What is it with Radical Muslims and beheadings?

[Shad]

I think you have an odd idea of the concept/definition of 'separation,' if you think that 'separation is about government telling people what to believe or using religion against the population..." "separation of church and state' means precisely the opposite of that.

My idea is aligns with your own previous post which I replied to. Read your own post again. I just pointed out that some practices the government addresses as those practices are illegal anyways. Human sacrifice for example is still murder by law. You never addressed that point namely practices. You just attacked your own idea you seemed to have forgotten over a period of a day.

 

[dianaiad]

My idea is aligns with your own previous post which I replied to. Read your own post again. I just pointed out that some practices the government addresses as those practices are illegal anyways. Human sacrifice for example is still murder by law. You never addressed that point namely practices. You just attacked your own idea you seemed to have forgotten over a period of a day.

you are moving goalposts.

As long as a religion's practicises apply only to willing members of its congregation, there is no reason for the state to intefere.

As soon as religious practices involve forcing someone who is unwilling and not a volunteer, then that religion is wrong and that's where the 'state' should step in.

I know of VERY few human sacrifices that are OK with that.

What the state must not do is compel a religion to accede to the beliefs of someone else...for instance, making the Catholic church recognize, within it's doctrine, the remarriages of divorced people. Nobody is advocating that, you realize. The government recognizes those marriages, but the clergy of the church probably will deny communion to those couples, since they are 'living in sin' according to Catholicism.

..........and that's just fine.

But what you SEEM to be advocating is that the state should be able to tell the church what to believe, and do, in terms of its own congregation and beliefs, because YOU disagree with them.

 

[Shad]

you are moving goalposts.

Nope. Reread your own post then mine and try again. Look up the history of the concept too. Do you know why the FF endorsed the idea? England and it's history with religion. A lot of the settlers were people expelled from England due to government as government determined they had the wrong religious views. Europe had major issues for centuries with government using religion to control the masses.

As long as a religion's practicises apply only to willing members of its congregation, there is no reason for the state to intefere.

Wrong. Drug use is one example. Violence is another.

As soon as religious practices involve forcing someone who is unwilling and not a volunteer, then that religion is wrong and that's where the 'state' should step in.

Wrong. Consent does not make something legal. If one consents to being a human sacrifice the people killing them are still arrested for murder.

What the state must not do is compel a religion to accede to the beliefs of someone else...for instance, making the Catholic church recognize, within it's doctrine, the remarriages of divorced people. Nobody is advocating that, you realize. The government recognizes those marriages, but the clergy of the church probably will deny communion to those couples, since they are 'living in sin' according to Catholicism.

I never made such a point.

But what you SEEM to be advocating is that the state should be able to tell the church what to believe, and do, in terms of its own congregation and beliefs, because YOU disagree with them.

Nope. I am talking about actions hence I said practices in the first reply.. People can believe X but committing X may or may not be illegal in a nation-state.

 

[ajay0]

This is due to improper and perverted interpretation of religious scriptures.

God is not interested in beheadings and slaughter of innocent people.

In fact the Dharmic monotheist sect the Prajapita Brahmakumaris strictly emphasize nonviolence and sweet speech for spreading the teachings of God both by example and verbal/written communication. The emphasis of God here is on being a virtuous flower rather than a vicious thorn, and it is such flowers who attain heaven.

Violence of any sort is abhorred by God, and the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who are of a violent nature

Violence stems from desire in the form of aversion or extreme dislike, which stems from wrong identification with body-consciousness or external identities rather than soul-consciousness which is our true identity.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

you are moving goalposts.

As long as a religion's practicises apply only to willing members of its congregation, there is no reason for the state to intefere.

As soon as religious practices involve forcing someone who is unwilling and not a volunteer, then that religion is wrong and that's where the 'state' should step in.

I know of VERY few human sacrifices that are OK with that.

What the state must not do is compel a religion to accede to the beliefs of someone else...for instance, making the Catholic church recognize, within it's doctrine, the remarriages of divorced people. Nobody is advocating that, you realize. The government recognizes those marriages, but the clergy of the church probably will deny communion to those couples, since they are 'living in sin' according to Catholicism.

..........and that's just fine.

But what you SEEM to be advocating is that the state should be able to tell the church what to believe, and do, in terms of its own congregation and beliefs, because YOU disagree with them.

It's a principle of law here - and AFAIK in the US as well - that a person can't consent to be assaulted.

That aside, the Catholic Church has tried - and sometimes succeeded - at interfering with secular laws that I live under. I don't see any particular problem with interfering with them right back.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

you are moving goalposts.

As long as a religion's practicises apply only to willing members of its congregation, there is no reason for the state to intefere.

As soon as religious practices involve forcing someone who is unwilling and not a volunteer, then that religion is wrong and that's where the 'state' should step in.

I know of VERY few human sacrifices that are OK with that.

Some years ago I saw a video, which is probably still there, about certain religious folks in these united states handling snakes and drinking poison to test god's word, I suppose. And so they dance around with the poor snakes in church, and some people live through the bites and some people die. Basically, I think that such actions, if they prove fatal, might technically be construed as falling under the heading of 'human sacrifice' by historians several centuries into the future

But to steer this thread back to the topic, this attitude of the snake-handlers calls into question the extent to which 'willingness' can go. For example, a society in which beheading exists might contain a sort of analogous attitude, therefore we might perceive the local populum as complying to an atmosphere in which beheading is a possibility, more than they rebel against it. For both, the practices probably 'justified' some kind of repentant feeling that it generates for the group. (I am not making an argument for any of this, I'm just trying understand it) Likewise with ancient cultures in europe and the americas, where old texts hint that individuals were variously willing to be sacrificed to appease their gods. All of this of course, seems to rightly be made illegal by the state (except perhaps all of the snake handling? I don't know)

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

So, IOW, beheadings don't bother you..?

...Because to me, it seems disrespectful to the max.

Beheading was traditionally viewed as a very honorable way to die across various cultures. Statesmen and royalty would often be beheaded. Of course, the method they used was quite different and far more humane (a quick strike from a heavy, extremely sharp sword or axe) than the grotesque, torturous methods used to behead people by terrorists (slow sawing through the neck with a dull blade).

 

[Cooky]

Beheading was traditionally viewed as a very honorable way to die across various cultures. Statesmen and royalty would often be beheaded. Of course, the method they used was quite different and far more humane (a quick strike from a heavy, extremely sharp sword or axe) than the grotesque, torturous methods used to behead people by terrorists (slow sawing through the neck with a dull blade).

Some terrorists even gouge the eyeballs before the sawing, just for gripping purposes. It's totally inhumane and disrespectful to the extreme.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Some terrorists even gouge the eyeballs before the sawing, just for gripping purposes. It's totally inhumane and disrespectful to the extreme.

Well, yes, that is. They are doing it to degrade and terrify people. But that's not the traditional method of beheading.

 

[dianaiad]

Some years ago I saw a video, which is probably still there, about certain religious folks in these united states handling snakes and drinking poison to test god's word, I suppose. And so they dance around with the poor snakes in church, and some people live through the bites and some people die. Basically, I think that such actions, if they prove fatal, might technically be construed as falling under the heading of 'human sacrifice' by historians several centuries into the future

But to steer this thread back to the topic, this attitude of the snake-handlers calls into question the extent to which 'willingness' can go. For example, a society in which beheading exists might contain a sort of analogous attitude, therefore we might perceive the local populum as complying to an atmosphere in which beheading is a possibility, more than they rebel against it. For both, the practices probably 'justified' some kind of repentant feeling that it generates for the group. (I am not making an argument for any of this, I'm just trying understand it) Likewise with ancient cultures in europe and the americas, where old texts hint that individuals were variously willing to be sacrificed to appease their gods. All of this of course, seems to rightly be made illegal by the state (except perhaps all of the snake handling? I don't know)

I'm....a bit torn.

Well, not really, I guess. Every time I think about it, I come down on the side of 'if they believe it, and it affects nobody but them, no matter how weird/horrible/stupid WE think it is, it's their beliefs and lives. Leave them alone."

I think the only option the rest of us have, if they are firm believers in things we find heinous, is to attempt to talk them out of it/convert them. We have NO right to stop them.

........except for the snake handling. We might be able to get them with 'cruelty to animals,' if it turns out the snakes are being abused.

Exceptions: anybody under the age of consent...nobody handles snakes unless they are at least eighteen, if there is human sacrifice, it better be a willing sacrifice, old enough to make his/her own decisions, and no coercion (such as...if you don't do this, we kill your kids, sort of thing). We really don't have any instances of this, except for the muslim suicide bombers, and they are a VERY different matter. Their goal isn't simply to sacrifice their own lives, but to kill a whole bunch of people along with them.

On the other hand, those monks who set themselves on fire to protest something....don't most people actually admire them?

The point about snake handling is that those who dance with snakes, drink poison, etc., are supposed to live through it, right? So....not a good example here.

I guess that this is where I have to, logically, stand. What people do is utterly up to them, as long as what they do doesn't harm anybody else. I think that might be the essence of libertarianism, come to think of it.

We have NO right to tell anybody that they can't do something simply because WE wouldn't do it.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Exceptions: anybody under the age of consent...nobody handles snakes unless they are at least eighteen, if there is human sacrifice, it better be a willing sacrifice, old enough to make his/her own decisions, and no coercion

Ok, now you're getting to the part of the discussion where obviously many would then question the role of religious education. Nobody handles snakes until they are eighteen, or experiences stoning via an LDS mission until they are 19, or probably gets beheaded until whatever age in Islam. However, surely a rigorous educational discourse took place before an individual decided to take up a deadly snake on their eighteenth birthday, or participate in religion under the aegis of any variation of austere rules, and one wonders if that person's rights to a 'non-biased education,' roughly speaking, were protected. Therefore, the palatablility of contrition or penance is, by general suspicion, the result of this being fed into one's development. What say you to that

The point about snake handling is that those who dance with snakes, drink poison, etc., are supposed to live through it, right? So....not a good example here.

Well, nascent christianity seems to revolve around the idea that suffering and possible death are experiences that bring contrition. And although I don't know it for a fact, I suspect that this attitude is similar in all variants of abrahamic religion. Thus, 'contrition' is just about the same whether you're a medieval stylite or an appalachian snake handler, or someone who is beheaded for sinning in a society where this might be construed as a kind of penance. Successful missionary work as well, does not necessarily seem to be an experience where all the successful have lived beyond it