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Messages - More Than Mortal
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7891
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:40:53 PM »
. . .
This all feels like bias on your part (I'm not passing judgement, however, we're all guilty) in trying to advance the idea that religious beliefs don't really motivate behaviour, and that there's some sort of underlying secular desire that's actually pulling the levers. History, or at least my study of certain parts of it, just can't allow me to agree with this. One of the most eminent examples used of where religion isn't really a motivator is obviously Palestine, but this clearly doesn't hold true. Aref al-Dajani, who was a prominent Arab statesman at the time of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, made explicitly anti-Semitic comments about Jewish immigrants and this was later reinforced by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini who promulgated Islamism alongside nationalism, which led to mob assaults on Jews in Jerusalem and rampant xenophobia. And of course, even later on, there's the example of Yasser Arafat not wanting to pursue Hamas for its use of suicide bombing techniques probably because he was being afraid as being painted as an enemy of Islam. It isn't so clear-cut, the distinction between "motivation" on one hand and "unification" on the other. Both feed into one another, and the creation of certain groups around unifying factors necessarily influence the motivation. I mean, let's be honest, when Sergio Vieira de Mello is murdered in Iraq for playing a part in the peace process of East Timor, it isn't just economic or secular. When Said Hammami--the first man to float the two-state solution--is murdered by Palestinian extremists, it isn't just economic or secular.
7892
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:25:15 PM »
Instead of just screaming YEEHAW and riddling the guy with bullets.
Probably would've been preferable, to be honest.
7893
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:22:52 PM »
The hunt for bin Laden wasn't a moral crusade of ours, it was an effort to destabilize a group that represented a serious threat to our nation's political and economic sovereignty. And yet they represented a threat precisely because their zealotry motivated them to do so. A person affirming a religious proposition is neurocognitively identical to affirming empirical propositions. For a Christian fundamentalist saying "God loves me" is identical--at the level of the brain--to saying "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen". And speaking of crusades -- arguably the most 'religious' wars in history -- were really just territory wars over middle eastern land, particularly Jerusalem, fought by sovereign nations. Religion was the excuse, but the motivation was a rivalry between two nations for control of valuable land. Would the land have been valuable if not for religion? The thing is that economics is to do with value, at its core. It's necessarily reduced to what humans value. If you want to rip it to its core, then terrorism is just an economic expression of certain religious values. Thus it is those values which motivate.
7894
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:16:58 PM »
As far as I'm concerned, Breitbart.com still believes Friends of Hamas exists. Good for them. Fortunately for us, it has absolutely fuck-all to do with the state of gun control in Europe. When I start posting about the U.S.'s links to Hamas via a Breitbart source, then you can criticise me.
7895
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:08:12 PM »
What's wrong with her post, though? It's about promoting responsibility and not being trashy. I don't see the problem.
You clearly didn't read the OP, so allow me to post it again for you: Get a load of those #hashtags too. Maybe it's just me, but this all just seems like utterly vacuous nonsense; feminism without the female liberation--and it's bullshit. Especially considering she's a Muslim*.
I really don't know how these lines of non-thought infiltrate and pervade a society. It's just meaningless, self-appreciating nonsense. No empirical evidence, no rationalism, just an appeal to fucking emotion. I underlined the important parts.
7896
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:06:41 PM »
If you want to stop Christianity ever existing, you don't need to go back that far.
You just need to stop Constantine luckily gazing upon a comet which, to him, looked to be in the shape of a cross.
If it hadn't become legitimized and made the official state religions in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires do you think it would have continued to exist underground or would it have fizzled out?
Difficult to say, really. It would probably have remained as Jainism or Zoroastrianism is today; a cult, more than anything, and probably rightfully so.
7897
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:03:43 PM »
So...why do you care, then?
That's like asking why I care about what radical Muslims are doing in their mosques, or what neo-Nazis are doing in the woods burning a cross. I care because I find it relevant in some tangible way.
7898
« on: January 31, 2015, 06:02:09 PM »
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed.
Okay? I don't care. I wouldn't have linked it if the information were false; I knew it was, however, true. You should be disappointed if I start linking obviously fabricated stories about Obama's birth records or trying to establish a socialist state--not when I link legitimate pieces from otherwise unlikable sources.
7899
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:57:54 PM »
Why are you following someone on Instagram that you don't like?
I'm not. The screenshots are from a friend who showed them to me.
7900
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:57:14 PM »
while you're going to go to imaginary land. That clearly isn't the case. If Breitbart isn't reliable, then fine, but this particular story is quite clearly not incorrect. If you want to advance some sort of assertions against the information and not the source--seeing as Time also corroborates the story--then I'm open to that. Not mindless Breitbart-bashing, though.
7901
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:44:22 PM »
Breitbart.com
Europeans need those guns to protect themselves from fictional terrorist organizations.
Previous issues with a source don't automatically discount the content within; here's TIME magazine saying essentially the same thing.
7902
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:42:36 PM »
 Unfortunately there is no data pre-1999.
7903
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:31:45 PM »
If you want to stop Christianity ever existing, you don't need to go back that far.
You just need to stop Constantine luckily gazing upon a comet which, to him, looked to be in the shape of a cross.
7904
« on: January 31, 2015, 03:38:09 PM »
You should have to select, from a drop-down menu, which rule is being broken and then have the option of putting some more information.
I know I don't use the text-box usefully when making reports.
7905
« on: January 31, 2015, 03:11:14 PM »
>he's still trying to transform into a weasel
>he's still misunderstanding what I said.
7906
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:59:03 PM »
>he thinks he can weasel out of this
>he thinks I said racism wasn't involved in slavery
7907
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:55:26 PM »
Get a load of the racism deniers ITT
No, we're saying slavery in America wasn't inherently racist. See: white slaves and black slave-traders. Nobody is, in any way, saying racism didn't exist. Plus, y'know, Turkey wasn't even using his professor in a point about slavery, but war and what motivates behaviour.
7908
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:54:20 PM »
My econ prof studied extensively under Friedman, however, and was staunchly of the opinion that every war has stemmed from a conflict over some combination of land, labor, and capital, and that religion or culture has never once been the prime motivator, and that was coming from an avowed atheist.
He'd be at a loss to explain the War in Afghanistan, I think; nobody particularly liked or saw any economic benefit to running around Tora Bora looking for bin Laden. Even then, however, this isn't solely limited to war. I'm not entirely sure how you can justify most of the behaviour of the likes of Boko Haram or al-Qaeda via economics. These are the people who murder school children because they don't want education for girls, and who murder tourists and diplomats because we wouldn't allow Indonesia to commit a genocide. In the sense that they're Islamic imperialists, land comes into the matter--but it certainly isn't because they really fundamentally lack sufficient supply. Belief matters; accepting the propositional content of assertions will motivate behaviour. If you want to boil it down to land, labour and capital then ISIS explicitly relies on its claims to such things with its religion as a basis.
7909
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:39:00 PM »
  Get a load of those #hashtags too. Maybe it's just me, but this all just seems like utterly vacuous nonsense; feminism without the female liberation--and it's bullshit. Especially considering she's a Muslim*. I really don't know how these lines of non-thought infiltrate and pervade a society. It's just meaningless, self-appreciating nonsense. No empirical evidence, no rationalism, just an appeal to fucking emotion. * Spoiler Fuck you, Islamic feminism is a bigger contradiction that 'Communist State'.
7910
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:07:54 PM »
How different new sites cover a story.
I feel like I should point out I'm glad she didn't capitulate to our idiots. It is mostly people in the West criticising her for it.
7911
« on: January 31, 2015, 02:01:15 PM »
What's with you linking tripe like The Washington Times and Breightbart lately? Usually you use better sources than that.
I'm completely unaware about the Washington Time's reputation. Is it unreliable in some way?
It was founded to and I quote "combat communism and uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values". In many cases it's articles are heavily slanted towards the American right and they're staunchly opposed to equal protection of trans individuals as they state that gender identity is a choice.
There's also been many instances where their editors will rewrite a reporters story if it doesn't coincide with their own beliefs and not tell the reporter that they've done so.
On the business side of things it's pretty shitty as well as it's never once made a profit and the Unification Church has spent like $2 billion in keeping it going.
Fucking lol The more you know, I guess.
7912
« on: January 31, 2015, 01:47:02 PM »
What's with you linking tripe like The Washington Times and Breightbart lately? Usually you use better sources than that.
I'm completely unaware about the Washington Time's reputation. Is it unreliable in some way?
7913
« on: January 31, 2015, 01:35:04 PM »
I enjoyed the video but I'm not sure what direction you want a discussion to take.
I'd be interested to see Dr. Sowell's take on your previous thread about slavery ultimately benefiting blacks.
Speaking of slavery, and not on an entirely unrelated note, Sowell argues that slavery in America wasn't an inherently racist practice. Slavery throughout history has been an economic, not racial, phenomena and he explains the disparity in America's case by the Constitution: if all men are created equal, then you can only justify slavery by arguing some men aren't actually men. As for the general thread? It's more of a poke against people who seem to think that culture/religion can't be used to motivate people to do (un)desirable things.
7914
« on: January 31, 2015, 11:03:25 AM »
not to mention the police officers who weren’t armed Wait, there's police that are not even armed?
fucking kek
That's not unusual for Europe. No British police officer carries a firearm unless they're part of a special unit.
7915
« on: January 31, 2015, 10:15:08 AM »
I just had a frappuccino.
So fucking good.
7916
« on: January 31, 2015, 09:59:13 AM »
If he believes in moral objectivism, then he shouldn't qualify the statement with "it's the 21st century". That's like saying, "it's the 21st century, slavery isn't okay anymore". By using that qualifier, he's saying that, since culture has now progressed to this point, it's wrong to treat women badly. That's cultural relativism, and as he says, it's nonsense.
I really dislike Maher so I enjoy picking apart what he says, as petty and semantic as it may be.
I think his point is more to do with knowing at this point in history that it's wrong to do that. It's morally wrong at whatever time in history, but the fact that its degree of immorality can be affected by our capacity to understand its wrongness doesn't negate it's objective wrongness. For instance, claiming water is not two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is essentially a "more wrong" thing to say nowadays than it would be in the 12th Century, yet both instances the claim is absolutely factually incorrect.
7917
« on: January 31, 2015, 09:47:09 AM »
you can't condemn a behavior of a culture by what another culture is doing at a certain period in time.
I'm either having a cognitive malfunction, or that sentence makes no sense.
7918
« on: January 31, 2015, 09:04:49 AM »
But if you interpret this in the more narrow and common colloquial meaning of the word, as in the general public's legal access to firearms, it is quite different from gun trafficking.
It doesn't seem reasonable to separate the two in the first place. If poor control over trafficking leads to the public accessing guns they shouldn't, how can any reasonable definition claim that's not a gun control issue? I understand you might need to technically separate them, and have specific laws for each issue, but fundamentally it comes down to what sort of weaponry people can access.
7919
« on: January 31, 2015, 08:58:40 AM »
I don't see how this has anything to do with gun control.
You really don't see how an issue to do with the flow and use of firearms is a gun control issue?
7920
« on: January 31, 2015, 08:44:22 AM »
BreitbartPolice armed with pistols in heavily gun-controlled European countries are realizing a hard lesson fast–jihadists with no respect for the law are side-stepping gun control and stockpiling weapons that will give them the upper hand in confrontations with officers.
Europol chief of staff Brian Donald says there were two “large seizures” of firearms–particularly “assault weapons”–over the last two weeks and more seizures are expected as investigations and tracking continues.
According to TIME magazine, this is indicative of the reality European police face. Regardless of the gun control laws passed/implemented, jihadists are able to arm themselves just as those who attacked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s headquarters on January 7 were armed.
Cherif and Said Kouachi “were armed with Kalashnikov rifles and could easily outgun the police officers who tried to apprehend them with pistols,” not to mention the police officers who weren’t armed. The third attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, “had an even greater collection of military grade weapons.”
The terrorists also had grenade launchers and Scorpion machine guns. AFP reports that Coulibaly had purchased most of the weapons from an unnamed arms trafficker in Belgium.
On January 7 Bloomberg.com reported the that Charlie Hebdo attack exposed the black markets for firearms that now exist in Europe–particularly France–and undercut gun control.
In other words, gun control appears to have created a false sense of security for the European people and their police forces as well. The reality is that guns remain available in black markets, albeit especially for those who have criminal or terrorist intent.
TIME reports that gun traffickers are thriving to such a degree that a training assignment for some new European officers has been to go out an buy a Kalashnikov from a black market dealer, just to see how easy it is. To date, doing so has only taken a couple of hours.
This is what Donald Trump warned about when he reacted to the Charlie Hebdo attack by saying, “When guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns.”
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