There goes the neighborhood - Tunisia Edition

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by BleedBurgundy

Might want to broaden your frame of reference a bit. Once you do, I'm sure you'll find plenty of violent behavior attributable to the western religions you mentioned. (hmm... Crusades? Salem witch trials? Catholic persecution of scientists)

Of course you're right, Christians do nothing but perpetrate violence on others. Nice you needed to reach back hundreds of years for your references.

And regarding the US, let's cut the shit. Any dollar that makes its way into the ME is sent with the underlying purpose of subverting their chosen way of life in favor of the western style which we, in our infinite wisdom, have decided to force upon the rest of the world. If they want to live under an Islamist government, that's their right. We don't have the moral authority to get involved. If we had abstained from being so goddamned proactive in the affairs of other nations, there's a good chance that there would never have been a 9/11. Just because we send some funds their way does not mean we have the right to interfere.

Any interference/funding in the ME has a lot more to do with secular U.S. interests (goodwill/positive outreach are generally better for business than violence) that promoting a religious agenda.

With regards to the violence we're discussing, it can be boiled down to two simple factors:

1) religion provides the moral authority to do violence against those who have beliefs contrary to yours. (contrasted with agnostics and atheists who don't have any supernatural father figure to tell them it's alright to go mass murder each other)

2) the US has repeatedly ****ed with these people in such various and obscenely short sighted ways that we are now collectively reaping what we have sewn.

Those two pieces combined result in what we are experiencing now. Impossible to deny.

While we're cutting through shit, let's cut through your shit. You're quite anti-religious and paint with a very broad brush in your negative (and very condescending) statements against those who are religious. While you focus on the violence done by religious extremists, or those who manipulate people using religion, you never mention the vast good people who are religious do everyday in the name of their God/religion.

And while agnostics/atheists may not have a "supernatural father figure" that tells them to commit murder, those that want to commit violence for secular reasons (money/power/statism) don't have any moral compass to hold them back from mass murder. For example; tens of millions murdered by Communist regimes such as the USSR, China, Cuba, etc. Japan's persecution of Christians in the 1600-1800s, Mexico's persecution in the early 1900s.

Look at the violence in U.S. society today, most of it is over $$$, drugs, etc....purely secular. It's pretty old to hear athetists/agnostics bash religion every chance they get with weak arguments.