posted
Resh and Tom sort of half-started an argument in the Yusuf Islam thread about whether Islam is a religion of peace. Tom was too annoyed to actually have the argument, though, so I figured I'd start up a real thread for one.
Here's my position. Practically any religion is what its people make of it. With few exceptions, most ancient religions include within their texts the potential for both advocacy of peace and justification of violence. Christianity's got it, Islam's got it, Judaism's got it ... it's part of the nature of the world we live in. Societies couldn't survive in the ancient world unless they were ready to fight, but now that pacifism is a more viable option, many ancient religions are moving away from their more violent roots.
There is no reason to isolate Islam and pretend that it is inherently more violent than Judaism and Christianity. It has a violent past (like most ancient religions), and it has means of justifying violence if you want to (like most ancient religions). The thing that sets fundamentalist Islam apart isn't some unique feature of Muslim scripture that makes them more violent. It's the fact that the people involved in fundamentalist Islam choose to read their religion that way.
They could, like your average mainstream American Christian, read those parts and say, "Well, that was a different world back then. The fact that [to use a Christian example] Christ said that He came to bring not peace, but the sword, isn't meant to be taken literally as an endorsement of violence. The fact that the Hebrews believed they needed to attempt genocide against the Canaanites at God's command is so deep in the past, and in such a different situation from mine, that there is no way I can consider that a model for my behavior." Etcetera.
Most Muslims do read their religion this way, and do not become radicalized terrorists. At the same time, the Christians who do not become radicalized crazies (which, again, is most of them) manage to remain mainstream because they, too, choose to interpret their religion in a way that promotes peace.
You can't blame a religion — which is an incredibly versatile thing — for the behavior of its members. They make their own choices, and we can see all over the world that being Muslim does not mean you are a violent, death-seeking murderer. Starting a fundamentalist sect might. But the same goes for a few offshoots of Christianity.
The advantage Christianity has is the fact that it exists primarily in the propserous Western world. What you don't get with Christianity is a giant third-world nation of frustrated and angry young Christian men, and a set of leaders who see Christianity as a rallying cry to whip them up into an army. It wouldn't work — the Great Oppressors are all Christian, too So they find other means to radicalize their populaces.
For Muslim third-world leaders, religion is just too easy an excuse. But it is merely one tool in their arsenal, easily replaced by something else, if they were to find it ineffective against a particular enemy.
So let's stop blaming the religion, and put the blame on the choice-making individuals, where it belongs.
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If we are not blaming religions for the bad behavior of the people in that religion, are we likewise not crediting religions for their good behavior?
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The OP reminded me of a really good quote from The Sparrow. I don't have the book on hand, but one character was blaming himself for something that was out of his control, yet was the result of his actions. This quote from an interview with Russell is similar to the quote, and gives the gist:
quote:Worse yet, he is only responsible, not culpable. The Talmud says that when we cause harm inadvertently and unintentionally, it's far more difficult to forgive ourselves.
The religions whose members commit crimes in their name are not culpable, and can't be rightly blamed for the actions, but I still feel that they hold some responsibility, and the leaders should respond in a way that will curb extremists if at all possible.
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Thanks for your post. I'm no scholar of Islam, so I honestly don't know how inherently violent or peaceful its teachings are, but I've always been inclined to agree with you. The followers of Islam that I've known personally have been gentle, peaceful people, and I don't believe that the problems with radical Islamic terrorist groups are a flaw of the religion itself any more than I blame Mormonism for the polygamist cults that hit the news now and then.
A few months back I received an email forwarded by a friend by the AFA or some family association. I was incredibly irritated by the questionnaire, which was basically asking, "Do you think that Muslims are peaceful?" It was obviously skewed toward the view that Islam is a violent religion, and there was no way to answer the questions to convey anything like what Puppy wrote above. So I just deleted it, annoyed. I would have written to them about my opinion, but I figured based on some previous correspondence that my questions/ thoughts would have been received with hostility, so I didn't bother. The ironic thing is, I'm sympathetic towards many of the organization's aims, but I can't stand it when they veer off into simple bigotry.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: If we are not blaming religions for the bad behavior of the people in that religion, are we likewise not crediting religions for their good behavior?
Yes. We can give credit to the religion for bringing to the peoples attention good moral principles and helping them better understand God. We can also see how increased obedience to the religion effects the persons manner, and consequentially judge in some respects the religion.
edit: But we can't say the religion makes people do either good or evil.
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quote:We can also see how increased obedience to the religion effects the persons manner, and consequentially judge in some respects the religion.
but if all people were increasingly obedient to their religion, then I think we would be judging ALL religions very harshly.
MrSquicky's question still remains unanswered though. If we can't blame the religion itself for acts of evil/violence committed by members of that religion based on what they read in the religious text itself, then how can we praise people for acts of goodness/charity that, again, are based on what they read in the text itself?
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Now there's the sort of sensible statement I've been dying to see! Good for you, Puppy. You are cool.
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quote:but if all people were increasingly obedient to their religion, then I think we would be judging ALL religions very harshly.
I do not see why you think this?
Fanatics typically do not understand and follow their religion as a whole and so they cherry pick the parts they think are important. While I do agree that if a religion is right, the more good people follow it, the more angry evil people get at it, I still think that an independent observer can observe the ideas the religion promotes for him/herself and make a good judgment of the religion.
I do not see why you should think that every religion across the board makes people worse the more the incorporate it into their lives.
I am convinced that the more pious somebody is towards Buddhism the better a person they become overall. But that does not mean I do not think there are many ideas within Buddhism that are incorrect. Or that my religion could not take the good of their religion and add to it.
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Well, maybe not Buddhism, but certainly Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The more someone follows those religions to the letter the more violent they will be. And the more good they will be too. That's the problem, there's so much contradiction in all those texts. One day they'll be loving their neighbor, and the next day they'll be stoning them to death...if they followed everything in the books, instead of cherry picking...the good or the bad. You can cherry pick either way.
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I think Puppy's point is partly right and partly not. That is, it doesn't make sense to blame (or credit) a religion for the actions of its followers if its followers are doing something the religion says not to. For example, if Christians violate the Golden Rule, it's not Christianity's fault that people don't listen to it. But Jews (boys anyway IIRC) in medieval times learned to read because every boy was expected to for religious reasons, and it's reasonable to credit Judaism with that.
Painting everything in broad brush strokes can of course make things seem similar even if they really aren't. For example there are plenty of religions that say you should usually obey government. But when we get specific, we find that Christ specifically says that some things belong to government ("Caesar") and some belong to God. This implies secular government. Those religions that had god-kings would be very different, and this has an effect on personal rights and on treatment of dissent. People matter but so do the ideas they believe.
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To know if Islam is too inherently violent or not would require us to know Islam. To know whether current interpretations of Islam are too violent is easy.
If Islam as it is practiced today had nothing to do with terrorism, and it was just another interchangeable tool third world leaders looking for an excuse to rally angry young men, then
* there would be comparable amounts of terror from non-Islamic parts of the 3rd world. I can't think of any instances [Edit: Snail may have found one, if we stretch the definition of Christianity]
* there would be comparable amounts of terror from non-Islamic parts of the rich world. But IRA and ETA are mostly dried up now. Terror in Europe is done by Islamic bombers now.
* the promoters of violence would mostly be leaders (and not by virtue solely of being promoters of violence). But in Palestine, promoting violence and hating Israel is how you get elected. bin Laden is a leader only because he is a terrorist (rather than being a leader first and convincing al-Qaeda to turn violent). Most Islamic heads of state try to make peace with the West. Assad, Qaddafi, and Hussein, although they were all officially Moslem, didn't use Islam so much as nationalism. Only Iran uses Islam this way consistently
* these leaders would sometimes use another tool to rouse the rabble when Islam doesn't work. I haven't heard of any such tool yet
We shouldn't just paint an image of "the Moslem" that fits what we would like to believe. We should look at what actually happens in the world, and also ask Moslems to explain what they're thinking. When we do this, we see that a common branch of Islam really does promote violence, and other common branches do not. It sounds like we need an Islam expert here.
[ April 02, 2007, 03:30 PM: Message edited by: Qaz ]
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quote:If we are not blaming religions for the bad behavior of the people in that religion, are we likewise not crediting religions for their good behavior?
You cannot credit or blame an entire religion for the behavior of an individual or a small group. That statement, taken by itself, is too abstract and there are simply too many variables that come into play.
For example, you cannot point to the Disciples of Christ and say they're a bunch of mass-suiciding maniacs, now can you? Similarly, you can't point to Catholics and say they're all icons (no pun intended) of charity.
All that can be done is to look carefully at the interpretation an individual puts on their religion, insofar as we can judge something so uncertain, and try to determine how much of an impact his religion had on his life.
After all, my Christianity certainly isn't, say, Belle's Christianity. Stalin's atheism wasn't Mao's atheism. TomD's atheism/agnosticism (covering my bases there ) isn't Strider's atheism/agnosticism. The list goes on.
Insofar as anyone has credited religion exclusively with the good or the bad things that people do, they're wrong. I'm not convinced people around here make a habit of that, though
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Lord's Resistance Army is said to have killed as many people as Hamas, Abu Sayyaf and Al-Queda put together. I don't know if that's true or not though. LRA is some sort of mix between Christianity and native African shamanic beliefs.
Anyway, I always understood that the present day Islamic fundamentalism was born as a counter-reaction to westernization somewhere during the 19th century. I've understood, for example, largely based on my high school lessons, that during the reign of the Islamic empire (when they were controlling most of Spain and so forth) Jews and Christians in the Muslim-controlled areas had to pay an extra tax but other than that they were very much let be. Which is far more than can be said of the Christian treatment of Jews and Muslims in those days.
EDIT: I'd typed Fatah up there by mistake, I meant Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic group on the Philippines. (Too much tea at this late hour.)
quote:Fanatics typically do not understand and follow their religion as a whole and so they cherry pick the parts they think are important.
I think this is pretty false. I suspect most fanatics would say that their non-fanatic counterparts are the ones who don't understand and follow it as a whole. "Cherry picking" in this instance is meaningless because it amounts to "interpreting things differently."
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BlackBlade, one could say *everyone* cherry-picks the parts of their religion they wish to follow, as Puppy pointed out. And for the majority of people in the world, they do not have a "whole" understanding of their religion, whether they're fanatics or not. They know what they are taught by their local clergy, but generally don't explore too much further than what's required.
And the "understanding" of a given religion is a highly subjective viewpoint, because when you say that some fanatical Muslim does not understand his religion, you are claiming that you(or practitioners of that religion you would rather associate with) understand better about the religion than the fanatic.
But from the fanatic's point of view, it's quite the opposite, so how can the dialogue come to the conclusion if you are just setting your opinion in opposition to another?
In the end, the goodness of a certain religious practice will be borne out by whether the practicing of it actually makes the world(or some appropriate part of it) a better place.
And I mean this at a very basic observational level, not in some "grand scheme of things" way. Are the people(any and all people) that are affected by a certain religious practice(not the whole religion) more secure than without? Do they have food, shelter, clothing? Are they able to rise above survival and become more educated, happy, enlightened and make stronger communities? Are the natural surroundings flourishing in harmony with the religious practice, or suffering? With regard to any particular practice, this may be anywhere on a scale of beneficience-benignity-malignance, and I *think* this should be a standard to measure religious practice, in the end.
These observations should be able to be made *directly* as a result of the religious practice, and there should not enter a "means to an end" argument to remove the responsibility of a particular religious practice for the malignancy it causes.
I think any person with an intention to do good can agree to these requirements(or something like them), and so even when relating to a "fanatic" one can use this metric. If someone doesn't have intention to do good, it doesn't really matter what religion they subscribe to.
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I did not say that wars and violence never occurred outside Islam. I said there were not comparable amounts of terror in the non-Islamic parts of the 3rd world.
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quote: Rwanda and Congo are not cases of terrorism.
Maybe not overall, but many of the stories I've heard about those places certainly do involve terrorism.
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quote:I did not say that wars and violence never occurred outside Islam. I said there were not comparable amounts of terror in the non-Islamic parts of the 3rd world.
What do you mean by comparable amounts, exactly? The Lord's Resistance Army example I posted is pretty clearly a terrorist organization, and the death toll caused by it surpasses that of the major Islamic terrorist organizations. The main difference, I guess, would be that the terrorism by LRA is local as opposed to global.
Also, I would say the Russian army in Chechnya is just as guilty of atrocities as the Chechenyans. Though the army is not, of course, mainly a religious group.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: Well, maybe not Buddhism, but certainly Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The more someone follows those religions to the letter the more violent they will be.
The more you follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, the more violent you will be? I don't follow this reasoning.
The more I read/study the NT, the more I feel I should love and forgive others.
Could you elaborate on things here?
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quote:Originally posted by Puppy: For Muslim third-world leaders, religion is just too easy an excuse. But it is merely one tool in their arsenal, easily replaced by something else, if they were to find it ineffective against a particular enemy.
So let's stop blaming the religion, and put the blame on the choice-making individuals, where it belongs.
I can't think of another tool as effective as religion for allowing a small group of individuals to control the thoughts and actions of a large group, nor one as effective at giving the group unarguable reason to do as they like.
quote:Originally posted by Ken: The more you follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, the more violent you will be? I don't follow this reasoning.
The more I read/study the NT, the more I feel I should love and forgive others.
You seem to be forgetting most of the OT. I haven't been to church in a while, but I'm pretty sure Christians believe the OT is gospel too.
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quote:I'm pretty sure Christians believe the OT is gospel too.
I may be remembering this wrong, as I haven't been to church in many a year, but I'm pretty sure that the Gospel is, quite specifically, the New Testament.
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Rather than me trying to prove a negative, could you point out some violent directives from the Old Testament that would still apply to (and be applied by) individual Christians today?
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"The Gospel" is specifically the "good news" that Christ has saved mankind from sin.
The word has acquired a broader colloquial meaning, however, and shows up in a lot of contexts that don't fit that original definition. I believe that Cow was using it in place of the word "canon".
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quote:I can't think of another tool as effective as religion for allowing a small group of individuals to control the thoughts and actions of a large group, nor one as effective at giving the group unarguable reason to do as they like.
A belief system doesn't need to specifically be religious in order to be useful for generating fanatical behavior. Communism being the prime non-religious example. Nationalism/Patriotism works, too, as does Xenophobia.
But I should also point out that leaders don't control thoughts and actions. Those can only be given willingly by their followers. A religion isn't the equivalent of a "Dominate Monster" spell, and its adherents should not be treated as though they were automatons.
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quote:I'm pretty sure Christians believe the OT is gospel too.
I may be remembering this wrong, as I haven't been to church in many a year, but I'm pretty sure that the Gospel is, quite specifically, the New Testament.
I've always heard to the Gospel as relating to only the first four books of the New Testament.
Regardless, one should still assume the Old Testament still holds validity to the Christian faith, should one not? After all, aren't the Ten Commandments (and the six hundred others) all in the Old Testament?
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I have to admit to having first read the title and defensively thinking to myself, "oh no, not another one of these." Glad to be way off on that mark.
The religion regarding Islam is the most often brought up reasoning behind the violence in the middle east. After that it's often culture. Both are wrong, and it's something that is so deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew up that it isn't unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand is the average or the norm. Since someone else already made the comparison, it is not unlike how the LDS are viewed as a subset of American culture by a large portion of America itself. The view isn't always based on reality, and that view is fed upon by more misinformation or disinformation that may be passed along by some groups, and the view maintains a low but ubiquitous presence throughout America. It isn't very different from how Muslims and Islam is viewed, with the particular differences having to do with distance (from America), exposure (to only specific parts), and an overwhelming lack of information correcting the misinformation. There are other contributing factors, like political interests that tend to lead politicians to using reduced sound bytes to position themselves in the right, or like media caricatures that almost always tend to portray Muslims and Arabs or Iranians in a less than positive light. There is very little that you could point at and say, "aha! There is a contributing factor, right there!" to focus on and rally against, because it has gotten to the realm of 'common sense' in that if they weren't violent and destructive, then why do they act violently and destructively?
Just look at some of the comments within the thread so far that could easily be asking that same question with the foregone conclusion already present and waiting to be drawn out with leading commentary and questioning. Challenge it, and they'll point out tidbit after tidbit of information, and no matter how many alternate cases not including their target pointing out it isn't just their target, that person or persons will simply point say that it is irrelevant or diversionary, and that the original conclusion still stands because their points are still their points, and they see what they can see. Can anyone who is LDS say that they haven't seen similar methods of debate in threads discussing LDS doctrines, structure, or beliefs?
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My understanding of "gospel" is "good news" and is generally used to refer to the stories of Jesus. This would not include the OT or the NT letters, Acts, Revelations etc.
For most Christian denomonations (not LDS as I understand it) this would mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Other stories about Jesus also fall into the category of gospel (Gnostic Gospels, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary etc.) but are not part of the canon.
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Ah yes. My years away from the church have erased the memory of the other books of the NT. I thought there were just the M,M,L & J.
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quote:Originally posted by Temposs: And I mean this at a very basic observational level, not in some "grand scheme of things" way. Are the people(any and all people) that are affected by a certain religious practice(not the whole religion) more secure than without? Do they have food, shelter, clothing? Are they able to rise above survival and become more educated, happy, enlightened and make stronger communities? Are the natural surroundings flourishing in harmony with the religious practice, or suffering? With regard to any particular practice, this may be anywhere on a scale of beneficience-benignity-malignance, and I *think* this should be a standard to measure religious practice, in the end.
Temposs, I don't entirely disagree with you, but the problem when dealing with "the good a religion does" is that it isn't necessarily in worldly effects. It's well within the realm of most religions (and notably Christianity and Islam) for faithfulness to reward you with a pretty terrible worldly life. The offset is that your religious life, your spiritual journey, your eventual place in heaven is that much better/more assured.
For example, one could probably argue that unfettered capitalism would probably do the best for raising the quality of life (externally) in third world nations and the like. But that doesn't mean that leaving devout religious practices in place don't significantly contribute to the happiness of the place (even if they may slow some progress). Note: that wasn't meant to state that religion necessarily impedes economic growth, but that it can.
So <insert your religion here> militant fundamentalists would likely argue that while their behavior causes worldly/material harm, it increases the overal spiritual happiness of it's members and/or everyone else. kinda the attitude of "I may live in a run down apartment because I give 70% of my income to charity, but when the rapture comes I'll be sitting pretty."
And even barring the afterlife issue, there are plenty of people living in third world countries/regions who would say that X religion increases their daily happiness despite the fact that it doesn't do anything to give them a better home or a more reliable source of food or whatnot.
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quote:But I should also point out that leaders don't control thoughts and actions. Those can only be given willingly by their followers. A religion isn't the equivalent of a "Dominate Monster" spell, and its adherents should not be treated as though they were automatons.
That's true to an extent, but I think the situation is more complicated than you are crediting it.
Volition isn't a binary thing. What other people do often has a very strong effect on determining behavior. For example, The Milgram experiment.
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Naturally, the situation is more complicated, and outside forces always play a role in an individual's decisions.
However, we need to be cautious with the way we attribute causes to human decisions. For instance, let's say that John Doe would administer an electric shock to Jane Whoozit if ordered to in a structured environment, but would not do so under any other circumstances. If John shocks Jane, who caused that to happen? The people who influenced John, without whom the event would never have occurred? Or John himself, who (again) would never have done it on his own.
In my opinion, John bears the full weight of the blame for his decision, but the people who influenced him bear similar responsibility for the separate act of encouraging him to do so.
What we need to avoid is stating the connection between John and his manipulators in a way that allows John to scapegoat them and avoid responsibility for his actions. He still made the choice, and learned that he is capable of doing cruel things under certain circumstances — which says something about him, and not necessarily about the circumstances.
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It seems based on that scenario that you are not saying that a religion cannot lead people to do things differently than they otherwise would, but that even if it does, they bear the moral responsibility for those actions.
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quote:What we need to avoid is stating the connection between John and his manipulators in a way that allows John to scapegoat them and avoid responsibility for his actions.
Alternatively, we need to avoid stating the connection such that the manipulators are seen as bearing no responsibility for the outcome and also in such a way to play up the effects of the situation so as to guard against the fundamental attribution error.
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Would the full blame still attach to John if they drugged him first, say with something like Sodium Pentathol that interferes with high brain processing?
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The Grimace, I do agree entirely with you, and it was only because I was unclear/vague in my prose that you didn't see that, I think.
Two points on which I needed to clarify to match what you say: 1) For any given religious practice, they don't have to improve multiple aspects of people's lives, or have huge positive effects, so even a slight "happiness" factor, which I did mention, is adequate for having a good religious practice even if the people are starving and desperately poor, as long as it doesn't do harm as well. Just as long as the religious practice does *something* good, no matter how much, and doesn't do wrong, then it is a good practice.
2) I don't mean to exclude the principle of personal sacrifice from good religious practice. If the sacrifice involves helping others in need, then it is especially good. But it is partly what I mean by "enlightenment", that by practicing ascetism or entering poverty by giving your life savings to the poor, people may gain a more divine perspective on life. People don't need much to live, and people being less rich can actually be a good thing, as long as those who are not voluntary ascetics are not deprived of life essentials.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: If we are not blaming religions for the bad behavior of the people in that religion, are we likewise not crediting religions for their good behavior?
I blame God for that touchdown pass I dropped.
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POINT ONE~ The religion regarding Islam is the most often brought up reasoning behind the violence in the middle east. After that it's often culture.
POINT TWO~Both are wrong...
POINT THREE~...and it's something that is so deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew up that it isn't unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand is the average or the norm.
Justa, what you said in POINT THREE, "something that is so deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew up that it isn't unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand..." and then you deny in POINT TWO that "both are wrong" and is based on your POINT ONE, "religion" and "culture" is a curious notion on your part.
Beliefs "deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew" and is "unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand" is based souly on religion and culture.
Much of the modern religion of Islam (and surely not all, because many Muslems don't agree with the beliefs of the radical Jihadists) and its culture lends itself to the violence in the Middle East (especially towards Isreal), terrorist activities directed towards Europe and the US as well as parts of Africa, India and the far East. This violence is based in the Islamic extremist's religion and culture.
quote:Krank states: Justa, what you said in POINT THREE, "something that is so deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew up that it isn't unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand..." and then you deny in POINT TWO that "both are wrong" and is based on your POINT ONE, "religion" and "culture" is a curious notion on your part.
Beliefs "deeply rooted in judgments based on how we grew" and is "unthinkable for a person to go their whole life and never question what seems like common sense about something so different from what they've come to understand" is based souly on religion and culture.
Were that true, the great deal of individuals born and raised in that region would be prone to the same behavior regardless of where they live, and yet America and much of the rest of the West have a great deal of immigrants from these regions and I believe it is safe to say that the percentage who are prone to blowing themselves up, as an example are lower than a fraction of a fraction. This is worth noting, and why I mentioned previously that it is not the culture and the religion.
quote:Much of the modern religion of Islam (and surely not all, because many Muslems don't agree with the beliefs of the radical Jihadists) and its culture lends itself to the violence in the Middle East (especially towards Isreal), terrorist activities directed towards Europe and the US as well as parts of Africa, India and the far East. This violence is based in the Islamic extremist's religion and culture.
Note that you stated in the Middle East when you said that, yet there are many transplants from the Middle East in many sizes and numbers who don't engage in such in America or Europe. So, what is it about that region specifically that makes the difference, since it is easily observable that those with the same culture and religion who have relocated are not prone to that violence? Can it really be attributable to religion and culture if that religion and culture doesn't result in the same actions when placed in a different part of the world?
I'm not suggesting a social experiment or anything, and I won't engage in hypothetical "Ahmed Doe" situations because I feel it unnecessarily reduces the underlying factors too far. What I am saying is that there are a number of reasons that we see violence and extremism in that part of the world, and religion and culture are not the mitigating factors. Environment, propaganda, wealth (or poor distribution thereof), dictatorships or one-party rule, and a history of both colonial rule and constantly being at odds with a larger and / or more powerful nation or state are more likely factors contributing to the behavior, and at least some of those conditions exist in areas of the world with similar behaviors but not necessarily always the same religion or culture.
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quote: Justa: What I am saying is that there are a number of reasons that we see violence and extremism in that part of the world, and religion and culture are not the mitigating factors. Environment, propaganda, wealth (or poor distribution thereof), dictatorships or one-party rule, and a history...
In addition to religion, language, etnicity, a region's/country's evironment, economy, government and history are all parts of a country's & a person's culture.
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quote: Justa: What I am saying is that there are a number of reasons that we see violence and extremism in that part of the world, and religion and culture are not the mitigating factors. Environment, propaganda, wealth (or poor distribution thereof), dictatorships or one-party rule, and a history...
In addition to religion, language, etnicity, a region's/country's evironment, economy, government and history are all parts of a country's & a person's culture.
I think that your definition of culture and my definition of culture have some pretty sizeable differences, to say the least. Could you explain to me how America has many different cultures, in some cases coexisting in a location, given what you just attributed to your definition of culture?
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Could you explain to me how America has many different cultures, in some cases coexisting in a location...
The U.S. is a land of immigrants. The ideal for the U.S. is to fully embrace multiculturalism which is "the doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country." The binding factor being the U.S. Constitution. This is the ideal, and I hope it will one day be achieved.
This does not contridict my "defination" of culture, which is pretty much textbook.
Posts: 1221 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Could you explain to me how America has many different cultures, in some cases coexisting in a location...
The U.S. is a land of immigrants. The ideal for the U.S. is to fully embrace multiculturalism which is "the doctrine that several different cultures (rather than one national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country." The binding factor being the U.S. Constitution. This is the ideal, and I hope it will one day be achieved.
This does not contridict my "defination" of culture, which is pretty much textbook.
I disagree, unless you can specify which textbook from which you read. You can't claim that something applies to everywhere but America and that that answer does not conflict with itself. You demanded an explanation from me before. I ask you to show me the same consideration.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:A people’s culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems.
I don't see "government" or "economy" listed there. In fact, it does not mention a coutry's anything, but a group of people's list of defining attributes. That may seem a minor distinction to you, except when you read further in your own link:
quote:Culture has several distinguishing characteristics. (1) It is based on symbols—abstract ways of referring to and understanding ideas, objects, feelings, or behaviors—and the ability to communicate with symbols using language. (2) Culture is shared. People in the same society share common behaviors and ways of thinking through culture. (3) Culture is learned. While people biologically inherit many physical traits and behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited. A person must learn culture from other people in a society.
It goes on to explain that culture is also adaptive, which supports the certain amount of assimilation that takes place when numerous cultures mix. It does not, however, support what you have said are the defining characteristics of culture. This is important because those abstract symbols and understandings are what make culture, not the framework of the government or economy in their nation of origin. Those latter things can influence the abstractions, but they do not define them.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote: Justa said: This is important because those abstract symbols and understandings are what make culture, not the framework of the government or economy in their nation of origin. Those latter things can influence the abstractions, but they do not define them."
Avoiding the abstract, keep on reading past the first page which gives more of a "textbook" explaination:
"British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor gave one of the first complete definitions of culture in his book Primitive Culture (1871). His definition stated that culture includes socially acquired knowledge, beliefs, art, law [LAW IS GOVERNMENT], morals, customs, and habits."
"Later anthropologists came up with simpler categorizations of culture. A common practice is to divide all of culture into three broad categories: material, social, and ideological. A fourth category, the arts, has characteristics of both material and ideological culture.
Material culture includes products of human manufacture, [$ ECONOMY $]such as technology. Social culture pertains to people’s forms of social organization—how people interact and organize themselves in groups [including GOVERNMENT]. Ideological culture relates to what people think, value, believe, and hold as ideals [including GOVERNMENT]. The arts include such activities and areas of interest as music, sculpture, painting, pottery, theater, cooking, writing, and fashion [more $ ECONOMY $]."
Posts: 1221 | Registered: Aug 2001
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So they find other means to radicalize their populaces.
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) isn't Strider's atheism/agnosticism. The list goes on.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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