worrying about car insurance and celebrity gossip, or would we rather be taking strides into the universe? Which one signifies progress?

What would some of the greek philosophers have said about us, i wonder? I think people have become too familiar with this reality we find ourselves in.. you put someone in the GTA universe, or Saints Row, and they will experiment and enjoy themselves for hours. There's a real world out there with tangible things that we can experiment with.. but people just want to watch TV or drink themselves stupid. Or maybe they're too exhausted to play and be inquisitive because they've been at work all day.

I don't want to be overly critical, but i was always well spoken when i grew up, and that was mostly down to being kindly corrected when i got it wrong. Being so inquisitive and young, i was always wanted to know why it should be spoken a certain way, became interested and learnt it, and thus became well spoken.

Can't be a bad thing to correct 'her' to 'she' can it? How else will "her" learn..

And thus are we stuck between a rock and a hard place. The politician wants you to believe that if we DO contribute to global warming (and we do) then it has to be to a degree that requires huge change and therefore huge amounts of cash. The monolithic oil/fuel companies want you to believe that we have no effect whatsoever, please continue burning as many fossils as you can find.

And the field of science (put simply, the desire of the most inquisitive amongst us to better understand the reality we find ourselves in) stuck in the middle quietly cataloging and recording exactly what is happening with the highest precision available, being completely fucking ignored.

But that is the way of Earth and i've made my peace with it. Suicide through capitalism, we are more interested in presentation than content, personal gain than collective gain, and afterall what is more presentable than the easy option? But i consider this a failing on the part of scientists to insist how important it is that we make our collective decisions based on our best understanding (i.e. science). I would like to correct that mistake, but i don't know how yet. I figure it will have to involve being able to present scientific ideas well, and VS has helped me hone that skill.

In other words thanks very much @enoch, i just wish he'd engage me. (I was less than polite because i know he ignores me - he doesn't want to learn, he wants to win.)

@Barbar
i think we agree more than we disagree my friend.

i started writing a very long history prior to the inquisition and the politics behind it and the consequent reformation and how that was able to transpire and i realized i was writing a lecture as if you were a student in my class.

lol...i figured i would save you the boredom.

you used a very apt word:justification.
and on that we agree.

I think we agree completely with Sam Harris in that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation. I won't bring Reza Aslan into this as I haven't read him, and it seems to be tangential at best.

But, acknowledge what you just said when you said that Islam is in need of reformation. You are saying what Sam is saying: That Islam contains some horrible ideas, and people are acting on those ideas, and we need to find a way to marginalize those ideas within the canon of Islam.

We could end the disagreement right there, except for where we stand in history at this point. If Christianity had undergone its reformation in a post nuclear arsenals world, who knows where we would be. It is because of this that it behooves everyone to encourage this reformation of Islam, and potentially to limit their access to apocalyptic weaponry until such a reformation has taken place. That's a different discussion though.

I think Sam's position is that one of the potential motivations behind suicide bombing is martyrdom and jihad. Real belief in those particular dogma alone is sufficient to justify suicide attacks. There are definitely plenty of terrorist actions that take place for completely non-religious reasons, and I bet that the bulk of them combine the two. But that doesn't refute Sam's point.

As for your last bit about literal interpretations, I don't agree there either, at least not entirely. How could you possibly explain the inquisition without resorting to what one would now consider to be fundamentalist readings of the texts? The same fundamentals you're saying weren't in vogue until 100 years ago is the very propaganda used to recruit soldiers to the caliphate's armies centuries ago. In any case it seems unrelated to the discussion when scriptural literalism came about, the fact is that it exists, making it more important that some books contain really bad ideas.

""Since 2 of those 3 [religions] have already internally dealt with the most horrendous of their ideas"

Now that is fucking funny, and the crux of Sam Harris's ignorance"

To think that they haven't, it would seem to me, is to be either forgetful, or ignorant of their pasts and just how horribly they behaved.

To pretend that you've made a point by sneering dismissively is just juvenile. Explain your stance.

The wholesale, unabashed genocides in the old testament seem to me to be more horrible than anything that jews are doing, for religious reasons in the present day. And that is taking Israel into account.

The picketing of soldier's funerals seems altogether less bad than the spanish inquisition.

It's not to say that Judaism and Christianity don't still have some work to do. Of course they do. But they've already climbed quite a distance.

I never said that we should brand people living in Islamic regions as the same. Stop putting words in my mouth. I said that if you seriously follow the tenets of the Islamic religion, not casually but seriously follow what the religion says, then you will be doing whatever you can to further the spread of Islam and Sharia law.

This is somewhat of a problem in all religions, but IT IS PREDOMINANT in Islam because Islam has never stepped away from these rules and tenets. In a very sad way, Islam is still in the state Christianity was during the damn inquisition and crusades. Now you will have people that refuse to devote themselves fully to Islam and those people will not act in a fashion like I illustrated. They are truly casual worshipers that have found a way to morally work around the tenets of the religion. I have no problem with those folks. Sadly, a huge amount of evidence points towards the information that they are a minority of the religion.

As far as US involvement, I said that we do stick our nose where it doesn't belong and that we should cut the rest of the world off when it comes to requests for military aid. But lets look at the link you posted. I see about half or more of the incidents are the US providing help at the request of other countries or joining coalitions of other countries. You can't have it both ways, either ask us to back out of the world scene completely or get over it when we do get involved at your request. Do you think we just popped up and sent troops/missiles to Turkey because we wanted to? Or did we invade Jordan while sending troops to help prevent the Syrian Civil War from spilling over into their country? They ASKED us to come and help. Are drone strikes against terrorists stupid? Absolutely and they help the terrorists find new recruits, but does that make Islam any less of a violence promoting religion?

The answer is no, it does not. Nor does your attempt to veer the spotlight off of the failings of Islam and back onto something else. You can misdirect all you like, but until you can provide hard facts you are simply equivocating.

Islam promotes Sharia law. Tell me truthfully if you can, that a religion that supports the execution of a woman who left the faith to marry a man her family didn't receive a dowry from is a religion of peace. Tell me that a religion that supports the execution of Homosexuals is a religion of peace. Tell me that a religion that still promotes honor killing is a religion of peace.

Because if that is the case, by your own definition the US is the greatest supporter of peace since the Romans.

Jews have the old testament.
Christians have the old testament and new testament.
Muslims have the old testament, new testament, and yet a newer testament.

All 3 share the old testament.
The 'violence promoting' scriptures are found in the old testament - which all 3 have in common.

Reza is right.
If people want peace, the religious of them simply ignore the violent edicts of their religions.
If they want to be violent, the religious of them legitimize it with excuses from their religions.

He's also right about the national hypocrisy. Al-Qaeda at the time of 9/11 was a pet organization of members of the Saudi royal family.
But instead of going after the Saudis (who also today finance ISIS), we go after 2 countries that are unrelated to the attack.

Look at today's irony. Assad in Syria (who we wanted deposed because he was friendlier to Russia than the U.S., and allowed Russian bases on Syrian soil [in the middle east]) is now fighting ISIS, while we ally with the Saudis who are supporting ISIS.

We also didn't mind supporting the Mujahedin (Jihadi fighters) in Afghanistan when they were fighting our enemy. We had no problem throwing Afghanistan into the dark ages when it suited us.

Ultimately, extremist Islam is a foil, meant to rouse western people's emotions. As national policy, we don't _actually_ do anything to stop it, we just use it as an excuse to do whatever else is of national interest.
Who would be the boogey man if extremist Islam was gone? We need a boogey man if we want to keep excusing and paying for a large military. People simply don't have the foresight and patience to maintain a strong military without someone scaring them into support. Particularly now, when we don't have the manufacturing capacity to quickly build a large military.

However, Reza is ignoring Turkey's and the Pacific islander's Muslim problems. Indonesia and the Philippines have extremist Muslim organizations doing attacks home (Philippines also has Christian terrorists). Turkey is a large source of Muslim fighters pouring into Syria.



The various related religions also have historical developmental differences.

Jews were for a long time in such minorities that they did not have the political capability of waging any campaign of violence. They were either too small, or too busy being occupied by European powers (Rome, etc).

Christians did have a long period of majority, starting around 400ad when Rome decided that a good way to control/pacify any dissent within the empire was to make the empire 1 religion and make Rome the head of that religion. They elected Christianity as the state religion, forced everyone in the Roman empire to convert, and you had a continent's worth of Christians.
This included north Africa and Middle East - and is when Jews (by now called Palestinians) were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity (**and few hundred years later forced to convert from Christianity to Islam).

Although, Christians had the benefit of the Inquisition(s) to temper their enthusiasm for Christianity. A large part of the population was killed for consorting with the devil. Once it got so bad that everyone knew someone who had been convicted and killed - and everyone was sure that those killed were innocent, it cast a large doubt on Christianity as whole. People questioned if the devil even exists, or if it's all a sham. The distrust and resentment paved the way for the eventual birth of Deism and Empiricism. A time when the scientific method and physical observation started to take over.

Islam is still a young religion. They still have to experience their religion becoming all powerful, and the inquisitions that inevitably come from absolute power. The one good thing about Islamic extremism is that it makes the people living under those conditions more likely to suffer. Once the suffering becomes so pervasive that everyone is suffering, the people will start to dislike/distrust their religion, and the extremism will resolve itself from the inside out - like it did with Christianity.

The bigger problem would be if things are 'too tolerable', and the religion grows more extreme (no one is inclined to say 'no'). The biggest problem would be if the religious leaders 'solve' the balance issue, and manage to stabilize the oppression at a level that is as extreme as it can be while still being permanently sustainable. Then the religious leaders can live the life of power without the threat of deposition.

-scheherazade

On a visual level that's pretty amazing how much better that looks than the previous game. I do think DAII suffered from a rushed development cycle and underfunding from EA. Who knows how Inquisition will turn out, but it looks like they're putting proper time and resources into it this time around.

Well I've watched it...both Lady Gaga and Marina are weird. They both seem very interesting, I will never tolerate anyone who calls either one a Genius though. Those that do are ignorant, being creative and inquisitive does not equal genius.

There are two things one never expects, the Spanish Inquisition and Sword-Chucks

Wait. I thought the Pope was the King of Vatican City. Me thinks the King needs to get his subjects in line with some ol' fashioned Inquisition-style torture right about now. I'd pay-per-view that.