Comments | cool_moose: Thou shalt not dismember thy neighbor ... even in Toronto

cool_moose

Thou shalt not dismember thy neighbor ... even in Toronto

Jun 13, 2006 09:07

Well, hurricanes are back … and I hope my friends in Florida will be safe in the coming days and months. But what’s this about naming the hurricanes after Canadian provinces ( Read more... )

Comments 13

csn June 13 2006, 10:24:16 UTC

Thank you for this lucid entry. I am in total agreement. It is not so much that religion has to go, but rather, peoples' ignorance and stupidity, of which religion is merely a manifestation, a scapegoat to be stupid and dangerous.

cool_moose June 13 2006, 18:53:35 UTC

Yeah - there are plenty of irreligious idiots around too. But inhumanity to others seems to be amplified by the idea of an afterlife - abounding with angels, virgins and true-believers.

Bill Moyers' PBS special "On Faith and Reason" later this month should be interesting.

(The comment has been removed)

cool_moose June 13 2006, 20:20:19 UTC

Karen Armstrong is a great lady. She was interviewed by another of my favourites, Bill Moyers, on PBS and I've read some of her work. PBShttp://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_armstrong.html

In the US, Coulter (and the Likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly) has a much greater following than the guys at the other end of the spectrum.
Moore is an embarrassment (to us 'clear-thinking'liberals :), but I rather enjoy Franken's counter attacks on the nut-bars.

keenman June 13 2006, 15:36:11 UTC

A few months ago, I asked a friend of mine who has degrees in sociology, psychology & anthropology, if there were one thing he could change in the world by simply pressing a button, what would it be?

With no hesitation, he responded, "Get rid of organized religion." I agreed with him, thinking it was quite an insightful response. He went up a couple of notches in my book. What I didn't realize was that others feel the same way.

Now if there were only a way to implement it without a whole bunch of bloodshed and suffering.

cool_moose June 14 2006, 02:56:50 UTC

I suppose the counter argument is that most 'godly' people are quietly pious, respwect their 'neighbors' - and are often inspired by a peaceful openness and agreement to keep their particular brand of 'godliness' the hell out of the rest of our lives. As 'mcgeary' mentions above, Karen Armstrong has written some great stuff - and you might watch PBS's "On Faith and Reason" with Bill Moyers later this month. It's a 7-part series starting, I think on June 23rd. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/

keenman June 17 2006, 03:38:22 UTC

I wonder if you can watch PBS without having cable... I'm so out of the loop regarding TV I don't even know what channels I get. The show does sound intriguing...

cool_moose June 17 2006, 05:42:59 UTC

You've got to get PBS. Charlie Rose is back.

Thread 5

bdouville June 13 2006, 20:14:35 UTC

I live in the suburbs of Toronto, and the news about the so-called "Jihadists" left me underwhelmed. I don't feel any less safe than I did two weeks ago.

The fact that CSIS has known about these folks for three years suggests that we have an effective intelligence system in Canada.

Moreover, the accusations still have to be proven in court. For example, what if these men only purchased the explosives because of encouragement (or pressure) by undercover agents? And how serious were the plans to behead Stephen Harper? As Harper himself stated, he only worries about threats of assassination when they come from his own Cabinet.

As for the Canadian mosaic, it seems to be working.

cool_moose June 13 2006, 20:29:55 UTC

It does indeed. But we still have to be careful of the idiot fringes - from within and without. Much as the Indo/Pakistan communities have resolved most of their problems in this city (Vancouver), we still had a bomb placed on Air India's Flight 182 in 1985 - all 329 on board were killed, of whom eighty two were children and 280 were Canadian citizens.

Sometimes a 'patch' just doesn't work in this quilt we are assembling. By definition, they want nothing to do with a mosaic.

peristaltor June 13 2006, 20:32:57 UTC

Nice overview. Reminds me of my brother mcfnord, back when he was in confirmation classes. He told everyone in the class he believed everyone in the world was either agnostic or atheist, but were too afraid to admit it. Pastor Matthias just said, "That's interesting." Pretty laid-back church.

Oh, and one correction (maybe); we supposedly don't have a melting pot anymore. Now it's supposed to be a salad bowl. In a melting pot, all the ingredients meld into one; in a salad, one enjoys all the individual, distinct parts at once.

A friend was sent to a seminar on just that topic, then was disciplined for "cultural insensitivity" the next day. The seminar constituted due notice.

cool_moose June 14 2006, 20:30:47 UTC

Salad bowls and mosaics are the same - and both of our countries' benefit hugely from the cross-pollination of cultures. I was born in the world's second largest French-speaking city - Montreal - and live now in Vancouver -a city that is 30% Asian (including my mixed Chinese/Irish grandson, who was born in Manhatten and has dual US/Canadian citizenship). My adopted son is Araucanian/Chilean, a Mapuche from the Andes. Ain't it great?

peristaltor June 16 2006, 04:27:04 UTC

Great it is.