Israel, Palestine and Iran

[Billson]

2 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

All it really confirms for me is that if religion was to be eradicated (somehow) I’m sure we’d all get along a whole bunch better.

I doubt it, I think the biggest issue is that some people just can't tolerate different opinions or lifestyles. Religious views are just an example of that.

People have fights because they go to different schools. People damage & vandalise property and fight amongst themselves because they support different football teams. People assault and abuse or even kill others because of their sexuality, race or even age/disability.

People and a lack of tolerance are the problem. We all just need to accept the fact that we don't all view the world in the same way. Live & let live and all that.

As it is, take religion out of the equation and we'll find something else to fight about.

[Davkaus]

As one of the great Irish philosophers once said, "people, what a bunch of bastards".

[bannedfromHandV]

55 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It’s an interesting theory. That if we removed religion, then the Arabic speaking people currently being displaced and kept in perpetual stateless poverty by the Hebrew speaking people, they’d all get on a lot better.

I guess another spin off would be an atheist UK scrapping any immigration policy for any atheist economic migrants.

This is not a defence of religion, more a suspicion peoples would find something else to war over. Language, fuel sources, water, skin colour, pineapple on pizza. 

I don't doubt that for a second, squabbles and differences would continue for sure but religion is such a fundamental and all-encompassing belief that it gives rise to people justifying all sorts of repugnant things, it also leaves little room for question and debate, it's 'gods will' afterall.

[chrisp65]

Just now, bannedfromHandV said:

I don't doubt that for a second, squabbles and differences would continue for sure but religion is such a fundamental and all-encompassing belief that it gives rise to people justifying all sorts of repugnant things, it also leaves little room for question and debate, it's 'gods will' afterall.

Well without wishing to trot out the usual response, I don’t think the dead of Soviet Russia or Communist China or the Khmer Rouge consider themselves victims of squabbles.

I really really don’t think we would introduce an open door policy for atheist immigrants and refugees once we became atheist.

Soon enough, we will be fighting over drinking water and habitable land. It won’t really be anything to do with who’s god is bigger than who’s. It’ll just be convenient for some of the bastards to frame it as that. Same as it ever was. Same as it was when god discovered gold in South America and when god discovered land and oil in North America and when god industrialised the slave trade in Africa. She’s a patsy.

 

 

[blandy]

24 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Soon enough, we will be fighting over drinking water and habitable land. It won’t really be anything to do with who’s god is bigger than who’s.

So what you're saying is "God" is just an excuse to have a war?

 

And to quote Mark Steel

General (stood in from of his assembled armies before the battle): "Men, Last night, God spoke to me and He said "I'm afraid on this one, I'm with the other side - you're on own this time".

[maqroll]

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook-

Quote

Palestine never went away. It’s still there, right there, the modern bedrock on which Israel was created. Its historical majority population is still there, right there. Israel displaced them, but they never went away. They were not the desert to be transformed, the underdeveloped to be developed, the phantoms of an ancient past to be displaced by other truer bearers of that ancient past. They were and are people who began to fear in the early 20th century, and were informed not long after, that they were considered worthy only of being overlooked or displaced within a geopolitical division of nations that saw them as mere appendages to Arabs elsewhere, not as the core modern population of a land carved out and cherished and given unique identity as the holy land. And they wrote petitions and sent delegations and founded newspapers and staged general strikes and created workers organizations and took up arms. And none of it mattered. And they created revolutionary movements and nationalist parties and oral traditions and memory books and they fought and they boycotted and they appealed with photos and literature and they sent rockets and sent pleas and still they aren’t believed. But they are still there and they will still be there and they deserve to be there. And we need to listen.

 

 

 

[villakram]

US Sec. of State Blinken "There is no equivalence between Israel legitimately defending itself and the terrorist group Hamas' rocket attacks"

Partially bastardized quote... but essentially an official and public green light from the Biden administration for Netanyahu.

[maqroll]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

As one of the great Irish philosophers once said, "people, what a bunch of bastards".

Or in this case, the IDF

[sne]

The US had ANC as a terrorist organization up until 2010 or something like that so...

[magnkarl]

2 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

I don't doubt that for a second, squabbles and differences would continue for sure but religion is such a fundamental and all-encompassing belief that it gives rise to people justifying all sorts of repugnant things, it also leaves little room for question and debate, it's 'gods will' afterall.

I think the Soviet Union proves that even if you remove religion people just find other reasons to kill eachother. Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union were both highly secular atheist states. China is now. It's not religion, it's people being people. When you have the power you don't want to lose it. If Hamas had Israel's capabilites they'd bomb Israel in much the same, or worse manner than Israel. People are idiots, no matter their religion, creed or situation. Put them in a collective group and you get this sort of tribality.

[Keyblade]

On 15/05/2021 at 16:41, a m ole said:

Are these people on Twitter real? The ones in the comments? I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Ah, the old Twitter moment. They are unfortunately very real. Every time I log onto that site I lose more faith in humanity. 

[villa4europe]

23 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Ah, the old Twitter moment. They are unfortunately very real. Every time I log onto that site I lose more faith in humanity. 

Quit about 3 months ago following a warning I got after the comment "should have hit him harder" under a video of Dublin headbutting savage 

Horrible place full of negativity, hatred and people who think they're right cos they scream the loudest 

Just some of the villa stuff let alone wider society, politics and race is embarrassing 

 

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

.. a warning I got after the comment "should have hit him harder" under a video of Dublin headbutting savage 

Horrible place full of negativity, hatred … 

 

Self awareness a big thing with you ?

but yeah, I jacked it in too because of all the nobbers and their free for all abuse etc.

[Keyblade]

12 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Quit about 3 months ago following a warning I got after the comment "should have hit him harder" under a video of Dublin headbutting savage 

Horrible place full of negativity, hatred and people who think they're right cos they scream the loudest 

Just some of the villa stuff let alone wider society, politics and race is embarrassing 

 

At least with football Twitter it's mostly teenagers so you can understand the inanity of it all. Everywhere else though makes you wonder how **** up society really is. Some proper dumbasses out there.

[chrisp65]

I don’t get any of that from twitter.

I do know there are horrible people and idiots, but I don’t see much of it.

I’m seeing football, local history, music, a mix of none hysterical politics.

Perhaps I’m the problem? I did manage to undermine an attempt to get people back in the football on the weekend.

But then, I utterly utterly couldn’t stand a full minute of Facebook. So each to their own I guess.

[Chindie]

Yeah. Just do a piece to camera on a rooftop while there's buildings being raised to the ground a literal stones throw away.

[maqroll]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

Quit about 3 months ago following a warning I got after the comment "should have hit him harder" under a video of Dublin headbutting savage 

Horrible place full of negativity, hatred and people who think they're right cos they scream the loudest 

Just some of the villa stuff let alone wider society, politics and race is embarrassing 

 

I got banned from Twitter and it was probably for the best. When you clash with anonymous fools on social media day after day, you end up a fool as well.

[bickster]

6 hours ago, magnkarl said:

Nazi Germany...  highly secular atheist states

I'd strongly dispute that bit. The Nazis were steeped in mysticism and mythology. I don't know what I'd describe them as but atheist really ain't a word I'd use not was Adolph an atheist as has been claimed for decades. Hitler and the Nazis have been used as an example of “look bad atheists” since the war ended usually by people with an interest in religion. They were much closer to religious than not.

[Chindie]

Nazism had a difficult relationship with religion. They didn't have a defined position on it, besides not being particularly engaged with religion and viewing established international religious organisations as a threat to Nazism. The leading party members all had differing views - some were atheists, some were Christians of various shades that wanted to have radical church reform into a Nazified Christianity, others were pagans in the Germanic tradition, and some infamously took that to the extreme of being occultists. About the only unifying thing amongst the major players in the party on a religious front was a bunch of them were from a Catholic background.

Obviously the biggest religious position they took was anti-Semitic, but even that wasn't really characterised by the classic religious basis of that particular hatred, it was focused on Hitler's stupid racial theories that needed a bottom tier on the hierarchy with the 'Aryans' at the top, conveniently also incorporating a an anti-nationalist position, which combined with his personal hatred from his blaming Jews for the loss of the Great War.

But Nazism wasn't an atheist endeavour. It didn't really care about religion. It felt Christianity as things stood were an obstacle to the success of Nazi Party, to the extent they made some moves towards making a Nazi church. but that was it really. They certainly weren't an atheist organisation - they didn't care enough.

[magnkarl]

11 hours ago, bickster said:

I'd strongly dispute that bit. The Nazis were steeped in mysticism and mythology. I don't know what I'd describe them as but atheist really ain't a word I'd use not was Adolph an atheist as has been claimed for decades. Hitler and the Nazis have been used as an example of “look bad atheists” since the war ended usually by people with an interest in religion. They were much closer to religious than not.

Okay, I'll rephrase. Remove Nazi Germany, an anomaly for sure. Further clouded by the annexation of highly catholic Austria and Czechoslovakia. There's some very clear examples of religion being removed from society that shows that it has the opposite effect of what atheists' wet dreams are. Khmer Rouge, Soviet Union, China, North Korea, GDR +++

However in states where religion is a choice and society is somewhat liberal on it you see a general move towards agnosticism and atheism. Or quite simply humanitarianism as they like to call it in the Nordics. The point being that if you try to forcefully remove anything, something just as vile pops up in different clothing. Instead of the church you have stasi or NKVD popping up as the next all-encompassing evil entity.

Devout atheists and fundamental religious folks have more in common than they think.