In Nigeria, an Islamic group called Boko Haram has been murdering their Christian compatriots in an effort to drive the Christians out of northern Nigeria. The details are sordid; automatic rifles, bombs, unarmed citizens gunned down en masse, churches being blown up, more than 500 killed in total.
But there is a theme, and it’s a telling one.
Witnesses said gunmen burst into the hall and shouted "God is great" as they opened fire.
“Gunmen who are, from all indications, members of Boko Haram came in large numbers and have encircled police headquarters. They chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’ [God is Great] and fired indiscriminately,” a resident told AFP.
God is a self-righteous delusion in the heads of believers that justifies terror and death.
God is not great.
God seems to be more on the level of a conscienceless thug with a gun.
I’d like to see everyone who evokes God to be placed in a mental institution for being dangerously deluded. Just think of all the open space we atheists would have! Of course, we’d have to let them out each day on work release, but after work it’s back to the padded hotel for “roast beef”, a cup a Sanka, and an evening of UNO cards.
Boko Haram is not only religiously extreme but highly xenophobic. The name Boko Haram means “Western education is a sin”.
Sadly, its continued rise owes as much to the Federal government’s botched attempts to stamp it out, and increasing links to Al Qaeda ideology can only make things worse.
But…but… Islam is the religion of peace. Sometimes i guess it is, but it seems too easy for some of its followers to become fanatical & murderous.
I feel really sad about all the suffering & misery these fanatics are causing, not just in northern Nigeria, but in all the other places where they run rampant.
I think the big tragedy with religion is that most of those ‘consciousless’ murderers DO in fact have a conscience – if they were psychopaths as defined by psychology, a deconversion wouldn’t stop them being indiscriminately aggressive.
Most of them do what they think is the right thing, and in this sense they are innocent human beings. But their innocent drive to do what is right has been perverted by a frame system that is *not* innocent and does *not* strive towards fairness, justice and good for all.
In a way it’s the atheit’s version of “Forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing”. It’s hard not to hate those people and not to despair in the face of their existence.
And this is why it’s so important for everybody with a truly independent morality to work against the acceptance of religious moral frameworks. One de-conversion, one blog post, one private discussion, one vote at a time. It’s our responsibility.
I think that irony is a concept that is totally missing from the psyche of muslims. What’s the standard joke?; “Islam is a religion of peace and if you dispute it I will kill you.” More or less sums it up. Religion sucks. And far too many of its devotees are not just deluded, but dangerously deluded.
Fuck everything about this!
They murder for Allah there, and in other parts of the continent they murder for Jesus. Religion sucks.
One group of goddists is killing another group of goddists yet people like jamesmichael1 argue:
Apparently jamesmichael1 thinks Boko Haram is killing Christians because…well…just because. But religion has nothing to do with it.
Obviously, God doesn’t care who acts in his name, nor what those acts are. To God, feeding the starving child is no more important than hacking it to pieces. Sending spacecraft to explore the edges of the solar system is no different than sprinkling goat blood on a bed to rid it of disease.
Or maybe, God just doesn’t exist. And god doesn’t either. Or, for that matter, god.
‘Tis, you forget that following the wrong religion is just as wrong as not having a religion. That is why atheists and Islamists are natural allies and interchangeable.
You can’t judge God based on the actions of his followers, man!
Wait, actually you can.
Boko Haram is also creationist. They reject all of modern science including the round earth.
Creationists, Geocentrists, Flat Earthers. In a lot of places in the USA, they would fit right in.
I’ve been harping on the violence against the Copts in Egypt for a while now (basically, every time an American Christian whines about how “happy holidays” takes away their religious freedoms). This just shows once again how absolutely fucking terrible religion is.
If Boko Haram is against “Western education” why are they not against Western technology?
They should be using swords.
Boko Haram. Didn’t they sing “Conquistador” in the 70’s?
@chigau #14
Scimitars, most likely, too.
Not that I have anything against scimitars. They’re frickin’ awesome.
Boko Haram could also use gunpowder.
But not automatic weapons.
I am wondering from where the firearms come from, you know, whether any of those manufacturers are Christian.
Hey, for the Prophet, oops, Profit, so what if some darkies get popped?
The islamist god of the likes of Boko Haram seems to be a weak and petty tyrant, who needs murderous savages to do his dirty work for him. The same is happening in Somalia with Al-Kebab or whatever those thugs call themselves.
The conflict is older than islan vs. christianity though. Several thousand years older. It’s the conflict of cattle herding nomads and agricultural villages so it’s basicly a fight for ressources, like most religious wars. Religion, and especially Islam, has only made the conflict more severe and increased the hate between the groups.
I can’t help but think of that Orlando Bloom movie about the Crusades, where some of the knights decided they wanted to attack someone and yelled out “God wills it!” as they charged.
How far we’ve come in 700 years…
(I guess the weaponry has improved)
People seem to have forgotten that religious divisions within the colonial construct that is Nigeria have given rise to civil war before.
Biafra’s secession arose in part from the wholesale retreat of largely Christian Ibo and igbo populations from the Moslem North back to their tribal homelands in the Niger delta.
Successive Sultans of Sokoto and other norther emirs likewise led invasions of the Yoruba south west with a view to piously dipping their Korans in the sea to demonstrate that the region constituted a Moslem commonwealth deserving of respect by its trans-saharan neighbors. The cyclic waves of invasion and warfare up and down the Niger often drove epidemics as well, giving the Niger delta a reputation as a place best avoided by European slavers and traders:
Beware and take care
Of the Bight of Benin
For one that comes out
There’s twenty goes in.
Yeah, but you wouldn’t dare say this about islam – oh, wait…
More crazed fanatics murdering people because, essentially, voices in their heads told them to, but since they call those voices ‘god’ it is somehow acceptable. I am with ‘Tis Himself, OM. @ 8 – It is not the horrific violence from religious extremists that surprises me so much as the sheer number of people who will try to argue that religion somehow isn’t the cause of clearly religiously motivated violence.
Religion of any stripe is a sociological poison – whether it kills by the means of thugs with guns and bombs, or by denying medical care to pregnant women and seeking to shame homosexuals into suicide, the end result is the same. The name of the imaginary sky daddy in question is mere window dressing.
The real difference between Boko Haram and Western christo-fascists? – Boko Haram has more guns and less fear of legal consequences, at least so far. The similarities in ideology are notable; Boko Haram believes that Western education is a ‘sin’, evangelical fundamentalists like Santorum believe that scientists (and by extension the scientific method itself) are evil…
Just ponder that for a moment, and tell me it is not reason enough to be worried.
Christians have also been murdering Muslims in Nigeria though apparently at a smaller scale (and less well publicized in the West). The Atlantic had an article on this a few years back.
Nigeria also has a humanist movement which has been speaking out against witch hunts, etc. despite obstacles (no legal recognition as an organization, physical attacks on them).
tine@4,
Very well said.
What utter granfalloons.
Michael @21:
That movie always reminds me of two guys I overheard when I was in college (a church-founded college). They were incredibly upset with the movie because the Christians didn’t “win” in the end and what kind of ending is that? The way they were whining, it became quickly apparent that they believed that:
a)Every movie should have a happy ending
b)Nothing other than Christian victory/Christians getting everything their way could ever be a happy ending and
c) The moviemakers shouldn’t have made a movie about the Crusades if they weren’t prepared to ignore history and make the Christians the ultimate victors of the Crusades.
Well, either that or these two private-college-attending young men were so ignorant of history that they weren’t aware that their religion did not triumph in that conflict. Which is kind of on a level with a college graduate my dad worked with who thought the Civil War came between WWI and WWII. Which is scary.
Amish technology creep rules. TV is out because it is entirely new and promotes a wicked culture, but the gun is merely the logical step up from the bow and arrow and fulfills the job that existed in biblical times of killin.
demonhype:
Er, say what? Really? That’s profoundly fucked up.
demonhype 7 January 2012 at 10:41 pm
Hmm? The Civil War did take place between WWI & WWII. Oh? Did you mean the American Civil War?
@tine: independent morality you say!
Thou shalt not kill. | Thou shalt not commit adultery. | Thou shalt not steal. | Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. | Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, |thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife…
So you are saying that many (not all) of the good values you have (i guess you do…) came from… oh yes, religion!!!
Yes, you are very independent…
@gregory: religion of any kind is a sociological poison!?
So, i shall stop giving food to the poor during my religious duties… Thanks for the advice!
@a3kron: mental institution you say…
Well, Hitler was not so nice, so i guess it’s ok to intern all those who have an opinion that’s not yours… don’t get me wrong… it’s your opinion… and this is mine.
Now, i found funny how the great minds of this earth says so much crap… please, clean after you leave!
You just speak of what you don’t know!!!!
Do you study God and religion. I mean really study?! Try to understand everything?
No, because you are as arrogant and as stupid as any religious person who ignores Science!
Oh, and you forget that science is here because religious dudes studied the Work of God… You may not like it, but there you have… well, i guess it was chance, just happened that way!
Do you ignore Sir Isaac Newton? You know that he was a delusional believer don’t you?!
Why you take his word, you should just burn every book with his name like your fellow religious fanatics! Take some marshmallows!
Does a coin have one single side? No, but your ignorance does… religious fanatics and ignorants are included by the way)
I’m open for a debate by the way.
I may not be as smart as your enlightened minds, but i don’t back down from a good debate.
Much love to your heart full of hate toward what you don’t know!
fredericomarques,
I’ll just deal with one of your entirely unoriginal idiocies, moron:
So. Fucking. What? Newton wasted much of his time on alchemy and Biblical numerology. Kepler worked on astology as much as on astronomy. Are you suggesting we do the same?
Sorry if i passed the wrong idea: i wasn’t trying to be original!
My simple idiotic mind won’t allow me that! At least i know my limitations.
That being said, let’s move on.
Choose of the following:
1. I wasn’t able to communicate in the best possible way
2. You are so clouded by hate towards religious guys like myself that you couldn’t even read correctly
I didn’t say you should follow Newton’s steeps: i said he also believed in God. Doesn’t that makes him delusional? But he gave important contributions, so it’s ok, this one is tolerable!
Probably of of those you would send to a mental facility by the end of the day to play UNO!
Hope you now understand that. (english is not my native language, you see. i only speak moronish! But by now you most definitely are used to us.)
You missed the third possibility:
3) You are a moron, with nothing of any interest to say.
No-one has suggested that religious believers cannot make important contributions to science despite their delusions, moron. The fact that you apparently thought a3kron’s was being serious @1 just confirms your stupidity.
Look, fuckwit, the majority of atheists here are ex-believers. By the way, have you studied L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology? I mean really study?! Try to understand everything?
fredericomarques:
Hmm.
*ding*ding*ding*
We have a winnah!
Yes, it made him delusional. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant concerning physics and mathematics. It just means that he was indoctrinated by his society, which was very much steeped in the delusion of the Christian god.
Most religious folks are tolerable. Many of them are also good. That doesn’t mean they’re not delusional, when it comes to God. You can be both delusional and good.
@KG
Sir, calm down… why are you so nervous? I don’t want you to die of a heart attack or something like that.
So that’s your way i see… if one does not agree with you, just call him moron, fuckwit!
As for the comment about a3kron… well, it seems you are on the same league as i am… want to make a fan club?!
And no, i haven’t studied that one you talk about. That one seems a bit wacko, even more than myself! O.O
But I do study others like Allan Kardec.
I was a non believer also, but then changed my mind because i had reasons to.
@nigelTheBold
Thank you good sir! I like to win sometimes.
As for the good or/and delusional persons, i got the idea from previous posts that it’s religion’s fault all the killing in the name of god (notice, i wrote god, not God).
But if you have good persons (you know some i would say) and bad persons, and both are believers, but only the second group commits atrocities, does that make religion bad? There are non-believers that do harm to their fellow human beings and many that do good!
The way i see it, if we have good and bad people on both sides, what we must categorize as good/bad is the person.
Yes, what he believes is important, no doubt and no discussion, but there are many factors besides religion.
And what makes a person delusional? Believing in God?
I have no problem telling you i believe.
My religion is the Science of God, that is, the Knowledge of whatever that means. Am I wrong? Maybe, but i don’t go trash talking saying that scientists are fuckwits and morons because they don’t believe.
Oh, be careful of 21-12-12… You are all going to hell!
nah, now i’m just trolling you!
That’s just stupid!!! (both parts: end of the world and hell in case you are wondering)
fredericomarques,
No, I call morons and fuckwits like you what they are.
Yup, you’re a moron and a fuckwit, sure enough.
My religion is the Science of God
There’s no such thing, peabrain.
Allan Kardec? You owe me a new keyboard, fredericomarques.
And watch out for admitting to trolling, cause trolling, that’s a banhammer offence around here. Mostly because trolls are boring, tedious, repetitive, dull. Gee, like you fredericomarques. Oh, and on the whole we don’t hate people who are deluded by religion. We pity them. We do however get angry at people who, poisoned by some of the nastier religious memes act in ways to attack the way of life, and sometimes the actual lives of people who don’t believe the way they do.
@KG
Yep, it seems only death will cure you…
Please keep insulting people you don’t know just because they are not smart as yourself.
You know, maybe in the planet where you live, education is different. But here, on Earth, education is indeed a weapon to keep people in ignorance.
Science isn’t for everyone, you just have to believe what other tell you, or else you’re a fuckwit, a peabrain and i’m sure you know many more as you seem to be experienced in trash talk. We must have been a wrestler…. those of the WWE!
So the same thing as religion did in the past!
Instead of trying to educate people you call them names and then think: this assholes don’t want to listen to the truth and love to remain in ignorance!
That’s what you think isn’t it?! And you want people to listen to you?! Way to go sir!
Ahaha, you’re an intellectual bully! It’s ok, i’m not impressed.
The word science it’s not your to use you know!? Or should i say, do you have the science of such thing? Science comes from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”.
To know God (whatever that means).
@myeck waters
Gladly sir.
As a matter of fact i have one i don’t use back home!
I can send it to you via UPS if you want!
English isn’t your first language is it frederico? I suggest then that you slow down and read more carefully here. It can be heavy going for those who can read and write English easily. For those such as yourself who have difficulty writing coherent sentences in it, you should probably spend some time carefully reading before replying.
fredericomarques,
In your case at least, it’s not just that you’re not as smart as me; rather, you’re not as smart as a bowl of dog vomit, as you prove with every comment.
Actually, religion did, and does, much more than that: denying people equality because of their sex or sexual orientation, indoctrinating children with stupid lies, torturing and murdering those who believe differently, justifying slavery and serfdom, etc.
Only morons, fuckwits and peabrains like you; I’ve learned from experience that anything else is a waste of time in the case of a moron, fuckwit and peabrain.
Only morons, fuckwits and peabrains believe that the etymology of a word tells you what its current meaning is or should be, blockhead.
fredericomarques:
Considering God is just a god, it amounts to the same thing. Claiming they weren’t doing bad things in the name of God is a No True Scotsman fallacy. You are defining your way out of a sticky situation.
What makes religion look bad is the refusal of the “good” people to take the “bad” people to task. Consider the child raping members of the Catholic Church. As a percentage of the whole, there are a very small minority. But the vast majority are at least silent on the matter, rather than doing as a good person should do: taking them to task, punishing them and trying to get them help. They should be turned over to the secular authorities for proper treatment, not hidden.
What makes religion look bad is the refusal of the good theists to criticize the bad theists, to hold them up to a higher standard. There should be public outcry every time fundamentalists on a schoolboard try to warp the curriculum to destroy education in the name of serving God.
There are bad people, and there are good people. But religion turns some good people into bad people, and it makes many more turn a blind eye to the actions of the bad.
I just thought I’d quote that for yuks.
English being your first language or not, I haven’t ready much here, but this is in running for dumbest thing said today.
But there’s much more to read.
read… ready pfft
Ah, yes, the knowledge of je ne sais quoi.
About what? If you have no idea what you’re talking about, neither do I.
Science is the same for everyone, it makes no difference if one lives in New York or New Delhi. Everybody can do it, and everybody will come up with the same results. Electronics don’t behave differently because you don’t believe it does. You don’t have to rely on people’s say so. You can find out for yourself. Science is at the same time the sum of all real knowledge we have about the natural world and the methodical search for new knowledge.
Nope. Religions don’t search for knowledge. They propose explanation by making shit up. They never amass any real world data, never examine or test their explanations.
Because that’s what they mostly are. The strongly religious assume everything is like religion – gurus, arguments for autority, revealed knowledge that you cannot dispute. The difference is that in science theories can be overturned, but it needs data – input from the real world.
Those religious who don’t deny reality separate their thinking in neat airtight little boxes that never touch each other. They can be spoken with normally because they understand the need for data in discussing the real world, contrarily to the terminally religious.
Ridicule is very effective to dispell delusions.
It means no such thing in everyday usage. Science means the knowledge we have about the real world and the process by which we gain it. The only known efficient such process.
Wow frederico.
-Several of the things you list as examples of Bible morality (don’t steal, don’t kill) are incredibly common across cultures and are independent of the Bible’s input on the matter. In addition, two of the examples regarding “coveting” are the same Commandment and the rule is a stupid one (borderline thoughtcrime). The rules against adultery and false witness are also common, but, in my opinion, are overly strict compared to rules against murder and stealing (case in point: the Biblical command to stone adulterers). You also seem to selectively omit the commandments about not breaking the Sabbath, worshipping non-Yahweh gods and idols, and respecting one’s parents, virtually all punished with the death penalty. Biblical morality FTW!
-If you only give to the poor due to religion, you are not a very good person.
-In general, atheists know a lot about religion. Many of us were formerly religious ourselves. And we know about non-Christian religions much more than Christians. Maybe you should study religion more? Aside from your own religion?
-The origins of science among the religious is irrelevant to the fact that accurate use of scientific methodology and current scientific findings makes many of those religions look ridiculous today. That’s how progress works.
-Science isn’t authoritarian. That fact is the reason why so many religionists bemoan it as untrustworthy and see it as justification to cram God into already filled gaps.
-It’s ironic to hear whining about “trash talk” from someone whose first post in this thread included calling all of us ignorant, hateful, arrogant, stupid, and fanatical. The nature of the tone troll.
-We don’t insult in lieu of educate. We educate people (or know that they should already have been educated), and then call them names when they reject facts in the name of ideology. We know that this is what is one of the things happening when it comes to creationism, for example.
-Science is not God’s property anymore than anything else is God’s property. Science works without invoking God. If you want to claim science as God’s, you must first illustrate that God actually exists. We await that with bated breath.
Rethink commenting further. You already reek of hypocrisy in such a short period of time, in addition to presenting nothing of merit. We are far from ignorant here, so don’t throw any bullshit argument you’ve heard regurgitated in Sunday school or Bible study and expect us to be surprised, let alone impressed, let alone convinced.