Fundamentalists expunged

OT: anything goes!

Moderator: Edi

So?

Save the art!
11
20%
Kill the fundies!
43
80%
 
Total votes: 54

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Plekhanov
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Post by Plekhanov »

Col. Crackpot wrote:look at what were destroying for a moment. Almost every form of art traces it's roots to religious influence. Every form of music traces it's way back to religous influences. Wheteher they be the pagan of africa, old negro spirituals, classicals odes of devotion... without these we would not have any modern music. at all. Eliminate those from history and suddenly rock and roll, Jazz, rythim and blues as wll of all of their sub genres cease to exisT.

No thank you, i'll let history run it's course. Let fundamentalism peter out naturally as humanity gradually learns the lesson of how foolish it is to worship the invisible man in the sky.

EDIT: Furthermore what advances in engineering were made by the religious in their quest to glorify a diety? Look at the massive cathederals dotting Europe and the Pyramids of Egypt. This is idea is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Bullshit, people make music because they like to for a while in Europe the cultural power of the church meant that people interested in the ‘higher’ forms of music found it necessary to work within/for the church (so are fair bit of music would be preserved as it was done for sponsorship rather than for belief) but that by no means does this mean that without religion there would be no music.

Also I would love to see your evidence for claiming “Almost every form of art traces it's roots to religious influence. Every form of music traces it's way back to religous influences.” You do have some evidence don’t you?

Also what you are saying seems counter to the OP as it simply states that religious art be magically obliterated it doesn’t state that all subsequent art in anyway influenced by religious art will also be obliterated.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Interestingly, Crackpot is engaging in the exact same fallacy typically used by fundamentalist idiots who claim that science came from religion: "if Christians did it a few centuries ago, then it was caused by religion".
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Post by Sofia »

Macunaima wrote:Assuming that we could keep the world fundie-free from that point on ...
That's a fairly grand assumption to make. How would we do this, pray tell?
Kathryn wrote:I think everything is a religion.
Care to elaborate?
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Post by Plekhanov »

Col. Crackpot wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Don't be a fucking retard. Do you really think that 100% of all music was inspired by religion?
I'll give specific examples. Rock, Blues, Jazz, Folk. R&B all share relious lineage...
Please do point to whichever bit of the op states that all art which was in any way influenced by religious art will also be obliterated.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Kathryn's mindless one-liner off-topic spam bullshit has been split to here.
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Post by Spacebeard »

Yes, there's plenty of music that's explicitly religious, but remember also that fundies have been engaged in a War on Music ever since the Middle Ages. Ever wonder why Bosch's Hell is dotted with giant musical instruments? It's because fundies associated dancing and dance music with sexuality and thus with sin. This continues into modern times with crusades against rock music. If the fundies consider a piece of music "satanic", I would think it's probably safe from the OP, and the OP doesn't say that all art that's ever been influenced by religious art must also go.

I don't know much about the history of music, but I'd also imagine that there's plenty of non-European music that's not explicitly "inspired by religion".
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Post by Crossroads Inc. »

Reading through this.. Im still confused. The OP metions all "Fundementalism" art and such, but then m,etions the works of Bach, Leonardo, the great Cathedrals, etc.

These are works I would consider NOT to be works of what WE consider "fundimentalists" today... If we are talking about 'modern' fundimentalists, and all work THEY have made, then yes, in a heart beat. As the "artistic" works of the Falwells, Robertsons and Islamo fundies in the past 100 years has been little to nonexistant and have done nothing to actually enrich artistic life.

It seems to me that this will devolve into an argument of semantics unless things are made more clear. Obviously almost everyone from 200 years on back would be considered a "Fundi" by todays standards by common beliefs alone. (yet could you argue someone like DeVinci or Bach was a 'fundi' as we know them?)
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Post by drachefly »

Darth Wong wrote:Don't be so quick to leap to that assumption. Fundamentalism is largely an historical phenomenon, in the sense that new fundies are created by aggressive brainwashing techniques from previous generations of fundies. The kind of rabid mindless faith that we're talking about originated during an era when there was basically no science, no public education, and no practical way for most people to know any better, and perpetuated itself via the mechanism mentioned above.
I wasn't quick to leap to an assumption. I just thought you would have realized it already.
Consider Scientology. It was started in a modern era, when people should have 'known better'; it was started with totally maculate purposes, and progressed accordingly.
Future cult starters can be similarly underhanded, or simply insane. Either of those bypasses 'knowing better'; and either allows the charisma necessary to bring in the sheep.

Or consider Objectivism, which has fundamentalist-style adherents. It was not started as a money-making scheme, but it did strike a chord with some people who felt strong opposition to something they could not have named, it was idealistic, and it was unrealistic.

Now, maybe if the OP specified that fundies would be deconverted and good educational practices were universally implemented, and the human cost of cognitive dissonance was diminished, then sure; but that's not what it said.
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Post by Darth Wong »

drachefly wrote:I wasn't quick to leap to an assumption. I just thought you would have realized it already.
Consider Scientology. It was started in a modern era, when people should have 'known better'; it was started with totally maculate purposes, and progressed accordingly.
Future cult starters can be similarly underhanded, or simply insane. Either of those bypasses 'knowing better'; and either allows the charisma necessary to bring in the sheep.
Seriously, you can't compare scientologists to Christian or Islamic fundamentalism. As much as we mock scientologists, they are a harmless cult compared to those two.
Or consider Objectivism, which has fundamentalist-style adherents. It was not started as a money-making scheme, but it did strike a chord with some people who felt strong opposition to something they could not have named, it was idealistic, and it was unrealistic.
So? That is also not a form of religious fundamentalism.
Now, maybe if the OP specified that fundies would be deconverted and good educational practices were universally implemented, and the human cost of cognitive dissonance was diminished, then sure; but that's not what it said.
I think you are exaggerating the scope of "fundamentalism". Stupidity will always survive, but the special nature of fundamentalist religions drawing their roots from ancient eras is particularly dangerous.
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Post by drachefly »

The purpose was to show that new forms of extremism can be generated ex nihilo, just feeding on ambient weak-minded folk... even when the old-school fundies were soaking almost all of them up.

Who do they need to grow? Anyone in search of a simple answer to a complex question.
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Post by Pick »

This is very difficult. I would get rid of the fundies, but the level of art destroyed as a result would simply be the gauge of my grief. Despite my loathing of religion in general, there are some very beautiful things that were created as a result of it. Seems very odd to me, that.
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Post by Darth Wong »

drachefly wrote:The purpose was to show that new forms of extremism can be generated ex nihilo, just feeding on ambient weak-minded folk... even when the old-school fundies were soaking almost all of them up.
And these new forms of extremism will be less ridiculous than the old ones, simply by virtue of being invented by people with more background knowledge about the way the universe works.

If you set out to create a new religion today, it would not be anywhere near as absurd as the Old Testament.
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Post by Big Phil »

Darth Wong wrote:
drachefly wrote:I wasn't quick to leap to an assumption. I just thought you would have realized it already.
Consider Scientology. It was started in a modern era, when people should have 'known better'; it was started with totally maculate purposes, and progressed accordingly.
Future cult starters can be similarly underhanded, or simply insane. Either of those bypasses 'knowing better'; and either allows the charisma necessary to bring in the sheep.
Seriously, you can't compare scientologists to Christian or Islamic fundamentalism. As much as we mock scientologists, they are a harmless cult compared to those two.
Or consider Objectivism, which has fundamentalist-style adherents. It was not started as a money-making scheme, but it did strike a chord with some people who felt strong opposition to something they could not have named, it was idealistic, and it was unrealistic.
So? That is also not a form of religious fundamentalism.
Now, maybe if the OP specified that fundies would be deconverted and good educational practices were universally implemented, and the human cost of cognitive dissonance was diminished, then sure; but that's not what it said.
I think you are exaggerating the scope of "fundamentalism". Stupidity will always survive, but the special nature of fundamentalist religions drawing their roots from ancient eras is particularly dangerous.
What about Mormons? They started off as a cult and now they have their own State and are spreading to other states. Protestantism (and all fundie offshoots) started this way as well, with a wacky priest who decided to tell the Catholic Church to fuck off. Islam began when a smelly goat fucker started his own religion to get back at those bastard Meccans who kicked him out. All religion begins with people lacking something in their lives and needing somebody or something to tell them how to behave or what to do.

I vote save the art - even if you call off all fundies, new ones will rise to replace them with other insanities. I'd rather have the art.
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Post by Darth Wong »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:What about Mormons? They started off as a cult and now they have their own State and are spreading to other states.
No, Mormons are an offshoot of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism. It's all ancient bullshit.
Protestantism (and all fundie offshoots) started this way as well, with a wacky priest who decided to tell the Catholic Church to fuck off. Islam began when a smelly goat fucker started his own religion to get back at those bastard Meccans who kicked him out. All religion begins with people lacking something in their lives and needing somebody or something to tell them how to behave or what to do.
And all of those ideologies have ancient roots.
I vote save the art - even if you call off all fundies, new ones will rise to replace them with other insanities. I'd rather have the art.
Ah yes, the time-honoured technique of treating assumptions as if they are as real as present-day actualities.
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Post by Big Phil »

Darth Wong wrote:snip
You casually dismissed Scientology but the example is completely valid. A ridiculous guy decides to start a religion... 50 years later he's got a full blown church going. 2000 years from now, who know? Maybe Scientologists launch their own crusade and wipe out all other religions. You are completely underestimating the ability of humans to believe in the idiotic and ridiculous and to behave against their best interests. Just because we have science, technology, etc., doesn't mean that people are any smarter today than they were thousands of years ago.

You feel free to hate all fundies and want to eliminate them... I'll disagree with you because I want the art more than I want the fundies gone, you'll insult me and I'll ignore it... and then we'll all go home and move on with our lives.
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Post by Darth Wong »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:You casually dismissed Scientology but the example is completely valid. A ridiculous guy decides to start a religion... 50 years later he's got a full blown church going. 2000 years from now, who know? Maybe Scientologists launch their own crusade and wipe out all other religions. You are completely underestimating the ability of humans to believe in the idiotic and ridiculous and to behave against their best interests. Just because we have science, technology, etc., doesn't mean that people are any smarter today than they were thousands of years ago.
More knowledgeable = functionally smarter. And you are basing your argument upon nothing more than an assumption. There is no reason to believe that Scientologists will ever start a Crusade, and your Appeal to Ignorance fallacy is certainly no substitute for a reason.
You feel free to hate all fundies and want to eliminate them... I'll disagree with you because I want the art more than I want the fundies gone, you'll insult me and I'll ignore it... and then we'll all go home and move on with our lives.
Nice way of ignoring the fact that your argument doesn't hold water.
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Post by Big Phil »

Darth Wong wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:You casually dismissed Scientology but the example is completely valid. A ridiculous guy decides to start a religion... 50 years later he's got a full blown church going. 2000 years from now, who know? Maybe Scientologists launch their own crusade and wipe out all other religions. You are completely underestimating the ability of humans to believe in the idiotic and ridiculous and to behave against their best interests. Just because we have science, technology, etc., doesn't mean that people are any smarter today than they were thousands of years ago.
More knowledgeable = functionally smarter. And you are basing your argument upon nothing more than an assumption. There is no reason to believe that Scientologists will ever start a Crusade, and your Appeal to Ignorance fallacy is certainly no substitute for a reason.
You feel free to hate all fundies and want to eliminate them... I'll disagree with you because I want the art more than I want the fundies gone, you'll insult me and I'll ignore it... and then we'll all go home and move on with our lives.
Nice way of ignoring the fact that your argument doesn't hold water.

V = Value of religious inspired art
H(F) = Harm caused by Fundamentalists

If you believe V > H(F), then you keep the art
If you believe H(F) > V, then you get rid of the art and the fundies

Since you can't quantify a subjective (value differs from person to person), you can't prove this argument objectively. So why get so riled up when somebody prefers art over getting rid of fundies?
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Post by Talanth »

Darth Wong wrote: Seriously, you can't compare scientologists to Christian or Islamic fundamentalism. As much as we mock scientologists, they are a harmless cult compared to those two.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you meen that in youre vew an extreemly devout scientologist is not a fundimentalist because their actions do not leed to sufering? Just for clarification.
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Post by Darth Wong »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:V = Value of religious inspired art
H(F) = Harm caused by Fundamentalists

If you believe V > H(F), then you keep the art
If you believe H(F) > V, then you get rid of the art and the fundies

Since you can't quantify a subjective (value differs from person to person), you can't prove this argument objectively. So why get so riled up when somebody prefers art over getting rid of fundies?
The harm caused by fundies is real. Examples include pointless persecution for victimless crimes, exacerbation of the AIDS crisis, increased teen pregnancy as a result of pinheaded "abstinence-only" sex ed programs, Al-Quaeda, violent religious and sexual persecution in Islamic fundamentalist nations, etc. The value of art, on the other hand, is purely aesthetic.

But apparently, you're either so stupid or so morally bankrupt that you don't distinguish in value between people dying and "oooh, I think that's pretty".
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Post by Talanth »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:Since you can't quantify a subjective (value differs from person to person), you can't prove this argument objectively. So why get so riled up when somebody prefers art over getting rid of fundies?
I agree. I've always been an art lover, especialy of medivil religiose art and old chirches. I've also never personly experienced any problems with religiose fundimentalists. Nore, as far as I know, have any of my friends or family. So in my own life the loss of art would be far, far worce than the existance of fundimentalists. However I can see the sufering that funimentalists do cause, often all over the news.

One thing that I think a lot of people seem to be forgeting is that, as SancheztheWhaler mentioned, art does have an intrinsic merrit. Looking at a beutiful painting or listning to a beutiful piece of music will create a feeling of happyness and contentedness. especialy, it seems, when the ary and music is relogiose based. So realy its a case of balancing the sum total of the happyness created by the art with the individual acts or misery caused by extreemests and fundimentalists.
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Post by Spacebeard »

Talanth wrote:One thing that I think a lot of people seem to be forgeting is that, as SancheztheWhaler mentioned, art does have an intrinsic merrit. Looking at a beutiful painting or listning to a beutiful piece of music will create a feeling of happyness and contentedness.
Do you really think that the pleasure gained from viewing a painting is comparable to, say, three thousand people dying in a terrorist attack carried out by religious fundamentalists?
especialy, it seems, when the ary and music is relogiose based.
I enjoy Medieval & Renaissance artwork with religious iconography also, but I'm not going to claim that it's more aesthetically pleasing than, say, a portrait by Rembrandt or Hals, an Impressionist landscape, a Japanese ukiyo-e print, or the bust of Philip the Arab, all of which are secular and thus safe from destruction under the OP.
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Post by Talanth »

Spacebeard wrote:Do you really think that the pleasure gained from viewing a painting is comparable to, say, three thousand people dying in a terrorist attack carried out by religious fundamentalists?
I agree. What I meen is that we are trying to balance a "few" thousand dying in a terrorist atack with a "few" million who see one indavidual painting. I interpreted the origional question as asking "which situation would create the greatest sum total of happyness". If interpreted in that way then we must sum up both sides and find which is greatest: A very large number of very small things (happyness by art) or a much smaller number of very large things (missery by fundimentalism).

I can't realy see ho this sum is at all practicaly posable, let alone what the SI units of the final answer would be, so I guess its all down to how much you hate the fundies. :)
Spacebeard wrote:I enjoy Medieval & Renaissance artwork with religious iconography also, but I'm not going to claim that it's more aesthetically pleasing than, say, a portrait by Rembrandt or Hals, an Impressionist landscape, a Japanese ukiyo-e print, or the bust of Philip the Arab, all of which are secular and thus safe from destruction under the OP.
Each to their own as they say. I personly prefer medievil religiose art and almost any art done in the 17th century.
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Post by Big Phil »

Darth Wong wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:V = Value of religious inspired art
H(F) = Harm caused by Fundamentalists

If you believe V > H(F), then you keep the art
If you believe H(F) > V, then you get rid of the art and the fundies

Since you can't quantify a subjective (value differs from person to person), you can't prove this argument objectively. So why get so riled up when somebody prefers art over getting rid of fundies?
The harm caused by fundies is real. Examples include pointless persecution for victimless crimes, exacerbation of the AIDS crisis, increased teen pregnancy as a result of pinheaded "abstinence-only" sex ed programs, Al-Quaeda, violent religious and sexual persecution in Islamic fundamentalist nations, etc. The value of art, on the other hand, is purely aesthetic.

But apparently, you're either so stupid or so morally bankrupt that you don't distinguish in value between people dying and "oooh, I think that's pretty".
Art is purely aesthetic to you - that doesn't mean you are right. As I said, this is subjective, and others feel differently.

The harm caused by religion is certainly real - no argument there. Getting rid of religion, however, won't stop stupid people from being stupid. If you need examples of harm caused for non-religious reasons, look at the Mongol Invasions, the Vietnam War, WWI & WWII, etc.

Talking about victimless crimes, the drug war in the U.S., as stupid as it is, began thanks to economic reasons rather than moral ones. The enslavement of Africans was primarily an economic (and racist) issue at first, and later took on religious overtones.

My argument is very simple - getting rid of religious fundamentalism will not eliminate or substantially reduce hatred, intolerance, crime, prejudice, murder, rape, etc. People will simply find something else to use to justify their behavior - perhaps another religion, nationalism, or something else. Given that I do not believe anything substantial will change, why would I want to get rid of fundamentalists only to see them replaced by something else?

You seem to believe that eliminating fundamentalists will reduce the incidence of this sort of nasty behavior, but you can't prove it except to say that fundamentalism has caused lots of harm... but then so has nationalism, communism, capitalism, fascism, science (it was scientists, not priests, who built the atomic bomb), racism, sexism, etc. If your goal is to eliminate all harm from being caused, why stop with religious fundamentalists?
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Post by Darth Wong »

Talanth wrote:I agree. What I meen is that we are trying to balance a "few" thousand dying in a terrorist atack with a "few" million who see one indavidual painting.
Objective harm vs subjective benefit. No contest.
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Post by Big Phil »

Spacebeard wrote:
Talanth wrote:One thing that I think a lot of people seem to be forgeting is that, as SancheztheWhaler mentioned, art does have an intrinsic merrit. Looking at a beutiful painting or listning to a beutiful piece of music will create a feeling of happyness and contentedness.
Do you really think that the pleasure gained from viewing a painting is comparable to, say, three thousand people dying in a terrorist attack carried out by religious fundamentalists?
The answer here is of course no - I'm sure it would be for most people. However, there is a world of difference between trading a painting for a terrorist attack carried out by religous fundamentalists, and believing that the absence of the current crop of religious fundamentalists will ensure that new ones don't crop up. Not all terrorism is motivated by religion - plenty of terrorists are nationalistic (the Basques, for example) or have political motivations (animal rights terrorism, environmental terrorism).

I see no reason to expect that the elimination of fundamentalists will eliminate any of the negative aspects of human behavior. Something will slide in to replace religious fundamentalism - nature abhors a vacuum after all - and then people will go right ahead and mistreat each other just like they're currently doing in the name of religion.
In Brazil they say that Pele was the best, but Garrincha was better
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