Religion Discussion

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Cosmos said:
Given everything that's going on with ISIS, I wanted to discuss something that's been bothering me for a while now regarding Islam itself. Oh, and before I start, I am in no way implying that this applies to all Muslims because that's stupid and irrational; there are plenty of Muslims who don't exhibit this kind of behavior.

Anyway, I'm pretty uncomfortable with how Islam and Islamic societies in general regard blasphemy and censorship. Even some moderate Muslims believe that their religion trumps freedom of speech. I mean, in 2012, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (aka the largest Islamic organization in the world) called for a worldwide ban on anything that could be deemed as denigration of the prophet Muhammad. And, of course, we're all aware of the controversies surrounding depictions of Muhammad, mocking or otherwise. You can't draw Muhammad for whatever reason without expecting at least a riot to break out.

It just kind of pisses me off because, as a Catholic, I can't go a day without hearing people hate on Christianity or make jokes about my religion. Why is it okay to make fun of Jesus and show him doing distinctly un-Jesus-like things (snorting cocaine, hitting on women, etc) but God forbid anyone even criticizes Muhammad? I'll be honest, I don't enjoy jokes at the expense of my religion. Like, at all. But I also don't throw a bitch fit about them; I just roll my eyes and ignore it. That's what everyone does when they hear an offensive joke (barring drama whores and SJWs, of course). I may not like it, but I also know that everyone has the right to have and express opinions.

And yeah, I know Christians used censorship in the past, but that's where it's stayed. Pretty much every Western country recognizes the importance of free speech and the dangers of censorship now. But in Islamic countries, their concept of blasphemy and censorship is absolute; no one is allowed to criticize or question Islam and no one is allowed to attempt to convert Muslims away from their religion. They are allowed to preach to others and can criticize other religions, but not the other way around. In countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, freedom of speech and freedom of religion don't exist. Not only that, some (again, not all) Muslims in Western countries also believe that Islam is untouchable and all criticism and jokes about it should be banned.

Islam isn't special; it doesn't deserve to be treated any differently than Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or whatever, and that includes both the positive and negative aspects. It just really pisses me off how even some very moderate Muslims believe that their faith is exempt from criticism; I've even seen some people imply that all of the riots, murders, and violence that occurs whenever Muhammad or Islam is made fun of is the fault of the people who made the jokes, as they shouldn't have insulted Islam.
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Islam's nothing more than a really big cult, a cult with no respect for human life or freedom at that. That people will defend it as a religion like Christianity or Hinduism is truly appalling.
 
Hat said:
Islam's nothing more than a really big cult, a cult with no respect for human life or freedom at that. That people will defend it as a religion like Christianity or Hinduism is truly appalling.
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It's not that homogenous. There's no single leader. ISIS would be a cult if it hadn't actually taken over and occupied territory, making it the authority in its region. A cult is also generally opposed to the society in which it exists. If it actually takes over that society, then it's something a lot worse, a theocracy.
 
AnOminous said:
It's not that homogenous. There's no single leader. ISIS would be a cult if it hadn't actually taken over and occupied territory, making it the authority in its region. A cult is also generally opposed to the society in which it exists. If it actually takes over that society, then it's something a lot worse, a theocracy.
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Excellent point. The more modern definition of "cult" requires centralized, charismatic, manipulative leadership (a good example might include Scientology or Quiverfull churches).
 
I'm a Quranist Muslim. I just read the Quran and find personal faith in it without the in put of others or from the Hadith.
 
While we're on the subject of Islam, something that also really bothers me about the faith is sharia law, or more specifically how modern-day Muslims use it. For those who don't know, sharia law consists of laws that basically govern every single aspect of Muslim life (marriage and divorce, dietary restrictions, daily routines, familial and religious obligations, and financial dealings, how to worship, etc). Whereas Christians and Jews abide by the Ten Commandments (which, aside from the first three, are really just about basic morality; don't kill, don't steal, don't cheat on your significant other, don't lie about others, etc), Muslims are bound by sharia law, and there are lots of very specific rules.

Now, some of sharia law was actually quite progressive for its time. Sharia places a limit of four wives on Muslim men; before that, a man could marry as many women as he wished. Also, there are divorce and child custody laws that were unheard of back then; another advanced law was that non-Muslims could pay a tax instead of being killed or forced to convert. But that's the problem: sharia law was progressive for its time. Here in the 21st century, some of the rules are downright barbaric. Here are some examples of laws that really don't have any place in any modern society:

  • Drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.
  • Sharia allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge; physical eye for physical eye. If you murder someone, the victim's family is actually legally allowed to kill you in whatever way they please.
  • Homosexuals must be executed, or at least imprisoned/flogged.
  • Non-Muslims (dhimmis) must pay a tax, called a jizyah. Their only other options are to either convert to Islam or die.
  • Non-Muslims are not equal to Muslims under the law. They must comply to Islamic law if they are to remain safe. They are forbidden to marry Muslim women, publicly display wine or pork, recite their scriptures or openly celebrate their religious holidays or funerals. They are forbidden from building new churches or building them higher than mosques. They may not enter a mosque without permission. A non-Muslim is no longer protected if he leads a Muslim away from Islam.
  • Unmarried fornicators are to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.
  • Sharia orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad, the Quran, and even sharia itself.
  • Apostates are to be killed; this applies to Muslims who leave Islam for another religion (including Islam's fellow monotheistic religions, Christianity and Judaism) or become atheists/agnostic. The only way to escape death or lifelong imprisonment is to convert back to Islam.
  • Blasphemers (ie, critics of Islam) are to be killed or imprisoned.
  • There's the concept of jihad, or holy war. There's a whole set of rules for jihad, including permission to steal property as well as to enslave any conquered people (including women and children); enslaved women can also be used as sex slaves.
  • A highway robber may be crucified or his alternate hand and foot cut off.
  • A woman only inherits half what a man does.
  • A woman’s testimony in a court of law counts half of a man’s testimony.
  • A man may legally and irrevocably divorce his wife, outside of a court of law, by pronouncing “I divorce you” three times.
  • A wife may remarry her ex-husband if and only if she marries another man, has sex with him, and then this second man divorces her.
  • Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband's obligation to support her and gives him permission to beat her and keep her from leaving the home.
  • A man can have up to four wives, but women are strictly prohibited from marrying more than one man.
  • A mature man may marry a prepubescent girl; to be more specific, there is no age limit for marriage of girls. The marriage contract can take place anytime after birth and can be consummated at ages as young as 8 or 9; as soon as a girl begins her period (which, for some girls, happens as young as 8) her husband can consummate their marriage.
  • A woman must wear a head covering and maybe a facial veil (to be fair, the Quran itself only says to "dress modestly," but traditions and classical law have made it so a woman must at least wear a headscarf when she's in the company of a man she's not related to).
  • Muslim women are strictly prohibited from marrying non-Muslim men. However, Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women, with the strong implication that the women will then convert to Islam.
  • A Muslim will be forgiven for murder of: 1) an apostate 2) an adulterer 3) a highway robber. Vigilante street justice and honor killing is acceptable.
  • Sharia never abolished slavery (including sexual slavery) and highly regulates it. A master will not be punished for killing his slave.
  • A non-Muslim cannot inherit from a Muslim.
  • A non-Muslim cannot rule- even over a non-Muslim minority.
  • A Muslim woman loses custody of her children if she remarries. But even if she doesn't, the children still belong to the father; the father gets boys when they are 9 and girls when they are 7 years old.
  • To prove rape, a woman must have 4 male witnesses.
  • A Muslim man is forgiven if he kills his wife at the time he caught her in the act of adultery.
  • No testimony in court is acceptable from people of low-level jobs, such as street sweepers or bathhouse attendants.

Believe it or not, there are more of these. I just got too depressed looking them up.

Sharia is actually a big problem facing many societies today; a key difference between Ten Commandments and sharia law is the extent to which they're applied. The Ten Commandments are meant to be adhered to on a personal level; not to mention that, as I said before, most of the Commandments cover basic morality that non-religious people adhere to. However, sharia law is meant to be absolute and must be followed in order to be as close to God as possible; to many Muslims, Islam is meant to govern social and political as well as personal/spiritual life. Most Muslim-majority countries implement sharia law instead of secular laws in at least some capacity; some countries eschew secular laws altogether and exclusively follow sharia (Saudi Arabia is one example). The goal of Islamists is to implement sharia worldwide.

Go ahead and glance over that list of laws I gave you and decide for yourself if you think that sharia belongs in a free, democratic society. I want to emphasize that I'm not shitting on Islam (although to be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of it either). It's just that many parts of sharia violate basic human rights and have no place being the governing laws of entire countries. In sharia, basically the only people who have rights are heterosexual Muslim men. What's worse is how there are Muslim groups in non-Muslim majority countries (including the United States and Canada) who demand that sharia law be implemented (despite how the US is, you know, a country with an overwhelmingly Christian majority as well as tons of people who are non-religious; both groups are treated as second-class citizens in sharia).

Man, I need to stop prattling on. Oh well, I just have a lot on my chest regarding all of these recent events and this is one of the few places where I can express my feelings without being labelled as an Islamophobe.
 
See, I don't think the ten commandments were originally intended to be applied on a personal level. The first five are very specific to the Jewish faith and culture. They basically amount to don't worship any foreign gods and keep the Sabbath. There are even specific punishments outlined in the Old Testament for those who break the Sabbath, take the lord's name in vain, or worship other gods. At the time the Old Testament was written (and even before that as much of it was originally oral tradition) these laws and commandments were carried out in the same manner as sharia. If western countries followed the Bible like middle-eastern countries follow the Koran we wouldn't get anywhere as a civilization. If anything we'd be going backwards. It's the same story with every religion I know of.

Religions are basically made up of people: people who run churches, people who fill religious organizations, people who run for political office, people you meet on the street. God may or may not exist but you can't have a religion without people to be religious. Holy books don't matter half as much as they way people in power choose to interpret (or exploit) them. So if the leader of your country says he's going to execute anybody who doesn't follow sharia law, then nothing else really matters except your leader's interpretation, does it? The Koran might not say anything he thinks it says but it won't matter because he's the guy with all the guns and he's not afraid to wreck your shit. The only real defense against these people is a secular government with a big stick and zero tolerance for human rights violators.
 
Question, as a practitioner of Hatian Vodou, would there be any interest in my doing a separate thread for questions and answers? I'm strongly considering doing a thread about some Neopagan lolcows that involves some Vodouisants and I don't want to just be sperging about stuff that makes no sense without some grounding (though there is definitely some incredibly cow-ish behavior on their part, understanding of the faith or no).
 
TremendousBoredom said:
Question, as a practitioner of Hatian Vodou, would there be any interest in my doing a separate thread for questions and answers? I'm strongly considering doing a thread about some Neopagan lolcows that involves some Vodouisants and I don't want to just be sperging about stuff that makes no sense without some grounding (though there is definitely some incredibly cow-ish behavior on their part, understanding of the faith or no).
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I think you should just answer questions in this thread. I'd be very interested to hear about it in any case.

What does it take to become a houngan/mambo? Wikipedia says you have to be chosen by your dead ancestors, but what does that even mean? Also is Samedi a cool guy? He seems like a cool guy.
 
CuriousBystander said:
What does it take to become a houngan/mambo? Wikipedia says you have to be chosen by your dead ancestors, but what does that even mean? Also is Samedi a cool guy? He seems like a cool guy.
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Vodou is an ancestral veneration faith, so there's a lot of stuff involving them present. Before undertaking any major step like Kanzo (the process of initiation that makes one a Houngan or Mambo), there's divination to make sure that it's the right step for you at this time. Because Kanzo? It's a two week process that is both A)Expensive, and B)Difficult. You're being called to serve your community as a spiritual leader, and so it's checking to make sure "is this ok, and do we really want this guy/that girl".

Sadly, there are a lot of folks who will go "yup, sure, your ancestors? Completely cool with this! By the way, it'll cost $15,000 and then you need to bring this that and this....". It's why lineage is so damn important, because it lets you check to see if your initiatory parent is a known scam artist. If someone won't tell you the Houngan or Mambo who initiated them and the house they belong to? Something is hinky and you're probably being taken for every cent the scam artist can get out of you.

As for the Baron? Baron Samedi is a blend of terrifying as heck, and not quite the guy that most folks make him out to be. He's one of the Gede, and they're all a little lewd and crass, but he's more stately than most. When he shows up, he sort of lies there on the ground and doesn't talk much because of that whole being dead thing. Still a scary strong Houngan and not someone you'd want angry at you.

The other Gede? Dick and sex jokes and crass language here we come. The Gede are all pretty damn awesome, even though I don't work with them much. Beyond their roles involving the dead, they're also sort of a release valve for Haitian culture which is pretty straightlaced and conservative. Because the Gede are dead, what's the worst you can do to them? Kill them?

Of course, when the jokes stop and they get down to things? They're pretty goddamn impressive when it comes to magic/travay (Work, the term for most magic in Vodou. Because really, like anything else...it's work). Also, they're overall some of the most life loving Lwa out there, and heaven help any dumb bastard who hurts kids and they find out about it. Children haven't had a chance to enjoy life yet, so people who abuse them or worse, kill them? Earn themselves a place on the Gede's shitlist.
 
I'm somewhere between agnostic and Catholic. If a homo who supports same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, and stem cell research can be a Catholic anyway.

EDIT - According to Google, that makes me a 'cafeteria Catholic'. Alright then.
 
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sugoi-chan said:
I'm somewhere between agnostic and Catholic. If a homo who supports same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, and stem cell research can be a Catholic anyway.

EDIT - According to Google, that makes me a 'cafeteria Catholic'. Alright then.
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Not necessarily. Of those you listed, only the immorality of abortion is explicit doctrine, and even then, it doesn't obligate one to take a specific position on what the law should be. One could both believe a practice to be wrong and yet not support outlawing it. The vast majority of obligatory Catholic beliefs are theological in nature, not political.
 
I'm currently studying all the religions, because there isn't one that suits me perfectly. I used to be an atheist but I think that was from being a rebellious teenager growing up with two very Christian friends who liked to push views on others. As I grew older and separated my life from these people I realized that some of my views were very biased, just because I met a handful of religious zealots, and I found that foolish on my part.

I don't follow anything organized, and like I said, I love to study religions, but I think I'll follow my own "code" for the time being (although after reading @Sanic's Zen Buddhism thread, I imagine what I follow is relatively close to that practice):
I believe strongly in karma, I've witnessed it several times (although I can't chalk every action up to karma-I feel like some people do this as a way to feel like they have control), I try my hardest to be positive although at the core I'm definitely a realist, and my thoughts on the afterlife can be rolled up into "energy can not be created, nor destroyed" so I imagine our energy or soul is transferred to either other living things, or to somewhere else that we can't fathom.

I have nothing wrong with anyone who believes anything else, I try not to judge others before I've walked a mile in their shoes (although me being on this site proves that I have a bit farther to go on that last one, but I don't think I possess the ego to be a lolcow- yet :sigh:), and overall try to be empathetic, play devil's advocate with almost all situations (there's of course some "atrocities" that I can't see from the other side, but you could make the argument of what is good and evil other than opinions) and view the glass as half-full while remaining tethered to reality.

Seems to be working out so far, I suppose.
 
I'm Christian Reformed, but my beliefs are more or less deistic or Unitarian in nature. The main reason being I find it hard to believe there is not some life force or divine power within the universe, but I don't believe this force is omnipresent. I also tend to criticize atheism. While I don't hold anything against atheists or agnostics as people, the movement itself is one I find quite broken.
 
I actually have a question. How would different religious groups react to Artificial Intelligence? Like, say google goes out and creates a truly sapient computer, assuming it's possible. Would such a thing have a soul? Should it be subject to the same rights a human would? Supposing it wanted to, would it be able to join a religion?
What about an animal engineered to have human or near human levels of intelligence? Or an alien?

TremendousBoredom said:
Question, as a practitioner of Hatian Vodou, would there be any interest in my doing a separate thread for questions and answers? I'm strongly considering doing a thread about some Neopagan lolcows that involves some Vodouisants and I don't want to just be sperging about stuff that makes no sense without some grounding (though there is definitely some incredibly cow-ish behavior on their part, understanding of the faith or no).
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That actually sounds interesting. Is it possible to give a basic overview of Hatian Voodoo (basic beliefs, worship, deities), and take it from there?
 
Randall Fragg said:
I actually have a question. How would different religious groups react to Artificial Intelligence? Like, say google goes out and creates a truly sapient computer, assuming it's possible. Would such a thing have a soul? Should it be subject to the same rights a human would? Supposing it wanted to, would it be able to join a religion?
What about an animal engineered to have human or near human levels of intelligence? Or an alien?
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I'd imagine that if a computer was to choose a religion, or a set of beliefs, it would be either diatheistic or deistic in nature. It could easily become detrimental, as it would have all human knowledge and opinions at hand, so it could easily cause people to become paranoid or skeptical. As for aliens, didn't the pope say he would baptize them if they wanted to join the church.
 
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