Amy, you can cluck about these little suckers until the day you die, and you'll never be wrong... Not exactly wrong.

When modernity comes to the places where they thrive and their audiences have a better selection of men and women to admire (industrialists, educators, pop stars, athletes, politicians, etc.), you won't have to be so snotty about them.

Meanwhile, shrieking that 'They're religious!!!' seems kind of beside the point.

You came to mind when rereading this February Postrel piece yesterday:

In 1976, Gallup for the first time asked people whether they had had a “born again” experience in which they committed themselves to Jesus Christ. It was a concept largely unknown to the popular media before the emergence of Jimmy Carter.

The answer was 35 percent. More than a third of the population. More than the number of Catholics. Even a narrow definition of evangelical Christians puts them at nearly a quarter of the population. Yet in the consensus picture of America -- the picture created by people Murray assures us came from all sorts of diverse backgrounds -- these born-again Christians were completely invisible: not mocked, not dismissed, not attacked. Invisible. Unknown. Utterly foreign. The gulf between the old elite, who had never heard of evangelicals, and the new elite, who don’t know many, is not as great as Murray would have us believe.

I mean, do you really think the Koran is worse than the Bible? Yet Google Earth shows about 10 Christian Churches in Venice Beach, and zero Mosques. What are you afraid of?

Well, if you reject Christianity, you may be shunned and told you're going to hell.
If you reject Islam, Islam teachings say that Muslims can (and should) kill you, the non-believer. That's not hype.

Other than that, no problems.

If you really want to fight this and win, drop WalMarts on them - with totally Western, "ordinary" inventories. Flat screen TVs, food, men's and women's clothing in the same store, a hundred steps and you have it all.

A consumer society notices that it isn't religion that brings them the fun things in life, or even basic health care - not at all.

Crid,
I mostly disagree with Amy on issues of religion, but on this she is 100 percent correct. The Koran is worse and it is dangerous. Those who seek to follow it to the letter are the ones who bomb buildings and knife people in the streets because of cartoons. Where else do you think they get these ideas?

Rad,
If bringing them the joys of modern living was all it would take, then how do you explain that video Amy posted the other day? Those people chanting, "UK police burn in hell" were in the middle of the UK and spoke with English accents. In other words, these were people who have beenvliving in the West and still want Sharia. Do not confuse these people with frustrated communists tired of waiting for the next Five Year Plan to include toilet paper. They don't want what you and I want. We share no common ground with these people.

> Well, if you reject Christianity, you may be
> shunned and told you're going to hell.

Exactly. That's what happens TODAY. And it took nearly two millenia of fighting, including outright warfare, to tamp their enthusiasm... They've been beaten into submission. Uniformly so; even hypermodern arriviste faiths (Moonies, Scientologists) know better than to get too mouthy towards those who don't share the belief.

That's what'll happen with these incoming nimrods as well... But not only will they be be lured into lives of Western depravity through the usual mechanisms –I've just met a girl named Maria and all that– but they'll be sucked in by all the other tits-out attractions that we have to offer. Cell phones! Directv! Rolling Stones conc err, Bieber concerts! Healthcare! Food! Ipads!

You live in the most religious nation in the world. Because it's uniformly tolerant, you're none too concerned about the Baptists next door, even if they're all twitchy about the Lutherans around the block.

> If you really want to fight this and win, drop
> WalMarts on them

You sound like that other guy. The process can't be rushed with any particularly fantasy of a Saturday shopping day well-spent (you do NAPA, Eric does Home Depot, I go Guitar Center). The one certainty is that as they acclimate to good livin', their aesthetics will strike us as inane.

Sheep mommy, those people didn't grow up with it.

And, of course, their parents told them what religion to have.

"Dropping WalMarts" is still cheaper than bombs.

China is still like North Korea, is it?

"If you really want to fight this and win, drop WalMarts on them...A consumer society notices that isn't religion that brings them the fun things in life"

A man was trampled to death by a crowd of crazed WalMart shoppers on Long Island on Black Friday of 2008. Amy blogged about it. I recall a lot of pundits pontificating about the sickness of American consumer society at the time.

Four years earlier, three men were trampled to death by a crowd of crazed Saudi shoppers who'd been camped out waiting for the opening of an Ikea store in Jeddah:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3618190.stm

Pundits were mostly silent over this incident, but it tells me that it's perfectly possible for people to be fanatical shoppers & fanatical Muslims at the same time. Those 15 Saudi 9/11 hijackers weren't herding goats & living in tents. They lived their whole lives in a consumer society floating on oil.

> The Quran, as I've explained many times, is

Oh for fuck's sake, if you're going to be a pompous asshole about it, to Hell with you. YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT ON RELIGION any more than you than you're a nutritional biologist.

> The Bible is seen as history and allegory,

…It is now, Amy. Christians aren't any less disposed to the intrusions of theocracy than anyone else is: We're talking about a human nature problem, not a swarthy-Middle-Easterner's problem. Christians see the Bible as history and allegory because that was all that was left for them to make of it when the shooting was over. When they tried to see it as something more, they started getting burned out of their homes and cast into the next valley, the one with the Hellish weather and the savage beasts. (That's right; Van Nuys.) It was allegory or nuthin', so allegory it is.

> which is why you do not have people slaying
> their neighbors for adultery, etc

No, the reason the next-door neighbor (from Africa, as it happens) doesn't come after my miniskirted daughter for being a harlot is that he knows I'll send a bullet through his temple if he pulls any of his old-country bullshit. As it happens, he's too busy banging his wench American secretary to worry about it too much.

The typical American Muslim is no more a threat to you than the typical American Christian. Both have proud histories of rape and pillage which threaten you not at all as you sleep in your little beachside paradise.

> Where else do you think they get these ideas?

Human-motherfucking-nature. Every 10-year-old boy who sat next to you in Social Studies (and Math) in 5th-grade had similar impulses to reckless domination, especially towards the girls, who were starting to cause feelings in his heart that he found discomforting. Be glad you were raised in the West, where those impulses were kicked & punched out of him by his friends at recess.

> They don't want what you and I want. We share
> no common ground with these people.

Y'know, there's this need here to look at this in a Mandingo Savage framework of exotic, darkskinned animals with unquenchable appetites.
This begins to seem like nothing more than an opportunity for ninnies to test out teenage patterns of masturbatory anxiety. Yes; primitive people do primitive things; They look ugly and threatening on TV clips in ways that we didn't experience when YouTube wasn't available to us.

But as it happens, they're on YouTube. And they like being on YouTube. But no culture of theirs ever built a computer, or a TV camera, or a camera of any kind. They know where the action is on this planet. But several generations are going to be resentful about joining the modern project because they personally will not be able to take part in a joyous way.

Again, again, again; so what? Do you know what New York City was like in the 19th Century, when Sonny was learning English, but Pop never did? I didn't watch this clip; does the face in the frame at the top of this page(the Egyptian, not Amy) look any more threatening than Falwell used to look? Does he look any less vain?

We're going to have to work to make things go well in the future. Oh, sorry: Had you made plans?

> I mean, do you really think the Koran is worse than the Bible?

Did Jesus have four wives?

Did Jesus rape an 11 year old?

Did Jesus say that unbelievers should be killed?

Did Jesus personally lead conquests?

Did Jesus give subject women to his military to rape?

Do Jesus' followers throw acid on women who show their faces?

Do Jesus' followers cut the clitorises off of young girls?

Do Jesus' followers blow up pizzerias full of citizens?

Mohammed: violent rapist pedophile warlord thug.

Jesus: non-violent preacher who went to his death without protest, and asked that God forgive his killers.

Yeah, I think Christianity is just a TINY bit better than Islam.

> Those who seek to follow it to the letter
> are the ones who bomb buildings and knife
> people in the streets because of cartoons.

People who follow ANY text to the letter are bad news. As an American, you have bigger things to worry about today.

> it's perfectly possible for people to be
> fanatical shoppers & fanatical Muslims
> at the same time.

Nope; modern economies need modern contexts. In rough order of necessity:

1. Women in the workforce.

2. Instantaneous unfettered communication.

3. Entrepreneurial opportunity.

4. Etc.

Look at ANY projection of life in the oil-rich Middle East at the end of this century. At this hour, it seems all this wealth –all OUR wealth that they're receiving– will have helped them not at all. They're horny for the West's coffee tables because they know their own character, and the character of their Kings and Potentates, up close 'n personal. They have no faith that the window for these purchases will stay open.

> non-violent preacher who went to his death
> without protest, and asked that God forgive
> his killers.

Right; this is the kind of inanity that makes Christianity so fucking loathsome.

> Did Jesus have four wives?

The sexual politics of the Christian heritage are repellant.

> Did Jesus rape an 11 year old?

Do you understand what's happened to Catholic boys in Ireland, the United States, and every corner of the globe in recent decades, and probably back into the mists for time? Are you motherfucking kidding me?

> Did Jesus say that unbelievers
> should be killed?

Have you heard of the Inquisition?

> Did Jesus personally lead conquests?

Do I give a rat's ass?

> Did Jesus give subject women to his
> military to rape?

Do sincerely believe that Christiandom is a realm without erotic misconduct?

> Do Jesus' followers throw acid on
> women who show their faces?

Again, Christianity is not the source the West's sexual improvement.

> Do Jesus' followers cut the clitorises
> off of young girls?

Are you really this naive?

> Do Jesus' followers blow up pizzerias
> full of citizens?

They did until they learned to tone down the attitude.

> Jesus: non-violent preacher who went
> to his death without protest, and
> asked that God forgive his killers.

It's this fuckbrained reliance on idiot ironies –cheek turning– that makes modern American Christianity such a pitiable enterprise.

> Yeah, I think Christianity is just
> a TINY bit better than Islam.

And I think you're a narrow, self-agrandizing praryer-bot. Whatever nobility Christianity offers is available to us only because secular decency has cut away its intrinsic evil; sometimes in the surgical theater, but quite often in the battlefield. We have to keep the pressure on; we'll do this.

Without complaint, we will keep you little fuckers out of our way. Well do it for the incoming Muslims, and we'll do it for you.

> and, as I've posted here before, I

PomPOUS.

> I've gone with her to her class.

You haven't gone to church in your own neighborhood Amy... Please don't pretend to be both studious and practical about this.

These faiths are incompatible with modernity, but these guys want to be on YouTube. What do you think is going to happen?

Ah, for TJ- Hitchens crystalizes the issue.

My copy of the book is signed; you will not be so fortunate.

Exotic, dangerous swartheez... Amirite? Never seen anything like 'em. Unprecedented in human history.

Golly golly golly, whatever will we do? We're doomed!!

Wow, Crid, way to stack up the straw men.

You cited a long list of things people did that Jesus never asked them to do, as if it was.

Nope.

And you're two-faced about this "secular decency" in the process. Cite a list of heinous things religious people do? Step right up with the secular folk's failures. I know you want to be fair. Yes, I am aware that prosperity is inversely proportional to religiousity. Norway is heaven, go there.

Now please, do whatever you must to think you are correct. I can't figure out what you're arguing. Apparently it's that a Baptist is going to maim your sister or something. And I have no idea why you think you know what Amy does.

If you have examples of other leaders recommending the equivalent of jihad, post them.

Nice snark at the end, there. Been to Windows on the World lately? Of course not.

The Quran, as I've explained many times, is to be taken literally and unquestioningly as the word of god. The Bible is seen as history and allegory

***

Except when it isn't.

For much of history, for many people, it was to be taken literally. What changed was the enlightment.

The Muslims need an enlightment. Then the ration of those who take it literally to those who take it metaphorically will shift.

But it's not going to happen from us dropping bombs on them. And exporting our culture isn't going to work as well as it used to because we've lost a lot of our soft power.

Also, a lot of our movies and music now are gross. Turn on MTV. I can see why people don't want to import it. In my travel experience, I find when it comes to American goods, foreign countries get the crappiest stuff. For example, http://www.americanmarket.ch ... Whole Foods it ain't.

I forgot to make a point.

My point is, rather than going over there and trying to fix them which doesn't work, because we don't really want to fix them, we (Westerners) should limit immigration from the extremist segments, deport the immigrants from the extremist segments, and work on assimilating those who want to be assimilated.

Crid, this isn't even 30 years ago. Assimilation and the melting pot does not work in the same way anymore. This is the internet age. You can get your native culture beamed into your house via satellite or the internet.

How has Europe been doing with all their Muslim immigrants? Are they all just eating up European culture? Well, eating up welfare payments sure.

Golly golly golly, whatever will we do? We're doomed!!

Go ahead and make fun, Cridmeister, but if my daughters and/or their offspring are in any way subjected to Sharia Law because of the stupidity of people who don't recognize Islam for the danger it truly is, and it somehow becomes law in any way, shape, or form in THIS country, I'm going to come over to your house and shoot your balls off with my new Savage Axis 243 rifle. And I will not shed a tear.

Okay, maybe one. Because I really do love you, except for this.

(Raddy, I stayed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_World_Trade_Center in September of 2000, and had dinner at the Windows on the World before we went to see Tommy Castro at the Bottom Line. I miss those towers. Every time I go to the city I still look for them. I won't ever forget.)

> I know you want to be fair.

And I know (presumptively) that you live in the United States of America. What exactly was your complaint, again?

> If you have examples of other leaders
> recommending the equivalent of jihad,
> post them.

First of all, I admire your intensely masculine deployment of boldfaced text. I think everyone reading these words is heartily assured of your confidence, your resolve, and the playfulness of your silhouette in disco-tight dance denim.

The point that you won't take is that American Christianity isn't nice to people by nature; it's nice to them NOW (and, as Amy would say, historically- and metaphorically-focused) because that's about all their surrounding community will tolerate from them. But this was not always so. We had to whip the Christians into the corral, and must patrol the fence even today. Now we'll have to do the same for Islam... So... Whelpers, OK then. Not a problem.

Did you think there was any other way? What exactly were you planning, besides participation in Amy's autoerotic fear-fests?


> we (Westerners) should […] work on assimilating
> those who want to be assimilated.

Agreed. Isn't that what we're doing? I'm a contractor at an intensely technical consumer communications enterprise. You wouldn't be-LIEVE what engineering meetings are like. We need their best brains, and their best brains want (and are earning) civilization's best candy. See the Reynolds link/podcast referenced in this comment.

> This is the internet age. You can get
> your native culture beamed into your
> house via satellite or the internet.

Wow, dood... As it happens, that topic is discussed in the exact podcast mentioned above. It's a serious problem. (Later today I'll check the link above and make sure it's the right one.) I hear what you're saying... I'll try to find my old blog comment about my Ukrainian barbership. It's possible to immigrate to the States without bothering to integrate into the American mindset.

But on the other hand, America at her most modern isn't doing as much for the rest of the world nowadays as it or we would like, either.

I'm nonetheless certain that when improvement in global conditions happens, the United States will be in the lead.

I gotta find that Reynolds podcast for you guys.

> Go ahead and make fun, Cridmeister

No force can stop me.

> if my daughters and/or their offspring are in
> any way subjected to Sharia Law because of the
> stupidity of people who don't recognize Islam
> for the danger it truly is, and it somehow
> becomes law in any way, shape, or form in THIS
> country, I'm going to come over to your house
> and shoot your balls off

Well Kitten first of all, MY balls aren't the threat to you, are they?

Secondly, that's my point exactly: These people will be tamed. The ones who are here and integrated into the circus already have been.

As with Raddy: What else did you have in mind? How else was this ever going to go?

Naw, that link to the Berlinski podcast is good, but not exactly the right one. I'll have to get it for you later this afternoon. You should read that old comment though, because I'm right about everything.

These people will be tamed. The ones who are here and integrated into the circus already have been.

I'm not so sure about that, Darlin'. Not too many others are either. So how can you be? Honor killings have gone on in Europe, England, Canada and the USA. So how can you be sure?

And this: CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's election commission confirmed Thursday that the mother of a popular Islamist presidential hopeful was an American citizen, effectively disqualifying him from the race and likely boosting the chances of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate.

does not bode well for the US's relationship with Egypt, now does it?

> > Did Jesus have four wives?
>
> The sexual politics of the Christian heritage are repellant.

I don't ask that you agree with doctrine for monogamy, no premarital sex, and no homosexual.

...but "repellant" ? In majority Christian countries you can break
any of these rules, and (a) some churches will support you, (b) some
will disagree with you, (c) some people will actively support you, (d)
some will talk about the weather rather than your sexuality, (e) a FEW
will snub you.

How does that compare with Islam, where to premarital sex or
homsexuality is punished by the mob, the state, and the religion...by
stoning to death?

> > Did Jesus rape an 11 year old?
>
> Do you understand what's happened to Catholic boys in Ireland

I've gone on record as saying that the individuals involved should go
to jail. I've also said that the folks involved in medically
castrating the kids by priests in the Netherlands should be HUNG.

Now, do ** YOU ** understand the difference between a religion where
the prophet says "it would be better for a child molester to be thrown
into the ocean with a millstone around his neck", and one where the
prophet raped an 11 year old "wife" ?

> > Did Jesus say that unbelievers
> > should be killed?
>
> Have you heard of the Inquisition?

Yes. You're aware that the vast majority of that was enacted by
political authorities, and the Church repeatedly acted to limit it and
dial the secular authorities back, right?

> > Did Jesus personally lead conquests?
>
> Do I give a rat's ass?

If you care about the truth in this discussion, I'd think so.

Sadly, the answer seems to be no.

> > Did Jesus give subject women to his
> > military to rape?
>
> Do sincerely believe that Christiandom is a realm without erotic misconduct?

Nice way to (a) put words in my mouth, and (b) to avoid answering the question.

For the record, I think that Christiandom, Jewdom, Islam, and the
Bright-o-sphere are (a) populated by human beings, and therefore (b)
have individuals involved in erotic misconduct.

> > Do Jesus' followers throw acid on
> > women who show their faces?
>
> Again, Christianity is not the source the West's sexual improvement.

Did Jesus' followers EVER do such a thing?

Do you recall that Jesus himself brought a prostitute into his inner
circle and told his followers to accept her, because she was a
daughter of God?

Now, how does Jesus compare to Mohammed?

> > Do Jesus' followers cut the clitorises
> > off of young girls?
>
> Are you really this naive?

Answer the question: Do Jesus' followers cut the clitorises off of young girls?

> > Do Jesus' followers blow up pizzerias
> > full of citizens?
>
> They did until they learned to tone down the attitude.

Give me an example of when a Christian blew up a pizzeria.

> > Jesus: non-violent preacher who went
> > to his death without protest, and
> > asked that God forgive his killers.
>
> It's this fuckbrained reliance on idiot ironies –cheek turning– that
> makes modern American Christianity such a pitiable enterprise.

Please rephrase that in the form of something that resembles an argument.

> > Yeah, I think Christianity is just
> > a TINY bit better than Islam.
>
> And I think you're a narrow, self-agrandizing praryer-bot.

The phrase you're looking for is "ad homimen attack".

Please actually address any of the points I raised.

> Whatever nobility Christianity offers is available to us only
> because secular decency has cut away its intrinsic evil

"Secular decency"?

LOL.

I am entirely tolerant of atheists and have them among my friends...but secular folks in the West have inherited a broadly Christian worldview and moral code.

If you want to see a TRUE secular society, look to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

> sometimes in the surgical theater, but quite often in the
> battlefield. We have to keep the pressure on; we'll do this.

What are you talking about?

> Without complaint, we will keep you little fuckers out of our way. Well do it for the incoming Muslims, and we'll do it for you.

Huh?

Here's what I think is a decent metric:

If you could live in a neighborhood that was composed of 90% of one group, would you rather live in

* an atheist neighborhood
* a Christian neighborhood
* a Jewish neighborhood
* a Muslim neighborhood

I'd take any of the first three.

How about an Amish neighborhood?

> How about an Amish neighborhood?

Sure.

(a) they're Christian

(b) even if they're militant, they can't use guns designed after 1740.

;-)

Idiot left and idiot Christians in a sex embrace, weeping over the mention of dinosaurs.

"The point that you won't take is that American Christianity isn't nice to people by nature; it's nice to them NOW...because that's about all the surrounding community will tolerate from them"

Plymouth Colony was established several decades before the Age of Enlightenment began, by Puritans who left England because it wasn't Christian enough for their liking. The King & the authorities were all thousands of miles away across the Atlantic. It was just the Puritans, the savages, and the wilderness. There is not one way - not one - in which life under American Christianity in its most primal form wasn't incomparably better (for women in particular) than life under the Taliban now, in the 21st century.

Jesus and Muhammad aren't interchangeable widgets. The differences between them are as stark as can be. If puritanical Muslims had colonized New England instead, there is absolutely no chance that they would have ever sown the seeds of a country like the United States, or anything other than another backward shithole. This can't be explained solely by secular forces or modernity.

> I'm not so sure about that, Darlin'. Not
> too many others are either.

Oh this is just nuts. Yes, Flynne, it's true... I think you guys subscribe to a very popular kind of foolishness and fear-mongering.

As Burge noted a couple weeks ago from the Windy City, "More Chicagoans were massacred on St Patrick's Day 2012 than on St Valentine's Day 1929. And you never heard about it." Do you want us to get all Trayvon about a particular Muslim murder? I haven't heard of one that's achieved Travonian notoriety. So now do we have to think there's a media conspiracy?

> So how can you be sure?

Flynne, what? Do you really want to believe that a satellite engineer making $850,000 a year in California with a house on the beach and a Ferrari in the garage is interested in returning his life back to the Middle Ages? How deep will this paranoia go? Do you have any faith in safety, nutrition, comfort, and wealth to sway people's feelings?

> does not bode well for the US's
> relationship with Egypt, now does it?

Egypt has always been one of the most religiously conservative nations in the Middle East... One reason why the USA wasn't more eager to see Mubarak pushed out of office in 1984 or so. That problem was always going to be there. And if you've been reading the news this week, it's very much with us today.

Again-again-again, what EXACTLY do you want? What is the response you think is made available to you by luxuriating in these goofy fear-fits? Is it that you get some tingle of accelerated modernity by imagining that no one has ever faced a threat like this before? Is it a sense of connection to earlier generations of your family when they too felt threatened by primitive, dark-skinned, irrational Negroes? (-red-skinned, shouty Injuns? -Crafty yellow hoards? -Coppertop potato-eaters? -Olive-skinned pasta fiends?)

People, these are just hillbillies... That's all. We've seen this all before, including countless episodes within the borders of our own darling nation. You're so concerned about the nuances of their unimprovable text... But all those texts are unimprovable (Hi TJ!).

And –this is the crazyshit part– the people most likely to be swallowed into this stupidity anew are by definition not big readers anyway. So who cares about their texts? Did you read Dianetics? Me neither. Ever do EST? Nope, me neither.

I don't understand why you're all so horny to think this is something exotic and game-changing... Especially when none of you can offer a SINGLE word about how the game has changed in practical terms. You just want to sit there and quiver in distress. But one thing the Bible got right: Same ol' same ol'. Human nature is not in transition. We've done this before, we'll do it again.


> In majority Christian countries you can
> break any of these rules

YES!!! Jesus Fuck on a stick!.. I *get* it! You have all sorts of freedom in Christianity... As practiced in the modern West *TODAY*, with extremism essentially extinguished by the preceding ten or twenty generations.

You simply cannot take this point, and it makes me think you're blithering... As if somehow, Christianity just happened to blossom in this direction. Nothing could be further from the truth.

> How does that compare with Islam

Not being forced to choose, I'll let you fight for sloppy seconds with the other also-ran cosmologies. I can't tell you who won the consolation game in the Final Four the other night, either... That's how they compare.

> I've gone on record

TOO LATE. Your faith did that to little boys, and to not a few little girls.

> Did Jesus' followers EVER do such a thing?

History is full of loathsome Christian conduct... For what WILL you be held accountable?

> Do you recall that Jesus himself
> brought a prostitute into

Bedtime stories are not of interest:

> If you care about the truth in this
> discussion, I'd think so.

Your fascination with supernatural, indemonstrable beings indicts your defense of "truth". You don't care about truth, and we both know it.

> Now, how does Jesus compare to Mohammed?

Cite the film dialog— Boy, you don't know nothing! Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman's a real guy. There's no way a cartoon could beat up a real guy.

> Do Jesus' followers cut the clitorises
> off of young girls?

If I looked hard enough, I could find some who have. But it's tempting to say no, because it would be fun to see you wear that as a boast. Let's all imagine the picture of a Ted Nugent-style Christ on a brochure (only without the electric Gibson archtop), hair billowing languidly into a blue sky dappled with cumulus clouds, flying over this text in really classy font:

We've raped and pillaged our way across the millenia in a horrific cycle of torture and genocide, we've suppressed astronomy, we've fought tooth and nail against germ theory, we're still pissy about evolution, abortion and homosexuality. But darn it, we happen not to have done a clitorectomy... For the last few years, anyway.

Quite a standard of decency you've chose for your team.

> Please rephrase that in the form of
> something that resembles an argument.

Or, you could learn to read: I think modernity has (perhaps righteously) reduced Christian belief to a series of childishly-magical idiocies, of which turning the other cheek is exemplary.

> The phrase you're looking for is
> "ad homimen attack".

Buttercup, I just don't care... Your daydreams of supernatural power are simply not of interest... And as you've so pathetically demonstrated in this exchange, they peg you to a primitive mentality much closer to that of brutal Islam than to modernity. (Per the Hitch clip and book described above, Islam is but a crude cobble of Christianity for a fresh region of illiterates.)

> What are you talking about?

Rephrased, just for you!— Sometimes religious zealots have to be tamed though careful logic, precise mockery and selected heartache. Sometimes they gotta be killed. It's a context thing.

> Huh?

Again, just for you— Watch your boundaries, Pilgrim, whether you're Christian, Muslim, or just a Star Trek conventioneer.

> Here's what I think is a decent metric:

For what? What will you do with your measurement? How will you insist that others be bothered with it?

> There is not one way - not one - in which
> life under American Christianity in its
> most primal form wasn't incomparably better
> (for women in particular) than life
> under the Taliban now, in the 21st century.

You're apparently very eager to believe this is true, but in a real world with penicillin and air conditioning, neither social condition has much to recommend it. If you and your little Muslim friends want to gather in someone's basement and drink Snapple and simulate the whole thing on a cardboard map with decahedral dice like pimply teenagers playing wargames, just to perfect the model, it'd be OK with the rest of us. We'll be doing other things.

> The differences between them are
> as stark as can be.

Yet inconsequentially distinguished when measured against the blessings of reason.

> there is absolutely no chance that they
> would have ever sown the seeds of a
> country like the United States

Probably not, but again, this sounds like a boast from the best of the worst.

> This can't be explained solely by
> secular forces or modernity.

Agreed, agreed. I think this is the best thing ever said about that on this blog. I wish I'd said it, and often pretend I did.

But here's the deal... The paths innovation eventually surrendered by the church shouldn't make us long for its administration. The day you were toilet trained was a day of pivotal progress, and giant leap forward in your distinction as a human being. That doesn't mean you should do it again.

"First of all, I admire your intensely masculine deployment of boldfaced text."

Blah, blah, blah. I find that I only admire your style - when you have a cogent thought - because your reasoning doesn't pass elementary muster, having to feed you first.

What Martin said - without the tiresome posturing.

Hrisky is, indeed, fabulous, if about as prolific a blog commenter as Fran Lebowitz is a writer.

Sio (& others): This is the podcast that explores the point you maid. It gets straight to the point.

> your reasoning doesn't pass elementary muster

Don't read it.

> you love to demean people and say they
> know nothing.

Only when they do weird, condescending vagueness in their blog postings.

(...Okay, some other times, too.)

> It's a totalitarian system masquerading
> as a religion

There's totalitarian stuff in there, absolutely. It's more shameless than some other faiths: They got in the religion game a little later than the Judy/C tradition, so they had to reach a little further. But they'll be overwhelmed just as assuredly, because their tenets are incompatible with the way people wanna live.

Do you guys really, truly believe there was a time when Christianity simply withdrew from political authority because it felt no inclination toward it? When you see what's happening with federalism in the United States today, or with power plays anywhere on the globe, do you sincerely think that kind of timidity beats in the technocratic heart?

You do?

Interesting! Interesting perspective on your part.

"You're apparently very eager to believe this is true"

It is true. I'm baffled to see an American sneering at the overwhelming importance of the Puritan heritage to America's founding. If you can't see the clear unbroken line from the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence, you're a bigger ignoramus than I thought.

"Yet inconsequentially distinguished when measured against the blessings of reason"

That crazy hippie mother was a Christian. And her parents were Jews. It was Judeo-Christian civilization, and only Judeo-Christian civilization, that produced an Age of Reason & an Age of Enlightenment. Why do you suppose that is?

"You do?" No. Who said so? Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This will still be true if no one believes in any religion anymore.

> It was Judeo-Christian civilization, and only
> Judeo-Christian civilization, that produced
> an Age of Reason & an Age of Enlightenment.

Or you can say it was from the Judeo-Christian tradition that reason and enlightenment escaped.

>> do you sincerely think that kind of timidity
>> beats in the technocratic heart?

> No. Who said so?

OK, then. Sorry, my misunderstanding. Great...

So why are people eager to worry that Islam is something exotic and unprecedented?

Again, go to the image of the Egyptian fucker under Amy's banner up there. You're really going to be scared of him? He's the most threatening figure in the 21st century? He's selling the sweetest candy?

Hell, no. He's hillbilly in a TV studio, with electric lights and humble technicians and a bangable receptionist in the lobby, and his voice is being projected into more homes than his grandfather knew even existed. Look at his face!... He's about to squirt, he's so pleased to be there. Modernity has sunk its talons into his immortal soul, sharpened by the vanity of YouTube. He thinks he's Rihanna.

He's pathetic. One music video from Gaga, and this fucker is forgotten. He doesn't know that. Maybe his son will know better (and at least partially extricate himself from the flapdoodle). His grandson almost certainly will. Everyone reading this blog certainly ought to.

I read on Reason tonight that there are now more smartphones (at least in the US) than conventional cell phones. And smartphones are how the internet is going penetrate the third world. This deeply personal portal into the larger planet will be MUCH more effective at bringing people to modern life than were television broadcasts of the Mary Tyler Moore on the community shelter TV set in 1970's Burundi.

> (Again, Muslims are only to provide charity
> to other Muslims and most of their charity
> is to go to jihad.)

Your parentheses are insufficiently humble: That's is some thundering speculation.

Here's the best six minutes to explain what religion is going to mean to people in this century. (Barnett was apparently raised in a very sincerely Catholic and capital-D Democratic home... But he's nobody's fool. See how that works?)

Amy, they DON'T.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS? WHAT DO YOU WANT, except to squeal and cower?

Luna. Luna-SEA. Lunacy. Moonbark. Howling... Howling at the moon.

Crackers. Soda crackers, saltines. Cracked up. Breakdown.

Insanity. WEIRD insanity.

BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID! THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS, AND WE'RE ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS BEFORE ISLAM'S MENACE. Doomed.. DOOMED!!!!!

Aiiiiieeee!

Ahem.

You can cluck about these little suckers until the day you die, if that's how you wanna live.

Mad Men's back, though.

Cridmeister, I loves ya. I truly do. But to keep insisting that Islam is NOT dangerous to the rest of the Western world is ingenuous, at best. Do you not see what's going on in Europe, especially France and Amsterdam right now? Muslims in ghettos over there are increasingly creating mayhem and ignoring those laws in favor of their own, AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT. In England too. I guess you didn't watch the video. What makes you so sure they won't try it here? They will. Hopefully, they'll get crushed, but there are more of them who live by their Islamic law than you think. And those who aren't will get called on by those who do, and it won't be pretty. I'm not scared, I'm armed. Because I'd rather have a gun and not need it, than need a gun and not have it. The writing's on the wall, and I'm going to be cautiously optimistic, but I'm not going to pretend that the Islamists in this country are all converted and don't want all of the rest of us either converted or dead.

See also this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/us/shaima-alawadi-court-records-show-family-in-crisis.html?_r=1

From the article:

"When Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi-born mother of five, was found bludgeoned to death in her home last month with a threatening note beside her, many members of the large Middle Eastern immigrant population here feared a hate crime.
When Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi-born mother of five, was found bludgeoned to death in her home last month with a threatening note beside her, many members of the large Middle Eastern immigrant population here feared a hate crime.

"But court documents made public this week instead reveal details of a family in crisis, with talk of divorce and a daughter resisting an arranged marriage, and of Ms. Alawadi’s survivors themselves coming under scrutiny from investigators."

"Or you can say it was from the Judeo-Christian tradition that reason and enlightenment escaped"

You could say that, but you'd be at least half-wrong. It was the Greeks & Romans who lit the flame of reason, but those monks scribbling away in their monasteries still managed to take reason in new directions the Greeks & Romans hadn't thought of.

And that was just the men. The women were even bolder. Christine de Pizan was the godmother of feminism. She applied her reason to make the case for the human female like no other woman had ever done before. Her "Book of the City of Ladies" (1405) is a singular work of genius. Yet she was very much a Christian, and all her writing was within a Christian framework. There was no one like her in Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism or anywhere else except medieval Christianity. Her reason didn't just escape from a Christian cage - Christianity helped give her wings in the first place.

"Again, go to the image of the Egyptian fucker under Amy's banner up there...He's pathetic"

Yes indeed. And I don't think he's making Amy poop her panties. It's good to know the truth about Islam. This fucker and others like him are Exhibit A, and Amy's just doing her part, educating her readership.

Aaaaaaaaannd again... This goes nowhere.

You don't want anything. These comments include no proposals or policy demands or anything else. Not only are you not recommending any remedying forces to be applied, you don't perceive any existing in the world by nature. The least-literate, least-civilized people on the planet have a book that says 'Be mean', and you're frozen in position. You really DO want to drown in your fear. Doomed!

> notice the gaping hole where the World Trade
> Center used to be?

You're THAT DESPERATE to imagine your perceptions are unique? By happenstance, I –a stranger to you– am quite possibly the person who's communicated with you about 9/11 & its impacts more than any other. Your eagerness to shout 'Wake up, Sheeple!!!!' is that deep. There's this need to believe that other souls are just robots. That's the sullen joke you make: Other people don't know about 9/11.

Listen, set aside the invasions, set aside the attacks themselves, and (for a moment) set aside the honor killings which trouble you so deeply. If you want, you can even set aside the TSA madness, though I believe it's more of a runaway-government problem than a response-to-9/11 problem.

The budget problems, the red tape problems, the hulkingly obese government, the blindness of our investments, and the explosion of financial services... All these nightmares have been entirely self-inflicted by us over here in Western Civ. We've done much greater damage to ourselves over the last twenty years than Islamic fascists could ever have dreamt of doing.

> But to keep insisting that Islam is NOT
> dangerous to the rest of the Western world

I said that? Care to, y'know, post the quote?

> monks scribbling away in their monasteries
> still managed to take reason in new directions

Um, where'd they get the money? In a time of subsistence, where do guys like that get the wealth to sit around and scratch at paper with feathers? Who brought them their food? Who defended the monastery from the local riffraff, and who paid the defenders? How exactly was that plate "passed"?

Never pretend this virtue, ANY virtue, came to the church as product of its own radiant (supernatural) wonderfulness. Similarly, the mansions of the antebellum South, while fun to look at (and live in, we are sure) as they stood, were not built from the kindness of their Masters.

> Christians should present Islam to Muslims as a
> better option.

?

"Um, where'd they get the money?"

In a feudal society, from feudal lords & ladies (who, of course, got their wealth from their land & the labor of their peasants), wealthy merchants & burghers. Most monasteries also had on-site business ventures (breweries, herbariums, the services of scribes, etc), and the wealthier ones owned large tracts of land (with peasants included) in their own right. If you think any other civilization at the time had a more equitable social arrangement, speak up.

Care to, y'know, post the quote?

Sure, here ya go:

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS, AND WE'RE ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS BEFORE ISLAM'S MENACE. Doomed.. DOOMED!!!!!

Happy now? Please excuse me, gigs to go to, songs to sing.

> a more equitable social arrangement, speak up.

Nope, I'm done. You and I agree that the financing was odious. It's just that you're compelled to be defensive about it:

> If you think any other civilization at the time
> had a more equitable social arrangement
[emphasis mine]

This temporal consideration is what I've been forced to correct repeatedly... And here it comes again!

What none of you will concede is that Christianity only looks like a better bargain in the United States TODAY, because so many rough edges –and brutal centralities– have been hacked away from it... Through the Constitution, through a hundred thousand smaller laws, and through God-knows how many unrecorded local conflicts over the centuries. Had Mohammad and Jesu made their stand in the same hour, who knows how Islam might have evolved at this point? (Amy, presumably, wouldn't expect much from it in the year 2582 AD. I'll give you this much, Martin: She'd be correct to have doubts.)

But given the mutual wretchedness of their texts, I'm pleased not to have to choose. Dude, I admire the fathers of our country even though they owned slaves; but every day I'm reminded of their weakness in the most poignant and practical terms. Likewise Christendom.


> Sure, here ya go:

I don't think you recognize that Amy's unremitting gloom was being satirized. There's a difference between "DOOMED!" and 'A problem we're going to have to face, but one that we've faced before', which is my preferred (and unchallenged) perspective on fundamentalist Islam.


> Christians should present Christianity to
> Muslims as a better option

Well c'mon... How attractive do you expect that to be for them when you won't even visit a local Christian sanctuary?

Hitchen's comments on ecumenicism to the contrary, these different faiths do not regard themselves as unified in their belief for (distinct) 'imaginary men in the sky'... Though I too enjoy teasing them that way.

Furthermore, supporting allegiance to a religious faith you don't hold is every bit as laughable as your support of gay marriage when, you assure us, you think marriage itself is a loathsome institution. This happens too much. You are not a Star Trek spaceship circling over humanity, pasting Post-It™ notes of suggestion and encouragement to our computer screens: You're IN this thing, and your cosmology will be judged as manifest in YOU. And as Frank Zappa once said, Your Mouth is Your Religion.

(Though this was a better tune from those sessions.)

Well, take one last look at the Egyptian Fucker at the top of the page. Don't bother to play the video: Flynne's right, I didn't. He's got one eye hidden behind the YouTube start button. And he's peeking through a pair of professionally modern eyeglasses, the kind that don't come from cultures where people get their hands cut off for taking a grape at the supermarket.

Who exactly do you think is going to find his message appealing?

"Who exactly do you think is going to find his message appealing?"

If you watch the first few seconds of the video, you'll find out that he's Yousuf al-Qaradhawi, arguably the most popular and influential imam on the face of rhe earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_al-Qaradawi

That answer your question? This clown is the Rick Warren of contemporary Islam, not the Fred Phelps.

Who's Rick Warren?

> arguably the most popular and influential imam

Dirty job, but someone's gotta do it... Or at least, someone's gotta BE it. The Wikipedia page mostly makes me hate Al Jazeera, which was already easy enough. Especially cute bits:

He is also well known for IslamOnline, a popular website he helped found in 1997 and for which he now serves as chief religious scholar.[4]

He has also received eight international prizes for his contributions to Islamic scholarship...

• The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Prize in Islamic Economics – 1991[112]
• King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies – 1994[113]
• Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (Sultan of Brunei) Award for Islamic Jurisprudence – 1997[15]
• Sultan Al Owais Award for Cultural & Scientific Achievements – 1998–1999[19]
• Dubai International Holy Quran Award for Islamic Personality of the Year – 2000[15]
• The State Acknowledgement Award for contributions in the field of Islamic Studies from the Government of Qatar – 2008[114]

First, these lines call to mind this passage from Steyn a few years ago:

The famous United Nations statistic from a 2002 report--more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand--suggests at the very minimum an extraordinarily closed society, which in turn explains its stunted political development.

Secondly, the need of these idiots to drape themselves in academic-sounding citations and awards demonstrates pretty conclusively that mostly, they want to sit at the Big Boy's table. They're essentially identical to the Appalachian preachers who call themselves "Doctor" and pretend, to the best of their sixth-grade understanding, to talk like college professors. They cannot deliver the goods.

Islam is a problem, but it can't meet the needs of modern, civilized people. This becomes MORE apparent, not less, when it's poised for comparative review with other schools of thought in modern media.

Bad times ahead, absolutely. We're gonna have to kill people and so forth. But this challenge was in our future all the time; and we have done it before.

He is also well known for IslamOnline, a popular website he helped found in 1997 and for which he now serves as chief religious scholar.

"Popular"! Cracks my shit up.

He tells you he's big news and you should be scared, so he's big news and you're scared.

Cracks my shit up.

Seriously... Dood... Have you ever seen a more obviously self-composed Wiki entry? It's like a lousy author listing his 'accomplishments' for the blurb of his book.

"He tells you he's big news and you should be scared, so he's big news and you're scared"

Stop pretending that you have ESP, and that you're the only one here who perceives how pathetic Islam is. We all remember that incident in Sudan when Muslims lost their minds and rioted over an English schoolteacher who named her class teddy bear Muhammad. A teddy bear named Muhammad! That's beyond pathetic. That's...I don't have the words to describe it.

"They cannot deliver the goods"

Again, this is not in dispute. It's been obvious for several hundred years now. That's how long it's been since the Muslim world fell hopelessly behind the Western world in every area of human endeavor. Islam couldn't deliver the goods in 1512, never mind 2012.

Nonetheless...

Salman Rushdie is still among us, but there's been no sequel - no novelist since then has published another satirical novel about Muhammad & the origins of Islam, because they're afraid.

Would anyone in the movie industry dare to make a Life-of-Brian style comedy about Muhammad?

Those Danish cartoons were the # 1 news story a few years ago, but only one newspaper in the entire United States dared to print any of them. All the others were afraid. Yale University Press published a book about the cartoons which didn't show any of the cartoons because they were afraid.

So you see, a lot of people in the civilized world truly are scared shitless of Islam. Amy & Flynne are not among them.

There's nothing cowardly or fearful about what Amy is doing: showing people the truth about Islam. Quite the opposite - anyone who scrolls through posts like this one will see Islam in all its evil ridiculousness, and will be better able to put the problem into proper perspective.

> Tell me why I should be attending church.

Because you have friends there. Not just useful idiots; friends. TJ nearly drew blood with his April 5, 2012 2:01 PM comment: You're safer in a neighborhood of tamed American Christians than in almost any setting in history. (Hitchens and Prager did several rounds on this point a few years ago; Prager landed too many punches to call it a draw.)

> His message is appealing like those to stone
> women who are raped as adulterers.

Right. Where's the market for that? Where are they going to expand their sphere of influence?

Listen, I'm exquisitely receptive to rhetoric about the fragility of civilization's strictures. Time and again history has moved backward when it was poised to move forward because sinister men appealed to our lesser nature. Be we ought to have some gratitude for the richness of our modern lives, and some faith that this wealth and safety isn't an acquired taste.

Flynne mentioned some honor killings that have happened... But they really aren't a regular occurrence here in the states. The scariest recent outbreak of Islamic zombiedom that I know of was the Oakland Bakery... It took root there because the larger community had forsaken the area anyway.

That's the point I was making about Chicago. When there's so much hideous death and misconduct going unpunished anyway, how upset are you going to get about honor killings?

> Stop pretending that you have ESP, and
> that you're the only one here who
> perceives how pathetic Islam is.

Well for fuck's sake, Dude... I'm not the one who cited his tone-deaf, self-penned Wiki page as demonstrative of his "popularity and influence".

> there are honor killings in the States from
> time to time

I hear you, but if you weren't going to be concerned about a murder in those neighborhoods anyway....

In earlier posts, you've rejected precious punishment for hate crimes. Murder's murder, right?.. Whether for a drunken game of cards or an infringement of Sharia.

Listen, if you seriously just want people to be aware of the wretchedness of Islam, have at it. But it shouldn't be described as unprecedented or insoluble. Muslims might very well turn away from the extremities of their faith just as the Christians have, given a clear view of the trade. All the Muslims I've known have done so, just as all the Christians I've ever met (or been bred from) were pretty mild in their practice.

The Christian god is no less jealous than Mohammad's... Consider the first commandment.

The Judeo-Christian god left Moses a list of ten fairly vague commandments. And he didn't specify the punishment (if any) for breaking them. The Christian god added one to that list.

The Islamic god left a long list of proscribed behaviors and brutal punishments for transgressors.

Mankind filled in the gaps, often horrendous results.