Mely has Iran ever attacked any country in the last 2000 years?

Has the United States?

Maybe we should have ameriphobia?

to be fair there is a difference of opinion about who started teh PErsian Gulf War.  And the Parthians were a thorn in teh side of the Romans--the PArthian Empire included the area (or some thereof) that we now call Iran. ANd then there is the issue of Hamas...

So your question (although I tend to agree with where I think you are going) is not as cut and dried as you would make it seem.

*giggle*

good one, Mely :3

Iran might actually be 'gentled' --- that raffish state who put out a hit on Salman Rushdie (his latest memoirs are a hoot)

EDIT: the mighty do-over button of that multicellular mythikal critter, the Leftie

That was painful, even to scan through.

Yes, Islam is a violent and ridiculous religion. So is Christianity.

This video is worse than both of them put together.

Mely distributing hatred again? What're the odds?

What's the matter, people at blazing cat fur not slobbering on you enough so you have to come here to get some pretend persecution?

The point is that Christianity is criticized all the time but often non-Christians religions not so much because of political correctness.  

And while it may or may not be that Christianity and Islam are equally "ridiculous" as far as being factually true, the evidence suggests that Christianity may be much less harmful than Islam, and might indeed have been beneficial to society.   It was, after all, in Christendom (and only in Christendom) that the Enlightenment took place.  

that's community cable/Canadian culture for you

If we're going to play this very silly game, I'd still nominate secularism as driver of the most devastating impacts… atheism and secularism.

And I think I'd categorise the Romans as having been essentially secularist. And Hollywood would definitely be atheo-agnostic, despite its Jewish thread.

But the real creed to be scared of is greed. Harness greed to egocentrisim and/or autocracy and you have the devil and all his legions on the loose and running amok.

Mely - do you seriously suggest the enlightenment has no roots in other parts of the world? that Christianity is the only religion that has ever produced an enlightenment?

Are you for real?

How do you figure?? The Enlightenment was based on science and human reason.

As for it taking place "only in Christendom" that's certainly not the case. As an example, several of the Enlightenment thinkers were Deists. Rich blessings.

What I meant is there could have been something about Christianity that affected  society in such a way as to make it possible for The Enlightenment to arise.  It could have involved something as prosaic as the Pope telling people they couldn't marry their 1st cousins (thus helping to eliminate tribalism).  It could have involved the Protestants wanting everyone to learn to read (so they could read the Bible).  And likely the Reformation helped to reduce corruption.  Corruption and tribalism, which are very widespread in much of the non-Western world, seem to be very damaging to a society.  

Not-X is usually bigger than X.  But it's also misleading to lump all not-X's into the same category.  Which is of course the point of your bigotry.

Islamic Enlightenment

by Ibn Warraq 

http://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/Islamic_Enlightenment/

Some quotes from the document (I have added the bolding):

" Without criticism of Islam, Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, mediaeval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. It will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Western intellectuals and Islamologists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals. They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam.

Some Islamologists have themselves noticed the appalling trend  in their colleagues. Karl Binswanger has remarked on the "dogmaticIslamophilia" of most Arabists. Jacques Ellul complained in 1983 that "in France it is no longer acceptable to criticise Islam or the Arab countries." Already in 1968, Maxime Rodinson had written, "An historian like Norman Daniel has gone so far as to number among the conceptions permeated with medievalism or imperialism, any criticisms of the Prophet's moral attitudes and to accuse of like tendencies any exposition of Islam and its characteristics by means of the normal mechanisms of human history. Understanding has given way to apologetics pure and simple."

Patricia Crone and Ibn Rawandi have remarked that western scholarship lost its critical attitude to the sources of the origins of Islam around the time of the First World War. ...

...John Wansbrough has noted that the Koran "as a document susceptible of analysis by the instruments and techniques of Biblical criticism it is virtually unknown."

By 1990, we still have the scandalous situation described by Andrew Rippin, "... I have often encountered individuals who come to the study of Islam with a background in the historical study of the Hebrew Bible or early Christianity, and who express surprise at the lack of critical thought that appears in introductory textbooks on Islam. The notion that 'Islam was born in the clear light of history' still seems to be assumed by a great many writers of such texts. While the need to reconcile varying historical traditions is generally recognised, usually this seems to pose no greater problem to the authors than having to determine 'what makes sense' in a given situation. To students acquainted with approaches such as source criticism, oral formulaic composition, literary analysis and structuralism, all quite commonly employed in the study of Judaism and Christianity, such naive historical study seems to suggest that Islam is being approached with less than academic candour."

There is, among many well-meaning Western intellectuals, academics, and Islamologists, the belief that somehow Islam will reform itself without anyone anywhere ruffling any feathers, disturbing Muslim sensibilities, or saying anything at all about the Koran. This is wishful thinking. If one desires to bring about an Enlightenment in the Islamic world or among Muslims living in the West, at some stage, someone somewhere will have to apply to the Koran the same techniques of textual analysis as were applied to the Bible by Spinoza and others, especially in Germany during the 19^th Century.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic countries (for example , Brunei) have established Chairs of Islamic Studies in prestigious Western Universities, which are encouraged to present a favourable image of Islam. Scientific research, leading to objective truth, no longer seems to be the goal. Critical examination of the sources or the Koran is discouraged. Scholars, such as Daniel Easterman[27], have even lost their posts for not teaching about Islam in the way approved by Saudi Arabia.

In December, 2005 , Georgetown and Harvard Universities accepted $20 million each from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for programmes in Islamic Studies. Such money can only corrupt the original intent of all higher institutions of education, that is the search for truth. Now, we shall only have "Islamic truth" that is acceptable to the Royal Saudi family, a family that has financed terrorism, anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism for over thirty years. Previous donations from various Saudi sources have included gifts of $20 million, $5 million, and $2 million dollars to the University of Arkansas, the University of California, Berkeley; and Harvard respectively."

Corruption is widespread in the non-Western world? As compared to the West? Are you for real? Do you have have the faintest idea of the extent of corruption in the West? Did you never hear of the banks bailouts? Of the British bank just caught for laundering money for criminal gangs and for terrorists? Have you no idea of the extent of corruption in US government? It is easily at the highest level in the world.

And, believe it or not, some very old and non-Christian societies made remarkable advances having to do with architecture, philosophy, reason.

Navel-gazing is not a good way to  study history.

You really don't bother to study history before you post about it, do you...

Translation: I HATE MUSLIMS!!!!! JUST HATE"EM!!! DON"T NEED A REASON, JUST HATE"EM ALL!!!!

Then there is that inconvenient truth that one of the things that brought about the rebirth of scientific, industrial, architectural and millitary innovation in Europe was the "recovery" of lost learnings from teh Romans and Greeks.  How were they "recovered"?  BEcause they had been kept intaact by the Islamic empires and were found by the Crusaders.

And here I thought the roots of the Enlightenment were in the courts of the Islamic rulers of the Middle-East where science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy were encouraged by rulers pursuing knowledge and wholeness.

DOn't be silly Jim.  That would mean that they were civilized and rational people (arguably more civilized aand rational than some of the European "nations" during what is generally called the Dark Ages) when we know that they were barbarian savages.  After all the Crusader Popes wouldn't have lied would they?

I agree. modern civilization was built on the leadership of the popes, along with important interventions from Prebyterians and Methodists. Baptists are actually Moslem spies.

He also wrote it was a very silly game -- I'm still laughing; you? :3

joining in on MikePaterson's silly game meme...

we should NEVER have gone beyond single celled existence...just look at how much trouble it causes?  nervous systems, trunk dialing, WC...tsk, the true myth of the Fall and Original Sin...

the Dark Ages weren't really so Dark

or they didn't exist

Oh oh, who's pov is this?

Ah yes, evil Christianity...back to normal

(but if Dawkins is talking aboot it, then he's an extremist...oops)

"It was, after all, in Christendom (and only in Christendom) that the Enlightenment took place."

Damn! And here all these years I thought Baruch Spinoza was a Jew not a Christian. So too with regard to Moses Mendelsshon.

<sarcasm turned off>

*giggle* good one, SG...

and after all, "Christendom" is really just Judiasm with a fancy frock :3

maybe you can tell your readers here the 'important contributions' that Judiasm and Jews brought to the world?  what things do we take for granted today that are a result of them?

Gefilte Fish

Montreal smoked meat.

And a Montreal Jew who became the world's first figure skating champion.

He lived in Christendom. I was talking about the society which allowed The Enlightenment to occur.

you mean like the way the popes encouraged Galileo and others?

You mean the society which waqs moving towards secularism and throwing off the trappings of legalistic and state sponsored, all powerful Christianity?

Then yes, certainly that was the society which allowed the enlightenment to occur.

I see in your zeal to become a journeyman Muslim hater over at blazing cat feces, you neglected to study history.

such a nice place, WC, letting Christianophobes & Islamophobes work together toward a common goal...

of...

mortal kombat!

I'm a jerkaphobe lol

Anything that happens in history is a reaction to something that happened before it.

The Enlightenment was indeed a reaction to the state of Christianity that existed before it.

That doesn't mean that Christianity should be credited for giving birth to the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment thinkers were in opposition to the Christianity of their day.

Rich blessings.

My point is that a movement in opposition to the status quo was allowed to grow and flourish in Christian countries.  Why shouldn't we assume there might have been something about Christianity that allowed this to happen?  Have you any other theories about why it happened in Christendom and not elsewhere?

Hi Mely,

Well, only if you ignore the French Government's hostility towards Enlightenment thought.  I mean the official French opposition to the ideals of the Enlightenment probably had no influence on the French Revolution.

Well there may be something correlational rather than causal. 

Human history is not monolithic.  The history of Europe, for example is different than is the history of China or Central America or even Africa.  As many historical eras are a response to the epoch which preceded them the unfolding history of the various population centres of the world do not share a common history.

In France, the age of Reason was defined by anti-government and anti-church thought (hence the resistance by the French Government) elsewhere the age of Reason was not stridently anti-government or anti-church which means that there is no social structure that the Enlightenment posed a threat to.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Why, Mely, do you assume that no other civilizations in the world before the 'enlightenment' or in other places than Europe produced great advances in rational thought?

graeme, good point.  Top of mind was the period of great advances in Athens, in Persia.  I believe there were at least a couple of periods in Egyptian history that were quite forward thinking as well, and I suspect  there were many times and places in India where philosophy and science made great advances.

One could say the same of, for example, China. The concept of a sort of peacekeeping body bringing nations together arguably came from the Iriquian peoples. (That's what Hiawatha was all about.) But our Christian forefathers made short shrift of that.

 If China, Persia (Iran) and other places had an Enlightenment there is not much evidence of it today.  

Why do people from China, Iran, etc. move to the West in droves, but not the other way around?

Mely, you don't know what our part of the world will be like once we descend into a dark age from our own enlightenment, either.

A very solid point. And our descent is happening right now.

And if you see no signs of enlightenment in those countries, then you know nothing of architecture or art - or of where things like paper and gunpowder came from - or of the history of religious thought.

Of course, it was kind of heart maintaining an enlghtenment when, since 1500 or so, the west has been killing and enslaving you, and forcing opium on you - all part of our enlightenment.

Are you suggesting that there is but one reason that they do so?

People move for as many individual reasons as there are individuals.

Take my own family for instance...

Stepson #1 moved here because he wanted to attend high school in Sault Ste. Marie. He thought of the South Korean school system as being too strict for his liking.

My wife moved here to be with my stepson #1, and because she wanted a fresh start in a new nation.

Stepson #2 moved here because he was a dependent child and was brought by his mother (He did also miss his brother and was happy to be near him again).

There is a host of other reasons why people come.

Rich blessings.

---

MC jae

Graeme how do you explain the fact that the parts of China that we're colonized such as Hong Kong have long been the most functional parts of the country?

I agree that our own Enlightenment could fade, and has already begun to fade. Perhaps it contains the seeds of its own distruction, because you all have become so enlightened that you refuse to recognize that some cultures are not enlightened. We invite people who practice non-enlightened cultures here and don't encourage them to adopt our culture, stubbornly maintaining that all cultures are equal. Thus our precious and dearly won Enlightened, liberal values begin to fade

Perhaps some of you have become so open minded your brains fell out.

MC Jae,
South Korea is quite westernized, due to the Korean war. North Korea is a different story.

Mely, you explain things so simply...

Christianity caused the Enlightenment.

The Korean war caused the "westernization" of South Korea.

I am not quite sure, however, whether I should find your simplicity delightful and amuse in it, or rather be concerned about what I perceive to be the ignorance of your reasoning.

Rich blessings.

---

MC jae

Mely, have you ever been to Hong Kong? Do you know anything about its history?

The original colony had wealth because wealthy English were sent there to control the China trade through it. It also had the British military garrison. All that money did not immediately flow to the Chinese inhabitants, though.

The became very cheap servants or just beggars. As recently as ten years ago, thousands slept on the sidewalks. I can well remember whole families, down to babies, whose home was a piece of cardboard on a crowded sidewalk. I saw families living under stairways, or in plywood boxes on the street.

The Chinese gradually began to make money supplying goods and services to the wealthy anglos. But at that, I don't think you would like the average chinese living quarters. Ever live in a tenth floor walk up apartment with the only toilets being separate structures on the street. Imagine waking up at three when you just have to go?

Ever try a whole family living in 100 square feet?

As for any Christian enlightenment in Hong Kong, I saw virtually none. I was, though, intrigued by a sign I saw on a highrise. It said, "Heap Gay Church. Fifteenth Floor."

No.  But I lived in or near Vancouver during the years  after Tiananmen Square when hundreds of thousands of Chinese moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver before the 1997 take over of Hong Kong by Mainland China.   

And trust me, they weren't living in cardboard boxes either before or after they left Hong Kong.  Most of them were very wealthy and they drove housing prices in Vancouver through the roof. 

How do you explain the difference between North and South Korea?  

ANd thousands more WERE living in squalor.  The wealthy were the first rats to jump ship because a) they could and b) they had more to lose.