Originally Posted by iggle (Post 11909159)

I've always wondered...what would you if your plane was hijacked.

Keep shut and pray for the best, or stand up and fight back? In my head I'd stand up and fight, each situation is different though.

Originally Posted by iggle (Post 11909159)

I've always wondered...what would you if your plane was hijacked.

Keep shut and pray for the best, or stand up and fight back? In my head I'd stand up and fight, each situation is different though.

Originally Posted by Millhouse (Post 11909143)

..... Since then, however, heightened airport security measures including x-ray machines and metal detectors have dramatically reduced the number of hijackings. ....

Originally Posted by Norm_uk (Post 11909892)

If if was that easy to convince people there is no afterlife we'd have no religiously inspired war or terrorism ;)

Sincerely belief is very hard to comprehend if you've never experienced it before. This is why the cognitive dissidence over the causes of Islamic terrorism is common in people who've never been deeply religious or from very religious communities.


N.

Originally Posted by Norm_uk (Post 11912238)

There's no doubt that tribalism has a religious form too. No argument there.

But there's also the fact that all religious are different at their doctrinal level. Some also promote culture and politics. We are not seeing issues with the most hardcore Jain adherents that we see with fundamentalist Muslims for example. Quaker fundamentalists have been quiet for a while and militant atheists seem to be restricting themselves to meme and tweets.

Some religious texts are simply more political and do not have the exclusion clauses we see in say, Christianity where Christ himself talks about 'rendering unto Caesar' and that his 'kingdom is not of his earth'. Early enlightenment thinkers and promoters of secularism were able to use that against the power of a very temporal church and a lot of Christians around the world today are on board with their founder's teachings. Those who are not are suspect Christians in my view.

I think there is overlap but it does boil down to doctrine. If the doctrine is not violent and earthly it's going to be less of a problem in the long run than if the fundamentals are intolerant and war-like.

I agree Islam is officially against racism, it also was quite advanced in it's time and place of origin in terms of divorce laws, usury and the managing of a very efficient Imperial system that was able to attack and conquer huge parts of the Christian Roman Empire (like all of North African and the Levant) and all but eliminate the Persia of Darius and his heirs.

There are good points in most books. I even found things in Mein Kampf that were reasonable (next to some of the most reprehensible things outside of religious texts...and youtube comment sections I have ever read ;)). I can compartmentalise this information but I am not obliged to believe the entire book is the final and revealed word of the eternal god in order for my soul to be saved or in order to have a community, culture and identity. I think therein lies the problem. ......