The Paris Attack Debate Thread

[Josquius]

The way see it there's nothing to reform. It's the extremists who are the ones trying to launch a reformation.
Which...considering protestantism is all about going back to the biblical text, contains the strictest and most literal Christians,  does kind of make sense.

[Martinus]

Yeah, it is not time for reformation (ISIS is the muslim Calvinism already) but secularisation.

Which, as others pointed out, in the Christian West required brutal force. And, coming to think of it, this is what Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Turkish army used to be doing...

[The Brain]

The Church of Sweden went from dogmatic old-skoolism to today's watered down don't-even-believe-in-our-own-God organization without any major upheavals. Obviously Sweden didn't exist in a vacuum but it's not like force is always necessary to break the power of religions or churches. It may well be in Islam of course, they do come across as less open to reason.

[Josquius]

Yeah, it is not time for reformation (ISIS is the muslim Calvinism already) but secularisation.

Which, as others pointed out, in the Christian West required brutal force. And, coming to think of it, this is what Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Turkish army used to be doing...

Agreed secularism is the way to go. And this works a lot better with the generic old fashioned faith as it has always been rather than with some fancy religious revival reform movement.

It is sad however in that such positive changes will always have reactionaries. A big reason for Islamic extremism, this knee jerk reactionary movement, is the growing secularism of other muslims. 'Home grown extremists' in particular tend to come from very secular backgrounds from whence they go through some sort of quest for identity and latch on to a pseudo-intellectual back to basics emo-tastic brand of Islam

[Queequeg]

Yeah, it is not time for reformation (ISIS is the muslim Calvinism already) but secularisation.

Which, as others pointed out, in the Christian West required brutal force. And, coming to think of it, this is what Hussein, Qaddafi, Mubarak and the Turkish army used to be doing...

That's not fair to Calvinism.

ISIS is Muslim. From the time of the Khwarajis you've had fanatical break off sects who want to kill everyone. That's how the religion started in the first place.

[Martinus]

The Church of Sweden went from dogmatic old-skoolism to today's watered down don't-even-believe-in-our-own-God organization without any major upheavals. Obviously Sweden didn't exist in a vacuum but it's not like force is always necessary to break the power of religions or churches. It may well be in Islam of course, they do come across as less open to reason.

Well, but it did come from losing a number of wars.

[The Brain]

The Church of Sweden went from dogmatic old-skoolism to today's watered down don't-even-believe-in-our-own-God organization without any major upheavals. Obviously Sweden didn't exist in a vacuum but it's not like force is always necessary to break the power of religions or churches. It may well be in Islam of course, they do come across as less open to reason.

Well, but it did come from losing a number of wars.

wut

[Martinus]

The Church of Sweden went from dogmatic old-skoolism to today's watered down don't-even-believe-in-our-own-God organization without any major upheavals. Obviously Sweden didn't exist in a vacuum but it's not like force is always necessary to break the power of religions or churches. It may well be in Islam of course, they do come across as less open to reason.

Well, but it did come from losing a number of wars.

wut

Sweden did lose a number of wars before it mellowed out.

[The Brain]

The Church of Sweden went from dogmatic old-skoolism to today's watered down don't-even-believe-in-our-own-God organization without any major upheavals. Obviously Sweden didn't exist in a vacuum but it's not like force is always necessary to break the power of religions or churches. It may well be in Islam of course, they do come across as less open to reason.

Well, but it did come from losing a number of wars.

wut

Sweden did lose a number of wars before it mellowed out.

What's the connection?

[Josquius]

Secularisation in Sweden was a 20th century thing right?

[garbon]

Sweden is also pretty insignificant. It has the population of about 3-4 large cities.

[grumbler]

A) Christians moved passed that because most intellectuals, deist or Christian, accepted the Enlightenment and the idea that came with it that religion ought to be emasculated, a tool for keeping social order and not a contender for divided loyalty between the state and their personal faith. Hence why, in France, priests were made to swear (by force if necessary) to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and why Napoleon had the Concordate consentend to and signed by the Pope. The same should be done with Imams (and really any and all priests of recognized religions) : They accept a "civil" constitution that preach respect and obedience to the rule of law, plus toleration of the land's law and customs and other people's belief, in exchange for being personally paid and receiving financial support from the state, or they have no permit to preact, their property on their cult is forfeit, and non-citizen "priests" are deported. Even that is more lenient than the fate that was reserved to non-swearing priests (read a date with the Lousiette).

B) It took bloody civil wars (even during the revolution with the Vendée) and Christians killing each other in droves for centuries before Christians, as a whole, finally accepted that tolerating other people's beliefs might be better than constant and brutal chaos all the time. Even the Dechristianization in France during the Revolution was rather brutal. Carrier, Hébert and Fouché really didn't fuck around with abstract liberal concepts of "respecting the liberty of Christians" and "sacrificing liberty for security leads to the loss of both" when their society was in mortal danger.

Your idea only works for religions organized along feudal lines.  There is no pope for protestants, orthodox, jews, muslims, hindus, buddhists, etc.  Congregations of these faiths are independent, so collective punishment just makes the problem you are trying to solve worse.

There may be modern paralels to Catholic France of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, but there aren't many.

[Martinus]

A) Christians moved passed that because most intellectuals, deist or Christian, accepted the Enlightenment and the idea that came with it that religion ought to be emasculated, a tool for keeping social order and not a contender for divided loyalty between the state and their personal faith. Hence why, in France, priests were made to swear (by force if necessary) to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and why Napoleon had the Concordate consentend to and signed by the Pope. The same should be done with Imams (and really any and all priests of recognized religions) : They accept a "civil" constitution that preach respect and obedience to the rule of law, plus toleration of the land's law and customs and other people's belief, in exchange for being personally paid and receiving financial support from the state, or they have no permit to preact, their property on their cult is forfeit, and non-citizen "priests" are deported. Even that is more lenient than the fate that was reserved to non-swearing priests (read a date with the Lousiette).

B) It took bloody civil wars (even during the revolution with the Vendée) and Christians killing each other in droves for centuries before Christians, as a whole, finally accepted that tolerating other people's beliefs might be better than constant and brutal chaos all the time. Even the Dechristianization in France during the Revolution was rather brutal. Carrier, Hébert and Fouché really didn't fuck around with abstract liberal concepts of "respecting the liberty of Christians" and "sacrificing liberty for security leads to the loss of both" when their society was in mortal danger.

Your idea only works for religions organized along feudal lines.  There is no pope for protestants, orthodox, jews, muslims, hindus, buddhists, etc.  Congregations of these faiths are independent, so collective punishment just makes the problem you are trying to solve worse.

There may be modern paralels to Catholic France of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, but there aren't many.

But there are even fewer to reformation, and those that are, are not positive.

[grumbler]

It is indeed. Worst line of my feed: "stop blaming a religion because of 8 crazy idiots".

The worst of mine was the idea that we should  "stop blaming secularism because of 8 crazy idiots"

We need to ban religion and secularism both.

[grumbler]

But there are even fewer to reformation, and those that are, are not positive.

And there are fewer yet to the Challanger disaster, and those are even less positive.