Blasphemy! You dare defile the sacred refuge of men worldwide?!

The Grand Poobah of Penis commands you to put an end to this travesty!

ALL DRESSED CHIPS ARE NOT BLAND! BLASPHEMY! LIES AND SLANDER!
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!

In all seriousness though, Canadian cuisine isn't terribly developed. I think my favourite thing to see though, is a local Chinese food restaurant that has Canadian / Chinese food. I've always wondered what the hell that means, and can only think of Back Bacon Fried rice.

If we were having this discussion in the 14th-19th Centuries maybe you'd be raising a point. Meanwhile it isn't some fringe group that supports death for apostasy and blasphemy in the early 21st Century.

For balance, most of the towns where drone strikes have been made already were completely controlled by people who hated America and harbored or cooperated with those actively working on killing Americans. Take a tour of the hundreds of drone strike targets in tribal Pakistan and you are surveying a region accepting the rule of militants so extreme that the Pakistani government is a secular heresy worthy of death to them. Pakistani law including the death sentence for blasphemy. Those regions being under such strong control of the militants that the Pakistani military can't go there for the casualties they would take trying to do so. The welcome for Americans(long before drone strikes were made) would have been even more vicious.

It is important to state that for as much legitimate reason to 'hate' American foreign policy as there is, there exist huge numbers of people who hate America for their own petty, vile and psychotic reasons. The Islamic fundamentalists that see Pakistan as too secular are plainly one such example, and saying they only hate America because they are justified is making excuses for monsters.

His brother? But how could he narrate anything? He doesn't talk. Swing a crowbar around, sure. Defeat extra-dimensional aliens, fine. But talking? Blasphemy.

Funny, i come from a background where young earth was a fact taught to me. By the time i was 10, the overwhelming evidence pointed towards at least hundreds of thousands of years and by the time i was 15, the whole thing was over for me. The church i was in, changed it's views (maybe the only thing they've admitted..) but that was after i was long gone. So i know young earth theories pretty well and they are all bullshit.

Let me ask you this, if creation is such big part of the bible, why does that story only last two pages? It's very vague and cryptic, the subtle changes between two different languages in those very first words allow all kinds of theories in them and i'm not talking about translations that are changing text deliberately, i'm talking about "honest to god" verbatim translations. Believing that Earth is old is not blasphemy. Believing that earth is young and then cherry picking the rest of the book as you wish.. That is the real blasphemy. If your Young Earth believer, you are also believing that owning of slaves is good etc all that stuff that you don't believe in. You can't say that one part is absolute truth taken literally and the next is not.

I'd still like to understand how you believe diplomacy to be a more workable solution. If diplomacy is to be the solution to extremism in Pakistan, I presume you look to the moderate leaders in Pakistan for the answers? When I go through the list of such leaders, a disturbing trend is observable.

Shahbaz Bhatti was an elected member of the National Assembly lobbying for repealing Pakistan's death penalty for blasphemy. He was assassinated on March 2, 2011.

Salman Taseer was a governor in Pakistan, lobbying for repealing Pakistan's death penalty for blasphemy. He was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards on January 4, 2011.

Benazir Bhutto, the nations first female Prime Minister had returned after being chased off by the nations military to run in the 2008 elections. She was assassinated on December 27, 2007.

This list is just highlights, countless more moderate leaders keep ending up dead in Pakistan. Meanwhile, elected figures like those from parties like the JUI-F survive, and give speeches in Pakistan's National Assembly declaring Osama Bin Laden an Islamic hero, and the assassins that killed those in the prior list as heroes as well.

I don't mean to be rude about it, but I just don't understand why you believe that diplomacy alone can be expected to succeed in such circumstances?

It's not revelational, it's powerful.

That said, I think I'm too much of a realist and still believe leaders like her require people protecting them with the force required to stop people like the Taliban. Benazir Bhutto was in many ways a grown version of many of Malala's own ideals, and she is now dead at the hands of the same militant fanatics that tried to kill Malala. Female politicians in Pakistan have a regrettably short life expectancy, much like any male politicians who support them or anything remotely secular. For example the two politicians assassinated in the last year and a bit for asking to lift the death penalty for the crime of blasphemy.

Pakistan is in the middle of a very bloody war between the people like Malala and the people who tried to kill her. The trouble is the side we relate with is being decimated by assassinations which are either killing the moderates outright, or forcing them from the country to safety but more limited impact within Pakistan. Bhutto was similarly in exile for a long while for the same concerns, which proved out to be all to well founded.

Your video, Reginald D Hunter on What Blasphemy Is, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

For all the horrible things you can say about drone strikes, there has never before been such an efficient method of specifically killing enemy leaders in a war zone. Look at WW2 and Vietnam, and how many innocent civilians were killed for every high level enemy leader. The drone strikes in tribal Pakistan, even by the measure of Pakistan's own critics of them, manage better than 50% of their victims as bonafide militants. This includes a long list of high level Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Loss of civilian life is always tragic, but to kill 1 thousand militants and a thousand bystanders each year, while those same militants kill 10s of thousands of civilians on purpose is on the whole a good trade. Truth be told, if the Pak army was at the helm of the drones, the praises of the program would be unending. It's a combined pride and distrust of America thing.

I also think guys over here complaining need to better appreciate the ground situation over in places like tribal Pakistan. Tribal Pakistan is exactly that, a series of tribal communities. Outsiders are either welcomed in as guest and friend, or ushered out as mortal enemy, with a number of social and ethical codes dictating which will apply. If you are living in a community, that whole community has embraced you as one of your own and on a large scale sharing common cause and values. Any tribal community that's accepted high level Taliban militants into their community is guaranteed to share an extreme form of Sharia law. The community will not tolerate the education of their young girls. Blasphemy and apostasy will be immediate death sentences, without trial. Rape victims will be stoned and/or killed for adultery, as is only right. Our high standards of morality over here absolutely demand we still declare those people civilians, and mark their deaths as such, but the notion of them being potential allies turned enemies because of drone strikes is absurd.

What's funny depends on who you're telling the joke to. I tell all my jokes to myself, therefore all of them are funny.

Seriously, you need to pay attention where you say what to whom. Rape jokes aren't funny if being told in a rapevictim support group, no matter who you are and how clever the joke is. In that situation it's not ok. Being alone in an elevator with your best friend? Hilarious as shit. Mind your audience. Don't be cruel, don't be reckless.
That said, you can't go to a Luis CK show and be surprised when he makes such jokes. He gets paid for it. So does Carlin although his rape jokes are mediocre. He so much better with blasphemy.

There are also sects of Buddhism that advocate torture, execution and public humiliation (The former Tibetan ruling class springing firmly to mind). Sadly it seems even the most peaceful of philosophies can still be trumped by psychotic self righteousness & mindless tradition .

I'm not aware of any specific Sufi sects having executed or tortured people for blasphemy, adultery etc. but I fear such groups likely exist somewhere if one were to go looking for them.

In general I have a healthy degree of respect for "Sufism" because it follows the same kind of esoteric approach to religion/spirituality/knowledge as it's western (Gnostic) and far eastern (Tao, Hindu*, Buddhist etc.) counterparts.

Very roughly "Esoteric religion" is based around looking inwards for knowledge and lends itself naturally to scientific enquiry, considered ethics, critical thinking etc.
When they speak of a higher power it is almost always in terms of something fundamentally connected to and embodied by yourself.
They almost never suggest one need feel threatened by divine judgement, or that some should be privileged over others (*hence the Hindu caste system being not being truly esoteric)

"Exoteric religion" (most of Islam, Judaism, Christianity etc.) is by contrast based around looking outside oneself for knowledge. Truth is revealed by outside agents, divinity and true power always lie outside of oneself. etc. etc. (I'm sure I don't need to further elucidate the negative qualities of such belief systems )


In truth all of the major denominations appear to have at least some some esoteric and exoteric variations even if most fall mostly into one or the other. There are bad Buddhists & Gnostics and there are good Muslims and Christians the only difference really is whether or not they are genuinely applying their own minds and judgement, or hopelessly enslaved to another's.
Or in "someone" else's terms Logos and Mythos.

Back on topic: Bill Maher is Mythos masquerading as Logos.

Do you know what the Sufi positions on blasphemy and converting away from the faith are? I'm guessing it's very likely to be the death sentence position. It's disheartening looking across at Islam and trying to look for the moderates and discovering just how many claim moderate status while promoting the death sentence for blasphemy.

Pretty obvious they expected this reaction by having police present in advance.
Pretty obvious the film was intended to get exactly this reaction.

Normally I'm against setting people up like that.

In this case though I actually find myself considering if this isn't a rather brilliant method of essentially purging the extremists out of society. If your willing to jump straight to violence at someone else's free speech, you are a problem and need to be removed. The faster the extremists are weeded out from the moderates the better off everyone is. It's disturbing how many self-proclaimed 'moderates' support capital punishment for blasphemy and converting away from Islam. IMO holding that view classes you firmly as an extremist and someone completely at odds with the society in which I live and wish to continue living in.

Can't you forget about hating the west long enough to see what's actually happening in the world? All the accusations against 'Islam' or more accurately 'Islamic extremists' are overwhelmingly in regards to the number of Arab muslims that they have killed in the Middle East. Sunni and Shia killings against each other are happening EVERY DAY. On a good day the worst such killings claim less than a dozen lives. Entire nations of millions of people in places like Pakistan uphold and support that blasphemy and converting away from Islam should be a capital offense. Those accused rarely make it to trial before being killed by an angry mob.

This is NOT about western abuses against Islamic peoples, and Islamic people fighting back. That's ridiculously narrow minded ignorant approach of a western obsessed mind. The crimes being committed and painting 'modern Islam' so badly are ignoring the west, and are entirely made up of extremists killing their (muslim and non-muslim) neighbors in the name of Islam.