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How many Syrian refugees should Australia take? |
None |
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52% |
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A few hundred |
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2% |
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A few thousand |
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5% |
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Over ten thousand |
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5% |
[ 2 ] |
As many as possible |
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35% |
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Total Votes : 40 |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Key difference: I'm not the one making sweeping generalisations about, say, the character of English literature. You've effectively just satirised your own argument! _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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David wrote: | Key difference: I'm not the one making sweeping generalisations about, say, the character of English literature. You've effectively just satirised your own argument! |
Nope, your misunderstanding is not my satire. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007 Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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Switzerland to vote on burqa ban
Switzerland could become the latest country to ban facial coverings worn by some Muslim women after activists collected more than the 100,000 signatures required to put the proposal to a national voteFull-face coverings like niqabs and burqas are a polarising issue across Europe, with some arguing they symbolise discrimination against women and should be outlawed. The clothing has already been banned in France.
'Facial coverings are a symbol of radical Islam that have nothing to do with religious freedom but are rather an expression of the oppression of women,' said Anian Liebrand, a Swiss campaign leader
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/europe/2017/09/15/switzerland-to-vote-on-burqa-ban.html _________________ Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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I agree with Anian, and I bet the vote doesn't cost 122 million! _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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It's a much smaller country, so of course it won't – beyond that, Switzerland seems to have a lot of these referendums. It's a curious system.
I wouldn't be sure about the vote getting up*, by the way. It's a conservative country, but even our National Party couldn't get on board with a 'burqa' ban, which perhaps shows that even among the right this is a fraught subject. Ultimately the aim of these 'burqa bans' is to send an assimilationalist and/or hostile message to Muslims – the issue itself is an irrelevance.
*Having said that, Switzerland does have form in this area:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009 _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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No one says you have to. |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007 Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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One's too many.
Teenage London terror suspect a ‘refugee foster child’ cared for by elderly couple honoured by the Queen
A teenager suspected of being the Parsons Green bucket bomber is thought to be a refugee fostered by an elderly couple who were honoured by the Queen.
The 18-year-old -- the youngest to be arrested over a terror attack in the UK -- is being quizzed by cops after he was seized in Dover, The Sun reports, over Friday’s London Tube attack.
The arrest is “very significant” and the terror threat level remains “critical”, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said.
https://thewest.com.au/news/terrorism/teenage-london-terror-suspect-a-refugee-foster-child-cared-for-by-elderly-couple-honoured-by-the-queen-ng-b88602100z _________________ Don't count the days, make the days count. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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David wrote: | Key difference: I'm not the one making sweeping generalisations about, say, the character of English literature. You've effectively just satirised your own argument! |
David wrote: | Key difference: I'm not the one making sweeping generalisations about, say, the character of English literature. You've effectively just satirised your own argument! |
Sorry if my replies were a little more waspish than usual on this topic yesterday ; I was typing on a very small screen in sunlight and while doing other things. Let me try to engage with your argument a little more constructively.
Religion is, in a sense, an ideology - a narrative about the world and existence that is used to give meaning and interpretation to events and suggest courses of conduct to adherents. Now, I think we might agree that ideologies are not equal, though all can be hijacked and abused by the human lust for power and domination. Some ideologies, most famously Nazism, more or less celebrate domination and conflict as an end in themselves. I would argue that Communism, in its deeply conflictual and historicist world view, does the same to a lesser extent, though that makes it more insidious. Liberal, capitalist democracy is less destructive.
If political ideologies are not equal, why on earth would religious ideologies be equal either ? And how does one judge between them ? i tried to provide a framework to analyse that question, and my asperity was triggered when you ignored that framework and seemed to consider the actions and intentions of humans 500 years ago some kind of proof of Christianity's meaning. I think that's like the argument that Jefferson owned slaves, so therefore the US constitution, a founding document of human liberty, does not represent an essentially benignant guide to politics and life. What benighted people raised in the utterly different culture of 500 years ago do with an ideology tells you something about it - but not much.
Now, to your arguments, I think it is a shame that the Old Testament, essentially an ancient and often rather barbaric Jewish text, is given so much prominence in Christianity, but I think only the most obtuse would consider that the OT is not countermanded by the meaning of Christ's words. What man, formed by the ultra violent world of two thousand years ago, and subjected to an agonizing death, forgives his tormentors ? What man today would do the same ? It seems to me that this is one of the most challenging ideas in human history, and that it has as much to do with the way the West evolved, as vice-versa. only someone whose soul has been dulled by years of materialism would shrug at this and mutter about a "sky-fairy". I don't believe the theology, but the ideas are shocking and awe-inspiring.
You seem to believe that Western politics caused benevolent Christianity, but I think they informed each other. History is not a chain of causation ; it is a dialogue between ideas and action, and when (for example) Wilberforce and Wedgewood campaigned to ban slavery on the edge of their time's understanding, they did not succeed because they used economics ; they did so in the language of Christian understanding. Probably their opponents used some Old Testament justification, but in a conflict between the (attributed) words of Jesus and the Old Testament, everyone secretly knows which is more authoritative, whatever your sister may say.
The founding texts matter. So does the general sentiment they arouse in the mind of the average person, and the behaviours the words license and encourage. That was my original point and I do not see how anything that happened in the 15th century contradicts it. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Great post IMHO. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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Allowing for different churches' perception of the Old Testament, I don't think there's ever been a time that it was treated as some mere addendum to the NT, as you seem to be suggesting. The doctrine that most – but not all – churches follow is that Christ's death on the cross annulled Mosaic law (i.e. the hundreds of commandments detailed over the course of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). They still, however, teach the narratives of the Old Testament while historically ascribing varying (but usually maximal) degrees of literalism to them. This means that Christianity was never only about about Christ's teachings or Paul's letters, but also about Adam and Eve, the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Golden Calf, David and Goliath and Job's trials, as well as some of the less palatable episodes such as the various divinely ordained massacres of the Canaanites and Lot's rape at the hands of his daughters. As just two examples (likely one of many) of Christian fidelity to the OT, the Catholic Church based their entire doctrine on the subject of masturbation on a misreading of a verse in Genesis; and, of course, to this day, Christians base their opposition to homosexuality on nothing that Jesus said or did but rather on a few references in the OT and one of Paul's epistles. Thus, to characterise Christianity as only being about the NT or the gospels just seems like opportunistic revisionism or cherry-picking to me, I'm afraid.
What does this mean for Christianity? To return to your assertion on the previous page, the very thing I'm not doing is using ancient texts to point to Christianity's inherent barbarism. It really is quite the opposite: my contention throughout the past few pages has consistently been that religion in practice is only loosely related to its sacred texts, which – usually being the products of many authors and time periods – are often of ambiguous intent and inherently contradictory, leading to a broad range of possible readings. Instead, I argue, the major religions' texts truly have the ability to be used as a justification for the best and worst of human action. What dictates the actions of its followers, then? Largely, I'd argue, power, capacity for pluralism, the existing aims of political groups or causes (whether they be 18th century Christian emancipationists or Jewish Zionists in the occupied territories), dominant social and scientific views, and the interplay between text and receiver that dictates how all media content is consumed.
Ultimately, I have to wonder what exactly the end game of this argument of ours is: is it the assertion, pushed by certain far-right groups, that Islam is an unacceptable political ideology that needs to be warred against, or treated as a cancer? Of course I'm opposed to such views, but I can only say that I have no interest in asserting a moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity, or any other religion, because I find the idea of ranking faiths absurd and pointless anyway. My primary argument here is with the idea that Islam is a special case, or that it needs to be treated as one: in my view, it should already be clear to any intelligent member of society that it functions in essence like most of the world's other major religions, with all the contradictions and danger, backwardness and genuine social benefit that that entails.
Quietly, I suspect that the sooner that it and other religions recede from public life, the better our world will be; but you don't get there by promoting hostility, conflict or discrimination, and neither should we let faulty, prejudicial and ahistorical assumptions about it influence immigration or asylum policies. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ you must know very different Christians to the ones I know, almost none of whom treat the OT with "maximal literalism". Indeed, ever since Darwin I think there has been a large mainstream of xtianity that recognised Genesis et al as a kind of mythic, or mystic expression.
We can probably agree that the kind of Christianity which treated the OT literally would indeed be better off vanished from the world. But it is onbvious that Christianity has as its centre the life and teachings of Christ, to most of the Christians I know. Despite the corruption of humanity, Jesus Christ is an astonishing figure, in his archaic message of love, redemption, tolerance, the inevitability of suffering, sacrifice and forgiveness. If you cannot see the moral power and the moral challenge of that message then I think you are missing something powerful. When it vanishes from the earth, as it nearly has, a powerful antidote to the totalitarian tendencies of human power and grim-jawed progressives will be lost with it.
What is the argument about ? I think it started because I said that Buddhism in itself seemed to me a fairly benign ideology. I was thinking more about Buddhism's effects compared with the oppression that usually issues from those who arrogantly think themselves arbiters of "progress", but you seemed to think it was code for dissing Islam. This is Ok by me as its founding texts and essential message are not at the more benign end of the spectrum either. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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2 great posts Mugwump.
So very much of angst is caused by still worrying about the sins of the fathers. Surely in all facets of life we need to get past that eventually? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ thanks TP. I'm glad that both you and Stui read it, as it's not light stuff.
The "sins of the fathers" thing is nearly always about the desire of some to appropriate history in order to achieve, or justify, changed power relations in the present. Only rarely is it a disinterested attempt to understand the past in its own terms. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
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Skids
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007 Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
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