Hating on religious people is a defence mechanism for the insecure.
It allows idiots like yourself to decide that you're automatically better than the rest of us.

On any other site, ingnorant tools like yourself would be torn apart. Thank science you're on funnyjunk.

That was radical Islam. A small group of just one religion.
That's like saying "Some cars have defective breaks. We should all stop driving".

-The crusades you're talking about were taken up in response to a call for aid from the Byzantine Empire against Turkish expansion into Anatolia. They weren't motivated by "herp derp let's go kill muslims lolol."

-9/11 was an action taken in response to the mass poverty and starvation that UN sanctions caused to Iraq. Caused by bitter resentment towards America. Not motivated by religion.

-The KKK is about racial purity in America. Religion does not play nearly as big of a factor into their actions as race does.

-Only a few Catholic priests were pedophiles. Pedophilia is also not exclusive to the Catholic priesthood.

-Witch trials started out as witch hunts but only got as widespread, extreme, and brutal as they did because people used them as excuses to act on grudges/steal their neighbor's land.

-You probably got me on the Spanish Inquisition. I'm too lazy to look it up.

-The Holocaust was carried out on the Jews because they were Jewish, not because Hitler was Catholic. He developed a deep hatred of Jews due to life events, not religious dogma. Also, Jews weren't the only ones put in concentration camps. Anyone deemed "undesirable" was.

The people in power had it great during the Dark Ages. Total control. It was to their advantage to maintain the status quo, including suppressing new technology and ideas. Religion played a part, but I doubt a lack of religion would have made a difference. It was more about the people in power wanting to stay in power.

Let's completely ignore the fact that the dark ages came about after the fall of the Roman Empire and Europe was localized with no centralized body of government. Lets also forget that the Germanic people invaded from the east.

Religion did not create the dark ages. Christianity just happened to be the only pillar that survived the fall of Rome.

Christianity didn't even become relevant for at 500 years after the fall of Rome because they were still trying to get their shit together and even then the Renaissance was only 300-400 years away.

I know people don't like religion (I don't even practice any), but you can't blame religion on everything.

People will find any reason to kill eachother.
Religion is one of them. If ceased to exist they'd just find another.
The idea that a world with no religion would be perfect or even better is naive.

also holy wars

How did religion lead to this?

muslims, bombing twin towers
muslim is a religion, i am never anon, just saying stuff

But the Qu'ran does not preach destroying the Twin Towers. They did not attack the U.S. because of their religion. They attacked us because America had been fucking around in the Middle East for over 60 years.

9/11 had nothing to do with religion.

What no one has ever been able to answer is who in history a Christian living in the Ottoman Empire(Main Religion Islam) was more tolerated than a Protestant living in a Catholic country.

Terrorists attack in the name of Islam.
"Lol, Islam had nothing to do with it"

They attacked us because we had bases in their land. Americans would be fucking pissed off if China set up a base in Texas. If America did the same exact thing Al Qaeda did to China would the Chinese be saying "Fuck those Christians and Jews".

No that's absurd.

Yes the people in the Middle East are very religious, but them attacking us has nothing to do with religion.

90% of the people in Afghanistan do not even know that the Twin Towers were attacked by radical Muslims, all they see is a foreign country invading their land.

People always try to act like the World Trade Center was a legitimate and rational target. I honestly don't see how someone could rationalize that. If your people are pushed to the breaking point by another's military you would attack that military. Not 3000 civilians that had nothing to do with it. Civilians are never an actual target to civilized people.

I often see Ron Paul make the same argument; that we would react the same way had it been the other way around. We absolutely wouldn't. Many nations have been "occupied" throughout history. Muslims seem to be the only ones that react to this by killing civilians.

How can you say islam has nothing to do with it? They yell "Allahu Akbar" before they kill. They "convert" those that they capture to Islam. They call us "infidel" and call for the rest of the world to join them or die. All that they do is in the name on their religion. What else we could have done to provoke them is an afterthought.

So when Germany bombed the shit out of British civilians during WWII? Obviously they weren't Muslim, They were all God fearing Christians. Can you justify the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians when we dropped Nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I don't know about you, but I think America is a pretty civilized society especially back in the 1940's

Why didn't our military just invade Japan and face their military head to head?

You are missing what I am saying. I am saying that "ISLAM IS NOT THE REASON THEY HATE US". What about when America indoctrinated the Native Americas or the Inquisition in Europe when Christians actually killed those that converted from Judaism or Islam.

Answer me this, In the past how come it was safer for a Christian to live in the Ottoman Empire, than it was for a Protestant to live in a Catholic nation. Christians had equal rights in the Ottoman Empire, but in France, Protestants were treated as scum of the Earth. It is not only about religion.

We provoked the attack. There is no reason they should hate us. Why aren't they flying planes into Swedish buildings? They aren't Muslim.

They say "God Wills It"
We say "Freedom Demands it"

Most of your questions could be answered by cracking a history book.
-Germany originally only bombed military targets. They accidently hit one civilian target, so England started bombing civilian targets in Germany and they responded with night raids on English Cities.
-Nuking Japan was the lesser of two evils. Invading would have caused many more casualties. Everyone with a basic knowledge of history knows that. The alternative was firebombing the entire country. Also, Japan had their own nuclear program and intended to nuke us. So don't feel bad for them.
-The Ottomans allowed others to live in the cities they conquered so that they could appear to be the good guys while invading all their neighboring countries. If they had treated the Christians as they do now, the nations of Europe would have heeded the Pope's call to retake Constantinople and cut off the Ottoman trade system.

It's not hard to provoke animals. More civilized people have seen far worse and not resorted to killing innocent civilians. I really hate the Ron Paul; "We deserved 9/11 because we're mean" doctrine.

The terrorist attacks did what they were meant to do, incite terror. Those that live in the Middle East aren’t advanced militarily at all--except Israel. Do you expect them to face and Empire head on?

You keep mentioning Ron Paul and it is probably because of my picture, his ideas have been secondary throughout this conversation. Ron Paul doesn’t believe that we deserved to have been attacked. He believes that 9/11 could have been avoided if we weren’t over throwing dictators and being constantly at war to benefit special interest while paying lip service to freedom.

We would have never been attacked if we just left the Middle East alone.

I'll correct the first part for you. Britain accidentally attacked Berlin which provoked Germany and in my opinion cost them the Germany the war. Rather than target military targets they went after cities like London. Germany attacked civilians for vengeance.

Firebombing was not an alternative; it is what we had been doing for the most part. In fact, Firebombing claimed the lives of even more civilians than dropping both nukes. Our two main decisions were to drop the nukes or do a full scale invasion of Japan. It is still the death of civilians; this is something that should never be down played.

As for the Ottoman Empire, I literally mean that the Muslims that ruled the Ottoman Empire did not persecute against other religion and they also didn’t force conversions. Remember, we are talking about how religion plays a part of all of this. Also, giving Christians all these “Extraterritorial” rights actually lead to the down fall of the Ottoman Empire because it would eventually give Europeans so much clout in their Empire.

You claim that the Muslims aren’t civilized, but we must also remember that being civilized is actually different depending where you live. Johaan Herder, a German philosopher, says that the culture, language, and policy is based on where you live and forcing people to adhere to foreign ideology never works. After Europe became stabile and the pope rallied for the crusades it became clear that the people they were fighting were not uncivilized. The Muslims were far more advanced in the sciences, medicine, and philosophy. They were able to translate the writings of Aristotle.

Now let me try to wrap everything together neatly. This whole conversation was about how religion played a role in 9/11. Rather than bomb two cities, why couldn’t we have bombed military bases instead? You also keep mention that civilized people have experienced far worse, but there are just as many examples that show that "civilized" people have killed citizens

>Implying that planes are the only way to kill civilians

fine, talk about the "holy" wars, no matter what, the anon is right in some areas, withought the battles and wars cause of debated religions, we would be aproxamately a thousand years ahead in technology

oh, and I'm leaving for a bit, got to go to work so after this message is recieved to funnyjunk, I'm logging off :D

The basis of what anon said was Muslims did 9/11

But what people seem to forget is that religion was one of the only pillars left in Europe that survived the collapse of the Roman Empire. Without Christianity, it is very likely that Europe would have remained localized because there was no central entity that the people could gather around.

You'll probably see this when you get back so I hope work wasn't to bad.

what i'm thinking, religion is good, as long as you don't think your beliefs are superior, the radical muslims, thought their beliefs were superior, yes, radical muslim is a small percent, and yes in muslim religion its to not kill

sidenote, christianity almost brought a complete end to paganism, pagans found many herbal recipes which variants of are used in meds to this day
pagan is a religion, is it bad, nope
did many die in the attempt to "convert" them to their religion, among them destroying pagan property

st. patricks day is not a celebration of beer and the likes, but rather the convertion of thousands of people in ireland to their religion, "cause it was right"

yes that is one of the only pillars left
a central entity can be thought of as either
a. a will (like a will for people to stay together)
b. a singler system of entities or singular entity with higher than normal power
c. a person with higher than normal power, a monarch if you will
for the king, they could have gathered around that, thor the singular system of entities, thats belief in many gods for one purpose, and yet it would still be united, will to survive is the least likely to work, cause it is chaotic, not random, but chaotic

i don't think the anon is thinking that religion is the cause at whole, but rather any of the religions that have 1 singular god (this leaves 100 million religions open)

tl;dr without christianity, millions of structures would still be around, modern medicine would be perfect (right now imperfect), technology would be way ahead right now, probly (80%), but, more cause by christianity being shoved down those of other beliefs

i do believe religion is fine, and lack of, you can describe your religion/lack of, just don't thing your is superior/you have to convert them to save them/shove it down others throat and you'll be good. if afterlife judgement exists, you will not be judjed by what you believed in, but by how you acted :D


Work was ok

Glad to hear work was okay. I agree with most of what you have said but when I mean "Bring everyone under one entity" I mean that the people of Europe were able to rally around the Church which unified them. I am not referring to God, god, gods or goddesses.

Also, I believe that technology would not actually be as far ahead as many people think. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it took Christianity 500 years to even gain enough clout to unify Europe under a central institution. By this time the Renaissance was only 300-400 years away. Europe was very localized and there were very few central governing bodies after the fall of Rome, but many people attribute the slow technological improvement to Christianity.

Also, when it comes to medicine, I end up sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but it isn't the pharmaceutical companies job to cure you. Their goal is make money; they can't make money if everyone is cured.

i don't nelieve as far as some people for ahead in technology, nut we would still be a little ahead
technically, the pagans when finiding when certain herbs were mixed did what, they didn't do it for money, they did it for senses and cures, ect.
pretty much, yeah, if christianity never existed, those componies would have never existed cause we would have cure those things long before, therefore diseases all die out, therefore no need

and i unfortunately no first hand how the meds they give you will not cure certain things, i have to get off my "new" meds for my adhd, cause, i was having psychotic thoughts, and a total of 3 voices in my head :D
so yeah, same goes to psychiatrists, when they say, its rare and therefore needs to be corrected, their lying, if its that rare, they'ld be out of jobs :D

i have to agree with this anon