Just one month away from 2012's "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day"?

[Gaith]

Do you actually know why we Jews do this, or why Muslims do this? It's quite simple really: we do it to avoid idolatry.

I actually did know that, and I actually respect that avoidance to a degree, though as an atheist, I do find the notion that one can positively identify the creator of the universe to be a wildly non-humble belief.

It's a gesture of humility to say that God is so great he cannot be so limited as to be a human being.

Sure, but I don't see anything humble in then turning around and saying that if anyone, anywhere makes an artistic depiction you wouldn't put in your own place of worship, then you are being personally insulted by that act. Just the opposite, in fact.

I indeed find the notion repellent, but would never claim that it somehow "defamed", or personally insulted me, nor would I claim that Lincoln must never be made fun of. Heck, I laugh heartily at the Lincoln gag in the remade Bedazzled, though it's in undeniably poor taste.

Yeah, okay... that's completely in line with your towering rage in the AL, VH thread last year. Not personally insulted at all.

Well, I certainly never claimed that there was anything blasphemous about slandering Lincoln's memory. You're comparing roast beef with Tuesday, as an old friend of mine likes to say.

 

[horatio83]

You totally missed the point which is that there is a good reason for the rule to not make a picture of God. I am all for irony and satire but not for uneducated, schoolyard-level insults.
Once again, the shift to montheism implies that there are no Gods anymore which are responsible for certain aspects of nature, e.g. a fertility godess to whom you can sacrifice a goat or whatever if there is a drought, but God as a signifier for the law, the absolute and other abstract stuff. Hence the rule to not make pictures of God.

View it from a evolution of culture point of view. First we had stupid pagan religions, then we came up with a far better idea of God and now we are about to leave this notion behind. Why would somebody like you who is on step 3 implicitly advocate that the folks who are on step 2 regress to step 1?

 

[Amaris]

I say if one wants to do it, go ahead and do it. Doesn't make that person any less of an immature, fussy little child who insists on marking up the walls with crayon, knowing that it's wrong.

 

[cooleddie74]

Screw it. If they do it and their car gets set on fire, its windows are broken or slurs are spray painted on its doors and hood then it'll be their own stupid fault just as much as the offended fundie crackpot who committed the vandalism. When you taunt the cobra don't be mad and surprised when the cobra bites you.

 

[Gaith]

First we had stupid pagan religions, then we came up with a far better idea of God and now we are about to leave this notion behind. Why would somebody like you who is on step 3 implicitly advocate that the folks who are on step 2 regress to step 1?

Er, a), I'm not advocating anyone worship images of any human, and b), I don't necessarily agree that monotheism is any better than polytheism, especially when we see so many monotheists asking their "one god" for specific favors and personal intervention in much the same way the ancient pagans did of their various gods.

Screw it. If they do it and their car gets set on fire, its windows are broken or slurs are spray painted on its doors and hood then it'll be their own stupid fault just as much as the offended fundie crackpot who committed the vandalism. When you taunt the cobra don't be mad and surprised when the cobra bites you.

What a profoundly undemocratic and dangerous thing to say. So freedom of speech shouldn't apply when that speech is unpopular? And women who wear short skirts and get sexually assaulted are "asking for it", and are also at fault?

You just compared human beings, who are capable of growth and maturation, to snakes. You are thus implicitly denying their capacity for reason and enlightenment. Just who is really insulting and slandering huge numbers of people here?

 

[cooleddie74]

I doubt the ability of any fundamentalist crackpot in any religion on this planet to reason and think effectively. I just don't want innocent people hurt and killed. Look man, I don't like the conservative Islamist philosophy any more than you do...it's misogynist, homophobic, hateful, bigoted towards other faiths and is anathema to Western, modern democratic thought. But sometimes there are better ways to confront the drooling fundamentalists of this world than deliberately provoking them with images of their deity or prophet. That's all I'm saying. I detest narrow-minded fundamentalism but I detest pointless stick-poking and provocation just as much.

Look towards the methods and opinions of liberal Muslim thinkers like Irshad Manji. The road to a Muslim Reformation is located in that direction.

 

[horatio83]

First we had stupid pagan religions, then we came up with a far better idea of God and now we are about to leave this notion behind. Why would somebody like you who is on step 3 implicitly advocate that the folks who are on step 2 regress to step 1?

Er, a), I'm not advocating anyone worship images of any human, and b), I don't necessarily agree that monotheism is any better than polytheism, especially when we see so many monotheists asking their "one god" for specific favors and personal intervention in much the same way the ancient pagans did of their various gods.

You still miss the point. In Judaism as well as its offsprings you are not supposed to worship the image of God, you are not even supposed to make a picture of God.
There is a lot of crap in these old texts but forbidding to make a picture of God is a great idea. If you expand it to "do not make a picture of your brothers and sisters" you get a tip for how you can love.

On your side on the other hand there is anything but love, just an infantile "let's piss them off for the sake of itself and without actually caring about what this do not make a picture thingy is all about".

I doubt the ability of any fundamentalist crackpot in any religion on this planet to reason and think effectively. I just don't want innocent people hurt and killed. Look man, I don't like the conservative Islamist philosophy any more than you do...it's misogynist, homophobic, hateful, bigoted towards other faiths and is anathema to Western, modern democratic thought. But sometimes there are better ways to confront the drooling fundamentalists of this world than deliberately provoking them with images of their deity or prophet. That's all I'm saying. I detest narrow-minded fundamentalism but I detest pointless stick-poking and provocation just as much.

Look towards the methods and opinions of liberal Muslim thinkers like Irshad Manji. The road to a Muslim Reformation is located in that direction.

Yep, let's make fun of the Pat Robertsons and Khomeinis of this world. They are truly wicked whereas there is nothing wrong with the fictional guys Moses, Jesus or Mohammed.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

...as an atheist, I do find the notion that one can positively identify the creator of the universe to be a wildly non-humble belief.

As an atheist, I find your obsessive need to try and provoke a negative response from religious people analogous to the very intolerant believers you despise, counter to the point of becoming an atheist in the first place, and "wildly non-humble" itself. Pompous atheists like you unfairly give the rest of us a bad name and are an embarrassment, just as pompous and misbehaving religious folk unfairly give their peers a bad name.

Screw it. If they do it and their car gets set on fire, its windows are broken or slurs are spray painted on its doors and hood then it'll be their own stupid fault just as much as the offended fundie crackpot who committed the vandalism. When you taunt the cobra don't be mad and surprised when the cobra bites you.

What a profoundly undemocratic and dangerous thing to say. So freedom of speech shouldn't apply when that speech is unpopular? And women who wear short skirts and get sexually assaulted are "asking for it", and are also at fault?

No one is denying your freedom of speech and the right to behave like a douche. What he is saying is freedom of speech doesn't entail freedom from consequences from independent actors (as opposed to the state). Obviously if any attacks on your person or property were known in advance authorities would try to stop them, and after the fact would try to capture and prosecute the perpetrators, and of course they would be completely at fault for their actions, but that doesn't make you completely blameless from an ethical standpoint either (though not legally).

The comparison to attacks on rape victims is baseless and a poor attempt to cast your opponents in this debate in a negative light. Don't dig yourself deeper just because the consensus here is that you are completely wrong.

You just compared human beings, who are capable of growth and maturation, to snakes. You are thus implicitly denying their capacity for reason and enlightenment. Just who is really insulting and slandering huge numbers of people here?

You for assuming reasoned and enlightened human beings can't understand a simple analogy?

 

[Thestral]

Yeah, okay... that's completely in line with your towering rage in the AL, VH thread last year. Not personally insulted at all.

Well, I certainly never claimed that there was anything blasphemous about slandering Lincoln's memory. You're comparing roast beef with Tuesday, as an old friend of mine likes to say.

Oh please. You may as well have with the way you bleated about how disrespectful it was and spitting on the memory of the Gentle, Humble Lincoln to depict him as a cold-blooded killer. The word "blasphemy" never came up, but the outrage was Pat Robertson-esque. I haven't seen anybody so worked up over a real person's depiction since Ron Paul supporters, or, well, Muslims over Muhammad's.

What a profoundly undemocratic and dangerous thing to say. So freedom of speech shouldn't apply when that speech is unpopular? And women who wear short skirts and get sexually assaulted are "asking for it", and are also at fault?

Stop. Just... god, stop. "You don't wanna draw Muhammad with me? Clearly you think women that get raped deserve it!"

 

[Amaris]

Yeah, okay... that's completely in line with your towering rage in the AL, VH thread last year. Not personally insulted at all.

Well, I certainly never claimed that there was anything blasphemous about slandering Lincoln's memory. You're comparing roast beef with Tuesday, as an old friend of mine likes to say.

Oh please. You may as well have with the way you bleated about how disrespectful it was and spitting on the memory of the Gentle, Humble Lincoln to depict him as a cold-blooded killer. The word "blasphemy" never came up, but the outrage was Pat Robertson-esque. I haven't seen anybody so worked up over a real person's depiction since Ron Paul supporters, or, well, Muslims over Muhammad's.

What a profoundly undemocratic and dangerous thing to say. So freedom of speech shouldn't apply when that speech is unpopular? And women who wear short skirts and get sexually assaulted are "asking for it", and are also at fault?

Stop. Just... god, stop. "You don't wanna draw Muhammad with me? Clearly you think women that get raped deserve it!"

Oh, I'm certain he can get much more histrionic.

 

[M'Sharak]

What fun it would be if Gaith gave a "provocative" thread and no one attended.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

...as an atheist, I do find the notion that one can positively identify the creator of the universe to be a wildly non-humble belief.

As an atheist, I find your obsessive need to try and provoke a negative response from religious people analogous to the very intolerant believers you despise, counter to the point of becoming an atheist in the first place, and "wildly non-humble" itself. Pompous atheists like you unfairly give the rest of us a bad name and are an embarrassment, just as pompous and misbehaving religious folk unfairly give their peers a bad name.

This. The pose is tiresome, whether it's coming from Dawkins or some kid on the Internet.

 

[Stardate]

I smell bullshit. In what way is a depiction of Mohammed an "offense to violent and tyrannical people"?
I am sure that there are plenty of ordinary and peaceful Muslims who did not like these depictions just as I am sure that there are plenty of ordinary and peaceful Christians who did not like this Monty Python movie.

If you wanna offend violent and tyrannical religious people you target Christians, Muslim or Jewish reactionaries and fundamentalists and not Jesus, Moses or Mohammed. I am a hardcore atheist but I totally fail to see why I should make fun of any of these three fictional guys. It's not like they are some kind of nasty assholes that deserve it. Now if you wanna attack Ratzinger, Pat Robertson, Nasrallah or Chomeini I am all for it ... but insulting religious characters just for the sake of it? Nah, plain dickery isn't what secularism is meant to be about.

R u claming that these 3 guys r fitctional and not real. There r more evidance about jesus existence then Julius Seaser, Alexander the Great and not only from the gospel writers as we have jewish historian and roman pagan historian talking about Jesus and they never clamied that jesus was fictional. That bs in my book. Jesus was a real person and not fitctional. I cant say the same thing regarding Moses and Muhammed. I think we have torah telling Moses story and Muhammed story comes from the Koran and hadiths. Both religious source. But i think all three was real and not fitctional.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

R u claming that these 3 guys r fitctional and not real. There r more evidance about jesus existence then Julius Seaser, Alexander the Great...

Uh...no. Says who?

 

[doubleohfive]

The original idea seems like a big risk just because Islam forbids Muhammad from being depicted at all. So how could that be anything but an insult or dare to Muslims?

It's just more of the stupid Western attitude that because "obviously" Islam is inferior to us, and also the "enemy," we can do and say whatever we want with no context or consideration for the meaning and origin of the matter being discussed. Regardless of the OP's original idea to also target Christian and Jewish luminaries as well, it's just a bad fucking idea, no two ways around it.

Gaith, are you really that backward thinking that you thought this kind of a thread would be a good idea?

 

[FlyingLemons]

Sure, but I don't see anything humble in then turning around and saying that if anyone, anywhere makes an artistic depiction you wouldn't put in your own place of worship, then you are being personally insulted by that act. Just the opposite, in fact.

There are situations where sometimes people are oversensitive to a book such as the Satanic Verses or something like that - the author didn't intend to insult but fell foul of someone.

Then there's "Everyone Draw Mohammad Day" which deliberately sets out to provoke people, which is different. Most Muslims just carry on with life and ignore it, so then the "Draw Mohammad" people then try and make it more outrageous until they get a response and then scream pathetically about how you can't comment on Islam and it's against freedom and democracy and stuff.

Some atheists choose to be particularly vocal about how religion is rammed down their throats all the time, and then go and try and actively provoke responses from religions even if most adherents of said religion would rather avoid it. The funny thing is that most liberal adherents of a faith will often agree with campaigns for secularism and free speech, but find the shrill stance of some totally off-putting.

The next time, for instance, I see a thread by a militant atheist about "OMG they're ramming Jesus down our throats" on some really minor issue no-one cares about I'm just going to laugh, as suddenly it's not so funny when the boot is on the other foot.

 

[Stardate]

R u claming that these 3 guys r fitctional and not real. There r more evidance about jesus existence then Julius Seaser, Alexander the Great...

Uh...no. Says who?

historic document about Jesus r dozen more then life of Seaser and Alexander also look up roman historian Taitus, letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan and Jewish historian Josephus. Also critics of Christ in first centuries never question the extiance of Christ at all. So to say Jesus was fitctional dosent hold water.

 

[Kemaiku]

 

[Pingfah]

R u claming that these 3 guys r fitctional and not real. There r more evidance about jesus existence then Julius Seaser, Alexander the Great...

Uh...no. Says who?

historic document about Jesus r dozen more then life of Seaser and Alexander also look up roman historian Taitus, letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan and Jewish historian Josephus. Also critics of Christ in first centuries never question the extiance of Christ at all. So to say Jesus was fitctional dosent hold water.

You know, we actually have books written by Julius Caesar. Quite a few of them

 

[Locutus of Bored]

R u claming that these 3 guys r fitctional and not real. There r more evidance about jesus existence then Julius Seaser, Alexander the Great...

Uh...no. Says who?

historic document about Jesus r dozen more then life of Seaser and Alexander