caretaker

Hard to blame this one on video games.

kimilseung

Never heard of the "God-sim" genre?

caretaker

1 -nil Korea! No never heard of it but will google. The thing all religons have in common is the promise of an afterlife, even the most basic animist reigons.
1 - 1 now, If there was a god that modeled people after himself would god be watching football and drinking beer right now? If god even sees the little sparrow fall why is he missing what's going on with all the Arabs and Africans, does he have something against them?

Novocastrian

Oh, that's it! I suppose Dog hates European teams as well?

Football is an exception to religions that promise an afterlife of course,.

JamesM

Wow some deep and intellectual writings in this thread.

I clearly have nothing further to add.

Keep up the good work.

bats

What if your creationist, homophobic GP had religious pictures up in the consulting room?

dbd33

I had a fish with feet on the back of the Beetle, people left notes admiring it. The Mennonite lady at the feed store looked askance at it, or perhaps just askance at being asked to load sacks of feed into a Beetle.

Novocastrian

She was probably thinking it was Beetlejuice.

scrubbedexpat098

I've been racking my brains to think of a war fought for religious reasons since 1900 (that's just to give a starting point, I'm sure it'll stretch further back) As far as I can see, every war since then has been fought for a) political, b)financial c)oil, d)power. Now this war that the muslim fundamentalists are waging is against America and her allies if I'm correct, so it's not religious, it's political. Like most, it's convenient to wage it under the guise of religion because you can swell your numbers and those that join in feel justified as it's 'Gods word', but if God did exist I don't think any sane person would for one minute think he would condone such barbarism.

Now the present conflicts would still be happening if religion didn't even exist, the worls is getting smaller, resources depleting, and everyone can see the writing on the wall for the future, but they'd probably have to be alot more honest about their motives.

To accuse the moderate believers of providing a platform for the nutters is ridiculous in my view, these nutters would be nutters with or without religion, or validation

kimilseung

Current Islamic fighters are waging a war far beyond America, it against other Muslims too, of different beliefs to theirs. Don't forget about the underlying support (or lack of opposition) to wars in the Middle East, from those that think it brings Armageddon closer.

Shard

They are not providing a platform, whatever that means, they are forming a buffer between the rational and the irrational. The extremists probably know that they are extremists (it is an ego trip after all) but they can look to the vast flock of moderate decent believers as a counterweight to the rationalists arguments. On the other hand, the moderates temper their criticism of the extremists as the further they criticise extreme aspects of their faith, the more they question their faith. And that scares them. The faith acts like a massive self-imposed restriction of free speech, and that leads to problems.

scrubbedexpat098

These clerics, leaders or whatever they call themselves are the strong minded, charismatic power hungry types, and they'll happily exploit others to achieve their goals. If it was all about God and Allah and the like these people would be as willing to die for the cause as they expect their minions to be. Like I said, power trip

Platform, buffer zone, validating, all ways of saying that the moderates enable the nutters. Sorry but that sounds to me like he's saying ALL religious types are responsible for world wide atrocities to some degree, which is clearly nonsense, and about as bigoted as you can get.

Jericho79

Perfectly sums it up, IMO.

Shard

Now you're making stuff up. Nobody has said the emboldened bit except you.

Explain why their is such muted response from the Muslim community against, say homophobia. Not all them will be homophobic, yet few will raise their head above the parapet to contest the ill-conceived thinking in their religion. Christians are slightly better, at least some of the watered down branches, but where were the moderate Catholics when their progeny were being abused by their proxy-extremist leaders?

Not rhetorical questions by the way, I'd be interested to hear your explanations in place of sweeping generalisations.

scrubbedexpat098

First up, you forgot to embolden the bit that indicated that I was voicing an opinion, not passing it off as a fact.

Re-read the middle paragraph and don't tell me about sweeping generalisations, what I said isn't half as sweeping as 'Christians are slightly better'. If say a muslim bloke was a homophobe, and he beat the crap out of a gay bloke, not an unbelievable scenario. What you, and this other fellow are saying is that it's a moderate Muslims responsibility to stop him, point out the error of his ways? Do you not think this is the worst kind of slopy shouldered apathy? My point is, if you see wrongs going on and you feel strongly about it, don't come out with shite like 'he's your brother, you sort him out', take responsibility and take action yourself. If you're not prepared to then keep quiet on the subject is all I'm saying.

I'm not having a go at you personally, don't go thinking that, it's just that most people who talk about how the world SHOULD be run, only ever do just that, talk and blame everyone else