Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Recently a commenter posted a raft of figures supposedly establishing as fact that large segments of followers of the Muslim faith are supporters of terrorist violence. The commenter took the figures from an anti-Islamic hate website. The figures themselves are compiled on Muslim Opinion … Continue reading “Damned Lies, Statistics, and Muslims”
Chapter one of The Christ Conspiracy [CC] is titled, reasonably, “Introduction”. In this chapter Murdock (known at the time as Acharya S) discusses history. Now my primary love as a student was history. I am still buying and reading books on history — ancient, medieval, modern, western, eastern, global, local. When I travel I often … Continue reading “Review – Part 2 – of Acharya S’s “The Christ Conspiracy””
Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne, and no doubt many other atheists have landed especially hard blows against the Muslim religion recently, prompted specifically by the recent wave of deadly protests over the trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims. So here are my two bits. Sam Harris dismisses the idea that murderous violence of Muslim rioters … Continue reading “All this Muslim business”
How irrelevant is all this shite about Paul and the gospels.
The following is from Alcanaanite’s Blog (Monzer Zimmo has kindly allowed me to re-post it here) Dan Gardner: The not so great Islamist menace Posted on 2011/01/06 by Alcanaanite Two millennia ago, there was a Jewish Palestinian from Nazareth by the name of Jesus who once said: “The truth will set you free.” Sooner or later, the truth will … Continue reading “The not so great Islamist menace”
September 11 came 5 to 7 days late for the Palestinian refugees in 1982. It is a most telling indictment that so much can be made of a September massacre of Westerners when up till 2001 the West scarcely registered a damn about massacres of Arabs and others, such as the slaughter of Arab civilians … Continue reading “Sept. 11: A Day Without War”
As long as we tolerate any public attention directed at the Moslem faith itself in response to terror attacks against our western nations and those our governments support, we will be allowing the real cause of those terror attacks to continue unchecked. We will even be playing into the hands of those responsible for the … Continue reading “The worst thing about us being anti-Islamic bigots”
If we want to understand religiously backed terrorism that “they” commit, we might first need to appreciate what our own religious heritage has contributed to the mix. The following is another by Gilad Atzmon. Jewish Ideology and World Peace by Gilad Atzmon Monday, June 7, 2010 at 11:41AM ” …then you must destroy them totally. Make … Continue reading “Jewish Ideology and World Peace by Gilad Atzmon”
I have begun to ready my second Chris Hedges book, this one, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, and have even more deeply mixed feelings about it than I had for American Fascists. It was not what I expected. I had expected a more philosophical treatise about atheism per se, but it’s nothing like that. I … Continue reading “Why it would be a good thing to humanize Hitler”
Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has analyzed suicide bombings internationally since the 1980s. In Dying to Win he demonstrates that the earliest case of modern suicide terrorism was carried out by mixtures of Islamists, Christians and Socialists without any particular allegiance to religion in Lebanon. In Sri Lanka … Continue reading “Dying to Win. What Makes Chechen Women So Dangerous?”
updated 20th May 2008 Listed here are news sources that target Palestinian affairs, with an emphasis on the Palestinian media and viewpoints. Most are based in Palestine. Some are run by or in partnership with Palestinians living outside Palestine. One is run by “Israeli anti-occupation activists.” I have in most cases copied a site’s blurb … Continue reading “Palestinian news sources“
Last update: 6.10 am [+10 GMT] 20th May 2008 A correspondent has posted in comments an ADL list of “major attacks” by Palestinians against Israelis. The list is intended to demonstrate the genocidal intentions of “the Palestinians” (not any particular organization/s among Palestinians, but “the Palestinians” and “the Palestinian government” (whatever that means). The list … Continue reading “Response to ADL propaganda, “Major Attacks Against Israel””
Leaderless Jihad Another MHR (“most highly recommended”) Podcast of a Late Night Live (LNL) program on ABC Radio National (only available online another few weeks). Dr Marc Sageman, an expert on terrorism and counter-terrorism, uses historical analogies to argue that Islamic jihadism does have a limited shelf life. He believes that the zeal of jihadism … Continue reading “Leaderless Jihad”
Since we’re the good guys we’ve done nothing so bad as to deserve all the headaches we have to put up with from Islamic terrorists and the bad guys in the Middle East. When the bad guys wearing the dark skins and having the wrong religion say that the root cause of all the strife … Continue reading “When Popeye David beat flabby Goliath and called it a ‘miracle’”