"As a Jew, no place but Israel is home "

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by S.A.M., Apr 20, 2010.

  1. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Hemm.. I just brought it up because Fraggle brought it up first (about Islam and Christianity), but you are right, I am out of topic. Anyway, to answer your this question:

    This is like.... everywhere in Sciforums religious discussion. We already know how Fraggle, Enmos, GeoffP, and many many other atheists think about theists. This is an example of such thread:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=101200

    but this works both ways (theists do the same thing to atheists all the time).

    /end of off-topic

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  3. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Well Fraggle was explaining behaviour tagged to the OP, not religions per se.

    Well what do you expect on a science board? And what else would you expect from sciforums (on any topic) where there is always an opposing view?

    Is this thread an example of how things work 'both ways'? Do you mean to suggest that the OP is a challenge to 'atheism'? Or are you suggesting that an attack on theists opens the way for an attack on jews? I suggest you read the thread from the beginning.
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2010
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  5. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Wait a minute, I was in another thread.. will check something first..

    Edit: sorry, Lucy, I was in another thread (about Chinese population). I admit that I didn't read the thread thoroughly. Earlier this day I was posting in the thread about "responsibility of the theists", and then I happened to click this thread where Fraggle posted as the last poster and saw his comment about theists, so I immediately respond to that part (my head was still thinking about theism vs atheism). I should have read the thread from the beginning. Now that I read it, apparently SAM also asked me about something (being Indonesian living in Germany for more than 18 months), I didn't notice this before:

    Hemm, the first time I left my home country for a long time was indeed when I came to Germany. I had lived in Indonesia for about 26 years, and then studying in Germany for the last 4 years. I visited my home country after 2.5 years I lived in Germany, and of course I didn't feel uncomfortable by own origin (when I went home, I feel like too comfortable, missing it a lot ). However, I am probably not the right analogy, because this guy in the topic is a Jew who was born and lived in USA in most part of his life, whereas I am Indonesian who was born and lived in my own country in the most part of my life. Probably this question suits draqon more. He is Russian who lives most part of his life in USA but in his heart he is always missing Russia. Um wait, it isn't right example either, because he was born in Russia. Well, I have no idea about the guy in the OP. Probably he was exaggerating everything (like being too excited to go back to Irael)

    Edit:
    And, sorry again for the confusion, Lucy, I guess I am too sleepy now ~_~ ciao
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2010
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  7. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, actually I'm a theist. :shrug:
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Too many of the best people on this planet are/were theists. People are complicated and in most cases one single trait is not enough to categorize them as inferior. I'm sure I don't speak for all atheists (such as Richard Dawkins, for whom Hell should be invented so he could rot there) but I certainly speak for the majority of the ones I've know personally--probably all of them actually. And for the record, notwithstanding my penchant for hyperbole, I know that the percentage of Abrahamists who regard non-members of their religion as inferior is far less than 100. Several devout Christians have told my wife and me that we are more Christian than they are because we do a better job of living up to their principles than they do, and they can't imagine that God would be so conceited and petulant--the Old Testament God before he took that anger management class and sent the First Hippie to teach us about love and peace--as to consign us to Hell over a technicality.

    America is full of Christians and Jews. It would be impossible to live here successfully if one truly believed that they are ALL inferior. We have our Richard Dawkinses, they have their Pat Robertsons.
    Who among us has ever advocated violating the rights of religious people? I'm a libertarian and a Libertarian. I support freedom of religion. Not as an abstract principle, but as a practical one. I have seen the damage done by religionists when they violate each others' rights; we don't need to repeat the experiment. One's religion is part of who one is. Yes, some people change that, but such a small number that they're almost statistically insignificant. And it's always voluntary.

    Actually we've even seen the leaders of communism--a screwed-up, godless offshoot of Christianity--try to suppress religion. A) it didn't work and B) it may be one reason for its failure.
    Duh! This is a place where people come to argue--using pseudonyms! We know everyone else is playing by the same rules so we say things we wouldn't say in polite company. We don't really walk around trying to avoid showing our contempt for 99.99...% of the people we meet.
    Everyone is wrong about a lot of things. You can't put too much of your energy into worrying about them or you won't achieve your own goals, which will make you worse than they are.

    This is why I keep stressing my paradigm of civilization as the transcendence of tribalism. In the Paleolithic Era people lived in small nomadic extended family units, in which everyone had depended on and cared for everyone else since birth. They couldn't tolerate a lot of serious dissent, and other tribes with different beliefs (about any subject) were incompatible.

    The Agricultural Revolution, and the large permanent settlements it both made possible and required, brought multiple families together, but still it was a small enough community that unanimity on key issues was possible.

    But civilization--literally the building of cities but anthropologically a network of cities that trade with each other--required living in harmony and cooperation with strangers. Everyone had to learn to tolerate everyone else's idiosyncrasies. This required overriding our pack-social instinct, but we could do that because the benefits were so great and obvious--economies of scale and division of labor resulted in vastly improved security and prosperity.

    This is where we are today. We have to let other people be who they are, no matter how much it bothers us, because by caring for them and depending on them, we make everyone's life better.

    I think most atheists understand this, even if they've never put it into words, because we're such a minority that the alternative is ludicrous. Many Abrahamists do, and the rest will hopefully catch on soon enough.
     
  9. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    I still live in a nomadic family unit. Why are you criticizing my way of life?
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    If that question is addressed to me, it is surely facetious. This board is about anthropology and the other human sciences. In anthropology, "nomad" specifically refers to people who have no permanent home and follow their food sources, moving to a new encampment as often as every day, and perhaps settling into more weatherproof lodgings such as caves or lean-tos during the off-season. In the Paleolithic Era (the Early Stone Age) all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, following game and seasonal fruits and other edible plant tissue.

    The Neolithic Era (the Late Stone Age) was the Agricultural Revolution, beginning in Mesopotamia around 12KYA and elsewhere a little later, when people settled into permanent villages and practiced the twin technologies of farming and animal husbandry. (Some Neolithic villages were built around bountiful fishing sites and practiced only the farming half of agriculture.)

    After food animals were domesticated, the technique of nomadic pastoralism was developed for practicing animal husbandry in regions that could not support cultivated crops. Pastoral nomads drive their livestock slowly across the landscape, living in temporary camps, foraging for the scarce grasses and moving on.

    It's not clear to me whether pastoral nomads were Paleolithic tribes who acquired the technology of animal husbandry from Neolithic people they encountered, or Neolithic tribes whose farms failed due to changing weather patterns.

    There are still a few tribes of pastoral nomads making a living in harsh climates in Africa and central Asia. The Sami ("Lapps") are the best known because they are close relatives of the Finns and Estonians and their livestock are the reindeer of Christmas folklore. Other peoples who were pastoral nomads include the Bedouins, Somali and Mongols, some of whom retain a modified version of the lifestyle.

    I don't know why you call your family nomads. Perhaps they live in a motor home, which arguably qualifies as a permanent residence even if it has wheels. Or maybe they're migrant farm laborers, who work in one agricultural district for weeks on end before moving to another, and usually have a permanent home they return to in winter. If they're computer consultants who stay in a different Fireside Inn every couple of weeks, that hardly satisfies the spirit of nomadism. If they move from one "permanent" home to another every few years because nobody can find a "permanent" job any more, well I'm not sure we have a name for that lifestyle yet.

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  11. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, it's not as though we just speared a reindeer, but we still do move around a lot.

    Anyway, apology accepted.
     
  12. w1z4rd Valued Senior Member

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    On a side not, but slightly related. Often "African" Americans come to Africa looking for their roots and expecting some kinda kumbaya-lets-form-a-drum-circle-and-make-love kinda feeling when they get here.

    When they see what the real Africa is about, they run back home with their tails between their legs completely unable to identify with their ancestors.

    People in America live in their own world, they dont know what the real world is like.
     
  13. kira Valued Senior Member

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    Hemm.. I vaguely remember you attacked Islam/muslims, I thought that you are among the atheists

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    I apologize for this mistake.

    Points taken, thanks for the great post. I actually agree with some points.
     
  14. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Awww, did a Jew burn down your little straw hut?

    Because the culture they replaced were a bunch of useless savages who would never amount to anything. The Arabs haven't produced anything but Oil for the past two centuries. All they have ever done is help destroy the planet. They are pretty useless. I think the Arab kings are just mad because the Jewish people and the nice Arabs they have civilized have been working on alternative energy solutions, and it's threatening to undercut their market pretty soon. So much for rich Arabic royalty riding around in overpriced cars and going with an entourage everywhere they go. Is that the "culture" you are saying the evil Jews and the evil Americans have been erasing? I say good riddance.

    You only like keeping backward tribal cultures embedded there because you know they tend to have high-export economies. That's why you love the backward, theocratic regime in Iran: as long as their economic system is broken, your overpopulated, polluted, disgusting country can ransack their oil reserves.

    You love sucking at that tit, don't you? You have your own kind of cultural imperialism, S.A.M.. You people who talk about "cultural imperialism" and say that backward tribal governments should resist being changed, you are so sanctimonious that it makes me want to vomit. Asia has been sucking Africa dry thanks to "preserving Africa's culture," which is really just a bunch of weak tribal governments and broken economies. YOU DID IT! Not the US. It is Asia that has been raping Africa in your own way. Shame on you!

    If the government of Israel were running an export-based economy that you could exploit, you would love the Jews, S.A.M., because you are motivated by greed. Your country does nothing but drink oil, and all you ever want is more. You are talking pigs in human clothing. You benefit from the Middle East remaining in a state of war. You profit from antagonistic relations in the Middle East. People like you color Israel as a monster, so you can empower tyranny in other places. You have no shame, either. Your entire ideology is one of pigs who walk on two feet and call themselves "Asians."

    You know that, if the Middle East becomes a peaceful place, the first thing they will do is industrialize. And what happens if the Middle East industrializes, S.A.M.? How will that competition affect your own country? What would an industrialized Iran or Pakistan do to you? It would suck for you! That's what! Your oil prices would go up through the roof, and then what would happen to your early industrial age economy?

    The fact that you have the most polluted cities outside of China doesn't lend to the belief that you are doing anything at all to reduce your consumption of oil. It doesn't lend at all to the belief that you are trying to make your economy more efficient. You are a nation of oil-suckers! Suck that tit! Suck that tit, and lap up the black milk of poverty and desperation!

    All of you who believe S.A.M.'s expressions of concern about the plight of the Palestinians, do not be taken in. S.A.M. just wants to empower extremist governments elsewhere in the Middle East. As long as that part of the world is too messed-up to industrialize, it keeps oil prices low for her.

    Oh, and owning a car is a real mark of status in India. People are so desperate to get one to put in their garage, they have even gone to the extent of putting into production a cheap toy car that the Indian middle-class can have just to show that they own one. It is really a pathetic thing, but Asians are really obsessed with status.

    You don't believe me? It's Asian money that has sent Vancouver's real estate to the top of the list of overpriced real estate in North America, the UK, and Australia. Vancouver is #1 for having overpriced, unaffordable housing.

    http://www.crackshackormansion.com/

    It's all due to rich Asians who all want to have an overpriced car and an oversized, ornate house. It artificially drives up property values without really doing anything substantial to improve the area. If you don't believe the Asian upper-class are pigs on two feet, look at what they have done there.

    The Asian upper-class puts the Americans to shame in terms of being over-consumers. They make Americans, who are literally the most arrogant white culture in the world, look frugal!

    And the ones who are in power in places like India and China are trying to scapegoat the USA and Israel for problems that they have really done more to contribute to. It is they who have done the most to keep the Middle East in a state of war.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2010
  15. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    um as far as i know any jews who migraed out of the area CHOSE to do so, they came to eroupe, the US, india, Australia ect willingly. African Americans for the most part had no choice, they went as slaves to the white invaders of the US. Thankfully that practice was over by the time Australia was invaded so we only have one crime against humanity to deal with (well except for the poor irish farmers who were staving and so stole some bread and got shiped off to Australia which really wasnt much better than slavery either but anyway)

    now 3 religions all trace there "holy" sites back to the same strip of the middle east (what a surprise because all three are related) and thosands of christans go to the middle east each year to vist sites like jewrusilam and bethlahem but they hardly ever (if ever) argue that they have some god given right to steal the land to live there because of a myth that surposedly happened centuries ago. WOW, someone slaugtered the jews in eroupe so that gives them the right to comit MASSIVE war crimes now, of the sort that Sadam got HUNG for. any sympathy they earned from germany has been washed away with the blood of there OWN actions
     
  16. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    But we are not speaking of the religious Jews, who refuse to fight in the Israeli army [although that is changing] and essentially demand welfare in return for being religiously inclined Jews. We are talking of people who advocate human rights, like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, who may otherwise be admired for their stand on civil rights for Palestines, but who still continue to defend the notion of a Jewish state. We are talking of people like Rahm Emmanuel who being American, did not enlist in the US armed forces but did enlist in the IDF at a time when the US was at war.

    It is Americans like Bradley Burston, moving to Israel and then saying things like:

    Which would be called antisemitism or racism if anyone hinted that there were too many Jews in the US. Incredibly, even more bizarre since Mr Burston is occupying Palestinian land based on mythical rights and is upset because Palestinians may have actual deeds to their homes in the area occupied by these mythically driven Jews.



    These people have discarded myths, or so they claim, and yet their tribalism is intact. Why? Even if Israelis migrate to the US, are their loyalties with the US or with Israel? The Bene Israel migrated to India 2000 years ago and had no loyalties to India - why should the Israeli Americans be different?

    And I doubt that as much as you despise the universal contempt you face as an outsider, you would be willing to switch places with a Palestinian.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2010
  17. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    S.A.M., the upper-crust in your country is just white trash with too much money. You may point to your swarthy skin like that means something, but pigs of a different color are still pigs.

    It must really piss you off that the government of your country has a basically pro-Israeli policy!

    You people, S.A.M. is in no place to be talking smack about the USA because her own country has had a pro-Israel policy since 1992. In fact, India is Israel's best friend in all of Asia! It really sticks in her craw, I bet!

    Does it bug you, S.A.M., that your country's first female president is in-bed with the Israel, too? It must chafe you bad. About half of the crap that you post here sounds verbatim like the crap that comes out of the Indian National Congress Party. Indian National Congress are known in the West as being corrupted and culturally backwards, yet they are the only influential party in your political system that has views anything like yours. Tell me, what has the Indian National Congress Party brought to India besides corruption and poverty?

    Oh, I know! They have been trying to sanitize the record of atrocity of Muslim cultures against the Hindu people. I bet that you are a Muslim or of Muslim descent. If so, your people were oppressing and murdering the people of India before the British Raj even came to town. You are a bunch of murderers and thugs, and now you are trying to cover up your crimes.

    People with your politics represent everything that is wrong with Asia, period. If you all died, Asia would get better quickly.

    Indian Muslims practice a cruel, arrogant double-standard: they demand the Hindu people in India to be "secular," yet the Muslims continue with exclusionary practices. The real truth is that Indian Muslims are bent on destroying any culture other than Islam. The only thing they intend to do is oppress and destroy anything that is not like them. They want special immunity and privilege. They are a poison to India, and their allies are motivated by greed.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2010
  18. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Actually Asia wouldn't notice

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  19. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Perhaps. Perhaps the excesses practiced by the Asian upper-class are not really relevant to the issue. I am still a freshman on the issue. I just get a strong sense that S.A.M.'s camp is a bunch of slimeballs to the greatest possible extremes of human evil.
     
  20. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Well actually its just that most of Asia pays very little attention to Israel and little or no attention towards judaism or jews for that matter. They have no opinion on the mater. Sam's position is unique to muslims and nations like Malaysia and Indonesia that have a large muslim population. The rest of Asia remains blissfully unaware of this issue and tend to focus on other things that affect them directly. Israel vs. palestinian and judaism is rarely discussed in Asia and you would be hard pressed to find a Korean for example having any opinion about the whole thing save 'that part of the world is dangerous, our government tells us not to go there'.
     
  21. Alien Cockroach Banned Banned

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    Well, that's what I said, Lucy. Believe it or not, I do not have an issue with being corrected when I actually have said something stupid or misguided. My continuing annoyance with S.A.M., who is sanctimoniously preaching about the "plight of the Palestinians" when her motives are selfish and ethnocentric, led me to speak more rapidly than my thought processes can go. She is a bad person. The political organizations in her country that are on her side have a legacy of corruption behind them, too. They are no good.
     
  22. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    You don't have any Korean friends, do you?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4TpCf0XURU
     
  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Islam, not Muslims, unless for their conservative values or intolerance of others.

    Quite all right.

    Ooh. Massive protest. That must be all of Korea assembled around that coffee shop. I can see how that must reflect all of their society, so that you can categorize the entire nation. Heck, it is all of their society. Why, I can see my cousin in the back! Hi Dave!
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2010

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