I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Greatest I am
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Seleucus wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 7:35 am
This was my first impression too, but after further consideration concluded that the tradition or status quo in America is actually democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, equality of women and so on.
Snipped for brevity but we basically agree except for what you put above on the right wing of Christianity.

The American majority status quo is as you say, but not the right wing who would discriminate against gays without a just cause and who do not believe in the equality of women as they try to control her reproduction by putting road block, so to speak, to family planning and abortion clinics.

The right wing of Christianity have a long way to go to be civilized and embrace the law of the land.

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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Seleucus wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 5:32 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote:I would say you are not a muslim's bum-hole. And there is nothing 'awesome' about American 'culture' (or is McDonald's your idea of heaven?)
Not sure what your remark about muslim's means? As for America, I personally find the lunar landing, the Internet, cell phones, the Panama Canal, nuclear power, the radio, the television, the submarine, the automobile, flight, the discovery of DNA, Measles vaccine, the First Amendment, a Course in Miracles, John Singer Sargent, the Oriental Institute, Penn Museum, and on and on and on very awesome.
vegetariantaxidermy wrote:SJW compared me to Hitler and said I was a 'racist bigot'.
That sort of thing is cognitive distortion: all or nothing thinking, over-generalization, minimalization, disqualifying the positive. I don't know you very well at all but to compare you to Hitler is a loss of objectivity, let us be alert not to fall into it ourselves.
DNA wasn't just 'discovered' out of nowhere. It was an evolutionary process, like most scientific discoveries and inventions. Same goes for most of your list. Who first split the atom? That would be Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander. There are countries with no 'First Amendment' that have far more freedom of speech than the US. A 'First Amendment' isn't much use if it's not followed.
Justintruth
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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...Now I wonder what percentage of secular sceptic 'atheist's would be the same? The US is to blame for the rise of radical islam, which is why it should be taking all of the muslims it has displaced.
I would say nearly a majority of American secular atheists and also a firm majority of Christian fundamentalists qualify. And by their actions you can see it.

I am going back over US history right now. America is...or at least was...a great county not because of those "nut jobs" but because men like Jefferson and King were able to have significant influence and more importantly many ordinary people backed them and gave them the political backing without which they would have evaporated.

Two big movements the French one prior to the revolution and the sixties. And also there was some influence by those who genuinely embraced Christianity. They acted like governing forces but still the bloodthirsty American nationalists hidden behind patriotism quenched, no drenched, their desire for war.

Unfortunately Trump is not a new story. Look at Hearst and Teddy Rosevelt.

The problem is not actually Trump nor was it Hearst. They fanned the flames but the hearts of all those citizens that advocate American power and cheapen foreign lives then spend the them lavishly for what? ... not even real comfort... their imagined American dream ....exposed by the artists like Arthur Miller or Ginsburg.

Unfortunately due to technical advances in killing the next round is going to be....special.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Greatest I am wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 6:13 pm
Greta wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 4:58 am While I abhor what I read about what Islamic extremists do, I have had only a few dealings with Muslims:

1) a hijab wearing work colleague with whom I had a funny regular banter routine. Very nice person.

2) a man who converted to Islam to marry a Muslim woman. He was a pleasant, intelligent and helpful fellow before his religion change and remained so.

3) A fellow I chatted with over a beer at a gathering of a dating website. Obviously he wasn't overly serious.

4) The owners of a Lebanese food place near an old home. When they found out it was my birthday they gave me a free dessert with my meal

5) A couple, plus the man's brother who ran a Lebanese good place not so far from where I lived. Really pleasant, fun, socialable people. We'd have long talks about life, the universe and everything. Then, in the years after 9/11 the mood changed in the shop from a happy, breezy vibe to somewhat heavy and morose. I chatted with my main pal there and he was very dark about what was happening in the world, and mightily angry about the US. Clearly depressed but repressing it. In the next few years his wife was suddenly only wearing the full Muslim cloaking and hijab, and no longer socialising and bantering with customers, although thankfully she was not in the burqa. Business slowed and then they shut shop. It was saddening.

None of this is any grounds for me having an attitude about Muslims as a general group. I've liked the ones I came to know. Any bunch of people over a billion strong are going to necessarily be incredibly diverse. Some nice, some nasty.
Sure there are some good Muslims in some countries that do not practice the more vile side of their religion, but they all fly the star and crescent and thus all contribute to a vile Islam.

If you saw a group of S.S. soldiers, how would you tell the good ones from the ones on their way to kill you?

Since Islam is a misogynous religion and then some, you should be ashamed of yorslf for not denouncing their ideology as well as those who support it by contributing to the whole.
I don't feel at all ashamed :lol:

Nor do I feel the need to provide the "required" display behaviour in order to prove myself to anyone. Am I to speak the required critical sentiments whenever the words "Islam" or "Muslim" are mentioned like the drool of Pavlov's dog? I think everyone is quite aware of Islam's treatment of women so there's no need for me to preach about it.
Last edited by Greta on Sat May 20, 2017 5:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 3:54 pm
Greta wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 1:13 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 6:07 amHmm. But if only 10 percent of them (VERY conservative) are radicals, that's a heck of a lot of fucked-in-the-head nut-jobs who would happily see you blown to kingdom come. Now I wonder what percentage of secular sceptic 'atheist's would be the same? The US is to blame for the rise of radical islam, which is why it should be taking all of the muslims it has displaced.
Yes, there is a crisis in Islam at the moment, just as there was a crisis in Germany, China and Russia.
When we say, "There's a crisis IN Islam, I think we need to point out as well that there is a crisis WITH Islam.
Sure. If there is a crisis in your body, then that a crisis for the whole of you. Islam has problems and, like people with problems, that makes problems for others. I don't see much in the way of answers, though. Whatever, it doesn't strike me that Muslims are doing well. For many Muslims, their living conditions have become steadily worse, often catastrophically so. The evidence is in: regressive religious caliphates do not bring prosperity.

Islamic nations have a bleak future, exacerbated by the effects of more extreme weather events and dwindling food production capacity. The answer for them is to separate religion and governance, to give the Imams no more power than western church leaders. I can't see this happening, though. More likely there's going to be carnage and most victims are going to be those languishing unprotected under the primitive, incompetent and arbitrary governance of Sharia law.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Justintruth wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 10:49 pm
...Now I wonder what percentage of secular sceptic 'atheist's would be the same? The US is to blame for the rise of radical islam, which is why it should be taking all of the muslims it has displaced.
I would say nearly a majority of American secular atheists and also a firm majority of Christian fundamentalists qualify. And by their actions you can see it.

I am going back over US history right now. America is...or at least was...a great county not because of those "nut jobs" but because men like Jefferson and King were able to have significant influence and more importantly many ordinary people backed them and gave them the political backing without which they would have evaporated.

Two big movements the French one prior to the revolution and the sixties. And also there was some influence by those who genuinely embraced Christianity. They acted like governing forces but still the bloodthirsty American nationalists hidden behind patriotism quenched, no drenched, their desire for war.

Unfortunately Trump is not a new story. Look at Hearst and Teddy Rosevelt.

The problem is not actually Trump nor was it Hearst. They fanned the flames but the hearts of all those citizens that advocate American power and cheapen foreign lives then spend the them lavishly for what? ... not even real comfort... their imagined American dream ....exposed by the artists like Arthur Miller or Ginsburg.

Unfortunately due to technical advances in killing the next round is going to be....special.
Are you saying here that the majority of secular sceptic American 'atheists' want to blow people up for not sharing their non-belief?
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 5:42 pmIt means you are on here pretending to be a muslim atheist who's scared to post on the internet. A pretty pathetic ruse.
Would you like me to take a selfie of a minaret in the background and holding a device open to this page of philosophynow forum and upload the image to this thread? Would you like an upload of my ID documents that read "Muslim"?
vegetariantaxidermy wrote:And imagine what the US could have done if it didn't spend most of its massive amount of money on military toys.
...
DNA wasn't just 'discovered' out of nowhere. It was an evolutionary process, like most scientific discoveries and inventions. Same goes for most of your list. Who first split the atom? That would be Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander. There are countries with no 'First Amendment' that have far more freedom of speech than the US. A 'First Amendment' isn't much use if it's not followed.
So can we agree that the US did some awesome things like the Panama Canal, the Measles Vaccine, and the lunar landing, and that people of other nationalities were also involved in those accomplishments, meanwhile also that the US did some very terrible things like spending trillions of dollars on military machinery that could have been spent building hospitals and orphanages and so on? That way we would be able to avoid cognitive distortions such as "all or nothing thinking", "black and white thinking" or "discounting the positive" and move towards objectivity in our account.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Justintruth wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 10:49 pmHearst.
Hearst was a leftist during most of his life, but from his late fifties or 60s he became a rightist. Why do you think that happened?

I can relate. I used to have positive view of religion in general and also Islam, I was politically a leftist. But then I switched sides. It was probably building subconsciously for a while, but it was in the space of an hour or ninety minutes while laying down one afternoon about a year and a half ago that it happened.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Greta wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 5:27 amWhatever, it doesn't strike me that Muslims are doing well. For many Muslims, their living conditions have become steadily worse, often catastrophically so. The evidence is in: regressive religious caliphates do not bring prosperity.

Islamic nations have a bleak future, exacerbated by the effects of more extreme weather events and dwindling food production capacity. The answer for them is to separate religion and governance, to give the Imams no more power than western church leaders. I can't see this happening, though. More likely there's going to be carnage and most victims are going to be those languishing unprotected under the primitive, incompetent and arbitrary governance of Sharia law.
I tend to agree. The end of the colonial period was a time of enormous hope that freedom and prosperity would emerge in the developing world. That didn't happen. The appearance of improvement that enlightened colonial policies brought to the developing world from the end of the 1800s came to nothing as the inertia of civilizational trajectories returned to course. The eventual realization that prosperity and freedom are not coming, and often instead, the situation is devolving from the point when the colonizers withdrew is leading to depression, hopelessness and reactionaryism. Realistically, Islamization will accelerate and nothing can stop that. The southern hemisphere does not have the psychological assets to develop independently and those qualities are not going to emerge on their own, (on a superficial level: queuing, attention to detail, punctuality and so on; on a deeper level: a belief in progress, valuing freedom, courage, discipline, honesty, environmentalism, health and fitness and so on). Meanwhile, there is no incentive for Western societies to intervene and show leadership or assist in the way that colonialism formerly made it profitable. As I discussed earlier, one hope might be repatriating refugees who have acquired values, habits, and money during their time in the West and on returning home will be able to affect change.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 5:48 amsecular sceptic American 'atheists' want to blow people up for not sharing their non-belief?
American atheists were doing their share of bomb throwing in the early part of the 1900s; not only in America, but elsewhere too beginning from the 1850s: veritable genocide and massacre of clergy across eastern Europe and also South America. There are also Islamic atheists, recall al-Razi. I don't say these things to apologize for Islam but rather to dissuade dualistic thinking and encourage objectivity in analyzing complex phenomena.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Seleucus wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 8:06 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 5:42 pmIt means you are on here pretending to be a muslim atheist who's scared to post on the internet. A pretty pathetic ruse.
Would you like me to take a selfie of a minaret in the background and holding a device open to this page of philosophynow forum and upload the image to this thread? Would you like an upload of my ID documents that read "Muslim"?
vegetariantaxidermy wrote:And imagine what the US could have done if it didn't spend most of its massive amount of money on military toys.
...
DNA wasn't just 'discovered' out of nowhere. It was an evolutionary process, like most scientific discoveries and inventions. Same goes for most of your list. Who first split the atom? That would be Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander. There are countries with no 'First Amendment' that have far more freedom of speech than the US. A 'First Amendment' isn't much use if it's not followed.
So can we agree that the US did some awesome things like the Panama Canal, the Measles Vaccine, and the lunar landing, and that people of other nationalities were also involved in those accomplishments, meanwhile also that the US did some very terrible things like spending trillions of dollars on military machinery that could have been spent building hospitals and orphanages and so on? That way we would be able to avoid cognitive distortions such as "all or nothing thinking", "black and white thinking" or "discounting the positive" and move towards objectivity in our account.
If you like. It's pretty obvious when someone has English as their second language. So they went to the moon 50 years ago. What since? That hardly makes up for all the evil stuff. It should be charged with crimes against humanity for wasting all that money and opportunity on shit like nuclear weapons. The chance might never come again.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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Greatest I am wrote: Fri May 19, 2017 6:19 pmThe American majority status quo is as you say,
They will tend to be opposites, a dual citizenship American right wing voter will be a leftist in Indonesia, and an Indonesian rightist with dual citizenship will vote for the American left. I understand that to be the case because they each ally with the hierarchy attenuating forces in a country on the other side of the civilizational divide from one in which they are the socially dominant in.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 9:18 amThat hardly makes up for all the evil. It should be charged with crimes against humanity for wasting all that money and opportunity on shit like nuclear weapons. The chance might never come again.
Can you think of a more objective way to say what you're wanting to express than using the word "evil" which is a cognitive distortion called "labeling"? Are you advising the US totally disarm at a national level, or what is your suggestion?
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Seleucus wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 9:22 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 9:18 amThat hardly makes up for all the evil. It should be charged with crimes against humanity for wasting all that money and opportunity on shit like nuclear weapons. The chance might never come again.
Can you think of a more objective way to say what you're wanting to express than using the word "evil" which is a cognitive distortion called "labeling"? Are you advising the US totally disarm at a national level, or what is your suggestion?
Hmm. American 'spelling'. Constantly singing the praises of America. Clearly a native English speaker. Uses babble-speak expertly to put even Walker to shame.
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Re: I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

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vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat May 20, 2017 9:25 amAmerican 'spelling'. Constantly singing the praises of America. Clearly a native English speaker. Uses babble-speak expertly to put even Walker to shame.
Recall that we have digressed from your point:
The US is to blame for the rise of radical islam
To which I replied that Wahhabism began in the early 1700s, but America in 1776, therefore America couldn't be the cause of radical Islam. I added that it would benefit Islamic countries if the West would lead and assist.

To that you replied that Islamic society had been stable if not for the interference of the West.

To which I relied that the Ottomans, and almost all modern Muslim states are being supported by the West. I further suggested that a psychological complex or cognitive distortion is making it impossible to grant that America or the West have amazing merits and much to offer the Islamic world. That lead to this digression on being willing to acknowledge the achievement of America.

Your above quoted reply (May 20, 2017 3:25 pm) is "genetic fallacy" unless my race, religion, or citizenship are somehow relevant to the amazing achievements of America? To boot, "babble speak" is not objective description, it is an interpretation; and I'm sorry, but I don't know who "Walker" is.

You had been reply to this:
Can you think of a more objective way to say what you're wanting to express than using the word "evil" which is a cognitive distortion called "labeling"? Are you advising the US totally disarm at a national level, or what is your suggestion?
What I'm contending is that in the process of cognitive distortion, the ability to assess objectively is being lost.

(1) I'd like for you to agree that some of the accomplishments of America are pretty amazing, like the Panama Canal, the Measles Vaccine, and the lunar landing. That isn't to say that non-Americans weren't also involved in those accomplishments, or that America didn't also do bad things like spending vast amounts on war machines instead of hospitals and orphans.

(2) I would also like you to make your complaint in an objective way and be specific, because the word "evil" isn't objective, its a label.

(3) I would finally like you to propose a doable alternative to spending funds on "nuclear weapons" which you had criticized below. Are you suggesting all nuclear weapons should be decommissioned, or a reduction, or more economical delivery systems like B-52 bombers instead of the more costly B2 bomber? Can you give some examples of where those funds would be better spent?
Last edited by Seleucus on Sat May 20, 2017 10:29 am, edited 5 times in total.
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