Is reading this a waste of my valuable time if I am an atheist?

It's really short. You can read it in one sitting. Yes.

not a bigger waste of time than being an atheist

Why Judaism and Islam? Shouldn't western children learn about their own cultural traditions? I guess you could make the argument that Jewish culture is part of western culture but Muslims have only been here for a couple generations.

he might be retarded mate

>why learn about the three major ideological forces that have shaped nearly all world conflicts since their consecutive conceptions?
I don't agree they should be "shoved down" kids' throats, but they are important.

go back to /pol/

I respect atheists, I respect agnostics, I respect those who are believers from an early age... but the stupidest fucking thing to me is atheists who get converted to an established religion. I get an atheist becoming "spiritual" or "mystical" because, I don't know, they experience or read something interesting. But I don't get how weird and gullible you have to be to convert from a perfectly defensible skepticism to something as retarded as following an established religion.

Why not Judaism? Why not Christianity? Why not anything else?

No, I put it wrong --- what confuses me is how weak-willed someone has to be to have their entire conception of life changed from a book based on faith, not even on reason/certainty. I admire constancy.

Holy shit dude, project harder. Just admit you were wrong and move on

That's not /pol/-tier. That would just be learning about their own culture. Not hating others. You are hating board cultures that aren't even encroaching on your own.

>why learn about the three major ideological forces that have shaped nearly all world conflicts since their consecutive conceptions?

But most world conflicts were fought over land and/or resources, not religion. Even ostensibly religious conflicts like the Thirty Years' War or the Crusades were mostly the result of power struggles between secular warlords.

Plus, any honest evaluation of world religions would paint Muslims in a bad light, since their culture is antithetical to the liberal values that most schools try to inculcate. They really are a chauvinistic, sectarian lot and no amount of multiculturalist special pleading will make any difference.

exactly, all the conflicts just use religion as an excuse but it's all about power just like every conflict, and you're right, islam is just bunk shit even though we have to pretend all religions are "equal"

>but the stupidest fucking thing to me is atheists who get converted to an established religion
Read more, live more, think more. Go less on reddit, post less on Veeky Forums.

Islam is the future of Europe inshallah. It's the only hope left.

...

We call this intellectual suicide - the mind wants to take irrational leaps. Living in a world where God is dead and there is no objective meaning in anything puts man and his actions on shaky footing - so man invents God.

An atheist could easily get sick of being an atheist, it actually happens a lot. You don't think John Milton or Dostoevsky had crises of faith? To write characters like Satan or Ivan Karamazov I insist that they must have. Vice-versa, you don't think Camus or Nietzsche thought "wouldn't it put my mind at rest if I just gave up the schtick and went to church?" at least once?

To be mortal is to be inconstant and rebellious.

>Living in a world where God is dead and there is no objective meaning in anything puts man and his actions on shaky footing - so man invents God.

unless he realizes he is god which is to say becomes an egoist, stirner is fucking underrated, i'm glad whatever sperglord spammed until he became a meme cuz dude is underrated, nietzsche's the fuckin man but stirner is like next level post-god shit

I'm a cultural Christian though.

Go back to [reviled internet forum]

Honestly, if someone, from his/her supposedly higher perspective, considers reading religious texts, whichever they are, as a waste of "valuable" time, that someone belongs to the most despicable kind of people our society tolerates. It has nothing to do with one's beliefs, since there is nothing inherently wrong about being an atheist. That kind of attitude is not only a demonstration of ignorance and disrespectful arrogance, it is a demonstration of incredible stupidity.

I care more about the outcome of a baseball game tomorrow and the color of Saoirse Ronan's underwear than what is in the Koran. I will never read it directly and do not care to ever do so. Not because I am a Christian (I am not) but purely out of spite towards what I believe is an inferior culture.

So - why the severe value judgment? Why does it rustle your jimmies to such astronomical degrees?

I'm an agnostic Muslim. It's not that difficult a concept to grasp. I believe, but I don't claim to know. I'm still at my core, a skeptic, but that doesn't mean I can't believe in things. Everything I believe in--from the Big Bang, to evolution, to the moon landing, to believing I don't exist in a solipsistic universe, etc. is still just a BELIEF. Because true knowledge is impossible, or at least, very hard to come by. Yet, these are all justified beliefs. They're justified empirically and they're justified logically. Islam is a logical religion that sees the greater narrative of humankind, our relationship with God, the circumstantial nature of ethics, and the universal unfolding of God's attributes.

Just read the Qur'an and see for yourself.

the thing is tho, if mohamed hadn't been a succesful warlord no one would give a shit about anything he claimed, sort of like if the russian revolution had failed, marx would have been forgotten ages ago

Judaism and Christianity are right about a lot of things, but they're also wrong about a lot of things. Judaism made the error of isolating itself into a single ethnic community and getting convoluted in its legalism and in secularizing itself. There are now "secular jews". A religion that has become godless when it's primary focus was initially God, is a religion that has deviated.

Christianity made the error of believing in the Trinity, which was completely unheard of until the apostle Paul and John wrote about this.

"Son of God" was a common expression at the time, which was used throughout the old testament to refer to people like King David or Elijah, but it was known that God didn't have sons and that God was 1 entity, not 3, or a combination of 3 into 1 or anything like that.

The pagan Romans, which misunderstood the expression "son of God" probably related it to their understanding based on their own traditions, which were incorporated by the early Church to get more followers. In getting more followers, the faith itself was corrupted, and Jesus, not God, was worshiped.

This isn't to say that Christians will go to Hell, but that Christianity itself contains this error, which God will correct to good Christians, when they reach God.

These are some of the reasons why I chose Islam over Judaism or Christianity.

Muhammad was a successful preacher in Mecca for 13 years before he ever became a warlord. He became a military leader precisely because his religion was becoming so successful in the region.

>These are some of the reasons why I chose Islam over Judaism or Christianity.

yeah, that you're a pussy

Yes. seculars cannot understand religion.
Skepticism is not defensible, it is a weakness.
Reason and certainty do not exist, they're memes. You admire consistency because you are a systematizer. You are the weak-willed. You are crushed under the gravity of non-entities.
Nietzsche was a Christian you fucking dope.
>so man invents God.
Nothing worse than psychobabble.
You are not a theist, you are secular filth living in delusion.
Of course you try to rationalize. You do not submit, you bend God to your will.

>Nietzsche was a Christian
>"man invents god" is psychobabble

holy shit read a fucking book you butthurt zealot.

go to syria and get blasted by a drone, faggot

How am I secular? Because I submit to the will of God and claim to not have knowledge of all things? This is the humility of Islam, to believe and not know, to submit and not dispute over things which we do not know.

You're probably a troll though. Nietzsche, a Christian? Come on.

I've read more books than you.
Nietzsche was a Christian and if you are approaching him systematically (you are) then you are mistaken on every last word he wrote.
'man invents god' is psychobabble. Neo-rationalist nonsense.
You have not submitted, you do the opposite. Claiming humility where there is not is not humility.
>You're probably a troll though. Nietzsche, a Christian? Come on.
Of course you don't understand Nietzsche.

Lol I'm basing my agnosticism on the Qur'an. You can have a firm faith without claiming to know as much as God. You can have a firm faith without claiming to **know** for a fact that your particular answer is more true than your fellow human being's.

The Qur'an says that on the Last Day, Allah will inform us on what we differed. Read surah 5:48 of the Qur'an.

>Of course you don't understand Nietzsche

Explain to me how Nietzsche was a Christian. He had deep repulsion towards Christianity. He saw it as slave morality.

>Albert Kazimirski de Bibenstein
That sounds like a Pynchon-made name.

If you're interested to know why Islam is dangerous to society, yes.

If you're interested in reading literature from Muslim countries, yes.

If you're interested in learning Arabic, Persian, or Urdu, yes.

But that is like not reading about 20th century history because you dislike communists or something.

I'd understand it if you generally don't like reading about history (or religion, in this case), but omitting certain (and very important I might add) parts in a topic you are interested in just because you don't like the actors/beliefs involved does not sound very healthy to me

Just saying

Then what the fuck are you doing on a literature forum?
Fuck right off.

I'll summarize

>blah blah blah
>behead the infidels
>blah blah blah
>raping 9 year old girls is totally legit

Kys you're retarded

fpbp

I'm also samefagging

Suicide is haram.

Please try to get a more nuanced understanding of Islam. Read the Qur'an with an open heart and an open mind. I once had the same attitude as you.

Beheading was the least painful method of execution at the time. France had decapitation until the 1970s, when it banned the guillotine. The US method of execution was the electric chair at one point. You really need to understand not only the context but the reason why these people were being beheaded. It wasn't merely for being disbelievers, but for going to war and persecuting the early Muslim community.

Aisha's age is never mentioned in the Qur'an and the hadiths that mention her age are widely disputed or believed to be misspelled so as to be missing the stroke that would make "9" into "19", as many people believe it originally was.

>Islam
>dangerous society

Are we reading the same Qur'an? Mine says that murder is prohibited and that we should do good deeds,give charity, love god, love humanity, forgive our enemies, respect our parents, be modest and humble, defend the persecuted from oppression, and seek knowledge.

>browses Veeky Forums
>valuable time
Lmao. Granted yeah, you should probably read it. The holy text of billions of people and the backbone of the Arab canon. Also it will clear up a lot of misconceptions people have over the Quran.

>why do they follow an established religion
>Why not Judaism? Why not Christianity?

What are you on about?

>These are some of the reasons why I chose Islam over Judaism or Christianity

*puts on fedora*

Although I think Christianity is less authentic than other religions, you can't really say any of the modern ones are free from this criticism. You take, on faith, that this or that prophet is the last of God's messengers but reject Guru Nanak? Or the Baha'st guy? Or Elrond Hubbard? Why? What makes Mohammed/Jesus/Abraham so special?

Its just picking and choosing whatever belief system fits your idiosyncratic understanding of the world. if we had higher rates of literacy and the internet, we would probably have shit loads more practitioners of Buddhism or Norse paganism in the West rather than they just breaking up into billions of tiny Christian sects.

is your conversion due to a genuine communication with God? How do you know or test this? And wh

>Nietzsche was a Christian
Neocon memes are starting to get weird

I don't reject that Guru Nanak or Bahai had worthy messages to impart on humanity. But there is a difference in being a messenger and being a prophet. A prophet is giving direct instruction / word of God, while a messenger is merely someone who acts in a worthy way and imparts a good message from his own mind.

It's totally possible that Guru Nanak or Bahai were messengers who should be admired. But to call them prophets would be wrong. Their messages had flaws and contradictions.

L. Ron Hubbard didn't even believe in God as a supreme entity, but merely as a mortal alien super being. Scientology is based on pseudoscience, a rejection of psychology, and a cult-like atmosphere that is really just a money-making scheme.

You should be able to look at these religions individually and see for yourself which contain errors and which contain more true and non-contradictory beliefs.

Why would Buddhism or Norse paganism be more worthy of belief than Islam? You need to ask yourself these questions.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

When you get right down to it, reading something, anything, is very rarely a complete waste of time, let alone something that has as much cultural significance as that. Whether you agree with it, disagree with it, love it or hate it, it'll still expand you personally in some way or another.

John Greene?