'Free speech absolutists' tend to be mostly interested in their own consequence-free free speech, for some reason.
Doesnt matter if I believe in sacred worms, if you burn my book about sacred worms you clearly do not respect me. At least have a conversation with me about sacred worms, and try and understand my view on sacred worms.
Turn that around though. Say I think your worm theory is daft. Why should your idea implicitly command respect? Why should anyone else waste their time listening to Annelid's Witnesses blabbing on uninvited?
Moreover, we're now in a situation where we have two people who have conflicting opinions, why should "worm" trump "non-worm" just because you've written the word 'sacred' in front of it? Do you think you're better than I am? No wonder people go around burning your books.
It's a ridiculous argument of course, but this is what gets some people's backs up. Religious belief is a protected characteristic, which simplistically means you you can't be prejudiced against someone because of it (eg, you'd be in trouble if you asked someone about their faith in a job interview unless it was directly relevant to the job). But that shouldn't mean it affords special privilege. Your faith might be the most important thing in the world to you but, well, so what? There are a couple of posters here who clearly feel equally strongly about their rejection of faith.
Burning the book doesnt help the situation, just states you have no wish to understand or try to engage
It doesn't though, does it. It actively rejects what (they believe) the book symbolises. It's an overt act of aggression and, given the typical demographic of someone who might own such a book, probably racism.
I wouldn't burn your worm book out of respect for Big Worm. Rather, I wouldn't burn your worm book because you like it and I'm not an asshole. Well, usually.
‘Free speech absolutists’ tend to be mostly interested in their own consequence-free free speech, for some reason.
They're also often fairly shocked to find that everyone else has the same rights they do. It happens on here quite a lot. "You can't say [thing] any more!" Sure you can, but everyone else can call you a nob for saying it.
Remember when the Nazi's burned all them books?
Remember when all those disco records (or more accurately, any record by a black artist) were blown up at a baseball stadium back in the 70's?
Destroying other peoples s in a public setting sends out a pretty hateful message,
F around > find out, (as per morecash's example).
I don’t THINK Christians would get so upset if you set fire to a copy of The Bible but Muslims take setting fire to a copy of The Quran as an act of religious hatred. Surely the copy that you burn is just that – a copy.
Some Christians (particularly those who take their religion very seriously and have the strongest views about the bible) absolutely would be offended. I suspect if you make a public show of burning a bible that even a lot of Christians who haven't opened a bible all year are going to be offended; and nobody should be surprised at that as clearly publically burning a religious book is done to antagonise people. I'm sure there are plenty of less "serious" Muslims who simply shake their head and think "what a prick" when someone burns the Quoran. I'm definitely not religious and even I am doing that!
I'm struggling to see why even the most militant atheist would not recognise that burning a holy book is symbolic and intended to be offensive just like burning a flag, and bound to elicit a response - after all if that was not the intent it seems like a fairly odd choice of thing to do.
It’s just fantasy though… I’d hapily burn a Quran and a Bible to get my BBQ going if it came to it.. I’d even place a union flag, and a wodden crucificx.
And a manchester united football shirt.
Even if you had people round who might be offended by any of that stuff? Yes I know there are people who are "professional offence finders" seeking to take offence where none is implied or intended but these "protesters" in Sweden and Denmark are actively seeking to give offence.
Yes, burning bibles and qurans is breaking rule #1. Good luck changing people's minds or softening their opinion of other groups if you've that going on in the background.
It hasn’t changed since 600AD (unlike the Bible) and is handed down generation to generation, since they believe that it was dictated to Mohammed by God
Good thing the world hasn't changed since 600AD...
Can someone tell me a bit more about these Sacred Worms?
Oh, and in answer to the actual question,
I don’t THINK Christians would get so upset if you set fire to a copy of The Bible
The issue here I suspect is that you're viewing Christianity through Britain's on the whole pretty wishy-washy interpretation of it, everyday folk who regularly go to church every year for Midnight Mass at Christmas.
Not every Xtian is like that. Go setting fire to bibles in say Tennessee, see how that works out for you. Hope you don't have a bullet allergy.
but Muslims take setting fire to a copy of The Quran as an act of religious hatred.
Because, what else could it be. Can you think of a more mundane scenario? "Hm, the fire's getting a bit low and oh no, we're out of coal! Best get my Quran on the go, it's either that or Pinch of Nom and I was about to go rustle up a quiche."
Riddle me this. Why would anyone burning a Quran even have one unless they'd acquired it explicitly to burn it? I couldn't burn a bible for one blindingly obvious reason. I'd first have to drive to the Christian bookshop in Preston in order to buy one and if I'm going to all that trouble I might as well torch the entire shop. And as much as I dislike organised religion that feels like it may be something of an overreaction.
The issue here I suspect is that you’re viewing Christianity through Britain’s on the whole pretty wishy-washy interpretation of it, everyday folk who regularly go to church every year for Midnight Mass at Christmas.
I have had contact with the fundmentalist "christians" recently. They are a whole other level and completely vile. they will lie in pursuit of their ideals. They consider non believers lessor and look down on them. They believe the bible is the literal word of god. Its been really eye opening
I’m sure there are plenty of less “serious” Muslims who simply shake their head and think “what a prick” when someone burns the Quoran.
Pretty much exactly what happened in town here. Paludan didn't have time to advertise and get the rest of his racist pricks into town, or rile up the Muslim population (local or otherwise). So it was just people shaking their heads and heckling, it's a shame no one threw a milk shake at him. But they aren't cheap here.
And TBH, burning Harry Potter books might get you some hate from a (very) small percentage of Potterheads.
..
@martinhutch:
‘Free speech absolutists’ tend to be mostly interested in their own consequence-free free speech, for some reason.
And people who use the term Free Speech Absolutists are actually pro-censorship and are either lying to themselves or others that they believe in free speech.
You cannot avoid the pitfalls that Hitchens very clearly articulates without actual, real freedom.
So yeah, given the last 2000 years of history - particularly (but not exclusively) religious history - I'm unapologetically zero tolerance on people who hold infantilising pro-censorship opinions.
chevy - do you think it acceptable to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre?
Good thing the world hasn’t changed since 600AD
In some parts of the world that seems to be true. Taliban's treatment of women come to mind.
I’m unapologetically zero tolerance on people who hold infantilising pro-censorship opinions.
Publicly setting fire to something doesn't seem like the least infantile way to demonstrate opposition to something. It seems more like a deliberate attempt to antagonise people who like that thing.
I’m unapologetically zero tolerance on people who hold infantilising pro-censorship opinions.
Which includes people who burn books on purpose presumably?
Can someone tell me a bit more about these Sacred Worms?
In the beginning was the Worm, and the Worm was with God, and the Worm was God.
Book burning? Books are tech used for storing, transmitting and communicate information. If you destroy that info in theatrical style you're doing it in turn to send a message, unlikely to be positively received.
None of us is 100% free. Because letting people do exactly what they want tends to mean that the freedoms of others are curtailed. Society should be a rolling compromise of rights and restrictions aimed at keeping everyone alive and well, and free from harassment and intimidation. Absolute freedom on an island of nearly 70 million people is impossible unless someone else is being trampled on to get it, and anyone who demands it generally isn't too concerned about that.
And that applies, to some extent, to speech and expression too. If I use free speech to rabble-rouse and incite violence and hatred against someone else, my free speech can directly reduce their freedom to live peacefully.
@tjagain - I didn't think you of all people would give me such a gift, and score such a a big own goal! Fantastic! Doesn't happen often on a forum :):
chevy – do you think it acceptable to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre?
Just watch the first minute of this:
To TJ, but also posting on this thread and hold pro-censorship opinions, if you've never watched that whole thing, it intelligently addresses everything this thread brings up incredibly succinctly. It's as if one of our great intellects has written and performed a speech to designed to address this very thread. If you don't really want to challenge your own opinions this way then then you're really only participating in a forum to howl at the moon, with no eye on self-improvement, never mind actual argument.
If you still can't be arsed after that, my last post on this thread (because I can't summarise anything better than Hitchens has on this exact subject) - how about this from the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers
Unless, of course, we legislate against them.
Think it’s time to admit to needing glasses- quick glimpse of the thread title & I thought it was “Buming the Queen”
It’s as if one of our great intellects
I'll stop reading there. This is Hitchens we're talking about, and his book on this subject "God isn't Great" is wilfully dishonest and anti-intellectual. As a (what would we call him?) a public philosopher His work in this area comes up woefully short. Like a undergrad argument maybe, but for some-one who professes intellect, it's shoddy at best and ignorant presumably by design
[as an example] He condenses the whole of the Eastern religious tradition into about 8 pages of that book, as if all the traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism (for example) can be lumped together. It's a work of startling crassness. That someone is using it to bait what might have otherwise been an interesting thread (by someone who's raison d'etre on this website appears to be just that) comes as no surprise.
are you religious @nickc?
Plenty of Buddhist and Hindu mass-murderous atrocities around the world. Pick your religion, pick your abuse and murder.
Pick your religion, pick your abuse and murder.
I'm sure we can find any number of religiously inspired atrocities throughout history, but to claim that somehow religion has made men uniquely violent in spite of their otherwise peaceful nature or their innate sense of good and evil isn't sound thinking. Its more likely that killing the heathens and the heretics and the free thinkers was always something that could be done in perfectly good conscience insofar as it was done for Yahweh, Allah, or The Church.
Plenty of Buddhist and Hindu mass-murderous atrocities around the world. Pick your religion, pick your abuse and murder.
Unlike atheists who have never done such things?
I’m sure we can find any number of religiously inspired atrocities throughout history, but to claim that somehow religion has made men uniquely violent in spite of their otherwise peaceful nature or their innate sense of good and evil isn’t sound thinking.
Religion is literally the mechanism by which unscrupulous people have mobilised people for war for millenia.
Religion has been the binding common myth that is needed to mobilise populations. It's not the only mechanism for doing so, but it's been the single most effective tool for that down the centuries. And it comes with the downside of magical thinking that pervades all of life which enables simple control over the humans that are brought up to believe it (note I didn't say idiots).
It's why religions are all for "hate speech" censorship - because they protect them - and why religious pressure groups are conflating "islamophobia" with spurious racial connotations, in the same way the state of Israel has been smearing those who would criticise the actions of the state with antisemitism.
I said I wouldn't get drawn into the thread further, so I failed on that point. Any more, watch the vid. If you've got a better argument than is made in that then you've a chance of changing my mind. But nobody has ever presented me with one, so whilst I eagerly await such a day, I don't hold out much hope for anyone being able to muster it.
Plenty of Christians will lose their shit at Bible burning. A Bermondsey pub if you have the wrong face, a Wee Free church, an Orange Lodge, a GAA club...and that's just inside the UK. There are plenty of Christian zealots in Nigeria, Uganda, Palestine, Serbia...
Some spanker US soldiers burned a bin bag full of Qur’an’s (given to detainees) in 2012 and a shit storm ensued.
ISTR at the time the soldiers had to clear out a cell block, and thought that burning them WAS the respectful thing to do (as an analogue to burning the US flag, which is the approved thing)
Free speech shouldn’t override common sense and decency
I totally agree that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should. But more importantly, we shouldn't let wafty, slippery notions of "decency" and "politeness" become reasons to suppress free speech. No-one has a right not ever to see things that offend or insult them...
...especially you, Big Nose.
No-one has a right not ever to see things that offend or insult them…
Agreed. But doesn't mean we have to put up with people that are saying (or doing) something purely to offend, as is probably the case in the burning case
Religion is literally the mechanism by which
We get the rich cross-cultural fertilization of the Levant by Hellenistic, Jewish, and Manichaean thought, and the transformation of a Jewish heretic into a religion that Nietzsche called “Platonism for the masses.”
We get the fascinating theological separation in the New Testament between Jewish, Gnostic, and Pauline doctrines, and the remarkable journey of the first Christian heresy
Without religion you have to ignore the spiritual origin of our own thoroughly liberal Unitarianism. (Newton was an Arian and anti-Trinitarian, which made his presence at Trinity College permanently awkward; ask @steveXTC)
and we get the sublime transformation of Christian thought into the cathartic spirituality of German Idealism/ Romanticism And we otherwise don’t have the existential Christianity of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and, most recently The Pope. Who’s messages have been the most robust anti-capitalist tracts from any post Marxism because of the harms it does to the poor.
But y'know Hitchens.... One of the great intellectuals. 🙄
Try expanding your horizons a bit.
So you are religious, and you are threatened by free speech and that's why you fall on the side of restricting what people are allowed to hear.
Check.
"and, most recently The Pope. Who’s messages have been the most robust anti-capitalist tracts from any post Marxism because of the harms it does to the poor"
I'll take lessons from someone who doesn't cover up institutional child abuse and still to this day runs opportunistic policies based on the sensibilities of the countries that it's operating in so it can provide varying levels of cover to predatory men who rape children.
Plenty of more worthy people have written much more on the harms of modern economics than than the head of a child-rape apologist organisation. One that still holds condom-use in AIDS-ridden Africa a sin, whilst being quiet on that in the UK. As they are about the fact that in much of the world they still hate gays, they still believe women are the cause of original sin and beneath men.
Religion claims moral authority where it has none. And it's primary tool to protect itself is to shut people up - to deny them the ability to freely criticise it.
So yes, stupidly burning books and making jokes and laughing at religion is going to wind people up. Enough so they'll try and kill you for it - and they get so violently wound up because such action is effective.
Even if they can't be talked out of their delusion, their children see it. And children see through religion anyway - and the idea that not all adults fall for the delusion, that some adults laugh at the lies religion promulgates is infectious. So much so that some of those kids ditch the religion (in countries that they're allowed to do so).
Censorship prevents that from happening - and censorship of that type is rife across the planet. It's not long gone in the UK and could easily come back.
So burn those bibles whilst you can people. It's a liberty that literally millions of people have died to buy you.
And whilst warming your hands on the ashes of the Quran rest easy that you're not abusing any freedom of speech - you're not stopping anyone from reading the words contained therein, there's bloody millions of copies of it all over the world, poisoning the minds of children into hating you and people like you. Burn away knowing that the only thing you're really hurting is the idea of organised religion being something that deserves respect, when it clearly doesn't.
ISTR at the time the soldiers had to clear out a cell block, and thought that burning them WAS the respectful thing to do (as an analogue to burning the US flag, which is the approved thing)
Aye, a soon as we heard it on BBC news those of us in country knew we were a) getting a long briefing b) going to catch some extra spicy heat for insult.
Both things happened. The worst part was the dull as **** briefing.
I said I wouldn’t get drawn into the thread further
And yet here you are drawn deeper and deeper apparently against your own will.
Maybe a study into the teachings of the Buddha might help you to have the strength and self-discipline to achieve your own goals💡
@ernielynch, let me quote the whole of what I said:
I said I wouldn’t get drawn into the thread further, so I failed on that point.
I don't think Buddha would help, I had some free time to kill in between meetings today and thought it an important enough subject to be involved in.
Unlike the Buddhists at least I'm only killing time instead of committing ethnic-cleansing and the forced migration of populations through mass-rape.
Although maybe I should try that?
Can someone tell me a bit more about these Sacred Worms?
Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people
Some folk like to offend, and some folk like to be offended.
And neither should be encouraged, supported, or otherwise pandered to.
So you are religious
Nope., not in the slightest, but I am at least willing to read the works of the folks who intellectually understood and learned from religion when writing and composing their own philosophy, science, secularism, and politics
stupidly burning books and making jokes and laughing at religion is going to wind people up. Enough so they’ll try and kill you for it – and they get so violently wound up because such action is effective
Effective at what?
But doesn’t mean we have to put up with people that are saying (or doing) something purely to offend, as is probably the case in the burning case
Well, what specifically do you think not putting up with it means? Do you mean calling offensive people arseholes? Seems fair.
Or do you mean putting them in prison? How offensive does something have to be before you won't put up with it? Can I call you bignose? Can I call Hitchens a fat drunk boomer waste of newsprint? Can I call Martin Luther a medieval dimwit?
Since someone mentioned burning the US flag, I always like to point out the relevant section of the US flag code:
“When a U.S. flag is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, it should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.”
Anyone mentioned the KLF yet? I think they burned a million rectangles of paper, that's like over one thousand Quarans!
Anyone mentioned the KLF yet? I think they burned a million rectangles of paper, that’s like over one thousand Quarans!
I'll forgive them due to this classic.
It's not for you or I to say what value or meaning the book should have. A muslim can tell you, and that's the answer.
Islam is a recruitment tool for hate.
Islam is distorted and used to recruit people, as is Christianity, nationalism, the left and right of politics and so on. Every movement has it's lunatic fringe and people are full of anger are easily manipulated.
And people who use the term Free Speech Absolutists are actually pro-censorship and are either lying to themselves or others that they believe in free speech.
No, they just understand what the term means. What you're describing isn't freedom of speech, it's anarchy.
You cannot avoid the pitfalls that Hitchens very clearly articulates without actual, real freedom.
Do you have an original thought in your head or are you just going to go "yes but Hitchens, here's the video again, 17th time is a charm" in every post you make? You sound like an ass and you're doing exactly what you accuse religious types of doing which is parroting someone else's teachings.
(Exercising my free speech just there.)
why religious pressure groups are conflating “islamophobia” with spurious racial connotations
Do you know a lot of white Muslims?
So you are religious, and you are threatened by free speech and that’s why you fall on the side of restricting what people are allowed to hear.
"Allowed" is a weird choice of word there. Is that what you meant to say?
People are allowed to say a lot of things. They're allowed to say a lot of things which others may not like. Hell, this thread exists.
But they're also likely to get a kick in the bollocks for it if they're being deliberately provocative. Which as someone else once said, well, seeing as you have an erection for YouTube videos here's one from another sage:
I'm playing catchup, I'll get to the rest in a bit assuming that a) the thread is still open and b) you haven't proven your own assertion at the top of this post to be correct.
Do you know a lot of white Muslims?
(... addendum: come to that, do you know any?)
@cougar:
(… addendum: come to that, do you know any?)
Personally? The wife of the owner of the curry house in Betws.
Oh, and being topical, Sinead O'Connor, sorry Shudhada Sadaquat.
(And plenty when I lived in Bradford).
But if you are the sort of person who can make a causal relationship rather than simply an associative one between the colour of someone's skin and the fraudulent belief system that they subscribe to then you're right on the bottom of this scale regarding this, unfortunately.
