islam is the truest way of life

Name the exception.

That makes no difference. Lots of people know Arabic.

In response to a specific post of mine.

You get mice more often, and other diseased vermin. You develop higher blood pressure, get less exercise, children so deprived later suffer from immune system disorders from excessive cleanliness, and so forth.

There is no logical argument. It's an arbitrary preference stemming from childhood circumstances, taking into account an apparent natural (possibly even genetic) human propensity to bond with other species, to keep pets or companions. I know people who find life without domestic farm animals deprived and empty, I even know a few who cannot bear the thought of living without semi-domesticated wild animals around - they are always harboring raccoons or pet crows or the like, sheltering rabbits in the garage, bringing home orphaned skunks or squirrels.

Bil Gilbert (an excellent writer for foreigners who have an interest in American character) once speculated on why some people need what he called "other bloods", and some don't. His starting point was that he did, and so did the others in his circle of friends and community, and those who didn't struck him as strange and alien somehow.

 

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Yup, to point out the irony of self described secular humanists cheerleading bombing squads. And for self described atheists who call themselves Jews. Or for self described religious people who call themselves atheists. False dichotomies I can comprehend but not antonymous definitions.

I would do the same for a self described Muslim calling himself godless.

 

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How is this thread not preaching ?

 

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Same way having atheists going around saying "religious nuts" is not preaching

 

What kind of compulsion? The verse in question relates to forcing people to convert to or be a part of a religion. Are you talking about that kind of compulsion? or are you talking about other compulsions, say, no murder? No theft? If we go down that road we find compulsions in every society based on a socially agreed upon text.

And its not those people that have the most problems understanding the Quran.

Meh, all of those can be negated by doing other things.

So attacks arent a logical argument? Cleanliness isnt a logical argument? Sure, sometimes animals may be useful for something, but does that mean they should be kept in the house, locked up or otherwise? Sometimes guns are useful too, does that mean I should allow guns into my house? No. Some peoople cant live without guns. I find them strange as well and they probably find me just as strange.

 

The irony you made obvious was rather otherwise.

If you quit trying to impose your own somewhat peculiar definitions, you may encounter less incomprehensibility. And you would avoid some of the cruder blunders in your responses, such as talking about the "self-described religious people who call themselves atheists" and "self-described atheists who call themselves Jews": most of the significance of the references you invoke there pivoted on the fact that these people were not self described in these ways.

If you insist on defining swans as white, then a discussion of the black ones may serve to confuse - but there's a way around that.

 

My job has me visiting many homes. My ability to make friends with the homeowner's cats and/or dogs almost always puts them at ease. If their animals trust me, they generally do as well. Animal lovers feel comfortable around other animal lovers, and are put off by those ill at ease in the presence of them.

 

In what thread ?
And how is that preaching ?

 

Thats very comforting since most homicides, assaults and rapes are committed by people known to the victims.

I prefer to keep white swans distinct from black ones. This may seem peculiar to some people but its odd to me when a black swan insists that its white or a white one insists its black and that I need to stop being rigid in calling white as white and black as black.

 

Once again: your complete obliviousness to the point of those references creates a much more pointed irony than the one you claim.

For example: In my original invocation of the Navajo, for example, long ago now on this forum, I pointed out - to you - that the particular Navajo shaman I was recalling (and believe me, I've combed the internet - it was an interview with a couple of people including novelist Tony Hillerman and this other guy, about the Navajo practices and life in Indian country these days. I can't find the thing) agreed with you, not me. He agreed that what Westerners called "religion" required a deity, and concluded that since the Navajo did not have any deities they had no religion. He was objecting to anthropologists and arrogant colonial intellectual types assigning the label "religion" to native community practices and rituals, without asking the people who knew, such as himself, whether there were deities involved.

The problem you are having is not talkative swans - most of them are agreeing with you that all swans are white.

The post in question related to the assertions of Diamondheart (who should not be called DH, btw - the name's taken by a much different poster here), and I refer you to them. Some of the societal rules of behavior allegedly mandated by the Quran (some versions or another of some of the Quran's mandates) are compulsory in all Islamic states because they are so mandated - that is their justification.

Nobody is talking about having problems understanding the Quran. That's apparently easy, or at least common - there are dozens of different understandings, with new ones popping up in every generation, jsut among Arabic speakers. God revealed the Quran to me in English, with the chapters rearranged from the earlier revelations for some reason, in a Penguin "classic" paperback. This is held by some to be an inferior mode of revelation compared with having an angel dictate to me in Arabic - but God works in mysterious ways, eh? And I think people who believe in angels as anything other than metaphor already have a screw loose, so their disapprobation doesn't sting much.

Nope. There's logic on all sides, and no argument with preference.

 

If thats what you were saying then we have no argument.

However this is what you said at the time:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2105390&postcount=225

 

Which ones?

No bias then eh?

Safety and cleaniless on one side, some health benefits which can be acquired by doing other things on the other side. Interesting.

 

"However"? Looks like exactly the same argument to me.

Seems like my memory is working a little better than I would have thought these days. The interview must have made a serious impression on me - I really need to find that thing. My notes are in a cardboard box under a pile of them.

"Shaman", I should apologize, is not the word he used, just my current label for the status of being able to handle, formally and professionally, the ritual role, as well as possessor of a postgraduate degree in anthropology, i.e. a Western education. I can't recall his term, something to do with "singer" - it wasn't the one Hillerman uses in his novels, either, unless my memory has slipped.

Again - your problem is not with the Herzls and Navajo philosophers and Taoist mystics and other talkative swanlike folks - your problem is that you want lasting human community to necessarily rest on religion, and religion to necessarily rest on theistic belief, so that the essentially invalid argument that the necessity of theism is evidence of its validity has as much force as possible.

 

Its not "my problem". Its what the evidence shows works. Even "enlightened" as they are today, all atheists can do is moan why they dislike religion.

 

I hear more moaning from theists about atheists.

 

Do you miss the mass congregation everytime a new theist signs up? Or wait, you're part of that pack. :bugeye:

Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining

 

I am part of that pack ? Yea right.
I just engage people on their blatant nonsense. I can't help it if they happen to be a theist of some kind.

 

Yeah you just conveniently miss all the atheists making unsupported assumptions. Or wait...!

 

Do I ? I'm pretty sure you remember Me vs. John trees-are-not-alive 99.
Can you point me to where I have engaged a theist in that way ?

 

Moaning now, are we - how long before you start putting stuff in red caps?

The problem is that people's actual lives and communities don't fit your classification scheme, in the first place (and some, like that Navajo guy, get a little angry about the arrogance of the Western colonialists like you labeling his heartfelt beliefs as you do),

and that the original argument was not about the benefits of theism, but its validity.

If you were openly arguing that human beings benefit from being deluded and hypnotized by their authorities in particular ways, and the downside of vulnerability to the pathological and cynically powerful was a price worth paying, that would be one thing. There is much to be said in favor of theistic belief - its role in preventing Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons an immediate example.

But you are arguing that this nonsense is not only desirable, but its prevalence evidence of its validity; that Islam is not only useful for communities but somehow true for human understanding, that theistic belief is not only natural but necessary, not only necessary but in some sense true, that there is no downside to mass co-option by systematized nonsense as long as it is benign, and such religions as Islam are benign by definition and by their own assertion.

They must be OK, therefore they are. The Quran says Islam is egalitarian and compassionate and reasonable toward women, therefore it is.

And this requires you to deny historical circumstance, plain reality, and physical fact. It requires you to believe that pork has something wrong with it, like higher cholesterol; that there are no religious schisms in Islam; that the people dropping bombs on the theists in Afghanistan are not themselves equivalently theistic; that the illiterate women dying two years early on average and especially restricted in clothing and behavior are not oppressed, that the Ottoman Empire was either not Islamic or benevolent and defensive in its expansion; and so forth.