SUBMISSION
Fifteen years ago, I was introduced to a young man who had escaped from Paris. Paris? Yes, Paris. He was the oldest son of a father who was an orthodox Muslim. They were quite well off. He was not too sure of his father's business. He was 20, had excellent grades and was a top athlete. After he graduated, his father informed him it was now time for him to go back to his town of origin and study to become an Imam. However, he was raised as a Parisian, speaking perfect French as well as Arabic. He studied the Koran but as he grew up he contrasted his world of Christian sophistication with his duties and attitudes of a Muslim cleric. No comparison, Unknown to his father, he took increments of "spending" money from the ATM card his father gave him and instead of living expenses he had saved the money until when he was to return to his Arabic roots, he traded in his plane ticket for one to London. I won't detail how he changed his identity and wound up in NYC, and eventually the heartland. Here is his view of Islam:
(I have edied it for brevity). "Islam is based on virtue; the very word means 'submission.'' It is truly not a religion, nor is it merely a set of beliefs but it is an entire way of life. The Koran doesn't simply govern everyone's conduct it is extended to all aspects of society. It regulates law, war, peace, education, economics, sexual conduct, trade and family. Sharia governs everything. It mitigates what it considers the rot of all other beliefs."
Between the Koran and Sharia, if one is to believe, there is no possible way that any Muslim true believer can ever be at peace with any other philosophy or way of life. All of those seeking peace will inevitably be frustrated because they are dealing with shadows. A charade being put on by Muslims for the benefit, eventually of themselves. All those Western peacemakers know that, yet they continue to participate in a game where the rules all favor their opponents. Everyone, Obama, Trump, Bush, Clinton, knows this, yet they continue to go through the motions -- and my question is, why on earth do they continue to do it.?
(I have edied it for brevity). "Islam is based on virtue; the very word means 'submission.'' It is truly not a religion, nor is it merely a set of beliefs but it is an entire way of life. The Koran doesn't simply govern everyone's conduct it is extended to all aspects of society. It regulates law, war, peace, education, economics, sexual conduct, trade and family. Sharia governs everything. It mitigates what it considers the rot of all other beliefs."
Between the Koran and Sharia, if one is to believe, there is no possible way that any Muslim true believer can ever be at peace with any other philosophy or way of life. All of those seeking peace will inevitably be frustrated because they are dealing with shadows. A charade being put on by Muslims for the benefit, eventually of themselves. All those Western peacemakers know that, yet they continue to participate in a game where the rules all favor their opponents. Everyone, Obama, Trump, Bush, Clinton, knows this, yet they continue to go through the motions -- and my question is, why on earth do they continue to do it.?
As Eric Hoffer (The True Believer) proffers, those that join mass movements do so to find a substitute identity to cover for their own shortcomings.
Like many religions, though, most of Islam is born into it and that is very difficult to overcome within the individual and within the cult.
Because it serves to increase their power and wealth. They are traitors and looters.
Except their punishments are much more extreme. I'd be willing to bet sums I don't own that the Muslims a far more willing to die for what they see as the rightness of their cause.
IF our elected (representatives, a farce to even say) were to do the right thing it would be to turn the desert to glass. that will not happen regardless of the number of attacks that the world experiences, so to also play in the usa. the rebel flag will fly again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Correct and to the point. But who are you referring to? The Muslims or the West?
His statement "Islam is based on virtue; the very word means 'submission''' brings up the doctrine of "dhimmitude". Multiculturalism in the west is leading to being dominated by the militant Islamic dhimmitude.
Ultimately, whether the invasion is military or passive through immigration, ultimately it is all about ideology anyway.
What about Mormons? Hindi?
Abandonment of science and reason? I'd wager there have been quite a few scientists with a belief (faith or religion) that made significant contributions.
Nicholas Copernicus
Johannes Kepler
Galileo Galilei
Blaise Pascal
Isaac Newton
Michael Faraday
Albert Einstein - not necessarily of faith or religion BUT he did comment on the impossibility of a non-created universe
If you want a good example of a major breakthrough and how it was done, a very readable account without complex mathematics is Forbes and Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field. Faraday's evidence in the mid 19th century for a field associated with electrical and magnetic effects, as something real but not understood was at the time a perfect example of your "it's something, we don't know what,..." -- followed by a rational explanation achieved over years of work.
I love those guys work. What would we have done without Faraday? Well, I'm sure someone brighter than 25 watts would have come up with a Faraday cage
There may be false premises, or an incomplete theory, or something too difficult to solve, but where do you think "math doesn't work"?
Not knowing more than we do is not "math not working". Math doesn't "lead" us to truth, letting us down and not working when it doesn't. People have to think and make discoveries using it. I don't know what it means to say "predicted actions prove a theory, but the math doesn't work".
Your definition of truth needs honing. Until you can prove the reality of a thing you cannot determine whether it is true or not. If I can prove that the moon has shoe factories on it's dark side, and I send a camera in orbit around it and sure enough, elves are hard at work making shoes. I theorized this through a series of equations which led me to believe the hypothesis. That's reality proving truth. Also, I have now revealed, to my deep regret, how my twisted brain often works.
The "impossibility of a non-created universe" simply conveys that he had faith that something or someone he couldn't see, touch, taste, or hear created the universe, no?
Yes generalization ("All religions" "Each (religion) requires...", "Religions thrive..."). There are plenty of non-religious groups that do those things as well and, I'm sure, there are those religious group who do not.
The USA with its constitutional freedoms is not compatible with the Koran's religious demand for a worldwide caliphate and a whole bunch of other Muslim crap, such as murderous "martyrdom," "honor" killings, requiring four male bystanders to witness a rape to name a few.
The solution? We stay over here and we make them stay over there.
Europe should do the same if they want to preserve what's left of the crumbling cultures that (once upon a time?) made each of their specific countries unique.
I don't care if my point of view makes me an Islamophobia who ain't into no di-VERsiTEEE as I once heard a libtard sing it as his mantra.
A mantra libs dearly cling to as being more important than little girls stuck with knives by people who say, "This is for Allah."
Fear is why I bought guns up until the "I dream of open borders" Evil Hag lost the election. I still buy ammo just in case.
"Political correctness will not give one a pass to Heaven...just the first trip."
Me dino has to remember that line so I can steal it some day.
I may loot that Muslim point of honor bit, too, along with that kicker about our political parties.
Why not? I'm an opportunist carnosaur and have a cat I named Moocher.
Reminds me of Walt Kelly's "Pogo."
"We have met the enemy and they is us."
Iran will eventually will have nukes (if not already) and will be in a sharing mood whenever the day comes when it's inclusively surrounded by a regional caliphate commanded by the written word of Allah's prophet to take over the world.
"This is for Allah."
Maybe, that's why they force immigrate them, hoping against all hope that the muslims will ascend into at least a rudimentary state of awareness...
On second thought, Naw!...scratch that one...they've never been that smart nor human for that matter.
My concussion?...Complicity to the extreme.
You have been busy with this post. Here is my
2 cents worth." Why on earth do they continue to do. It?" Your title is the one word answer Submission.
The presidents that you named (besides the first Bush, he is the part of the deep state )were all controlled by the deep state except maybe Trump.
The DS wants to have chaos they don't care about death , destruction or families. Their motto is "out of chaos comes control". They make huge amounts of money from war and conflict. They also take away our liberty and freedom in the name of security. The connections between the "bad guys" and the intelligence groups are mind blowing. Both sides sacrifice individuals for their own purpose. Like Freedomforall said they are first and foremost traitors and looters. The real enemy has infiltrated and has destroyed the checks and balances of our constitutional republic.
Warm regards,
DOB
A newborn lacks most physical skills but is hardwired to learn, to connect causes and effects, to mimic others' learned behaviors. If I were the programmer of this lifeform, I would work on the assumption that the existing order and behavior patterns are the successful ones, since the current mature practitioners are alive and presumably thriving, and so their behaviors, like a template, should be replicated. From the earliest physical actions of feeding, sleeping, moving, finding protection, safety, comfort, hygiene, reproduction, a young human acquires and integrates data at a prodigious rate. Moment by moment both the data base and the rules become more complex of what must or must not, may or may not be done.
Fast forward to the accumulation of enormous concept webs within which an individual must choose and find courses of action that are acceptable to the group within which it needs to function. Whether cultural taboos within families and clans, or the millions of pages of laws and regulations that a nation has built up, there is a massive pressure to conform. Any deviation sends an alarm, and the system will seek to eliminate the defective elements, the disobedient units, whether by gentle persuasion or severe punishment or terminal removal. This has a micro parallel in the body's immune system that attacks any alien substance at the cellular level. It may even attack its own natural system, as in lupus, destroying itself from within. Likewise a society can fall into a self-destructive mode, formulating ever more restrictive rules until a totalitarian rigor mortis is reached.
In today's world, the belief systems that move towards total control will command their members to total obedience, submission and surrender, at the opposite end of a healthy system where enlightened cooperation does not require any destruction of fellow humans and, in fact, requires their participation for one's own wellbeing and survival. But destructive belief systems are not a reasoning entity, only a defective piece of software, and they embed themselves through humans' emotional (diagnostic) apparatus. This apparatus, that evolved as a guardian feature for survival in a simpler environment, can, in an overwhelmingly complex matrix of perceptions and concept formation, break down into self-contradictions. And the one thing it will not do is to admit any error. All the highly evolved brain's creative powers and defensive resources rise to deny error and to fake reality.
Should we, then, accept as unavoidable that humans will continue to persist in delusion, self-delusion, and mutual murdering? How can we free them from the compulsion to fight against self-correction and repair; how to persuade them that it is more valuable to be right than merely to appear to be right? To go against a lifetime of conditioning, of praying to a non-existent deity, of faithfully following rules rooted in centuries or millennia of cultural indoctrination? Why is it so much more difficult to wean people from believing in invisible rulers than to get over believing in Santa Claus? Where is their free will?
Submission started as a survival necessity. It has become cancerous. How to teach that Reason is the antidote, and that misplaced hatred of otherness is an unintended mutation? Check your own reaction to this analysis. Feel your hackles rise?
Without objectively checking their premises, most people willingly accept definitions of the good (what God, their parents and teachers and culture tell them) and evil (whatever does not agree with their conditioning). So some cultures consider honor killings honorable and murder of designated foes as noble. Peace-makers are written off as traitors and cowards. Those who are not for me are against me. Those who refuse to be expropriated are condemned as greedy. Etc.
In most people's lives good and evil are subjective and situational. They clamor for what pleases them and will sacrifice others sanctimoniously when their authorities assure them it's right to do so. Yes, they understand that there is a difference between the polar opposites of good and evil, but without an objectively defined set of values, there is no way to know which is which, and anything goes.
By the way, every living thing has an instinctive sense of what is good for it and what is bad, and will evolve features to aid its survival, or perish. Mankind has the potential to know those conditions conceptually and has created a technological world to support its survival, mixed in with the remnants of murderous aberrations.
Are those the two extreme products of the mind you would call their glory and their curse? Those sound rather mystical. I would like to see us evolve to a point where Galt’s Oath (a more explicit restatement of the golden rule) is the premise of human relationships. The highest good embraced by highly evolved minds, freely chosen and not simply submitted to.
But all good and evil are not subjective. For humans, there exists objective good and evil. Animals are not either good or evil unless they are trained to be one or the other and for them it it is obedience = reward.Only a high degree of volition allows for making decisions. As to good & evil being subjective and situational I'll bet you or I could name 50 or a hundred actions that are objectively evil. Some of them so horrible that we feel dirty just thinking of them. But, frankly, I don't care whether Muslims are raised in such a way that they don't understand the difference. Their religion, what they are taught, if it is a danger to me and mine, I'm not going to try to teach them right from wrong when while they are attacking me. They are adherents to an evil philosophy, which our leaders are afraid to articulate. As to instinct, it is strictly a self protective mechanism. It allows for no volition, it exists only to protect the mechanism. As to "glory and curse" I was waxing poetic. Good writers do that now and then, (except Hemingway).
Have you known any drummers?
Abstraction isn't a higher level of development than concepts, concepts require abstraction -- abstraction means selective focus, which is required in identifying essentials to form concepts. But there is a hierarchy of concepts that are abstractions from abstractions, and the ability to do that is more advanced than first level concepts based on direct perception. That is part of being rational, too. Many people treat concepts as if they were percepts and are very poor at dealing with higher level concepts. But every human has the capacity.
Thinking objectively versus following emotions is related, but is about the choice of how to use and apply concepts.
Every human has the capacity to think like a rational human being, so it's not a matter of a state of evolutionary biological development, but is a matter of philosophical evolution, which is what you are describing.
Traveling amidst 21 persons in a changeable schedule.
They'd never catch him.
we're still fighting back. whatta life! -- j
So sorry.
You just took the wind from my sails. I can't think of a single one of my famous smartass remarks.
Hang in there
Why do Progressives team up with Islam when ultimately it will destroy them? Progressivism itself is a self-destructive philosophy in the end: trying to understand it will only lead to contradiction because of the misguided belief of elitism and "it can't happen to me" that forms the basis for Progressivism. They are so steeped in self-delusion that what is actually an unleashed rabid wolfhound they see as a cute, little chihuahua.
Why do politicians try to pretend that they can solve an ideological conflict with diplomacy? Because they do not fundamentally understand their opponent/enemy and they underestimate it. Badly. Few in the Western world really comprehend how religion to many is much more than a one-day-a-week thing, but rather an entire way of life.
Progressivism, collectivism, socialism, etc., etc.all eventually lead to misery, starvation, demoralization and death. Even contrasting it with a mixed economy, like ours, that contains only 50% capitalism, easily shows its superiority. The thing that capitalism realizes that collectivism can't comprehend is that all men are not created equal and as a result some will succeed more than others and some will fail more than others. But treating everyone the same regardless of ability, ambition and application is the road to eventual poverty of wealth and spirit.
"Understanding a bad philosophy exposes contradictions, it doesn't create them." Precisely.
That a philosophy has some contradictions does not mean that one cannot understand what it is, including the nature of the contradictions.
Relying on the truth of the philosophy, based on the evidence of sense input.
Lewis Carroll's Classic "Alice in Wonderland" has probably one of the most compelling arguments to this I know of. Alice comes to a fork in the road and while she sits pondering the Cheshire Cat appears. She asks it which way she should go. His response is to ask where she is trying to get. She answers that she doesn't know. And his response is then that it doesn't matter.
If you spend your life wandering the road without an end goal - you'll get exactly where you intended to go: nowhere in particular. It is only those who have a goal in mind that get somewhere at all.
A rational individual rejects "following a path" in the footsteps of a mystic Pied Piper. Rejection of dogmatic mysticism is not "spending your life wandering the road without an end goal". We each make our own "path" for our own lives. Blarman's following a "master" and submitting to "discipleship" is the opposite of having one's own goals and the opposite of a rational morality based on the nature of man and his requirement to live. We do not "each have to choose which master to follow" or submit to "true discipleship walking the path of the master". That is disgusting.
Blarman's repetitive, obnoxiously dogmatic and subjectivist promotion of obsequious religion is the diametric opposite of the reason and individualism illustrated and explained in Atlas Shrugged. It does not belong on an Ayn Rand forum. Neither do his demands that his subjectivism be taken seriously and neither do his repetitive personal insults towards those who reject it.
I'm neither defending nor attacking the content of blarman. However, by saying his opinion doesn't belong in the Gulch is censorship. If every idea and opinion in this forum is the same, then there's no need for the forum, not to mention the boredum factor. It is my opinion that anyone exhibiting a well expressed opinion has a right to express it. Those persons who run the Gulch have the ability to censor if they wish, and they do so, but very rarely. They seem to be against the personally offensive posts more than those with mystical or non-rational opinions.
There is nothing boring about rational discussion without dogmatic mysticism. Rational does not mean "the same". His "beauty" and "poetry" of the Koran and insistence on submitting to "discipleship" and that "We each have to choose which master to follow" ought to be offensive and inappropriate to everyone here, especially since it has been explained to him many times. He ought to have enough sense on his own to realize that. Like the obnoxious Jehova's Witnesses he does not. His posts also often contain false personal attacks, insults, and outrageous misrepresentations in his hostility and arbitrariness. Rejecting this is not censorship.
Having been an atheist most of my life, I guess that I'm naive when it comes to religious dogma. I think I'll track down more info.
However, I did see a movie called Dogma which should be a must for every atheist who enjoys religious comedy.
The man with the overbearing father appears to be stating, probably unwittingly, the view of the Islamists extremists. If he convinces people of that lie, he's probably doing more to help the cause of Islamists than if he picked up a gun to fight for them.
I'm trying to understand your comment, but I'm drawing a blank. Could you elucidate more clearly?
The man from Paris contrasts the open/free society of Paris with his father's Saudi Arabian style religious fundamentalism. He calls the Paris way "Christian." In his mind, there's something about being Christian that makes you sophisticated and not take religion literally and something about Islam that demands you must take it literally. I know this is completely false. I am around people of all faith backgrounds who are not fundamentalist.
I claim most people want to live in an open pluralistic society and to enjoy the prosperity that comes with it. Extremists can't win on the battlefield, and they can't win comparing the quality of life that results from using reason rather than religion. Many of us have religious books like the Bible that our grandmother gave us, and we have fond memories of going to some religious event. The only way extremists get power is by convincing people that everyone who got a different religious book from their grandmother is bad in some way. It's an uphill battle for them, though, because a free pluralistic society is so much nicer than theocracy. They're only hope is get people to identify as groups rather than individuals based on which book and religious holiday they got during childhood. I think that's pure evil.
Eric Hoffer, author of "The True Believer," described the peculiarity of mass movements as a product of misguided, unhappy middle and upper class people comfortable enough to have the time to be troublemakers. The poor and uneducated who have to scratch to survive, he pointed out, have no time for political or theological struggle, usually ending up as cannon fodder for leaders from the upper classes.
What drives educated people in these mass movements is fear. They fear the loss of identity, of belonging, of power. The cultural gap between the West, with its focus on individual freedom (especially America, influenced by Native American culture - see "Indian Givers" by Weatherford), and Islam, in which the identity of the individual is subsumed into the umma is a nearly unbridgeable chasm.
However, there are over two billion Muslims in the world. Billion with a great big B. You don't come close to that number by only using elites. Many of those illiterates are tribal leaders using what they know of the religion to both enlist and cow others like themselves.