Iran, again

[Judge Hades]

Your mind is 34% manipulated, 37% rigidly unbending, and 32% in denial.

 

[LoneWolf16]

Your mind is 24% manipulated, 34% rigidly unbending, and 37% in denial.

 

Meh.

[Darque]

What a horrid concept.

[Azarkon]

Religion is not inherently mind-control. Those who depend on it for the legitimacy of their authority, however, inevitably make it so. But how's that different than any other ideology? Before you vilify religion, remember that the Nazis relied on no established religion, but their own dogma based upon nationalism, scientific racism, and cultural supremacy. And of course, who could forget the atrocities committed by Stalin in the name of Communism?

 

All forms of ideology can be equally dangerous when misapplied, and that includes atheism.

Edited May 20, 2006 by Azarkon

[Musopticon?]

vilify

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is that a real word?

 

Oh, and I find you comparing religion to WW2 ideologies interesting.

[thepixiesrock]

What a horrid concept.

[Baley]

Atheism is not an ideology. It can be part of an ideology but it can not form one by itself. It is simply a lack of belief. The political, financial or social positions one takes are usually influenced by society's constant molding. All it takes to be an atheist is the rejection of the god concept. That's all. The choice afterwards, the choice of how to act, of how to speak, of how to treat your fellow humans rests on your shoulders and yours alone.

 

Vilify is a real word, yes.

[Dark_Raven]

What a horrid concept.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Truly.

[Musopticon?]

Yes, but to be an atheist one needs to actively reject of the idea of divine. Most atheists I've met just seem to be diehard on believing that the Judeo-Christian god doesn't exist. Almost fanatically so. Could it be called an ideology if the the followers show so much devotion? Of course, most are wannabes who hate the the church by default.

Edited May 20, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Baley]

Yes, but to be an atheist one needs to actively reject of the idea of divine.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Define actively reject. It is simply the absence of belief in the god concept that defines an atheist. Everything else is of a personal volition.

 

Most atheists I've met just seem to be diehard on believing that the Judeo-Christian god doesn't exist. Almost fanatically so.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You're thinking of antitheism.

 

 

Could it be called an ideology if the the followers show so much devotion? Of course, most are wannabes who hate the the church by default.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It is still not an ideology. A conviction sure, an influential conviction, but a conviction still. For it to be an ideology, a human would have to build his entire set of beliefs around it, political, cultural, social, you name it. And I very much doubt that a man could achieve such a deed. It just doesn't seem feasible.

[Musopticon?]

I will so totally get back to you, once real life frees me.

 

I still feel proud over being ignored by certain member in a certain thread we discussed about recently.

Edited May 20, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Baley]

Hehehe. Yeah, I've been totally browsing that certain thread we were discussing earlier today. Good going, jerkface.

[WinterSun]

I like to think of myself as an Apatheist. I don't really care if God, Satan, Buddha, whoever exist or not.

[Colrom]

This is a false propaganda story deliberately originated from outside the US but likely fabricated in coordination with US agents intended to inflame hatred for Iranians and justify future actions against them.

 

There were alot of similar stories about the Iraqis and their leadership originating from all around the world in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

 

It is a standard propaganda technique.

 

If you feel the need for motivations or just rationalizations for murder they will be provided.

 

It is false.

 

I think it is worth considering what it says about the sources and the spreaders of this hate food. :angry:

[LoneWolf16]

Religion is not inherently mind-control.  Those who depend on it for the legitimacy of their authority, however, inevitably make it so.  But how's that different than any other ideology? Before you vilify religion, remember that the Nazis relied on no established religion, but their own dogma based upon nationalism, scientific racism, and cultural supremacy.  And of course, who could forget the atrocities committed by Stalin in the name of Communism?

 

All forms of ideology can be equally dangerous when misapplied, and that includes atheism.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Didn't the Nazis feed off of either catholocism or christianity? Using it to better make their "case" or something? I seem to remember some program or book I've read going over that...I really do hate my memory.

 

Anyway, what about the Crusades? The Inquisition? 9/11 (Those virgins were too good to pass up)? Etc. (Note: Etc. being used because I can't think of anymore examples right now.)

 

Oh, and Agnostic right here. "

Edited May 20, 2006 by LoneWolf16

[Baley]

They made use of Christian symbols. Hitler did indeed support what is known as "Positive Christianity" . I'm sure a google search would yield interesting results.

 

Suffice to say, as long as Christianity stayed out of politics, and for the most part it did, he didn't mind it much.

[Azarkon]

For it to be an ideology, a human would have to build his entire set of beliefs around it, political, cultural, social, you name it. And I very much doubt that a man could achieve such a deed. It just doesn't seem feasible.

 

Paradoxically, it is very much possible to build a system of beliefs on the absence of belief itself.

 

However, you're right in that I misused the term in my haste to post earlier. Atheism is what can be considered an overarching typology, much as theism refers to a myriad of different beliefs. For the discussion of atheism to make sense, one must suggest what branch of atheism we're talking about. I contend that there are two major ones of interest:

 

Scientific Empiricism: the belief that everything in the world can be explained through science, which easily becomes an ideology by way of glorifying rationalism.

 

Antitheism: the belief that religion is evil, a system of control, etc. This is really what I was referring to when I threw out the term atheism, since it made sense in the context of the religion-bashing, and is an ideology in and of itself.

Edited May 21, 2006 by Azarkon

[Baley]

For the sake of debate, if we were to indeed start one in the truest sense of the word, could you give me you definition of "ideology"?

[Azarkon]

Either one from dictionary.com will do:

 

1. The body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture.

 

2. A set of doctrines or beliefs that form the basis of a political, economic, or other system.

 

But I have a feeling that what's worth arguing is ideology in the sense of a system of control based on a common universalizing belief, as is in the case of Iran.

Edited May 21, 2006 by Azarkon

[Colrom]

First - As I said the claim is false. Here is the report from the Associated Press who took the trouble to actually obtain and translate the draft law.

 

AP story begins/

 

Iran bill addresses women's clothing

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Associated Press, May. 20, 2006

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A draft law being considered by Iran's parliament encourages the wearing of Islamic clothing to protect the country's Muslim identity, according to a copy of the bill obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.

 

The 13-article bill, which received preliminary approval a week ago, makes no mention of requiring special attire for religious minorities.

 

On Friday, a Canadian newspaper, The National Post, quoting Iranian exiles, said the law would force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear special patches of colored cloth to distinguish them from Muslims.

 

The bill raised fears among women that the hard-line government led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to crack down on social freedoms won in Iran during the previous, pro-reform government.

 

Laws in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution require women to wear "chador" - meaning a headscarf to cover their hair and a long overcoat the hide their shapes.

 

But in the past decade, enforcement has grown lax, and women - particularly in the capital, Teheran - commonly wear scarves that leave almost their entire heads bare and short, form-fitting jackets instead of overcoats.

 

The bill makes no specific mention of women but says it aims to "encourage the public to abstain from choosing clothes that aren't appropriate to the culture of Iran," according to the copy received from the parliament's press office.

 

It tasks the Culture Ministry and state media to promote Iranian styles of dress and to discourage clothing "that does not conform with Iranian-Islamic culture."

 

It also would give economic incentives to producers making Islamic-style clothing and impose tariffs on clothes imports.

 

The bill does not call for police or other bodies to enforce stricter styles of dress for women. In the past, religious police and paramilitary militias would castigate women in the streets if any of their hair was showing or if their clothes were too revealing, though such enforcement has been rarer in recent years.

 

The law does not define the Islamic-Iranian style that it will encourage or directly impose a particular uniform, as the National Post article suggested.

 

/AP Story Ends

[Baley]

This is an interesting topic, so I'll probably be up for a little fun tomorrow morning. But as things are, I haven't slept in over 15 hours and my brain is tired.

 

So, I'll leave you with my own personal view of atheism and why I am an atheist.

 

 

I have lived on this planet for a long time, and as far as I can recall, emotionally that's about 4-5 years, I have never felt a divine presence. That is why I am an atheist. I'm not exactly a diehard rationalist, and on many occasions I have rejected the rational world. I am not an antitheist either, at least I don't consider myself one.

 

Do you truly believe that for a human to consider himself an atheist he has to be either a rationalist or an antitheist?

 

Or are you using a personal definition of the word atheist, which forces men into finely tuned criteria?

 

 

That question raises an interesting point in itself, if we were to look at it in a relativist fashion. Basically, as long as we have different understandings of the words debated and their implications neither of us are either right or wrong.

 

 

If this ain't making much sense don't worry. I've left the world of conventional sense long ago, 4 hours actually.

 

And now I must sleep. Good Morning.

[Colrom]

Second - The paper involved is owned and directed by well known right wing political extremists.

 

The National Post is owned by Hollinger Inc. which has Richard Perle as Co-Chairman and Director. Perle is aalso Director of the Jerusalem Post which is owned by Hollinger.

 

Richard Norman Perle (born September 16, 1941 in New York City), is an advisor on national security issues who served the Reagan administration as an assistant Secretary of Defense and served on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004. He was Chairman of the Board from 2001 to 2003 under the Bush Administration.

 

He is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter sent to US President Bill Clinton.

 

Hollinger relatively recently inherited the media network of Conrad Black.

 

Conrad M. Black was Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Operating Officer of Hollinger International Inc.. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Nixon Center. He is married to far-right columnist and socialite Barbara Amiel [1] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1296236,00.html).

 

Following his fall from grace with Hollinger in late 2003, Christopher Grimes and John Lloyd wrote in the London Financial Times that Black was a more effective as a conservative political advocate than a businessman. "Yet Conrad Black's business ambitions probably always ran second to his urge to be an intellectual force of conservatism. He did not want to simply own newspapers. He wanted to use them to help to reshape the political culture of his native Canada, and to influence that of the United States, Britain and Israel", they wrote.

 

Matthew Fraser, the current editor-in-chief of Canada's National Post - a Hollinger publication - defends Black as having made a significant impact on Canadian policies. "He (Fraser) says its push for lower corporate taxes has made the issue 'legitimate'. Its criticism of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation forced the public broadcaster to be less "biased and left-wing". And its support for the invasion of Iraq, free trade and general pro-Americanism have added much-needed debate," Grimes and Lloyd wrote. However, Black became known for taking over newspapers and restructuring the different departments, resulting in job losses.

 

Maude Barlow, the chair of the Council of Canadians, is cited by Leiterman stating Black is known to "routinely intervene in editorial policy-making". [6] (http://www.fair.org/extra/9611/conrad-black.html)

 

Leiterman also cites Radler, Hollinger's president, as telling Maclean's (2/3/92): "If editors disagree with us they should disagree with us when they're no longer in our employ. The buck stops with ownership. I am responsible for meeting the payroll; therefore I will ultimately determine what the papers say and how they're going to be run." [7] (http://www.fair.org/extra/9611/conrad-black.html)

 

Hollinger also owns the Jerusalem Post. The editor of the US journal, the National Interest, John O'Sullivan, a friend of Black told the Financial Times that the Jerusalem Post "supports the policies of the right and broadcasts them to the world - something which people weren't used to, because it had always been the Israeli left which commanded the stage".

 

In September 2003 that newspaper advocated killing Yasser Arafat. This was quickly raised by the Israeli Cabinet, but described by Colin L. Powell, Condoleeza Rice as "unhelpful" and by The Economist as "wrong".

 

Israel has no law against foreign press ownership.

 

This info came from several sources including wiki.

[Azarkon]

Do you truly believe that for a human to consider himself an atheist he has to be either a rationalist or an antitheist?

 

Depends on the definition you use for atheism, I guess. I think that's more pertinent here than how I define ideology.

 

Personally, someone who believes in neither the existence nor non-existence of divine entities is not atheist, but agnostic. If, on the other hand, you believe that divine forces do not exist, period, and is fanatically so in your belief, then you are an atheist, and uphold one of the atheist ideologies (there are others apart from rationalist/antitheist). If you don't really care, then you're simply a non-believer, which you may define either as agnostic, non-theist, or atheist. The terminology really doesn't matter.

 

My point was simply that *any* sort of belief can be taken to the fanatical extreme, in which case it becomes an ideology. As such, I don't think that religion is to blame here. If not Christianity or Islam, then certainly some other brand of ideology would take its place - nationalism, for example, is an alternative adopted by nations that do not have strong religious backgrounds.

[Atreides]

Damn those propaganda Canadians!

[Baley]

The problem I see with atheism as an ideology is this. Atheism is simple. It doesn't depend on doctrines, dogmas, rules or laws. In its most purest state it is the honest lack of belief. Everything else is man-made. In its natural state the universe is godless, void, empty. To understand the universe gods have been created. To give meaning to the void, to instill order. And so we have gods, myriads of gods, keepers of age-old knowledge. Each god has his own dogma, his own ideology. They build temples of words. They give commandments unto us, informing us of what is best for us. But never showing their faces. For we are not ready. Instead they choose the enlightened few who are to guide our lives through their holiness, bastions of belief.

 

How hard do you think it is for a man to realise that he has never felt God? That while he's alway been surrounded by His words, by His servants, he himself is void of belief?

 

I cannot see God as a natural state. Nature is chaos. Gods are order. Laws, gods, ideologies are all symbols of order. They are that which is spawned out of our inherent need to make sense of the world around us, a world washed in chaos, guided by random chance.

 

And so we have atheism. The natural state of the world. The absence of belief. It is so very simple once you think about it. We can delude ourselves with order, we can delude ourselves with laws, we can even close our eyes and mutter some insipid mantra. But the truth is simple. My soul has never felt God. And I shall certainly rather trust my soul than some old drunken preachers stranded on a mountain's top.

 

One can of course link atheism to theism as if they are but two sides of the same coin. They are not. Atheism, obviously seen through my own perception, is the fundamental state of the universe. The word used to express it might not be the best of choices. But I like it. I do not like a lot of words. I would not even easily associate atheism with the mindless, angry, pubescent rebellion against the cloaked priests. It's more than that, much much more. Religion has changed the game, so to speak, it has brought its own rules, substituted the eternal universe's original laws. Created a human society based around its teachings. It has created ideologies.

 

So atheism for me is never an ideology, it is free, free of laws, rules, dogmas, doctrines, commandments, orders, free to express itself in whichever fashion it desires.

 

Rationalists and antitheists are not atheists in the truest sense. They are more than that. They have added their own puzzles and conundrums. They have replaced the laws of religion with the laws of man and science. Can you build an ideology around their teachings?

 

I'd say no to antitheism, it's still pretty much doctrine free, one can of course be created but it would more likely be fathered by their desire for rebellion, for progress. You can't build it around atheism in its natural state. You can blame it on atheism, sure, you can say that it all comes out of atheism. But atheism has no laws. That's what they forget. All the laws they make are of their own minds, of their own volition. You can't create the order needed for an ideology out of atheism.

 

As for rationalism, I don't know. What's rational? I've seen attempts at building a perfectly rational God. I myself know that I am less than rational. I'd rather not tackle this subject right now.

 

What I've written here is all rather pointless. I'm sure we can both agree that the religious fundamentalism sprinting through the starved deserts of the middle East is a very very nasty thing and be done with it.

 

We'll never agree because our definitions of the words in question are different. It's a tale as long as humanity itself. A tale of words and nuances.