Can Religious Leaders Redeem the Future of the World?

Re: # 64

Thanks for sharing your intellectual endeavor but hasn't it proven in your face, time and again, that "Shocks & awes", "agent oranges", "depleted uraniums", "mothers of all bombs", your favorite "daisy cuuters", "thermobarics" and "be all you can bes" do not work. These are the classic examples of the dance and prance of the weak horse. Ideas and ideology cannot be "killed" with bombs; ideas and ideologies can only be replaced with better ones. Had you had any better ideas and ideologies you wouldn't have needed the daisycutters in the first place. That is what I am trying to humbly submit in my last few posts.

Re: # 65

urstruly,

don't act dumb - you already know about the better ideas and ideologies ..... you spelled them out in your earlier post : Capitalism and Democracy .....

....... and don't give this bullshit about atheism and the lack of morality - i haven't met a single 'religious' who had any moral values - person starting with adam who screwed eve to get us kicked out of heaven, a senile old man who slept with his wife's maid to create our tribe, and a philanderer whose sexual antics have made us the laughing stock of the world .......

should read "i haven't met a single 'religious' person who had any moral values"

Re: # 66

I think you need to get out more. You have one life to live; why spend it like a frog in the well.

GT: #58
The two sides do not agree because they are not talking to each other. Each of them is paranoid of the other. We are making the usual presumptions and holding on to them. Many people do understand that its not my world and your world; it is our world. If we destroy it in the zeal of conquering it, all of us lose. We are sitting on the threshold of a nuclear holocaust.
Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell had published a manifesto in the 1950s drawing attention to the great danger that humanity is facing. I am appending a couple of extracts from it for the Chowk readers. Hope they'll empathize with the danger that all of us are facing.

"Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.
The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term "mankind" feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly. And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are prohibited...
..................
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 68

urstruly,

... i have been trying to invite you 'out' for years now - it is you who is stuck in flint ....

Re: # 69

gill sahib,

"There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings"

.... it is a noble thought but i don't think it will work with people who think that happiness is a pagan concept, all that we need to know is in 'the book', and wisdom is the domain of bearded fools who pore over the book ..... it is also hopeless to talk to people who love death more than we love life and want to get to heaven in a hurry so that they can get it on with seventy virgins ...... and i am really not sure that they consider infidels and apostates like you as human beings .........

........ it is a hopeless cause .... the battle lines are clearly drawn and it will be a fight to the finish .. luckily, we have bigger and better arms than the poor meccans ......

Gill Sahib, when the kaffirs like China and the india re ready to take over the world in teh next 50 years, shouldn' tthe maulvis be sending flowers to them instead of teh pope?

GT #61 you write Urstruly etc. can only accept peace under their own terms and they are honest about it

While the logic-challenged can be excused for making such a an odd statement, you sir are not logic-challenged and so cannot be excused on that count.

What is "honest" about talking about armaggedon between the US and the muslim world using an anonymous nic? Between Hamidm and Urstruly, common sense would say that it is Hamidm who is being honest, and Urstruly who is the fake. I say this for the following reason:

Both Hamidm and Urstruly chose to leave Pakistan and come and live in the US, work and raise their families here. Hamidm looks at the positive side, Urstruly can only talk about the negatives, and bad mouth the country he has chosen to live in. It doesnt take a genius to figure out which one of the two is honest, and which one is dishonest.

The above begs the question - Why have you chosen to encourage Urstruly by referring to his bad mouthing of the US as being dishonest? Thanks in advance for your answer.

correction to #73: the question to GT in the last para. should have been " Why have you chosen to encourage Urstruly by referring to his bad mouthing of the US using an anonymous nic as being honest? "

#74 Posted by tahmed32:

tahmed sahib, Gill sahib and others:

Let us not get bogged down with what I have to say about urstruly. Though, let me remind you that US citizens have a right to criticize their country and their structure of governance. Let me instead put forth a disturbing proposition.

The problem put forth by Einstein etc. is well understood. If "humanity" means the same thing to every group then recourse to just "humanity" is the solution. I believe that "humanity" does not mean the same thing to all groups. Hence, recourse to "humanity" MAY not be the solution.

GT you have hit upon the problem (or rather stumbled onto it or rather still stated it) by the use of two words "good" & "bad". In the world of urstruly's everything he holds dear is good and all else is bad. (I respect urstruly a nice person and a remarkably honest as far as his "little world" goes (perhaps dishonest in the sense TAhmed32 states below - but that is not the issue here).

The point about "good" and "bad" is about how closed your mind is to rationale and reason. If "good" and "bad" are closed definitions, and compact (and completely inscribed (note not circumscribed)) within the a fixed framework you end up with the near fascist harangue of the Urstruly kind you have seen below. There is redemption is there is circumscribing (using the geometric analogy - you have room to wriggle).

When you are faced with the new, and want reassurance that the world is still flat you reach for the "inscribing" option. That is from where all their "you kafir" "your murtid" "you munaafiq" and other torrents of bouquets come from.

It is often the case that when people follow an inscribing approach to life they end up in a cul de sac from which there is often no reprieve (by no reprieve i mean - no progress of thought/intellect and development of potential). This is something the ancient greek understood reasonably well, and the modern atheist Christians and jews and hindus and buddhists understand very well (the very same people Urstruly reserves the most vitriol for). That is why they will leave behind the inscribing zealots (of whatever hue).

That is why these guys who wrote that letter are oafs and the people who reply, if at all they do, do so only out of politeness for the effort these guys have gone through in putting this epistle together. For this epistle is meaningless, and in fact does not take forward human thought - there is really no contribution and or anything new in there. It is same old same old.


This is precisely the reason why I asked Gill in #2 whether he thought it was really a clash of civilisations or not? For this is not a clash of civilisations - for this to happen you need two similarly matched sets of human thought to meet. that aint happening here.

#75 humanity - might mean different things to different groups of people. But if there is a "circumscribing" of the definitions there will be an intersection of ideas and views (overlapping) from where progress can be made.
The absolutist positions taken as a result of the a lack overlapping is the issue. ONe group wants the total annihilation of the other group. In such an eventuality no group can afford to let their guard down - that is why you have the current situation. One group let its guard down for too long and got it in the neck - and this group has removed its gloves and gone for the daisy cutter option!

Re: # 74

tahmed,

you ask GT: " Why have you chosen to encourage Urstruly by referring to his bad mouthing of the US using an anonymous nic as being honest? "

.... it is obvious, isn't it?

#77 Posted by Dash_Dot:

Sir/Madam,

I shall not single out urstruly sahib or George Bush. It has to do with our intellect. Classical logical systems are binary in nature: "good / bad", "right / wrong" etc. Even Einstein could not accept a different system.

Different systems of logic are being used in natural sciences (I am told with better results), it lies on the frontier of research in economics today, poets and painters perhaps always used it. Such systems of logic will take generations to percolate down to common people like me. And by that time we may all be happily dead :)

Please do not take any of the above seriously.

Dear Dash_Dot,

My post to you (#79) may sound a bit fuzzy. So let me give you a concrete example.

When you see a sand dune, you know it is a sand dune. You can differentiate between what is a sand dune and what is not a sand dune. Now try the following thought experiment. (1) You get a truck-load of sand. (2) pick one grain from the truck and put it on your porch. (3) Keep repeating the process counting the number of grains. (5) What is the number of that grain before which you did not have a dune but after which you have a dune?

Do you see a small proble with binary logic now?