Islam nowadays are religions most used to justify violence and prohibitions against freedom of opinion. When people embrace violent approach, either by doing it or kowtowing to violence, they use Islam as justification. I don’t see people beating up someone for having a different opinions and do it under the name of Buddha, for example.
Religions are undoubtedly a highly effective (and defective) euphemistic techniques politicians use to guide the population. It’s not wise to say that I like bigger tax because I am lazy. I would rather say that I prefer that for more agreeable reasons, like social justice.
The same way power seeking bigots do not like to say that they kill those that unmask them to preserve their power. People simply has a way to direct responsibility. It’s called the invisible God.
We can think of religion as a political party.
Say somebody wants high tax and bigger welfare. Does he do so because he’s a Democrat or is he a Democrat because he like high tax and bigger welfare? Well, the latter is more correct of course. However, why do people want higher tax and bigger welfare tend to vote for Democratic party? That’s because Democrat parties tend to attract those people. After a while, Democrat parties will tend to support interests of such people. That means more and more people like that will vote for democrat. So in a sense, the causality is not just one way. It’s more of a circular causality.
Circular causality is more like circular reasoning. The latter is false, but still identifying it will correctly predict why people keep having stronger and stronger faith on something.
The same way, does people hate freedom of thought and porn because they are muslim or do they become muslim because they hate freedom of thought and porn? It’s more of both way with bigger arrow on the latter.
Just like political parties changes their stance through out centuries, religions also tend to change their stands. It’s difficult for political parties to change their stances easily. That’s because those political parties are heavily supported by their base. Changing what they stand for will change their base and that means losing support.
Just like religious followers kowtow to their religious interpretation, the same way religious interpretation tend to kowtow to the interest of their followers, probably weighted by relative power or influence toward the making of those interpretations. I see that this principle correctly predict religious teaching far more than their scriptures.
There are probably a very few small group of extremely esoteric groups that see religions as inspiration. Religious texts matter to those and only to those small groups. Most of the time, religions are simply one of many effective ways to persuade other humans to agree on a certain political stances that benefit the religious interpreters. In the majority of cases, the interest of religious interpreters simply decide what their religious interpretations are.
Different individuals have different traits that benefit under different rules. Diligent productive people, for example, prefer low tax and lazy parasites prefer high tax. People tend to support traits that best serve them in voting or in fighting. Certain religious values then often appeal to a certain type of people.
The trend that I observe is that Islam is simply the religion violent people more likely choose as their mascot now.
It’s true that most other religions also have their fair share of violent teaching. After all, most popular religions are made a long time ago. A long time ago, before Wealth of Nation by Adam Smith, violence are the way to solve virtually all social problem. Might makes right and that’s just that.
However, through cultural processes religions tend to change their bases and hence change their stands. As a religion becomes popular, so is their interpretation. After all, in any society, there will be some liberals, some conservative, some socialist, and plenty of moderate libertarians. If all of them worship Bob, for example, then there will be liberal Bobish, conservative Bobish, socialist Bobist, and libertarian Bobists. When that happens, religion of god Bob, for example, don’t stand for anything. I think major traits in all major religions are their flexibility that allow those religions to be accepted by a large wide range of people.
So we often end up in a catch 2 2. If we said Islam is pro violent, we’re wrong because many Muslims are actually peaceful. If we said Islam is against violent, we can only wonder why those suicide bombers are not Christians, or satanists for example. We would also wonder why those suicide bombers use Islam, rather than Buddhism as their justification. Perhaps, because they know that they will be more easily approved by Islamic bases than by Buddhist bases.
Like most political parties, while there are differences within political parties, there are also significant differences between political parties. We can guess that anti abortion advocates will be much more likely picking republican than democrats. The same way, black people are more likely to vote for democrats rather than republican in US now. It’s actually the opposite during Jim Crow’s era.
The same way, when there are several religions in the same country, then different elements of a society will be more likely to pick different religions.
Nowadays, Islam seems to find their niche among frustrated power hungry facist males that don’t like to think. There are a lot of people like that in any society and most of them are more likely to embrace Islam than say atheism.
Of course, just 50 years ago it’s the other way around. I wrote this on 2010 by the way and still remember how atheist Vietnamese slaughtered a lot of people and how religions are one of the elements that save us from those commies.
Like most ancient religions, Islam allow polygamy and prohibit sex outside marriage and prostitution. In one area of this issue, proponent of Islam is surprisingly correct. Women do often want to share a richer smarter males than being the only one for a poor ones. Prohibition of polygamy in western society is not there to protect women. It’s there to protect males that won’t get any if supermen are banging too many girls.
In fact, that’s what christianity is all about. It’s also western civilizations most unique traits. Rationing women in equal share for every one ensuring that anyone irrelevant of beauty, wealth, or sexual orientation will end up producing the same number of kids. That’s Christians’ main base and value for the last, well, 1000 years at least.
The tradition goes back all the way to Sparta where the only way a man could breed is if he broke some laws. At the end while winning a lot of battle, Spartans simply don’t breed enough kids and slowly disappear, which is the exact same problem western civilizations face.
Nowadays, the only way a male can have more than one women in western civilization is by breaking some norms, laws, and political career, which explains their dwindling gene pool survival relative to say, muslims. Around 1000 years ago, western europe civilization isn’t rich and powerful. They can’t import women from other countries and hence monogamy serve their bases. Those traits simply don’t evolve out yet despite the fact that Europeans are on top of the world now.
However, women also often prefer to have normal free sex outside marriage or prefer cold hard cash in prostitution. Allowing polygamy while prohibiting sex outside marriage do not put power on women in choosing their mates and terms of their matting.
Of course, the more beautiful the woman, the more those women will want to value their right to use their bodies as their please. In western civilization anti free sex feminists are usually ugly and the pro freedom feminists are usually pretty.
So by allowing polygamy Islam run against the interest of the majority of males population. By prohibiting free sex, Islam run against the interest of hot babes where power to freely choose mate matters most. That means Islam is more likely to be popular among authoritarian people that love violent and hate free sex.
There is only one way that kind of stand will ever work out. Namely if Islam shows up in authoritarian non democratic and unfree countries.
There is no way legalization of polygamy can be popular in democratic countries. The same way, prohibition of sex outside marriage obviously hurt the interest of most free loving women. Prohibition of prostitution also hurt the interest of most valued sex objects, namely hot babes.
Again, I do not see this as a necessarily a bad thing. I for once, do not like the idea of rationing females in equal share for everyone or having government interfere in economy. However, we need to understand why Islam, hot babes, and democratic western civilizations simply don’t get along with each other.
While most people in democratic countries argue whether we should have universal health care or not or whether abortion should be legal or not, or whether tax should be lower and higher, or whether porn should be more legal or not, Islam comes with an out of the box solution. They effectively say that it’s not up to us to decide but up to those with the most capability to seize power by terrorizing the rest of us.
While most democratic countries are ruled by moderates, islamic countries nowadays are ruled by extremists. In democratic countries, those who are too lazy to even vote shape the politics. In islamic monarchs, those who are willing to die and kill others are the one that shape politics. That’s simply what islamic base is.
As sure as I can guess that anti abortion advocates in US are more likely to vote for Republicans, I can pretty much guess that typical democratic loving porn stars are less likely to become muslims. I would predict that typical muslims are more likely to hate porn star and democracy than typical satanists for example.
There are many other causes I do not mention. For example, countries that lose war against other cultures tend to be filled with bigots. So Europe countries that are ruled by muslims or mongols like spain or rusia tend to be poorer than the rest. I suppose if you get screwed over by someone else too different your first reaction is not to serve the world but to kick ass first. Muslims countries have lost so many war and the only victories they have are victories against civilians that do not even hate them. That could be another reason why Islam attract thugs.
Islamic country that kicked ass like Turkey and Egypt tend to be more liberal than their military losers brethens.
The way I see it is that Islam, as a religion, not as political party, by it self, is only 60% of the problem. Another 40% of the problem is that different individuals will simply agree and want different thing than what we wish just as we disagree with them. That’ll be the problem on any society we live in. Like it or not, others will have power over us against our will. The same way, we too can have power over others should we wish to neutralize that.
Will destroying Islam end all religious violent and facism? Hmm… Will voting for republicans lower tax? Probably. But then high tax supporters will simply find different parties. The same way, if Islam is destroyed, the violent power hungry people will simply come up with different mascots. But yea, it’ll work out for a short time.
Religions are mainly a mask. Those who are violent under the name of Islam are also violent even without Islam. I do not know what to do with them as I obviously have many muslim friends.
For now, and it may change, I tend to see that fighting Islam, instead of bigotry in general, is more of a waste of fire power and unnecessarily alienate too many people.
Banning Islam, for example, would not help. Bigots will still exist and they’ll simply raise different banner, this time in a world where government has power to restrict speech and hence promote bigotry.
Western civilizations also have their fair share of bigotry such as http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n1-10.html without “help” from Islam. While Islam whip women for having sex outside marriage, Americans seize people’s car just for getting consensual blow job.
Perhaps our world will always be on the balance between several bigots. Perhaps the answer is not to fight all bigots but to unleash any opinion, no matter how evil, from the chain of censorship so they balance each other out. Nazism… Anyone?
Secular View of Islam is a post from: Free Market Forever
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