I didn't say human nature.

Says the dude with 7,000 hours total in TF2 and Dota :D

Can I just take this opportunity to remind you all that Mr Mohammed from your local shop wasn't involved in last nights attacks on Paris. Neither was Mrs Azeer from Lloyds Bank or her family. Kamal from down the road has never been to Paris, and his brother Abdul, the taxi driver, was watching the news in horror along with everyone else.

The people behind last night's attacks weren't "Muslims", they were extremists using religion as vindication for their cowardice. As a muslim living in France, I can guarantee you that we're absolutely disgraced by the actions these terrorists are doing in the name of religion. I have no words for how disgusted i am.

Please, I urge each and everyone of you, do not lay blame at the doors of the innocent just because of what they believe. We are one world and one family. Treat each other as such, because what happened last night should bring us closer together, not make us lash out against our neighbours for a perceived religion affiliation" #terrorismhasnoreligion

Also FUCK ISIS. And may all my brothers in France who were victims to this unjustified action, rest in peace.

/

Exactly, England was really eager to support the south, as a divide and conquer tactic, but eventually aligned itself with the union, after the trent affair, because they were dependant on east coast grain, and becuase slavery, that was abolished by britain in the 1830's was seen as morally repugnant, and once the union secured the support of the European powers, or at least their neutrality, the confederacy was isolated. So as i said, read up on your own country's history before you slander it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyons%E2%80%93Seward_Treaty_of_1862

And I don't see how I was "slandering" my country's history or how any of that is even relevant to me giving two (factually correct) examples of how people justified slavery and racism.

Negative frag me all you want, the truth is that you might be completely right about "Azeer, Kamal, Abdul and Mohammed" not being directly part of what happened last night or with terror acts of the past but I'll be damned if I trust them in any way shape or form. The entire region of the world has shown they hate us and want to do us harm by sneaking into our countries and hitting us from the inside.

A time will come, probably after many more attacks, when the countries of the west realize you can't be civilized with cultures/religions that have not evolved to that level. At one time ,Christianity was just as violent as Islam and perhaps even more brutal but we evolved in the west and so did our belief system. The same has simply not happened in the middle east and both cultures will continue to clash.

^
..................wow

SpaceCadet has a point. Everytime something like this happens it makes me more and more weary when I see a muslim. You can never know who the extremists are. The more this happens the more people are gonna be scared when they see a muslim walking down the street. Also I feel now like we should really tighten up on who we let into our countries, maybe start doing background checks and interviews more ect. The truth is a lot of people from these countries aren't as civilized as we are and this is why we are seeing so many people from these countries raping our children, in the UK at least. People need to understand that the lifestyle in some of these middle eastern places are a lot different from what its like over here.

Wow, this is horrible. I just don't comprehend what has to be in a person to believe that this can be justified in any way shape or form. Do terrorists honestly think they are doing the right thing?

they're hiding under your bed, in your closet, lurking in your bed sheets waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

why are old people so racist?

hide yo kids hide yo wife

https://youtu.be/hMtZfW2z9dw?t=8

And a huge amount of mass shootings are by white people...Do you run and put on a bullet proof vest every time you see a white person?

Because the facts are also racist.

lol hilarious xD good one guys! allah akbar so funny.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dqzx9_images-de-la-fusillade-au-bataclan_news

Well.. you go on about how religion brainwashes people, how poeple in the thirteen colonies were racist slaveholders, while the British empire abolished slavery, and was on the forefront of getting rid of the practice in the world, and they were fueled by religious convictions. for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Missionary_Society. of course of "the white mans burden" you can interpret a lot of things, but British culturel imperialism, is relatively benign, and if i'm not mistaken, it's England's ex-colonies who fared the most well after decolonisation. (except Rhodesia obviously)

I am very sad with the huge number of moral subjectivism, the golden rule is 2600 years old, and as valid as today.

Even in the worst of times, people develop empathy for their enemy, because morality is objective and universal, it's what defines humanity to live along it.

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
And Priam and his people shall be slain.

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human. Polybius actually heard him and recalls it in his history .

Is it enjoyable to talk about 2 completely unrelated situations and try and make them seem the same?

Most mass shootings have been mental health issues gone bad. A terrorist attack is a group of people intent on harming another group of people. Both can be stopped and prevented but they both required a different approach to solve. That is why they are different and separate issues.

yr misinterpreting facts about a region as being facts about race :)

And that group of people is ISIS, not Muslims.

the shitposters are the most logical people in this argument so far

put down your keyboard spacecadet, you've lost

I never said religion brainwashes people, the society at large brainwashes people. The hatred towards Jews in Nazi Germany wasn't entirely borne of religion. I also didn't say that the religiously derived morals couldn't be used for positive things. I also gave an example of the same hatred fuelled by non-religious motives.

Yes, and we have lots of words for people like you!

Weird, all of the news reports I saw seemed to suggest there were roughly 8 ISIS members responsible for this attack, I guess the French authorities let the other 1,569,999,992 perpetrators escape.

This, to me, represents exactly what I was talking about in regards to American exceptionalism. Your statement boils down to "these people kill us indiscriminately, so we should do the same to them, but we're still morally superior to them". Do you not see how this begets yet more violence, and allows us to, say, react to a terrorist attack by invading a country that didn't do it and killing over 200,000 civilians? And yet, you think we're more civilized and evolved? Why do our actions not deserve as much scrutiny as theirs?

It is true that, by percentage, the number of religious extremists in our country is lower than that in some Middle Eastern countries. They still exist, and exert a pretty ridiculous influence on our school boards and local legislatures, but they're still in the minority nationwide...slightly. But if we can find non-religious motivation to justify our acts of violence, then it's irrelevant from a foreign policy standpoint, what matters are the acts themselves.

As for the Samuel Huntington "clash of cultures" model, it's ridiculous. The majority of Arab countries are still allies with us, because the global neoliberal capitalist order creates pretty strong incentives for countries to remain so. The few exceptions do not break the rule, and most of the countries most utterly outside this system are not in the Middle East.

i never thought saam, elliot, and mustard would ever agree on anything ever

seriously though. how can you play competitive video games and still be racist? it's 2015 and you're playing video games for tens of dollars

Yes, and we have lots of words for people like you!

I found one! ^^^^^^^

Yes, and we have a lot of words for people like them!

This is known as racial profiling, it is or should be illegal everywhere, and it will not have any affect on the ability of terrorist groups to commit atrocities, it will only hurt ordinary people.

What the fuck are you talking about you racist freak

You probably shouldn't say mean things about facts like that, I like facts which is why I try to use them in discourse whenever possible. You should try it out too!

Yes

1) I'm just gonna springboard off of this point to talk about a mostly unrelated but important topic, which is the exaggeration of the link between mental illness and violence- http://depts.washington.edu/mhreport/facts_violence.php

That is not to say that mass shootings are not often perpetrated by mentally ill people, I was just reminded of something that I thought people in this thread ought to know about.

2) saam's point does not require the two situations/motivations for them to be the same, it's about the level of overreaction and racial profiling that the rest of us commit after these events occur. Unless you have statistics to show that a larger percentage or even a larger total number of Muslims living in the U.S. are involved in terrorism than the percentage/amount of white people in the U.S. who commit gun violence, then acting that way afterwards is the same in both situations.

well you're black so

also on mental illness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8

Doesnt this quote from you imply that you argue for moral subjectivism on the base that the religious laws don't change. Becuase I know that argument pretty well, it's usually followed by a quotation out of leviticus or Deuteronium, about holding slaves. One could argue, that how much they convinced themselves of acting morally right, they're wrong from the start.

But, as far as I know from the covenant, " Paul explains that Christians "are not under law, but under grace" (6:14) and that they "died to the law through the body of Christ" (7:4). He writes,

By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (7:6)

This is elaborated in 2 Corinthians 3, where Paul contrasts the administrations of the old and new covenants:

He [God] has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (verse 6)

So under the new covenant Christians serve in a "new way" — the way of the Spirit. The "old way" of the written code has been superseded. It has ended because the old covenant was a temporary system designed to act as a guardian for the nation Israel until the Messiah came (Galatians 3:19). Humanity’s relationship to God is no longer regulated by a written law code on tables of stone or in a book, as it was for ancient Israel. It is now based on faith in Jesus Christ (verses 22–24). "Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law" (verse 25).",

Paul’s conclusion concerning law is found in Romans 13:8–10:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

that's how you get redemption in christianity, you have to love one another. Isn't that beautiful? No wonder it was so popular under proscecuted slaves from all corners of the Mediterranean. In fact, thats the main reason the Roman empire proscecuted Christians so much, after figures like Spartacus, romans were very wary of anything that unites the slaves, or would give them hope.

religion is just the scapegoat for shit like this. the "top" people that organize shit like this use religion to justify their actions but its only for their personal gain/agenda. it's the same reason "holy" wars went on; common folk will fall in line and do some truly brutal shit if they believe they're doing god's work while the 1% barking orders are using it for personal gain.

terrorism in general is super fucked though, targeting civilians is some scary shit

p.s. some real ignorance in this thread, lmao