kingarabian has summed his case up, now its my turn.
The debate started off with flat-out denial and no-true scotsman logical fallacies, then it moved onto preaching by the other side. After that came a sidetrack in the debate which confused the truth of Islam with the morality of Islam, with lots of preaching and creationism in the process. An interesting point was the 'miracles' in the Quran made by far-fetched interpretations. kingarabian ignored most of my points, especially the creationism one which I was quite keen on. After this came more far-fetched interpretations and preaching, finally kingarabian gave up and left.
Its sad that the debate got sidetracked, I should have spotted that earlier and I regret that. We ended up talking about whether Islam is true or not, which was not my intention.
I think I've done a good job trying to convince the impartial observer that Islam has much element of falsehood in it and that the Quran is not from God, even though that's not what I had in mind when I started this debate.
From: Ruroken
You think people actually take that shit seriously? I sure don't.
Well, obviously you've done your research and know what you're talking about. </sarc>
How do you know that "nobody takes that stuff seriously". I really don't get how you can believe that when in this very thread, kingarabian has said he believes the Quran to be 100% and believes in creationism because the Quran said so.
I hope you don't take offence, but I suspect you've reached that conclusion by living in Canada and mixing with people there. Since nobody there takes the "that shit seriously", you extrapolate and think that nobody in the entire world takes that shit seriously.
Its a baseless assertion, with no evidence.
On the other hand, I did get sidetracked into talking about the Quran and the Bible and their alleged miracles.
You're wrong to say that nobody's beliefs are ever changed from this forum. I know of at least two people who've admitted to me their religious beliefs have changed. My owns beliefs have changed too, I used to believe in the economic model of communism. Due to much discussion on this forum with people like JAD and tarajunky, I slowly realised.
Its always worth going back to first principles. Its always worth debating about how do you know what you think you know. How do you know except that you've always been taught at school and never heard anything else?
What would you do if you sat next to a member of a flat earth society? What about the theory of evolution, I know its supposed to be true but here's someone who says its wrong and its all intelligent design. How sure are you of your own beliefs?
From: Ruroken
You need to legitimately transfer the essence of the message into semi-modern terms. This is hard. The text has been through so many editions, by so many authors, with so many personal agendas. It's rather tangled. Once you do (Contextual-ism, people!), you find all religions are the same. The same golden rule at its core. Do unto others and you would have done unto you. If you take this as the essential message of the holy writing in question, you find that all the unnecessary bits fall off and the message is a rather universal one of peace, love and compassion at it's core. I'm not making any claims to its validity or truth, just saying how I would go about trying to actually make a debate like this fresh.
I hope you don't get offended, but to me this seems like wishy-washy babble.
Religion can be used to justify anti-women sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. You might claim (without evidence I might add) that every single one of these doctrines have been added afterwards by people with agendas, but it doesn't make a difference because people still follow it. As a moral person, I feel it is my duty to stand up for women, gays and other "undesirables".
"Do unto others and you would have done unto you" may be one of the doctrines preached by all religions, but its contradicted by other things.
Also, you might be interested to know that religion doesn't have a monopoly on such teachings. Secular moral philosophy was first recorded in ancient Greece, 500 years before the birth of Christ.
From: Ruroken
So some crazy people got high on allah and talked some smack. Whoop de doo. Do you see the other 99% walking around with detonators? Hell no.
Again, a baseless assertion, with no evidence.
How do you know its 99% ? It could be 98% or 100% for all you know, or any number at all.
My thread was meant to be about state-sponsored bigotry before it got sidetracked. Its not just one or two people, but entire countries and governments.
From: FEAR
Those are people. Can you tell me there aren't any Christians who does that sort of stuff? Would you blame the religion for that? You can't blame a religion for something a person has done
You're right, there are Christians who harass women. However countries and governments with a Christian tradition have made and enforced laws to protect women for the last 100 years.
josh's article didn't just pick out one of two Muslims. It did a study involving a large sample and found statistical evidence that this isn't just one or two people.
I admit the article confused correlation and causation. The study doesn't mean the blame goes solely on Islam, it could be because of other reasons too.
From: FEAR
and you have no right to say anything bad about a religion or anything for that matter unless you know everything there is to know about it.
I'm sorry but I think this is a stupid idea, here's why.
I have a lot of bad things to say about fascism and nazism, and I'm sure everyone else also here does. Does that mean I need to absorb myself in nazi literature for weeks before I can make a judgement? No of course not.
I say bad things about nazism and I feel I have the right to, but I havent' even read Mein Kampf.
You can disbelieve the existence of fairies without spending weeks in the library reading up on fairy literature.
From: FEAR
Edit: O and josh81193. That link you posted. See what the girls are wearing? Thats why Islam tells woman to cover up their body.
If you actually read the article instead of just looking at the pictures (I grew out of picture books when I was 9) you would have seen stuff like this.
Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told The Associated Press that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighborhood.
'I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone,'
In Saudi Arabia, another country where women cover themselves completely and are nearly totally segregated from men in public life, women report harassment as well
My bold.
It doesn't matter what these women wear, according to josh's article, they will still get harassed.
This is exactly what you'd expect if my view that Muslim dress degrades and objectifies women. It is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if the view that, "This is to keep our women safe and secure", was true.
From: SRL_Sensei
What do you mean by this exactly? Also, see the last part I bolded?
No problem.
I was talking about how left-wing liberal feminists often reframed from criticising Islam, possibly because they felt like they were being racist (even though Islam is not a race)
The reason I said its changing is because their I think many feminists have woken up to the dangers of militant Islam and have started criticising it. Their attitude has changed only in the past couple of months.
I hope that clears it up for you. :)
I should tell you I'm not impressed by your new account who's only two posts are in this thread. What exactly are you trying to hide?
You must understand why I feel uneasy. Sometimes in these internet debates it can happen that somebody creates many accounts and uses them all to shout-down his opponent, making it appear that many people disagree with him when in reality it's only one person.
From: SRL_Sensei
And has Yakman proven anything either by posting links to far-fetched interpret … aw, forget it. Point being, you cannot, I repeat, cannot, rely on the internet for cold, hard facts. There's just no way, what with the internet in access to everyone, muslim or not, that you can get accurate information. Yakman (as well as the others), you want sources? Facts? You won't be getting them from the internet.
Woah what kind of logic is this?
Muslims and non-muslims also have access to books and newspapers. With your logic, I cant get any facts from those either.
The internet, like any other media can be corrupted. Its down to the individual to use his or her critical thinking skills to judge which sources are reliable.
To take an extreme example, here is a
link to facts on the internet.
From: SRL_Sensei
You have questions about Islam, you go ask a Muslim scholar. And before you start about fundamentalist crap, that's a major minority.
Interesting how you warn me about bias, and yet point me towards a bias source.
Why don't I also ask a Christian scholar what he thinks of Islam, and a Jewish scholar, and a non-religious scholar.
For all you know, I've already done these things. I haven't asked anyone personally, I've read books written by them which is almost as good IMO, especially since some of the authors are dead.
On weighing up the different arguments, for now I've decided that Islam fundamentally preaches bigotry and I made this thread to argue my case and see if it was robust.
