Slashdot Mirror
The Implications of Google Restricting Access To Anti-Islam Film
ideonexus writes "While the decision has been a footnote in most news stories, the Washington Post is raising the question of what it means that Google can shut down access to the anti-Islam film in countries where that film has sparked riots, something the American government cannot do thanks to our First Amendment. A popular meme in the Information Age is that the Internet spreads democracy by enabling citizens to organize and speak out, but we forget that much of that speech is now hosted by third parties who are under no obligation to protect it."
that shutting down access to anything in this country can't be done by the American gubmint "thanks" to our First Amendment then let me sell you this bridge I own...
this movie is not at all "free-speech"! this movie is a conspiracy!!! this movie was designed to cause riots!!
watch the movie trailer, all parts with mohammed and anti muslim intent are COMPLETELY DUBBED IN!!
the actors themselves have stated that they did not know that the movie was about Islam, but was casted under the title "Dessert Warriors"
it screams psy-ops or simple chaos sowing.
First Amendment is BS. Read up on the Tarek Mehanna case .
Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a
local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two
federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do
things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy “ way,
as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the
government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a
courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I
am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a
solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down
for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very
hard—and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in
that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me
stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a
cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered
suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead
for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would
be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about
myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by
charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahideen fighting the
occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to
call them, “terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I
was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people:
how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe,
take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his
environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no
different. So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I
am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic
books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a
paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors,
there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the
oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of
my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that
paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I
even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was
learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about
the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European
settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European
settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed
insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as
the American revolutionary war. As a kid I even went on school field
trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet
Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this
country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles
of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne
Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned
dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King,
and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how
the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one
invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight
against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years
confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that
throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the
oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned
All Internet 'speech' is hosted by third parties, if you go far enough up the chain. Even if you avoid Youtube etc., and post a video/article to your website, someone can complain to your webhost and get your hosting yanked. Colocate or own a blade in a datacenter? Datacenter owner can yank you. Use Akamai or another CDN? They can yank you. If they're getting DDoSed because of 'speech' on your site, they'll find an excuse in their EULA to justify dropping you.
Now let's say you own a datacenter. Your BGP peers can disconnect from you, stranding you from the Internet. If you find a webhost that cares about free speech, people can jump over them and get their provider to disconnect the entire webhost (this has happened before).
P2P infrastructure depends on peers wanting to connect to you. If you're seen as 'toxic' then noone will.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Let me see, the film has caused a violent backlash and Google is wanting to block people from seeing in areas that further cause a violent backlash? I'm not at all concerned about the implications. As stated many times, it's their service, if Al Qaeda want's to spread it they can make VHS (VCD?) copies or whatever and do so. The film maker who is certainly enjoying the violent response (that he aimed for) is more than welcome to ship copies anywhere in the world he wants.
Spare me the false logic arguments of "what's next?". Google does not have to be the hosting provider of hate speech if it doesn't want to. And they certainly have the right to be selective on what airs where. I see it as good "citizenship" in a way. They already can remove my videos calling for the mass murder of all Slashdot readers - just because, never mind it's not even constitutionally protected speech.
I'm pretty sure by looking back now at Google, Twitter and Facebook they didn't discourage spreading information that lead to violent revolutions (Wikileaks still shows up in searches for example) in these countries when the causes were noble (i.e. toppling un-wanted and brutal/corrupt leaders). The track record thus far has shown they self censor when appropriate.
I get slippery slopes and all that - and I get that you don't have the right to not be offended... but today money is speech, corporations are people and hate speech is lauded over violent reactions. Even shooting and killing your own citizens to defend an embassy of another country isn't enough to satisfy those who want to further fan the flames of hate. In what world is is okay to continue answering hate speech with more hate speech and then cry foul when it comes down to blows? There is less civility in civilization every day. What happened to "mutual respect"? Why sabotage years of peace just because you can?
For goodness sake, do you think the people who died want the video spread even more? Don't you think their families hold both parties accountable (of course the killers more so - but still)?
Get your Unix fortune now!
What has Southern USA got to do with this?
The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.
I would like to see what exactly caused these riots. Link please?
Sure. Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
Look at your calendar. What anniversary just passed?
These attacks were far to well coordinated and planned for them to be simply an unusually-bad outbreak of the typical muslim-outrage insta-riot over a rather shoddy YT video.
Besides, look at the date on the video. That video had been up for a couple of months with maybe 10 views.
The video story is a distraction thrown up to cover the fact that the US is being attacked because the radicals sense the US leadership is weak. Our government pushes the video excuse to cover their own incompetence and weakness.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
http://www.upworthy.com/we-saw-the-violence-freedom-of-speech-can-spark-now-lets-see-the-love?g=2&c=cp1
A popular meme in the Information Age is that the Internet spreads democracy by enabling citizens to organize and speak out...
A rather one sided meme. The internet spreads hate and intolerance as well using the same principles. The internet is both a conduit and a doorstep shaped by the capacity to make perception what we want.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Why? When the US does, such as when they allow for free speech, people in the Middle East goes nuts and starts killing Americans. Democracy comes after free speech. You can't have democracy without free speech, and currently the demonstrators are demonstrating against democracy and free speech.
Wait, nobody knew that Google was a private company and can do pretty much whatever they want in terms of limiting access to content?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Rubbish. A movie can not have the intent to offend since a movie can not offend. The only person who decides who is offended is the person who gets offended at stuff. I can say whatever I want to you, if you get offended by it that is your problem, not mine. You can chose not to be offended by it. Adults generally do when children say offensive things. When retards say offensive things too.
In this case the "offender" and the "offendee" are equally retarded, and boom, you have a boom.
People supporting free speech should sponsor one such movie a week, hitting every major and minor religious figure in history, until these retards stops electing to be offended by something that is not offensive.
No One Murdered Because Of This Image
And I could argue that as atheists aren't smart enough to know they should believe in God, it's obvious they couldn't have produced this film. There's a logical fallacy in here somewhere, if only we could find it.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Atheism isn't AGAINST GOD. It's a nonbelief in God. Atheism isn't a fanatical belief that there cannot be a god, but the recognition that no god has shown itself even once.
You're still, as a faitheist, insisting that any and all positions MUST be a position of faith, since that is all that you think defines you. But atheism isn't a faith, in the same way as not collecting stamps is not a hobby.
There is ABSOLUTEY no need for any atheist to make this movie. And there is no credo that would impel atheists to collect together and make it.
However, those who DO believe in THEIR god and believes that the Muslims want to put a false god over them, DO have a reason to do this.
As others have noted, rossdee asks the right question, then gives factually the wrong answer. Everyone embarrasses themselves on occasion. It's one way we learn and grow.
And I could argue that as atheists aren't smart enough to know they should believe in God
No, you could not. It's impossible to argue that someone should believe in something that most likely doesn't exist, since the supporting data of existence is non-existent.
We also know that with intelligence comes non-belief. With higher levels of education also comes non-belief. Intelligent people with a higher education simply do not believe in various superstitions to the level with which uneducated dumb-asses do. In the US, since you can get a higher degree with no scientific training whatsoever, the co-variation between belief and education, though strong, is weaker than in Europe for example. The more education you have in the sciences the lower the chance of you running around believing in mumbo-jumbo is however. The numbers are quite staggering, also in the US.
Why? Because religion is a complete load of wank and the successful ones are the ones that scare the shit out of their believers about leaving (see scientology), hound them far more radically if they leave (see scientology) and insist that anyone who ISN'T of the same faith is
a) evil incarnate
b) destined to hell for eternal punishment
c) out to destroy the REAL believers
(see scientology).
The only difference between Muslim, Christianity and Scientology is we accept the idea that Scientology has been made up by a bloke.
Piss Christ didn't cause Christians to kill people...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ#Reception
Serrano received death threats and hate mail, and lost grants due to the controversy.
...
...
The work was vandalized at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, and gallery officials reported receiving death threats in response to Piss Christ.
During a retrospective of Serrano's work at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997, the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of Victoria to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from publicly displaying Piss Christ, which was not granted. Some days later, one patron attempted to remove the work from the gallery wall, and two teenagers later attacked it with a hammer.
Just because no one was actually killed, it does not make one kind of religious violence more civilized or rational than the other.
Nor is it unheard of for Christian religious fanatics to commit indiscriminate acts of violence over a movie.
You can't troll people who don't CHOOSE to be trolled!
Now that's being a bit obtuse.
We ARE talking here about people who believe that they have a direct line to the creator of the Universe by kneeling on the floor, putting their hands in a certain position and pronouncing a special incantation.
The kind of people who get trolled by pieces of toast, FFS.
It's not like they are the most reasonable bunch in the world, capable of rational thought when that one special topic comes up.
After all, they are all conditioned to believe in one form of hell or another, where those who are against the above mentioned creator of the Universe and his laws must end up.
Where they too will end up as well if they accidentally eat certain food on a certain day or if they forget to do a certain ritual or if they say the name of the above mentioned creatorTM.
And then there's all that thing about impending Armageddon.
Seriously, what do you expect to get from people who are conditioned to be in constant fear not only for their own existence, but for the existence of EVERYTHING if someone insults their creatorTM?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Being offended does not mean you have the right to censor someone nor does it mean that you have the right to lash out at others. If the movie bothered you, I refer you to JSM's points 3 & 4. Explain why the movie is wrong and fight against its bigotry.
This is actually a fascinating distinction.
Calling the President a "poopyhead" doesn't actually hold any implied physical danger what-so-ever. Saying I am gonna _________ is a future tense action statement with a verb, sure, that would be worth looking at.
The fun starts when "loss of honor" becomes worth retaliation, as another poster below mentioned. So while there's no physical action planned, "the loss of honor is unforgiveable" etc etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Is that you posting from the afterlife, Christopher Hitchens?
From what I know of this "prophet" Mohammed, he was a good guy, and just like Jesus Christ, he taught love and respect for fellow human beings. He pulled his group of people together, got them working towards a better standard of living, for that time. He helped to pull his people out of poverty. Taught non-violence. But as he was nearing the end of his life, he realized they were going to create a religion with him as their central "savior", and he didn't want them to do that. Like Jesus, Mohammed told his people, "No! There's nothing special about me. I'm a man just like you!" But they didn't listen, and went ahead and made a religion about him anyway. And the Crusades created a hatred of anyone non-muslim (thanks, Catholic Church!). There will be more time needed for the un-enlightened Moslems in that part of the world to 'assimilate' with the rest of the world's free society. It's going to take a couple generations to get there, but they will. Bigotry in the U.S. still exists, though it's far less than what it was in the 1960's. The older racist generations are dying out, getting replaced with more tolerant and educated people. The same will happen eventually in the Middle East. It'll just take time.
I believe this onion cartoon explains the difference between Islam and the other major religions well:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto
The prophet's good name ?
The problem is that most of the claims are true. The muslim prophet, by all reasonable standards, IS a paedophile, a genocidal maniac, dictator, thief, slaver. Just about the only accusation the movie makes that isn't confirmed by muslim scripture is that he's gay.
You somehow think that muslims are somehow not aware of those characteristics of the prophet. That's why it's a threat. Nobody needs to kill anyone to protect Gandhi's good name, or mother Theresa.
Muslims protect the paedophile prophet the way dictatorships protect their "great leader". It's a global threat, that goes into a circle. That's fundamentally how islam works.
So are idiots in america viewing this as a freedom of speech issue.
This is not a free speech issue, it is a freedom of religion issue. Freedom of religion is not your freedom to censor, it is my freedom to do what I want with religion. I can follow them to the letters, I can take and leave any parts, I can completely ignore it and I can mock it. The right to mock religion is a important part of religious freedom. Consider the following:
Islam claim that Jesus is only a average prophet like many others, he is even not the best one(that would be Muhammad, right?). From the point of view of a Christian, that believe Jesus is the half-devine son of God, this is extremely offensive. Your right to worship is base on your right to mock someone else's religion.
Now take a deep breath and take your stupid hate cult back to the bronze age where it belong.
Thanks,
The civilized world.
No, for a Christian, Jesus is 100% divine.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Hardly just one. Christianity today is quite moderate (mostly, there are exceptions), but it has had it's inquisitions and holy wars in the past. A large part of the reason the US was founded with a secular government was to avoid the christian-on-christian violence seen in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics had been taking turns slaughtering each other and many minority sects were banned outright. Judaism lacks the numbers to do much today other than take part in some territorial squabbles, but their own historical texts describe how they came to possess Israel by first emptying it of former occupants, and you can see the propaganda still in there describing the previous tribes as so evil the land rejected them and God personally ordered even the children slaughtered to exterminate their line. I don't know a great deal about the other significent religions, but I'm sure a little research would reveal even Buddhism - usually regarded as one of the most non-violent religions around - must have a few skeletons in the closet.
If you're going to convince me that you're truly Muslim - or at least decently educated, then you need to be able to transliterate "God is Great" in a way that follows the accepted norms. Maybe you're being dialectical, but Islam is based on classical Arabic, and there's a "proper" way to render that phrase in English. As it is, it makes me wonder if you're truly Muslim or just pouring gasoline on the fire.
As far as I'm concerned, religious displays of violence are major sins, regardless of whether they're Muslim, Christian, or whatever. They're the ultimate in hubris, because they're basically saying that God, the Almighty, is too weak and too feeble to protect Himself, and so must enlist crowds of murderous men to do the job. God, if He is Who you say he is, could do a Sodom-and-Gomorrah on any place in the Universe, or even wipe the entire planet, if he felt the need to defend Himself. We see every day how the Earth and the heavens can be subjected to earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, plagues, meteor swarms - even supernovae. And that 's just in an apparently undirected way. If God can bind Leviathian, those are the least of punishments he could aim at the infidels if that was His desire. These mobs are about as meaningful as if a nest of ants were to rush to my defense against another nest of ants. As the Qur'an states repeatedly: "Let God be the judge".
Likewise, I'm very much opposed to suppression of offensive speech, because if you have faith, you understand that God is too powerful to be overcome by lies. That lies may eclipse the truth, but the truth will eventually prevail. And that the best way to expose lies is to bring them forth into the light of day for all to observe how their details fail, not to suppress them in the hope that no one will believe them.
There are a lot of ideals that America has discarded in the last 30 years or so, but one that we've managed to hold on to is the idea that free speech means free people. In a more authoritarian country, such slanders as this "film trailer" would either become underground "forbidden knowledge" (with all the appeal inherent), or officially sanctioned. Either way, the message would be legitimized. Instead, the controversy enabled by free speech and the freedom to view and dissect this work has exposed the tawdry underpinnings of this scheme and the lack of moral character of those behind it. Instead of undermining Islam, it may, in fact, have done the opposite. We learn a lot about people (and religions, and ideologies) by the calibre of their enemies.
So are idiots in america viewing this as a freedom of speech issue.
What is it then if not a freedom of speech issue? The only effective way to fight idiocy is to drag it to broad daylight and humiliate it publicly. If you can't criticize others because you might hurt their feelings, they'll never find out there's something wrong. Yes, the movie is retarded and offensive, but you're free to just ignore it or you can respond with another movie that's even more retarded and offensive to the other side.
As long as there are huge masses of people who are willing to kill over a retarded movie, this kind of retarded movies will need to be made. I know it sucks to be caught in the crossfire between two camps of retards but the alternative to a little disgust is to stay sorrounded by retards forever.
Are those "subliminal messages" actually real threats of violence that warrant preemptive violent action, or simply insults that are especially insulting to people who adhere to a particular mythology?
Who cares if Muslims find it more insulting? Remember those cartoons of Bush, showing him as a chimpanzee? Those were legal.
Now, if someone drew cartoons of Obama as a chimpanzee, that's a race-wank dog-whistle, because of the history of depicting black people as simians. That's especially insulting to a black fellow. But it is ALSO LEGAL, because both "offending someone a little bit" and "offending someone a lot" are part of free expression.
This film doesn't call for violence. Bin Laden and al-Awlaki do. There is a big, big difference between "Mohammed is a goat-fucking paedophile" and "We should go murder some infidels".
Why "religion" ? You make it sound like all religions have their followers pull this crap, when in reality ... it's only one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence
All religions are absolutist philosophies, with very specific ideas of good and evil based not on real life but on imaginary properties proscribed by their own scripture.
As such, they are all destined to clash with the real world sooner or later.
When that happens, there is really no choice for someone who's high on religion - you're either on the side of god, angels and good or you're on the side of evil.
And evil, as we all know, must be vanquished. Man's law be damned. We're talking higher power here.
Abortion clinic bombers don't think that they are killing doctors - they are just doing god's work, eliminating the child murderers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Do you also think the Norwegian Labor Party should be censored because a follower of Breivik's ideology might be offended by their stance on immigration, and go on another shooting spree because they see it as a message that embraces the destruction of their white race? After all, we have to appreciate the fact that the white nationalists likely perceive the pro-immigration message as a threat.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I'm opposed to oppression of offensive speech because it is so bad that intelligent people learn better why they shouldn't use it when they see it.
It seems odd to question the legitimacy of a person's faith on the basis of whether they translate a phrase a certain way. Kind of like you can't be Jewish if you turned on a light on Shabbat, or you can't be Catholic if you failed to read the Pope's latest proclamation.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I'm opposed to oppression of offensive speech because it is so bad that intelligent people learn better why they shouldn't use it when they see it.
It seems odd to question the legitimacy of a person's faith on the basis of whether they translate a phrase a certain way. Kind of like you can't be Jewish if you turned on a light on Shabbat, or you can't be Catholic if you failed to read the Pope's latest proclamation.
Transliteration is not the same thing as translation. "Allah Akhbar" is the generally-accepted transliteration of the Arabic phrase which is generally translated into English as "God is Great". If I was to back-transliterate "Allah hoakbar", the letters would be very different. At best, it's a bad rendition of "Allahu Akbar", which is how it's spoken. Bad renditions typically mean that either the writer is using a dialect (and religions do tend to prefer formal, standardized language), that the writer is illiterate (it does happen), or that the writer is ignorant. Ignorance comes in many flavors, some few of which are Muslim, but likewise many of which are non-Muslim trolls.
I'd be more accommodating, but when you're defending the faith (whatever that faith may be), it's incumbent to do it in a way that does credit to the faith. Something that the 9/11 crowd certainly didn't do.
What are the implications of Google blocking the film? Probably not that great if it's already on one of the other kajillion-and-one media sharing sites or being personally hosted by anyone with a vested interest in riling up one side or the other.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
There is a difference. A man makes a movie that some people find offensive ( i would wager 99% of the people rioting havent seen it either) one group of people call for a boycott, complain and it is the end of it. Another group starts rioting, starts invading american soil (embassies are the soil of the country that is there) and kill people who have NOTHING to do with the thing they are upset about.
to recap
one group, gets mad, writes letters, moves on
group 2 starts murdering people and destroying everything.
yeah so instead of complaining about americans who are saying this is a freedom of speech issue, you should be standing up against those idiots who are murdering people
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
agnosticism is the philosophy that no knowledge (gnosticism) can ever be drawn onto whether gods exist or not. Atheist is the disbelief in the existence of gods. Usually the two combine, you xan be a gnostic theist (believer ; but miracle and evidence of gods existence abund), agnostic theist (gods can only be believed as faith without evidence) , agnostc atheist (there is no evidence for gods), gnostic atheist (there is no god). Mind you ,you can also be atheist and gave a faith (belief im buddah for example , animism, etc...).
if you look up infidel or belief poll you will see that gnostic atheist are about 30% the rest are agnostic atheist, which is a very strong and rational position in absence of evidence.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Uh, they are. I mean, unless the Vatican isn't "Christian" enough for you.
The only reason Jesus was able to be resurrected is because he was purely God, and sinless. Had he been half human prior to death, he would have been neither sinless, nor purely God, therefore the resurrection could not have happened.
Drugs existed then, and one of those drugs actually simulated death in the user that lasted for just about three days before it wore off. Perhaps, when Mary gave Christ water that drug was 'slipped' to him. When he woke up and realized, "They want to kill me", he got the hell out of town. This is one plausible explanation for the ressurection. I am a former altar boy who believed in religion until I reached the age of reaaon.
If you owned the ground at "ground zero", you could do that.
It's called "free speech".
It would be insulting and offensive, but legal. Just like this video.
Do you remember when a cross (crucifix?) was placed in a bottle of urine in an art gallery? The Christians were rather upset, to say the least. The Pope got all bent out of shape. People protested the museum. Public funding for art was attacked, again. NOBODY FUCKING DIED. Get it?
If the Muslim world ever wants to be seen as something other than a bunch of animals, they need to learn to deal with stuff like this without killing people and rioting. It *is* free speech. Offensive free speech, actually.
Another is: "Let's throw in this element from Mithranism while we are cooking up this new religion of ours. It is popular back in Rome."
Maybe it's a trap?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The last major example in Europe was the Thirty Years war. It ended, IIRC, in 1648.
As far as I'm aware, it was not kept secret. There's books and stuff about it. Anyone who wishes to study it and learn from it can. Some, apparently, chose - and continue to choose - not to.
How politically correct garbage making comparisons across the best part of four centuries gets modded insightful I'll never know. "Does" and "did" are not the same thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Drugs existed then, and one of those drugs actually simulated death in the user that lasted for just about three days before it wore off. Perhaps, when Mary gave Christ water that drug was 'slipped' to him. When he woke up and realized, "They want to kill me", he got the hell out of town. This is one plausible explanation for the ressurection.
So Jesus lay in a cold tomb with crucifixion wounds, a hole in his side from the centurion's spear, suffering from scourge wounds, with no food, water, nor medical care, for 3 days? Then got up, moved a several hundred pound rock, and went on a journey?
Yea, that makes perfect sense.