mdegges

Thanks- that's a great point. I think the key here is that his motivations are 1) voluntary (meaning, he has consciously chosen to believe in a subjective view of the world), and 2. personal (meaning, his views are not necessarily shared by others of the 'same' religion). This shows that the real blame lies with the man who has consciously and voluntarily accepted destruction and death as the standard for life. Feel free to tack on 'for political gain' or 'to assert power over others'- imo it's a given that doesn't need to be explicitly stated.

I disagree. Should religion be the cause of all this antagonism? A religion cannot 'make' anyone do anything they don't want to do. It's not some magical force that moves people to do good or evil. People use religion to spread whatever 'truths' they believe in, or to manipulate others into doing what they want. I don't think the fault is with Islam- if it didn't exist, terrorists (people who blindly follow orders and promote and use acts of violence) still would. You think they'd be happy and go about normal lives if America was wiped off the planet? Become regular lawn-mowing citizens? No way- they would just find something else to hate and destroy.

It has nothing to do with civility, but it has everything to do with freedom of religion.

Oh, so you don't know her in real life? If that's the case, you probably just like her appearance (as you would like a celebrities, without actually knowing them). That is far from real love. I agree that it is self destructive, creepy, and immoral: self-destructive- because you like someone you can't have or even become close to; creepy- because you said yourself that she would be creeped out if she knew you were collecting pictures of her. (In other words, your acts would make her extremely uncomfortable); immoral- because it's self-destructive and most likely dissatisfying. Edit: I think Objectivists would say yes to this Q for the reasons above. But if you were to ask a Q more general, such as, 'Is there anything inherently wrong with an older man dating a younger woman?' I think the answer would be no, there is nothing inherently wrong with that- there are multiple factors that would need to be considered here, depending on context.

Do you also believe that the WBC represents all "sincere" Christians, and everyone else is "hypocritical"? That's false- there have been tons of anti-terrorist protests by Muslims all around the world. A quick google search brings up articles about protests in NY, Libya, UK, Jerusalem, Syria, Detroit, India, etc. Here is yet another source you might want to check out.

I assume you're referring to the public education system in the US. How exactly does it teach the indoctrination of mysticism-altruism-collectivism? I learned about evolution in my biology classes, not creationism.. I had physics and chem classes, not bible study. So what specifically is being taught that you have a problem with, and what changes would you suggest (besides a complete privatization of schools, which is not going to happen anytime soon)?

Why should moderate muslims have to prove themselves?? You act as though it's THEIR job to fight against terrorist extremists because they are members of the same religion, forgetting that they are just regular joes trying to live their lives in peace. It is NOT their fault that terrorist extremists exist. You'd think the almost constant protesting against terrorism was enough.. but no. You believe they are somehow to blame for all the violence in the world. Grow up.

@aleph_ 1 and Harrison: I probably should have responded in a different way. I am not claiming that religion should be mixed with government affairs. Obviously, I believe religion should NOT be mixed with government AT ALL (that's what has caused many of these problems in Turkey and all around the world- don't need hard statistics to figure that one out).. The purpose of government is to protect individual rights. That includes ALL individuals, whether they are religious and choose to wear hijabs or whether they are crazy atheists who protest outside of the temple everyday. A secularist government (one which is not involved in religion at all) must be built on this foundation. I fear that in Turkey, secularist protesters have gone too far by harassing and threatening religious people in the streets. The current government (or any secular government that may form in the future) should never stand for that. So as I asked above, tell me which is worse: harassing women who DON'T wear hijabs in public or harassing those who do? (My answer: both are equally wrong and should not be tolerated.)

I would not be so quick to support any group who wants to limit my freedoms with threats of force. What a person wears in the public sector is his own choice- not the government's, not the protesters, not the imams. Limiting that freedom by harassing or threatening those who choose to wear religious garments/symbols is a big deal. It's just as wrong to threaten women who DON'T wear hijabs in public as it is to threaten those who DO wear hijabs in public. What you call 'containing public displays of religion' is actually 'initiating force towards those who wear religious items.' [Feel free to swap out the term religious with political, anti-religious, etc.]

And now we are back to this religious interpretation conflict... There are multiple 'justified' deaths in the bible that conflict with 'thou shall not kill.' Off the top of my head, God himself (ie: an unnamed supernatural power that caused plague, fire, disease, etc) killed a bunch of people, including Lot's wife, the ammorites, Isrealites.. the list is pretty long. Further, there are many instances where murder and robbery is portrayed as being justified by God (ie: the writers of the stories in the bible who were divinely inspired by God's word)- for an example, see the story of Dinah.

Maybe the correlation is just between closed-mindedNESS and people- which in my experience has been mainly atheists.

We've also seen what happens when secularists (albeit marxist-leaning secularists) get ahold of government.. does the USSR ring any bells?

Nice to have you back, & congrats on the promotion.

These protests started in response to government plans to turn Gezi Park into a shopping mall.. but they soon developed into a clash between secularists who believe in the separation of religion and state (CHP and Taksim Platformu), and those who don't (PM Erdogan and the AKP). Are you for or against these protests? Why or why not? ... At first I thought Occupy Gezi was just about a bunch of environmentalists trying to stop the wheels from turning, like Occupy protesters did here in the states. As the protests evolved, I began to support them- they seemed to be secularists standing up against Erdogan's religiously motivated rule. However, I've heard some troubling news about these secularist protesters (ie: they have begun to persecute those who are 'visibly religious' and thought to be AKP or AKP-sympathizers) which leads me to believe they are not as good as they first appeared.

You've entirely missed the point: different religious interpretations exist, and there are reasons for the existence of different sects and denominations within religions (ie: Christianity). Without understanding those differences and reasons for those differences, how can you know what Christianity as a whole is about? Your two-word generalization about faith and self-sacrifice does not and cannot sum up thousands of years of historical and theological growth and development.

I forget why I originally created this thread. I think at the time I was wondering 'why does religion still exist, what is its purpose, is any part of it GOOD or worth redeeming' etc. I think I also wanted to understand the huge personality differences between theists and atheists, like 'what makes man A need religion and man B shun it in all forms, never giving it any thought or time of day.' In regards to this last part, I found some useful information in Philosophy: Who Needs It. There are also some good posts about this in Christianity and Objectivism. Edit: More on these personality differences. In general I've found two categories of people: 1. those who are arrogant, abrupt, opinionated about everything, threatened by other points of view, and unable/unwilling to fully explain or validate their points of view, which they cling to so desperately- what I would call closed minded (and Rand calls passive). Then there are those who are more open (what Rand calls active). 2. These people are eager to learn and hear other points of view, listen- accept or reject- and give reasons why, able to understand and admit when they're wrong about an issue, and most importantly, they actually care about the truth no matter how small it may be. You'd think that people in category 2. would be atheists and in 1. would be theists, but I usually find the opposite is true. I don't know if atheism is the cause (ie: is an important human element missing?), or if it just attracts a certain type of person. (whyNot said somewhere on here that theists have character. Maybe that is the more accurate word to describe the difference between 1. and 2.)

The bit that interested me was that only some of the information provided by Snowden was published. (The details are fuddled but both Greenwald and Gellman have said that all the info wasn't published.) Toobin thinks this is a negative, and believes it shows that Snowden didn't use any judgement or restraint when it came to releasing this information. That could be the case.. but it might be reassuring (to those who think guys like Manning and Snowden have no regard for national security) to know that even whistleblowers cannot get all of their info published. There are multiple checks along the way to ensure that truly important, life-or-death info is not released to the public. Also- that McArdle article is pretty weird itself. "[Whistleblowers] are weird in their own way, because they have to be in order to be willing to violate the trust of their group in order to protect a principle... We may well end up grateful to Edward Snowden, and also find that we don't like him very much. Of course, Edward Snowden probably doesn't care. After all, if he cared about people liking him as much as the rest of us do, he probably wouldn't have been able to do with he did." Since when is that a bad thing?

On that note-

Yes, of course they do- but should these acts be kept from the public just because they make the US look bad? For instance, should the government forbid the publishing of civilian casualties? .. or friendly-fire incidents? How far would you take this 'undermining the government is evil' belief? I don't know exactly where the line is, but there is a line between 'undermining the government' and publishing real facts to inform the public about what's going on. I agree with you here.. but just because something makes the US look bad doesn't mean it should be kept private.

Isn't the belief that the government should declassify everything that isn't a threat to national security? Sure, most of Manning's leaks (videos of airstrikes, the iraq war logs, afghan war diary, etc) made US soldiers look bad... but that's because what they did (namely, killing tons of innocent civilians) was wrong. What is the problem with 'leaking' this information?

Oh cool. You can do the same stuff (read, bookmark, search, and much more) with Calibre, if you have ebooks: You can get this on practically every device (iphones included) & sync your library across all your devices- more info here.

Isn't it just a compilation of all Rand's works in ebook format? I read that it went out of production about 5 years ago, so I'm not sure exactly what it is.

I see what you mean, and that's a nice way of looking at it.. but I also think that committing suicide is a complete and total rejection of life. Yes, a person may be rejecting illness (or heartbreak, or a bad living condition, etc) by choosing to end their life early, but they are also rejecting everything else in life- including the positive aspects of it. It's not just a rejection of one thing, it's a rejection of all things.

His point there is that Rand formed judgements about issues (evolution, hypnosis, etc) without even studying them. In other words, if something seemed to go against her views (even superficially), she wrote it off entirely and called it irrational. Obviously this was written as an insult- but taken as is, it's understandable that Rand wasn't interested or devoted to learning the truth about every single subject in the world (gardening, hypnosis, African art, rice cooking, evolution, etc.) Her expertise was in other fields. Further, just because NB was interested in hypnosis at one point in his life doesn't mean Rand automatically had to be interested in it too. Remember she was 25 years his senior- they were at very different stages in their lives. (Imagine writing down all the arguments against creationism and giving them to a Catholic priest, 25 years your senior. Think your arguments will get through to him on any meaningful level?)

Is it an .exe program that you want to run on your iphone? The last answer on this page might be worth a look.