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A little unfinished business still needs attending to The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, those somewhat indistinct eras between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Napoleonic Wars, were when the modern world was born. It was when rationalism emerged from the previous millennia where superstition and obscurantism were mankind’s norm and goring a sacred cow could bring down the wrath of the powers-that-be.
Yet it seems that there are still those in the west who hanker after having their beliefs protected by the force of the state in ways that other sets of personal values are not. So rather than surrender to Christian authoritarians who wish their views to be protected by law, thereby quite reasonably handing even loonier Muslims a tool to protect their equally preposterous views, a little final clean up work, a final long overdue flourish of Enlightenment thought, is needed.
Abolish every last one of the ludicrous blasphemy laws. Right now.
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I believe that most Christians (and I mean believers, not just nominal Christians) would support getting rid of these regulations.
Insults to God should not be paid for by the taxpayer – but God does not need the state to protect him from insults either.
I’ve always believed that the blasphemies of “commission” can be avoided easily enough. I can avoid blaspheming against Judaism by avoiding pork. The Muslim faith will remain unoffended if I refrain from drawing or publishing blasphemous cartoons of The Prophet. Almost all Christians will agree that I avoid blasphemy when I don’t covet my neighbor’s ass.
So, if pressed by the state, I can probably stay out of trouble by avoiding ham sandwiches, caricatures of Middle-Easterners, and looking at Kim Kardashian.
It’s the blasphemies of “omission” that send these laws into the land of absurdity.
Other writers have pointed out that George Bush makes a mockery of language and religion when he claims to respect the Islamic faith.
This isn’t possible for George Bush, and it isn’t possible for me.
Someone who “respects” the Islamic faith (and doesn’t physically blaspheme against it with his actions) is someone who bows toward Mecca a certain number of times per day, reads the Koran, and tries to organize his life around Islamic law and concepts. To a true believer, that is what is meant by not blaspheming against Islam.
George Bush and I fail to do these things. Bush doesn’t listen to an Imam at a mosque. He goes to a Methodist church.
Therefore, he respects Islam no more than I do.
Anyone who fails to honor whichever day is the dominant neighborhood Sabbath – Saturday or Sunday – physically dishonors the Jewish or Christian Holy Day of rest. (Forgive me for blaspheming against The American Seventh Day Adventist faith by lumping them in with The Jews. Most Jewish people are open-minded enough to forgive me. The Adventists aren’t.)
To a True Believer, blasphemy isn’t merely giving offense by our actions, it’s giving offense by our failure to act.
It’s Saturday night in Texas. I’m going to have a long overdue “flourish of Enlightenment thought” and blaspheme against someone’s Baptist beliefs by having another beer.
Yes
Absolutely
Without a doubt.
When Maude Flanders dies in The Simpsons, Ned meets and falls for a singer in a “Christian Rock” band. Nothing happens, it’s too soon after Maude. He meets up with her again in a later episode and she’s gone solo. The rest of her band have decided to dump the Christian and just become a “rock band”. She explains that it’s really easy, you just replace the word “Jesus” with “baby”… Ned looks aghast and says it’s terrible. She shrugs and says it’s OK because they’re all going to hell anyway.
Muslims claim that Allah is “the best of all planners” and you get the general impression that he’s playing a long, deep game (how else do they explain the many temporary reversals of fortune) but still they demand (& sometimes exact) punishment for cartoonists, novelists, translators, film-makers… Aren’t they satisfied with the lurid torments lasting all eternity that they believe shall happen to such transgressors after their mayfly existence on this Earth is over? Isn’t that enough for them? Why not knowingly shrug or tut and reckon he’ll be having it times infinity very soon?
If you really believe that your God will mete out a punishment unimaginably nastier than you ever could why bother? And speeding them towards that endless end is no excuse because this is an eternal punishment and we all know what Woody Allen had to say about eternity.
Why should I care? Believers can “blaspheme” against me all they like and tell me I’m going to hell. Shit, I’ve already been to New Jersey so I doubt its going to be any worse than that.
I couldn’t care less. If I eat pork or piss on a picture of Mohammed, that’s my business. End of story.
Does that make me “disrespectful”? You’re damn right it does. Deal with it.
Absolutely get rid of the Blasphemy laws!
I’ve been saying it for years.
After all the one we have has been used just twice in a hundred years and both failed in the Courts.
Having a bloody good laugh at Islam, may help it grow up a bit…
But preferably wither and die.
See when we have Blasphemy laws, the burka brigade will only use them against us. Like Nick says-
Theirs is a long term gameplan.
What utter tripe in this day and age to have such special treatment afforded to a select few because they feel their beliefs to be above all others. The cheek, the sheer arrogance of it all. It’s the same over this side of the sea mind you, actually it’s probably worse.
In 1995 some fruitcake by the name of Conway brought the Independent newspaper to court over a cartoon which hailed the lifting of a ban on divorce as a break from the backwardness of Catholicism (that’s right it wasn’t until 1995 before the state had the balls to step up to the Catholic church). The judge said no jury could entertain the notion of finding the independent newspaper guilty of blasphemy (that’s such a strange phrase, the life of Brian comes to mind) and cancelled the appeal request. But nothing was done to change the law despite all the talk. Hopefully a change in the UK will stir up the desire to do so here too.
Drat. I had hoped blasphemy laws were an anachronism restricted, in the Anglosphere, to the U.K. But no, there are still some on the books in the U.S. as well. At least Americans can take solace in the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1952, ruled blasphemy laws a prior restraint of the freedom of speech.
Alas, modern-day puritans are working diligently to enact the contemporary version of blasphemy laws. Enacted purportedly to prevent real discrimination, Government and organizational “Hate Speech” and “Discrimination” laws and rules are increasingly used silence, punish, and sometimes destroy people or organizations who do not strictly adhere to the “progressive” Party Line.
Efforts to stop individuals saying things someone else is offended by will not end any time soon. Only the players change.
In the face of the Islamists’ arrogance and bullying and ambitions to dominate, blasphemy is more than just a right; it’s practically a duty.
“If you really believe that your God will mete out a punishment unimaginably nastier than you ever could why bother?”
Because Allah commands to believer to “prevent vice and promote virtue.” If they don’t do everything they can to stop you going to hell, they’ll be going with you.
Because blasphemy by believers is apostasy, and apostasy deserves death; and blasphemy by non-believers is a breach of the terms of protection by which they are allowed to live in Muslim lands, and with protection withdrawn, the proper punishment for unbelief is death. And because Allah has commanded all this, and to disobey and not impose Allah’s law on others – worse, to say it shouldn’t be imposed on others – is itself blasphemous apostasy and hence deserves death.
Even if a Muslim secretly agreed with you and didn’t like imposing the prescribed punishments for blasphemy laws, they could not say so and still be Muslim. To change God’s law to suit current fashion would make it a man-made law, and put man’s laws alongside God’s, and hence would put mankind alongside God, which is shirk – associating others with God – and absolutely the worst sin it is possible to commit in Islamic eyes, the absolute antithesis of Islam. It would, of course, deserve death.
It’s sort of like saying you wouldn’t have a problem with the police if they simply obeyed the law themselves and stopped trying to impose it on everything else. It’s a contradiction in terms – if they weren’t trying to impose it on everyone else, they wouldn’t be real police. What you really want is for there to be no police.
If their beliefs are as valid as they claim, said believers should have no need for legal protection, surely. What are they afraid of?
The fact that the BBC was screening this nonsense complicates the issue somewhat doesn’t it. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to protest having YOUR license fee money spent in a manner that you find deeply offensive for religious reasons or otherwise
Blaspheme NOW!. God isn’t listening!
Johnathon.
I suppose some believers are scared by the danger of other people being misled or corrupted.
The error here is a double one:
First it assumes that it is O.K. to save souls by coercing bodies (one of the false opinions that Augustine of Hippo spread – although he also spread predestination ideas which would seem to make the coercion a waste of time, unless the coercion was predestinined to save the souls and…… God save us from the “reasoning” of Augustine).
The second error is a practical one.
It assumes that the power of censership will be in the hands of good people.
However, such power attracts bad people.
And even if they are warded off and the power given to good people….. well it may not be true that “all power corrupt” but it does “tend to corrupt” – especially such things as censorship powers.
As for people being corrupted.
This is a real danger – I am a libertarian not a libertine.
However, “of one thing I am certain, it is not from the State that we should look for moral improvement” (the exact words may escape me).
And, contrary to the things that Disraeli implied to Queen Victoria, Gladstone was neither a decadant man or a foolish one.
Although I have often myself observed that it is quite reasonable to object to the BBC (as a state broadcaster) screening something while also defending the right of the makers to screen it somewhere else, preferably financed without state exortion, I do not see the relevance of that distinction here. Christian Voice intend to prosecute under the law of blasphemous libel so the existence of a law of blasphemous libel is the issue.
So how to oppose it? In general it is best to argue from the highest principle available: in this case, the principle that human beings have a right (in my opinion a God-given right) to express themselves freely.
However there is one secondary argument that might be a little more persuasive with these particular folk. Could someone please take Mr Christian Voice aside for a moment, smack him round the face a few times* in a spirit of brotherly rebuke, and point out that organisations with views on homosexuality like those held by Christian Voice are the last people whose interests are served by undermining freedom of speech. Judging by the precendents of Harry Hammond and others, the government will go for them whenever it thinks it can get away with it.
Just out of interest I would like to add that I gathered from such diverse sources as Polly Toynbee and Melanie Phillips that before all the fuss began Jerry Springer the Opera actually had good reviews from the Church Times and the Catholic Herald. However it’s a bad idea to get distracted into arguing about the merits or otherwise of this particular show. I would still defend it against legal suppression if it had no merit whatsoever, just as I would defend the right of Christian Voice to propagate their views.
*Meant in a purely metaphorical sense, M’Lud.
Actually, our blasphemy laws are precisely a product of those somewhat indistinct eras between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Napoleonic Wars”. Frankly I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about and it seems to me that if you want to make the bizarre agument that the best way of fighting Islamism is to further de-Christianize the British polity you might like to base it on a historical meta-narrative that has a passing relation to what actually happened.
You are confused, no, actually you are nonsensical, Gabriel. What I did not say was that “the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment was when we all became rational secularists”. My contention is that it was when we started to put aside (in my view) the superstition based model of the world. I think that is unarguable by any reasonable person. And as I think religion is superstition…
And yes, I am all for de-Christianizing the British polity because I am all for ‘de-religionising’ EVERY polity, be that religion Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam or whatever… the actions of Christian Voice are a useful reminder of the struggles of the past (hence my historical references) against the Christian religious nutters of yore. Islam is only the current most active enemy of reason, it is not the only one.
Now in this socially inclusive politically correct era, a successful prosecution for blasphemy by Christians will simply move Islamic folks in Britain to demand the law also applies to Islamic notions of blasphemy rather than discriminating in favour only of Christianity. It is an argument that will make perfect sense to many on the left and I think allowing that entirely predictable scenario to play out is something well worth avoiding.
First, just so we are all clear about the facts, there was nothing in either the common law or statute pertaining to blasphemy until the 16th century and it didn’t become an established feature until the 17th. If, indeed, this was the period when a more “rational” mindset came to the fore, this might suggest that rationalism has very different – one might say polar opposite – consequences for human liberty to the ones you think they do or, if not, that blasphemy laws are not as contradictory to freedom as you think.
You mean the struggles against the alliance of church and state? I think you’ll find that these were mostly carried out by the religious nutters, not against them.
Anyway, as it is, removing unenforced blasphemy laws from the statute book now will simply be intepreted by the people that would actually push through such a change – that is to say the progressive left not you – as a further step in divorcing Britain from its cultural heritage in order to create a blank slate upon which they can then work. Islamists would, rightly, see it as a sign of cultural decay and decrepitude on our part and step up their measures to Islamize the British polity by stealth accordingly.
The proper counter to the hypothetical argument you see coming is to point out that (duh) Britain is a Christian entity and that there is no earthly reason why it should extend it’s blasphemy laws to protect anything other than the creeds of the Churches of England and Scotland. If this isn’t good enough for some morons and if the same morons happen to form the majority of the opinion forming classes then, yes, we’re right up shit creek, but in such a scenario we’re up shit creek one way another whatever the law says on blasphemy. Insulting Muslims will become illegal eventually if the people in charge want it to be so.
And why did they appear then? Because that is when the religious infrastructure came under attack. Obvious really.
Except it is nothing of the sort. Oh sure, in theory it is but in reality, the nation is one of the most secular in the western world.
And if Britain was indeed a ‘Christian entity’ in any meaningful way, that would be true, but as it ain’t, the “make the blasphemy laws inclusive” argument is actually the one far more likely to gain traction than an argument which openly (however appropriately) argues for discrimination.
Through my mother and her church friends I know a number of people who complained about the showing and are supporting this prosecution. You are wrong to say the BBC is not the issue, it is all the issue to them. Their view is that the program was intended to offend Christians and they were forced to pay for it. These are people who are not generally concerned by Christians being mocked or ridiculed, they know they live in a secular society. If it had been shown on Sky they would have just ignored it. What they are furious about is being forced to pay for a program that expressly set out to offend them.
PA,
Yes… But. Allah is conceived of as being supreme master of the universe and everything that happens is down to him*. He created us all, even Salman Rushdie and Theo Van Gogh. If someone doesn’t submit to Allah it’s because He made ’em that way. Determinism (or the whim of Allah) are a philosophical nightmare. Paul expressed it thusly in this thread…
although he also spread predestination ideas which would seem to make the coercion a waste of time, unless the coercion was predestinined to save the souls and…… God save us from the “reasoning” of Augustine).
So it was down to Allah that Mr Rushdie wrote the book, and it was down to Allah that Bradford Muslims burnt the book.
Quite how this squares with morality (which I always took to involve choice) is beyond me if we’re just cardboard actors in Allah’s model theatre.
*Hence all the “Inshallah-ing” over minutiae.
Gabriel,
If the UK is a Christian entity why just the CofE and CofS? I seem to recall these churches are a minority of total practising Christians in these Isles. Why not protect Catholics, Methodists, Baptists… as well? Because it would be the thin end of a wedge?
I hear a lot from Christians who think something like “Christianity is a vaccine against Islam”. Fair plays I suppose but then so is the brand of agnosticism which the likes of me (and I daresay many, many others) espouse. If we’re not going to believe in the words of Christ we’re hardly likely to find comfort in the Qu’ran.
Christians have gained relative respect in my eyes (and I daresay many, many others) for the generally dignified and calm manner in which they have dealt with slights over recent years. Certainly relative to the orgies of rage and violence the muslims have resorted to.
Blasphemous acts or works are merely wind-ups, taunts – the real damage done to the credibility of a religion is done when the believers react violently. In themselves the MoToons didn’t lay a glove on Islam. It took the Muslims themselves to give their religion a few stout body-blows.
A successful blasphemy case by Christians would be utterly counter-productive for the same reason. Less spectacularly laughable but still a self-inflicted wound.
Gabriel, I really do fail to see how a massively unused law like Blasphemy remaining on the statute books, is going to provide “Western Civilisation” with a bulwark against the beards.
We all know how the logic works by now. Governments like level playing fields. They will wish to extend it to cover all religions because it’s “only fair” innit?
Of course as soon as it is extended, watch how frequently it is invoked thereafter. Unused it will not be!
Hell Jack Straw is already trying to introduce “speak no evil” laws in all directions.
Oh heard the latest? A British teacher has been arrested in the Sudan for allowing her class to name their class teddy bear, Mohammed. This is the mentality we are dealing with.
Logic demands the repeal of the Blasphemy law, but Government doesn’t run on logic does it?
Nick:
I think you are dead wrong on this. I would agree if you said “atheism”, rather than “agnosticism”, but I think that it is precisely the secular agnostics who are most vulnerable to a prospective conversion to Islam. Needless to say, I know that you are not one of them, and I suspect that is at least partly due to the fact that you have had an extensive scientific education. What you may be forgetting is that is not the case with most people of your generation, and the situation is only getting worse, as you well know. And, like I said, this is only part of the problem.
All that said, I still disagree with Gabriel, but I could be wrong, as I don’t live in the UK.
There have always been anticlericals in England.
Open athiests is another matter, but people who said and wrote that priests were fat, corrupt, sexually perverted (and so on and so on) were always common. And that was NOT because most priests were like this.
However, openly insulting God (as opposed to the Church) that was indeed rare – so Perry has a point.
A person in a wild rage (or wild drunk) might say something obscene about the Virgin Mary, or might curse God for the horrors of life (the Book of Job with its message that a good and hard working man may still lose his family and end up starving in a ditch, is not enough for some people).
There was Church Law (Cannon Law) about such stuff, but mostly it was a matter for the local J.P. (so there was Common Law of a sort – even if it was just “put him in the stocks till he sobers up”).
On rationality:
Actually (much though people may hate to hear it) it was the Church (or rather the mainstream of the Church) that normally stood for reason against supersition (the tribal ideas of country folk).
Even people like Roger Bacon were not far from the mainstream of the Church in the Middle Ages.
People remember the trouble that the Western Church had with natural science from time to time – but they forget that without the Western Church there would most likely have been no natural science.
The Orthodox Church had little interest in natural science, and (after the first few centuries) Islam sat on it really hard.
And, no, it is very unlikely that natural science or philosophy would have grown without Church support (what other institutions existed?).
As for the “big question” – would it be nice or nasty if relgion was stronger in the West?
I am in the opposite camp to Perry on this one.
I do not believe that something like Islam can be defeated (or even held off) by athiesm (still less by people being agnostic – after all athiesm is a religion of a sort, being agnostic is simply saying “I do not know”).
However, it is not just the “Islamic factor”.
I may despise (I do despise) some of the aspects of the thought of the German nationalist Herder (French Revolution supporting……), but his prediction that if the ordinary peoples of Europe (as opposed to handful of intellectuals, who could do great damage for a while, but who could not destroy the population as long as they remained a small minority) lost their religious faith they would decline and rot away was correct.
We are not even having children any more – it is a bit more than just “bowling alone”. Religion turned out to be part of what held civil society together – even to the level of the long term physical survival of the population. Hence the difference between “Red States” and “Blue States” (with the ultimate “Blue” area being San Francisco – nice perhaps, but the road to nothingness).
Of course Herder believed that the Slavs had a much stronger religous nature and that they would become the new force as the Germans and others declined – he failed to predict the rise of the athiest religion of communism (without the many tens of millions of people this killed and the damage it did to society Russia, and perhaps PanSlavism, might well have become the main civilzation of the world in the 20th century).
“But God does not exist, one can not base society on a a falsehood”.
Adolf Hitler, a strong athiest in his private talk, faced this problem and tried to replace God (gradually) with worship of the race (as an individual we die, but the race – our volk comrades – go on into the future). But his approach led to unaccaptable consequences from a moral point of view.
I rather hope that God does exist – but I can not prove it.
And the “leap of faith” seems to American Bible Belt for most British people (even if the idea is from a Dane).
Of couse, in my own life I am very “Blue State” rather than “Red State” (much like some of the libertarians of New Hampshire are) – I am isolated, without practical purpose and childless. I am in no way part of a community, I am no good with my hands, and serve no useful function – very Blue State.
We can only hope that Red State “Bible Belt” people remember us fondly (at least in part) – for they are the future of the West (if it has a future).
And remember, in the American context, community spirit and traditional values are not just “Southern”.
In my youth the city of “super patriotism” the ultimate “American city” (as opposed to city that happened to be in the United States) was Indianapolis.
It is a great mistake to confuse the “nation” (which is, contrary to Hitler, a matter of cultural traditions and history NOT race) with the government. The capital of the United States was and is Washington D.C. – but it was no accident that the American Legion was not there.
Alisa,
I don’t think the scientific background thing makes that much difference. In fact I can see it working in reverse. Scientists are curious about deep things by nature. I recall hearing when I was an undergrad that 3% of UK Physics grads went on to eventually become an ordained minister of some description. Most people in the UK just aren’t too fussed about religion and really don’t care. If they have a “God-shaped” hole in their lives they usually shoe horn a collection of New Age crap into it.
I have intellectual disagreements with Islam but (along with the vast majority of lads of my generation) I also have “lifestyle issues”.
We like beer and bacon and birds (in bikinis) and blaspheming too much to ever adopt the hideous puritanism of Islam. We also aren’t too keen on beards and burkhas either.
The ones you really want to look for are the Neo Puritans – Greens and NueArbeit for example. They might see a convergence of interest with the Muslims. Certainly our heir to the throne does. Didn’t he recently refuse to visit Israel? He certainly had no problem dressing as a bloody imam at Al-Azhar University, Cairo.
Having said that, the madness goes on…
But his approach led to unaccaptable consequences from a moral point of view.
Understatement of the week?
The only place the church infrastructure was coming under attack from was the crown and then the Protectorate. i.e. the very same people who instituted blasphemy laws.
Britain is Christian in two meaningful ways. First given that civilization is a synonym for shared cultural tradition, our civilization is unavoidably Christian to the extent that Britons are part of a contiguous chain of experience with their ancestors. Secondly, what culture is left is still Christian. Most people, for better or worse, celebrate Christmas. If it is objected that such festivals of consumption are not “meaningfully” Christian the exaxt same could be said of the 15th century. (I’d guess that the proportion of people who both understand and believe in the Nicene creed is about 10X now what it was then.)
No, because there can never be more than one established church and seeing as churchs have mutually indistinguishable creeds it is logically impossible to protect them from all from blasphemy.
I’m not a Christian, but the proposition is self-evidently correct as you recognise. More importantly, Christianity is worth preserving because societies populated by people adhering to their ancestral faith are better than ones where people don’t.
I don’t think they do or can act as a bulwark, I’m just pointing out what the consequences of abolishing them would be. The correct response to the level-playing-field argument is neither to abolish blasphemy laws nor to extend them to all religions, but to tell the people who make such arguments to get stuffed. As I said, blasphemy laws or no blasphemy laws, the people with the power will make it illegal to insult Islam eventually unless they are convinced that the end is wrong, not by shutting off one amongst myriad means.
Nick, point taken on the science angle. Still, I am afraid my point stands.
In the previous comment, I almost wrote that women may be more vulnerable than men.
Paul, you are losing me here a bit now.
You seem to be saying that the only hope for Western Civilisation is the success of the “Red Staters”.
So you believe that salvation will come from one bunch of the Deluded outstaring the other bunch of deluded.
I rather hoped it was time for us all to put all that fiction behind us. It has been 10,000 years after all.
Once we belived in Thor and Odin, and managed to discover America way before Columbus. Then we got a foreign God imported from the Middle East.
Nobody believes seriously (well a few kooks) in Thor anymore, yet these Middle Eastern Imports (Judeaism, Christianity and Islam) are still going strong.
I find that very weird, as I believe each and every one of them to be a fiction.
It is time for Childhoods End.
Gabriel,
Huh? All Christian denominations share certain beliefs. I fail to see how a law could not be framed to protect the core of that from blasphemers.
Alisa,
My bad. I almost included a bit about how the lasses would object for very similar reasons to the lads. I didn’t because I couldn’t find as many “B”s they were into. Although, from my experience they’re not into beards or burkhas.
Women are more vulnerable than men because of Islamic marriage law. The overwhelming majority of white muslims I have seen have been female. This is sad because women are so often treated abysmally by Islam. I utterly fail to see where the likes of Yvonne Ripley are coming from. How can they hate someone hate themselves so much?
*indistinguishable should of course read exclusive, there are other errors, of course, but not of that magnitude.
How can they hate someone hate themselves so much?
should be
How can someone hate themselves so much?
In as much as the dogmas of other churches are the same as those of the CofE they are already protected by the blasphemy law, in as much as they don’t they aren’t and never can be.
Nick: it’s all about the B’s and the birds, innit?
The Islamic marriage law makes the women more vulnerable to mistreatment after they have converted, it does not make them more vulnerable to conversion itself. What does is, IMO, secular agnosticism, combined with poor education, replaced by PC crap about how all cultures are equally valid, but ours is less so, etc. This is true for both men and women, but more for women, because they are into less B’s than men are.
blasphemy laws or no blasphemy laws, the people with the power will make it illegal to insult Islam eventually unless they are convinced that the end is wrong, not by shutting off one amongst myriad means.
Better safe than sorry though and every little bit helps
Repeal the friggin Blasphemy Laws!
Tosh. It was under intellectual, not just political attack. and in the end, the intellectual was what mattered.
Like belief in Wotan for example? Sorry but I just cannot take that seriously. Christianity spawned traditions that were an essential part of the march towards rationalism (Thomism for example) but I find notion that Christianity still has anything to offer, intellectually or practically, well, laughable. The best that can be said for Christianity in my view is that is it largely harmless these days. For me the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is far more rewarding (yes, I am a dedicated Pastafarian myself).
NickM,
“Quite how this squares with morality (which I always took to involve choice) is beyond me if we’re just cardboard actors in Allah’s model theatre.”
That’s the problem. It involves choice in the modern Western tradition, but not in the Islamic morality (or much the Old Testament, for that matter). Morality is about obedience to God. When Eve ate the apple, she did not know good from evil; but what was punished was not her informed choice to do wrong, but her disobedience. The message is repeated over and over, how unquestioning obedience to religious authority and tradition overrules people’s own needs and priorities. Another example, how Lot’s traditional duty to guests overrides his love for his daughters. Or Balaam told that he must say only what God tells him to, even though it means facing the wrath of his king. Or Jonah told to face potential ridicule in Nineveh. Or Abraham told to sacrifice his son. Absolute, abject obedience is what it is all about. Islam is the same.
And yes, the Qur’aan often speaks of how Allah guides who he wills and closes the eyes of who he wills to his revelation. Allah makes you an unbeliever, and then punishes you for it. Indeed, to believe that there is any causality or choice but Allah’s will is unbelief and punishable by death. (Reliance o8.7(17)) It’s not required to make sense – it’s Allah’s word.
RAB,
I think what Paul and others are talking about is cultural strength – a resistance to pressure to change culturally. Religion can provide this through its own self-enforced resistance to change, but there are other cultural traditions that can do so too. The problem a lot of the red-staters see with atheism is that it is a cultural negative – it specifies what it is not, but says nothing about what it is. That makes it possible to bend in any direction, including bad ones. Hitler tried nationalism/patriotism instead, which works, but there’s also a thing which might be loosely described as Western values: liberty, tolerance, respect for property and promises and other rights, and a belief that these rights are universal.
I’m generally in favour of identifying precisely what it is that you want and going for that, but some argue that the Western belief in liberty is weak, compared to religious faith, and better to stay with the Christian devil you know than risk an Islamic one that fortunately most of us don’t. I’m not going to say they don’t have a point, but I’ll still have a go at any religion any time I get a chance. 😉 If our belief in liberty is not strong enough, we don’t deserve freedom.
Nobody expects the…
Been comfy chaired good and proper!
There aint I?
I grew up a simple minded Law student
all I’m saying is, if you give people an excuse they will take it.
The Blasphemy laws are a chink in the armour of our Western Civilisation. Not that we havent gapeing holes in other places, But they can be worried at.
Put more succinctly
Our God is as good as your god, we want protection!
Like you.
Daft liberalism will grant them their equal status, which to us is an anacronism of history, will become another weapon in their hands. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.
The monkeys are us if we fall for it.
Get rid of the Law and the focus and Precident.
Then the legal mountain to banishing freedom of speech gets that little bit higher.
Pa,
Thanks for that. Erudite as always. But I don’t think either of us get this fully. BTW, I’m not arguing here, I’m looking for answers. I’m not sure either of us can. There is still a choice between obedience, even if it is merely to fiat or whim, yet my reading of the Qu’ran (and commentaries – most recently Robert Spencer’s Q-Blog) suggest that Allah (for whatever purposes) specifically made me to be kufr. And I don’t understand how that can make me morally responsible for anything because I am even in disbelieving in him obeying Allah’s will as does everything. Yet “kufr” literally means something like “refuser” and that implies choice. As Ned Flanders put it, it’s a dilly of a pickle.
Re: your comments to RAB I appreciate the idea of atheism as being a negative (and agnosticism is I suppose a void) which is why I have recently experimented with a positive – “rational sceptic”. It just seems a bit high fallutin’.
Gabriel,
if you want to consider protecting Christianity, then take the United States.
We’re probably the most religiously-devout nation in the civilized world, depending on how observant Israelis actually are. If you can think of any contenders (and no, I don’t consider Saudi Arabia to be ‘civilized.’) I’d love to hear them.
And blasphemy is legal here in all its forms. More importantly: blasphemy laws themselves are illegal, per two separate parts of our Constitution. And government support for religion per se is also illegal.[1]
I suspect that the reason that religion is relatively healthy here is BECAUSE of our lack of protection against blasphemy.
I’m still a little hazy as to how a blasphemy law (or any infringement on free speech) will protect freedom of speech and religion. It’s almost like the “Taxation defends property and conscription protects freedom” speech that I got when I was a kid, which was, to be polite, counterintuitive.
[1] Right now, we’re still arguing amongst ourselves about how far governments can go in supporting charitable acts with secular purposes undertaken by churches. “Intelligent Design” is over and everybody but the scientifically-illiterate have won.
Sunfish: Israelis are probably just as observant (including all religions that we have here), and we have no blasphemy laws either.
RAB.
The “Redstaters” tend to have enough children to replace themselves – the “Bluestaters” tend not to.
That is enough in its self – but there is more.
The Redstaters tend to know work with their hands the Bluestates tend not to know how to – as even Mr M. Moore admits you have to get your “conservative relative” to fix your car (or most other things) when it breaks down (Mr Moore’s time in the car industry was one day – so that he could get a union card which would useful to him in politics).
Bluestaters depend on the “creative industries” – not growing things or making things, or even running companies that make things (manufacturers do not tend to be leftists – although some are).
They have better paid jobs instead. Apart from those Bluestaters who do not work at all – the Welfare Class (such as those who now dominate most of the big cities of Mr Moore’s home State). For the left is the party of the welfare class as well as many of the mega rich.
It is not just so many billionaries who are leftists – it is a bit more than that (for example most of the really high income congressional districts).
I ADMIT that it is partly extortion (at least what in the non political world would be called extortion) which means that the Democrats get a lot more money from the financial industry.
Senator Charles Schumer does indeed go around telling people if they do not pay up they will be hit with more taxes and regulations (a classic protection racket) – but it is NOT just this.
The Democrats have a lot of real (unforced) support in the credit bubble world (for example a big figure from that world bought himself the Governorship of New Jersey a few years ago).
But credit bubble economies eventually go – whereas people will always need to know how to grow things and make things.
As for other sources of leftist mega wealth.
The software industry depends in large part on copyright law – and the Chinese and others are not wildly devoted to helping enforce them. So eventually….., how far this will go I do not know (because I know nothing about computers), but it may be a problem
As for Hollywood and the entertainment industry – that is already on the path of death (that I can see and hear).
But it is more than even the economy of the left (and the “education system” and the rest of the government bureaucracy it supports) having future problems.
It is also a lack of community – not just church, everything.
We must not confuse civil society and state (as the left do – and have done since the days of the Jacobins and before), but atomised individuals (yes the term is correct – if used with care) is not the way to go – for many reasons.
Lastly there is this:
Some athiests have great courage and with give up their lives for principle.
And this is not just those athiests who follow the religion of Marxism (or other collectivist doctrines).
Some libertarians have this courage also, and some social democrats.
But most social democrats (what Americans call “moderate liberals”) do not.
They move from thinking “this life is all we have” to the postion that they will do anything (anything) rather than die. They have no faith – they are not Redstaters.
The Muslims will eat such people for breakfast.
Right.
Just asking like!
I have read all three Nick – in fact Playboy was mild compared to some of things I came upon in my security guard days.
Which would I rather read? There is nothing worth reading in Playboy or the Q. (or K. depending on how one spells it). And the Economist is not good either – I sometimes look at it in the library to see if there is something worth attacking in a post (but that is about it).
I suppose I would rather read your comments – or those of the other people here.
As for the decline of the West.
Fertility rates have collapsed, the various economies are credit bubble jokes, and social institutions (not the government – civil society NOT being govenment financed whatever the academics like to say) are all in decline.
Islam will advance (is advancing) because there is nothing much there to push back
The Slav tribes you spoke of (who used the Norse name “Russ” for themselves) had strong social institutions and a healthy fertility rate (both unlike now), but even they would have fallen if they had not something positive as an alternative to Islam.
One can not fight something with nothing – and decadence (vomiting on the dance floor or whatever) is, for this purpose, “nothing”.
The Western Church or Judaism (do not laugh – one people did adopt Judaism and did well till they were overwhelmed by the Slavs) might have done – but Orthodoxy worked to.
Sadly the Orthodox Church is no longer a vital element in the lives of most Russians (the Marxists failed to build their “new society” but they made a reasonable job of undermining the old one) – so their society is rotting and they do not even replace themselves (and Islam is on the rise in Russia).
In most of Europe and Bluestate America both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches are not strong elements in the lives of most people.
RedState American (which I repeat is NOT just the South) is different.
It is possible that it will survive.
As for goverment statutes bringing back religion (or any other social insitution worth having).
I agree with those above who say that the idea is utterly absurd.
By the way I was rather hard on the creative industries in the early hours of this morning (British time).
I apologize.
NickM,
In the interests of further education…
Kufr is most directly translated as ‘ingrate’ – one who is so ungrateful for Allah giving you existence and Islam as to disrespect, disbelieve in, and disobey him. However, like a lot of words in many languages, the meaning has shifted through conventional usage.
Like I said, the modern conception of moral responsibility requires knowledge and choice, and as I subscribe to the same modern morality, I don’t really understand it either. But from what I can tell, that’s how it works, and trying to talk them round assuming that they share our values is a recipe for misunderstanding and frustration. I suspect a lot of Western Muslims particularly have probably absorbed the idea from us, and it might work with them, but it won’t work with the likes of the Mutaween or Hamas or Ahmadinejad.
Thanks Pa,
Now, I’m going to really share my frustration… I read somewhere a brilliant article on the strange double-think that affects many Western Muslims… And I have no idea where it was…
Pa, a bit of nit-picking: there is a similar word in Hebrew (“kofer”). The root (K.F.R.) means “deny”, generally, although more often in a religious context. There is an additional line of meaning, that has to do with settling a dispute, namely: forgiveness/atonement, and ransom payment. I have no idea if these two lines of meaning are in any way historically related, and how either one can be understood as “ingrate”. But, as I don’t speak Arabic, I am just pointing out that it it is closely related to Hebrew, and trying to look for clues. (Can you tell I love etymology?).
Alisa,
I’m seriously no linguist but I think you’re on to something. Arabic and Hebrew are both semitic languages with (at least historically) a rather cavalier attitude to vowels. That’s really interesting. To be honest my knowledge of semitic languages is primarily derived from Tolkien who based Khuzdul (Darvish) on Hebrew. He used a similar triple consonent construction for roots hence Kh-Z-D means “dwarf”-like stuff, hence “Khuzdul” – Dwarvish language, Khazad – Dwarves. Seeing as you are (I’m fairly sure) capable in at least three rather dissimilar real languages I’d best doff my monolingual hat to you and stop now.
Well, Russian and English are far less dissimilar than eother one compared to Hebrew. As to the root in semitic languages, you got it right. In Hebrew (I don’t know about Arabic), you basically have a root that is made up of 3 consonants. When you want to change the meaning (such as changing a tense of a verb, or going further, such as changing from “letter” to “literature”), you basically change the vowels (and sometimes add a consonant or two). As to vowels: nothing cavalier about it. I’ll explain it the way I used to do while teaching Hebrew: take any English text (a short one, as you are new to this), and omit all the vowels. Now try reading it. I promise you you’ll have no problem understanding it perfectly, although it will take you more time (this will improve with practice). When my students asked me what is the reason for this, I told them that I have no idea, but I have a theory. I’ll give you a clue: there was no paper yet, so the Israelites used to write on tablets made of clay/slate (hence the expression “clean slate”).
BTW, I am fairly sure that Tolkien made that one up, but there’s nothing wrong with that in fiction. BTW, here it says nothing about Hebrew.
Alisa,
You’re right about the etymology. Apparently, it is from the K-F-R root meaning to hide or cover (and yes, Arabic does use triliteral roots for words like Hebrew does, and sticks different vowels and endings on them to vary meaning), and it was used in pre-Islamic times to refer to farmers burying seeds. However, there are lots of sources that translate the modern Arabic word as ‘ingrate’ and it seems pretty standard. It’s not my only source for the translation, but Wikipedia say the same.
Etymology is often relevant and useful, but it pays not to read too much into it. Do you know what the original meaning of the word “nice” is, for example, and would you be pleased to be so described?
But I stand corrected. It can be interpreted both ways.
Well, this is waaay OT, and it’s all my fault, but seeing as it is the end of the thread…Feel free to drop it if it bores you:-) I don’t read too much into etymology, although it can teach us some interesting things, including your “nice’ example, but I enjoy it very much – always have. “Cover” can be easily seen as related to the second Hebrew meaning I mentioned: one can “cover a debt” in Hebrew (does it sound right in English?). As to “ingrate”, I suppose it was superimposed later, to concur with the Islamic dogma, just as even more later it became “unbeliever”.
Nick M.
Gimli as Jewish.
I had not thought of it before – but now I do, it makes sense.
Alisa said:
I’ve heard it before[1]: “cover” a debt meaning to pay or resolve a debt, usually for someone else’s benefit. e.g. “Don’t worry about the lunch check, I’ve got it covered.”
Sunfish: exactly.