Re: Hi Doc. I'm Krebs.
Krebs,
Your reply is silly to the point that I hardly need point out your falacies, but I shall. By the way, you'll get no argument from me that fundamental Christianity is evil too. I'm an atheist. As far as I'm concerned,
all religions are stupid and counterproductive.
Originally posted by MGKrebs
The Christian world...missed out on the Cultural Revolution,
Excuse me? Let's reterm your "Christian world" back to my "Western World"--I'm not a xtian, but I am a Westerner. The West has spent hundreds of years preserving our artwork, our literature, our music. In this country, in particular, by force of our belief in freedom of speech we allow even controversial works of art to be produced. Our technology--film, television--has resulted in new media for artwork. Let's think about the fundie Muslims for a second. They (Taliban) blew up some of their most ancient art (Buddhist statues), and throw people in prison for listening to the wrong sorts of music.
Score: Western World 1; East 0.
Needless to say, if the fundie Christians had their way, life here would be a lot like the Taliban. Note, though, that the fundies
don't have their way over here, apart from the odd posting of the Ten Commandments in inappropriate places, and occasionally getting their panties in a bunch over an art exhibit of questionalbe legitimacy. The fundies don't run things here. They do (did) in Afghanistan.
the Socialist revolution,
If, by "missed out," you mean "ignored a socio-economic development that plainly couldn't work, didn't work, failed, and is now being dropped by the wayside," then yes, we did miss out. We missed out the shitty lives that Eastern Europeans lived. We missed out on having our human rights trodden up like the Chinese government does to their folks. Hey, you think socialism is so great? Go on, I
dare you to go live in a country that claims to be socialist (China, Cuba, whatever). Feel like giving up your standard of living? No? Didn't think so. Socialism died because Capitalism proved itself to be superior. Under socialism, "equality" is enfoced by bringing everyone
down to the same level. With Capitalism, those that have the skills are allowed to rise to whatever level they like.
Western capitalists: 2; Eastern Commies: 0
and the Environmental Revolution.
Without Western science, there would be no study of the environment--no satellites to monitor how humans are affecting the globe, no computer models, etc. I suppose Afghanistan, with rivers of crap running down the streets and into the aquifer, is a paragon of Environmental responsibility? Been to the former East Germany lately? They've gotten better, and it's still horribly polluted there. Sure our industry causes pollution, but
we're getting better. Doesn't that count for anything?
Living in a commercial wasteland with few resources that have any spiritual value may have something to do with this.
I've said it before in one of these forums; I'll say it again. We--Westerners--today live a life far richer than that dreamed of by any ancient king. We have immediate, cheap, near-universal access to knowledge and communication. For the price of dinner, as Carl Sagan once said, you can hold in your hand the history of the Roman empire. The happy socialist Chinese peasant that slaves away all day planting rice never has a chance to think about spiritual issues. The fundie Muslim has religion pushed upon him. In this country, you can believe what you like. In fact, you can go to the library for free, and be as spiritual as you like. Go to your local library. Note that you can browse the best writers of the world for free. What wasteland with few spritual values is this? Can you do the same in Saudi Arabia? (Answer: no).
West: who cares, we can see where this is going anyway...
Christians have contributed very little to the world today
Who cares? Back to the Western world (which includes atheists and non-fundie Christians)--our science produced modern medicine (NMRIs, drugs that work, vaccines), put men on the moon, invented the internet, and pretty much everything else that's good. What did the fundie Muslim world produce? (Sound of crickets chirping.) That's right--not much.
However, when taken in the extreme, fundamentalist sense, their religion implies that they are god's chosen. The idyll of their faith contrasts sharply with their actual circumstances. Could it be that their faith is wrong? Maybe there is no god, or maybe her name isn't Jesus.
Again, I'm not arguing for the fundie Christians and their Jeebus. But you completely missed my argument. The fundie Muslims are the way they are because their religion tells them they're the Ones, but their pragmatic circumstances prove that their lives suck. They get violent. In this country, Christians' religion tells them they're the Ones, and clearly they do lead good lives. This makes them be *******s, but they don't go round flying planes into buildings.
All the products of the East-- mud huts, camels, olives, fireworks, rugs, burkhas, etc.
Insulated houses with running water and electricity beat mud huts hands down. And freedom to wear what you like beats being forced to wear a burkha. Olives are rather nice, but camels smell bad and tend to be fould-tempered. I like fireworks and rugs. Those are nice. Modern medicine is nicer though. See? You're trying to defend them, and you can't think of anything really useful they've invented.
--are evil and must be destroyed, and the only thing of value, oil, must be taken and used up.
Well, while we're on the subject, remember that it was Western science and technology that discovered the oil, and had uses for it. When the Arabian princes whined, "Oh, we're just poor arabs. Please let us have the oil so we can raise our people up," we bought their foolish story, and allowed them to nationalize their oil reserves and steal them from us (remember
we discovered and exploited them first). What was the result--a rich strata of princes who don't share the wealth with those below them. Nice going guys.
A recent Washington Post article had some man-on-the-street interviews with Christians, and one of them pointed out that Democracy is wrong. After all, laws come from god--not man. It is right to live by the Bible, and wrong to live by man-made laws.
Like I said before, the difference between Us and Them, is that the worst thing the fundies do here is put up the Ten Commandments where they shouldn't and make kids pray in class. In Saudi Arabia, if you play the wrong sort of music you get smacked around. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
I notice you didn't bother to respond to my point that we spent years of effort and money to build targeted weapons so we could take out the bad guys and leave the civilians alone. Hey, we could have bought an awful lot of daisy cutters for that money. It's cheaper to just saturation bomb a target (think Dresden), but we've realized that's wrong and we make a HUGE effort to leave the civilians out of it. Terrorists like killing civilians. *******s.
Krebs, your point is you think that Christians are just as bad. Look, I don't like the Jeebus crowd any more than you. But the fact of the matter is, apart from Northern Ireland, you don't see people running around killing oodles of folks in the name of Jeebus.
The original point of my post was that a previous writer had said we must understand the causes of terrorism. My point is that no we don't. Once you
fly airplanes into buildings filled with people that have absolutely nothing to do with the military and vaporize something like 3000 folks, you kind of lose any sympathy people might have for understanding your point of view.
This bears repeating:
When you vaporize 3000 innocent civilians--WITHOUT PROVOCATION--there is no onus upon me to understand your motivation. You must, at all costs, be stopped from similar action in the future. Don't like it? Don't fly planes into buildings anymore. 'Nuff said.
