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The Wrath

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Everything posted by The Wrath

  1. If someone derives enjoyment from casual sex, what's wrong with it? If it feels good physically, you enjoy the person's company, and are reasonably certain that there is no STD risk, I can't see any rational reason to object to it.
  2. I liked it okay, but thought it was the weakest of Ridley Scott's historical epics. The first half was confusing, and the second half is way too preachy. It also tries too hard to put Robin Hood at the center of English history. Robin Hood is supposed to be a bandit who lurks in the woods and makes life miserable for corrupt royal officers. I know this was a prequel, but I've just never heard of a depiction of Robin Hood where he is a high-profile military commander and chief negotiator of the Magna Carta. I would have liked it better had they not tried to turn him into some hugely important historical figure. Having said that, I'll probably get it when it comes out on blu-ray. The guy who played King John was freakin' awesome...particularly at the end, when he declares Robin Hood "AN OUTLAAAAAAAAW!!!" For the record, I think everyone's impressions of "Robin Hood" are mistaken. Though the popular idiom is "stole from the rich and gave to the poor," this is a gross oversimplification of the story of Robin Hood. I've never seen or read an actual depiction of Robin Hood that has him as some sort of socialist hero. Yes, he steals from the rich, but they got rich by literally (not just in the Marxist sense) stealing from the poor. He has always been, first and foremost, anti-corruption.
  3. Though I am firmly on Israel's side on this, particularly having seen the video, I fear that their actions just played into the hands of their enemies. Their enemies wanted some soundbytes to play for an international audience, and got it. As a result, Israel is in danger of losing diplomatic relations with Turkey, which was once a close ally. Surley they saw this coming. Seems like a smarter move would have been to set up a counter-blockade with its own ships. It's not as if the "humanitarian" ships would have gotten past it.
  4. Also note the Hamas flag that the knives are laying on.
  5. These two statements prove the notion that you should keep your mouth shut if you don't know what you're talking about. There are theological differences big enough to make some groups of Muslims kill others. It is not my job to educate you on Islam. Firstly, because I'm not an expert. Secondly...well, it just flat isn't my job. This link summarizes the broad categories of Islamic thought, if you're still interested. It doesn't list 25,000 different variants, but then I'm guessing the equivalent article for Christianity doesn't list all the thousands of Christian denominations either. I have no idea how many different forms of Islam there ultimately are, but I don't need to know in order to refute your claim that there are only two kinds of Muslim: Sunni and Shi'a. Can you at least acknowledge that, within those 2 large categories, there are many, many variants and sub-variants and sub-sub-variants? As for the Qur'an being straightforward...it's not anymore straightforward than the Bible. The attitude and proscriptions of the different suras vary widely--particularly suras that deal with how a Muslim should treat non-Muslims--based in large part on whether Muhammad was in Mecca or Medina when the sura was written. The Meccan suras tend to be more or less peaceful, because Muhammad had virtually no political following there and was having to keep himself out of trouble with the establishment, but the Medinan suras tend to be much more violent, because Muhammad actually gained a large following there and he could afford to preach schism and vitriol without really fearing the consequences.
  6. With the recently provided information, I changed my mind on the mosque issue. However, you are completely wrong here. It is not "egalitarian" to say all religions are equally wrong. It is a statement of fact. The factual claims made in the Bible are no more or less true than those in the Koran. In fact, if one is truer than the other, it would probably be the Koran, since it was written much more recently and by (more or less) a single person...meaning, of course, that the claimed events of the Koran are much more likely to be backed up by actual history, than are the claims of the Bible. Muhammad really did gain a political following in Medina, and then go back to conquer his former detractors. If Jesus Christ even existed (which is far from certain, by the way), he was not born in Bethlehem and many of his escapades are pretty low on the historicity scale. Trying to break up Islam into two dominating sects (Shi'a and Sunni) is no more accurate than breaking up Christianity into three (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox). Although, in both cases, each particular denomination can be lumped into one of those categories, there is wide disparity within them. I'm not going to give a full taxonomy of the different sects within both Sunni and Shi'a Islam, but suffice it to say that they are wide and varied. I never said the two religions currently present an equal threat. I said they are equally bullshit and that the threat they pose depends entirely on what interpretations are currently prevalent. If you want to argue that there is a "true interpretation" of either religions, then I challenge you to do so. Pick what you think is the true variant of either Christianity of Islam, and argue in favor of it. You'll find it quite impossible to reconcile your chosen variant with other parts of the respective holy books that are completely contradictory.
  7. This is the problem that seems to confound most people who talk about Islam (or any religion.) There is no "undiluted form." There is no such thing as "true" Islam. Muhammad was a politician who said what was convenient for him at the time, and there are huge disparities between his disposition in Mecca and his disposition in Medina. The result is 14 centuries of people bickering back and forth about who has it right. They're all wrong, not just with respect to reality, but with respect to the content of the Quran. It is impossible to be anything but wrong when trying to reconcile a contradictory religion.
  8. In this particular instance, I am in 100% agreement with Jake. And that is not something that happens often. I oppose all forms of irrationality, but I am not going to be any more incensed about a mosque near Ground Zero than I would be about a Shinto temple near Pearl Harbor or a Catholic church near a counseling center for sexual abuse victims. Islam, like all revealed religions (including Christianity and Judaism), contains many contradictions that are impossible to reconcile and, as such, there is no interpretation of it that a rational outsider should consider the "true" version. The version of Islam preached by bin Laden is not "true" Islam, nor is the peaceful version typically adhered to by American Muslims. Instead, each interpretation is just another version of the same religion. In fact, the history of religion demonstrates that they evolve in some ways like life-forms do. As in, we are the ones who draw the lines that divide them, in the same way we are the ones who decide where one species ends and another begins. Such distinctions do not exist in nature. Islam grew organically out of a mixture of Abrahamic monotheism and the polytheistic religions of 6th century Arabia. So if we're calling Christianity and Islam different religions, we might as well call bin Laden's Islam a different religion from Islam as it is typically practiced in this country. Since one wants to kill us and another does not, I see no reason to blame the latter for the former's crimes or to lump them into the same category. All versions of Islam (indeed all religions...in fact, all forms of irrationality) are bullshit and harmful to human happiness. But the people building this mosque have committed no crime against you. Be incensed about the irrationality of any religion. But, unless you're going to be equally incensed about a palm-reading parlor next door to your favorite restaurant (like the one I see every day), then quit yer bitchin'.
  9. So, we're devolving into barbarism, and your evidence for this is nasty political speech by an extremely small minority. Most people do not want talk show hosts to kill themselves or wish to see the president assassinated, no matter how vehemently they may disagree. Politics always has been and always will be nasty. Back in the 1800s, presidential candidates used to call each other's wives whores. Sometime in the late 1800s, I think, one Congressman used his cane to beat another Congressman to within an inch of his life...on the House floor. This is nothing new, and we are no more barbaric (indeed, in my opinion, considerably less so) than we have been at any point in the history of this country, which is in turn far less barbaric than 99.9% of all human societies that have existed since homo sapiens first evolved
  10. What country's air force did Israel destroy in 1967, Jake? No looking on Wikipedia, now.
  11. Arguing with Jake is useless, and telling him he's full of shit on anything regarding the Middle East is somewhat comparable to telling creationists that they don't understand biology. You'll have more luck teaching calculus to a cat. If you need evidence of this, witness the pwn4ge laid down upon Jake in the link that Greyhawk provided, take note of his utter inability to defend his "points,", and then his even more staggering inability to realize that he has no idea what he's talking about. The guy is the epitome of what people mean by the word "Randroid."
  12. lol Read a book. Hey Jake, what countries did Israel fight in 1967?
  13. You will be missed.

  14. No one wants to flog you for being honest. Though the government is prohibited from restricting freedom of speech, CNN is perfectly within its rights to disallow incitement to genocide on its own airwaves. As are the keepers of this forum. When I accuse you of supporting genocide, it's not much of a defense to say "well, no I don't, but only because we won't do it right." Everyone in this thread who responded with anything but outright condemnation of you should be ashamed of themselves. It's not hard to imagine someone--totally unfamiliar with Ayn Rand or the individual rights philosophy that we generally espouse here--stumbling upon this webpage. If they were to read your posts and see that, not only are you allowed to spew your tribalistic venom, but no one even calls you out on it, then every poster here looks guilty by association. I don't care how old you are and how much you've been through. I recall you bragging, at one point, of how you have purged yourself of all human compassion. You are laboring under the delusion that ardent capitalists should share your mindset. I can be a capitalist without feeling pitiless indifference to mass murder. There are few people I have ever felt like saying this to, but I think you deserve it: the world is a worse place with you in it.
  15. I rest my case. I got a 20% warning for suggesting that some environmentalists, even if misguided in their views, are doing what they think is best for human civilization, by keeping the earth such that it can sustain human life. Kolker just explicitly stated his desire to see us exterminate the entire human population of the Middle East. I'll leave it up to a moderator to decide what action to take. If none is taken, then shame on the moderators, and shame on this forum.
  16. Since I know someone will eventually ask me for proof that he said this.
  17. Why is no one willing to call out Kolker on this? Nevermind his ridiculous statement--that he makes with utterly unwarranted certainty--that DC and NYC will both be nuked or dirty bombed. He is an absolutely despicable person who has, in other threads, explicitly advocated genocide, even going so far as to use the G word itself. As you can see in this post, he doesn't support bombing population centers out of defensive necessity, while expressing sadness that it is necessary to do so. Instead, he supports bombing them, because he just doesn't give a fuck about the innocents who are killed. He even justifies it with the "well, they'd just turn into terrorist someday anyway" logic. While we're at it, lets kill all black children, simply because they are more likely than white children to eventually become criminals. Unfair comparison? Nope. It's the same logic he uses. Even though the outcome of both approaches is the same, I am a firm believer that it is your intentions which make your actions good or evil. Kolker's intention could be to protect American lives and to place the blame for innocent deaths on the hands of terrorists. But he doesn't care about blaming them for innocent death, because he views Arabs/Muslims as a monolithic group of guilty, evil terrorists. It is a tribal, racist, and evil mentality. Kolker should be condemned for his statements and banned from these forums.
  18. Why is he not on par with Aquinas? Because he came later? I think there is easily an argument to be made that Jefferson was at least as important as Aquinas. Jesus Christ came after Buddha, and his teachings (well, the ones that are attributed to him, anyway) seem to have been influenced by Buddha. But I imagine most people would agree that Christ was a more important historical figure.
  19. I am curious to know what your opinions are on Bill Maher. I find that, the more I watch him, the more I like him. In some ways, he is a typical American liberal, and has numerous positions that I disagree with...he supports the health care bill, for instance. But I find that, when I agree with him, I agree with him whole-heartedly...and that happens more than I thought it would. He constantly lampoons religion, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and (as I recently discovered) is prone to launching passionate defenses of Israel. Not something I would have expected. I just saw an interview he did with Netanyahu that was quite well-done. Even though I disagree with a lot of his views, I find myself agreeing with what he spends the most time talking about. Apart from being hilarious, I find his best feature is that he tells is like it is. When Jerry Falwell died, for instance, he came right out and said "death is not always sad." Not what you heard from most people (even ones who disagreed with his politics), when he died. I also like his very candid take on the American people, in general. They're stupid. I think he's largely right. I was not a fan of Religiulous, however. It was funny for about 15 minutes, but making fun of religion is not difficult, and it's not really material for a full-length movie.
  20. I know that many (all?) Objectivists are opposed to the theory of evolution when it is applied to human psychology. Just wondering if someone would offer me a brief explanation why. It is difficult for me to understand how someone could view our psyches as having been somehow isolated from the process of evolution, when every part of our bodies--brains included--were shaped by natural selection. I suppose you can make the argument that we are fundamentally different from the rest of the animal kingdom because of our capacity to reason, but I would point out that our capacity to reason is not the only thing that makes up our psychology. When looking at wild animals, I doubt that anyone will argue that the sexual promiscuity of males and sexual selectivity of females have clear evolutionary explanations. Likewise for the presence of fear in the face of a predator. Both of these examples also apply to the human species. How do you explain these without reference to evolutionary psychology? Or have I completely misread the Objectivist stance on this?
  21. The troofers would argue that it hasn't remained hidden, because they have exposed it...just that most people remain willfully blind. To answer EC's question, they would also argue that it was done to give the government an excuse to get involved in the Middle East again. I know these things because, I am sorry to say, my best friend from college (who was also the best man at my wedding) believes that the US government orchestrated the collapse of the twin towers. Don't talk to him much, these days...
  22. Tried to go see it a couple nights ago, but our great nation's capitol apparently shuts down when we have more than a few inches of snow. What a bunch of sissies.
  23. I was actually referring to someone else's statements on the preview for Iron Man 2.
  24. What exactly is in that preview that you find offensive? The scene where he addresses Congress seems pretty badass.
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