the village idiot

We are in full agreement Felix.

Ti, you are truly awesome.:thumbup:

Yes, and the mods will have to make that call, but stopping the debate is not cool. If they want it to be purely a tree forum then fair do's, but in my view the lounge adds a worthwhile optional element.

"bollox debates" !!?? You need to give that opinion some serious consideration. For sure, not every post consists of startling revelations that we should all take on board, but believe it or not a small amount of common ground has been identified. This is very important. We all know that Matelot likes to provoke, this doesn't mean that all of his input is invalid. I don't like his tone either but he does raise some points that we should be discussing. Please note that we are posting in 'the lounge' as the rules dictate. We are not interjecting our thoughts on the future of humanity into crown reduction threads.

Yes indeed. Many intense fights break out about which is the best water based beverage- Stihl or Sparkling.

If you disagree with someone's reasoning, call it out, try to change their mind. This is really important stuff. Any workable solution to this mess is very likely to be very uncomfortable to a great many people. Banning discussion of these solutions (on a forum where discussion of religion and politics is invited) because they are uncomfortable is wrong and a dangerous precident to set. Once again, it is vital that we talk about these things.

Arbtalk is much more like a town full off tree folk with lots of pubs. In one of the pubs people are discussing religion and politics. If you are in the mood to discuss chainsaws you can go into the chainsaw pub and give the religion/politics pub a miss. The religion/politics pub is pretty packed suggesting that people are happy to spend time there. If you don't like the atmosphere just drink up and move to another watering hole. There are plenty of excellent pubs in Arbtalk town.

Be careful where you go with this David. Having a thread that invites members to discuss religion and politics and then shaming members who discuss religion and politics on it is a bizzare move. These are arguably the most important issues in the world. Just look at what is going on. They are difficult subjects to navigate because they can easily hurt people's feelings but we MUST talk about them in all walks of life. If Steve feels that it is damaging his forum then obviously he must take whatever action he sees fit. I would argue that our queeziness on discussing these topics is landing us in very deep doo doo.

One theory of why we haven't been contacted or visited by any other advanced civilisation in the Universe is that long before any planet's inhabitants get advanced enough to develop the necessary technology they reliably destroy either themselves or their host planet-and by extension themselves. It seems not at all unlikely that we are on the same trajectory. I can imagine a civilisation observing us from another world being totally dumbfounded by how unimaginably stupid we are being. That is until they wipe themselves out of course!

Good evening yourself! I like you too much to descend into another ding dong battle but I think it is worth pointing out that we live in "a very messed up world" significantly as a result of devotion to the same ancient texts that you suggest looking for the answers in. I'd be interested on your thoughts on this also: If you had been born in Egypt say, to Muslim parents and had no exposure to Christian teaching or philosophy, it is almost certain that after your revelation you would be worshipping the Prophet Mohammed with exactly the same fervour that you currently worship Jesus Christ. This is not a dig, I am just genuinely interested to understand how you are so sure that your God is the dude. I have no huge beef with Christianity other than that it makes absolutely no sense to me. I do believe it provides some cover/justification for other more troubling ideologies though such as Islam and think we would be much better off without any of them. Religions divide us and hold humanity back. Without wanting to put words in your mouth, you may well be thinking that I have just not been lucky enough to experience the rapture of feeling God's love and that if I had I would be converted. I am infact quite a spiritual person and have experienced bliss, and feelings of boundless love through meditation. These are very profound experiences and I can see why conditioned people who experience them feel they have been 'touched by God'. I firmly believe these people are jumping to the wrong conclusions.

Hi Ti, I'm sure you would agree that whilst there is plenty of good advice in the bible there is also a great deal of terrible advice. A book dictated or inspired by an all knowing, all loving God should by definition be bloody brilliant cover to cover. The bible is so far from this it should be discounted. There is something wrong when someone can quickly flick through the pages and pages glorifying genocide, child sacrifice and slavery to get the bit about 'loving thy neighbour' and decide to dedicate one's life to it's earth shattering wisdom. The Koran is even worse! Not everyone is a wise as you Ti to only take on board the parts that promote human flourishing.

Would you care to name who you are accusing here?

But that isn't an answer, however understandable in these emotive times, it's a short term retaliation. The only thing stopping radical Islamists from killing us by the thousands is their current lack of access to the technology to hit us from afar. If they get hold of this technology our only hope is that they choose not to use it. The only way to get them to choose not to use it is to change they way that they think. I realise this is almost impossibly difficult, but what option have we got other than to try?

In that case 'our' job must be to put our resources behind moderate muslims who are brave enough to speak up with some degree of clarity and reason within their own communities. These people do exist Encouraging an 'us and them' mentality can only make matters worse.

Why it wouldn't be perfectly crystal clear that they DON'T think like us is beyond me. Immigration is in my view a bit of a side issue. We need to find a way to change the way these people think. It is a travesty that billions of people are taught to value faith over logic and reason.

There may be some hope in the fact that Christianity has more or less managed to transform itself from a cult of human sacrifice into a largely benign curiosity, but on the whole I agree with you- Islam is a whole other (boiling) kettle of fish. It is very difficult to see a solution.

Nice to see some good news for a change. Well done 'huck!

This may well be anathema to Matelot but one option to stop the spread of extremism (and bad faith based ideas in general) might well be to help develop the nations that produce terrorists. Punishing the potential criminals in the UK will surely achieve next to nothing in the long term. We need to try and change the way these people think, globally. There is a well proven correlation between development, reason and stability. Much of the developed world has progressed to a point where religious groups are little more than social clubs- with ever dwindling memberships. "Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. Insofar as there is a crime problem in Western Europe, it is largely the product of immigration. Seventy percent of the inmates of France’s jails, for instance, are Muslim. The Muslims of Western Europe are generally not atheists. Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations’ human development index are unwaveringly religious." Harris, Sam. Letter To A Christian Nation (Kindle Locations 477-483). Transworld. Kindle Edition. The US bucks this trend quite spectacularly. I have no idea why. As a rule, as countries become more developed they become less religious. Interestingly, countries with low religiosity are also the most charitable "both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world." Harris, Sam. Letter To A Christian Nation (Kindle Locations 502-503). Transworld. Kindle Edition. It is surely undeniable that these terrorist attacks are relgiously motivated. If we can help make countries more developed, and make them less religious as a natural consequence, they will attack us less (or not at all) as their primary motive has been removed. We have to stop this problem at source, not just punish the result.

If only he was called Alan. It would be impossible for people to take him seriously. Apologies to all you Alan's out there.

I have no idea, but that is the task ahead of us.

Good evening VI, Long time no see. Didn't Stalin try that? Timon. Hi Ti, Stalin was an un-reasonable egotistical nut job before anything else. Probably not the man for the job!

Until we tackle and irradicate the bad ideas that make these people do what they do we are just pissing in the wind. Locking people up might help a bit, but it won't solve the problem Delusional people are killing us and will carry on killing us because their beloved fantastical holy texts tell them to do so. Unwavering belief in iron age stories written by savages really is the problem here. It is tempting (and perhaps natural) to focus on the people, but it's the ideologies- the bad ideas that are the cause of this madness. Human civilisation will not truly prosper until religious faith is rejected in favour of reason. We know so much better now. Humanity needs to move on.

Ah, so it's you spreading TB to cattle!