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" You say they "were most probably imagined". Yes, but not depicted. "
I don't get it. Depicting, portraying something imagined is fantasy, is not real. Although i agree that some fantasies are important to people but at the same time no one is entitled to force their own views upon others. You may believe in anything you want but within some limits and those are where you start to go beyond your personal borders on to someone else's. Like talking about religion is ok, joking about religion is ok, but forcing others to align to your religion is not ok. And it doesn't matter how you may enforce it. May that be by extreme violence, mild social pressure or even school grading. I for one think that religion in schools is a form if indoctrination, a form of forcing religious views on to helpless children. I mean, i don't know how is in different countries but when i was in school we didn't learn religion, as in the history and influence on societies of religion and also about the variety of it and a bit of all of them. We were thought only about Christianity. So i'm willing to bet that in those countries where you can't even joke about it, the level of indoctrination is very high. Like if it would be after me i would definitely try to change that. But at the same time it's their country and if they are fine with it so be it, i'll leave it be. But they shouldn't expect to find the same approach upon their beliefs across those borders.
Also there is an interesting video on youtube from Lindybeige about escalation of violence. Normal people understand that and never go from zero to nuclear. Like no one is stopping anyone to respond with the same pay if they feel like some cartoons are so disturbing. Don't they have their own publications? But seeing some of the news articles about Macron being portrayed in different ways, with a boot footprint, an red X over his picture, or as a pig and whatnot, you don't see the french people and more important, the government demanding to stop the circulation of those images.
I feel like the logic is gone, people are acting without any common sense. That's why, how you said, i went off the rails because it seems we tend to give more importance to nocive structures and ideas than to actually focus on what is beneficial, what is real and important. Like education, public health and our economies. We need to change a lot still, to basically change out global culture around wealth, to actually act as good householders rather than scalpers. And bickering on trivial stuff around holy fantasies is lost time that we don't really have.
 
I feel like the logic is gone, people are acting without any common sense.

The people rioting about depictions of Muhammad live in or are strongly influenced by dictatorships who use the distant authority of Islam (and arab nationalism, and the Ottoman Empire etc) as part of their power structure. This kind of redirected religious anger didn't even exist until the mid to late century, and they are almost always invoked when the government is under threat and needs people to let off steam. Some of the most aggressive Islamic fundamentalists are just compensating for the fact that they don't live up to the standards of the religion and need an easy way to show off how devout they are.

In comparison if the US really wanted to, it could whip large numbers of people up into a wild frenzy by claiming they were making fun of 9/11, or the war of independence or whatever other stupid historical fetish. It really wouldn't take much, most americans are either angry working class people or terrified middle class people, and lots of them would jump at the chance to have some state-sanctioned obscene violence even if it meant beating up or killing people who had nothing to do with it. The reason you never see this kind of violence in Europe or America anymore is because the goverments have enough control that they never need to stoop that low.
 
It's mostly the depiction but also very much about the ridicule/disrespect of the prophet.
Think of it like blasphemy. Many European countries had laws against that up until very recently.
Ironically, in Denmark it was abolished in 2017 after a man burned a copy of the Koran (and also the Bible, but that was ignored).
 
I agree that extremism exists everywhere. So people could go bananas if you pick on the 9/11 wound. But at the same time most would just respond with their words and possible their money taking you to court and whatnot. It doesn't matter if it's blasphemy. Legally or otherwise. Law is always behind society evolution anyway, so in some aspects it's not to be followed even if it's written, no one does take it serious any way when is comically dated. So you can't really deny that the way extremism behaves seems to differ a lot between western countries and eastern ones. And it's not even a matter of wealth as many of the eastern group are very wealthy. The way i see it, the numbers of extremists are lower and the ones that are behaving unreasonable are mostly vocal with the Christian groups. I don't ignore the part that there are still enough bad apples that kill, like the one who shot randomly in a mosque some time ago. But they do it from a sense of fear as they do it in their own region and do not export their ideas and perform attacks in muslim countries. And i could even say that to some extent i understand that fear because the muslim extremists are repeatedly attacking with deadly results over some words. So to some extend it's like dealing with a rabid animal that can't be understand or reasoned with it. As normal people have the notion of escalation of violence and are open to bargaining and debate. So i guess that it seems like a sort of siege on the idea of a free society. Which sure, would spark a defensive response in anyone. As that every action has a reaction.
You know, it's one thing to say we will never renounce our cartoons and something entirely different to say "Muslims Have A Right To Be Angry And Kill Millions Of French People, Says Ex-Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad". And that after another yet brutal knife attack.

I don't care if it's shame, social pressure or whatever. But even the North Koreans would not go in suicide missions for their "god" leader that never takes a dump. They too are oppressed and afraid and live in a very ****ed up system, so when a foreign doctor pro bono treats many people of cataract giving them sight again, their first act is to praise their leader. They must cry in pain at his funerals. I mean, it's just theatrics but they need to keep it real for survival and a fade sense of being treated as people. And even them would not go to live in another country just to go in a killing frenzy because their culture is different than the culture in their new country. No one is so far gone to not see reality and common sense regardless of how difficult their life was. So i don't really buy that part about religious dictactorship. Or that part about wanting to show own worth. As from what i seen in some article about how people end up as trained terrorists, it's more about emotional programming and abuse, not so different than how modern slavery works nowadays. The part that i fail to understand in any situation is how and why not ask for help when in a place where getting that help is more plausible. Or at least rebel. I for one would rather die grabbing some wannabe slaver by the throat than go along with their plans and end up in a situation where acting out is even less possible. And like in the part about koreans, threat on your family shouldn't matter in doing what's best for you. Killing some people and going to prison or getting shot or exploding yourself is not really something good for you. The idea of 100 virgins in heaven or the idea that your brother would not be harmed when he goes to school, or the idea that your mother will get a large sum of money, even though it seems a pretty compelling argument, your life and personal values on good and bad should never be for sale. People should just try to walk in other people's shoes before acting. And the first instinct should be on the effects of your actions on others. Like you may be better when taking a bribe but doing so you support a system of corruption that on a broader scale is basically just cutting the branch on which you are standing on. I think i hate religion as much as i hate communism and capitalism. I want to believe there is something else there that can make us work together in spite of our differences.
 
Not sure if this is the best thread for this but whatever.
Why is pride considered to be a sin? In all religions that I know anything about and also I think in most secular philosophies pride is considered to be a hindrance to good behaviour in some form of another. To me it seems like a neutral driving force for behaviour, if you are proud of the wrong things (I think this would most commonly be the usual end results of "good" behaviour, e.g. being proud of wealth earnt by working hard) rather than being proud of choosing to behave well (so actually being proud of the decision to work hard as opposed to the results) then yes I suppose it could lead you to judge people who haven't seen the same results as inferior to yourself (so poor people in this example) and it could push you to be overly competitive for that end result and to use bad behaviour to achieve it (fraud for example). Your pride and sense of self worth could also be damaged by factors largely outside of your control too I guess, perhaps you get wolloped by a load of unforseen expenses or whatever and you end up a self-loathing poor person. Now if you have actually taken pride in the choice to act well then these should not be issues, as long as you recognise that this choice will influence the end result but does not determine it - so maybe your friend is poor because they have other priorities or commitments or general circumstances. They might work very hard as a volunteer, or towards their hobbies or in a job that doesn't tend to pay well.
And pride can also blind you to your own flaws, but if you take pride in being someone who acknowledges their flaws and tries to overcome them then surely pride could be a motivator for doing so.

So is pride being considered a sin just an acknowledgement that pride can be and often is a drive for bad behaviour/arrogance or is it something fundamentally different to how I interpret it? I've noticed some religions seem to teach it dogmatically, I think from the idea that we all have flaws and are supposedly nothing compared to God but this doesn't seem particularly healthy to me.
 
Not sure if this is the best thread for this but whatever.
Why is pride considered to be a sin? In all religions that I know anything about and also I think in most secular philosophies pride is considered to be a hindrance to good behaviour in some form of another. To me it seems like a neutral driving force for behaviour, if you are proud of the wrong things (I think this would most commonly be the usual end results of "good" behaviour, e.g. being proud of wealth earnt by working hard) rather than being proud of choosing to behave well (so actually being proud of the decision to work hard as opposed to the results) then yes I suppose it could lead you to judge people who haven't seen the same results as inferior to yourself (so poor people in this example) and it could push you to be overly competitive for that end result and to use bad behaviour to achieve it (fraud for example). Your pride and sense of self worth could also be damaged by factors largely outside of your control too I guess, perhaps you get wolloped by a load of unforseen expenses or whatever and you end up a self-loathing poor person. Now if you have actually taken pride in the choice to act well then these should not be issues, as long as you recognise that this choice will influence the end result but does not determine it - so maybe your friend is poor because they have other priorities or commitments or general circumstances. They might work very hard as a volunteer, or towards their hobbies or in a job that doesn't tend to pay well.
And pride can also blind you to your own flaws, but if you take pride in being someone who acknowledges their flaws and tries to overcome them then surely pride could be a motivator for doing so.

So is pride being considered a sin just an acknowledgement that pride can be and often is a drive for bad behaviour/arrogance or is it something fundamentally different to how I interpret it? I've noticed some religions seem to teach it dogmatically, I think from the idea that we all have flaws and are supposedly nothing compared to God but this doesn't seem particularly healthy to me.


Like most KJV biblical terms the word pride has a much more superficial meaning than it did when that version was being written. For example "Jealous" literally means "Zealous" and means "righteously protective" rather than "I want what that guy has".

Pride in the Bible is like self-aggrandising pomp, and one of the parables gives the example of people giving to charity. The way to avoid pride is to "not let the left hand know what the right is doing", because otherwise your actions are all dictated by how good they make you appear outwardly, which is to put it bluntly the domain of psychopaths, rather than doing them authentically without thinking. The point is that pride of this kind is an undesirable bridge between moral behaviour and selfishness.

Why are you copying an old post? Is has already been discussed. At least add something to the topic...

Oh lol. And I replied to that one as well.
 
To people who are not sure that God exists:
What kind of empirical evidence, if provided, would strengthen your belief in God?
One or all of these:
1. A spectacular, scientifically inexplicable public message to humanity.
2. A regular supply of hallucinogenic drugs.
3. I also take bribes if that's what you are really offering.
 
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I don't really need strengthening the belief in god/higher being, I'd require a solid proof that any of the organizations which monopolized their interpretation of such are in any way tied to them. I found my belief doing math (not meth), but lost all hope in any of the religions ever providing me with an answer in the process.
 
As an empirical evidence, simply the one proposed in the paradox of omnipotence, - "Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being cannot lift it? :iamamoron:
 
As an empirical evidence, simply the one proposed in the paradox of omnipotence, - "Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being cannot lift it? :iamamoron:
I once asked this the local priest, reffering to God, and he responded :"He can, and he did, the stone is a man, and that stone (human) can only be "lifted" by itself alone (reffering to its transition to heaven)"

A nice one, i give him that :smile:
 
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