Pure Brutality

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh sure, maybe they all had bad dads and moms. Or, maybe, islamists do the shit islamists do for the reason they say they do. Islam. Abrahamism has a long history of being a shitty reason to do shitty things. OFC, it's an equally shitty reason to do good things, which..imo, has always handicapped it and what has ultimately lead to such outcomes as islamism in the first place.

[Leonardo17]

Oh sure, maybe they all had bad dads and moms.  Or, maybe, islamists do the shit islamists do for the reason they say they do.  Islam.  Abrahamism has a long history of being a shitty reason to do shitty things.  OFC, it's an equally shitty reason to do good things, which..imo, has always handicapped it and what has ultimately lead to such outcomes as islamism in the first place.

I agree to disagree on this atheistic way of handling the who issue.
 

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Still my point of view is this. As I am reading (listening to) Deepak’s book on the life of the prophet, I cannot keep myself from seeing a man who was an exceptional being from the moment he was born. Did you know that Arabs of the 6th century saw themselves as the descendent of the prophet Abraham? These believed in Allah a long time before the arrival of the prophet. The only problem was that the Kabbah (which also existed before the Prophet) was full of Idols. So Muhammad acted as a new Abraham who cleared the Kabbah of those idols.
 
   Did you know for instance that people, his family and even himself took him for a mad man when he started to talk about an Angel appearing to him and making him recite the Koran?
 
   Other interesting point: Christians and Jews were the first to recognize him as a man of God. + Muhammad worked to ease the tensions between Arabs and Jews (who seeming had a considerable presence in the area around Makkah in that era).
 
   So the Atheist approach is one possible approach (especially if you have limited time and resources). The other possibility is to study all of these spiritual teachings in a more detailed manner.
 
   These guys (political İslamists / extremists etc.) are actually everything that the prophet tried to change in his lifetime. And people like me, we basically do not care about them. I try to understand that message that says so much about my true identity and the potential that is readily available for me (and everyone else).

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This said, I don’t even know if it is possible to help these people. My belief is that the Universe will rebalance itself at some point. Actually, That’s what the scriptures are saying too.

[Sheldon]

 When you are into some genuine form of spirituality. You end up distinguishing ego centered behavior better than other ordinary people.

That looks like a no true Scotsman fallacy to me. I can see how blindly following religious ideologies that have archaic and pernicious doctrine and dogma, can lead directly to acts of cruelty barbarity and indifference to suffering. 

Now while I can see that someone who does not believe in any deity, is just as capable of being cruel, barbarous and indifferent to suffering, atheism itself has no ideology or doctrine that must be followed, so it would follow that this is simply a personal choice. amd nothing directly to do with atheism.

I doubt that Peter Sutcliffe or Ted Bundy believed in mermaids or unicorns, but no one would dream of suggesting this lack of belief motivated their terrible crimes.

[The Grand Nudger]

Still my point of view is this. As I am reading (listening to) Deepak’s book on the life of the prophet, I cannot keep myself from seeing a man who was an exceptional being from the moment he was born.

We clearly have different tastes in men.

Did you know that Arabs of the 6th century saw themselves as the descendent of the prophet Abraham? These believed in Allah a long time before the arrival of the prophet. The only problem was that the Kabbah (which also existed before the Prophet) was full of Idols. So Muhammad acted as a new Abraham who cleared the Kabbah of those idols.

Fiction..but then again, it's all fiction..so I suppose you can make it up any way you like.  
 

   Did you know for instance that people, his family and even himself took him for a mad man when he started to talk about an Angel appearing to him and making him recite the Koran?

Maybe they were on to something...but you know what, you can't fault crazy.  It's all the slaving and raping and killing that turns me off.  
 

   Other interesting point: Christians and Jews were the first to recognize him as a man of God. + Muhammad worked to ease the tensions between Arabs and Jews (who seeming had a considerable presence in the area around Makkah in that era).

Trading on the reputation of christians and jews?  Because you as a muslim and I as an atheist think they definitely get shit right....eh?  Boy howdy, if they say god said something, or someone's a man of god, or..hell..someone's a god...you can definitely trust them.
 

   So the Atheist approach is one possible approach (especially if you have limited time and resources). The other possibility is to study all of these spiritual teachings in a more detailed manner.

I never know what you mean when you say things like this.  I suspect it's because you don't really know what you mean either.
 

   These guys (political İslamists / extremists etc.) are actually everything that the prophet tried to change in his lifetime. And people like me, we basically do not care about them. I try to understand that message that says so much about my true identity and the potential that is readily available for me (and everyone else). 

Nonsense.  Insomuch as your great man tried to change people, it was to convert them into islamists themselves.  That's how islam became a political force in the first place.  
 

This said, I don’t even know if it is possible to help these people. My belief is that the Universe will rebalance itself at some point. Actually, That’s what the scriptures are saying too.

If an islamist could let things be, then they wouldn't be islamists.  Balance is for normalizers and apologists, like you.  The only balance in the scales of an islamist cosmology has islam on one side and everything else on the other.  Extremists have the courage of their convictions and are willing to put in the real work of making the world as they believe it ought to be. Big Mo and his warband were the first muslims, the first islamists, and the first islamic extremists.  They were slavers, they were sex traffickers.  They were murderers and thieves.  Their new god cosigned all of this garbage..first to the great man, and then in a magic book.....because of course it did.  There is an unbroken chain of specific and explicit violence and misery from them to our modern islamists.  

Trying to talk about islamism while talking around islam and is ludicrous.   Mo is their role model, magic book affirms their lifestyle choices.

[Sheldon]

I would simply say this: Having parents is a good thing, 

Do you imagine this was true Of Fred and Rosemary West's children? This strikes me as another facile deepity.

[arewethereyet]

^Having good parents is a good thing.

Having parents is necessary since we don't just spring forth from nothing.

Parenting and parents are two entirely different things when it comes down to it.

[Leonardo17]

 When you are into some genuine form of spirituality. You end up distinguishing ego centered behavior better than other ordinary people.

That looks like a no true Scotsman fallacy to me. I can see how blindly following religious ideologies that have archaic and pernicious doctrine and dogma, can lead directly to acts of cruelty barbarity and indifference to suffering. 

Now while I can see that someone who does not believe in any deity, is just as capable of being cruel, barbarous and indifferent to suffering, atheism itself has no ideology or doctrine that must be followed, so it would follow that this is simply a personal choice. amd nothing directly to do with atheism.

I doubt that Peter Sutcliffe or Ted Bundy believed in mermaids or unicorns, but no one would dream of suggesting this lack of belief motivated their terrible crimes.

Part 1: Yes, and this is why I decided to be involved with atheism in the first place. If I died today and had to reincarnate, I would rather incarnate in a non-theistic environment rather than a more theistic / mystical environment. Simply because it is better to have no understanding of religion rather than a dogmatized understanding that will need to be corrected in later periods of your life.
 
This said: I don’t care about any of the more superficial / visible aspects of a spiritual life. My understanding of religion is the “Religio” meaning “to bind back”. I believe in this Inner Phenomenon over which no person or entity has a monopoly that is available for us to connect regardless of the spiritual doctrine we have been indoctrinated with as a child.
 
In fact, many more contemporary writers will tell you that typical religious indoctrination is more likely to obstruct this “reconnection” rather than facilitate it.
 
And I will develop this last idea by telling you that the times have changed. Religion as it is today was basically the best any spiritual leader could do in ancient societies that were based on farming, aristocracy and military might. In these days you needed rules, laws, fear of death, rituals, repetitions, dogmas, stories, mythologies etc. because these was an age in which people didn’t even know how to read and write.
 
And Still, if you can invest some time into these studies, you can discover (I mean us / 21st century people) the universality of the messages that were introduced by all these spiritual teachers.
 
You can try to read Wayne Dyer, the book is called “The living Wisdom of the Dao”.

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Nudger said: “I never know what you mean when you say things like this.  I suspect it's because you don't really know what you mean either.”

 
- I see myself as a lucky man. I come from a not so religious family and I got involved with this New thought” movement + Yoga philosophy + mystical Islam very quickly. So what happened to me was not a change in my mind. I still like to interpret the world in a reason and observation based manner.
 
Yet, there was a point at which I started seeing value + universalism in the core of all religious teachings. I am not saying “All religious people are absolutely right about everything”, I am saying that there is a core teaching in all religious teachings (that has been largely ignored and forgotten for the benefit of some mindless and repetitive rituals and dogmas) and that if you can get there, you can get to the almost Jungian archetypes and universal teachings that have their benefits that are beyond some simple philosophical or other mind-based approaches.
 
And I don’t think anybody should be shocked by these arguments. It’s not so complicated either
 
On Political Islam and Islamic terrorism:
 
Etiologically “Islam” means “To Surrender” (to God). So
1) “Islamism” does not even exist. It cannot possibly exist.
2) If it was as you said “God” would actually have to be some evil entity playing with humans the way a child plays with its toys.
3) There are elements in the life of Muhammad that raise many question marks. Like “Why didn’t he abolish slavery or (let’s say) Polygamy?  
 
The problem with the Prophet of Islam is that he is the most human among all great spiritual teachers. So in some cases the answer is “Maybe he could not / maybe he didn’t have that kind of power”.
 
Societies have a fabric. Some people say that Hitler was a boy-scout in comparison to Stalin. Did you know that Mao Tse Dong scarifised some 50 million people during his “cultural revolution?”
 
Great spiritual teachers don’t operate like this. Jesus, for instance, did not even flee the Romans. Yet, with the passing of the ages, he still managed to transform society and provide us (individuals all over the world) with this opportunity to learn about his message that has a deeper meaning beyond the more ritualized and dogmatic interpretations of this teachings (as I tried to explain before).
 
Sheldon: I was just saying that there are people out there who can make use of anything to turn other people into their Bt-Monkeys and feel no remorse about it.

[The Grand Nudger]

You think that your collection of new thought quacks offer an improvement over abrahamism. The abrahamists thought their collection of new thought quacks offered an improvement over paganism. I think that you were both wrong.

[Sheldon]

That looks like a no true Scotsman fallacy to me. I can see how blindly following religious ideologies that have archaic and pernicious doctrine and dogma, can lead directly to acts of cruelty barbarity and indifference to suffering. 

Now while I can see that someone who does not believe in any deity, is just as capable of being cruel, barbarous and indifferent to suffering, atheism itself has no ideology or doctrine that must be followed, so it would follow that this is simply a personal choice. amd nothing directly to do with atheism.

I doubt that Peter Sutcliffe or Ted Bundy believed in mermaids or unicorns, but no one would dream of suggesting this lack of belief motivated their terrible crimes.

Part 1: Yes, and this is why I decided to be involved with atheism in the first place. If I died today and had to reincarnate, I would rather incarnate in a non-theistic environment rather than a more theistic / mystical environment. Simply because it is better to have no understanding of religion rather than a dogmatized understanding that will need to be corrected in later periods of your life.
 
This said: I don’t care about any of the more superficial / visible aspects of a spiritual life. My understanding of religion is the “Religio” meaning “to bind back”. I believe in this Inner Phenomenon over which no person or entity has a monopoly that is available for us to connect regardless of the spiritual doctrine we have been indoctrinated with as a child.
 
In fact, many more contemporary writers will tell you that typical religious indoctrination is more likely to obstruct this “reconnection” rather than facilitate it.
 
And I will develop this last idea by telling you that the times have changed. Religion as it is today was basically the best any spiritual leader could do in ancient societies that were based on farming, aristocracy and military might. In these days you needed rules, laws, fear of death, rituals, repetitions, dogmas, stories, mythologies etc. because these was an age in which people didn’t even know how to read and write.
 
And Still, if you can invest some time into these studies, you can discover (I mean us / 21st century people) the universality of the messages that were introduced by all these spiritual teachers.
 
You can try to read Wayne Dyer, the book is called “The living Wisdom of the Dao”.

---

---

Nudger said: “I never know what you mean when you say things like this.  I suspect it's because you don't really know what you mean either.”

 
- I see myself as a lucky man. I come from a not so religious family and I got involved with this New thought” movement + Yoga philosophy + mystical Islam very quickly. So what happened to me was not a change in my mind. I still like to interpret the world in a reason and observation based manner.
 
Yet, there was a point at which I started seeing value + universalism in the core of all religious teachings. I am not saying “All religious people are absolutely right about everything”, I am saying that there is a core teaching in all religious teachings (that has been largely ignored and forgotten for the benefit of some mindless and repetitive rituals and dogmas) and that if you can get there, you can get to the almost Jungian archetypes and universal teachings that have their benefits that are beyond some simple philosophical or other mind-based approaches.
 
And I don’t think anybody should be shocked by these arguments. It’s not so complicated either
 
On Political Islam and Islamic terrorism:
 
Etiologically “Islam” means “To Surrender” (to God). So
1) “Islamism” does not even exist. It cannot possibly exist.
2) If it was as you said “God” would actually have to be some evil entity playing with humans the way a child plays with its toys.
3) There are elements in the life of Muhammad that raise many question marks. Like “Why didn’t he abolish slavery or (let’s say) Polygamy?  
 
The problem with the Prophet of Islam is that he is the most human among all great spiritual teachers. So in some cases the answer is “Maybe he could not / maybe he didn’t have that kind of power”.
 
Societies have a fabric. Some people say that Hitler was a boy-scout in comparison to Stalin. Did you know that Mao Tse Dong scarifised some 50 million people during his “cultural revolution?”
 
Great spiritual teachers don’t operate like this. Jesus, for instance, did not even flee the Romans. Yet, with the passing of the ages, he still managed to transform society and provide us (individuals all over the world) with this opportunity to learn about his message that has a deeper meaning beyond the more ritualized and dogmatic interpretations of this teachings (as I tried to explain before).
 
Sheldon: I was just saying that there are people out there who can make use of anything to turn other people into their Bt-Monkeys and feel no remorse about it.

Nothing you said directly addressed my post, or your fallacious claim? And you can't have any idea what, if anything, Jesus said, no one can. You seem to be just reeling off unevidenced subjective claims, then propping them up with more of the same?

[The Grand Nudger]

Nudger said: “I never know what you mean when you say things like this.  I suspect it's because you don't really know what you mean either.”

 
- I see myself as a lucky man. I come from a not so religious family and I got involved with this New thought” movement + Yoga philosophy + mystical Islam very quickly. So what happened to me was not a change in my mind. I still like to interpret the world in a reason and observation based manner.
 
Yet, there was a point at which I started seeing value + universalism in the core of all religious teachings. I am not saying “All religious people are absolutely right about everything”, I am saying that there is a core teaching in all religious teachings (that has been largely ignored and forgotten for the benefit of some mindless and repetitive rituals and dogmas) and that if you can get there, you can get to the almost Jungian archetypes and universal teachings that have their benefits that are beyond some simple philosophical or other mind-based approaches.
 
And I don’t think anybody should be shocked by these arguments. It’s not so complicated either

You overlook the possibility that the core value of many religious teachings is the same horrid shit you reject.  Islam's core value might be, for example, the conformity that abject terror can often inspire.  Thus, islamism.

On Political Islam and Islamic terrorism:
 
Etiologically “Islam” means “To Surrender” (to God). So
1) “Islamism” does not even exist. It cannot possibly exist.
2) If it was as you said “God” would actually have to be some evil entity playing with humans the way a child plays with its toys.
3) There are elements in the life of Muhammad that raise many question marks. Like “Why didn’t he abolish slavery or (let’s say) Polygamy?  

Whew, glad you cleared that up.  Islamism can't exist.  Just not a thing.  Obviously, whatever string of rationalizations lead you to this conclusion is airtight and no thinking person would believe their lying eyes or the islamists lying mouths.  
 

The problem with the Prophet of Islam is that he is the most human among all great spiritual teachers. So in some cases the answer is “Maybe he could not / maybe he didn’t have that kind of power”.

There you go again.  Most this, most that.  Bullshit.  Big Mo is a cheap knockoff of a cheap knockoff.  
 

Societies have a fabric. Some people say that Hitler was a boy-scout in comparison to Stalin. Did you know that Mao Tse Dong scarifised some 50 million people during his “cultural revolution?”
 
Great spiritual teachers don’t operate like this. Jesus, for instance, did not even flee the Romans. Yet, with the passing of the ages, he still managed to transform society and provide us (individuals all over the world) with this opportunity to learn about his message that has a deeper meaning beyond the more ritualized and dogmatic interpretations of this teachings (as I tried to explain before).

You're reading new magic book like a news report from the galilelan front.  Wanna know why jesus didn't run from the romans?  Because there never was a jesus and rome didn't operate the way magic book describes.  I know...I know..you mean "in the fairy tale" - but in the fairy tale, jesus doesn't run because a crucified god has to get crucified.  Be an awfully abrupt end to the story otherwise, eh.

-"and jesus fled" the end.

You're operating, ultimately, under the premise that "great religious teachers" know some profound thing that isn't obvious from what they write and..often enough, is the direct antithesis of what they wrote or has been attributed to them.   Worse, deepak fucking chopra qualifies, for you, as such a person.  There's a twitter account that uses generative ai to write deepak deepities and, surprise, deepak fans consistently fail to distinguish between the real deal and actual gibberish spouted by a random number generator on roids.

Here, let's try it. Which of these quotes is the real deal and which ones are a joke?

1. The Higgs boson gives rise to the doorway of acceptance.
2. The web of life differentiates into incredible potentiality.
3. Your heart co-creates sub-empirical positivity.
4. The invisible unfolds through the barrier of life.
5. Death imparts reality to the flow of balance.