Evolving Middle East Crisis Thread

I think this might be an opportune time to visit an old thread.
How's that arab spring working out?
 
They are kept down by their primitive faith and tribalism, not successful as nations and only have their pride so they cling to guns and religion :p in lives of quiet desperation.:D
If Jews had'nt developed nuclear weapons for America, Stalin would have run them out and killed them to capture the oil fields after Germany surrendered.
Thats the way things were done.

Our God can be insulted without riots because we have the seperation of church and state, are not focused on religious governance, are accomplished at life and not focused on death(the reason for religion) and have so much more to be proud of than just faith which we keep in it's proper place despite the efforts of our religious zealots.
 
Our religious aholes started and provoked the mischief

[URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/innocence-of-muslims-film-filmmaker-sam-bacile-permit-christian-charity_n_1883792.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular"][url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/innocence-of-muslims-film-filmmaker-sam-bacile-permit-christian-charity_n_1883792.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular[/URL][/URL]


The permit for "The Innocence of Muslims," which was filmed in Los Angeles County in August 2011 under the title "Desert Warriors," has been pulled from public view by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department over safety concerns, TheWrap reported.
Media for Christ, a Duarte, Calif.-based Christian nonprofit group, applied for the film permit, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported. The charity's misson statement is to "glow Jesus' light" to the world.
 
The film is simply the excuse given to insight the mob. It is incidental at best (unless you think it is mere coincidence that this started on the 9/11 anniversary). Since this is election season, the U.S. media will look desperately to find a scapegoat for voters that avoids blaming Obama and focuses blame on someone or some group that fits into their partisan narrative. Just look at how much they focus on marginalizing Romney with this (through his response) instead of actually focusing on the issue itself. When the response to a news story overshadows the actual story, you can bet the media is working to mislead.

Frankly, IMO this shows a failure of not only Obama's policies and approach, but Bush's as well. The best line I've read on it comes from the German press:
The deeply held American belief that all you have to do is liberate people from serfdom and dictatorship, and then democracy and a market economy will develop more or less on their own, burned to ash in the trial by fire of Iraq... Deeply ingrained cultural attitudes do not change simply because one political regime replaces another. In the long process of building a democratic society, it is not possible to simply skip stages.​

There is also Walter Russell Mead:
The person who comes out of all this looking smartest is Samuel Huntington. His book on the “clash of civilizations” was widely and unfairly trashed as predicting an inevitable conflict between Islam and the west, and he was also accused of ‘demonizing’ Islam. That’s not what I get from his book. As I understand it, Huntington’s core thesis was that while good relations between countries and people with roots in different civilizations are possible and ought to be promoted, civilizational fault lines often lead to misunderstandings and tensions that can (not must, but can) lead to violence and when conflicts do occur, civilizational differences can make those conflicts worse.

The last few days are a textbook example of the forces he warned about.​
 
Well foss
nice to see you to drop in 6 weeks after my post.
Hope things are well with you.:)

Surely with your opinion of Obama from previous posts you are excited that Romney might actually win.
However if he does I don't think he will give the social conservative base much.:eek:

He has played them well and put them in his pocket but he'll rule like a moderate like when he was governor of MA.:rolleyes:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald

It goes with the superior intellect of holding 2 opinions at the same time and still functioning (to get what you want)( a part of my pet human contradiction theory);):cool:
He's not going to stick himself into people's lives when there's important real stuff on earth to accomplish.
He'll kick it down the road or to the states which used to have official religions up until 100 years ago.

Your opinion?

Refering back to the embassy attack...

So now that more information has come out it shows the attack was obviously planned and the film was merely a convenient excuse.
However since these religious Muslim people seem to have nothing but their pride and we are the richest country on earth we should avoid provoking them directly on our petulantly silly free speech grounds but find more ways of creatively using agent provocateurs to turn their religion on them.
This will cause them to insult each other and fight and kill themselves which they are already predisposed to do, while we purport to pursue peace which we all know is impossible because of religious fanaticism (pun intended :p)
and only a continued stalemate standoff is possible.
 
I thought I'd wander over here and see what stupidity is reigning these days.

Got my answer.

Nice try, you just showed yourself to be a mindless robot.

speaking of mindless robots, hows that rapture thing coming along?

creatively using agent provocateurs to turn their religion on them.

there are many moderates who don't like what the ruling parties are doing. if you could just bring them to arms instead of the radicals, you might get somewhere.
 
Madonna booed for endorsing Obama at New Orleans concert

Singer tells fans to vote for Obama in US presidential election

[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/29/madonna-obama-new-orleans-concert[/URL]


Funny how all the comments here and on other sites are insults to Madonna but no one has commented about the meaning of the message that OBummer is now being booed by people who one would think would be his dazzled fans and core supporters.

I think this is a good harbinger for Romney :D and ominous for Obama :eek: certainly more than the polls the media keeps trying to portray as even.:rolleyes:
 
speaking of mindless robots, hows that rapture thing coming along?

How's that proof of materialism coming?

How about the irrational axe grinding against people who don't share the same dogma as you?


there are many moderates who don't like what the ruling parties are doing. if you could just bring them to arms instead of the radicals, you might get somewhere.

You seem to be dogmatically assuming that truth has to lie between to "extreme" positions. Interesting that you don't do so when it comes to religion...
 
Funny how all the comments here and on other sites are insults to Madonna but no one has commented about the meaning of the message that OBummer is now being booed by people who one would think would be his dazzled fans and core supporters.

I think this is a good harbinger for Romney :D and ominous for Obama :eek: certainly more than the polls the media keeps trying to portray as even.:rolleyes:

Are We Looking at an Undertow Election?

 
How's that proof of materialism coming?

How about the irrational axe grinding against people who don't share the same dogma as you?

proof of materialism? are you alive? do you live on this planet? :rolleyes:
that's material. i don't see supernatural anywhere. i guess you must live in the land of fairies to need proof of materialism.
materialism is the default. so, mine is not a belief. it's not dogma. it's fact.

i'm still awaiting your supernatural proofs. alot of philosophical crap, but nothing substantive yet. probably why even hawking says philosophy is dead.
just nothing evidence based.
 
Since you guys keep coming back to religion this I found interesting
and informative.

When Evangelicals were Pro Choice

[URL="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/?hpt=hp_t3"][url]http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/?hpt=hp_t3[/URL][/URL]

By Jonathan Dudley, Special to CNN
Over the course of the 2012 election season, evangelical politicians have put their community’s hard-line opposition to abortion on dramatic display.
Missouri Rep. Todd Atkin claimed “legitimate rape” doesn’t result in pregnancy. Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock insisted that “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
While these statements have understandably provoked outrage, they’ve also reinforced a false assumption, shared by liberals and conservatives alike: that uncompromising opposition to abortion is a timeless feature of evangelical Christianity.
The reality is that what conservative Christians now say is the Bible’s clear teaching on the matter was not a widespread interpretation until the late 20th century.

In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, of the famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:
“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: 'If a man kills any human life he will be put to death' (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”

The magazine Christian Life agreed, insisting, “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” And the Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.

These stalwart evangelical institutions and leaders would be heretics by today’s standards. Yet their positions were mainstream at the time, widely believed by born-again Christians to flow from the unambiguous teaching of Scripture.
Televangelist Jerry Falwell spearheaded the reversal of opinion on abortion in the late 1970s, leading his Moral Majority activist group into close political alliance with Catholic organizations against the sexual revolution.
In contrast to evangelicals, Catholics had mobilized against abortion immediately after Roe v. Wade. Drawing on mid-19th century Church doctrines, organizations like the National Right to Life Committee insisted a right to life exists from the moment of conception.
Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter
As evangelical leaders formed common cause with Catholics on topics like feminism and homosexuality, they began re-interpreting the Bible as teaching the Roman Catholic position on abortion.
Falwell’s first major treatment of the issue, in a 1980 book chapter called, significantly, “The Right to Life,” declared, “The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception… (Abortion) is murder according to the Word of God.”
With the megawatt power of his TV presence and mailing list, Falwell and his allies disseminated these interpretations to evangelicals across America.
CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories
By 1984, it became clear these efforts had worked. That year, InterVarsity Press published the book Brave New People, which re-stated the 1970 evangelical consensus: abortion was a tough issue and warranted in many circumstances.
An avalanche of protests met the publication, forcing InterVarsity Press to withdraw a book for the first time in its history.
“The heresy of which I appear to be guilty,” the author lamented, “is that I cannot state categorically that human/personal life commences at day one of gestation.... In order to be labeled an evangelical, it is now essential to hold a particular view of the status of the embryo and fetus.”
What the author quickly realized was that the “biblical view on abortion” had dramatically shifted over the course of a mere 15 years, from clearly stating life begins at birth to just as clearly teaching it begins at conception.
During the 2008 presidential election, Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren demonstrated the depth of this shift when he proclaimed: “The reason I believe life begins at conception is ‘cause the Bible says it.”
It is hard to underestimate the political significance of this reversal. It has required the GOP presidential nominee to switch his views from pro-choice to pro-life to be a viable candidate. It has led conservative Christians to vote for politicians like Atkin and Mourdock for an entire generation.
And on November 6, it will lead millions of evangelicals to support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama out of the conviction that the Bible unequivocally forbids abortion.
But before casting their ballots, such evangelicals would benefit from pausing to look back at their own history. In doing so, they might consider the possibility that they aren’t submitting to the dictates of a timeless biblical truth, but instead, to the goals of a well-organized political initiative only a little more than 30 years old.

_______________________________________________________________

It is merely an insistent unsupported assertion that the Bible clearly states that life begins at conception and not birth.
In Goebels like fashion Falwells mere dissonant opinion created to battle the loathed sexual revolution and Rick Warren's ‘cause the Bible says it” has become the accepted gullable interpretation just like the canard that the US was founded on the Bible and religious freedom is our first and most cherished right whereas the establishment clause is more a statement of freedom from religion by putting religion in it's proper place and bribing it with tax free status to neutralize it and prevent it from it's poisonous meddling in the workings of government like in Monarchies in Europe.
Just because someone makes an assertion does not make it true but since religion runs on faith not proven by reason it is easy for the weak minded uncritically thinking to accept made up opinion as fact.
 
proof of materialism? are you alive? do you live on this planet? :rolleyes:

Unsuprisingly, I see you haven't even taken the time to understand what materialism is, and (more importantly) what it is not.

Safe to assume you still have no proof.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them… [H]e must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
-John Stuart Mill​
 
yes, i do understand it fine. you apparently don't. you keep coming back to the ideal that i have to prove what is.
in other words, disprove god.
just as soon as you provide convincing evidence for the supernatural, i will make the case for the material. i won't hold my breath.
 
Since you guys keep coming back to religion this I found interesting
and informative.

us? you tap on it pretty often too.:)

that is interesting as to how they have reversed opinion over the last half century. but then it would be one less cause to bitch and fight over.
everything has to be their way, you know.
they want freedom, but nobody can have a choice.
contradictory, yes, but they just don't get it.
 
yes, i do understand it fine. you apparently don't. you keep coming back to the ideal that i have to prove what is.
in other words, disprove god.
just as soon as you provide convincing evidence for the supernatural, i will make the case for the material. i won't hold my breath.

So...you understand what it is yet you then set up a straw man of me asking you "disprove God" by asking you to prove materialism?! Or that I am somehow asking you to disprove the Supernatural? Anyone who has taken a Philosophy 101 class can clearly see you have no clue what you are responding to; that you don't know what materialism is or what I am asking. Considering how long we have been going around on this, the only reason you can't grasp these things is due to your sheer intellectual obstinance and/or obtuseness.

Maybe you missed the point with the John Stewart Mill quote. If you don't understand the opposing point of view (not a simplistic caricature of it), then you don't understand your own point of view and have no logical reason to prefer either point of view. The ONLY reason left to prefer either point of view is emotional.

EVERY TIME you are confronted with the materialism point, you show a profound misunderstanding of the point as you try and dismiss it. Basically, you are confirming the original point I was making when I brought it up; Atheism depends on faith.

Specifically, the blind faith you consistently show in materialism. So blind, in fact, that you feel no need to examine and understand it or defend it against different viewpoints (which you also refuse to take the time to understand).

The fact that your response is to misrepresent, deflect, frustrate reasonable discourse and assume the intellectual high ground only confirms that the basis for your belief in materialism is not reason but emotion; it is a means to make you feel superior.
 
So...you understand what it is yet you then set up a straw man of me asking you "disprove God" by asking you to prove materialism?! Or that I am somehow asking you to disprove the Supernatural? Anyone who has taken a Philosophy 101 class can clearly see you have no clue what you are responding to; that you don't know what materialism is or what I am asking. Considering how long we have been going around on this, the only reason you can't grasp these things is due to your sheer intellectual obstinance and/or obtuseness.

Maybe you missed the point with the John Stewart Mill quote. If you don't understand the opposing point of view (not a simplistic caricature of it), then you don't understand your own point of view and have no logical reason to prefer either point of view. The ONLY reason left to prefer either point of view is emotional.

EVERY TIME you are confronted with the materialism point, you show a profound misunderstanding of the point as you try and dismiss it. Basically, you are confirming the original point I was making when I brought it up; Atheism depends on faith.

Specifically, the blind faith you consistently show in materialism. So blind, in fact, that you feel no need to examine and understand it or defend it against different viewpoints (which you also refuse to take the time to understand).

The fact that your response is to misrepresent, deflect, frustrate reasonable discourse and assume the intellectual high ground only confirms that the basis for your belief in materialism is not reason but emotion; it is a means to make you feel superior.

us? you tap on it pretty often too.:)

I may be superlative in my attack statements but I try not to make it personal and add insults :D or ad hominem attacks as you might say.


I think understanding there is a natural human contradiction as a concept is enlightening informative and useful.

Some of us are more contradicted than others but we all have plusses and minuses in our "Balance Sheet" some a lot more minuses than plusses or visa versa and so on.

I suppose the perfect human being would have no contradictions
especially when confronted by a Moral Hazard.

A man who knows how the human mind works and uses it can beat 10 men who don't know how it works and don't use it.

Doesn't this just come down to somehow explaining how do you get something from nothing or where did matter and energy and the workings of the universe come from.

Materialism can't explain how something came from nothing.
Faith in religion is a false equivalency to the "faith" in materialism when you talk about other points of view.
The only reason for religious faith is belief or at least hope in an afterlife since everything else is irrelevent.
The faith you assert of athiesm is a "faith" in the natural order of the universe and the laws of physics which are not mystical or moral or ethical or other human creations and beyond reason or based on the premise of an afterlife as faith in religion is.
A faith in the natural as opposed to the supernatural.
Matter and energy in the universe are eternal but people come and go.
To me that the morals and ethics of human beings have anything to do with the creation and perfect workings of the universe is a prepostorous supposition.
As Einstein said the human concept of God is the sum of human failure.
He said he could believe in a God of the Universe due to the elegant perfection and math of the constant perpetual motion machine but not a personal God of the Bible and afterlife (a concept he described as noble but childish wishful thinking) who looks over you
an opinion which basically renders man made religion moot.
There is also the premise based on the riddle that the universe was not created but always was and matter and energy are constant in constant motion.
 
Materialism can't explain how something came from nothing.
Faith in religion is a false equivalency to the "faith" in materialism when you talk about other points of view.

What makes it a "false equivalency"?

"Materialism" is not synonymous with "natural order" (in fact, it can be argued that materialism is opposed to the notion of a natural order in many ways). The very idea of a "natural order" has Christianity's fingerprints all over it.

You seem to be buying into the red herring of natural vs supernatural that hrmwrm is trying to hide behind and that has nothing to do with materialism. Rejection of materialism does not equal acceptance of the supernatural.

This is not hard to understand if you simple hold off the clearly reactionary instinct among atheists to dismiss the idea without consideration and instead study the idea and understand it.

The fact that atheists are so desperate to avoid confronting materialism only proves their views are more rooted in dogma than in reason.
 
So...you understand what it is yet you then set up a straw man of me asking you "disprove God" by asking you to prove materialism?! Or that I am somehow asking you to disprove the Supernatural? Anyone who has taken a Philosophy 101 class can clearly see you have no clue what you are responding to; that you don't know what materialism is or what I am asking. Considering how long we have been going around on this, the only reason you can't grasp these things is due to your sheer intellectual obstinance and/or obtuseness.

Maybe you missed the point with the John Stewart Mill quote. If you don't understand the opposing point of view (not a simplistic caricature of it), then you don't understand your own point of view and have no logical reason to prefer either point of view. The ONLY reason left to prefer either point of view is emotional.

EVERY TIME you are confronted with the materialism point, you show a profound misunderstanding of the point as you try and dismiss it. Basically, you are confirming the original point I was making when I brought it up; Atheism depends on faith.

Specifically, the blind faith you consistently show in materialism. So blind, in fact, that you feel no need to examine and understand it or defend it against different viewpoints (which you also refuse to take the time to understand).

The fact that your response is to misrepresent, deflect, frustrate reasonable discourse and assume the intellectual high ground only confirms that the basis for your belief in materialism is not reason but emotion; it is a means to make you feel superior.

shag, philosophy is dead. it is what you keep hiding behind.
the material world is the default.
i'm not gonna run circles in philosophy with you, because there is no evidence for any arguements, or there are always some niggling factor.
it is the drawback of religion. because you are seated in religion, you keep falling back on philosophical arguements.
there is no truth in philosophy. only questions.
and where you think you're smart and have an answer, in truth, you haven't answered anything.
you may have made a philosophical truism, but without evidence, it's not TRUTH.
i live in an evidence based ideal. something exists, prove it.
material, is obvious. materialism, the arguement you hide behind, is based in philosophy, which is only another idea to confuse.

prove anything beyond a natural order. it is the way of reality, and not supernatural. natural order has no christianity behind it.
for that, you'd have to prove natural order was created by supernatural order. that i'd like to see you do.
 
Materialism can't explain how something came from nothing.

physics has got it down pretty good. hawking even has a strong arguement of how you can get a whole universe from nothing.
there are forces we don't yet fully understand, and may never understand. but saying god doesn't answer the questions either. it just placates the simple mind.
and, i'll step out of character here for a second. what if there was a creator. do you really think it really cares what happens on some speck about as discernible as any quark in our galaxy would be to you? religion is a man made ode to nothing. just look at the different flavours through all the epochs of civilization.
if any were true, there wouldn't be others.
 
What makes it a "false equivalency"?

Religion is faith beyond reason and belief in the scentient supernatural that can arbitrarily suspend or change the natural order and perform miracles based on the wishful thinking of an earned afterlife.

The observation of materials can be measured and quantified and is irrespective of the notion of an afterlife.
Religion is warm and driven by emotion but observation and analysis is cold and hard and irrespective of morals and ethics.

There is a natural order that is not supernatural and the laws of physics light, electricity and gravity are set and constant.

Religion is a lot of make believe whereas materialism tries to avoid making up fantastic unsupported conclusions influenced by human wishes morals and ethics.
 
Religion is faith beyond reason and belief in the scentient supernatural that can arbitrarily suspend or change the natural order and perform miracles based on the wishful thinking of an earned afterlife.

Faith, by definition is "beyond reason". There is no distinction between "faith" and "faith beyond reason" as you seem to imply.

Also, when you castigate things as "wishful thinking" that suggests a lot of circular thinking in your characterization.

The observation of materials can be measured and quantified and is irrespective of the notion of an afterlife.

But that is not what materialism is. Stop trying to redefine materialism to make it easier to defend.

Know what you are talking about. Research.

What separates materialism from idealism? From Dualism? None of these concepts can be true if materialism is true and vice versa.


There is a natural order that is not supernatural and the laws of physics light, electricity and gravity are set and constant.

Again, the idea of a natural order is not, in any way, inconsistent with non-materialist views, the supernatural or any God-fearing viewpoint. The fact that the modern concept of a "natural order" is derived from Christianity speaks to this.

Religion is a lot of make believe...

Again, circular reasoning.

...whereas materialism tries to avoid making up fantastic unsupported conclusions influenced by human wishes morals and ethics.

This is no less true of idealism, other forms of monism, dualism etc. Yet Atheists assume materialism to be true.

Do you and hrmwrm not see how ALL your attempts to defend materialism inherently assumed materialism to be self-evidently true? That they are inherently circular in their reasoning and therefore invalid?

The fact that you have create straw men of views opposed to materialism ("wishful thinking", "supernatural", etc) only highlights the shallow nature of your arguments.

It might be worth revisiting the last few pages of this thread.
 
Shag
I do my own thinking and I'm stating my views and not some textbook philosophical definitions as to what is materialism.
Just because someone is an athiest and does not believe in a personal God and an afterlife does not mean they believe materialism as you observe it.
You can believe what you want and argue debating technicalities of what someon'e opinion of materialism is but IMO religion is a lot of comic book level make believe nonsense based on wishful idealistic childish notions that come from a desire for immortality in the face of death.

It is also useful as a way to try and control human behaviour.

To use religion as an equal alternative explanation to observed science is akin to asking a plumber about dental work.
 
The fact that you have create straw men of views opposed to materialism ("wishful thinking", "supernatural", etc) only highlights the shallow nature of your arguments.

But these are not created misleading Strawmen but accurate representations.
Supernatural wishful thinking is IMO a definition of religion.
 

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