And this is about religious extremism. Tell me the Amish or Mennonites are violent and ignorant. Let’s talk about liberal/progressive Christians or Jews who’re out protesting the war and the Bush administration. Let’s talk about any religious member who, y’know, actually follows the dictates of a religion instead of swings around a AK-47 and makes lip service, if that, towards a religion that is so irrelevent to their daily lives that it’s basically interchangeable with whatever extremist is on the opposite side of the barrel.

Extremism is the problem, not what the extremist is extreme about.

The existence of other destructive ideologies in no way makes religion any less destructive. You can look for economic, racial, or freckle-based causes underlying conflicts, and they will doubtless be there, but the trend remains: the more religion in an area, the more violence.

Karl Rove II: Is Dicks still there on Broadway? Are the burgers as awful as they were 40 yrs. ago? (Is nostalgia pathetic or what?)

Yup, all five locations are still open…

http://www.ddir.com

Awful? I love them late at night after drinking/other things..the fries are floppy but fresh cut.

Were you a UofW student?

You’re not going to get careful, play-by-play handbooks on how to refute the bullshit that fuckwit is going to spout because it’s just blatant bullshit. Pointing it out as bullshit is frankly as best you can do.

It is bullshit. Calling it so is the way in which to refute it.

Here’s how you refute their argument. Point out that what they have is not in fact an argument, but a load of xenophobic hooey. Then call them fascists.

SM Stirling, one of the wingnuts I want to learn how to refute, once said “A people without any xenophobia would be like an individual whose immune system has been destroyed by HIV — defenseless.“

Does anybody use the word “hooey� anymore? That’s how I would define George Carty�s theorizings.

It’s not MY hooey – I’m just repeating what the wingnuts say. I’d like nothing better than to be presented with a coherent argument which proves that it’s hooey!

My advice: read some colonial history and, if you can, go befriend a couple of Muslims.

I already frequent quite a few Muslim blogs and forums, and several times I posted outrageous anti-Muslim quotes from the author SM Stirling, with the enjoinder “don’t buy this man’s books!”. If you search under “joatsimeon” (which SM Stirling often uses as his online nickname), you’ll find some more scary stuff…

How about WW1?

One could conceivably argue that the decline of religion was partially responsible then, by paving the way for the rise of Social Darwinism.

The Latter-day Saints Church is the most tenacious ideology that has ever existed. No population, once converted to Mormonism has ever abandoned it no matter how badly they were persecuted. Because Mormons also have a higher birth rate than non-Mormons, any Western society which totally renounces ethnic cleansing and/or genocide is dooming itself to the jackboot of polygamy.

Clever analogy. In fact there are striking similarities between Islam and Mormonism – evangelical Christians even had a book published entitled “Mormonism the Islam of America“.

I know that Yusuf Smith, one of the Muslims bloggers I follow, was actually humorously referred to on another blog as “Latter-Day Shahid”, because his name resembled that of Mormonism’s founder.

I think the issue is that there are a lot more Muslims than there are Mormons.

Anything else is buying into their bullshit.

Right.

And I’m sure the aspects of politics, nationalism, racism, and all the various other gags people use to get people to kill other people for not being their kind of people has no relationship whatsoever to it.

It’s all religion’s fault! Religion is irrational and bad! It made me do terrible things! Religion is somehow its own entity that leaves people as people completely blameless for their own behavior! Save me from religion’s grasp, because the entire source of irrationality in humanity is religious in nature!

Bull and shit, Doc. Was the Vietnam War declared over religious reasons? How about WW1? Or, say, the Spanish civil war, or the American civil war? What was the religious conflict of the Armenian or Rwandan genocides?

People are fucking irrational beings who’ll kill each other over freckles vs. not-freckles if given the chance.

(Screaming “fascist bastards!” at them is very satisfying, but it isn’t a refutation of their arguments.)

By pointing out it is bollocks, perhaps?

Thanks for playing, now away back to LGF.

The Latter-day Saints Church is the most tenacious ideology that has ever existed. No population, once converted to Mormonism has ever abandoned it no matter how badly they were persecuted. Because Mormons also have a higher birth rate than non-Mormons, any Western society which totally renounces ethnic cleansing and/or genocide is dooming itself to the jackboot of polygamy.

…No, that doesn’t make much sense either.

George, you’re flailing around. This Muslim problem of yours isn’t going to go away just because you and a bunch of other frightened westerners reach a satisfactory definition of Islam for yourselves.

My advice: read some colonial history and, if you can, go befriend a couple of Muslims.

You could call me up and ask me if I support the “rule of law,” but the fact that I say yes certainly dosen’t mean that I think women should be stoned to death for being raped or any crazy shite like that.

Go read any pundit on the right, from the ‘president’ on down, they all demand the same things, the creation of a totalitarian state where neighbors turn in neighbors for being ‘liberals’. Look at the list of people the Nazi’s rounded up and slaughtered. It’s the exact same list that the right-wing pundits use as their enemies.

I long for the day when they stop pretending they aren’t really Nazi’s, when Michele Malkin finished one of her screeds with, “Hitler was right!” (which actually is the sub-title of her book defencing concentration camps).

“Supporter of Shari’ah law” for most Muslims is like keeping Kosher (or Halal, as th’ case may be). That is, they support Shari’ah law–for Muslims, to regulate daily religious conduct. Most Muslims are like most Christians–they really have bigger things to think about than whether their neighbors are praying properly. Most Muslims live in secular states, and see the benefits of secular government.

Patkin–

Yeah, *all* religion. There are Buddhist terrorists in the world, for Christ’s sake. Religious people in general aren’t necessarily destructive, but areas of high religious observance famously play host to high levels of destructive behavior. I suppose it has something to do with encouraging irrationality…