"Sven Littkowski" <sve### [at] jamaica-focuscom> wrote:
> And many
> politicians even declare loudly that Germany has no fascists (upfront to the
> football worldmastership).

Very dangerous attitude.  Indonesia once declared that they had no Al Qaeda
cells.  Then one of their non-existent Al Qaeda cells blew up a nightclub
in Bali.

> But many islanders are also very religious. And I really mean: very, very,
> very religious. Some of those religious families even take their children
> out of school just because they don't want their children to learn about
> science and evolution, can someone imagine that...

Excessive religious devotion is common to most of the western hemisphere.
There's even a home schooling industry in the states specifically for
parents who would rather their children learn fairy tales instead of
science.  The irony is that evolution isn't really taught in most school
districts; political pressure from Christian fundamentalists has been so
heavy that biology curricula have been gutted of real substance.  What most
people "know" about evolution is not at all what science claims.

And it doesn't stop there.  There's a very strong movement to force
_taxpayer supported_ public schools to teach their religion (disguised as
"creation science" or "intelligent design") to all schoolchildren.

> I am a fighter against religious intolerance. I am also an atheist who can
> be, therefore, tolerant to each person, independent by religion (Buddhism,
> Sikh, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Christians, Shintoism, and all the other ones).

I'm also an athiest, and i'm tolerant of anyone who's tolerant of me.  But
contrary to their own delusions (and their own constitution), religious
intolerance is rampant in the USA.  I just got an e-mail from my
Pentacostalist sister, urging me to write my senator to vote for a
constitutional amendment to preserve Christians' "right" to deny other
people their rights.  (They didn't phrase it that way, of course.)  Mind
you, _nobody_ is denying Christians their right to practice their religion,
but a very vocal minority of Christians feels threatened by people who don't
follow their rules.  The courts have been steadily hacking away at
Christians' special privileges, and the fundamentalists interpret that as
"persecution."

I don't know how science education and religious tolerance are in Latin
America and most of the Caribbean, but i know that religion is ubiquitous
in this part of the world.

> Of which descendence are you? When I was still living in Berlin, i was a
> part of "Savannah United e.V.", an African cultural organization group.
> Organizing African festivals, and so. I am a native German (but one of the
> good ones, I hope).   ;-)

My ancestors were brought here chained in the cargo holds of slave ships.  I
don't know which parts of Africa they were from.  This is true of most
blacks in the Americas.

Post a reply to this message

Ricky, you speak me in all points out of my soul! Might even be, that 
fundamentalist USA has that big issue with Al Qaeda because both are the 
same fundamentalistic. Religious persons, the fundamentalist ones, are very 
often extremely intolerant, and consider themselve of course as more human 
than anyone else not like them, so those others of course shouldn't live 
with the same human rights...

What you write about the education in the USA, shocks me. At the end, they 
destroy their own future. Without enough scientifical new generations, they 
soon will technnologically be behind other nations. And then, you will see, 
they will cry out and consider those advanced other nations as dangerous for 
the USA, even their previous friend nations.

And then, attempts of political and (decreasing) economical influence, and 
then military powers, will be used to keep the other nations down as well. 
"Missionars" will be sent out, to influence the societies othe those other 
nations from within. Like in all times since ancient times (Rome sent 
missionaries into Germania to break their resistance from within), they are 
used to break the backbone of the other nations.

I am a so-called "white" man (actually: kind of peach), but I feel big shame 
about the last centuries. Imagine, those slave society considered themselve 
as a Christian society. And churches also devided between black (actually: 
many shades of brown) and white. Christianity supported churches for the 
black people, and churches for the white people. Watta shame. But also what 
a truth about the phenomena called "religion" (mind control).

The entire slave phenomenum shows what happens if some nations have an 
advanced technical knowledge but not yet the matching wisdom (philosophical) 
level required to handle their technical abilities. But to be honest, even 
today, I believe, we are still the same. The entire mankind. We can build 
interesting things, but so much of our possibilities and resources we put in 
things which can kill us humans. They support oil but ignore sunlight, wind 
and renewable energy resources. Uhh! Yeah, it is so easy for some, to keep 
the focus of so many away from the real things. Yeah, we humans are truly 
"intelligent"...

Seems we are really of one opinion.  am happy to know that I am not the only 
person on this planet who feels not very good with so many things my eyes 
and ears tell me.

If you give me the e-mail address of that Pentacostalist sister of yours, I 
would love a lot to write her a letter asking for support, to vote for a
constitutional amendment to preserve Buddhists, Hindis, Sikhs, Moslems, Jews 
(etc.) "right" to defend other religions persons to deny their rights. Of 
course, I would not mention you at all. And that letter would have a formal 
attitude like it would be a letter meant like that. I sometimes don't know 
how those persons can be teached with their own words and behaviours. Maybe 
the way to just replace the name of the religion (Christian becomes Hindu), 
and you will see how LOUD these Christians suddenly will cry out on their 
own words now used against them...     ;-)

To state it clearly: I would do that with every intolerant person, of each 
religion.

Best greetings,

Sven



"Cousin Ricky" <ric### [at] yahoocom> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:web.4489bec1df8d5bed43a5e2560@news.povray.org...
> "Sven Littkowski" <sve### [at] jamaica-focuscom> wrote:
>> And many
>> politicians even declare loudly that Germany has no fascists (upfront to 
>> the
>> football worldmastership).
>
> Very dangerous attitude.  Indonesia once declared that they had no Al 
> Qaeda
> cells.  Then one of their non-existent Al Qaeda cells blew up a nightclub
> in Bali.
>
>> But many islanders are also very religious. And I really mean: very, 
>> very,
>> very religious. Some of those religious families even take their children
>> out of school just because they don't want their children to learn about
>> science and evolution, can someone imagine that...
>
> Excessive religious devotion is common to most of the western hemisphere.
> There's even a home schooling industry in the states specifically for
> parents who would rather their children learn fairy tales instead of
> science.  The irony is that evolution isn't really taught in most school
> districts; political pressure from Christian fundamentalists has been so
> heavy that biology curricula have been gutted of real substance.  What 
> most
> people "know" about evolution is not at all what science claims.
>
> And it doesn't stop there.  There's a very strong movement to force
> _taxpayer supported_ public schools to teach their religion (disguised as
> "creation science" or "intelligent design") to all schoolchildren.
>
>> I am a fighter against religious intolerance. I am also an atheist who 
>> can
>> be, therefore, tolerant to each person, independent by religion 
>> (Buddhism,
>> Sikh, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Christians, Shintoism, and all the other 
>> ones).
>
> I'm also an athiest, and i'm tolerant of anyone who's tolerant of me.  But
> contrary to their own delusions (and their own constitution), religious
> intolerance is rampant in the USA.  I just got an e-mail from my
> Pentacostalist sister, urging me to write my senator to vote for a
> constitutional amendment to preserve Christians' "right" to deny other
> people their rights.  (They didn't phrase it that way, of course.)  Mind
> you, _nobody_ is denying Christians their right to practice their 
> religion,
> but a very vocal minority of Christians feels threatened by people who 
> don't
> follow their rules.  The courts have been steadily hacking away at
> Christians' special privileges, and the fundamentalists interpret that as
> "persecution."
>
> I don't know how science education and religious tolerance are in Latin
> America and most of the Caribbean, but i know that religion is ubiquitous
> in this part of the world.
>
>> Of which descendence are you? When I was still living in Berlin, i was a
>> part of "Savannah United e.V.", an African cultural organization group.
>> Organizing African festivals, and so. I am a native German (but one of 
>> the
>> good ones, I hope).   ;-)
>
> My ancestors were brought here chained in the cargo holds of slave ships. 
> I
> don't know which parts of Africa they were from.  This is true of most
> blacks in the Americas.
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

Sven, Ricky, I'm a little late to this discussion but I wanted to say I'm
tending to agree with you guys....

I'm from the USA and I'm very sad to see where I think this country is
going.   One of the things I have the least tolerance for is intolerance.
It baffles me why people care about how other people live their lives, so
much so that they vote for controls and reduce freedoms, or restrict
certain rights to be beneficial only to majority groups and not others.
It's the tyrany of the majority syndrome.

The way I see it, freedom and democracy are two very distinct things.  (A)
In a nation that values "liberty," the idea should be that personal freedom
should extend up to, but not go beyond the point of impinging on others'
rights.   (B) In a nation that values "separation-of-church-and-state", the
government should be absolutely indifferent to religion-based morals. The
government also has no duty to teach religion. (C) And still, in a country
which is supposed to be a democracy, people need to have a say over the law
of the land...   But to what end?  What is the scope?  What protects
minority groups from majority demands?

The emediete question is what should the government do if a majority votes
to impose religion-based morals and teachings? And the question behind this
question is what has precidence, the "will-of-the-people," or "liberty."   I
think this is where countries need to decide that the principle stated in
sentence (A) should apply to the voting population:  you can't vote to
restrict rights without showing that rights conflict with other rights
somehow. (Land use/planning is a good example of how rights can conflict in
a way that I think is vote-able.) Anyhow, majority religion under this
principle, cannot be a reason to change laws etc.


Hmm, are we still talking about raytracing? :)   Oh well, communities get to
talk about other stuff too...

Charles

PS, back to the origin of this thread,   POVMAN  I like your sheep, and on
this one I like the apparent mutual envy of the sheep.  :-)

Post a reply to this message

Among other things, Charles C saw fit to write:

> The emediete question is what should the government do if a majority votes
> to impose religion-based morals and teachings? And the question behind
> this
> question is what has precidence, the "will-of-the-people," or "liberty."  
> I think this is where countries need to decide that the principle stated
> in
> sentence (A) should apply to the voting population:  you can't vote to
> restrict rights without showing that rights conflict with other rights
> somehow. (Land use/planning is a good example of how rights can conflict
> in a way that I think is vote-able.) Anyhow, majority religion under this
> principle, cannot be a reason to change laws etc.

In my country (Spain) I believe it's possible to promote a law change by
popular demand, except in "foreign affairs" and economics.

I wholeheartedly agree with you about tolerance, personal freedom and
tyranny of majority. I recently heard that democracy is not about doing

the minorities.

However there, is something that worries me. Take this discussion about
science/religion in the school. I am strongly convinced that science is
"the good way", that people should know what science has to say, that the
world would be a better place if everyone had a firm scientific education,
that our children should be taught to think critically... But I have to
accept there are people who think the opposite, that (their particular
flavour of) religion is the only acceptable way, that people should act
according to religious teachings, that the world would be a better place if
everyone lead a pious life, that our children should be taught to interpret
the scriptures... Who am I to say that my view is better than theirs? It's
certainly better for me, but why has the society have to be as I want it
and not as they want it? It's not only about personal freedom, it's also
about the way we want our societies to go.

The same can be said about many other subjects like taxes, public health,
research, etc. Sometimes you have conflicting views, both (or all) of them
equally valid for their supporters, who also believe they're the best
choice for everyone's wellbeing. A decision by the "brute force" of voting
may not be the fairest one, but an agreement might be next to impossible
(and the "most tolerant" of the views is likely to be the one to give up
earlier). Sometimes one would wish there was a "benevolent dictator"
somewhere...

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

Post a reply to this message