Re: Coming Trends: Fading Extropy? (extropians-digest V7 #279)

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 11:21:51 MDT


FutureQ wrote:
>
> William wrote:
>
>
>>Yesterday I read an interesting critique of Islam at
>>http://answering-islam.org/TWOR/peacepromoting.html. It is written
>>by an Evengelical Christian but I did check every quote he made from
>>the Koran since he cited them by chapter and verse numbers. (The
>>Koran is structurally organized exactly like the Bible. Yes, I bought a
>>copy of the Koran.) I have read scriptures from the other major religions
>>e.g. the Vedas of Hinduism and Tae-Te-Ching of Taoism and have never
>>found any lines that advocate war like the Koran does. Mohammed
>>was a military general and grew very wealthy and powerful. His biography
>>reminds me of Gengis Khan except that Mohammed was much better at
>>the rationalization of violence and thus recruiting of soldiers.
>

Wow. Opinions taking from the convert-the-world-for-its-own-good
arm of one religion about another religion ripping its bloodier
quotes while ignoring one's own. Impressive. Read your Bible
if you want to see war and violently repressive quotes. Mohammed
as military general? Only relatively briefly. That is
certainly not an accurate summation.

>
> Try Howard Bloom's Lucipher Principle, chiefly the chapter on Islam's War
> Against the West. See it or some of it here:
> http://www.howardbloom.net/islam.htm
>
> luddite+religious fanatic+violent militant=muslim
>

So, you believe the world has over a billion violent miltant
religious fanatics? Really? Why would you believe that one
religion manages to turn all of its followers into violent
luddites when most of the religions have most of their adherents
among those who do the minimal number of observances and take
some social and existential comfort in their beliefs? Something
is very seriously out of kilter in the above equation.

> According to Bloom due to the militant teachings of the Quran, chiefly the
> passages referring to not allowing an infidel to live, not even moderate muslims
> can be trusted. Their apologists will say Islam teaches against violence...
> unless it is jihad. The trouble is, it's far too easy to cry jihad at the drop
> of a hat, for anything under the sun!
>

Ever read the books of law in the Old Testament? Hair-raising
stuff that makes even sharia look mild. Yet only a small
minority of Christians or Jews belive this would be a
reasonable way to order a society. Why should we believe it is
different for Muslims? Simply quoting from a religion's sacred
writings is obviously inadequate.

> To me all religion must go. It will go two milliseconds after an augmented
> populace goes online and the average human's brain power and logic acuity
> increases even a little. Will we survive long enough in the face of the rise of
> Islam? That is the question.

You have far too little understand of religion if you believe
greater intelligence will automatically be the end of it.

- samantha



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