@transmorpher
so when i point out the historical implications,i am somehow automatically disregarding the inherent problems within islam itself?

and your counter is to not only NOT counter,but refuse to acknowledge the historical ramifications,because that is some political,agenda driven-drivel.

that the ONLY acceptable argument is to focus on the religion itself,and ignore all other considerations,because,again..just tools to be used and abused by the left to fuel the far right.

am i getting this right so far?

that to include history is actually the path that stops that path to move forward?

and here i was still hanging on to that tired old adage "those who refuse to recognize history,are doomed to repeat it".

i am glad that you found those authors so respectful and admired their analysis and dedication to research,but you didn't even bother to use one of THEIR arguments.you simply made claims and then told us you read some books.

dude..now i am just kinda...sad for you.

i am sorry that you are oblivious to your own myopia,and that you are coming across as condescending.yet really haven't posted anything of value that you have to contribute.

you are just pointing the finger and accusing people of their arguments being dishonest,when it appears to me that everyone here has taken the time to try to talk to you,and your replies have been fairly static.

hitchens tried to make the case,and failed in my opinion(i am not the only one),but a case i suspect you are referencing.that even if we took the history of neoliberalism,colonialism and empire building OFF the table.islam would STILL be a gaggle of extremist radicals seeking a one world caliphate.

which is why i referenced dearborn michigan.
it is why i mentioned kabul afghanistan.

we are talking about the radicalization of muslims.
why are they growing?
where do they come from?
why do they seem to be getting more and more extreme?

which many here have attempted to answer,including myself.

but YOU are addressing and entirely different question:
'what is wrong with islam as a religion"

well,a LOT in fact and i already mentioned islams dire need for a reformation,but it goes further than that.you see the epistemology of both judiaism and christianity have been thoroughly argued over and over....and over..that what you find today is a pretty succinct refinement of their respective theologies.

agree/disagree..maybe you are atheist or agnostic,that is not the point.the point is that the so-called "finished' product has pretty clear philosophies,that adherents can easily follow.

for judaism this is in large part to the talmud,which is a living document,where even to this day rabbis debate and argue the finer details.not to be confused with holy scripture the torah.

christianity was forced to acknowledge its failings and flaws,because the theology was weak,and was becoming more and more an amalgamation of other religious beliefs,but most of all,and i think most importantly,the in-fighting with the vatican and the church of england had exposed this weakness,and christianity was on the brink of collapse due to its own hubris and arrogance.

they had no central authority.no leadership that the people could come to in order to clarify scripture.

so thanks to the bravery of martin luther,who risked being labeled a heretic,challenged the political power,which in those days was religious,and so began the process of reformation.

and also ended the dark ages,and western civilization stepped into the "age of enlightenment".

islam has had no such reformation,though is in desperate need of one.they had no council of nicea to decide what was holy canon and what was not,which is why you have more gospels of jesus in the quran than you do in the actual bible.

the king james bible has over 38,000 mis-translations in the old testament alone,whereas the quran has....well...we don't know,because nobody challenges the veracity of the quran.

am i winning you over to my side yet?
still think i am leftist "stooge' and "useful idiot"?

look man,
words are inert.
they are simply symbols.
they are meaningless until we lay eyes on them and GIVE them meaning.

so if you are a violent,war-loving person-------your religion will be violent,and warmongering.

if you are a peaceful and loving person----then your religion will be peaceful and loving.

the problem is NOT religion itself,and i know my atheists really don't want to hear that,but it's true.religion is going nowhere.

the problem is fundamentalist thinking.
the problem is viewing holy scripture as the unerring word of god.
which is why you see creationists attempt,in vain,to convince the rest of us that the earth is only 6,000 yrs old,and their only proof or evidence is a book.

so we all point and laugh.....how silly..6,000yrs old.crazy talk.

but WHY is the creationist so adamant in his attempts to defend his holy text?
because to accept the reality that the earth is not 6,000 yrs old but 14 billion yrs old,is to go against the word of god,and god is unerring,and if the bible is the word of god....and god is unerring.........

now lets go back to dearborn michigan.
if hitchens and harris are RIGHT,then that relatively stable community of muslims are really just extremists waiting for the angels to blow their horn and announce the time for JIHAD!!!

and,to be fair,that is a possibility,but a small one.

why?
because of something the majority of christians experience here in the states,canada,europe,australia...they experience pushback.

does this mean that america does not have radical christians in our midst?

oh lawdy do we ever.

ok ok..i am doing it again.
me and my pedantic self.

suffice to say:
islam IS a problem,even taken as a singular dynamic,that religion has serious issues.
but they are not the ONLY problem,which is what many of here have been trying to talk about.

ALL religions have a problem,and that problem is fundamentalism.which for christianity is a fairly new phenom (less than 100 yrs old) whereas islam has suffered from this mental malady pretty much since its inception.

ok..thats it..im done.pooped,whipped and in need of sleep.

hope i clarified some things with ya mate,but i swear to god if you respond with a reiteration of all your comments.i am going to hunt you down,and BEAT you with a bible,and not that wimpy king james either!
the hefty scofield study bible!

@SDGundamX

it is all good mate.
you vote however you wish,for whatever reasons you deem pertinent.

i do not identify so strongly with a video that it somehow represents me,or everything i stand for,and i have no issue if someone disagrees.though i always do respect when someone states WHY they downvoted.

which you did,and mad respect my man.

as i stated earlier i was fairly ignorant to a lot of this new flavor of social justice warrior.gamergate included.in fact,i still do find gamergate really that important in the larger context,though i am sure there are gamers who would disagree with me.

i found this video interesting in that it was addressing how the more radical and extreme elements were attempting to hijack public spaces by controlling language,and therefore dominate the conversation.

since i was not familiar with this particular youtubers stance on gamergate,nor followed his videos,i harbored zero bias on his conclusions.

in my opinion,this mans stance or political leanings in regards to gamergate is not enough of a valid reason to dismiss what he is laying down in this video.

what you are suggesting (and if i am reading your position wrong,please let me know),is that because this youtuber held a certain position on a related subject,devalues and dismisses his position on radical social justice warriors.

a good analogy is me pointing to the sky and stating "the sky is blue" and having my statement dismissed because you may disagree with my politics,religion or philosophy.

but that would not make my statement any less true.

i agree with you that it does not matter of someone is a narcissist or a special snowflake.it is the argument that matters.the IDEAS that should be examined for their veracity and clarity.

and yes,this youtuber makes certain assumptions that are not only irrelevant but extremely biased.

which brings me back to my main point.
freedom of speech and how these radicals attempt to impose their own selective bias by controlling the language we use to express ourselves and those very ideas that you and i find to important.

so while the radical right attempts to legislate morality and impose THEIR own narrow and subjective understandings on all of us.

the radical left is attempting to silence dissent and dialogue by controlling language by using this weird orwellian doublethink.

"zero tolerance for the intolerant" almost every college campus has something similar to this all over campus.

now THAT phrase is a brilliant example of orwellian doublethink.
definition of doublethink:The power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them.

so my main point is in regards to freedom of speech and how the radical end of these social justice warriors are threatening that most basic and vital right.

did i get my point across?
well,the jury is still out,but i hope that at least i got a few people thinking and giving this situation a bit more scrutiny.

i am also attempting to address this phenom of binary thinking.
that because i post a video that criticizes the more radical elements of social justice warriors.this automatically translates to me being "anti-social justice warriors".

my recent posts on this matter have confused and troubled some sifters.because they had a certain mental image of who i was and because they may identify as a social justice warrior,my posts were offensive to them,and confusing.

now thankfully @Jinx spoke up and inquired about my reasons,because it appeared to him that i was behaving out of character.

but i am not.
i am,and always have been,about freedom,equality,fairness and justice.i apply that metric as evenly as i humanly can ( i make mistakes,of course).

bad ideas MUST be challenged and how this new batch of social justice warriors are behaving in order to further their agenda is a bad fucking idea.

does this mean trash ALL people who are socially conscious and wish to create a better world by fighting injustice,racism and bigotry?

of COURSE not!
but i do blame those well-intentioned people for not standing up this new form of bully groupthink.just because someone identifies as a social justice warrior does not mean that they get a free pass just for being part of a group.

so just like i blame the "good" cops who stand by and allow the "bad" cops to break the law,abuse their authority and behave like fascists with impunity.they are just as responsible as those cops who cross the line.

so while the intentions may be good,the execution is a horrible lovecraftian nightmare,with far reaching implications that affect us all and can be easily abused.

freedom of speech is good.
disagreement is healthy.
we cannot be so allergic to conflict that we shut down the conversation,and all reside in our own little echo chambers where everybody is agreeing and nobody is questioning.

as a society there is grave danger in that practice.

and that is really what i am talking about.
thanks for commenting my man.
as you may have figured out.this is a fairly important subject to me.
stay awesome!

@Barbar
what you are speaking of in regards to the 2 religions (judaism/christianity) are the reformations they both experienced.

now there are a myriad of reasons why these reformations occurred:age of enlightenment, renaissance and a new way of thinking=secular philosophy.i could go on but those are the big three.

islam has yet to experience a reformation and reza aslan's book "no god but god" makes the case that islam is in desperate NEED of a reformation,to which harris dishonestly suggests that islam needs while in the same sentence accuses reza of ignoring.the man wrote an entire nook making the case for islamic reformation!

when you are going to criticize belief you have to also ask the "WHY" of that belief.if you strictly confine your arguments to a book then you are ignoring the multitude of factors to the origin of that belief and are actually formulating an argument with the very same absolutist and fundamentalist thinking that you are criticizing.

you are quite literally using fundamentalism to criticize fundamentalism.

example:
harris makes the point that suicide bombers blow themselves up because the quran glorifies martyrdom,with little thought to WHY those young men strapped bombs to their chest in the first place.

when the WHY is the most important question!

and the answer is NOT because the quran demands it of them but rather out of hopelessness brought on by oppression,murder,torture of their friends and family.

the quran offers a rationalization for the suicide bomber.a desperate person will grasp desperately at any thin straw to give their life meaning,but it most certainly not the cause.

this fundamental lack of understanding is why i find harris to be a mediocre atheist thinker.

literalism in regards to scriptural interpretation is a fairly new phenom,(past 100 years),and that includes muslims.

First of all, I'd like to point-out that once the lovely Ms. Spicer here took of that hideously frumpy dress, got rid of her patina of shellac and wet her hair, she suddenly became much comelier and glamorous and down-to-earth sexy for me personally, as I have ALWAYS gravitated towards women who shun make-up who looked like they just threw-on their favorite comfortable clothes, and could give a fuck about what anyone thinks about how they should look or act.

Any man who thinks otherwise is most-likely, a superficial and abusive fucking douchebag who will invariably seek-out the female form of douchbag, and have lots of power, money, and influence in either politics, banking, sales/insurance, or some other form of criminal activity which does nothing for the planet except create more douchebag children who will turn into bigger douchebag adults than their sheit-scumbag parents ever dreamed. This is a huge phenom in the current planetary paradigm and has been going-on for centuries to create the dysfunctional western civilization we enjoy today, cascading into insanity and oblivion, a world controlled by completely evil pieces of shit.

Here's the real-deal Trancecoach and it's in-line with Bill Burr's idea of an 'epidemic of gold-digging whores' routine so popular here among sift-voters, because it's all true. Assholes and douchebags wield enormous power and control over the rest of us honest and capable peeps on the planet because people in-general, don't know who they are or why they think and act the way they do, because as victims of abuse both physical and psychological, they give their own energy and power over to these cunts who are ass-raping the planet with their lies and egos, their narcissism and toxic personalities.

These hopelessly evil humans have been very successful in programming the herd-mokeys as well to aspire to become cunts, douchbags, and assholes just like themselves, as evidenced in the inordinate amount of these gullible mini-versions running loose on the globe and breeding like fruit flies.

This phenomenon is endemic in the west, the Middle East, China and South America, and it will get way worse before it gets any better.

Missed the whole Transformers phenom-First gen Hasbro toys hit in 84', (senior year in HS)-Back in my day, all plastic toys became blobs of melted plastic after being 'transformed' under mysterious circumstances...

Uhhh, now this phenom you imagine (enhance life for fellow man, yadda-yadda) has de-evolved into what we see worldwide: An unending fabrication of laws which restrict or inhibit the will of your fellow man in order to enable and strengthen the the will of a small percentage of human beings who use humanity to their own ends.

Comparing slavery in America to slavery of the bible is fucking ignorant. Never has there been slavery as cruel and inhumane and fueled by denial and lies than here. To compare U.S. slavery to that of the slaves in ancient Greece or Rome, both cultures whose slaves were an integral class in these cultures, is an historical faux pas of ludicrous proportions.

Waste of a perfectly good 55-gallon steel drum..same phenom easily demonstrated with a paint can.

It's no FUN to computerize it all with one START button.
And more seriously; it's not like software-only planes can't have problems either. The Airbus 320 crash at the Paris Airshow (low and slow, outside parameters ever anticipated by the programmers; crash); the Phenom 100 Business Jet (currently having to do inflight resets); but your point is well taken.

The highly computerized planes aren't less safe or less reliable; they just fail in different ways.

same phenom with Cannabis... its just taking time and the internet now.

i mean, i can type it out: anticancer, neuroprotectants, alt. nontoxic pain relief, antiinflammatory... plant fibers themselves used for many products, cheaply and quickly grown unlike wood... hemp seeds contain all essential amino acids.

quite literally manna from creation. ignorance alone is enough to deny our birthrights!~ /soapbox

good post

Once someones' physically incapable of procuring the raw materials, they invariably kill themselves. I understand this phenom very well on a personal level.

Experienced this phenom with a projection-television atta friend's roach-infested hovel once, better than the horror film we we're watching...

Someone just reminded me of the phenom, that once people know they might be on TV, they are much more willing to be idiots....Hadn't really factored-in that certainty!

Yo spoco2, Parker and Stone covered the phenom quite well I thought on Southpark-In my experience and with Americans especially, people tend to become assholes to the uninitiated from point-of-epiphany, forward.

SCIENCEDAMMIT!

At the Tol Sleng museum, there are signs posted "no smiling"...hard to imagine that needed to be said. Grimmest place I've ever been. The "killing fields" just south of Phenom Phen have clothes emerging from piles buried which look like they were just dropped by people not long before.
Despite the grim history, the Cambodians were the nicest and friendliest of the people I encountered in my travels through SE Asia.

what a phenom job @dag and @lucky760.
absolutely love the new look and features.commenting has been revamped in a perfect way.gonna take some time to learn all the other new widgets but over-all i am thoroughly impressed with what you both have created.

i am humbled by the time,energy and dedication you two have brought to this site.
fantastic job!