Show that there is *religiously* motivated violence

No offense, but you're getting less coherent with every post. :bugeye:

By your logic, "the devil made me do it" would be a reasonable defense. But we don't see it used very often. And I doubt it has ever worked...

 

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But if some religious text or other suggests that, in fact, gay people really are bad bad baddie bad, and one goes out and kills a gay person in the name of some fundamentalism espousing such a belief, then that is indeed religiously motivated. Are you assuming that only nice things can be religiously motivated, or that unless an actual little grey representative of a religion tells you to do something - which would fall under the auspice of insanity, frankly - it cannot be religiously motivated?

OK, I see you're going with my first option above. Well, if the American constitution permitted or encouraged it, then it would make it so. There might well be a higher-order zeitgeist reading or perspective that would make such an action wrongful and immoral in the light of that very philosophy, but the tools still exist within the baser reading of that philosophy to allow it.

I appreciate what you're arguing here, but as an example the Abrahamic religions all have parameters under which murder and war and mayhem is allowed, or even encouraged. One cannot call the benevolent products of religion religious and the malevolent products irreligious. One has to take the good with the bad. If you wanted to call the malevolent ones misread, then okay. But if they remain genuine articles in that religion, then it's acceptable to call them religious. One could similarly have corporate douchebaggery and (less likely) corporate benevolence: but both still emit from the corporation.

The devil made me post in this thread.

 

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Holy sheeit... Geoff, wow man... devils advocate is one thing... but damn.

Truly, Christianity isn't advocating violence or even the condemnation of other religions - truthfully, Christianity is supposed to be welcoming and even accepting - yes, we are supposed to reach out to those that don't know God and Jesus, but we are NOT supposed to "force them to bend to our ways or suffer the consequences"... after all, we humans are not intended to judge.

 

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I disagree:

And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. As well the stranger as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the LORD, shall be put to death. ​

Leviticus 24-16

 

No, he's a theist, and I can't figure out his argument.

 

Devil made me do it, pt II

?? OK, you lost me there. How is that Devil's Advocate?

Yes, but Christians do judge, and when they do, they do so because the actions of others are in violation with their conception of morality. They didn't institute pogroms against Jews because the Jewish people had really nice lawns or didn't return their recyling. They did it because of the old and utterly false conception that Jews were "Christ-killers", or unbelievers, or religious deniers, and so forth. It's not Devil's Advocate to say that; it's true. This persecution had a religious basis. It was religious violence.

Now, if you want to say that's not part of Christianity as you conceive it, you'd be right by default, because it's not part of your Christianity. It's probably not part of most people's Christianity. But it is part of someone's, and because it has a limited connection to Christian theology, it's still "religious violence".

Naturally, Kitta, I realize full well that you reject this doctrine as wrongful, immoral and inaccurate, and naturally I applaud you for that. It isn't a question of whether it's mainstream belief, but rather whether such violence could be called "religious" (as defined by the OP), and it could be.

 

Well...that has been the result of what we did.
Some of us seem to have done it with religious motivation:

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=6607

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(Not sure they were either)
(ADD powers activate-ooo shiny!)

 

It is your reading/comprehension abilities that apparently decrease with every subsequent post.

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I'm not a theist. I just want to understand how there can be religiously motivated violence.

I certainly think that there can be violence that is motivated by a mundane/incomplete understanding of religion.

 

There is indeed a considerable legal problem that ensues from the status that religion is ascribed by the law.
So questions arise like: Are those who are in some way religious or believe in God, delusional, or are they sane?

If a person commits a crime and then claims e.g. "God told me to do it" or "The Bible/Koran says so" - how should that crime be prosecuted?
Under the plea of insanity?

So I suppose one motivation for positing that violence can indeed be religiously motivated is legal.

People who have committed crimes and who justify them claiming e.g. "God told me to do it" or "The Bible/Koran says so," otherwise do not necessarily exhibit any beliefs and behaviors that would suggest they are insane.

But if we posit that there is no God, then it follows that those who believe in God are necessarily delusional, and if they commit a crime which they claim is justified in the name of God somehow, they are to be prosecuted as insane.

 

Then you seem to understand religion in terms of politics - as if religion would be yet another brand of politics, nothing more.

I take for granted that the American constitution doesn't permit or encourange vigilante justice.

And some people have baser intellects, so baser things appeal to them.

We're not.

Again, this speaks of a mundane, political understanding of religion.



I am beginning to think that the problem arises simply from the fact that people who have committed a crime can name justifications for it that the secular (!) law cannot prove or disprove. Such named justifications can be an appeal to aliens, conspiracy, temporary insanity, or religion.

 

wynn,

Also, are they insane because they believe in God.

And they do not necessarily exhibit religiousness, or a belief in God.


jan.

 

Three questions for discussion here:


1. How would religiousness or a belief in God be exhibited?


2. Throughout the thread, quotes from scriptures have been listed that instruct the commission of violent acts. How are those instructions to be understood?


3. When a person commits an act that is perceived as harmful by others,
an act that may be to the extent of a legally prosecutable crime (such as aggravted assault or homicide), or an absence of reasonably expected common decency (such as shutting the door to someone in a public space, as when several customers entering a store, and one shuts the door on another),
and they justify that act by naming some religion-related justification (such as "God told me to do so," "the Bible Koran says so," hissing "You worthless atheist!" at someone),
how can people who are not religious make sense of that?

 

I am deeply, deeply impressed. I thank you.

I accept Bells' frank and abject apology for her assertion. Most kind.

And naturally I apologize in turn. My objective was to illustrate an issue, and it has done. I didn't expect quite such a reaction, but I'm glad in its way that it has, and I think something genuinely positive has come from this. I can't tell SF how incredibly impressed I am by this decision. Was this a general thing or a single supermod's call? It's brilliant.

As for the 'threat to my family', the implication was legal, not physical, and the situation sounded as though it was becoming litigious. I've already made my mea culpas for that above; I'm a family man and when people start using heightened language of doom on the forum I think "nuisance suit?".

Lastly, and almost most importantly, I don't think I actually implied that Bells would use her mod status; rather, I was implicating the system itself. I suppose it's to that system I should apologize, which is an incredulous sort of turn of events.

So... strangely enough - I apologize to the SF system - and those that run her, too - for my suspicions. They were, most impressively, unfounded. I have to admit to a certain suspicion that this post might come back to haunt me if later I again criticize "the system"

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, but, too, it could hardly be otherwise after this wonderful decision. :shrug: There you have it.

Sincerest thanks again.