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Eivind August wrote:#notallmuslims etc.

Good post, Andrew. Glad to see someone delwing a bit deeper into the subject when we're first having this discussion. This was what I was getting at when I said that extremism is the symptom, not the disease. Sure, religion plays a huge part in this, but it's worth noting where extremism prospers and why. Extreme poverty, fucked up living conditions, anger etc. leads to young men joining the people that will give them guns to destroy a perceived enemy. Whether they're doing it for religion, nationalism, political ideology or whatever is of course interesting, but the result remains the same. In the west, ISIS can recruit poorly integrated muslims who feel out of place in the society they live in, and, as jwar pointed out, young men who just wants to point a gun at something. ISIS is hardly a uniform group.

Now, religion is a really handy way of recruiting people, as it's an easy tool to justify your actions. "Oh yeah, I don't have to argue with you, God says that this is right, and you can't argue with the big guy." Belief in a greater cause makes it easier to do crazy shit. So the young men gets to play with guns, destroying what they believe is the reason for their own misfortune.

Ugh, this was a bit simplified and all over the place, but there might be something in there somewhere. Honestly, I just get tired of this americanized (no offense, #notallamericans) way of debate where you're supposed to score points against each other instead of having a meaningful dialogue.

jwar wrote:No I'm sorry your all making opinion based arguments. That does not mean I'm wrong. Religion is NOT to blame. Once again. The people who believe in it on the other hand, yes. How the hell can you blame a religion for something like this? How? It makes no fucking sense.
Religion is an idea or a belief system.
The PEOPLE (read the word and let it sink into your skull) are the ones committing the acts. Not the religion.

D.o.S. wrote: The idea that you can say "the religion isn't bad it's the people acting on it's behalf" is a cop out and an easy way to divert blame. There is a reason this stuff is being done, and the idea that it has no religious basis is totally wrong.

Eivind August wrote: This was what I was getting at when I said that extremism is the symptom, not the disease. Sure, religion plays a huge part in this, but it's worth noting where extremism prospers and why. Extreme poverty, fucked up living conditions, anger etc. leads to young men joining the people that will give them guns to destroy a perceived enemy. Whether they're doing it for religion, nationalism, political ideology or whatever is of course interesting, but the result remains the same. In the west, ISIS can recruit poorly integrated muslims who feel out of place in the society they live in, and, as jwar pointed out, young men who just wants to point a gun at something. ISIS is hardly a uniform group.

D.o.S. wrote: Not to say that people wouldn't behave this way in the absence of religion (you can take a gander at a lot of the Cold War era atheist countries to start with) but this sort of insane fanaticism comes out especially when religion is involved.

D.o.S. wrote:So, once again, I'll explain it to you. You blame the religion because it is the defining set of rules that allow someone to make the moral equivalence that these sort of things are justified, because they're fighting "the good fight". The basis for "the good fight" comes from their religious convictions, and the convictions empower the act. QED

D.o.S. wrote:I have little desire to defend statements I'm not actually making derived from snippets of what I've said in this thread.

as an aside: 'Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People' is totally fucking retarded, to avail myself of brevity.

tbh I'm a little impressed by the inability to follow along here, so:

D.o.S. wrote: Not to say that people wouldn't behave this way in the absence of religion (you can take a gander at a lot of the Cold War era atheist countries to start with) but this sort of insane fanaticism comes out especially when religion is involved.

D.o.S. wrote:So, once again, I'll explain it to you. You blame the religion because it is the defining set of rules that allow someone to make the moral equivalence that these sort of things are justified, because they're fighting "the good fight". The basis for "the good fight" comes from their religious convictions, and the convictions empower the act. QED

D.o.S. wrote: Not to say that people wouldn't behave this way in the absence of religion (you can take a gander at a lot of the Cold War era atheist countries to start with) but this sort of insane fanaticism comes out especially when religion is involved.

“We cannot solve this problem only through prayers,” the spiritual leader said. “I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.”

He added his hopes that the record violence of the 20th Century doesn’t continue to bleed into the current one.

“We need a systematic approach to foster humanistic values, of oneness and harmony,” he said. “If we start doing it now, there is hope that this century will be different from the previous one. It is in everybody’s interest. So let us work for peace within our families and society, and not expect help from God, Buddha or the governments.”

In what the Friendly Atheist described as sounding like Humanism, the Dalai Lama also said that much of the violence is over superficial matters.

“Furthermore, the problems that we are facing today are the result of superficial differences over religious faiths and nationalities,” he told DW. “We are one people.”

He also said he was leaving it up to the people of Tibet whether they wanted to continue having Dalai Lamas serve as leaders in the future.

“If the people think that this institution is no longer relevant, it should be abolished. I am no more involved in political matters,” he said. “I am only concerned about Tibet’s well-being.”

Snufkino wrote:

D.o.S. wrote:I have little desire to defend statements I'm not actually making derived from snippets of what I've said in this thread.

as an aside: 'Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People' is totally fucking retarded, to avail myself of brevity.

So it's okay for you to take snippets of my words, and call me retarded when I actually said:

I see it as kind of a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" thing, which is true, although of course guns make it a lot easier to do so, just in the same was as religion makes it a lot easier to justify.

And what's with the constant passive aggressive stuff about the "inability to read"? I'm not even arguing or saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it's difficult to understand how you (or anyone) can say that Jwar's post is totally 100% wrong. You even say yourself:

D.o.S. wrote: Not to say that people wouldn't behave this way in the absence of religion (you can take a gander at a lot of the Cold War era atheist countries to start with) but this sort of insane fanaticism comes out especially when religion is involved.

That's pretty much what I'm saying too.

In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics—notably the late Edward Said—who pointed out that calling Muslims “ancient” was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil.

Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons.

UglyCasanova wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb_5QlLQQH8[/youtube]

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