I am going to make two assumptions; one about the present and one about the future. I assume the Catholic Church is presently ashamed of the Inquisition and its role in fostering that stain upon western civilization. I assume that the Muslim world will one day be similarly ashamed of what is now being done in its name by psychopaths.
Whatever Jesus may or may not have done, or Mohammed, so many crimes have been committed in their names that they’re stigmatized beyond redemption and will never unite all people against the common enemy which is ignorance, isn’t that the reality that suffering humankind faces?
The German people who slaughtered 6 million Jews were not atheists. They were good Christians following the teachings of Martin Luther who’s treatise “The Jews and Their Lies” was a prescription for the extermination of the “Christ Killers.” Did you even know that? The Nazi newspaper proudly compared Hitler to Martin Luther. Hitler cut a deal with the Pope to each work their side of the street and stay out of each others way since killing Jews was not morally objectionable to either. These are not my opinions, they are cold, hard facts. Do you dispute them?
The “good books” of both religions include the call for mass murder of non-believers, infidels, heretics, and blasphemers and so those who feel themselves to be truly and devoutly religious like those young men in Paris yesterday and Anders Behring Breivik see themselves as the true followers and that tepid followers (probably like you in their eyes) who don’t follow the good books to the letter and kill for their beliefs will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
It’s the 21st century. Why do we need a morality more complex than the golden rule? These ancient and primitive systems of myth and fantasy have had their run and it’s time for them to exit the stage, wouldn’t you agree?
Just for consideration: when I was in school, I was taught Greek and Roman mythology. The implication was “who would imagine that people would believe that gods sprung out of the heads of other gods, and that they would get angry with one another and behave….like humans behave”?
And that got me to thinking: in a few thousand years, will the same thing be thought about Abraham taking his son to the top of a mountain to kill him (and his son went along with it) because the voice in his head told him to? Or the idea of a virgin birth? Or coming back to life? Will what we accept as gospel actually be thought of as “mythology” in the far future? Or that the supreme being could easily be made angry enough to destroy nearly everything ever created, behaving…..like humans behave?
I’ll put on my Kevlar suit and wait for responses….
I’m sorry sir, but the entire Christ story, from the virgin birth to the miracles to the death and rising is an insult to human intelligence. As are the stories of a woman popping out fully formed from the ribs of a man, food falling from the desert sky, the utterly absurd ark story and all the other stories made up by human minds to explain an existence that was mysterious and terrifying. The fact that as a child you were forced to accept these silly things as under threat of loss of parental love and going to hell doesn’t lend the least bit of credence to them. This is how these religions pass along from one generation to the next and by no other means.
Well said but naming all the atrocities committed in the names of the various gods created by humans is not even the main problem we all face at the hands of these primitive mythologies. The fact is that they all demand blind, unquestioning obedience, they are male controlled autocracies, they are the greatest vectors of ignorance on the planet, and have you noticed how easily ignorance morphs into evil?
How can we hope to govern ourselves when half our population believes the biblical creation story, that there were really people named Adam and Eve, that there was really a talking snake and an apple? How to express the absurdity of all of this and that they’re accepted without question by so many.
The religions that have plagued humankind for centuries are autocracies and we’ve been trying to do away with autocracies for awhile now. Question the bible and you go to hell; question Stalin and you went to the Gulag, question the leader of North Korea and you go to a dungeon, question the hierarchy about the heliocentric universe and you are sentenced to house arrest as in Galileo’s case. Notice a common thread? In some autocracies this is called treason, in others it’s called heresy, but it’s all the same thing; shut up, believe what you’re commanded to believe and never, ever express any dissent or ask questions. Isn’t that the way it is, the way it’s always been?
Hey, I heard on the news today that some gun control people state that our government needs to control on more guns! This also includes in France! While the cops rode on bicycles and didn’t have guns, these 3 Islamic goons shot up these magazine headquarters WHERE CARTOONISTS DREW CARTOONS, these bad guys with AK-47s had all the ammo to do their dirty work and escape! Isn’t Mr. Toles going to be a coward for not standing up to his beliefs in free speech like ALL AMERICANS should? People that want gun control, you are reaping for what you sow, so sleep in it!
Hmm, talking of Algeria, and Viet Nam, among other colonies, the French were extraordinarily brutal, and used the Foreign Legion (French officers running mercenaries) to fight all their wars. Is that why their military was matched only by the Italians on speed of surrender? That’s why after we beat Germany, they still used US to screw over Ho Chi Minh who helped kick the Japanese out. Heading up towar Pleiku, there’s a mountain pass with over 1,000 grave markers off the road and down the hlll, Dien Ben Phu wasn’t the only collosal French miitary screw up.
I have no love for, nor particularly respect for the French government. I’ve heard some folks down in the south are okay, but the Parisians tend to be total jerks, especially toward Americans, which is I guess their classic response to looking in their mirrors?
Which, while the “modern” radical Muslims ARE totally crazy, and jerks, we might want to look at the history of European, and American, folks screwing over Arabs, and Muslims, for some consideration of motive?
Which, pay attention to what Likud and Netanyahu have done to Palesinians and stop trying to bring on the Holocaust, whick did kill 6 million Jews, and some 7 milliion NON-Jews in the camps. It’s more accurate to look at Joshua, and the leadership that led to the Jewish diaspora, it was THEIR brutality toward their neighbors, so think karma.
ALL radical religious nuts are nuts, and few if any actually practice what their religions actually stood for, except well, about Joshua’s attitude again…
ChazNCenTex over 9 years ago
Je suis Charlie!!
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
How many countries, including our “friends”, have done no less than these crazies?
ConserveGov over 9 years ago
So wait Tom…..who killed the French cartoonists?Christian Swedes? Buddhists from Thailand?
Liverlips McCracken Premium Member over 9 years ago
I am going to make two assumptions; one about the present and one about the future. I assume the Catholic Church is presently ashamed of the Inquisition and its role in fostering that stain upon western civilization. I assume that the Muslim world will one day be similarly ashamed of what is now being done in its name by psychopaths.
LOLisgood4U over 9 years ago
Congratulations to all the editorial cartoonist with the courage to express their condemnation of the cowardly attack on Charlie Hebdo.
StCleve72 over 9 years ago
Whatever Jesus may or may not have done, or Mohammed, so many crimes have been committed in their names that they’re stigmatized beyond redemption and will never unite all people against the common enemy which is ignorance, isn’t that the reality that suffering humankind faces?
The German people who slaughtered 6 million Jews were not atheists. They were good Christians following the teachings of Martin Luther who’s treatise “The Jews and Their Lies” was a prescription for the extermination of the “Christ Killers.” Did you even know that? The Nazi newspaper proudly compared Hitler to Martin Luther. Hitler cut a deal with the Pope to each work their side of the street and stay out of each others way since killing Jews was not morally objectionable to either. These are not my opinions, they are cold, hard facts. Do you dispute them?
The “good books” of both religions include the call for mass murder of non-believers, infidels, heretics, and blasphemers and so those who feel themselves to be truly and devoutly religious like those young men in Paris yesterday and Anders Behring Breivik see themselves as the true followers and that tepid followers (probably like you in their eyes) who don’t follow the good books to the letter and kill for their beliefs will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
It’s the 21st century. Why do we need a morality more complex than the golden rule? These ancient and primitive systems of myth and fantasy have had their run and it’s time for them to exit the stage, wouldn’t you agree?
Godfreydaniel over 9 years ago
Voltaire would defend to the death William Blake’s right to compose that poem…….
I Play One On TV over 9 years ago
Just for consideration: when I was in school, I was taught Greek and Roman mythology. The implication was “who would imagine that people would believe that gods sprung out of the heads of other gods, and that they would get angry with one another and behave….like humans behave”?
And that got me to thinking: in a few thousand years, will the same thing be thought about Abraham taking his son to the top of a mountain to kill him (and his son went along with it) because the voice in his head told him to? Or the idea of a virgin birth? Or coming back to life? Will what we accept as gospel actually be thought of as “mythology” in the far future? Or that the supreme being could easily be made angry enough to destroy nearly everything ever created, behaving…..like humans behave?
I’ll put on my Kevlar suit and wait for responses….
hippogriff over 9 years ago
Doughfoot: Lynching did not stop 50 years ago, but continues today, some of it, ironically, under the direction of one named Lynch.
StCleve72 over 9 years ago
I’m sorry sir, but the entire Christ story, from the virgin birth to the miracles to the death and rising is an insult to human intelligence. As are the stories of a woman popping out fully formed from the ribs of a man, food falling from the desert sky, the utterly absurd ark story and all the other stories made up by human minds to explain an existence that was mysterious and terrifying. The fact that as a child you were forced to accept these silly things as under threat of loss of parental love and going to hell doesn’t lend the least bit of credence to them. This is how these religions pass along from one generation to the next and by no other means.
StCleve72 over 9 years ago
Well said but naming all the atrocities committed in the names of the various gods created by humans is not even the main problem we all face at the hands of these primitive mythologies. The fact is that they all demand blind, unquestioning obedience, they are male controlled autocracies, they are the greatest vectors of ignorance on the planet, and have you noticed how easily ignorance morphs into evil?
StCleve72 over 9 years ago
How can we hope to govern ourselves when half our population believes the biblical creation story, that there were really people named Adam and Eve, that there was really a talking snake and an apple? How to express the absurdity of all of this and that they’re accepted without question by so many.
StCleve72 over 9 years ago
The religions that have plagued humankind for centuries are autocracies and we’ve been trying to do away with autocracies for awhile now. Question the bible and you go to hell; question Stalin and you went to the Gulag, question the leader of North Korea and you go to a dungeon, question the hierarchy about the heliocentric universe and you are sentenced to house arrest as in Galileo’s case. Notice a common thread? In some autocracies this is called treason, in others it’s called heresy, but it’s all the same thing; shut up, believe what you’re commanded to believe and never, ever express any dissent or ask questions. Isn’t that the way it is, the way it’s always been?
GasHouseGorilla over 9 years ago
Hey, I heard on the news today that some gun control people state that our government needs to control on more guns! This also includes in France! While the cops rode on bicycles and didn’t have guns, these 3 Islamic goons shot up these magazine headquarters WHERE CARTOONISTS DREW CARTOONS, these bad guys with AK-47s had all the ammo to do their dirty work and escape! Isn’t Mr. Toles going to be a coward for not standing up to his beliefs in free speech like ALL AMERICANS should? People that want gun control, you are reaping for what you sow, so sleep in it!
Dtroutma over 9 years ago
Hmm, talking of Algeria, and Viet Nam, among other colonies, the French were extraordinarily brutal, and used the Foreign Legion (French officers running mercenaries) to fight all their wars. Is that why their military was matched only by the Italians on speed of surrender? That’s why after we beat Germany, they still used US to screw over Ho Chi Minh who helped kick the Japanese out. Heading up towar Pleiku, there’s a mountain pass with over 1,000 grave markers off the road and down the hlll, Dien Ben Phu wasn’t the only collosal French miitary screw up.
I have no love for, nor particularly respect for the French government. I’ve heard some folks down in the south are okay, but the Parisians tend to be total jerks, especially toward Americans, which is I guess their classic response to looking in their mirrors?
Which, while the “modern” radical Muslims ARE totally crazy, and jerks, we might want to look at the history of European, and American, folks screwing over Arabs, and Muslims, for some consideration of motive?
Which, pay attention to what Likud and Netanyahu have done to Palesinians and stop trying to bring on the Holocaust, whick did kill 6 million Jews, and some 7 milliion NON-Jews in the camps. It’s more accurate to look at Joshua, and the leadership that led to the Jewish diaspora, it was THEIR brutality toward their neighbors, so think karma.
ALL radical religious nuts are nuts, and few if any actually practice what their religions actually stood for, except well, about Joshua’s attitude again…