The issue of Blasphemy in Islam

[Leonardo17]

Grand Nudger:
   I am not going to repeat myself on the issue of some scholars having been and still being completely incompetent in the realm of religion and spirituality. But if we are to talk about scholars (in the past and in the present) who are known to be serious and diligent in their duty, most of them would agree with most of the opinions I have expressed here during the last 1 or 2 weeks. And no one is clowning anyone. We’re just having a chat on issues on which we happen to interested in.
   So my objection in this post is going to be about your theory about monotheistic religions eradicating earlier pagan cultures. To refute this thesis I am going to talk about the Celts. Unlike religion, Ancient History happens to be one of my strong points so I’ll readily try to answer to your comments on this issue.
   Now the Celts have arrived to Europe in the 12th Century BC and they became the dominant culture of Western Europe in the 8th century BC. I believe the reason for this success was their improved craftsmanship and in particular, their high quality iron weapons which allowed them to subdue the earlier Bronze-age cultures of Western Europe. Then they coexisted peacefully with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians who were doing nothing more than establishing some trading posts and therefore not threatening them.
   This started to change with the Greeks. The Greeks shared this romantic “noble savage” theory of the neo-pagans and had a degree of admiration toward them. But still the term “Gaul” was synonymous with the term “barbarian”. In 4th century BC frescoes from the Athenian Acropolis you can see “Athenians fighting Persians” or “Athenians vs Amazons” or “Gods vs. Giants” frescoes that clearly resumes the Greco-Roman ideology toward the Gauls. While they had some feelings of admiration toward these cultures, their behavior reflected a true feeling of supremacy toward these “uncivilized barbarians”. At the time of Lysimachos (An heir to one of the Kingdoms of Alexander the Great in the 3rd century BC). Gauls were allowed to found a Kingdom in Anatolia, only to be used as pawns or as cannon-fodder during the endless rivalries between the Hellenistic Kingdoms until their complete eradication by the Romans in the 2nd century AD.
    Gauls didn’t like their civilized neighbors eithers. They had a relatively peaceful coexistence with Greek colony / city states in Italy, southern France and east of the Iberian Peninsula but in 387 BC the Gaulish King sacked Rome and returned to Gaul with a huge amount of ransom and plundered goods. During the Punic wars (218 BC) Gauls Sided with Hannibal and tried to destroy Rome. So when the Romans conquered Gaul, Iberia, Anatolia (which was also being occupied by a celtic tribe called “Galatians”) They immediately started to capture their druids and destroy the main features of Celtic religion in order to be able to Romanize them. The Romans did the same thing in every country they could conquer. So this entire culture gradually disappeared and became Romanized (The Christians aren’t even here yet).  
   So when Constantine became emperor in the 4th century AD. These cultures who were already highly Romanized started to become Christians. No one forced them to convert but a) Early Christianity appealed a lot to the people of that age. It was an entirely new spiritual system which was (I am sorry to say this) far more logical than the Greco-Roman religion. By that time emperors of Rome were maniacs or decadent hedonists who were pure materialists who saw the Gods as mere philosophical concepts rather than true deities. It wasn’t uncommon for Roman Emperors to declare themselves as descendants of Venus” (like Caesar), Decadents of Hercules (Emperor Commodus) or even living Gods (like most Emperors after the 2nd century AD. ).
   So After Constantine things happened very quickly. Even the Germanic and Dacian tribes started to convert to Christianity as a result of missionary activities. No one conquered Scandinavia for instance. Missionaries started to enter these kingdom starting from the 8th century AD. And many have abandoned “the old ways” by themselves. There is one case of zealous Christian attacks that I know of and it’s the Livonian Crusade against the Pagans of Today’s Latvia, in 1200 AD. And there were anti-Pagan rules during the rule of the East-Roman emperor Theodosius. But again, there was no bloodshed. In fact at the time of Nero in 64-68 AD. It was quite the opposite. Christians were thrown to the lions by the “Pagans” for not recognizing the “God-Emperor” of Rome.
So I’m going to finish with
a) “The dying Gaul” statue in the Capitoline museum that is dated to the 3rd century BC.
And b) the Amazomachy Relief from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in the same period.

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96len_...g_gaul.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_..._BM_n3.jpg

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that your opinion is artificially constrained by exclusion for effect - and I'll point out that any time you exclude a group of people or scholars for effect that amounts to implicit acknowledgement of your awareness of those scholars and people. You might call them incompetent because they do not share your own sub-sects beliefs, or because those beliefs they have are horrendous. I, however, could point out that you also appear to have horrendous beliefs, and that your own preferred set of scholars are also incompetent. They do believe in fairies, after all.

You're entirely incorrect in believing that there was no force to christian conversion, and you've swallowed christian myths and legends about martydom as a fact when it was most plainly not. Do you know who threw the most christians "to the lions"..in rome? Other christians. The same relationship played out in the muslim conquests, similarly complete with retconned bullshit about the Other Guy.

[Leonardo17]

1) You are not totally wrong on this one either. Of course there are those that I like and those that I don’t like. I am the one who decides which one is a serious scholar and which one is a complete M…n with followers. I am the one who makes these decisions (for myself of course). But still I don’t believe I’m making these decisions in an arbitrary manner. I am shaping my opinion on these issues in the same way I am shaping my political of philosophical opinions. I try to maintain a critical approach, and then I am deciding which one is truth, with one is fairy tale, which one is obvious bigotry etc. etc.
 
   This is why I am totally opposing all types of religious schools before the age of 18. No one can teach you religion before the age of 18. If you try you will get two types of people
a) People who have lost all sense of belief in the spiritual world and are either pretending to believe something (or are self-deceiving about that) and
b) Fanatics who were so unable to resist the amount of pressure that was applied on them in their early years (Like the President Xi Xing Ping of China who was just a farm boy who was recruited into the ranks of the Communist party and has been entirely indoctrinated by it), that they suffer some kind of Stockholm Syndrome and seen no other exit other than insanity and end up surrendering entirely to whatever indoctrination they have been exposed to.
 
   I am not against extra curricular Bible classes, Kuran classes etc. Also some practical things like Yoga, music, dancing, tai-chi could even be made mandatory in public schools. But I am against all types of religious schools before the age of 18. And then, there should be religious colleges (4 year programs) for all people who are willing to become priests, pastors, rabbis, İmams etc. or for people who simply happen to be interested in these subjects.
 
Once I had met this guy who was impressed by the amount of nihilism and loss of direction of some people in the area he lived in and hoped to solve this by sending his kids to a religion oriented school. My answer to this is that this is simply not way to solve this problem. What you need is:
a) A truly loving and responsible family. Parents who are kids themselves should not be allowed to become parents.
b) A free, universal, secular and mandatory education system between the age or 6 and 18 (16 if you decide to move to a professional high school).
And this is it. Religious indoctrination cannot replace these two things and in fact, it will only make it worse if these two elements are absent.
The satisfaction of spiritual needs after the age of 18 is another issue. Of course I am against sectarian formations, UFO cults, brainwashing abusive Guru’s etc. But I would support all forms of religious groupings, truly spiritual communities etc. who are focusing on some mainstream teachings instead of some invented cults. And I am saying this because is you let anybody invent his/her own religion then how do you stop some of those suicide sects or brainwashing sects who are openly using and brainwashing their adept being hidden under the umbrella of religious freedoms?
   With traditional belief systems you don’t have these problems. So if someone tries to abuse me through İslam, other Abrahamic beliefs, or other true religions (And believe me, they are trying to abuse me and my entire society through the misinterpretation of İslam) I can always resist them and say: “Well, here is my book. Where did you get this? What you say isn’t present in the book. It isn’t present in the historical records? So where did you get this Mister?”
   But what can I do in the case of scientology for instance? What do I say if someone is pretending to be the reincarnation of Big Mo. Of if he / she is pretending to be receiving from the Andromeda Civilization?
  So not believing is OK. But you should still probably be able to accept the fact that most of mainstream religions are still a little bit more than fairy tales. Because we are able to debate and do research and have rational debates about the beliefs that are contained in these religions. So we may be mistaking (and that’s what you are saying) but we are still rational people, with a rational belief system and for most of us, our two foots are still firmly in the ground. We are not having LCD trips like some UFO cults, or suicidal sects in which we are veneering an enlightened being of some sort whose only problem is to sexually exploit the women and receive cash from his male followers. No I think. That traditional religious systems are very serious beliefs systems that are very demanding in terms of both religious devotion and intellectual work that have to be invested in order to be able to get any visible result from these belief systems. Or at least, this is how I see it.
2) I told you how the druidic culture and religion of the Celts have been destroyed. When he conquered Gaul, Caesar deliberately destroyed the druidic culture (and all the wisdom they had accumulated through the ages through their unwritten oral teachings) because he wanted to assimilate the Gauls into the Roman way of life. The Roman religion (and the Pagan religion of the Greeks) was in the most part superficial. Ordinary people still believed in Jupiter, the Vestal Virgins etc. But for the elite, the Gods were mere concepts. As I told you, Roman emperors were even going as far as deifying themselves. It was a highly materialistic culture that focused on material / worldly pleasures and they weren’t civilized at all. The Gauls were not wrong in their hatred toward them. The entire Roman economy was based on slave labor. They were brutal and barbaric and their entire power was based on their superior military machine. So Jesus came (In my opinion) as a revolutionary. So they crucified him. But this wasn’t enough. The people didn’t want the old ways anymore. So they converted. And when Constantine made it the official religion of the empire, in this kind of society no one could really remain Pagan when the elite of the empire had turned to Christianity. In fact there was this Emperor Julian (331-361 AD) who wanted to restore the old ways and forbid Christianity once again. But he failed. The people wanted to adopt the new belief system.
   Of course the Catholic church of the middle ages became highly oppressive and dogmatic. But I don’t think this was the case in the beginning of Christianity. Still it is true that it was the Christians who burned the library of Alexandria in the 4th century. And I agree that that gradually became less and less tolerant toward other belief systems. But this too happened by itself. People don’t like what is different. Once they became the majority, they probably forced the remaining minority into their belief systems.
 
But as I said. If I decide to believe something, I’d rather believe an ages old religious teaching that has some rationality in it (this you cannot deny) than some new cult that was invented by a perverted mind in order to be able to exploit people. In fact, anyone who puts some amount of effort in understanding one of the worldwide recognized religion will see that there is an amount of wisdom and true spiritual messages in these teachings. Even an Atheist cannot deny this. This is a fact. For this reason I think that the term “fairy tales” is not a good description for these traditional belief systems.

[The Grand Nudger]

The beginning of christianity reads like a gangland drama.

Ever occur to you that you believe that there's some rationality in your religion...that I cannot deny, because you were a brainwashed child, in a cult, that someone made up, to exploit other people?

[Leonardo17]

No.

Listen. The Admin too doesn't seem to be very fond of me either. So I'm starting to think that maybe I should simply bid farewell and leave you among yourselves.

Would that be a problem for you?

[The Grand Nudger]

I think we may have identified several problems.

You might find it difficult to rehabilitate your religion if you can’t get a handle on that. Especially on a board like this, where people will laugh at you pretty viciously for insisting that you’re the arbitrator of what they can and can’t deny, as you consistently fail to apply the criticisms of others faiths to your own, in the context of an imagined history.

We already have Muslims like that on the boards. Idk if we’d miss you and I can’t imagine what you could get from this place as you are.

[arewethereyet]

No.

Listen. The Admin too doesn't seem to be very fond of me either. So I'm starting to think that maybe I should simply bid farewell and leave you among yourselves.

Would that be a problem for you?

Admin just tries to enforce the rules...nothing personal....at least not with you.

[Ranjr]

If I decide to believe something, I’d rather believe an ages old religious teaching that has some rationality in it (this you cannot deny) than some new cult that was invented by a perverted mind in order to be able to exploit people. In fact, anyone who puts some amount of effort in understanding one of the worldwide recognized religion will see that there is an amount of wisdom and true spiritual messages in these teachings. Even an Atheist cannot deny this. This is a fact. For this reason I think that the term “fairy tales” is not a good description for these traditional belief systems.

This is a pitiful way to decide to believe in something.  Ages old people were guessing on far less knowledge than we have now.  That's like saying, if I had to guess, I'd go with the sheep fucking hand wipers, not what my well read handsome self tells me.

In reply to the claim highlighted by me, the quantity of some rationality must coexist with a fair amount of irrationality.  Misunderstanding that is why, in reply to the second claim highlighted by me, you also qualify for the category of perverted minds.

[Leonardo17]

You still can't criticize me without even reading my posts. This is inappropriate.

You don't even know who I'm referring to when I'm talking about perverted minds.

So I don’t know what’s going on here. But if you really don’t like my post. Well, I’d also prefer to have them deleted (together with my account) if nobody is even going to read them.

I came to express my views on some issues that have an important political impact in many parts of the world. I didn’t come to engage into personal confrontations. So if you guys are trolling me, that’s the issue of the admin.

But I won’t go into a personality confrontation with because the messages I happened to have already posted above are simply too serious for me to do this.

And again: You don’t talk like this to people you don’t even know. Come on. How serious are you now?

[The Grand Nudger]

I read your every post, and criticize your positions on the basis of what you write. It's conceivable that other people do as well. Try again.

-as an aside to your aside. I talk to everyone this way, it's who and what I am (ask around), even my own wife. Some people appreciate it, some people don't, so what. I'm as serious in all of it as dick cancer, mull that over.