Well, all right. We often hear it said that ISIS aren't "true" Muslims, or that the Westboro Baptist Church aren't "true" Christians, and that we shouldn't judge a religion by its fundamentalists. I take issue with this, for a number of reasons, but even if I accept such a proposition it doesn't harm my position.

I needn't take the fundamentalists to prove a point, I can judge a religion by its scripture and its mainstream authorities. For instance, taking Islam, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa against Salman Rushdie which lasted for ten years, the hadith calls for the murder of apostates and there was widespread dissatisfaction - to put it mildly - with the expressions of a Danish cartoonist.

The book of Deuteronomy calls for your wife's hand to be cut off if, should she try to deliver you from the wrath of a countryman, she accidentally touches another man's genitals. In Numbers, Moses ordered his generals - after the slaughter of the Midianites - to kill all the young boys and older women who have lain with men and keep the "women children" for their own pleasure.

Kings recounts the story of when God sent two bears to maul 42 children for mocking a bald prophet and in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah an innkeeper gives up his virgin daughter to an irate crowd demanding to be able to meet the angels.

The Catholic Church has long proselytised in Africa and condemned the use of contraception and set its face against the only and pretty much definitive cure for poverty - the empowerment of women. It has professed and recanted ideas such as limbo, causing untold misery for Catholic parents who lost their children, and beatified disgustingly immoral people such as the likes of Mother Theresa. Not to mention, it signed the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany and didn't officially forgive the Jews of "Deicide" until 1965.

The Church of England, often seen as the meekest and mildest of the bunch, isn't free from fault, either. Graham Dow, the former Bishop of Carlisle, said in 2007 that the storms and floods in the north of the country were judgement for the country's lax attitude towards gays and the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1958 said a nuclear holocaust wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing as it would simply wipe people out and usher them from this world to the next.

Taking all of this into account, I don't think it'd be appropriate to try and judge the merits of a religion without considering the "moderating" influences.

White-Gold Concordat

LOL WAT

White-Gold Concordat non-intervention pact of '36 with them...).

I new it, the Nazis were elves.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 02:27:16 PM

Quote from: SuperIrish on September 29, 2014, 02:25:33 PM

White-Gold Concordat

LOL WAT

Yes, I know, same sorta thing as TES. Does kinda put another perspective on the Elves as TES' form of Nazis :L

I refuse to believe that's a thing. Link me.

Quote from: SuperIrish on September 29, 2014, 02:36:52 PM

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 02:27:16 PM

Quote from: SuperIrish on September 29, 2014, 02:25:33 PM

White-Gold Concordat

LOL WAT

Yes, I know, same sorta thing as TES. Does kinda put another perspective on the Elves as TES' form of Nazis :L

I refuse to believe that's a thing. Link me.

Hmm... I think my A-Level and GCSE history teachers might have failed me here. (And maybe even the courses themselves... :S).

Just searched it, doesn't seem to be an A.K.A. of Reichskonkordat, though my History teachers (multiple) and the examining board specifications explicitly mention it as the same thing.

Well, fuck me. My school's education and the WJEC board have failed me in this respect, it seems. I'd actually better tell them :L.

Quote from: SuperIrish on September 29, 2014, 02:47:18 PM

Just searched it, doesn't seem to be an A.K.A. of Reichskonkordat, though my History teachers (multiple) and the examining board specifications explicitly mention it as the same thing.

What kind of History Class would bring up the White-Gold concordant?

One that obviously didn't check it out and confused it with the actual historical name, and then no-one else questioning it, now I feel retarded (._.) . Just checked out with my friends still in school; they still haven't realised, so I'mma have to tell teacher so they can take it up with the idiots at WJEC.

One that obviously didn't check it out and confused it with the actual historical name,.

When did Floor become a professor?

lel Irish plays too much TES

I've never even played the damned thing. Only ever played Skyrim, figured out the rest through interest and checking up on the wiki.


And seriously it wasn't a slip of the mind on my part, my teacher's TAUGHT (or rather, drilled it in) me this.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 29, 2014, 02:27:16 PM

Quote from: SuperIrish on September 29, 2014, 02:25:33 PM

White-Gold Concordat

LOL WAT

Yes, I know, same sorta thing as TES. Does kinda put another perspective on the Elves as TES' form of Nazis :L

Wait

Fucking wait

People are JUST FUCKING NOW realizing that the Thalmor are supposed to be Nazi analogues?

Like seriously

It's taken three years for some people?

Holy shit fuck me

If Yahweh/God/Jahovah/Allah is truly the way he is described in the "holy texts", then he is a cruel monster who doesn't even deserve to be acknowledged.

Aren't the fundamentalists of a religion a perfect example of said religion, since they follow it so closely?

Aren't the fundamentalists of a religion a perfect example of said religion, since they follow it so closely?

Essentially. Like Mitt Romney being cornered into saying the Constitution takes primacy over scripture.

The extent to which it's acceptable is the extent to which it isn't religious.

I legit don't understand how you could have a problem with mother Theresa.i stopped reading there by the way.

You must not know a lot about her.

Quote from: Mad Max on October 03, 2014, 12:20:49 AM

Aren't the fundamentalists of a religion a perfect example of said religion, since they follow it so closely?

Pretty much.  Now religion is like an Γ€ la carte.  People pick and choose, further proving it's man made.

How does that prove it's man made? Even in the stories of the Bible people picked and chose what parts of their faith to believe.

I legit don't understand how you could have a problem with mother Theresa.i stopped reading there by the way.

She thought abortion was the biggest threat to peace on Earth.

She supported Indira Gandhi.

She didn't discriminate between people who could be cured or not, thought poverty and suffering brought people closer to religion, encouraged her sisters to rely largely on faith instead of medicine and forcefully baptised the dying.

She also accepted stolen money from Charles Keating and refused to return it.

To name but a few.