Israel/Palestine

The reason I asked “what is there to discuss?” in my first post was because I believe in such a complex matter everyone has some kind of biased opinion.Whether it’s because of their beliefs or because of how the picture was painted to them in the news.

Saying who is right and who is wrong is simply immature in my opinion.

Countries in that area of the world have a very powerful and particular notion of pride for centuries now.Pride is one tough motherf***er.

I don’t take any sides because there is no right and wrong in this dispute; but of course I acknowledge the importance of stopping it.

As much as in theory what the USA did by invading Iraq might have been wrong I think that Israel/Palestine borderline zone needs to get the same treatment in a bigger scale with the involvement of international organizations such as UN or NATO.

SOMEONE needs to play world police and set things right.

I’m sorry, but people who believe in ‘God’ are fucking idiots. Who in their right mind would create a reality where one must ‘survive’ at the expense of someone else? It’s not just humans who do this - everything in nature does it. Who in the fuck would create such a reality, unless they weren’t incredibly evil by default? Think about it.

We’re all trapped in a holographic universe which is evil by design. So, if there is a higher power (news flash: there isn’t) it is most definitely evil. But for those of us who know the true nature of reality, we know that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself, subjectively – thus, that makes us the creators of this evil reality, and all that is required to change it is a massive change in perception, which will then lead to a paradigm shift which will usher in a Golden Age that the human race has never before experienced.

What does this have to do about this pathetic thread? Well, Israel is evil, Palestine is evil, and everything else in the world tends to bend toward the negative end of the spectrum. Moral of the story: there are no good guys.

[quote=“Neil”]
It didn’t work in atheist Russia because while the State did away with all religions, it went ahead and made itself an icon, essentially making it a type of theocracy. Before you bludgeon me with “what-the-fucks”, allow me to clarify. Yes, the official “religion” (A tad ironic that they called it that) was atheism, but the fact that the State made people worship it as if it were a religion essentially made it no different in essence than a theocracy. That’s why.
In my honest opinion, a true atheist state wouldn’t acknowledge religion.

What Christian influenced countries are you referring to? [/quote]

You can’t deny how much western civilisation has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values. An example of this can be as simple as monogomy, or as complex as the Crusades to which western Europe owes its independence.

This is unless you want to just make this a race issue, because for some reason, we’ve thrived while offers have suffered. And now others have nothing so we can have everything.

Look at how the followers of Luther King protested against racism. They didn’t fight back at all, and it worked. This is at the heart of the Christian mindset: love your enemy.

Can you say the same for Islam?

History has proven that isolationism doesn’t work, and this is all boiling down to a war of ideas that simply cannot co-exist. Something will come out on top, and we really, really don’t want it to be something oppressive.

The mere belief in a better way will help pave the way for one. When one person wants to stop another from suffering, does that not make them good?

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]

The mere belief in a better way will help pave the way for one. When one person wants to stop another from suffering, does that not make them good?[/quote]

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

Geoffrey, I’m not entirely sure how this may relate to your point, but strictly speaking Islam is also a part of the Judeo-Christian influence. And indeed there’s a great deal of love thy neighbor - turn the other cheek style of philosophy to be found in it as well. In just the same way that the powerful orthodoxies of Christianity have routinely undermined the true teachings of Jesus, Muslim orthodoxies have focused on interpretations that best serve secular interests as well.

In their current popular representations, Christianity is far less oppressive in practice than Islam. But that has very little to do with the intrinsic structure of each and everything to do with political, cultural, secular factors anyway.

I don’t know if it’s a result of staying indoors playing video games too much or what, but there is an astounding amount of pessimism on this board regarding the human condition. The only positive viewpoint I’ve seen so far on the subject comes from G. Duke, ironically a man whose views I’ve found are pretty polarized to my own in a lot of fields.

[quote=“Heretic Agnostic”]
I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this “empire” is already falling, but we still have the fundamentals in place to catch our fall without the need for bloody revolution. I cannot say that I am at all confident we will actually remember how in time though… shrug[/quote]

I’m going to make an assumption and assume that the Empire which you refer to is the “American Empire.”

Where exactly does your doubt stem from? America has been in much worse places than where we are right now. People often forget that we had a terrible Civil War in which our country was quite literally divided into two halves and nearly crumbled, and even through that, it managed to keep itself together. And that was when the country was in its infancy (Technically, it still is). We suffered through Vietnam, a wholly unnecessary war not unlike this one we’re currently involved in, suffered the same kind of polarization that we’ve endured in the past decade or so; actually, a worse polarization, because back then, there wasn’t any “Support the Troops” shit going on and as a result the military had horrible morale.

If your opinion is based purely on this bogus war and how our citizens have responded to it, I urge you to find a silver lining somewhere. People are getting more and more active; progressive groups do work to pull our country back together. I can’t be certain, but I still have enough faith in our people to say that we’ll pull through, at least for awhile.

[quote=“Kadamose”]We’re all trapped in a holographic universe which is evil by design. So, if there is a higher power (news flash: there isn’t) it is most definitely evil. But for those of us who know the true nature of reality, we know that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself, subjectively – thus, that makes us the creators of this evil reality, and all that is required to change it is a massive change in perception, which will then lead to a paradigm shift which will usher in a Golden Age that the human race has never before experienced.

What does this have to do about this pathetic thread? Well, Israel is evil, Palestine is evil, and everything else in the world tends to bend toward the negative end of the spectrum. Moral of the story: there are no good guys.[/quote]

Good and evil are subjective concepts; creations of one’s choice to view them as such. I say this on a more broad scale; I’m not referring to one’s internal sense of right and wrong here (Biologically speaking, I am convinced that human beings have a form of instinctive collaboration and as such view societal “evils” such as murder as anti-progress, and societal “goods” such as charity as progressing the species). It surprises me to see a fellow atheist with such a bleak, negative view of the world. The universe is so vast and splendid, such a colorful and infinite macrocosm beyond any of our wildest imaginations; do you mean to tell me that you have the clout to suggest that it is, inherently, evil? Can you elaborate in terms greater than, say, argument from design? Because it seems to me that you are using the same argument that Creationists use to assert that humans are affixed to “sin.” It seems quite contradictory that, without evidence, you are refuting all of existence in the same way that your antagonists would to argue their opinions.

And “those of us who know the true nature of reality”. Does anyone who claims to know the “true” nature of reality know what the hell they’re talking about? It’s a highly audacious, laughable claim to make, and you discredit yourself, as well as deprive yourself, when you attribute such a one-sided, negative view of the world.

I’m an antitheist. A militant atheist, about as far from the religious spectrum as one can get, and yet even I see that there is so much to be amazed by in this continuously changing plane of being. I don’t believe in miracles, but the fact that each of us were born, having beat out millions of other sperm cells in a race to merge with the egg, is pretty fucking amazing. The only real “miracle” is life itself, and as such we should make the most of it in every aspect of our lives. Geoffrey is right in his claim that believing in a better way will pave the road on which it is travelled. Sure, some of the thinking is purely wishful, but for every person who merely wishes, there’s another person who goes out and actively tries to make a difference. Can you really sit there and tell me that everything and everyone involved in social work/charity is a fraud looking out for their own self-interest? You could postulate that they do have ulterior motives to an extent, but you can’t sit there and tell me that their actions don’t benefit others regardless. I do believe that you should pull your head out of your ass.

Bullshit. Absolute, pure bullshit. I won’t even dignify that with a further response.

Neil, my doubt stems from the very fact the US has only fully occupied the role of an empire for less than the span of a generation. And we’ve already managed to lose any real grasp of the identity and singularity of attitude that granted us respect and influence in the first place.

No, this nation has never been all that “good” by any criteria. And we’ve been through our share of crises as you say. But I am actually very proud, in a realistic sense, of our history. The US of A has been the cultural epicenter of human rights progression for the last century at least, and now we’re the ones openly holding and torturing people without charges?

Indeed Vietnam is a perfect lesson, in how we have reached the point of abjectly failing to remember lessons from even our very recent history. It is the very fact of how completely we have become just another willing cog of the very old world power structure, in such a short time, also running through the predictable cycle of decadence and resource abuse of every empire, but on a completely, comically unprecedented scale…

Do I have no hope at all? Of course not, I actually feel myself to be a patriot most of the time. But the very fact any significant percentage of our population was capable of seeing George W Bush as a paragon of righteous leadership speaks incredibly poorly of the overall intelligence and moral center of this nation. Just over a half century after what many consider our finest hour, we have basically laid out a welcome mat for fascism, even if the door is still officially bolted.

So what, people weren’t monogamous before the conception of Judaism (I assume we’re not going to give Christianity any credit because, if you adhere to Christianity and the Bible, we’ll take note that people did indeed have spouses)? I don’t quite see how you can make such a wide claim without any evidentiary support to back yourself up. History and biology negate your claims.

Historically speaking, the Romans practiced monogamy before the Jews or Christians did. It was a legal rather than religious matter, and their customs were of course different from those practiced today, yet essentially they were quite positively monogamous. The concept of marriage, therefore, predates Judeo-Christian influence. I’m unsure as to its origins, I’m not an expert on the subject, but that much I can tell you. If it interests anybody I am going to the library tomorrow and can do a little side research, but I don’t really feel that’s necessary.

Biologically speaking, monogamy is present in many different lifeforms, not just humans. In terms of social monogamy, only three percent of mammals adhere to it, but a whopping ninety percent of birds are monogamous. Having said that, sexual monogamy, regardless of your wishful thinking, is not something inherent in the human nature, but we are led to think that marriage (assume for the sake of argument that marriage is synonymous with monogamy) somehow by sanctity purges a person of their desire to fuck other people. This, of course, is falsified by the fact that people cheat on their spouses. As such, I don’t see any reason to view it as virtuous except out of fear that an invisible man in the sky will strike me down with lightning if I insert my penis into the wrong female specimen (or heaven forbid a male specimen). If virtue is based on fear, and this is a point I will reiterate later, is it really virtue, or merely a means to escape wrath? These questions are unanswered by the religious and are very fundamental and basic.

Back to biology. The point I was trying to make is that monogamy is not a result of any divine guidance, as if humans are too stupid or feral to collaborate in such a way on their own, but it is something that we find all throughout nature, therefore it is inevitable that one day nature and nurture would meet upon the foundation of civilization, or rather, culture, and our nature is in a way infused into that nurture. Why do I think this? I will refer you to the concept of Attachment Theory: This is usually attributed to children and their parents, but the theory also applies to adult romantic entanglements and goes to great lengths to explain as to why human beings share that emotional connection to “that one special person,” if you will.

Europe owes its dependence to a series of bloody campaigns promoting a savage, archaic form of Christianity? Well, that changes everything now doesn’t it?

For all that I think Europe and the rest of the Christian world was worth saving. Note the sarcasm.

We thrive and others suffer because of our strict join-us-or-die attitude that has reverberated throughout society from time to time.

Arguably, it wasn’t until Dr. King was assassinated and made into a martyr (because apparently martyrdom is equivalent to sainthood; whether it’s dead Jews on a cross or a dead “nigger” in a casket, our society loves it. The one thing separating our reverence for martyrs from the Islamofascists’ reverence is because the latter bases their respect on how many infidels get killed in the process) that any real breakthrough was made in terms of civil rights in the US. And it wasn’t so much racism that they were protesting against; arguably many blacks in the US were just as racially bigoted toward whites as the inverse was toward them. They were protesting against segregation, and lobbying for equal rights/protection of the law.

Also, to equate Dr. King’s nonviolence strategy with Christian morality is somewhat overreaching. Of course King and a good chunk of his followers were Christian, but the purpose of the nonviolence strategy was dependent upon the most easily achieved means of social change. King’s and his followers believed that violence would only infuriate the white majority more and further alienate themselves from their goals, which is contrasted sharply with the actions and motives of other black leaders, such as Malcolm X and the rest of the Black Muslim crowd.

Moreover, people always seem to forget that Dr. King allied himself during this time with like-minded secularists such as A. Philip Randolph, an atheist and a socialist who actually helped organize the March on Washington, and other members of the communist party who at that time also focused their efforts on desegregation. They [the atheists/communists/secularists] didn’t have Christian morality to base their intentions on, did they? But they went along with the same means because they knew it was what would work.

Like that Heretic Agnostic fellow stated, Islam is in fact a sloppy derivative of the Judeo-Christian line of thinking, and as such should not be fully excluded from that great religious triad. In my eyes, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all three different sects of a much more potent imminent threat to reason, rationality, and logic, and it is through sheer luck that they spend so much time quarreling amongst one another rather than unite into one congealed mass of irrational thought and attack the secularists who have worked so hard to rework society for the better through enlightenment. Having said that, I know it sounds harsh, and my aim is not to be deliberately provocative, merely to explain the connections that the Big Three have with one another. The term “luck” should also be looked at with a grain of salt, as the fact that they quarrel with one another creates a great deal of strain with all parties involved regardless.

Is Islam more violent and oppressive than Christianity? Most definitely. Is it a threat? Again, most definitely. But if you look at it through it’s roots, the more violent and oppressive aspects of Islam are not entirely absent in Christianity, which likes to defend its little nasty embarrassing tenets with wishy-washy “Love thy Neighbor” drivel, which is quite hypocritically contradicted at various times throughout the length of the Bible. That’s the point I want to make. Just because it’s not as guilty as Islam, doesn’t mean that it is steer clear of criticism, either.

I’ll end this rant on a high note so you don’t take it as a personal attack. I want you to know I’m not singling you out or anything, Geoff, I merely respect your intellect enough to challenge it, and as such I respect my own enough to defend it. Here is where I agree with you. As much as I do honestly wish that the brilliance of my Founding Fathers and all their statutes on religious freedom could bring us all together holding hands and shitting butterflies and cinnamon buns on a multi-colored, multi-ethnic field, history and the amalgamation and incorporation of so many different opposing ideas into our society has led to a great deal of violence, hatred, and bigotry. I’m not saying that religious freedom is a bad thing. I’m all for it; it’s a person’s intellectual right to think how their mind has decided it will. The problem is not a product of the freedom, it’s a product of what is being exercised itself. Religion, overall, is too dogmatic to bow down to any who oppose it, and when various scriptures and holy books are essentially incompatible with one another, problems arise. So I agree with you there. I agree that I wouldn’t in a million years wish for society to be consumed by the plague of Islam. But the implementation of Christianity as Top Dog is not going to help us either in the long run. The very fact that people feel that certain aspects of Christianity (ones that are very clearly written in scripture) oppress them exists means that in the end, where theocracy exists, oppression exists.

I apologize for the overall shoddy articulation of this response. It’s three AM where I live and I’m very tired. I’ll try and re-articulate myself better later if you have any questions on anything I’ve said, or if you need clarification.

[quote=“Heretic Agnostic”][size=75]Neil, my doubt stems from the very fact the US has only fully occupied the role of an empire[/size] for less than the span of a generation. And we’ve already managed to lose any real grasp of the identity and singularity of attitude that granted us respect and influence in the first place.

No, this nation has never been all that “good” by any criteria. And we’ve been through our share of crises as you say. But I am actually very proud, in a realistic sense, of our history. The US of A has been the cultural epicenter of human rights progression for the last century at least, and now we’re the ones openly holding and torturing people without charges?

Indeed Vietnam is a perfect lesson, in how we have reached the point of abjectly failing to remember lessons from even our very recent history. It is the very fact of how completely we have become just another willing cog of the very old world power structure, in such a short time, also running through the predictable cycle of decadence and resource abuse of every empire, but on a completely, comically unprecedented scale…

Do I have no hope at all? Of course not, I actually feel myself to be a patriot most of the time. But the very fact any significant percentage of our population was capable of seeing George W Bush as a paragon of righteous leadership speaks incredibly poorly of the overall intelligence and moral center of this nation. Just over a half century after what many consider our finest hour, we have basically laid out a welcome mat for fascism, even if the door is still officially bolted.[/quote]

Thank you for the clarification. What you said before makes more sense now.

EDIT: By the way, I just wanted to throw in how pleased I am to be able to confront such taboo issues on an online forum and not have to endure people resorting to name-calling and allegations of stupidity. Give yourselves a big collective pat on the back. :anjou_happy:

[quote=“Neil”] Can you really sit there and tell me that everything and everyone involved in social work/charity is a fraud looking out for their own self-interest? You could postulate that they do have ulterior motives to an extent, but you can’t sit there and tell me that their actions don’t benefit others regardless. I do believe that you should pull your head out of your ass.

[/quote]

Yes, I can honestly say that because in this world, the good guy will always finish last, and no good deed goes unpunished. Those who do truly mean well for humanity (i.e. Nikola Tesla) are branded as crazy, usually die penniless, and are forgotten by time. This is a cold, hard fact; therefore, no one wants to be the good guy; instead, they’ll just do what’s easiest and pretend to be one. Everything in this universe will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance, and humans are no exception.

I try not be so cynical when I observe the universe around me, but it’s quite a challenge not to when one is always looking for the faults in life, instead of the good things that come out of it, too. But that statement means nothing when there is no balance between the good and the bad; unfortunately, the bad outweigh the good several fold. I’d like to see this change - I really would - but that borders on wishful thinking.

Kadamose, there will be some dichotomy in every human impulse, so if you choose to look for it you will always be able to find a ‘dark side’ to any human action.

Evil is itself another human construct, and it is defined not by greed or selfishness in their most basic forms, but by the perversion of natural impulses into irrational patterns. It is a part of the human condition to crave recognition and approval from fellow humans, the very fact that people may be motivated to pretend to be a good guy exposes the ultimate lie (or paradox) of your perspective.

Is all strife, oppression and destruction evil? It does not appear to be the case, at least not going by the patterns of popular judgment. The defining quality of evil would seem to be that of entropy, when an action exceeds even the normal rational degree of self-serving outcome and represents a far greater detriment to another party than benefit to the perpetrator.

So the flip side of that, the actual shape of ‘goodness’ if you will, may be considered Enlightened Self-interest. If one’s moral/ethical compass tends more toward a direction of harmony rather than exploitation, what more can really be asked? Perfection… is after all yet another human construct.

The thing that completely breaks this whole debate, for me, is the issue of altruism, since that seems to be the real criteria you’re using to pass judgment. In essence your argument is that altruism doesn’t exist, so there’s no such thing as a good guy, right? I mean, one truly does follow the other there… the way you’ve structured the argument at least.

Here’s the problem, I do not believe altruism is a concept that can even be considered outside of a spiritual context. It is a grace that cannot exist if we are but animals, it cannot be argued on a purely rational basis therefore it cannot be proven, therefore can always be ‘disproven’ by default. So if altruism (or lack thereof) is the standard by which you condemn the world, it’s an argument that effectively eats itself.

[quote=“Heretic Agnostic”]Kadamose, there will be some dichotomy in every human impulse, so if you choose to look for it you will always be able to find a ‘dark side’ to any human action.

Evil is itself another human construct, and it is defined not by greed or selfishness in their most basic forms, but by the perversion of natural impulses into irrational patterns. It is a part of the human condition to crave recognition and approval from fellow humans, the very fact that people may be motivated to pretend to be a good guy exposes the ultimate lie (or paradox) of your perspective.

Is all strife, oppression and destruction evil? It does not appear to be the case, at least not going by the patterns of popular judgment. The defining quality of evil would seem to be that of entropy, when an action exceeds even the normal rational degree of self-serving outcome and represents a far greater detriment to another party than benefit to the perpetrator.

So the flip side of that, the actual shape of ‘goodness’ if you will, may be considered Enlightened Self-interest. If one’s moral/ethical compass tends more toward a direction of harmony rather than exploitation, what more can really be asked? Perfection… is after all yet another human construct.

The thing that completely breaks this whole debate, for me, is the issue of altruism, since that seems to be the real criteria you’re using to pass judgment. In essence your argument is that altruism doesn’t exist, so there’s no such thing as a good guy, right? I mean, one truly does follow the other there… the way you’ve structured the argument at least.

Here’s the problem, I do not believe altruism is a concept that can even be considered outside of a spiritual context. It is a grace that cannot exist if we are but animals, it cannot be argued on a purely rational basis therefore it cannot be proven, therefore can always be ‘disproven’ by default. So if altruism (or lack thereof) is the standard by which you condemn the world, it’s an argument that effectively eats itself.[/quote]

Touche’ - however, I’m not arguing altruism. What I am arguing is that the act of self-preservation disables all good intentions – and we’re all guilty of this. If one could disable or reduce the self-preservation impulse, the world would be in a much greater state than it is now or ever has been. But that’s not the way we’ve been biologically programmed, and we’re not the only ones. If you observe everything in nature, including plant life to a smaller extent, you will see that all life, in order to survive, requires sustinance from another form of life; in other words, in order for one to live, another must die. Basically, the argument is that we are all living at the expense of someone else – and that, in itself, is an evil act, and, therefore, the core programming of the universe must be evil, as well.

I am not, by any means, stating that our default programming can’t be bypassed; I’m simply saying that it’s unlikely for most people.

I agree with your reasoning to an extent, but let me put it another way…

Every act of creation is an equal act of destruction. So if that means we live in an evil universe, the ONLY rational response is to eliminate the very concepts of good and evil, which you seem unwilling to do. I suggest you have a long way to go before you find any functional understanding of why you persist in feeling attachment to the concepts?