Fan of theocracy?

[Patine]

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...ntries-where-atheism-punishable-death/355961/

Atheism is not the same as apostasy, and this list doesn't recognize other countries that simply don't recognize your legal right to consider yourself atheist (or a follower outside a small number of religions, or even just one religion) and leave your birth religion's following legally, and don't legally recognize just religious status as being legally, even if you're not executed, tortured, or even imprisoned forever over it - including many non-Islamic examples like Greece, India, Israel, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Tonga, several Latin American and Anglo-Caribbean nations, Ethiopia, and many African nations south of the religious "Green Belt." Just because you don't get executed (and thus put on the list you linked) doesn't mean you can freely leave your "registered birth religion" and join another or declare yourself an atheist freely, or that only predominantly Islamic countries outlaw apostasy or atheism, effectively, even if not as a capital crime. Because your link only deals specifically with nations where atheism is punishable by outright death is a very manipulative argument. Plus, my statement still stands that religions like Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and many others DEMAND death to apostates in their scriptures, like Islam does, and older nations where those religions had also been predominant used to also execute atheists and apostates in horrible ways, but it tends not be that prevalent anymore (though there are likely still extrajudicial family instances in those communities, extreme among the harder traditionalist communities). And, also note, that not all predominantly Islamic countries, or even the majority, are on the list you linked either. As well, North Korea executes people for NOT being atheists. Basically you've proven nothing here.

 

[Berzerker]

Read the article, it deals with apostasy too... I didn't mention other countries because they dont have the death penalty for apostasy. You're trying to change the subject to punishments short of death and policies from long ago. Do Jews execute apostates? I've 'proven' what I argued, trying to leave Islam can get you killed.

 

[Patine]

Read the article, it deals with apostasy too... I didn't mention other countries because they dont have the death penalty for apostasy. You're trying to change the subject to punishments short of death and policies from long ago. Do Jews execute apostates? I've 'proven' what I argued, trying to leave Islam can get you killed.

But, you haven't addressed the fact that the majority of predominantly Islamic nations (Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Eritrea, Djibouti, the Comoros, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, all five former Soviet Central Asian Republics, and I'm probably missing a bunch) are NOT on that list, and Jews are still required to execute apostates by the Talmud, whether they do or not. Also, Nigeria is not as clear-cut of an example, because it has a federal system with a political compromise between the predominantly Islamic north and predominantly Christian south, and each component Nigerian States decides their own religious orientation, by the majority of their residents "in their traditional homelands" (to avoid swarming States through internal migration), and only States that have an Islamic orientation (all of which are in the north) have laws that fit into this example - but the southern, Christian states are collectively wealthier, more developed, and have a higher total population.

 

[Berzerker]

Why is any of that relevant to my argument? Do you think the fact not every Muslim country allows for executing apostates means becoming one cant get you killed? Do it in one of those countries where its punishable by death.

Thats another drawback of monotheism, they're so much more intolerant of dissent.

 

[Patine]

Why is any of that relevant to my argument? Do you think the fact not every Muslim country allows for executing apostates means becoming one cant get you killed? Do it in one of those countries where its punishable by death.

Thats another drawback of monotheism, they're so much more intolerant of dissent.

So, what you're saying is it doesn't matter that Turkey doesn't have such laws, for instance, and I should go to Iran (not Turkey), for instance, and declare apostacy or atheism just to prove that Turkey not having such laws doesn't matter. That doesn't make any sense.

 

[Berzerker]

I'm saying apostasy can get you killed... Your argument is: not in Turkey. I didn't say it will get you killed in Turkey. What advice would you give Muslims who want to leave the religion? Go to or get out of countries where apostasy can get you the death penalty?

 

[Patine]

I'm saying apostasy can get you killed... Your argument is: not in Turkey. I didn't say it will get you killed in Turkey. What advice would you give Muslims who want to leave the religion? Go to or get out of countries where apostasy can get you the death penalty?

I don't think Sinead O'Connor in the Republic of Ireland would be in nearly as much danger as a person in Iran, or even Turkey. Statistically, she'd be in greater danger from a militant Catholic extremist (such as a Provisional IRA veteran of "the Troubles) who might kill her for "besmirching the honour of the Republic and Church as a nationally iconic modern celebrity."

 

[Berzerker]

if she changes her mind, better not do it during a pilgrimage to Mecca

 

[Patine]

if she changes her mind, better not do it during a pilgrimage to Mecca

The point I'm trying to make is that Islam is not the only religion in the world with a history (and even modern activity, whether legal and judicial or not) of homicidal intolerance and reaction to apostasy, AND that not all Moslems, or Islamic communities or nations, engage in such behaviour.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think Sinead O'Connor in the Republic of Ireland would be in nearly as much danger as a person in Iran, or even Turkey. Statistically, she'd be in greater danger from a militant Catholic extremist (such as a Provisional IRA veteran of "the Troubles) who might kill her for "besmirching the honour of the Republic and Church as a nationally iconic modern celebrity."

The IRA don't particularly like the Catholic Church, and only recognised the legitimacy of the Republic in the 1980s. Some of the active splinter groups still don't. This is a weird analogy.

 

[Live trash can]

Theocray doesn't look so bad now, does it?!!

I'm kidding... it's still terrible

 

[Berzerker]

Cat Stevens became a Muslim many years ago, I remember fans piling his records up and torching them like a good 'ol fashioned book burning while singing "Peace Train"

 

[Patine]

The IRA don't particularly like the Catholic Church, and only recognised the legitimacy of the Republic in the 1980s. Some of the active splinter groups still don't. This is a weird analogy.

I think the "Republic" that would be referred to there is not the actual, recognized, governed "REPUBLIC OF IRELAND" with borders, a seat in the UN, membership in the EU and NATO, and actual laws and a parliament, but the idealistic (and non-existent) "IRISH REPUBLIC," the nation of conception and irredentist alone that governs all 32 Irish Counties, all of Ireland's coasts and offshore islands, where everyone speaks only Irish Gaelic and is (more by national identity and default, and hatred of the Ulster crowd, than true backing and support) Roman Catholic by religion, and no British Subject, or staunch ally or supporter of British Imperialism, ever sets foot on the Emerald Isle to sully her hills - the nation the IRA fantasize about creating. I read an article several years back in a magazine about the difference between the two.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think the "Republic" that would be referred to there is not the actual, recognized, governed "REPUBLIC OF IRELAND" with borders, a seat in the UN, membership in the EU and NATO, and actual laws and a parliament, but the idealistic (and non-existent) "IRISH REPUBLIC," the nation of conception and irredentist alone that governs all 32 Irish Counties, all of Ireland's coasts and offshore islands, where everyone speaks only Irish Gaelic and is (more by national identity and default, and hatred of the Ulster crowd, than true backing and support) Roman Catholic by religion, and no British Subject, or staunch ally or supporter of British Imperialism, ever sets foot on the Emerald Isle to sully her hills - the nation the IRA fantasize about creating. I read an article several years back in a magazine about the difference between the two.

Catholicism really doesn't figure as heavily into this vision as you might think. The Republicans have tended towards sectarianism, but their relationship with organised religion is historically fraught. Like any left-wing revolutionaries, the Republicans were suspicious of organised religion, and like any organised religion, the Catholic Church was overtly hostile to left-wing revolutionaries. Consider that the IRA traces its origins to the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret oath-bound society, and that membership in any such secret society entailed automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church; your de Valeras and your Collinses managed to avoid that fate mostly because the Church was too diplomatic to make a point of it. "Catholicism", in the great historical snarl of Irish identity, isn't nearly so simple as men in frocks turning blood into wine.

It's certainly possible to imagine an individual who upholds Irish Republicanism and Roman Catholicism with equal fanaticism, but it doesn't follow that this constitutes an actual type. At least, not in Ireland. Perhaps in the diaspora; some of those guys are pretty weird.

 

[Berzerker]

Sinead wont be ripping up photos of Muhammad

 

[Traitorfish]

Sinead wont be ripping up photos of Muhammad

Muhammad, c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE)

 

[Berzerker]

woosh

 

[timtofly]

According to the Enuma Elish, Heaven and Earth were the carved up remains of Tiamat (biblical tehom) and they were likened to 2 halves of a flatfish. So Heaven is not the universe, it was comparable in size to the Earth and is nearby in our own solar system. Genesis doesn't describe the creation of the universe, but it is monotheistic. How did its authors adapt polytheistic mythology for their own? The "gods" were disguised. Tiamat becomes 'the deep', or waters, and the olden gods are hidden in numbers - 6 'days' of creation followed by a 7th for rest. Our oldest written records show monotheism derived from polytheism.

You are viewing heaven and earth as a place way after the fact that heaven and earth started their existence. Genesis calls the material makeup of the universe heaven and earth. The EE calls them primordial Apsu and the substance Tiamat. This was way before Marduk was even named. A Theocracy is not some non-existent god ruling mankind. It is a single God setting up a government. If you want to say that Marduk came along and split the physical earth or the solar system into two sections, you may or may not be interpreting EE correctly. That point has nothing to do with God causing water and dry land to separate.

The claim is that Marduk changed up the solar system and formed constellations. But not before Apsu (primordial water) and Tiamat (primordial substance). They came first and several generations later Marduk was formed.

Trying to point out that Marduk was the God of Genesis does not stand because it says that God created Apsu and Tiamat. They had a beginning in Genesis. In the EE, they did not have a beginning. It even points out that Apsu was the primary god from which came Tiamat and together they were the source of the physical universe. Probably the source and reason why God and the universe are synonymous in the majority of religious teachings.

Now God is not physical in any form we have knowledge of except Jesus claimed to be a physical manifestation. Just like Apsu has no physical form that we know of. But Apsu was relegated to just the physical makeup of the universe and ceased to exist as a god according to the EE. Genesis claims that God exist outside of the physical universe because God cannot create God. The EE is more of an evolutionary process, over the span of (billions) of years. The EE gives no reference to time at all. It just gives names to certain phenomenon.

 

[Cheetah]

Atheism is not the same as apostasy, and this list doesn't recognize other countries that simply don't recognize your legal right to consider yourself atheist (or a follower outside a small number of religions, or even just one religion) and leave your birth religion's following legally, and don't legally recognize just religious status as being legally, even if you're not executed, tortured, or even imprisoned forever over it - including many non-Islamic examples like Greece, India, Israel, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Tonga, several Latin American and Anglo-Caribbean nations, Ethiopia, and many African nations south of the religious "Green Belt."

Long list, but let's focus on Greece: What is it Greece fails to do, exactly?

 

[Patine]

Long list, but let's focus on Greece: What is it Greece fails to do, exactly?

Greece is, legally speaking, the only nation remaining in Europe (other than Vatican City and Malta, I guess) that constitutionally has a state religion and no legal guarantee of freedom of religion or recognition of citizens having a status of not being members of the state religion (Greek Orthodox Christianity, in this case). Although the Greek government, police, and courts have not pushed it as heavily in recent decades as they could (though there have definitely been cases there where they have), it's still a legal fact that de jure exists. In fact, I believe the same was actually true in your home Norway until as recently as the Interwar period, if I'm not mistake.