[ExI] Feel Safer Now?

spike spike66 at att.net
Mon Mar 17 02:40:50 UTC 2008


 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org 
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of 
> Amara Graps
> Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 7:02 PM
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: [ExI] Feel Safer Now?
> 
> Spike:
> >Gary I am disappointed in the vast majority of peaceful 
> believers who 
> >do little or nothing to help catch the violent small 
> percentage within 
> >their ranks.
> 
> First: I think you were referring to Islam...

Note that I did not specify any particular religion.  But when I referred to
a violent small percentage of believers, many people do read a particular
religion into the message.  Why is that?

>... but don't you 
> think that you could ask the question of the other major 
> religions?...

Again, I didn't specify any particular religion, so one could argue that I
*was* asking the question of other major religions.  Which major religion is
most associated with a violent small percentage within its ranks today?  Why
does it have that association?

> You are living inside one of the most religious 
> countries on the planet and the fundamentalists christians 
> are not always peaceful...

Granted, and I am not defending religion.  I consider it bad for the human
mind, pretty  much all of it.  But some are worse than others.  Which is
major religion is most associated with violence today?  Why is that?
 
> ...How much do you trust your information sources?  Amara

Not much.  World "news" media are terrible.

Here is where I would go with that.  Even if I allow that all religions have
a violent small minority, I will not agree that all religions are *equally
likely* to produce violent individuals.  Within each religion that has
sacred scriptures, there is a small minority that believes those sacred
scriptures to be given directly by god, and so must be literally true and
rigorously obeyed.  

Of those religious groups with sacred texts, there is one particular
religion which has sacred texts which appear to me to give specific
justification, or even direct orders, to slay Jews and to make war on
unbelievers.  I never saw anything like that in the christian scriptures,
never saw anything of the kind in the Jewish scriptures.  But I do see this
in the scriptures of one particular religion, which makes the most
fundamentalist believers in that religion a danger to nonbelievers.  

I know of no outwardly visible way to tell the peaceful majority in that
religion from those fundamentalist believers.  I cannot attribute all the
sordid tales I read in the news to slanted reporting.  Some of it perhaps,
not all.

spike







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