The key to the success of American religious tolerance is not that we believe religion is imaginary and therefor that various beliefs are harmless. The key to our religious tolerance is that we believe people have an inherent right to be wrong. We believe in conversion by choice, and that conversion by sword is not allowed.
In relatively recent history it has been Christians who have believed in converting others, not Muslims. (I refuse to go back to Crusaders v. Saladin arguments). The spectrum between converting by choice and by sword has evangelical soul-saving missionaries in the middle, but in my opinion much closer to the sword side.
They say books should never be burned. Well, there's always an exception to the rule. It's fucking infectious malware for the human brain.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. (Heine).
Oh, and who decides what is "infectious malware" and what is liberating truth? Should the Bible be burned? Mein Kampf? The Communist Manifesto? The Rights of Man? Lolita? Atlas Shrugged?
It's funny how everyone who's so keen on free speech when it's neo-Nazis or the KKK suddenly thinks the Koran is too dangerous even to fucking read.
im not religious, but christions dont riot when artists paint jesus with shit, or other fucked up things
You are aware that this story is, in fact, about Christians trying to censor free speech in Greece?
As with the Pussy Riot case, you need to look at the politics and power struggles involved, not just blame it on religion. Religion is, in itself, a harmless delusion, but once organised relion starts getting enmeshed in politics, then it can become dangerous.
So why exactly do we need to buy airtime in Pakistan to let them know that the actions of some guy making a movie are not official US government policy?
Will explaining this to anyone who needs it explained to them change a mind? Just one mind. Not looking for miracles here.
It is my belief that it will not change one mind in Pakistan. Not one.
The fact that the government feels the need to do this is not as you rightly stated apologizing.
It is a bad attempt at pandering though. Pandering that has no hope of working and that can only make the US federal government look weak and ineffectual.
Surely the feeling was that by saying nothing, it would look as though the US government was tacitly condoning the film? (In the eyes of the extremists, I mean).
At least the US government explicitly stated their position, that they did not "approve" of the film but that they had to follow the laws of free speech in the US, and so made this line of argument impossible for the extremists.
As to whether it would actually convince someone incensed enough to riot and kill over the idea of the film, well it's remarkably unlikely, but you have to start by being reasonable even with unreasonable people.
The US, for it's faults, certainly does have some good points. I was watching an old (2 years) youtube video about Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) who was under investigation by the Australian Crimes Commission. He went on TV talking about the investigation, the video I was watching was a follow up by some sort of a talk show host who was saying that it's illegal to talk about the investigation or even admit you are being investigated--that seems absolutely insane to me as well. So not only are we going to accuse of crimes, but it will BE A CRIME if you tell anyone we are investigating you......... that is nuts.
Bullshit. Laws in places like Australia and the UK prohibit the prosecution, police and so on from talking about a case in progress after someone has been charged. This is in order to safeguard the interests of the accused and to allow a fair trial.
The simple-minded objectification of free speech as the be all and end all of freedom clearly doesn't work when it allows public discussion on TV of things that wouldn't be allowed in the courtroom where the accused is on trial.
to have so many regulation and laws that you are committing several felonies every day simply by trying to live your life and do the work you need to routinely to in good faith
I know this is a point of honour amongst followers of Ayn Rand, but if it were true why wouldn't everyone be in jail? Surely the Evil Government would want to maximise its evilness and revenue if it could do it so easily?
Y9ou are basing your whole argument on the libertarian assumption that (big) business always knows best, government always achieves nothing apart from spending money and that the courts provide a level playing field for rich and poor.
Laissez faire capitalism is not some fantastic new idea that has never been tried before.. It is a system that made a few poeople very rich and millions wage slaves in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries before popular democratic pressure forced it to adapt to the threat of pure communism by coming up with a workable compromise. You may want to go back to firms hiring private armies to kill strikers, eight year olds working in factories, unlimited environmental pollution and the rest. Most sane people don't.
Yes, because God made Florida into an instant launch facility that required zero construction. Do you people ever read the shit you spew?
There is a difference between hauling material a few hundred or even thousand miles on a planet where you can breathe the air and grow food for workers, and moving it hundreds of thousands of miles across hard vacuum.onto a sterile piece of rock with no water air or food.
Keep in mind there was fuck-all in southern California until the Spanish showed up. Or anywhere else in what came to be the US when the first ships landed. There was no McDonalds next to a Starbucks next to a Dunkin Donuts to greet the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Somebody had to go there, pave the way, and build them. Just beccause we cannot at this very moment build a spacecraft on the Moon does not mean we'll never be able to, despite what the JOEs ('Just One Earthers') want you to think. Are you a JOE or a GOE ('Get Off Earth!!)?
No, but equally just because we could build rockets on the moon doesn't mean that, without some serious breakthrough in technology such as virtually free unlimited cold fusion, it will ever be economically feasible to do so.
In round, made up numbers, if it costs 1 trillion dollars to build something that produces a few billion net profit, what's the point? The benefits to mankind of having a large robotic factory on the moon or Mars isn't inherently that great in non-financial terms either. It's not like we can go and set up reasonable sized self-supporting colonies there as lifeboats, unless we also get the hang of terraforming.
No. The Galactic Barrier is a (fictional) force field around our galaxy, preventing matter to get out or in (supposedly placed there by some higher intelligence).
The real thing is a very sparse cloud of ionized gas. It doesn't work like a barrier at all.
You really are a bundle of fucking laughs aren't you?
I came here expecting a few pithy but in-the-long-run helpful "install Linux you fucking retard newbie" type comments, and instead get serious recommendations about Windows software, almost as though people actually use it! Unbelievable.
A good start might be for the West (well, basically the US) to keep out of other countries and let their own people sort out what they want. This was as true in the days of the USSR as it is now. If country X wants a repressive theocracy or Central Economic Planning, let them - hopefully temporarily. The virtues of democracy, fredom of expression, equal rights and so on should win in the end, however long it takes.
Know it's not a religion of peace because Mohammed taught the principle of abrogation
Has some right wing DJ in the States just discovered the word "abrogation" and told all his followers to go out and use it as much as possible? Because it keeps coming up in this thread in the context of "anything good in Islam can be ignored because anything bad obviously over-rules the good". (As opposed to the bible which is, of course, flawlessly logical and consistent throughout).
The inscription on the Jefferson Memorial reads "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Which is ironic as religion is one of the worst tyrannies over the mind of man ever invented.
I have to say that anyone who disallows proselytizing doesn't believe in free speech. Free speech at its core is the right to present arguments in the public forum and convince people of their truthfulness. Which is precisely what proselytizing is.
If God can't make you believe in Himself on His own, why the fuck should He expect human beings to do the dirty work for Him and annoy the rest of us? He should get of His arse and do it Himself, ergo there is no need to allow proselytizing, unless He doesn't exist in the first place, in which caase it should be banned for being silly in any case.
Slashdot Mirror
The key to the success of American religious tolerance is not that we believe religion is imaginary and therefor that various beliefs are harmless. The key to our religious tolerance is that we believe people have an inherent right to be wrong. We believe in conversion by choice, and that conversion by sword is not allowed.
In relatively recent history it has been Christians who have believed in converting others, not Muslims. (I refuse to go back to Crusaders v. Saladin arguments). The spectrum between converting by choice and by sword has evangelical soul-saving missionaries in the middle, but in my opinion much closer to the sword side.
'blasphemy' is anachronism from middle ages. 'disrespect to the religious beliefs of others.' is exactly what he have done.
Yeah, but "blasphemy" just sounds so much more...evil.
Your plumber photographs you naked and fondles your genitals?
Hey, it's one way of getting a discount.
What's so evil about Mao and his little red book? He dragged China from Medieval backwardness into a successful Twentieth Century superpower.
They say books should never be burned. Well, there's always an exception to the rule. It's fucking infectious malware for the human brain.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. (Heine).
Oh, and who decides what is "infectious malware" and what is liberating truth? Should the Bible be burned? Mein Kampf? The Communist Manifesto? The Rights of Man? Lolita? Atlas Shrugged?
It's funny how everyone who's so keen on free speech when it's neo-Nazis or the KKK suddenly thinks the Koran is too dangerous even to fucking read.
im not religious, but christions dont riot when artists paint jesus with shit, or other fucked up things
You are aware that this story is, in fact, about Christians trying to censor free speech in Greece?
As with the Pussy Riot case, you need to look at the politics and power struggles involved, not just blame it on religion. Religion is, in itself, a harmless delusion, but once organised relion starts getting enmeshed in politics, then it can become dangerous.
So why exactly do we need to buy airtime in Pakistan to let them know that the actions of some guy making a movie are not official US government policy? Will explaining this to anyone who needs it explained to them change a mind? Just one mind. Not looking for miracles here. It is my belief that it will not change one mind in Pakistan. Not one. The fact that the government feels the need to do this is not as you rightly stated apologizing. It is a bad attempt at pandering though. Pandering that has no hope of working and that can only make the US federal government look weak and ineffectual.
Surely the feeling was that by saying nothing, it would look as though the US government was tacitly condoning the film? (In the eyes of the extremists, I mean).
At least the US government explicitly stated their position, that they did not "approve" of the film but that they had to follow the laws of free speech in the US, and so made this line of argument impossible for the extremists.
As to whether it would actually convince someone incensed enough to riot and kill over the idea of the film, well it's remarkably unlikely, but you have to start by being reasonable even with unreasonable people.
The US, for it's faults, certainly does have some good points. I was watching an old (2 years) youtube video about Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee) who was under investigation by the Australian Crimes Commission. He went on TV talking about the investigation, the video I was watching was a follow up by some sort of a talk show host who was saying that it's illegal to talk about the investigation or even admit you are being investigated--that seems absolutely insane to me as well. So not only are we going to accuse of crimes, but it will BE A CRIME if you tell anyone we are investigating you......... that is nuts.
Bullshit. Laws in places like Australia and the UK prohibit the prosecution, police and so on from talking about a case in progress after someone has been charged. This is in order to safeguard the interests of the accused and to allow a fair trial.
The simple-minded objectification of free speech as the be all and end all of freedom clearly doesn't work when it allows public discussion on TV of things that wouldn't be allowed in the courtroom where the accused is on trial.
to have so many regulation and laws that you are committing several felonies every day simply by trying to live your life and do the work you need to routinely to in good faith
I know this is a point of honour amongst followers of Ayn Rand, but if it were true why wouldn't everyone be in jail? Surely the Evil Government would want to maximise its evilness and revenue if it could do it so easily?
Y9ou are basing your whole argument on the libertarian assumption that (big) business always knows best, government always achieves nothing apart from spending money and that the courts provide a level playing field for rich and poor.
Laissez faire capitalism is not some fantastic new idea that has never been tried before.. It is a system that made a few poeople very rich and millions wage slaves in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries before popular democratic pressure forced it to adapt to the threat of pure communism by coming up with a workable compromise. You may want to go back to firms hiring private armies to kill strikers, eight year olds working in factories, unlimited environmental pollution and the rest. Most sane people don't.
Yes, because God made Florida into an instant launch facility that required zero construction. Do you people ever read the shit you spew?
There is a difference between hauling material a few hundred or even thousand miles on a planet where you can breathe the air and grow food for workers, and moving it hundreds of thousands of miles across hard vacuum.onto a sterile piece of rock with no water air or food.
Keep in mind there was fuck-all in southern California until the Spanish showed up. Or anywhere else in what came to be the US when the first ships landed. There was no McDonalds next to a Starbucks next to a Dunkin Donuts to greet the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Somebody had to go there, pave the way, and build them. Just beccause we cannot at this very moment build a spacecraft on the Moon does not mean we'll never be able to, despite what the JOEs ('Just One Earthers') want you to think. Are you a JOE or a GOE ('Get Off Earth!!)?
No, but equally just because we could build rockets on the moon doesn't mean that, without some serious breakthrough in technology such as virtually free unlimited cold fusion, it will ever be economically feasible to do so.
In round, made up numbers, if it costs 1 trillion dollars to build something that produces a few billion net profit, what's the point? The benefits to mankind of having a large robotic factory on the moon or Mars isn't inherently that great in non-financial terms either. It's not like we can go and set up reasonable sized self-supporting colonies there as lifeboats, unless we also get the hang of terraforming.
Really? Where's China's mars rover?
Waiting to ambush our mars rover in conjunction with the Martian AI troops it has allied itself with.
No. The Galactic Barrier is a (fictional) force field around our galaxy, preventing matter to get out or in (supposedly placed there by some higher intelligence). The real thing is a very sparse cloud of ionized gas. It doesn't work like a barrier at all.
You really are a bundle of fucking laughs aren't you?
and is 300,000 lightyears across... possibly extending far into other galaxies...
You are vastly underestimating galactic distances. Our closest neighbor, Andromeda, is over 2 million light years away.
Yeah, and we don't even get on that well.
From my understanding the Theoretical model says we can probably go 10x the speed of light
You piqued my curiosity. Where can I read more about this?
He could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.
I came here expecting a few pithy but in-the-long-run helpful "install Linux you fucking retard newbie" type comments, and instead get serious recommendations about Windows software, almost as though people actually use it! Unbelievable.
Promote intelligence and logic and reason and religion will vanish...
We've been doing that for hundreds of years, and you still get retards on slashdot saying that religion and science aren't mutually exclusive.
A good start might be for the West (well, basically the US) to keep out of other countries and let their own people sort out what they want. This was as true in the days of the USSR as it is now. If country X wants a repressive theocracy or Central Economic Planning, let them - hopefully temporarily. The virtues of democracy, fredom of expression, equal rights and so on should win in the end, however long it takes.
Know it's not a religion of peace because Mohammed taught the principle of abrogation
Has some right wing DJ in the States just discovered the word "abrogation" and told all his followers to go out and use it as much as possible? Because it keeps coming up in this thread in the context of "anything good in Islam can be ignored because anything bad obviously over-rules the good". (As opposed to the bible which is, of course, flawlessly logical and consistent throughout).
As a Wiccan
Sky-clad pix or it didn't happen.
The inscription on the Jefferson Memorial reads "I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Which is ironic as religion is one of the worst tyrannies over the mind of man ever invented.
forbidding proselytizing
I have to say that anyone who disallows proselytizing doesn't believe in free speech. Free speech at its core is the right to present arguments in the public forum and convince people of their truthfulness. Which is precisely what proselytizing is.
If God can't make you believe in Himself on His own, why the fuck should He expect human beings to do the dirty work for Him and annoy the rest of us? He should get of His arse and do it Himself, ergo there is no need to allow proselytizing, unless He doesn't exist in the first place, in which caase it should be banned for being silly in any case.
Religion don't need a special case any more then Trekkies; both groups are obsesses with work of fiction.
At least I've seen James T. Kirk, which is more than I can say for The Big Guy In The Sky.
For those not on the know, what are you referring to as Rule 34?
Do you live in Iran and not have access to google or something?