The end of faith.
 

So, I recently got done reading a book called The End of Faith by Sam Harris. In it, he goes to show that faith is the prime factor in irrational decisions and injustices throughout history.

First, he calls for an end to all established religions: especially Islam, due to the number of verses the Muslim community in the Middle east uses to support it's suicide bombings and violence. Because there is little to no moderate Islam in the middle east, and little tolerance for liberal positions on Scripture, the area has become religiously stagnant and their religious texts and faith is what drives them to violence and rationalizes their violence. If they were a faithless society, it would remove the justification for their actions. We can also go into how Christianity has used it texts and faiths to savagely murder millions, but since a majority of it's followers are now moderate, our largest concern is the end of Islam, or at least fundamental Islam.

Secondly, he makes the case that we can establish moral truths without the need for religion. He basically founds this on the principle that almost all of us want happiness and happiness for others. This is a general concept, so don't bother getting picky about it. If we establish that it is in our nature to find happiness and to provide happiness, we can then extend this into what brings happiness and what doesn't in a rational way. BUT - we can only approach rational morality this way if we first throw away faith-based rationality. An example would be: God doesn't like homosexuality, therefore it makes me unhappy to see gay people, therefore gay people should be outlawed. This is an irrational claim based on the beliefs of an unresponsive invisible being. Imagine the case where anti-gay advocates had to base their arguments on rationality: "We want to end homosexuality because they don't produce babies, and that means it wastes energy, which makes society more tired and less happy!" A bit harder to argue then the typical "GOD WILL BURN YOU" argument, eh? As our society becomes more secularized and less religionized, we will see more rational morality, such as gay unions/marriage, female/male equality, drug laws that actually make sense, etc. As we can see from the past, Religion is always playing catch-up adaptation with modern day secular morality and science.

Thirdly, he claims we can have spiritual experiences without Religion, mainly concentrating on our levels of consciousness. We still don't know why we are self-aware and other creatures are not. There's yet to be a biological marker found that says "these creatures will be self-aware and these creatures will not." The spirituality Harris puts forth is based mainly around our interaction with our self-awareness and how we can manipulate or experience reality differently. This is most commonly accomplished through meditation, drug use, and other ways yet to be discovered.

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That's a basic summary of the book. I think I agree with most of what he has to say. It's difficult to present the book since it covers an insane number of topics on culture and society and government and of course, religion, but I tried. There are pluses to Religion, such as establishing a community, goodwill services, etc, but these can all be accomplished just as easily through secular mechanisms instead of religious ones. Faith is, in a nutshell, the largest hindrance we've had to peace and justice in this world. If we look at the different Religions, the ones we consider most moral are the ones most closely tied to secular rationality, not faith based rationality.

Someone in my English class is reading that book, and they really like it.

I agree with those points aswell, and the world would be a much better place if that idea was to become a reality. However, you can pretty much count on it never happening. Telling a religioius person to give up everything they beleive in is impossible. Faith is just that; faith.

Although I'm definitely not arguing with that, I think the point was to not take away faith, but the structures that it currently uses.
I'm probably wrong, but that's how I interpreted it...
I agree, though. As fascinating and appealing as the idea is, it's all theoretical. Plus of course there's the point that it's not religion that starts wars so much as overzealous fanatics who do; and I'm sure you'll get those whether there's structured religion or not. Can't get rid of crazy people!

I agree with franposis on this one, crazy people are always going to be there. Religion is just a shield they can hide behind to justify their questionable actions, when something is done "in the name of God" they believe it's ok to slaughter thousands in war. Personally I can't believe that God would wish slaughter on anyone seeing as he is omnibenevolent. Religion can be a very good thing but also a very bad thing. Sadly there's no getting out of it for us since religion can never truly be abolished, people just need to coincide with each other and respect each others beliefs.
Like that'll ever happen -sighs-

Did you read the book too? When I read it I got the impression that faith is Harris' enemy (hence the title of the book haha). I think what he aims to change is the way we interpret spirituality. His version of spirituality includes no elements of faith in it.

I agree, I was just emphasizing religion since it's the most relevant thing in our society today. Back during WW2, we were fighting the atrocities of atheists. The foundation of faith, however, was still there. To quote from the True Believer: "Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: "Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts."

No, just interpreting from what you've written. I may read it now it's been suggested, it looks interesting...

In a way, atheism has always seemed like a religion to me, in that most of the people who are atheists believe in it as strongly as Christians do in God. I know I do; I put as much faith in science as I ever could in a religion. Although I have to admit I've never considered WW2 a question of atheism (which is worded badly but it's late night and can't be bothered to phrase it well), I can see where you're coming from.

Of course, and if it were not religion, it would be something else. I mean that convenient skin color excuse for example? Any excuse to point to a group of people and say "they aren't like us in some way!!!" is good enough to start a war if the will is there.

Depends which version of his biography you read. He's only a kind and loving God to everyone in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Other religions that decended from that same family tree don't make him out to be quite such a nice deity.

So true. Even if you outlawed religion, it would still persist, but be better hidden. There's plenty of historical examples for that. You'd never stamp out religion even if you could convince 99% of believers to recant. As long as one believer in one religion remains, there's that chance he can win others over to his cause. Even if he has the craziest UFO-cult religion on the planet, as Phineas T. Barnum is often quoted as having said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

I'm not saying that Christianity or any of the other major religions are equivalent to other UFO cults. I'm just saying that some people have the gift of being able to win others over to their cause, no matter what that cause is. You've got to be quite the talker to win someone over to the ideo of suicide bombing, don't ya think? I don't think the promise of 72 virgins in the afterlife would convince me. A bird in the hand s worth two in the.... *achem* bush, and my life is one hell of a bird in the hand.

As long as those kind of slick-talking people exist, the worst kind of religious extremism will persist.

A lot of Christian fundies have said this to me. I always told them that I thought they were full of shit. I guess if you can say that, they weren't quite so wrong as I thought. I believe there's something deeply wrong with the idea of atheism as a religion, or with the religion of science...

I'm an atheist myself. It shows, right? I don't treat it like a religion though. I treat it like the absense of religion. Science isn't sacred. It's a good tool, one of the best, but it's far from perfect and it's not something I put 'faith' in. For one thing, it doesn't require belief. The parts of science that work may be proved empirically.

It disturbs me a little that you can say this, but I'm sure it does no actual harm...

Well, putting faith in science isn't the same as putting faith in there not being a God. Atheism at it's root is the belief/faith that there is no God. And I don't particularly have faith in science either - I'm only going to believe in science if science can produce facts and strong correlations. My belief in it is dependent upon it's provable reality, not upon my concept of the word "science."

And as for WW2, you should probably buy The True Believer by Eric Hoffer as well. He goes to show how Christianity and Nazism were connected to each other through their use of similar systems to produce mass movements. Basically, faith is always going to be the antithesis of rationality, and thus able to produce any and all kind of atrocities without need for justification.

-nods- By saying I put my faith in science, I meant, as you say, I'm putting faith in there being no God. Sorry about the poor wording there. This takes in its own way as much blind trust as believing that there is a God, considering that there's no proof to say there's not and that human nature seems to need something beyond itself.

As for trusting the reliability and provability of science, in a philosophical sense that's as much of a belief in that we're trusting our senses and the appearance of the world to be true. But that would be going offtopic, so for the sake of arguement let's assume that everything we percieve exists and not turn this into an empirical arguement :D

Well, being a good talker is a lot more necessary concerning non-religious faith like Nazism. Hitler had to be a good talker, to the degree where the German people thought that this guy really could lead them to prosperity. If they happen to a kill a few million non-believers and evildoers along the way, all for the better. As for religions like Islam, the need for smooth talking is a lot less. This is because they have their Holy texts that speak of them being rewarded in heaven for fighting infidels.

Don't be mistaken, there are also verses that say violence is wrong, but they are much fewer in number. Just like the Christian Bible, there are many contradictions in messages. The difference is that Islam is VERY fundamental in the middle east, so the interpretations are always going to be pro-violence and pro-fighting infidels. Any other interpretation is considered unfaithful to Allah.

Here's a survey Harris inserts into his book.

Suicide Bombing In Defense of Islam: Is it ever Justifiable?

________________Yes___No_____DK/Refused
Lebanon_________82____12_________6
Ivory Coast______73____27_________0
Nigeria__________66____26_________8
Jordan__________65____26_________8
Bangladesh______58____23_________19
Mali____________54____35_________11
Senegal_________47____50_________3
Ghana__________44____43_________12
Indonesia_______43____54__________3
Uganda_________40____52__________8
Pakistan________38____38_________23
Turkey_________20____64_________14

So are we at war with Iraq? Or at war with Islam? Should people have freedom to choose a religion in which the majority of it's constituents are OK with suicide bombing non-believers?

Woah. Can I ask where you got the figures from, out of curiosity?
That's frightening...

Edit:
Ah sorry being slow. Noticed the Harris reference above it -blushes

The reason I said that I assume you need to be a good talker is because I assume that even the most devout of believers has some doubt. Your life is a bird in the hand. It's the one thing you know you have. These rewards in the afterlife are quite uncertain. You won't ever know for sure that you're going to get them until the job is done. Plus scholars disagree on the meaning of the verses in question.

Then there's the 'creative' tactics that involve various parts of a pig being interred along with the bodies of terrorists. That's whole extra bunch of uncertainty that can add to the problem.

Isn't it only natural to have some doubts? I mean, no matter how devout you are, there might just be nothing. No afterlife. Just worm food. That's a big risk for these sucide bombers.

Don't go there. Don't betray the founding principles of your nation just because of a few acts of terrorism. America was founded on freedom of religion.

That survey you posted is interesting, but is the data verifiable? If so, why is the question so broad? Is suicide bombing ever justfied? Well that 'ever' is a really nice touch, isn't it? It adds too many variables into the mix. Of course I'd rather say that it's not ever justified, but I didn't grow up in an that environment. Ask muslim people who grew up in my environment, and you'd get a completely different set of results. The answer then is to fix the enviroment in which they live.

Yeah, that's easier said than done.

Also after WWII, the concept of Existentialism/Absurdism was born, where the advocates of these concepts agree that human beings live in an irrational world in isolation.

It seems kind of pessimistic cause it is said that people will try to find meaning in this world but will fail in the process.

Actually the survey wasn't by him.

From the book: "Over 38,000 people recently participated in a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The results constitute the first publication of its Global Attitudes Project entitled "What the World Thinks in 2002." The survey included the following question, posed only to Muslims:

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justifiable in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified."


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Sam Harris showed the original results, and then lumped the "often/sometimes/rarely" into the "ever" category to show how many find it acceptable to any degree, period. Also, we have to keep in mind, this is suicide bombing specifically against civilian targets, non-combatants. Also keep in mind Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Iraq and Palestinian territories weren't included in the survey.


One of the things Eric Hoffer goes into is that the reason smooth talking isn't that necessary is because the believers willingly want to give up their private identities and become part of a system, a mass movement, especially when their current life is crap (aka Germany after WW1). It's appealing to many to give up your own decision making processes which may or may not work out in the end, for a system that's promising rewards as long as you stick to their rules.

Scholars have little to no influence on mainstream Islam in the middle east, so what does it matter? Plus, there may be different interpretations, but there's only so much wiggle room you get with honest interpretation. In Harris' book he devots 6 pages of text to quotes straight from the Koran speaking of how the infidels, non-believers should be punished to death. Christianity also has some verses like this in the Old Testament, but they're ignored for the most part because Christianity has become secularized. Christianity no longer does the witch-hunt thing. Islam still does.

It's natural for you to have doubts, yes. It's natural for most people living in America to have doubts, yes. It is not natural for middle eastern Muslims to have doubts, because if you have doubts, you are put to death for your non-belief. Actually, let me change that. It IS natural for them to have doubts, but the punishment for doubt is very severe so it effectively eliminates it. Die and go to heaven as a hero, or die as a traitor to God? These are your options in that society.

A few acts of terrorism? Do the people who die on a regular basis in Iraq not really count as people, then? Because they're dying everyday due to this terrorism caused by their religion. Would you defend freedom of religion to the extent to where you might allow a country of openly pro-suicide-bomb-civilian-Muslim zealots to immigrate into the US? Our government calls them terrorists, but they're just following their faith. Is religious doctrine important enough to sacrifice lives for? Even a single life? Not in my opinion.

*edit* Now, I know I may be coming off VERY anti-Muslim, but it's not out of racism. I could care less what race you are. If you're OK with killing civilians by blowing yourself up, regardless if it's a religious concept or not, it's completely unacceptable. Yes, verses can be interpreted differently by scholars, but mainstream mid-east Islam doesn't care - and most importantly, they are the one who represent Islam. You will get Muslim professors in the US claiming their religion is being "misrepresented" - but who are they to "correctly" interpret the religion? What matters is how the masses are interpreting it, and I don't think the idea of a jihad is any new concept to them. If anything, modern non-violent interpretations of the Koran are the dishonest interpretations, simply hoping to salvage the religion so it can survive in a growingly secular, rational world.

For the majority of Muslims in the mid east, the jihad against America is real, not imaginary. Our evil is real, not imaginary. And them going to heaven for killing us is real, not imaginary.

But we can't criticize it since, you know, it's religion.

I posted above the actual technicalities of the question. The bottom line is that these are civilian targeted suicide bombings. The question of "is it ever justifiable" would only have too many "variables" if you include military targets, in my opinion. However, the survey explicitely said civilian targets.

Moving this thread to PP since this discussion is getting political and stuff

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Sam Harris is full of shit. It'd be nice if he could stop jacking himself off to the humanism poster he hangs over his bed long enough to understand that injustices are perpetrated because humans are conditioned to form inclusive, and exclusive communities. That religion excludes based on faith is the leading cause of injustices in history is primarily because we've had tens of thousands of years when man could only explain the world supernaturally, as opposed to the 500 some-odd years of reason and logic.

I guess it's cool to also point out that concepts of justice are subjective, and that one society's conception of what is right may be radically different from others, irregardless of whether or not that justice is based on religion. Communism killed more people than two world wars, and you could hardly call it faith-based.

Have you ever lived in the middle east? Just because you're a Muslim in the middle east does not automatically make you a terrorist, that kind of thinking is blatant racial profiling - and defiantly something we should try to be avoiding.

No, that's only one side of the coin. Technically the "religious" atheists are a subset of atheists in general, who simply lack the belief in God. I stopped calling myself an atheist a while ago, because like you, most people assume the more extreme case.

Wait a second. Isn't it agnostics who simply don't believe, or is it that they just lack faith?

Agnostic –noun
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
2. a person who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge in some area of study.

Atheist -noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

Basically, according to the dictionary, atheists deny and/or don't believe in the existence of God. Agnostics simply say it cannot be proven one way or the other. You could say neither have religious faith, I suppose.

EDIT: For clarity's sake, I should say that neither have faith in a supreme being, rather than "religious faith." Because you can actually have religion without it being centered around a supreme being, as shown below (I love the dictionary.) It's only "especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency." But you can have a religion based upon something like the big bang theory, as well. Which is why scientology exists.
Religion –noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

So, basically, Sam Harris wrote a book about something that everyone should already be aware of.

I'm not anti-religion, I'm just saying that anyone with eyes and the ability to string two ideas together, should already be aware of what the situation is.

ah, but you're missing the point. He probably used really long words to explain it. :p

Mississippi. Mississippi is a long word.

Cat. Cat is a short word.

Cat is not as short as "at."

Look at that cat. Look at it. That cat is fat. That cat is short. Look at that short fat cat. My hat fits that cat. My hat is fat, and short. Put the short fat hat on the short fat cat. Look at that short fat cat in the short fat hat. Look at that! Here comes longcat! Longcat is loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong

I think we've gone a little off subject here. I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with the statement that "Faith is, in a nutshell, the largest hindrance we've had to peace and justice in this world." I pose that fear (not faith) and the symptoms of fear (anger, jealousy, greed) would be such a hindrance. Faith, as I've come to find, often results in an absence or at least a quieting of fear, and therefore cannot possibly be a hindrance to peace and justice.

People like killing each other, people will always like killing each other, every year people discover new and exciting ways to kill each other.
As long as people have things to kill each other with, they'll kill each other.
I don't think it really matters what we try and blame it on.

Faith, in itself, is by no means a hinderance. That's absolutely ludicrous.

I think faith is an extremely valuable thing to humanity as it gives us drive and motivation, sight and inspiration.

I think the major flaw in religion is that it encourages us to put faith in something other than ourselves. We are very easy to be swayed into this position.

If faith is put in good motion in the right direction, it is an asset. If it is used against each other or to create literally a "holy mess," then we're doing something wrong.

I agree totally, Sass. That's why I said I disagreed with that original statement. :)

To further illustrate my point, I'll use a personal experience. My trust was betrayed in one of the worst ways by someone I thought would never betray it. Because of that, I've lost faith not only in people, but also in God AND in myself. That last being the biggest one, and a catalyst for the lost faith in everything else. Without faith in myself, I'm more susceptible to fear, and that fear has made me do some things I'm very ashamed of - not even necessarily big things, but I'm lashing out at people more frequently, and not caring how they feel. I was so focused on myself, because I was afraid to put any part of my life or my choices in others' hands. And then there were negative consequences. It's easy to see how the absence of faith can destroy us.

But yes. Faith in anything other than ourselves can also be destructive. I would disagree that faith in God is destructive, because God is greater than ourselves, in my opinion, but for me it's not blind faith motivated from fear. I'm sure you can see the difference, and the connection there. Blind faith in anything can very probably become destructive.

The only problem I see with this is the fact that if the things you stated were to be accomplished by secular institutions, such institutions would have to take the role of a god.
Part of what keeps a persons behavior in check is the thought that a God that seeks justice could be watching. If there is no metaphysical god then a government run by people just as falty as the common citizen has to keep watch and be in the citizens mind when someone wants to misbehave. I dont like the idea of such a merciless lack of privacy or the standards that faulty people deal out to meet justice in the name of their own authority.

I disagree. In a world that is just plain miserable for most folks historically and now, faith in a higher power has proven its self to be the biggest life saver for humanity.
When human stregnth and brain power has failed you will always find people huddled together with the common bond of faith.
When deaths hand draws near, for many faith is the one thing that eases the passage from life.

I don't believe for a second that this is universally true. Even in the cases where it is true I'm sure that it's far more prominent in the mind of someone contemplating rape or murder that he could receive punishment in the here and now rather than that he may be judged by God.

There ya go, I can make unsupported statements too. You can't assume that.

Also, that depends on what kind of behavious people think their god expects from them.

Faith seems like a bad scapegoat for humanity's stupidity. The decline of faith in the 20th century has been accompanied by two of the biggest, bloodiest wars in history. I'm not saying that there is a causal relationship from the former to the latter. It's just that if faith and religions were such major causes of carnage as some folks would have us believe, we should expect to see a decline of violence following a major decline in religion and faith. That has not been the case. People don't need extra help from religion or any other abstract aid in order to justify screwing each other over.

I don't see much value in putting faith in ourselves, either. I see billions of people out there who are brutalizing each other, and yet no one thinks that they themselves are part of the problem. I doubt anyone claims that they are part of problem. Similarly, no one thinks that they are a roadblock to the solution to our world's problems. And yet, there is a whole lot of evil stuff going on in the world. Obviously, a lot of people must have misjudged themselves. No one ever really stops and asks if he himself is part of the problem.

I'm sorry to hear that. Let me give some of my own personal experience, though. I was hurt in a very attrocious way back when I was in the eighth grade, and I did something very similar to what you describe: I shut myself off from others. If I don't go far outside of myself, I don't get hurt as much. But you know what I discovered? Loving someone else requires you to open yourself up to getting hurt. The more you love someone, the harder it hurts if they reject you. And yet, I think human experience agrees with me when I say that love is worth it. Love assures us that we are not alone in the world, and it makes life worth living. I know that doesn't get rid of the pain. I don't think deep wounds completely heal in our lifetimes. But don't let that stop you from learning to love. Learning to forgive, especially in the most attrocious cases, is helpful, too. Very difficult, but worth it.

I'd argue that having faith in ourselves is not the solution. No matter how we define 'having faith in oneself', I guarantee that we can find at least one premium example of such a person that fit the definition that was also a monster. Having faith in oneself seems to relate too closely with self-love. There is no shortage of self-love in the universe, and most if not all of the world's problems can be traced back to one person/people seeking only after their own narrow self interests.

IMHO, it seems the only solution there is to this mess we're in is to stop pursuing our own self-interests and start seeking after the common good. It's only when we ditch our own self-love and care enough about all people that people will stop trying to screw each other over. Not that I think humanity as a whole is capable of such a thing on its own, but I don't think it is impossible for some people to overcome their narrow self-interests. Think Mother Theresa.

Mother Theresa's interests were tied into aiding the Untouchables, who she felt compelled in part by her faith to aid as best as she could.

"Self-interests" are ultimately subjective, and there's no such thing as a "common good." Anybody's vision of a common good is going to end up disadvantaging one group in favor of another, and as hard as ideologues have tried to create unstratified societies, they've never pulled it off.

I'd also say that nobody has the right to dictate what is the "common good," because perceptions of the common good will vary according to culture.

It's an interesting point that someone brought up, earlier, that they believe people only do things because they think a supreme being might be watching over them. I find that to be a ridiculous notion.

Brady, I think the common good can be ratified by values common to all or a vast majority of peoples. For example, the greater good could be something simple as ensuring survivability (i.e. necessary provisions such as food, shelter, at least something resembling healthcare whether holistic or western medicine) for all those within the society. As far as I know, it is recognized amongst all cultures that humans need to eat to survive, they also require some sort of shelter, and healing.

I do not need religion or faith to make utilitarian decisions. Hedonistic calculus, man, whatever produces the greatest good for the largest number of people.

Who said anything about unstratified societies? 'Common good' does not refer to a state of being where everyone is treated "equally," whatever that may mean. 'Common good' refers to a state of affairs where the group of people is more important than the individuals that compose it. The mentality that I am describing is not theoretical. It was a mentality that existed until the Enlightenment, when the individual gained unrivaled precedence over society.

At any rate, you are reading much more into my words than I said. I said nothing about stratified or unstratified societies, or anything along those lines. All I said is that narrow self-interests create more problems than it solves. I don't have to think long before I can come up with an example of needless death and destruction just because President Joe wanted better materials to make his yacht.

The lack of agreement about what the common good is does not demonstrate that there is no such thing as the common good. Nor does it prove that there can never be such agreement. Is the term problematic? Sure it is. Most, if not all, philosophical questions are. The modern idea of 'freedom' is equally as problematic.

Besides, based on the second to last discussion I had with you, you don't seem to think that ethical principles are rationally discernable anyway, so what is the point of debating this with you? According to that philosophy, all we are doing is emoting, anyway.

I'm well aware of that, yet the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment was also marked by brutal European imperialism, and the concept of the "common good" was for the sake of common white men.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to find more cases where somebody tried to make the world better, and ended up making it worse than you would with "narrow self-interests."

I think ethical principles are subjective and not universal, and while you can create a body which determines what is and isn't ethical, there will always be someone who disagrees.

The only people capable of determining as a group what qualifies as the common good, are nationals. Aside from the basics of law, being that murder, theft, and in some cases assault are bad, everything else is flavor determined by the dominant forces in society, irregardless of whether or not those forces represent a majority.

In order to "end injustice" and to establish a universal "common good," you would have to create a global authority and culture, and considering basic factors such as religion, ethnicity, locality, history, and other aspects of culture it simply ain't gonna happen, either in this or other lifetimes.

In order for there to be a universally established common good, humanity as a whole does have to accept it on its own. Humanity itself must change its nature, and as I believe you've implied it, if we have to rely on some type of authority to steer humanity in that direction, ultimately the only case of that ever happening, in my opinion, is if we're engaged in inter-special war with aliens, or by altering our very biology. Neither of which is a good option in my opinion.

I think individualism is destructive and so I really do not like the idea of theories such as emotivism or subjectivism dominating ethical principles. Cultural Relativism is another theory I say we can do without. It stuns me to how any rational person would agree to use these theories as a working model for society -- any society. These are a dangerous set of ideals because it stops all cause for people to question their own actions and customs. I believe absolute moral truths do exist and the only way of discovering them is through reason. For example:

Relativism: In certain parts of the world we know young girls have their genitals mutilated. While western society tends to vehemently disagree with the practice we do however agree that different cultures follow different customs. In short, it is no way prudent of us to force our morals onto other cultures. The relativist at this point would call it a day and go for a pint. The rational person instead would ask, did the young girl agree to the procedure? One simple question and the theory shatters because in not consulting with the girl beforehand, she is simply being used as a means to an end. This blindly followed custom robs the girl of her own reason and dignity. Reason tells us there are likely very few girls and women who would agree to circumcision and so as a working ethical theory relativism collapses.

As for faith. There is no room for a personal God in my life. Religion is nothing more than a tool to rob people of free thought. Religion stifles imagination. Crushes wonder. Leaves no room for questions about the stars and heavens. Religion is the cause of many strifes, misery, pain, suffering and deaths around the world. So powerful is religion, such a corruption of the mind, people are willing to end their own life by flying an aeroplane into a building because of their faith. Their belief that God has reserved a special place in heaven for those who work in His service. Religion is fear. Fear of the unknown that awaits us. Fear of an omnipotent God who will burn us with smoke and fire for eternity if we deny Him. If science is a torch, religion is an extinguisher.

What a bunch of self-delusional bullshit. You trounce religion yet have the gall to declare that there are absolute moral truths? It is wrong to force our morals on other cultures, because the end result is violent resistance. The end result is a people who feel as if they are no longer their own, and if we want to change foreign cultures, it should be through the demonstration of the superior qualities of our own, not some absolutist moral crusade where we go into some African backwater and make people who still can't get irrigation right understand the concept of ability to consent. We still practice ritual male circumcision in this country, but female circumcision makes so many more heads shake because it's culturally acceptable to us that women possess a clitoris or a clitoral hood, but men can't have foreskins because it's "icky." We can't even establish the right to consent in male infants, and you still insist that we should also deny the ability of an indigenous people to consent to our moral crusades?

No god encouraged the murder of millions through the totalitarianism of communist and fascist regimes.

Claiming that there are absolute moral truths is like putting a dog in a sweater vest. To reject individualism denies that people are at their base simple animals who lucked out in regards to opposable thumbs and a higher ability to reason. Individualism is no more destructive than communism, because both cases produce sociopaths, which are ultimately the greatest cause of destruction in history. Not religion, and not the value of individuality.

Religon was intended as a means of guidance for people at their wits end, but being maintained by humans has made it like anything else, anything but beyond corruption and the poor followers can be none the wiser. In worse cases it's all they know to have faith in especially if it's all they've ever known from birth, it becomes about as part of being human for them as something like the ability to talk.

I'm not going to even attempt listing examples of corruption making religon questionable to have faith in as it's a flamewar waiting to happen... (although that leaves me open to "BUT U HAVE NO EVIDENCE! >B(" but I'd rather that then going into religons facts and fictions). Let's just say we can blame the pioneer diehard fanboys/girls for many of the religous or 'holy' wars of the past and the people at the top adjusting religon values to say what they want to manipulate people and laugh their ass off while they go off and do their bidding for them.

To say it's the end of faith is impossible because it keeps so many people going, I can't see religon ever completly disappearing the only difference now is information is more available to people to know better between when it's good advice and when the guy giving advice is taking the piss... it's the year 2007 having faith in only one things set of values is to say the least pretty primitive >.>

Edit: Brady Wins this thread for the self delusional bullshit post alone

Sure. And thus European imperialists' actions can be judged to have been too limited in scope in whose good was being served. Notice that the principle I am putting forward of stepping out of oneself and looking after the goods of all over one's own person interests is not being contradicted by the example you are giving. All the imperialists were doing was looking after their own interests. I don't see how that is a valid counterexample.

And I'd argue that we don't establish moral principles. They exist whether we like them or not.

You're right. Theft and murder are instances of actions that are universally taboo. Few would deny the principle, even if they disagreed on the application.

Again, ethical principles are not determined by people, whether they be nationals or otherwise. Any person is capable of discovering something that already exists.

You are missing my point entirely. This isn't some utopian program. I've said it once, and now I'm going to repeat myself. My point is a lot tamer than the one you are trying to pin on me. Let's perform a thought experiment, not an actual plan of action or a now or future state of affairs, but a world of make believe. Now image that the prevelance of narrow-self interest was reduced to a level where people took only what they needed to survive, and they had so much respect for human life that they would volutarily give what they did not need to those who had not. Why? Because they valued themselves more than they valued themselves What incentive would there be for things such as world wars, etc?

Again, this is not reality, nor do I think that such a reality can ever exist. The point of the thought experiment, and the point that I've been making all along, is that if there were no libido/ will to power for more than what was needed to satisfy, most of the incentive for the most terrible crimes of our century would not exist. Hence, I think I've discovered a cause of a lot of the evil in the world. It's not as if I'm coming up with a new idea. I think most political philosophers and ordinary men of common sense have agreed. Where they disagree is in how essential the promotion of our own self-interests is to our own natures.

I don't think humans will be able to change their natures. I'm actually quite politically conservative, if you care to know. There's a difference between isolating the causes of our species' woes in addition to what would hypothetically be needed to eliminate those causes, and claiming that such a state of affairs is actually possible. No where do I say that such a state of affairs is possible. My proposition is hypothetical: If we want to eliminate the biggest source of our world's problems, then people need to stop looking after their own narrow self-interests.

Not that I deny that people can put aside their own narrow self-interests on an individual basis. Mother Theresa is an obvious example of virtue, even if virtue to that degree is rare. But even if the state of affairs will never exist on a global level, that shouldn't stop me as an individual from practicing self-denial. If people hate you, and despise you, and utter every slander against you, love them anyway. It's not a matter of good intentions; I can have good intentions while committing murder. It's about establishing the rightness of actions along with the right intentions, aimed at the good of all rather than of the ego.

It's not just that. The fundamental fault of communalism is that by forcing unity, it generally means that those which are incapable of conforming, or don't want to conform end up being shunned. Conformity in European society became racial during and after the Age of Exploration, therefore their perception of the "communal good" was hardly limited in any reasonable scope. That's why I don't like this idea of a common good, because historically it's always been used by a central authority, whether a totalitarian or populist one, to force conformity and persecute the "others."

Is it possible that we'll come to a genuinely just "communal good?" Maybe, but we'd have to come to the conclusion as a race naturally, and consentually, or else forcing the situation only exacerbates the problem.

And yet, those moral principles exist because of causal reasons. As I've mentioned before, the only absolutes involving morals throughout all cultures is that murder is wrong, theft is wrong, and assault is wrong. Everything else is flavor, and usually many moral, ethical, and legal codes attempt to justify some cases of theft, murder, and assault by establishing a sympathetic circumstance. Dueling, for instance, was considered an honor killing, and practically nobody was sentenced for it in its heydey. In Arab culture, rape is sometimes acceptable. In some African tribes, cannibalism is a natural result of warfare.

All of these codes are subjectively determined based on circumstance and other causal criteria.

Yet Ethical principles are determined by people. Ethical codes wouldn't even exist if it weren't for controversies surrounding an event, and the end result of those codes is usually caused by a certain amount of debate and consent among a body, whether it be communal, societal, or governmental. Because no two cultures have the exact same ethical principles is enough to establish that they are subjective, and aren't merely "found."

It sounds like a brutal, albeit socially gratifying life of subsistance farming.

And as you've said, it's all based on an if. The reason people want more is because what they have doesn't satisfy them. How much it takes to get to a point of satisfaction is dependent on the individual. Some of them are never satisfied, yet that's also ok depending on the cultural climate. Individualism has nothing to do with the pursuit of "narrow self-interest" because the individual is still a social animal, and helping others whether through charity or the bonds of friendship and family, ultimately ties back into one's own self-interest. "Narrow self-interest," I think, is a buzzword used to attempt to refute the notion of individualism by associating an individualistic term to sociopathy.

Well, I do, and no I don't care.

Claiming that righteousness doesn't serve the ego is a horrifying case of denial. If helping the outcasts didn't make Mother Theresa feel good about herself, she would've never done it. Using terms like "narrow self-interest" itself appeals to the ego, because it entices people to give up behaviors which may not necessarily actually be destructive in order to inflate their own egoes.

I do think people can change their natures, but only through ideologies and the embracing of fundamental truths, such as the needs of the ego. If people truly understood why they do things, and why others commit harm I believe we'd then be on the track to something legitimately resembling a "greater good;" and no, applying buzzwords to social disorders isn't going to get us there.

Is it purely coincidental that male circumcision is viewed as acceptable to western cultures and at the same time shows up in scripture? I can only wonder, if God asked for the removal of the labia how many millions of women in North America would undergo the procedure without consent in the same manner as their male counterpart. I am willing to bet quite a few. Although male circumcision is accepted it is still widely debated simply because the child has no say in the matter.

Brady, I want to be clear on your position so correct me if I have misunderstood. You're saying that because certain societies are less fortunate, moral truths ought not to apply to them and more, do not exist at all? This is the equivalent of suggesting that 2 + 2 only equals 4 in certain societies with higher education. Moral truths are no different than logical truths. Also, in calling it the moral crusade, you seem concerned that moral truths are nothing more than an iron curtain. This isn't the case. Moral truths are not forced onto people. It is not like the ten commandments. The rational person only has to think about murder to know it's wrong. There is no need to look it up in the criminal code or scripture.

It's interesting that you reject moral truths because the study of ethics is to do just that. Ethics is the attempt to derive our values from facts. You are free to believe that we are forever hopeless in ever finding moral truths but I just happen to think of them as quite real and obtainable.

Last thing, I want to clarify the contradiction you believe I have made. My view on morality and religion are very much separate. Moral truths are discoverable through reason. These are not rules codified by the elite and forced onto others. All humans have the ability to discover the same moral truth. In the same manner that all humans have the ability to understand that 2 objects when added to another 2 objects equals 4 total objects. And so I have not contradicted myself because while religion is an iron curtain, moral truths are not.

Apologies for the scatterbrained post.

That's because there is no moderate case of atheism. Lacking a belief in God can be both agnostic and atheist. However, when getting more specific, atheism is that you have faith there is no God, and agnostic is you believe there's no current evidence supporting God. Maybe you should check up on definitions before you start using labels.

Yes, it leads to a quieting of fear for some people who are fearful. However, fear is not the enemy. Example: Germans became much less fearful of the state of their country due to their faith in Hitler. Their faith in Hitler and his message even led them to consider Jews non-human - quite the feat for faith. Muslim extremists have much less fear from dying in suicide bombs if they have faith they go to heaven and meet Allah. Christian fundies have no fear of ruining the lives of homosexuals because they have faith that God is on their side. If you remove faith in each case, each group would've had enough fear that they were doing the wrong thing to prevent injustices. Fear of doing the wrong thing is a very good emotion, indeed. Faith, on the other hand, is the main cause of these atrocities. Faith can also lead people to do wonderful, caring things, but there is no need for our dependency on it anymore. The US is slowly evolving into a purely secular society as is many other first world countries, and we no longer need faith as a catalyst in producing love or care for each other.

Agreed, Sass. Harris goes on into a conclusion part of his book that he included with the reprint with questions or criticisms people had against his argument. One such criticism was that having faith in each other is necessary and useful, and he agreed. His statements against faith were primarily statements against believing the irrational over the rational, and justice verses injustice. A better word to use for this personal faith in others would be "confidence." Faith for me, at this point, is defined as belief in the irrational.


You can't use the word "faith" in such a general context and actually believe it to be true. You know why the middle east is in complete turmoil? Faith. If you suddenly made them a faithless, godless society, there would be no violence, because they would be forced to depend on rationality to resolve disputes. You take away faith in Allah, what have you to fight about? Nothing. If you take away faith that one race is superior than another, what have you to fight about? Nothing. One may claim "oh they'll find something to fight about" - but this is hardly true. People don't enjoy killing others unless they think they're fighting for a cause, whether it be religious or secular. In America's case, many of the reasons why we fight are based on premises of freedom and individual liberty which can certainly be grounded rationally, unlike belief in Allah. Not to say we haven't committed atrocities, but you must look at the intent of the aggressor, not simply the outcome.

Incorrect. There are millions of Atheists and Agnostics who could care less about God yet live moral lives. This implies there is an inherent morality in us that isn't restricted to religious doctrines. We can establish moral foundations without needing a God.

Perhaps faith was declining in the 20th century to a degree, but guess what happens when war starts? It's the CHRISTIAN USA verses the heathen godless communists, or heathen godless nazis! The US feels justified in destroying atheist/communist regimes not strictly because of humanitarian reasons, which it should be, but because we're fighting the good fight on God's side! That's how it was marketed to the masses of the US, and it worked.

But categorizing faith in ourselves is not simply a self-interest. It is faith in each other as well, as a community, a nation, a world. It is not simply confidence in yourself, but confidence in others.


But the premise is, once you get rid of faith itself, that will remove the religious/historical/local/ethnic barriers blocking us from a common moral ground. We can say with honesty that we all want happiness for ourselves and for each other in general. Only when faith, belief in the irrational, enters that picture will people's views on happiness end up distorted in some hate/bias against others happiness.

Are you going to tell me that the middle east tradition of beating women for exposing 3 inches of skin is up to subjective morality? You're saying that it isn't inherently wrong to beat someone for showing a bit of the stomach? What kind bullshit morality does this lead to?

Using our views on circumcision as the crux for this argument is laughable. Get a new line. We're talking human rights, not cleaning up genitalia skin.

No, but undeniable FAITH did. I think this topic is getting too religious in general. Harris' argument is against FAITH. Hitler called for faith from his followers, as do all great leaders. They call for their masses to follow their hearts, not their head - this is faith in the most absolute sense, following your heart. And when it comes to human justice and injustice, faith should never be a factor.

Your argument for self-interest fails, because it is in our self interest that the people around us are happy as well.

Conformity, no doubt, to faith based principles such as: jews are evil, russians are evil, God is evil, Islam is evil, Christianity is evil, blah blah etc. Persecution of others always has it's roots in faith: the population who persecutes has faith in their doctrine or their leader that some group is evil, regardless of rationality.

Are you saying rape is sometimes acceptable? Are you saying cannibalism, in this day an age, is acceptable? They probably thought they'd gain magical powers from eating each other, and they probably still do. Honor, back in it's heyday, was almost as grand a concept as faith, aka bullshit. No rational basis. Honor is an imaginary concept, and if it produces unwarranted unnecessary death, what's the use of it? None, which is why it faded into the past in light of secular rationality. Your argument that there's no universal morals beyond murder theft and assault is true, but that doesn't make it right. Letting cultures beat and rape women just because they're a "different culture" is NOT legitimate. Just because a culture is different doesn't mean they're equally rational or justified in their systems of justice. Why hell, why don't we just send all our rapists and abusers into these cultures??? That way they can do whatever the fuck they want and not get in trouble for it! That's justice in your eyes, right? Bullshit. God forbid we step on Allah's toes and tell them to respect women as equal intelligent individuals.

The bottom line is that the more faith-centered a culture/group is, the more irrational and unjust it tends to be. This includes Hitler. This includes most of Christianity's past and some of it's present. This includes almost all of Islam's past and present, with the exception of those Muslims in the minority now adopted to modern day secular culture. Secular rationality will lead to universal moral standards, but unfortunately there is too much faith clouding the world for this to happen anytime soon.

Murder someone for being taller than 4'0", and the world will agree you're immoral.
Murder someone for faith-based reasons, and Bradylama the world will say you're from a different culture.
Murder someone for faith-based reasons in a purely secular world, and the world will agree you're immoral.

Religion is about as important in Europe as good hygiene, yet people still identify themselves based on ethnic backgrounds, and what religion they were born into, irregardless of whether or not they have faith in it, or even go to churches, synagogues, or mosques.

The absence of faith doesn't get rid of cliques, it doesn't get rid of history, location, or skin color. It doesn't get rid of income, social position, or class. It doesn't distribute resources evenly (nothing really can).

Even in the absence of faith, people will find a way to preserve their identities, and it'll be based on the simplest of things.

Hell, it doesn't even get rid of subcultures. Especially not the really weird ones. You know what I mean...

Yeah, if Arabs think beating women is ok within the right context (to us, very silly ones) then morality is subjective. I prefer to think that understanding subjective perspectives of morality would lead people to understand what aspects are truly beneficial to the greatest amount of people possible, and the answer I believe lies in individuality and self-determination. Because it's ok for Arabs to keep beating their women doesn't mean that it's ok for us to do it, because it isn't culturally kosher. If you think that somebody could effectively convince enough guys to beat women (ladder theorists), well, the law and social norms would have something to say about it.

This is not an endorsement of Arab behavior. We think beating women is horrible, and through the virtues of our own society, hopefully they'll end up coming to the same conclusion. Attempting to force our morality on them, however, hasn't come to any good whatsoever. There's a war going on which proves my point.

Is the ability to offer consent to mutilation not a human right? Removing the foreskin is relatively analogous to removing the clitoral hood, so how many of you ladies would be ok without it?

My point is that there are underlying hippocracies in the argument which are based upon our own societal norms. What right do we have to tell other people to stop committing genital mutilation when we continue to perform it ritualistically? Infants can't even offer consent.

Granted. Consequently, the very reason Hitler came to power was by playing off of the fears of Germans for Jews and Communists, and by making false promisses to industrialists and workers. People "had faith" that Hitler would lead Germany into great nation status, which he did. The side effect, of course, was a world war and the systematic murder of millions.

It's essentially not much of a leap from voting for any politician in a democracy. You cast a vote for the representative or party that you believe will act in your best interests.

The end result I'm getting from this argument is that the inevitable solution to the politics problem is no politics, and social or market anarchies.

... Capitalists are evil, the nobility is evil, the white man is evil. The persecution of others does not require faith, because it can be as simple as the extraction of resources.

It didn't require faith when Colombus committed genocide against the Arawaks, although it did help him sleep at night. Cognitive dissonance has as much to do with, or may even function independantly of faith.

"It's ok to kill Jews, they destroyed Germany."

"These niggers deserve slavery, they can't even carry the hoes in."

Cognitive dissonance, of course, is highly irrational, yet it has no real basis on faith.

European Imperialism subjugated millions, and slaughtered hundreds of thousands (millions when you count plagues in the Americas), yet it wasn't based on faith, but real political interests, such as the spice trade and gold production.

Acceptable? I never claimed we should embrace rape or cannibalism, but at the same point we have to be willing to tolerate it within cultural and societal bounds. If we don't allow people to determine for themselves what is right and wrong, then we deny them the very self-determination that we supposedly value, as well as end up with bloody messes.

Honor has its use in posturing. By establishing that one possesses honor, one makes oneself more marketable to those that are interested in egaging with or doing business with one. The concept of honor hasn't gone away, dueling has, because it was perceived that fights to the death were counterproductive.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll listen.

I never said it was right, and you're coming up with an end which I never implied. Obviously shipping off rapists to the middle east doesn't fit with our concept of justice, because we prefer punitive sentences to exile.

You're applying the misconception that subjective perspective is equal perspective. What I'm saying is that forcing people to come to the "right conclusion" creates more problems than it solves. If that conclusion is self-evident, let them figure it out.

Don't you mean the entirety of human history, written and uknown? Secular rationality may lead to universal moral standards, but I don't buy that it'd make the world a better place. No matter what, the ability to use force always exists, and it's not that hard to get enough people to support you by appealing to their greed.

If you're going to tell me that no faith will eliminate greed, then get the fuck out of here.

Many of those things you listed are intertwined to such a degree that there's basically two subjects. One is ethnic/historical background, and while the end of faith will not erase these, it will cause the irrational prejudice caused by these systems to cease. You can no longer hate someone for being black because he's dumber than white people. You have to hate him simply for being black. As you can see, racism of this kind would be based simply on hatred, not faith-based hatred that your race is better.

As for SES, it's true it will remain in faithless societies as well as possible injustices caused by them, but the playing field will be greatly leveled when equality is truly reached through non-discrimination of the previous category.

Well, in my opinion I don't care what society you come from or what culture you come from. If you beat other human beings for irrational religions reasons, you are immoral. That's simply a matter of fact in a rational world.

As for your view on how to convert their society, their faith blinds them to virtues of our society. Their faith says men are in control of all aspects of life and women are not. That's how it's always been, and it's worked for thousands of years, why change now? Giving women equal rights doesn't necessarily improve a society's wealth, a society's military, or most importantly a society's faith, so what virtues could possibly be found in it?

This is where your argument falls flat on it's face. Are you saying Iraqi women consent to be treated like dogs? That's because they know of no other life. Their acceptance is based on irrational faith-based doctrine. Make no mistake, these religious beliefs hold no credible weight whatsoever in the real world, yet we accept them as realities? This is unacceptable. If a parent in today's society raises a child that expects abuse, does that make it OK? Certainly not. And it doesn't matter if the Parents are following a magical guide book created by an elf in their closet, it is unacceptable period.

And that's exactly my point. It's a faith-based ideology. If this practice is to remain in our society it should be wholly based on rational scientific data showing pros and cons. If there are neither pros nor cons, it can be left up to the individual since it becomes purely a visual decision, if you know what I mean. This foreskin argument, however, has no impact on non-faith-based ideologies such as individual freedoms, which I feel need to be spread to all cultures.

Oh but I think it does. If a communist tells you all capitalists are money grubbing whores, does he give you a fact sheet listing corporations that have done such things? That you can corroborate on your own? Getting unbiased sources, making an informed decision? I think not. All hate such as this is dependent on faith in your information source. And when it comes to things like hating groups of people, we should never take someone else's word for it. We can see how it is indeed faith that leads us to make uninformed hateful conclusions.

We can sit here and list the legitimate reasons he did it, but that's not the point. What did he tell his fellow officers when he tried to convince them to help him kill all these people? Did he say "well, they really bother me and I think we should kill them"? I think not. It was most likely an impassioned speech about the godless natives who want to destroy their holy christian doctrine of Jesus, and their holy country etc etc. You can't just rally people up to kill a bunch of other people unjustly without a faith-based justification.

I disagree. You can't make a group look guilty unless you label them - and these labels are always faith-based issues, such as one race being better than the other, or one religion being better than the other.

But to get the backing of your fellow officers and population who do the actually killing, you can't say "we need more spice so the King can get more money, so you're going to have to kill these people." Humans HAVE to label others in order to separate themselves from that person, and faith-based labels are always at the forefront. Faith in your race being better, faith in your country being better, faith in anything without rational unbiased evidence. Your arguments would be better supported if you could show me actual lectures or speeches that were given at the time to rally people up.

But in these societies people aren't allowed to determine for themselves what is right and wrong in the first place, because they don't have that individual freedom to do so! The middle east has been the same situation religiously for the past how many thousands of years? Yet now they're really rich because of oil, with big weapons and lots of followers. See how the situation has changed for the worse? How do you expect them to dig themselves out of a hole when we keep on pilling dirt into it by accepting their lifestyle?

It may survive in very remedial ways, but it's power has lessened tremendously. Now we have rational terms like dependability, efficiency, friendliness, customer support, etc. Honor, as an idea and a word, died a long time ago.

I never said we need to force them to our way of life. However, accepting that they can beat women as long as the women don't complain is a vicious circle. The women don't complain because then they'll be beaten. They don't run away because they'll be hunted down and killed, and what of the children? Do you really think us sitting here being accepting of their way of life is going to encourage them to change??


Hahah, no it won't eliminate violence in the name of greed. But if greed would become the new major sin of the world instead of faith, I'd be fine with that. At least the people who were committing crimes would all KNOW they were doing wrong, instead of thinking they're fighting some glorious battle.

I don't really think there can ever be a true equality. People are always able to find ways to stratisfy their societies, and while the frequency of "injustice" may be lowered, it'll never be eliminated. It's also possible to hate blacks because of "black culture."

No it isn't. Reason itself is subjective. The only form of thought that is objective is logic, yet logical conclusions may still not be right.

What you're creating here is a cultural conflict, in which one culture, presumably ours, cannot accept the existance of another culture, Arab ones, on the same planet. This creates problems because it implies to Arabs that we consider them an enemy, meaning that we are their enemy. You may not feel that way, but carried to its extreme through interventionist relations (essentially what is happening now) you end up with a clash of civilizations, if not at the least terrorism.

Uh, why did Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers have to become secular rationalists? Use what God gave you. :P

I really don't think you're getting any of my points. Granted, doing this like a quote-war probably isn't helping your concentration, but these things are like Pringles. Pay some fucking attention.

Genital mutilation isn't practiced based on faith in this country. If anything, it's practiced because of a doctor's recommendation, or as a fashion statement. One case is illogical, the other unreasonable. Which one is based on faith?

Communism only provided a theory and alternative for what people already felt, that they were being screwed over by industrialists, and that an exhorbitant amount of wealth was being distributed to them and away from the working class. Ultimately, communism is about forced equality and socialistic brotherhood. That brotherhood just comes at the price of everything looking like a government housing project and a post office, and in the case of the actual attempt at communism, almost always ends up being headed by sociopaths, because they tend to be drawn to movements of violent revolution.

Faith is also a matter of trust. You can't trust anybody without placing a reasonable amount of faith in them. The Germans trusted Hitler, the Cubans trusted Che Guevera, etc., etc., yet if we denied ourselves the ability to trust, how would we ever develop meaningful interpersonal relationships?

None of the Conquistadores bought that. Everybody in Columbus's first voyage new that the Arawaks were technologically primitive militarily, and could never pose any kind of threat to Christian Europe. What was simple, however, was convincing them that there were gold and women there for the taking. Religion was a factor, of course, but it was mostly to ease their consciences and justify their actions while establishing the means to convert the primitives. In the absence of religion and faith, I doubt faith would have been a factor, and they still would've gone ahead with it.

Cognitive Dissonance, in case you didn't know, is the behavior associated with demonizing a demographic in order to justify your intent to persecute them. On his first voyage, Columbus had a lot of praise for the Arawak people in his journal, yet when he returned with Spain's military might he described them as stupid and warlike whereas before he considered them beautiful and inquisitive. Would he have made these claims if he didn't think the Arawaks had gold? I doubt it.

Jingoism itself is a real political ideology which justifies the actions of one's nation, because one's nation should be at the forefront of the world stage. If one is a national, why shouldn't one want his nation to be the best? While Imperialism may have been justified by racism and ethnocentricity (you know a lot about that don't you?) ultimately it could never exist without the desire to consume and to live in a great nation. The appeal was to the ego and didn't require faith. Jingoism died as an ideology, because the effects of constant warfare took their toll, and encouraged people to seek alternatives in regard to foreign diplomacy.

They've only been dominated by Islam since the 8th century, so it's only been slightly more than a thousand. Arab tribal culture, however, goes back a considerably farther timeframe, and in many respects is based on the same nomadic cultures which birthed Abraham and the Jews, and as legend has it due to Ishmael, the Arabs themselves.

The Western World has been Christian dominated since the Edict of Milan in 313. It took us 500 years after a dark age and subsequent enlightenments before we've even started to toy with the idea of faithless societies. The Arab world is currently in their own dark age, and they have to come out of it naturally, otherwise we end up with collapsed towers and dead soldiers, in addition to all of the other innocent Arabs who end up being killed, all so that we can impose our own values on their society and still fail, because they can't accept a system of government which doesn't adhere to Sharia law.

You still think this is just?

The Soviets understood that Chinese communism was different from Vietnamese communism, was different from Soviet communism, yet right now we've made a mistake in regards to considering how Democracy would work in the Middle East. As one blogger put it, it's as if we all thought that Arabs were just "Americans in funny outfits."

In our own society, men had to be convinced to give up their power in order to foment equality for women and minorities. We still have a lot of problems regarding race relations in this country, and you think that we should be imposing our values on a foreign culture?

Not dictating what is right and wrong to Arabs is no more an acceptance of wife beating than prosecuting "curb stompers" is an acceptance of homosexuality. Stop being an idiot.

So you've just entrapped a concept in business-friendly buzzwords in order to try and somehow establish that the concept of honor is dead, as if anybody who doesn't have their head up their ass would believe you.

We possess the greatest technology and have the most powerful economy in the world. We live in a society which produces so much wealth that obesity is an epidemic. This alone is the primary catalyst for reformers in the Arab world, and it's what Wahhabists fear the most. No moral posturing will get us anywhere that observable phenomenon can't.

I never said that we should accept cultures which don't appeal to us, only that we should tolerate them within their boundaries. Otherwise, if we attempt to impose our values on them as you suggest, either through force or posturing, we enable the forces of regression in the region to capitalize on our oppression or hypocracy.

And what if they're nihilists? What if they don't believe in right and wrong and are moral relativists? The very fact that they believe so makes it so, and that's basically the essence of "the will to power."

This also, of course, denies that some people may be legitimately justified for violating a societal norm.

And yet here, you are exercising some faith yourself. Unless you can scientifically prove, 100%, beyond the shadow of a doubt that their religious reasons are absolutely false -- good luck with that -- you do not know that their religion is untrue. Improbable, yes, but you take the rest on faith.

On the contrary, it opens up vast possibilities for women as consumers, women as members of the work force, and women as members of the military.

Atheism is not a religion. The atheist doesn't use faith to reject God. She uses common sense. The rejection of God is based on the absence of rational justification. You cannot prove the existence of God with logical thought. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm tried and their arguments, even to the church, are embarrassingly laughable in this age. 21st century philosophy is mainly dominated by logical positivists and analytic thought. Metaphysical claims about God are rejected as nonsense because there is no way to prove them.

That is very misleading. You can only have a false logical conclusion assuming the premises you start with are not true themselves. If the Queen is a man then pigs have wings, is a perfectly valid argument.

Coincidence? No. Then again, circumcision wasn't popularized in Christian Europe, and it wasn't in America for hundreds of years. It got its start as a medical fad.

I'm saying that because all societies develop independent of each other, based on seperate criteria, that their views of morality are going to be very different. It's because this view of morality is subjective that there can never be an absolute moral truth, especially when you consider nihilists, who simply don't believe in morality. The application of reason has developed vastly different methods of philosophy, and none of them have the same take on morals or moral development. The belief in a moral truth is itself a vast leap of faith that has no real basis in history or reason.

And yet, every ethical issue is a controversy, in which certain people are going to disagree with what ends up as the widely accepted norm. How can you declare an absolute truth over a controversy?

Tell yourself what you want. No amount of reasoning will get around the fact that you have to take the view of absolute morality with a bit of faith.

No shit?

I have no problem with faith in general, the sort of faith I have in my family and friends. It's this blind faith that bothers me. Frankly, it makes no fucking sense.

You're basically allowing people to believe in fairy tales to justify beating other humans. If you can rationalize this into some kind of theory of relative cultures, go right ahead, but it's sad to think there are people like you who succumb to that liberal propaganda of non-action. You're the kind who will sit on their asses while Germany kills jews and say "well, they're from a different culture, we should hope they see the virtues of our society to change because war is bad."

Why did they become that way? Because there was huge amount of evidence that overwhelmed and contradicted previously held notions and people found virtue in rationality. Can we say the same will happen to the Arab community? Possibly. But how long are you willing to wait while they have nuclear bombs in their lockers? 10 years? 100? 1000 years for a revolution in their culture? You think somebody isn't going to get nuked before then?

It's no longer practiced out of faith based reasons, no, but it's a relic of our religious past. It's where it originated from. Why do doctors still recommend it? Probably mostly due to medical reasons, since it's easier to catch diseases with the foreskin on. If you'd like to disagree and say that doctor's don't know what they're talking about, go right ahead, but your war on foreskin cutting is the most ridiculous way to argue for moral relativity so I'm going to stop responding to posts about it. It's wasted space.

Incorrect. Is this some kind of magical bullshit theory you pulled out of your ass? I'm not going to respond to this point until you make some kind of legitimate claim that the concept of faith, as I've defined it, is interlinked with trust. I've defined faith as belief in the irrational how many times now, yet you're still trying to wiggle out other definitions to prove I'm "wrong". How about you start paying attention? I already addressed confidence in others with Sass. The faith I'm speaking of is faith in the irrational - which is what these societies had when following their respective leaders.

You think they would have gone ahead with it even if they had no justification for their actions? I think this is a completely bunk argument. If they wouldn't be able to degrade the natives through use of faith-based labels it would have been terribly more difficult. You're missing my point on morality. They sugar-coated their actions in faith. This sugar-coating is what makes these actions acceptable in their consciousness. There was also faith that their culture and government was superior to the natives as well. If you remove all these faith based principles and justifications and leave them simply with "we want money and women, so we're going to go rape and pillage these humans who are equally intelligent and legitimate as we are" it would've been nearly impossible. You can HARDLY convince people to attack others without lowering the other group to sub-human standards. I'd make the case you never can, not counting individual sociopaths. I'm talking group theory. You're saying you can just convince a group of people to go out to steal and murder without needing to make them impassioned for an irrational cause, and I say you're full of shit.

I did know Bradylama, don't patronize me. And it's the entire argument I've been making the past two posts against faith which you seem to be ignoring. Would he have made claims that they were stupid and dumb if they didn't have gold? No. Greed was the reason they fought them. However, faith was the thing which allowed them to kill others and justify their greed. Faith JUSTIFIES this.

All these examples you give of atrocities have non-faith based roots. Power, money, political gain. But all of them use FAITH to justify their actions. Once faith is removed from the picture, there are no more excuses to make you seem good and righteous, and people will see you for what you truly are; a thief, a murderer, etc.

No, they don't have to come out of it naturally. You seem to think the only options are killing and converting, or doing nothing at all. That's ridiculous. There could be many methods to turning the Arab culture into a moderate secular society by way of religious doctrine. Start with the more moderate countries to begin with, and start up religious campaigns for moderate Islam and try to work it into the core of their beliefs. Yes, this is basically hijacking their religion to turn it into a secular, rational based one, but that's fine with me. If we can twist their fairy tales into ones that don't justify murder so easily, just as we've twisted our own, all for the better.

Yes, considering we won't KILL you for being another religion and they WILL. Again you love to blame America for shit but refuse to admit that we are a more rational and thus more just system. You, for some reason, refuse to make that connection. You say that systems of irrational justice may be equally legitimate as rational ones. This is a terribly liberal argument. Beating a human causes pain. Pain is not happiness to the one being beaten. Therefore, we can draw the rational conclusion that we shouldn't BEAT people. But the Arabs do, and why? Because they sugar-coat it in their faith to make it seem like they're doing the right thing. Do you really think Arabs would continue to beat their women if they no longer held faith-based, irrational principles like inferiority of women and religious rules?

And what is homosexual intolerance? A FAITH-based principle for Christ sake. Are you not fucking pay attention to what I'm saying?? I'm saying our SECULAR.RATIONAL.BELIEFS should be spread, for like the third time now. For fuck's sake, Brady. And your argument makes no sense. "Curb stompers" I assume are people who beat homosexuals? If we prosecute them, we're saying they're doing wrong. If we don't prosecute them, we're saying they're doing right. We prosecute them. Just as Arabs should prosecute wife beating, but don't, because their irrational faith-based system makes it OK.

Buzzwords? WTF. Dependability means they deliver a product consistently. Efficiency means they can get the job done in a short amount of time while producing a quality product. Friendliness means the welcoming of pleasant conversation, etc. Oh, and what does your magical word Honor mean in context of business? Absolute bullshit. Hmmm, I wonder why we don't see marketing campaigns based around which companies are most honorable to buy from? I suppose it's because the word is bullshit.

Then they're ignoring the possibilities of a rational world, and the possibilities of a rational morality. They gave up and decide to believe in nothing.

I don't need to prove they're false, because I deny their very foundation as being legitimate in a rational world. Make no mistake, a rational world is a real, tangible, observable world. A faith-based world is an imaginary, intangible, unobservable world. The imaginary has no place in the justice system of our physical world.

I was speaking from an Islamic perspective. Yes there are obviously positives, but their faith will blind them to it.

This is called agnostic. Unless you think you can rationally reject something from existing because of a lack of evidence. Example: there's a planet 5 million light years away that spins backwards at a speed of 3 miles a minute. Can we prove this right or wrong? No. Which means we can't make statements on whether it really exists or not. Without evidence one way or the other, you have no right to make claims on it's existence unless you have faith.

Incorrect. You're neglecting the possibilities of a rational world. Moral subjectivity exists today due to development alongside faith. Punishment of wrong doing may always be subjective, but the degree to which any given action is wrong or right is not. Remove the faith and stick in rationality, and everyone will come to the same basic conclusions. And don't bullshit me with saying moral truth requires faith. I'm talking about rational moral truth based on individual freedom. If you think individual freedom is under the category "subjective truth", I call it complete bullshit. You're denying others the right to individual freedoms because of an illusory world. That should be a crime in and of itself.

It's a controversy because of irrationality. Because of belief in God, belief in Allah, belief that group A should have more rights than group B. All irrational.

How very convenient for you. Throughout this thread you've thrown around the words rational and irrational as though they're going out of style, but there is no basis in rationality without truth or logic, and no basis in truth or logic without proof. If you do not or cannot disprove what you so confidantly claim to be imaginary, then your reasoning is just as much based in faith.

If you really have to change the definitions of words so much to suit your argument, I see no point in continuing this discussion.

And you honestly think that these positives have not occurred to and even appealed to more than a few middle-eastern Islamic bussinessmen and generals? They are clearly evident in western culture, whether the zealots like it or not. As Brady already put it, "No moral posturing will get us anywhere that observable phenomenon can't."

I should not need to disprove it, because it cannot be proven in the first place. I only need to disprove that which can be proven. Beating people causes pain. People don't like pain. This is proven. Showing too much skin angers Allah, and deserves beating for repentance. This cannot be proven, and thus has no significant weight against my argument.

If you cannot deal with my definition of faith as believing in the irrational, then stop wasting my time. My definition still applies to almost all concepts of faith, and concentrates on the ones that produce irrational claims. More specifically, irrational means contradicting things that CAN be proven, such as how a beating produces pain and people don't like pain. Deal or GTFO.

You're ignorant to their culture. I'm sure they seem appealing if you look at it from a secular point of view instead of a religious one. And I'm sure there are some silent secularists in the middle east that want this change to take place. However, the masses find no such appeal in it. I'm pretty sure the Arab culture remaining behind the times the past 300-400 years is evidence enough that moral posturing can quite easily overpower observable phenomenon.

And in the first place you're jumping to the conclusion that doing something to someone that they don't like, even selfish violence, cannot just as easily be rationalized or justified without faith, and is "wrong" - from your own viewpoint. Not to acknowledge that amorality is and has always been vastly prevalent, regardless of faith, is simply narrow-minded.

Oh, I can certainly "deal" with it, even if I disagree with it. I've merely been pointing out how you've been irrational and hypocritical yourself, and you've offered little in the way of disputing that. By no means do you need to disprove religion, but doing so would mean that your matter-of-factly statements about it being undeniably false would not be based on faith. Using something that you call for the complete eradication of hurts your argument just a bit.

And you're racist. Every single middle-easterner is completely incapable of interpreting their religion differently without diminishing it to allow for positives? I think many of those who have immigrated to a western country might just disagree with you. Granted that it's currently nearly impossible for reform to happen in the middle east itself. But where, exactly, for the past 300-400 years, have women had equal rights, and forms of media been able to convey such positives across vast distances? Considering how recently the latter has begun leaking in, expecting reforms already is impatient.

Nice way to skip over my point that rationality is based on proof and faith-based rationality isn't. And no, injustices can't be just as easily rationalized or justified if you're not including faith. But then, I'm almost 100% sure you're not paying attention to how I'm defining faith, especially in context of political and or social motivations, so I could care less about your argument against mine.

Any religious dogma without proof to substantiate it should be irrelevant to human justice. Secondly, I'm not disproving religion, I'm disproving faith. Get with the game. I don't need faith that there is no religious truth. I can simply look around and observe that gods have no impact on the world.

Go back to my planet analogy. There's a man on a planet 5 million light years away, spinning 3 miles per second backwards. A group on Earth claims this man wrote a book for them, and the book tells them that it's OK to murder your wife if she runs away from you. And if you don't murder her, your entire family will be destroyed in a plague.

Are you going to let people murder their wives because of an unprovable man on an unprovable planet? Or would you tell them not to murder their wives, because murdering people is obviously provably harmful to those being murdered?

Playing the racist card. It's understandable to a degree to think I'm racist because I blast Islam much more than other religions, but make no mistake, it has nothing to do with the color of their skin or how intelligent or unintelligent they are as humans. This has to do with their sacred text, which greatly supports violence, and their fundamentalism that's ever prevalent in the middle east. Scroll back to the first page of this thread, and you'll see the statistics of how many Muslims in that area think it's acceptable in some way to suicide-bomb civilian targets in defense of Islam. This is why I detest their faith. If it didn't breed so much violence and death, I could care less about it and would concentrate on other subjects.

On the other hand, I've already stated that there are Muslims who've escaped to western cultures and embraced secularism, and interpret the Koran with much modesty. This is why I believe the most effective way of reforming their culture is to attack it religiously by producing a big movement forward in moderate Islam. I would think many of them would see it as more rational, and thus more appealing than faith. At least, I'm sure the women would. I've already said there are positive aspects of any religion, but we don't need religion as a catalyst for these beneficial systems anymore.

The reason I have impatience concerning reform is because the majority of Muslims are still OK with killing infidels, whether it be themselves or us, and now it's easier and easier for them to get a hold of nuclear devices.

Ok I don't know if anyone said this already but Christianity did not use it's text to murder millions. greedy men who wrongly used the power of the the bible killed millions. The text it self was and is against this. Jesus himself said inform the ignorant and ignore the arrogant. The text in the bible tells you that even evil thoughts are bad let alone any harmful and or evil acts. Christianity in itself never used it's text to kill millions MAN did. Also the bible's text may seem against homosexuality but does not tell people to hate gay people. The bible tells us to love all men or women no matter what. If they do something you disagree with you still treat them like you would a friend. The mus slim thing I agree with but Christianity was always about loving your fellow man and anything other wise was wrong. It may have told stories about man doing other wise but god and jesus's messages were all clear.

I'm not saying believe in GOD i'm saying the guy doesn't have his facts straight so he has no right to say such things about Christianity. If you are against it fine but atleast know why. Atleast get your facts straight.

Good point. But why then do people believe in God? Why not believe in the Celestial Teapot or the Yo-Yo theory where the sun begins to revolve around Earth? Why do so many people believe in God when they could just as easily believe in any number of unknown and unprovable objects?

Atheism however does not necessarily have to rely on evidence. One theistic argument goes: We notice the external world is made up of extremely complex forms of life. These life forms in all their intricacies could not have come about by mere chance. Something intentional must have set up the conditions to start and support them. This something we call God.

The weakness of this argument is such: Humans are indeed very complex. Even slight changes to our genetic material can leave parts of our body without function such as a child being born deaf for example. God however is exponentially more complex than any form of life we're familiar with. God is perfect, immutable and enduring. Since God himself is very complex there must have been some intentional condition met to allow for God's existence. For God is so complex himself he could not have just come about by chance even by his own divine power. This is where Darwin's theory takes over and explains how life did not come about by mere chance but by a gradual evolutionary process.

When arguing for the existence of God, the onus is left to theism. Atheism has the much easier task of only having to prove that the probability of God's existence is so small, there is very little reason to suppose he does exists.

So you are correct that we cannot disprove the properties of a star 5 million lights away regardless if that star exists or not, in the same manner that we cannot disprove that a Celestial Teapot orbits around the sun. No one of course believes there is a Teapot floating about in space and for very good reasons. The atheist rejects the existence of God in the same way a rational person would reject the existence of a Teapot orbiting the sun.

You are disproving religious faith so yes you are disproving religion. You are not disproving faith. Faith in general can mean hey I have faith in the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. Will you disprove that? it sounds stupid right?

Haha, I like that theory. But anyway, I think I agree with most of what you say. I can't say how or why we developed the idea of God in the first place, since I really haven't studied it. Though was polytheism around before monotheism? You could then make the case polytheism started due to exaggerated claims of people doing great deeds, and eventually the Hebrews took that to the next step be embodying the concept of a god free from any human notions. I think the issue with god verses the issue with a magical teapot is that god was originally rooted in some form of fact about a man perhaps killing 20 soldiers, then exaggerated to 100 then exaggerated will this man was invincible, etc etc until you get the notion of God. I'm not sure what my point is for this paragraph haha, but it's interesting.

I've defined faith as belief in the irrational. I'm not going to argue with you about anything, though. First read up on the past 3 pages. Don't just enter and thread and start arguing when you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Calm down and be careful what you say "Secondly, I'm not disproving religion, I'm disproving faith" threw me off cause it doesnt make sense so practice what you preach.

Let's look at this before I even dignify anything else. Pay real close attention here. You have no proof for your belief that religion is inherently false; obviously you're not trying to disprove it, you feel that you already have.

And I can describe your confident disbelief in all religions as little but irrational. You know, since:
Sound familiar?

All I'm saying is, you may want to attempt to purge your own faith, according to your own definition, before you call on others to do the same.

Also, you assume that any possible god is concerned with making a visible impact to everyone. If that were the case, religious faith would never have existed in the first place.

Assuming this little scenario takes place in our own culture, where our established morals are enforced, then yes, obviously I would stop them. But since it is similarly impossible to disprove them, I would be stopping them because I have faith that they are wrong; because they contradict the morals that I believe in. I'm still being irrational, I just don't think I'm being as irrational as what they're advocating.

Now, I honestly hope you're not meaning to compare this absurd scenario to every well-established religion. But since you already "know" so well that every single one of them is a bunch of superstitious crap, I suppose I'm hoping for too much.

Because surveys are ALWAYS incredibly accurate, right? Pardon me for having some doubts about a poll of 38,000 people in an area consisting of roughly 461 million people.

If you're even concerned with injustices. In such a case, would one not come to the rational conclusion that one's own happiness is more important than the happiness of others?

Yes, a rational world is based on proof. NOT unprovable things, as you so adamantly cling to. Proving something true or proving something is false is the foundation of a rational world, and faith has no place in it. Why? Because faith is unprovable. It will go into the same categories that Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny go into. It will only gain importance in a rational world when it can be proved or disproved.

Exactly. The only reason faith cropped into existence is because people couldn't legitimize their beliefs rationally, so they chose instead to convince people to follow their hearts. How sweet, and how completely inconclusive.

And this is the exact scenario why faith fails. You aren't stopping them because of the rational, factual reality that killing people is painful and brings sorrow, you're stopping them because a Bible or a government tells you it's bad. Faith verse faith, the ultimate battle of imaginary forces, with both sides thinking God fights for them.

Then you don't know much about how surveys work.

Yes, one owns happiness is more important. However, it is also in our self interest that the others around us are happy. And if we view the others around us as purely equals, which only rationality brings, destructive selfishness will hardly have legs to stand on. Rationality will provide justice due to our social dependence on each other.

We can't get rid of faith. Don't we use it all the time? When you are talking to people, you have faith that they are telling the truth or you have faith that someone will do something you've asked them to do for you. Faiths all over, ahh.

"Religious faith" I won't even touch that...well maybe a little. According to this author this is the worst hindrance ever to befall mankind :(. He highlights all the bad (according to the poster I haven't read the book) and doesn't highlight the good that religious faith has done. If someone does something bad it won't be just because they have faith in a certain religion, other factors come into play, like greed, envy, lust or deception. Just because Hitler killed millions of people in the name of Christianity doesn't mean that the religion itself is bad. He just interpreted it differently. Sure you can say, well it still drove him to do what he did but...how can you say whether it did or did not? Maybe from some writings from him or some historian. You can even ask the question, were those writings his? You can't really tell (unless you were there and you saw him writing it) you must have faith :d.

Woo, I'm not sure if that makes sense but I'm sure the intelligent people here will dice it up. Go forth and have fun. :D

I have to admit I don't have any of my own ideas of how religion came about but Richard Dawkins has an interesting theory. He says religion is a by-product caused by a misfire of some otherwise useful quality in human brains. He uses moths as an analogy. We've all seen a moth fly into a flame. To us it looks like the moth is simply emo and desires to end its own life in self-immolation. In actuality, moths flying into a flame according to Dawkins is a misfire caused by its otherwise useful ability to navigate using light such as the sun or in this case a flame.

He also talks about children and their tendency to invent imaginary friends. To the child their "friend" is every bit real and it's this imagination that carries over into adulthood in the form of religious faith. God to the theistic grown up is every bit as real as the "friend" is to the child.

I really dislike how 'faith' is used as a multipurpose word. Faith should only be used when we're referring to the mysticism of religion. Proper usage would be: I have no reason to believe in God, but my faith enables me just that. Improper usage: I have no reason to believe my friend is telling the truth but I have faith that she is. I really do hope our expectation of promise keeping does not work like this. I don't want to have to resort to prayers when a friend promises to meet me for lunch.

Richard Dawkins isn't the first to suggest it. Ever since Darwinian theory came about people have been trying to figure out what the necessity is for religion in our life. Which is why, incidentally, God can be easily substituted for the 'crowd', 'society', 'the government', 'the man', etc. People are semi-conditioned for obedience; as they grow and mature, a healthy individual should discard that. The hugely religious are still clinging onto the fact that they have parents they can rely on with their 'heavenly Father'.No, you can't pull that. The very first definition of "faith" according to Random House is 'confidence or trust in an individual or concept'. Even though it's very easy to say, "faith is the absence of reason", that's only a secondary definition, and no matter how much you might attempt to take it back people still say they have faith in a person's ability and not mean to be going against all reason. Not to mention that sometimes people use the word faith interchangably with 'religious beliefs', which is a bit different, as well.

This word "faith" is just not a clear-enough statement to make judgments like that.

sorry, but it does not promote random acts of violence... everything is justified. i'd love for you to try and prove otherwise (show me textual evidence please).

So now your against the idea of people following their hearts? Maybe i'm stupid but could you explain what bad ever came from people convincing others to follow their hearts?

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.
—Idiom
9. in faith, in truth; indeed: In faith, he is a fine lad.

I don't expect I can change the meaning of words but number 1 bothers me. I trust my friends because there is reason to believe there is a high probability that what they say is true, or will become true. Faith is a much stronger word. As we know, faith is belief in the absence of reason. Because of the different strengths of these words I think it's improper to confuse them, even if according to a dictionary, they mean the same thing.

It further suggests that science itself is a religion which I disagree. When I think about the properties of metal and how metal expands when heated it's not my faith which leads me to believe this. I can prove this belief empirically. David Hume noted that in all his tests metal expanded when heated. However, he doesn't believe heat causes metal to expand. There is no reason to believe that in future tests metal will always expand when heated. Just like there is no reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow or your favourite food you have been eating for years will instead poison you. We can however make predictions about these things with very high probability of them becoming true in the future not based on faith. The principle of the uniformity of nature is our reason to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. It's why we don't expect the sun to suddenly start revolving around the Earth.

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don't exactly have sacred texts or people who claim to have had spiritual experiences with them. Until you have conclusive proof to discredit those, your belief that religion is just fairy tales is still irrational. Now, I don't personally have a problem with that, but I'm not the one advocating that irrationality is the primary cause of wrongdoing in the world.

See above.

And you're still taking it on faith that causing pain and sorrow is wrong. "Because people don't like it" is irrelevent, because one can rationally come to the conclusion that doing anything to increase one's own happiness is justified. Increasing the happiness of others is irrational, since in order to do that you have to decrease your own happiness. Men have been happier than you in your wildest dreams through oppression, and not giving a second thought to equality.

I know plenty well how they can easily be manipulated, thank you very much.

Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. But you may hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you. God knows, but you know not. 2:216

Let the believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful - he that does this has nothing to hope for from God - except in self-defense 3:28

Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people. They will spare no pains to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is evident from which they utter with their mouths, bu greater is the hatred which their breasts conceal. 3:118

Believers, if you yield to the infidels they will drag you back to unbelief and you will return headlong to perdition... We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers... The Fire shall be their home 3:149-51

Their hearts were hardened, and Satan made their deeds seem fair to them. And when they had clean forgotten Our admonition We granted them all that they desired; but just as they were rejoicing in what they were given, We suddenly smote them and they were plunged into utter despair. Thus were the evil-doers annihilated. 6:43-45

The only justification that's needed is that you're not Muslim, and even if you are Muslim we can see in Iraq that those scriptures can lead them to justify any murder they commit.

"Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: "Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts." - The True Believer

Of course, there are instances where it's perfectly fine to follow your heart to a degree. As long as it doesn't involve politics or human justice.

Sacred texts have unproven prophecies, but those are ignored because you can always "reinterpret" them. Sacred texts with grammatical errors and edits throughout. You do realize that none of our current Bible or Koran or anything, is based off original texts, right? They use copies of copies of copies, and who knows what the copiers wanted to put in there themselves. The only way we can accept anything Religion says as true is if the entire text itself was perfect, which it obviously isn't to those who've actually studied it. If the sacred texts are fallible, so are their messages, and thus prove no solid foundation for their beliefs. The texts themselves actually contradict what happened in real world history, whether it be time line wise or prophecy wise, and if that isn't enough proof to show it's false I don't know what is.

I'm taking it on faith that causing pain and sorrow is wrong? What kind of bullshit mentality is that? Because people don't like it is extremely relevant, because we should be the judges of what harms us in a rational way. The mentality of "fuck everybody except myself" is NOT rational. We are a social society and must live with each other, and it's easy to reason that we need to depend upon each other to live the most enjoyable life. It's also irrational to think we decrease our own happiness when making others happy. In almost all cases, when we do something good for somebody else, we feel proud of ourselves and happy about ourselves.

And the idea that men have been happier than me during oppression has nothing to do with being in oppression itself. Sure, maybe his family made him super happy, or his coworkers, but living in oppression did not cause him happiness, and decreased his happiness to some degree knowing he can't escape his situation. Even though both of our cases are hypothetical to begin with, thinking that oppression causes happiness is completely bunk.

Discrepencies alone are not proof, considering they are a result of the fallacy of men, not the god of their religion. Sacred texts are still secondary to personal spiritual experience, since with that one could theoretically discern what is wrong and right with the book.

"Real" world history is subject to the same possible fallacies that any sacred text is.

But the mentality of "fuck everybody but myself" sure worked well for the perpetrators of oppression. And there is a vast difference between oppressing people for greed and power, and oppressing people because you don't believe them equal. Since the latter rationally serves no purpose, it is likely that it is a side-effect of the former. As if there's any rationality behind coming to the conclusion that feeling proud and happy for themselves would be compensation for giving up their wealth and power.

Incorrect. Discrepancies are proof enough considering sacred texts claim to be holy and without error, inspired by God, and preserved for all time by God himself. Therefore it proves itself invalid because it cannot sustain all of it's self-claimed attributes. The gods of today's religions are wholly based off of and inspired from texts, therefore proof is wholly dependent upon the provability of texts. Unfortunately for them, the texts fail it's own litmus test.

And you are incorrect that world history is subject to the same possible fallacies. Example: Prophecy-A says all of Egypt will remain destitute and a wasteland for the remainder of all time. Reality: It hasn't. World history is not subject to claims without evidence. Prophecy and Sacred texts are. And I'm no longer going to argue the validity or invalidity of Religion with you. The point remains that Religion has no place in a rational world, in the real world, where action A causes effect A to happen in an observable, reproducible way.

The perpetrators of oppression used many more factors beyond "fuck everybody but myself." They still had to convince many others in lower levels to keep them in power, lest an overthrow occurs. This shows that even the most ruthless people have dependence on others, and need help from others, and thus try to keep others happy. Don't grossly generalize things to win your points when you haven't thought them through.

Oppressing people for greed and power and oppressing them because you don't believe them to be equal are indeed very deeply connected. But I'm not going to explain myself to you again when I've already explain why in previous posts. You apparently can't grasp the interconnectivity of oppression and equality, and how faith is the justification of all oppression. You make gross generalizations based on your belief all men are evil and selfish to such an extreme that the only way we can become better is by following religious creeds that make us selfless. This is preposterous. As we can see, there are plenty of atheists and agnostics who all care more about others than most religious fanatics do. Where do they get their selflessness from when there's no God telling them to be selfless? Because it is in our godless, faithless self-interest to help others as well, whether you want to admit it or not.

surah 2, known as 'the cow'. this was revealed at a time when prophet muhammad (pbuh) was fighting in wars and oppression against the pagan arab tribes. these pagans were hell bent on wiping out islam because its concept of monotheism went against their idol worship. it also threatened their livelihoods because idol worship made them prosperous due to the pilgrimages and tourism of idol worshippers thoughout arabia who would visit each year (at the time mecca was the centre of idol worship in arabia). this verse was telling muslims that they must fight back when oppressed even though they were scared/outnumbered/etc. i don't see a problem with it.

surah 3, known as 'the family of imran'. it doesn't say "don't take non-muslims as friends", but rather "don't take non-muslims as friends IN PREFERENCE to muslims". it also doesn't say not to associate with non-muslims at all, because if this were the case then muslims wouldn't be able to propogate the religion to non-muslims. again, i don't see a problem with it.

same surah as before, except this time it talks more specifically about the pagan arab tribes who were oppressing the muslims. many of these pagans wished for the muslims to turn away from the new religion and back into idol worship, so the surah serves as a warning to the muslims because it explains the true, hidden intentions of the pagans. again, i don't see a problem with it.

same surah as before, and same points apply.

surah 6, known as 'cattle' or 'livestock'. let's look at this in a little more context:

6:42. Before thee We sent (apostles) to many nations, and We afflicted the nations with suffering and adversity, that they might learn humility.

6: 43. When the suffering reached them from us, why then did they not learn humility? On the contrary their hearts became hardened, and Satan made their (sinful) acts seem alluring to them.

6: 44. But when they forgot the warning they had received, We opened to them the gates of all (good) things, until, in the midst of their enjoyment of Our gifts, on a sudden, We called them to account, when lo! they were plunged in despair!

6: 45. Of the wrong-doers the last remnant was cut off. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher of the worlds.

6: 46. Say: "Think ye, if Allah took away your hearing and your sight, and sealed up your hearts, who - a god other than Allah - could restore them to you?" See how We explain the signs by various (symbols); yet they turn aside.

6: 47. Say: "Think ye, if the punishment of Allah comes to you, whether suddenly or openly, will any be destroyed except those who do wrong?

6: 48. We send the apostles only to give good news and to warn: so those who believe and mend (their lives),- upon them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

6: 49. But those who reject our signs,- them shall punishment touch, for that they ceased not from transgressing.

God is simply saying that he sent prophets with clear signs to many communities throughout history, yet these communities ignored their warnings and persisted in their evil ways, and hence they were punished.

time and time again i see people like you quoting verses like those that are above. putting things into context and a little further reading would clear all of these misconceptions up. i bet you've never even read the Quran from cover to cover and that you took those verses off of some anti-arab or anti-islamic website. i ask that you stop spreading lies about islam and that you do some proper research into it before talking about it like you're some kind of expert. martin lings' book 'muhammad' is a biography of the prophet and a good place to start as it will give you the background information needed to properly understand the context of verses like those which you quoted above. one last thing:

i didn't have a lot of time to write this response so i'm going to re-use this article:

Thousands of the Companions of the Prophet learned the Qur'an directly from the Prophet (pbuh) just as millions of Muslims know it off by heart today. They memorized it and were known in Islamic history as huffaadh (the memorizers and preservers of the Qur'an). Moreover, a number of Companions wrote it down during the lifetime of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and it was compiled in its entirety immediately after his death.

The following generation of Muslims learned the Qur’an directly from the Companions. Thus the chain of teaching and learning through direct contact continued systematically, methodically, and meticulously until the present age.

Additionally, several of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) were appointed as scribes to record the words of the revelation directly from the Prophet himself on parchment, leather, or whatever else was available. The most famous of these scribes was Zayd ibn Thabit, who also memorized the entire Qur’an, and he formed with the others a community of huffaadh that can be compared to academic societies of our present time.

We know the Qur’an was recorded in totality during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) and the different surahs (chapters) personally arranged by him. Many copies of the text were used for study and teaching, even in Mecca before the Hijrah, the migration to Medina.

The entire Qur’an was written down during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, and trusting the fact that many scholars knew it by heart, it was not collected in one volume. It was personally arranged by him, and the Muslims memorized it in the same order. The companion Uthman reported that whenever a new verse was revealed, the Prophet would immediately call a scribe to record it. He would instruct the person to put the specific verse or verses in a particular chapter.

Furthermore, every year during the month of Ramadan, the Prophet would recite the whole Qur’an from beginning to end in its present-day arrangement, and everyday people could hear it from his own lips in the mosque. Its sequence is no mystery. Many of the Companions not only memorized it completely, they also wrote it down and even added commentary (tafseer) on their own personal copies. When the Prophet passed away, the whole Qur’an was already written down, but it was not yet compiled in book form.

During the rule of the first Caliph Abu Bakr, there was a rebellion among some distant Arab tribes that resulted in a series of fierce battles. In one particular battle, a number Companions who had memorized the Qur’an were killed. The Companion Omar worried that the knowledge of the Qur’an was in danger, thus he convinced Abu Bakr that the Qur’an should be compiled into book form as a means of preserving it once and for all.

Zayd bin Thabit was entrusted with this important task. Zayd followed strict methods in his compilation and had dozens of other huffaadh recheck his work to ensure its accuracy. Abu Bakr, who had also committed the entire Qur’an to memory, approved of the final product. After Abu Bakr passed away, the copy was passed to the Caliph ‘Omar, and then Uthman.

However as the Muslim world expanded into lands where the people spoke Arabic as a second language, the new Muslims had a difficult time learning the correct pronunciation of the text. The Caliph Uthman consulted other Companions, and they agreed that official copies of the Qur’an should be inscribed using only the pronunciation of the Quraysh tribe, the Arabic dialect that the Prophet spoke.

Zayd bin Thabit was again given this assignment, and three other huffaadh were assigned to help him in the task. Together, the four scribes borrowed the original, complete copy of the Qur’an, duplicated it manually many times over, and then distributed them to all of the major Muslim cities within the empire. Two of these copies still exist today: one is in Istanbul and the other in Tashkent.

One must keep in mind that in traditional learning in the Arab world, transmission was based upon an oral tradition as well as a written one; the Arabs (and later all Muslims) excelled in accurately reporting scripture, poetry, aphorisms, etc. through the generations without change. Similarly, the chain of huffaadh was never broken, and thus the Qur'an today has reached us in two forms: the memorized version transmitted through the scholarly chain, and the written version based upon the Companions’ initial recording.

If the Qur’an had been changed, there would be huge discrepancies between these two today, as the Qur’an has reached isolated (and sometimes illiterate) communities through the memorized form of transmission without the written form to correct it. No such discrepancies have ever been recorded or reported. In other words, isolated village A in African Mali and isolated village B in Afghanistan will both produce contemporary huffaadh reciting the same words of the Qur’an, though they did not learn from a similar printing of the scripture nor has there ever been a concerted international effort to rectify would-be discrepancies.

Leave it to a Neo-Conservative to use strawmen and debating ad-Hitlerum when he feels cornered.

Nevermind that the Nazis kidnapped Jews from other countries and gassed them, or their sporadic slaughter of Russians and Ukranians, and denied the rights of self-determination to other countries, cultures, and especially individuals. Nevermind that the Jews themselves were a seperate culture unto themselves, and that the Nazis had no right to subjugate those outside of their cultural boundaries, or that the very practice of genocide didn't even conform to German norms.

Nevermind, either that Roosevelt maneuvered America into fighting a war it wanted no part of (and really didn't need us) and as a result established global American hegemony and eradicated the classical liberal qualities valued by Americans due to the paranoia propagated over a threat that didn't exist (Communism).

Our legacy of interventionism has fucked over several countries in the Americas and Asia, yet here you are proposing a Jacobinist rational utopia which can never be implemented because people don't appreciate being forced into conformity. How can you be this stupid?

No, I don't think anybody is going to get nuked before then, because nuclear weapons are weapons which are ultimately extensions of national pride. The actual use of nuclear weapons is inconceivable, even to men like Ahmadinejad, because the result of their use is always mutual annihilation. Yet you want to go start wars and create more enemies for America instead of playing nuclear hardball and ending these programs through hard diplomacy. Iran and North Korea are nations with big talk and no power, yet you want to depose their regimes by force and consequently force our own values upon a people who is conditioned to be resistant to them because of the very fact that they're being forced upon them. You're satisfied with the notion that we should encourage freedom in Iraq through oppression and socialist oligarchy.

Nigga please. Your ideology is so idiotic and old-hat that if you actually shared it with other secular rationalists they would laugh you out of the county.

Then wallow in your ignorance and hypocracy.

It's irrational to presume that you can trust people, even with relative histories of reliability and good faith. Kids have turned in their own parents for drug charges, and you think that trusting people isn't irrational?

They were a technologically inferior people who may have possessed vast amounts of wealth. That's essentially all the justification they needed.

"Stupid" and "warlike" are not faith-based labels.

Which is wrong, because the Spaniards knew that what they were doing was inhuman. The application of faith gave them Casus Belli to do as they pleased in relation to other Spaniards and Europeans, yet there was no denying at the individual level that raping and murdering people was wrong. The greatest critic of Spanish imperialism, Bartolomé de Las Casas, was himself a man of God and understood first-hand the immorality (faith-based even) of slavery, first for Native Americans, then for Africans.

Consider this excerpt from Columbus's journal: "They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. . . they do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance . . .. Their spears are made of cane . . . they would make fine servants . . .. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

Did this require faith in order to convince Spain that conquest was to be had?

It's not a matter of lowering them to sub-human standards, but of presenting them as a competitive "other" which seeks to gain prosperity at their own expense. The British and French did not consider each other inhuman, yet that still didn't discourage both peoples from continually attempting to subjugate the other. The Mongols had no illusions concerning the humanity of their enemies, they merely played ball harder than anybody else. The Turks essentially did the same thing, until Vlad Dracula.

Fascist and Communist atrocities weren't performed using faith in order to justify their actions, because they didn't need to justify their actions. The Boss starved millions of Ukrainians to death because he ruled the USSR through fear. What they did have to justify and attempt to reason for, was their rise to power, but after that point it didn't matter what people thought of their actions.

So because an ideology is foreign-backed, you don't think that Wahabiists wouldn't capitalize on that? Any movement towards secularization has to be purely Arab, otherwise it'll be easily delegitimized. The only realistic alternative is a forced change.

I'm not going to say that the American system isn't the superior one, yet the quality of one system doesn't delegitimize another, especially when the issue of quality is itself subjective. Would Arab societies no longer continue beating women if all elements didn't believe in it? It's a self-resolving question, though in Islam there is quite a bit of controversy on the part of scholars claiming that wife beating has no real Qu'ranic basis, and that Muhammad himself condemned the act of wife beating, even though he made exceptions in cases of "disobedience" to use non-harmful striking as a last resort of disciplinary action.

It's not as if women aren't capable of consenting to a culture which marginalises their roles in favor of men, either. The greatest opponents of Women's Suffrage were women. It's possible to make rational judgements concerning marginalised societies in which men and women accept their gender-roles instead of encouraging social equality. In that sense, it's possible to make a reasonable claim, that it's ok to hit somebody if they deserve it. What is deserving of hitting or beating is determined by culture, and while some justifications aren't acceptable to us, that does not make them illegitimate within the bounds of that culture.

One does not require a faith-based conclusion to understand that homosexuality is genetically unproductive, and therefore should be squelched. Arabs are actually supposed to prosecute wife beating, the problem is that the male-dominant cultural traits they inherited from conquered peoples has encouraged the adoption of clothing that hides the bruises which are forbidden according to Sharia. When you couple that with battered wife syndrome, there's very little room within the culture for the act to be contested by women. They can make arguments based on faith which eliminate the practice entirely, yet are presently incapable of having much effect because of the massive ignorance of the Islamic populace concerning their own religion. The wearing of body-covering articles is itself oddly perceived as a liberating tool by women, because they feel it protects them from the leering gaze of men who are incapable of controlling their own desires, even though Muhammad encourages them to do precisely the opposite. It's even gotten to the point where they've lobbied for female-only facilities so that they can expose themselves to the sun without being visually violated by the leering gaze of evil men. It's something which has even been oddly adopted by some radical European feminists who feel that it allows them to isolate themselves from the corrupting influence of men.

I think it's dumb as shit, but you can't end stupid.

I suppose the concept of "friendly business practice" is also foreign to you, and how the practice of businesses according to lobbying to reduce competition (Wal-Mart) makes those businesses less desirable to people who value free markets and fair play.

Of course, you're also applying what is fundamentally an individual value to groups which lack political or family ties. Honor is very much still alive in society, it's just a term that possesses little use. Shit-talking behind somebody's back, for instance, is often perceived as a cowardly trait, and since cowardice cannot exist as a concept in the absence of honor, it sort of means that the concept of it is alive and well, even if it isn't applied as much semantically or given as much social import.

Yet, believing in nothing also lets them operate outside the bounds of morality. If morality cannot apply universally, then there can never be such a thing as "universal morality."

The possibility of a rational world is itself flawed, because reasoning is a subjective behavior. There are no objective conclusions which may be reached through the application of reason, there may only be consensus or majorities. Reason itself, may also be fundamentally flawed if it is based on criteria which prove to be false, in the same way that logicical conclusions may also be false. It is impossible to disprove the existence of a god, for instance, because most of the legitimate religions of the world are based on traditions which pre-date written history. Hell, even concerning our own immediate history it's impossible to establish what is and isn't fact. In order to establish that the concept of a god is the pure product of imagination, you would need a time machine with which to observe the genesis of the concept. This isn't like Scientology where it's obvious that people are just making this shit up.

The "Rational World" is not a complete world, because it can only ever be based on the capabilities of human perception. It's impossible to understand beyond what the mind can perceive, and it is that uncertainty which establishes the subjective nature of "truth." The existance or non-existance of a god, or more specifically The God, can only ever be a truth and not a fact.

Right. So come up with a rational conclusion concerning abortion. Even in classical liberal circles, people are divided on the issue. If there are issues which don't have a position determined by objective rationality, then such a thing cannot exist.

Inspired by God, but written, translated, and copied by men. How do you know that any of the self-claimed attribute of being preserved for all time was not an error added to the book?

:wrong:
Personally, I tend to rip the entirety of The Song of Solomon out of every Old Testament I own, because I feel that it was not inspired by God in any way.

Just because different interprations are convenient, that doesn't invalidate them.

Evidence? So do you happen to have a photograph of Washington crossing the Delaware? A video of Hannibal Barca crossing the Alps? Just like sacred texts, history was written, translated and copied, and those men may or may not have done so accurately.

My major qualm is not over the validity or invalidity of religion, it's over your claim to know that religion is invalid. If you merely said that you think religion is invalid based on likely evidence, I wouldn't be posting in this thread.

Oppression requires one thing and one thing alone to exist: greed. Other factors, such as faith, make it easier, but they do not generate oppresion.

And you apparently can't grasp the concept that moral absolutes may not exist. Faith is not needed to justify anything if you don't care about justifying it.

Don't fucking tell me what I believe, either. I believe that men are born without concepts of morals, and whatever morals they learn, they learn by what their culture teaches them and by their experience.

I also believe that there can be godless, faithless self-interest to help others. My whole point with the oppression example was to show that godless, faithless self-interest can also hurt others and still be rational. Rationality does not always have to be right, and vice versa, because it is based on our subjective reasoning.

Well, technically oppression also requires power. =/

To enforce, yes. I meant it as only needing greed to be inspired.

Casual_Otaku, you're missing the point. I'm glad you interpret these verses within context and in a way which leads to a more rational theology. Of course they can be interpreted differently. If you would read my previous posts, you would know this already. The problem is that Muslims in the middle east do not interpret it this way; the vast majority of them are fundamentalists. When you say a verse needs to be put in context, they can simply say context is unimportant because it limits the verses, and that non-Muslims are trying to deceive you. Of course, this isn't the case. However, it is their mindset, and it's very easy for them to use the verses I posted to rationalize their violence through the Koran.

Ah, and then we come to Bradylama. I almost thought you left from being so pissed off at me. I'm glad this isn't the case. For the sake of the thread, I'm not responding to any personal insults. But suffice it to say, labeling me a neo-conservative because of my opposition to a fundamental sect of a religion which supports violence is ludicrous. I’ll gladly take the title of a realist instead.

Firstly, let’s cover my argument concerning Germany. I will reword it so it’s a hypothetical question for the sake of understanding your perspective, not for the sake of understanding the war: If you claim no country or person should intervene with another culture, in an attempt to convert, etc etc, however you want to define it, isn’t this a hidden universal truth you’re trying to spout out? That every nation, everywhere in the world, has no right to infringe on other cultures? And pray tell, since you don’t believe in universal truths of any sort, why do you get the justification for your belief?

Since you believe there are no universal truths, the idea that no culture should be infringed upon is merely a product of your upbringing, and is no more legitimate than the claims of a fundamental Islam suicide bomber shouting that all non-Muslims should be murdered. You just made your ideas as worthless as theirs.

And to take it a step further, you believe we can never know reality directly, that it’s all subjective. But this in itself is a direct claim on reality: "humans will never be able to know reality directly."

Thus, your claims both on cultural infringement and subjectivity are paradoxical in that they cling to universal truths as their foundation.

Hardly true. If an extremist sneaks into a country with a nuclear bomb and detonates it, and no extreme Muslim sect willingly takes credit for it, who can we blame? Nobody, because everything will be blown the fuck up leaving no witnesses. Nuclear weapons to nations are extensions of national pride, but to rogue operatives fighting for a religious cause it's much different.

Then you're ignoring the way the human mind works. We don't like thinking we're guilty of anything because it makes us feel bad. I'd bet you that Columbus and his crew talked a lot more about how primitive and stupid and unrighteous the culture was then about how rich the culture was. People don't like discussing their greed or discussing their murder of innocent people, but they do like discussing how those they steal from are unworthy, and how those they kill are unrighteous.

Stupid, when applied to a group based on skin color, nationality, ethnicity, etc, is a faith-based label. Columbus convinced himself that they were stupid because of their skin color, convinced himself to the degree that he took back previous statements. It was his deeply strong, newfound faith in the irrationality of racism that led him to be able to honestly make these statements and honestly murderer and steal from them. You still seem to be missing my point, though.

Faith-based Columbus: These natives are stupid so we stole their gold and killed them.

Rational-based Columbus: These natives are not as advanced as we are in technology so we stole their gold and killed them.

You see how a rational-based Columbus comes off as much more ruthless and corrupt to the public than a faith-based one if this is what he had written in his journal? This is why people who carry out wrongdoings depend upon faith based justification. It lets them carry out immoral deeds under the guise of goodwill, to themselves as well as the community.

If a man rapes a women in a street, he justifies it thinking men are superior to women and deserve to be fucked. He doesn't think "even though this woman has equal right as I do, I'm going to fuck her anyway."

If a man steals from his neighbor, well fuck, his neighbor is an idiot anyway so it doesn't matter. He doesn't think "I'm going to steal property from someone who equally deserves to keep what they buy."

If a man thinks slavery is OK, it is because people of a different skin color are inferior. He doesn't think "I'm going to deny these people any similar life to my own, even though they're equally capable of learning and becoming as educated as I am."

Why don't people think these things? Because they don't like the rationality. And what can replace truth? Faith-based irrationality.

As for your priest who claimed slavery was immoral, he probably did use scripture to try to prove his case, but the reason he changed his opinion in the first place was most likely due to his rationality in seeing that all humans are created equal. Then he had to wrap it into a blanket of faith-based justification in order to convince himself he wasn't a heretic, and for others to believe it to be true. Don't think the Bible or God magically spoke out to him telling him to go against the crowd. Personally witnessing the abuse of slaves, and realizing its irrationality is what I'm sure led him to his radical ideas.

Incorrect. The other group exists as a competitive "other" which seeks to gain prosperity at their own expense. This is not how that group of people is presented, though.

You need to justify why your group of people is more worthy than other groups of people, and the only way to do this without exposing the group's injustice, which would rally up opposition, is to make the other group of people seem (unjustly) inferior. And the way we make a group of people look unjustly inferior is by depending on irrational beliefs, whether created by the government or a religion or the people themselves.

The Boss didn't starve millions of Ukrainians so much as the people who had power to overthrow/kill him starved millions, whether it be his guards or his political cabinet. They had faith that what he was doing was the right thing, and they were a-OK with his plan and carried it out despite reports they received of millions dying. My argument against faith-based rationality is pinpointed against oppressors, not those who are subjugated.

So now that you realize I don't support a forced change, I assume you take back all your ignorant statements claiming I'm shouting out a rallying cry for war? Why, thank you. And yes, the change needs to come from within, which is why we should probably fund money into moderate Arab institutions which are growing in number in places like Egypt, and support them to such a degree where it makes a significant impact on the region. I'm sure this could be done in a way without it reaching news papers. And you may claim it's not in America's interest to support a religion, but in this case it's the only non-violent solution to the middle-east problem and the rogue nuclear problem. And it's safer than doing nothing.

It's true many women opposed Women's suffrage. You say that it's possible to make rational judgments in favor of restricted rights? I beg to differ. Women protested because they had faith that they were inferior in some way to men, whether it was Bible verses or saying women didn't have the "brains" to judge who should be president. It isn't provable, therefore it's irrational. Women accepted gender roles out of faith-based irrationality that their society instilled them with. The same goes for Islam. Hitting or beating is never acceptable in our culture now unless it's in self defense. Why? Because we've reached the rational conclusion that beatings cause physical pain, and since we're all equals none of us are deserving of physical pain. Muslim irrationality is that Allah gets angry. What is deserving of hitting or beating is determined either by rationality or irrationality, the provable or the unprovable. And the unprovable can kiss my ass concerning morality. It has no meaning because it has no place in observable life.

Whether you like it or not, the only thing humans are capable of judging is the observable; therefore the only means to justify judgment is within the observable.

Do you think people who beat the shit out of gay people are thinking "these people deserve to be beaten to death because of their genetic unproductivity"? No, because this would be a rational reason for that hatred, and the rational reason looks a WHOLE lot uglier than the "God hates them and will burn them and they corrupt our families and our nation" line.

I completely agree. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. :) Massive ignorance is the equivalent of fundamentalism, since all fundamentalist have a bad habit of ignoring context.

I think cowardice and bravery are connected. To use your example, if your friend would go up to you and start shit talking you to your face, it would be bravery not honor, because there's nothing "honorable" about shit talking in the first place. Perhaps you can give me a different example, though.

Objective conclusions can't be reached through the application of reason at this moment. My case is that in the event of a rational world, there will be no consensus or majorities because rationality will prevail over faith-based concepts of justice, and thus morality will take on the form of an objective truth.

Religion should have no place in reason to being with, because it can be neither proven true nor false. The legitimacy of religious claims in our observable world is a sham because the only way we can justly judge our observable world is through observation, simply because that is the one basic premise of our existence that all will agree to - that we live in an observable world. Whether or not certain groups believe in unobservable worlds or not is of little relevance unless it's self-destructive in context of the observable world. The unobservable should always play second fiddle to the observable one because the observable one is our human condition.

Here's Sam Harris' take on it:

Many of us consider human fetuses in the first trimester to be more or less like rabbits: having imputed to them a range of happiness and suffering that does not grant them full status in our moral community. At present, this seems rather unreasonable. Only future scientific insights could refute this intuition.
The problem of specifying the criteria for inclusion in our moral community is one for which I do not have a detailed answer - other than to say that whatever answer we give should reflect our sense of the possible subjectivity of the creatures in question. Some answers are clearly wrong. We cannot merely say, for instance, that all human beings are in, and all animals are out. What will be our criterion for humanness? DNA? Shall a single human cell take precedence over a herd of elephants? The problem is that whatever attribute we use to differentiate between human and animals - intelligence, language use, moral sentiments, and so on - will equally differentiate between human beings themselves. If people are more important to us than orangutans because they can articulate their interests, why aren't more articulate people more important still? And what about those poor men and women with aphasia? It would seem that we have just excluded them from our moral community. Find an orangutan that can complain about his family in Borneo, and he may well displace a person or two from our lifeboat.

--------------------------------------------

So in other words he doesn't give an answer in his book. But, in my opinion the legitimacy of abortion would become dependent on the legitimacy of observable claims. Claims like, the fetus feels pain. This is dependent upon when it's aborted, and we don't have the necessary technology to really measure things like pain yet. Etc, etc, only observable facts can be made in the case of abortion. Hopefully the technology will catch up by the time we’re a rational society to clearly state the facts on abortion and what the fetus actually feels, if anything.

Fuck, this is a long ass post. Sorry.

Additional Spam:
Sorry, I forgot you StarmanDX.

I'm not going to debate the legitimacy of the Bible anymore. This is not the thrust of my argument, therefore I'm not going to spend my time defending my point for you. If you want me to, start your own thread.

My claim is that it is invalid is due to it being unprovable. And specifically, my claim is that it is invalid concerning human justice and injustice because it is unobservable. If you want to see my argument for this, look at my previous post to brady.

Faith doesn't generate oppression, but it gives oppression legs to stand on.

Wrong. Oppression is always given legs to stand with faith-based rationality. Whether or not god or religion is involved is unimportant. And I make the case that the notion of reasoning being subjective is a fallacy because it's a absolute claim in and of itself. Reference my post to brady.

It isn't opposition to a fundamental sect of a religion that makes you a neoconservative. Rather, it's the fact that you think you know what should be done to make a perfect world, and that you think it is someone's duty (presumably ours) to do what it takes to make the perfect world a reality, regardless of what that is, or what anybody else feels about it.

This is precisely the mindset the Jacobins had in exporting the French Revolution to the rest of Europe, the mindset of the Bolsheviks in exporting Communism to the world, and the mindset that fuels the neoconservatives in exporting democracy today.

And, ironically, it's all based on the faith that your idea is the right idea.

Furthermore, you mentioned earlier a poll of people in the Middle East who feel it is alright to attack civilian targets to defend Islam. This is interesting, since your opening post singles out Islam as a religion that needs to be eliminated. Not any particular sect, mind you, but Islam itself. You further go on to say that we should subvert Islam to serve the ends of making your utopia. Understandibly, this isn't something Muslims would take kindly to, moderate or radical, and they would be expected to respond violently, especially considering how radical Muslims have reacted to many smaller cultural intrusions.

Yet you want to inflame the Muslim world by attacking Islam directly and attempting to destroy it.

Of course, it would ultimately serve to bolster your argument that Islam is ignorant and warlike, that we need to destroy it, and liberate the Muslim peoples' minds from their irrational beliefs.

My perfect world doesn't hinge on faith based principles, only factually supported evidence, so it's of little consequence that my claims are my claims because I would not be determining universal morality, the rational world would.

Yes, it singles out Islam due to Islam being the most violent mass religion existing in the world today. This is brought up as a product of my argument. If they were all Christian, I would be blasting Christianity. And I've related many times now that the majority of Muslims in the middle east are fundamentalists, as the survey goes to show, and that fundamentalists are who I have the biggest beef with. Those in the survey who were OK with suicide bombing civilian targets all go into my fundamentalist category, and those who don't go into the moderate category, in general.

And yes, I call for subverting Islam, but from within by supporting moderate Islam so there's no visible American influence. What's your point?


I've specifically said I directed my arguments for Islamic revolution towards fundamental Islam many times in my post. I don't know how you're coming to the conclusion that I'm attacking the entire religion. I'm attacking fundamental Islam as something that needs done soon, and I'm attacking faith as something that needs done whenever it can possibly be accomplished.

However, you consider the idea of faith to be an impediment to the creation of your perfect world. Therefore, faith must be eliminated.

Just like the Ancien Régime and the Bourgeoisie did.

Perhaps you need to understand just how important the Islamic faith is to Muslims. Many Muslims who are otherwise moderate would become violent if their faith itself were to come under attack, and would use any means necessary to defend it.

Much like how the United States would, without a flinch, incinerate many millions of people in nuclear fire if we were seriously threatened with annihilation.

This will, of course, let you twist the results of your cited poll as much as you like to paint the Muslims of the Middle East as a stupid and warlike bunch, and their religion as one we need to destroy for their own good as well as ours.

That subversion of Islam, particularly in the context that you've talked of what needs to be done with faith generally in this thread, can only mean in the destruction of Islam.

Contrary to your apparent belief otherwise, Muslims aren't stupid, and they'd see it for exactly what it is. And would fight it. To the death.

You're attacking the entire religion by saying it in particular needs to be removed, preferably by subverting it from within, but I don't think you'll much object to how its done. You're attacking the entire religion by saying that all faiths need to be eliminated. One way or another, if you had your way, the Islamic faith would cease to exist, whether the people who follow it want it to cease to be or not.

Don't try to bullshit me, you wannabe revolutionary.

Sounds like FallDragon basically wants to start a religious war - those who have it and those who don't.

FallDragon (et. al.) is the reason why recent South Park episodes are so much better than previous seasons.

The truth is you know as well as everyone in here that taking away a persons faith is not positive in anyway. If you are going to strip their reason to live then you might as well kill them yourself. Also a rational world is ridiculous, yeah I said it. This is just me but in a "rational" world their will be no passion, no art, and so on because pure "rationality" cannot fuel such imaginations to do so. I may be wrong but I see the world as a balance. You cant have the good without the bad, the math and science with out art and literature. Even by thinking of ridding the world of religious faith or "irrationality", you will be thinking of breaking that balance and turning it all to one side. That can't and wont happen. Someone living in the streets has a better chance of becoming another bill gates based on faith. I don't know about you but I would rather have stupid media with a chance of something good every once in a while, over a completely boring world of your "rationality".

Hit it right on the nail.

On another note, there is a big discrepancy when it comes to "Eastern" and "Western" faith in that Eastern religions teach acceptance of everything and even allow a person to be a member of multiple faiths. Western religion however encourages exclusivity and this leads to conflict.

No offense to Christians, as I am Catholic myself, but Mahatma Gandhi put it best when he said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

All of this quote war shit has reached critical mass, so instead of arguing history and subjectivity, I'd like to address two points:

My views on cultural infringement are based on a value of self-determination, and the subjective nature of reality is not necessarily a universal truth. That's the rub, essentially, that we don't really know if there can be a universal reality, and that we'll ever know anything without any uncertainty.

Yet there are only so many people we can blame. The former Soviets, for instance, have supposedly had unsecured nuclear material for ages, yet there has yet to be any city that's been engulfed in nuclear fire. At the present, the only country which could possibly supply anybody with nuclear weapons would be Iran, in the future. There are very few choices in the matter, and hard diplomacy is the easiest way to get Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions. There's already a moderate element in Iranian politics who feel that Ahmadinejad is pushing us too far, and if we just started pushing back a little we might be able to reach an agreement before we really give them a reason to nuke us.

I see you continually overgeneralize my opinions so I'm not going to bother to argue with you anymore.

The subjective nature of realty becomes a universal truth when you apply it to all humans being unable to reach beyond it, which is your argument. You're limiting human cognitive function in a realistic, universal way by claiming to know and describe the limitations of human cognition. You can never know anything without uncertainty, thus you can never know that we are unable to produce universal truths. Your theory self-destructs because of this contradiction, you can't just ignore it.

Only so many people, yes. I'm sure we would have a list of possible countries and/or factions that could've done it, but in the end we'd have no evidence to point a finger. Soviets haven't engulfed a city with fire because they don't think they're fighting a religious war. They've come to the rationality that they need other nations for support. Fundamental Muslim sects want to destroy not for rational reasons, but for religious ones, and to think that reason will prevail over faith naturally in that area is a mistake. Why do you think there's a never ending supply of young extremists?

No, what I'm saying is that subjective reality is the present truth, but may not be the truth at some point in the future. Besides, I never really argued that it was impossible for there to be a universal truth, but a universal morality. I suppose to clarify, it would be practically impossible to establish a universal morality without going to measures which I find distasteful.

I don't think you understand the concept of "unsecured nuclear material." Former Soviet Republics have no reason to nuke anybody, yet the nuclear materials they possessed aren't all accounted for. This has been the leading cause of fears concerning nuclear terrorism prior to North Korea's atomic bomb. Supposedly, if this material was unsecured it would be on a market somewhere, and whether it was sold as cheap fuel, or to potential terrorists we really wouldn't know, yet there hasn't been a single incidence of nuclear terrorism since the fall of the Soviet Union, and I think that's long enough to declare the former Soviets an unlikely source of nuclear material.

It doesn't really matter if we have concrete proof of somebody's involvement or not, because we're going to nuke somebody anyways. The bloodlust initiated by an act of nuclear terrorism would be insatiable, and the most likely targets at this point would be Iran and North Korea. North Korea's program, of course, is purely for reasons of national pride, so it's unlikely they'd ever consider selling their biggest insurance against Amero-Asian interference.

So, essentially your argument is that Iran would have to use its own nuclear weapons on somebody becuase Ahmadinejad is just that crazy. The problem with this assumtion, though, is that Iran would need enough weapons to ensure the destruction of their target, otherwise they would be completely annihilated. As Styphon pointed out, Muslims aren't stupid, even the radical ones, and their ultimate goal is the global hegemony of Islam, not its destruction in thermonuclear fire. If there were nuclear weapons or materials circulating on the black market, that's the most probable cause for their reluctance to use them, because it would spark a war which no Islamic country could possibly win.

At the present, the United States has a dominating nuclear weapons gap with every nation on the planet with the exception of Russia. The concept of any country attempting to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons is laughable, because all it takes is for American leadership to establish a willingness to use our weapons in order to eradicate any nuclear upstarts. Even Israel could do essentially the same thing if they admitted to their weapons stockpile, and they have a much greater willingness to act tough when it comes to nuclear diplomacy.

my last argument, rather you like to believe it or not, is based on many posts like these that you have posted your self. So ask yourself is that really my fault? I have read the entire forum as you so instructed me too and all I see is you going in spirals around outside subjects and loosing the idea behind your very first post or idea. To tell you the truth I tried but I guess I can't see WTF you are really trying to say so forgive me for looking stupid and I will no longer burden you with my lost posts.

The premise is hardly similar considering my fight is leveled against faith-based, irrational, unobservable claims.

And what rational would they use to become violent? That their religion all of us a sudden supports violence in this case? This demonstrates the degree to which religion can say whatever the hell it wants and get away with it under the guise of being substantiated by higher powers. And just the same, I didn't call for an attack on moderate Islam, I called for the revolutionizing of fundamental Islam into moderate Islam, which would hardly be considered an attack on moderate Islam

Attacking the idea of faith is hardly equivalent of attacking people themselves.

I call for the subversion of fundamental Islam and then the destruction of faith itself. However, the destruction of faith itself needs to be a concept of much grander scale beyond destroying Islam, because otherwise Islam will see it as an attack directly on them instead of directly on faith.

I said fundamental islam needs to be removed, and then all faith-based concepts, which includes religion, should be removed. In this sense I am attack Islam, but not directly since it falls under a broader category. And as for "I don't think you'll much object to how its done," don't start putting words in my mouth K THX.

But religion is their justification, not simply oppression. Others groups who were oppressed in the past didn't go out and explode themselves in bombs to fight oppression.

The opposite of a subjective reality is one where you can make statements that are either true or false. Here are the definitions of our two ideologies:

Pragmatist: All statements about the world are "true" only by virtue of being justified in a sphere of discourse.

Realist: Certain statements about the world are true, whether or not they can be justified - and many justified statements happen to be false.

You admit that your pragmatist viewpoint is pragmatist in itself, so what reason do you have to defend it as being a present truth? What exactly do you mean by that? That currently it is a universal truth, but that one day it might not be? Whether or not you think pragmatism is a universal truth or not is determined by whether you think other people should accept it as truth as well. And if you think other people should accept it, you immediately make claims on it being a truth regardless of subjectivity. if you don't think other people should accept, the truth of the idea dies as soon as all of it's adherents die. So really, what is the purpose of such an outlook?

In fact, there's a statement about the world that only a realist can make: "If a belief is true, it would be true even if no one believed it." An example: A group of primitives incapable of understanding planetary rotation says the sun revolves around the earth. Just because they all believe this to be true and have no means of proving otherwise doesn't mean it's a reality.

Now I'm going to attempt to explain how we can come to a rational moral universality in detail by paraphrasing the argument Sam Harris makes, since that is your biggest objection.

We know that a consensus among a culture may be the final arbiter of truth concerning morals, but it can't constitute it. What can constitute it, as a first step, is human intuition. Secondly, we can use human happiness, since ethics are created in the first place for human happiness.

Unselfish human happiness is created out of actions based on our love for one another. However, when acts are carried out based on ideas not related to love for each other, it becomes irrational and immoral. For example, beating your wife for showing skin is not an act of love for your wife, it is an act of love for an invisible being. Concerning their wife, if they saw a man beat a women for no justifiable reason, they would claim it's abusive. Thus, instead of admitting that they are abusive to their wives, they instead consider themselves carrying out an act of love for God. Regardless of the rationality, they are not carrying out an act of love for their wife.

We can then say that a persons happiness will be improved by becoming more loving and more compassionate towards them. Further, we need to define love in order for everything else to work. An example would be how a man may kill his daughter because she was raped, and it will bring shame to the family. We might say that their society perceives this act as an act of love towards his daughter, but why? Is it because of intuitive human notions? If so, why don't all cultures do this? It is because it is based within the context of faith, where faith based rules define how you should love another person instead of human intuition. Intuitively, one does not want to kill their daughter who's just been raped out of love. One rationalizes it through the use of the idea of shame, which consequently links back together with the irrational notion of honor. Love for an invisible, unobservable entity, a love which has the power to veil cruelty to your own family, has no place in human intuition and thus no place in morality.

The idea of MAD doesn't matter to begin with when dealing with Islamic fundamentalists due to their belief that if they die, they're going to heaven as heroes. And since this war on "terror" has only started fairly recently, especially with our invasion of Iraq, I wouldn't be so optimistic just because nothing has been nuked yet.

What if Iran suddenly reported an crazy Muslim sect stole a few nuclear device of theirs, and for countries to secure their borders even though the rogue operative has already infiltrated a country? They then agree to hand over all nuclear equipment to the US and stop all nuclear operations. And then a year later, three major cities blow up in a nuclear blast? Are we going to nuke Iran? Hard to say. My point is that it's completely feasible for terrorists to be able to nuke countries without necessarily causing immediate retaliation against Iran or N. Korea. I'm sure there are many other plausible arguments that can be made for my case as well. You seem to be claiming you know another absolute truth, oddly enough.

Oh, and is this why they're so willing to sacrifice themselves in suicide bombs? Because it leads to global hegemony of Islam? I think not. They're fine with it because they're A) Killing infidels and B) Going to see Allah in heaven.

Uhm, yeah. Vietcong.
Given supplies, and enough negative motivation, people will.
The removal of one justification does not mean the removal of all possible justifications.

If I said that all beliefs that are not Buddhist must be destroyed, would you find your Atheism under what would appear to be direct attack?
Or, alternatively, if I said that all people from the Southern U.S. should die in a fire, would you think that Bradylama would consider this a direct threat?
Of course this is a useless side argument. >_>

It doesn't matter what your fight is against; what matters is that you are, like the Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Neoconservatives before you, championing a revolutionary ideology and seeking to export it to the world. Like them, the impartation of this ideology requires the destruction of something else to work, in this case the idea of faith.

You don't get it, do you?

You are trying to tell people what to believe, and that their beliefs are irrational and must be swept aside. People have been fighting to protect what is important to them, whether that is their homes, their homeland, their ideology, or their faith.

Why would moderate Islam become violent in the face of your attempt to subvert it into something you deem more "rational"? The answer is simple; their faith is important to them, and you're trying to take it away from them.

Your attack goes beyond merely attacking the idea of faith; you also seek to attack the institutions of faith.

I already told you once about trying to bullshit me.

OK let be more clear since I was to vague. What the Vietcong were doing was out of self-preservation, not out of a holy war. They made no qualms that when America left, they didn't chase after us and continue to wage a war. Islam on the other hand views American not as simply an oppressor but as an evil that fights against their religion, and this is even when we have yet to make any claims against their religion. The Vietcong didn't kill because you were of a different sect of religion, they killed because of oppression. If we jump out of Iraq right now you can be sure the jihad will continue their war on us.

I never said I was an Atheist, though I've made arguments for an atheist position due to how the thread took it's course. There may very well be a god floating around somewhere, but that has little to do with my argument. My premise is not based on the belief or non belief in a god, it's based on the premise that it is irrational for justice to be based upon unprovable, unintuitive rules.

Allow me to take a step back from the abyss and note how this thread has given us nothing productive, and is degenerating fast.

For the good of everyone, this is closed. Pointlessly bickering about religion and FallDragon's evangelizing for his new Cult of Reason is to take place somewhere else where I don't have to deal with it.