[ExI] Religions and violence.

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010, John Clark wrote:

> On Aug 1, 2010, at 5:37 PM, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> 
> > This was part of their official philosophy. It promoted nobilitation of 
> > one group (called Aryan race) while enslaving and eradicating  other 
> > groups seen as inferior (Jews, Gypsies, Black people, and a little later, 
> > Slavic peoples). This was ideology, i.e. theory.
> 
> Do you find the official Islamic philosophy to be significantly more 
> ennobling?

That is strange question, Mr Clark. Is Islam more ennobling than Nazism? 
You start to scare me.

> I don't, in fact most Islamic leaders were very sympathetic 
> to the Nazis. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem 
> and Osama bin Laden's intellectual godfather; he was given the 
> equivalent of $10,000 a month for making propaganda broadcasts on radio 
> Berlin. In March 1944, he said on the radio that there should be a jihad 
> to "kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and 
> religion." After the war he fled to Egypt which protected him from 
> extradition for war crimes, in return he recruited former Nazi thugs to 
> work in dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser's government.  

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni was a mufti in years 1921-1948. So he was a 
British subject, at least to some extent. And in 1921 elections, he had 
got the least number of votes from all four candidates (nominating him was 
a political decision, not majority support).

 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Amin_al-Husayni ]

I wonder what is your point here. A number of leaders from around the 
world were sympathetic to the Nazis, including some Western leaders (but 
they had not much to say about politics of their countries). So Mohammad 
Amin al-Husayni is no extraordinary for me.

As of Nazi thugs in Egypt, I don't think there was more of them than in 
one single American scientific project:

 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip ]

 [ 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Project_Paperclip_Team_at_Fort_Bliss.jpg
 ]

On the other hand, it could be more Nazis in Egypt than at Fort Bliss, 
since according to this page

 [ http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/nazis_postwar_egypt.htm ]

their first batch in 1952 counted about 100 persons. But on the same page 
there are statements about connections between ODESSA (including Nazis in 
Egypt, I suppose) and CIA. One of ODESSA chiefs, Otto Skorzenny, is said 
to have some talks with Mossad, too (giving them misc info).

So what exactly you want to prove now? That Islam is less evil than 
democracy? That part of its wrongs are to be blamed on us? With this last 
statement I agree, yet I think we should look rather forward not backward.

> And by the way, the Arabic translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf is the 
> 6'th largest bestselling book of all time among Palestinians.

Something like this could be expected. Number one is Qur'an, I guess. What 
are the other four bestsellers?

> >  As I have mentioned in one earlier post, such overreaction is a sign of weakness or 
> > lack of confidence. This might be connected with possible cultural shock, 
> > that Islamic world experienced after WW2
> 
> Maybe maybe not, who cares. Let me say yet again, explaining why 
> something sucks does not stop it from sucking.

Let me explain again, too. It is important to know what sucks and how to 
stop it. Just yelling that it sucks does not stop it from sucking. If you 
think there is a problem (like I do) than you should try to understand 
what it is about. Otherwise I don't get how do you plan to solve it.

> > I am not defending it.
> 
> Like hell you're not!

So we agree on this... like hell.

> > I refuse to attack it before I find good reason for this.
> 
> Holy shit! If you can't find something hateful in a philosophy as evil 
> and incredibly stupid as Islam then there is something seriously wrong 
> with you.

To find something in their philosophy I have to actually start looking at 
it. I guess reading Qur'an is a minimum, since this looks like a basis of 
everything they do and say. You seem to be versatile in this subject, so 
great. But I haven't got much time for such things. Yet I want to make my 
own choice, not just because someone who already read Qur'an, like you 
apparently did, have told me what to think about it.

I wonder why making my own choice based on my own research is wrong. From 
what you tell, I understand that Islam would dissalow me to make such 
choices, so you come surprisingly close to it.

> I can neither prove nor disprove that there is a bright green teapot in 
> orbit around the planet Uranus, therefore there is a 50% chance there is 
> a bright green teapot in orbit around the planet Uranus.

Exactly so. You seem to understand. In this case, however, it could be at 
least argued that chances are rather small, since Universe is big and for 
teapot to make it exactly to one of possible orbits around Uranus requires 
lots of good luck. But again, taking Universe size into consideration, the 
number of planets out there seems to be enormous. So I think there are 
good chances (one could actually bet money on it, rather than on some 
unlucky horses) that somewhere such a teapot really orbits a planet.

So in case of a teapot we have some facts, upon which we could build nice 
and quite defendable (IMHO) theory.

God, however, could either exist or not but I cannot think of any physical 
fact supporting one theory or another. Therefore we could only use 
probablity. Which gives 50-50 chances.

> > if you want to escape from belief, you cannot use belief-based 
> > arguments. So, if you  
> > would like to prove that God does not exist, you should use rational 
> > arguments.
> 
> Are you really suggesting that the infantile fairy tales that are the 
> foundation of Christian and Islamic theology needs to be taken 
> seriously? Is that why you took offense when I said it was all based on 
> a colossal lie and your insistence on putting the word lie in quotation 
> marks? Do really want to defend that stinking pile of colossal 
> BULLSHIT?!!

I don't care much about fairy tales. I've already said I don't support any 
form of religion. At least I am not active supporter, while I reserve 
myself a right to feel sympathy towards goodwilling people. If they happen 
to be religious as well, that is their choice I have no right to question 
(but I feel free to ask questions).

But I see the problem of God's existence as totally independent from 
religion. Which should be obvious because they tend to say strange things, 
even contradicting each other. While the problem of God is something that 
grownup minds could think of. If one is afraid of the other "50%" 
possibility, then of course one definitely is unfit to be bothered by the 
problem.

As of offending me, well I find this to be a bit difficult to do, because 
I have this tendency to agree with my offenders. I could hint you at some 
good offences but as soon as you throwed them at me, I would probably 
agree with you again. I doubt there is any way out of this impass. Perhaps 
problem of offending me successfully could be used to test Singularity, 
but this is pure speculation.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **