I don't give a shit if a homeopath or an astrologer or a climate denier or any other nutjob you care to name disables comments on youtube. It's simply not a meaningful channel for debate. There are other, better channels.

There's no one claiming to represent everyone who uses the internet saying that online harassment is ok.

But those GG assholes claim to represent "gamers", and no, it's not even slightly about ethics in journalism. It is, in fact, the complete opposite. This is a group that called on Nintendo to withdraw support from reviewers who were critical of Bayonetta.

The fucking hypocrisy is mind blowing. Seriously, think about it. A group that is supposed to be anti-censorship and pro-consumer told one of the biggest names in the industry to boycott a publication because it criticized their product. It is to Nintendos credit that they ignored these assholes who can't understand the difference between critique and censorship.

There isn't some balanced 3rd party POV on GG. Those people are fucking troglodytes, and the sooner they're consigned to the dustbin of history the better.

And yes, of course, I'm ashamed to be part of society sometimes.

I'm not a WASP, but I am Irish and I'm deeply ashamed of some of the racist bullshit associated with my country. I was raised Catholic. Take a wild guess about how I feel about that.

The "gamers are dead" thing has been completely misinterpreted. Did you even read the source article? It's saying that the target market for games isn't "gamers", but just people. Stop marketing to a fictional teenage boy demographic.

And quite frankly, I'm considering buying a t-shirt that says SJW. How the fuck did advocating social justice become a pejorative?

I'm not saying religion may or may not have had an influence on him or anyone else throughout his/their lives.

What I am saying is that It sure had no influence on reality and the way that device works. It also didn't give him the knowledge or education necessary to know how to make that. In fact, quite the opposite. If he had TRULY, DEEPLY believed the bible (for example), he wouldn't even have tried. He would've simply tried to pray the blindness away, and believe that god would take care of things. And if it didn't... hey it's god's will. God works in mysterious ways right? Let's just wait to die and be carried to heaven.

But fortunately, at least from my perspective, most people (unlike religious extremists) don't actually believe. Not really. They WANT to believe. They believe they want to believe. But it goes no further than that. It's an act of fear of the unknown, grasping at anything that gives them hope that they won't simply go back into nothingness when we die.

Now, contrary to what you may think, I'm not "hating on people". I'm hating on religion. That is true. But I know how to keep that separate from the people. Shit, if I hated people because of that I would hate most of my family, they're pretty much all catholic.

You're saying science doesn't do anything by itself. You're right. It's not an object or a machine. It's a method. And thanks to it, great things have been achieved. Unlike religion. That's my point. You don't actually DO anything with religion except fill every possible void of knowledge with bullshit, expecting it to stick, even when it flies in the face of actual reality.

You said: "Meanwhile, religious people built much of what you enjoy today which utilises the scientific method as a starting point."

Just because they're religious doesn't mean religion had anything to do with it. What did, was the void of knowledge they felt, even though religion claimed the absolute truth; and the need for better lives, even though religion claimed to be the only way for a perfect life.

People didn't achieve anything with religion. If anything they noticed just how much void of knowledge there was that needed to be filled, and not with the answer: "god did it!".

You're religious I'm guessing... you didn't go into this field to try and help people because you're religious. You went to it because you're probably a good person who wants to help others, and also help advance mankind. None of that has anything to do with religion.

edit: sorry, long text

Hey Enoch,

The premise of the video is wrong. Christians, if you include Catholics, make up around 1/3 of the worlds population. By 2050 it is predicted there will be over 3 billion Christians in the world. Christianity in many places in the world, especially Asia and Africa, is exploding. Even in the west, it is isn't exactly stagnating. 42 percent of the population of the United States believes in young earth creationism, for example:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

It is simply not true to say people no longer believe; believers are increasing, not decreasing, in the world.

....and when they're not telling others what to do, what to believe, how to love, who to hate, who to kill, who isn't human, which gender is to be subjugated, which race is acceptable to force into slavery....

Plenty of non-religious hospitals out there, (ever hear of Kaiser
Permanente?) but more religious ones because Catholics (and other greedy religions) realized how much money there is to squeeze out of the desperate and bought many non-religious hospitals and quickly raised the prices across the board. Very few religious hospitals are free, or even non profit.

Only a life spent in subjugation to a non existent deity has no meaning, a life well lived and based in reality has great 'meaning'. Existence is precious. Experience is precious. Knowledge is precious. But a life spent trapped in belief is absolutely worthless and meaningless.

"teaches right behavior"....
Do you mean like owning slaves, murdering infidels and heretics, raping women, crusading, inquisitioning, conquesting, etc.... Yeah, great book of morality, and wonderful moral behavior exhibited by it's believers...not.

It's only because people fail to follow the religious ideas wholly that religion is tolerated at all. If people acted like the fanatical Muslims, taking every word as law and acting on it, Christianity would have been outlawed in the US at the inception of the country (indeed, many of the founding fathers seemed to want this, at least in part). The 3 major western religions all require 'holy war' to spread the belief system if read honestly.

What he said is that only psychotics need religion to restrain them from immorality. If you aren't psychotic, religion harms you more than helps you.

Any catholic hospital would qualify as one opened by psychotics, since one of their 10 important rules is "no statues of anything", yet they do nothing but worship statues and icons. They institutionally ignore any 'rule' that's inconvenient, and insist on absolute adherence to any that further their current goals, which may change 180 deg tomorrow. Sure sounds psychotic to me.

Hitchens.

Watch the debate on Catholicism with Hitchens and Fry on one side and a bishop and an idiot politicians on the other. The pro-catholic side are so unbelievably outclassed it's not even a contest.

To everyone else... Gay Byrne deserves a lot of credit.

He was host of the Late Late Show in Ireland for decades and during that time he presided over some incredibly contentious debates on a number of issues in Irish society (contraception, homosexuality, divorce, abortion, child abuse, the north, political corruption, etc.). Looking back it was a slightly bizarre mix of Letterman, Bill Maher and Questions and Answers on the BBC. Despite the fact that Byrne himself would be a reasonably mainstream guy, he IMO hosted the debates fairly (and frankly, considerably better than most modern debate shows).

"Catholes", really...

I've seen that once. Might have been after one of the irish scandals, a guy holding a sign with a little kid and an old clergyman with a robe-tent approaching with his hands out like mr burns and a big grin. The thing is when it comes to paedophilia, you can't think it of anyone you think you know, so you discard images like that as silly fairy tales without thinking beyond the metaphor. You don't want to be wondering if the guy you just shook hands with gets drunk before sunday school and manipulates extra private tuition with the shy kid who doesn't have a dad and cries a lot.

Sorry to be so graphic there, but it is what it is in all its vileness, and everyone complicit ought to feel fucking ashamed of themselves. I'll stop before i derail, but the moral standards these people are hiding behind are very shady indeed, because somewhere in that chain of command someone knew and kept quiet about the institutional rape-centres the Catholics kept running for many decades. Unless they've leaned on their own faith-leaders to press for justice and HARD, their hands are dirty, and they are ridiculous to stand there shouting shame on someone else.

Man, i think i'm in love with this woman..

It is quite funny because the guy on the video, the so called 'priest' is one of the most twisted and unchristian leaders of the polish roman-catholic church. He is a businessman who begs old ladies like these, to send him their last money. He is a cynical hunter of 'jews' and 'anti-poles', whose sole purpose seems to be getting more money. He should be removed from the church, because he pushing it even beyond what catholic church normaly does, but he has such a fanatical following, that it is possible that he would start his own church. Number of followers possibly in tens of thousands, mostly poor people from the smaller cities and villages, older people, generaly people who feel forgoten and cheated by the system. He has a radio station, a tv station, a school - all catholic, tons of money etc. etc. The tv logo is his tv.

tl;dr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Rydzyk#Controversies

yep. the cross of saint peter. but a lot of evangelicals view catholics in about the same light as "satanists" (their definition).

lol and doesnt a catholic saint attribute to the upside down cross?

Shows pretty well how two person can't talk about muslims without one of them accusing other to be a racist. It happens on anti-racist rallies too, you put 10 people who are all opposed to racism in to the same room and 10 minutes in someone is already labeled.

Weirdly, this infact made me respect Ben Affleck. He is on the good side of the battle, misinformed but i can recognize that fury that comes when i suspect someone starting to veer the discussion to topics like "why all muslims yada yada yada". I go fucking ballistic, i see blood of the innocents in the gutter and i wanna kill that nazi before it happens again.. It is the same fury that rises on me when people link Israel and Judeism to the same category. But both Israel and muslim world require criticism in order to progress. It is just very hard for people on the "same side" to talk about those two subjects without responses like we see in this video. Racists know this very well and it is because of bigotry we can't criticize nations and cultures objectively, we need to spend most of our time to explain why criticizing is not bigotry, how questioning catholic church and their views and islam and their views is EXACTLY the same thing. The less we talk about the actual subject and more about why we aren't talking about the actual subject, guess who wins?

And it IS frustrating since we can't get anything done. Fucking racists and yes, i can identify racism towards racists in my on views and i have to think about that too (how racists are just humanbeings yada yada but that's my problem..). So maybe i should just say fucking quilt over actions and views hold by few is preventing us from honest discussion.

You are empirically incorrect. You are proposing an impossible scenario, that somehow 1.5bn world wide are perfectly aligned, have some say over the actions of all the other people simultaneously and ergo bear some responsibility for any actions committed under the broad umbrella of "Islam"...

http://enews.fergananews.com/articles/2698

To speak of “Islam” as a homogenous phenomenon is analogous to speaking of “Christianity” as a single whole that includes Catholics and Orthodox, Protestants and Copts, and countless other sects, including such marginal ones as the Mormons, the Scientologists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of course, we never do so, because we intuitively recognize that the label loses all meaning when forced on to such a diverse group. We seldom have such qualms, however, when it comes to Islam, even though the label “Islam” covers just as wide a spectrum of geographic, cultural, and sectarian diversity as the label “Christianity.” If anything, it is even more internally diverse than Christianity, which crystallized around an institutionalized Church from the very beginning. In Islam, such an institution never developed. There is no religious hierarchy and no single individual qualified to pass final judgment on questions of belief or practice. Within thirty years of the death of the Prophet, the Muslim community had split on matters of doctrine. Since then, there have been multiple and simultaneous sources of authority among Muslims. Authority is located not in church councils and such, but in individuals who derive their legitimacy from their learning, piety, lineage, and reputation among peers. This gives Islam a slightly anarchic quality: authoritative opinions (fatwa) of one expert or one group can be countered with equally authoritative opinions, derived from the same sources, of another group, or one set of practices devotional practices held dear by one group can be denounced as impermissible by another. In more extreme cases, such conflict of opinion can turn into a “war of fatwas,” fought out, in the modern age, in the press or in cyberspace. (If Islam were held in a more positive light in the West today, this diversity would be described as a “free market of ideas”!) To speak of Islam as a homogeneous entity ignores this fundamental dynamic of its tradition.

This pluralism extends to the most basic level of belief. The major sectarian divide in Islam, between Sunnis and Shi‘is, goes back to the very origins of Islam. The two doctrines evolved in parallel, and therefore it is incorrect to see in them an orthodox/heterodox divide. All Muslims share a number of key reference points (the oneness of God, loyalty to the Prophet and his progeny, the need to prepare for the Hereafter, to take a few examples), but they have been played upon in different ways by different sects and movements. Nor do the two sects exhaust the diversity, for they both have many branches and various theological and legal schools within them, while many modern ideological groups straddle the divide between the two sects.

Or
http://wasalaam.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/the-myth-of-homogeny-in-islam/

I could provide link after link, discuss Sunni vs Shia, or any one of the innumerable other sects (70+ iirc), discuss Islams war with itself throughout history etc, all demonstrating that you are wrong.

You are portraying (demonising actually) Islam in the same way the two morons in the video are, by making all Muslims responsible for any action committed by a Muslim. You talk about enlightenment, but your post reeks of bigotry, hardly the hallmark of an enlightened person, right?

Incidentally, the "popular" view of Islam is of a homogenous group of people, us vs them, a group to be afraid of, or to attack. The average person on the street (ie. plumb ignorant, much like yourself) would not be aware of just how complex it is, far more so than Christianity. It's exactly why the talking heads who got schooled kept trying to make out that Islam was homogenous, and were proved wrong...

But give it your best shot trying to shoot down the considered opinions of Phd's, scholars, philosophers etc if you want to continue to make a fool of yourself.

That's not what he's saying at all.

The bible, or the Quran, or many other texts, just like historical events as they were, or works of literature, or other even historical texts as complex as this often have contradictory ideas. The US constitution is founded on a set of beliefs and ideas that almost all of us subscribe to, yet there are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, pragmatists, etc. all deriving very different ideas from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and more. The reason this is true is because those values often come into conflict, and can outright contradict each other. Freedom vs security, equality vs prosperity, I could go on and on.

With the Bible, you have Catholics, Protestants, subdivided into a plethora of different religions in their own right under the umbrella of Christianity. You have the running joke even within Catholicism that American Catholics aren't really Catholics at all. Not only do different Christians interpret the bible differently, the amount they count on the bible varies between fundamentalists like Jehovah's Witnesses who take the bible extremely literally to extremely secular Christians who have absolutely no problem discarding any part of Christian doctrines when scientific evidence proves otherwise.

You have Christians who act as saintly as Mother Theresa to mobsters.

That's just Christianity. There are extremist Islamic groups that sound more like the Westboro Baptist Church than other Muslims.

But within Christianity, there's "honor thy mother and thy father" and "thou shall not kill". What if your parents are murderers?

That's a crude, and obvious example of conflicting values, but the 10 commandments are simple rules that don't completely resolve every situation.

What's stupid is to believe that you can know about a person's specific ideology just by their religion. Does their religion play a role in their ideology? Absolutely, but how it impacted their ideology has much more to do with their experiences, their natural tendancies, etc. than necessarily their religion. If you grew up in a mob family, honor thy mother and father was more likely the lesson you took from the Bible than thou shall not kill.

And if you look around you, this is plainly obvious. Even look within yourself. We're all a melting pot of lessons and ideas we've learned from school, personal life experiences, our religious beliefs, our parents, our socio-economic backgrounds, our friends, etc. That's why you are different from everyone of your religion, your friends, who you went to school with, your socioeconomic class, etc.

His points are, on the face of it, correct. However, the whole question here is whether religion itself creates these issues or if they are inherent in society. One might argue that they are inherent, but that would be incorrect. The fact of the matter is that the more a society is based on science and secularism, the more peaceful and prosperous they will be. See pre-McCarthy United States or Sweden or Canada today.
So I agree with him that painting a large brush across all Muslim countries is idiotic, but at the same time, we can do that quite successfully with secular countries. They are, quite simply, more moral countries. And for those of you who want to argue that Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia were extremely secular and atheist, I urge you to re-evaluate the evidence you have of this. Nazi Germany was distinctly religious in numerous ways, including in the deep relationship they had with the Catholic Church. And it would be easy to succeed on the argument that Soviet Russia, while appearing atheist to the outsider, worshiped an altogether different kind of religion: communism.
While Reza is correct that not all Muslims or their countries are violent or willing to subject women to numerous horrors, they are certainly more likely to than secular countries.