The overriding theme here is that you try to promote assertions that are not in keeping with the currently accepted set of beliefs on their respective topics.
I don’t have any actual problems with challenging accepted beliefs.
However, the challenges and new ideas must meet a minimum threshold.
Yours do not.
The reason they do not is that you don’t cite actual evidence.
Its not that there is no evidence.
Its that you are totally lousy as a researcher. Your backup is just links to poor authors.
The content of those links are weak.
Content matters but the content is weak.
Credentials matter because one must always consider the source (of anything).
When I pointed this out in the last post you responded by posting more links.
Priceless.
You are better at criticizing you than I am.
I am sorry that I hurt your feelings by pointing out your bigotry. Not sorry that I mentioned it but my purpose was not to cause personal hurt.
Could you include some O’Reilly factor in your next post? I will need some entertainment. Uncle Bill at least has panache when he makes weak arguments.
[quote=surveyor]So anyways, in no particular order:
2:Islam has violence and homicidal intent as a requirement of piety:
There are 109 verses in the Koran that preach violence. Here are two of them:
Sura (2:191-193) – “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]…and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”
Sura (2:216) – “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”
The fact is that most muslims recite the Koran in arabic and most do not understand the verses they are reciting. The ones who find out what the verses are actually saying, some become jihadists, some become apostates, and some just continue being muslims. However, there is a pattern of muslims becoming more pious and becoming jihadists.
as Ibrahim notes, “Zawahiri’s writings especially are grounded in Islam’s roots of jurisprudence; in fact, of the many thousands of words translated here from his three treatises, well more than half are direct quotations from the Koran the Sunna [words, habits, and practices] of Mohammed, and the consensus and conclusions of the Ulema.” This extensive grounding weakens the “highjacking” charge apologists use to explain Islamic jihad. On the contrary, al Qaeda’s arguments are unexceptionally traditional — which is why, of course, millions of Muslims accept them. The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim
Chapter 3 of Spencer’s book “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades”:
“Islamic law mandates second-class status for Jews, Christians, and other non-muslims in islamic societies.”
“The idea that jews fared better in islamic lands than in Christian Europe is false.”
“Muslim spokesmen in the United States have worked hard to present a vision of Islam as benign, open, and accepting – worlds away from the fanatical intransigence of Osama bin Laden and his ilk. PC watchdogs, both Muslim and non-Muslim, have virtually ruled out any dissent from the idea that Islam is peaceful, benign, and tolerant to a degree that will present no problem for Western societies. They depict Islam as akin to Judaism and Christian and, like them, liable to be “jihacked” (through no fault of its own) by “extremists”. Most American today accept this as axiomatic – and many would consider rejecting it an act of “racism,” despite the fact that Islam is not a race and most Muslims in the world today are not members of the ethnic group with which they are most often identified – Arabs. But there’s just one problem with this common view: It isn’t true. We’ve already seen how thoroughly Islam is a religion of war; it is also, profoundly, a religion of intolerance.”
Here is the evidence against your “trusted and respected” historians.
3: Not widely credited authors should be widely credited and treated as widely credited by me.
Not even close. I am putting up these authors as impeachment to your assertions. I do not expect you to respect them, but I do expect you to at least acknowledge their content. If you say, “according to most historians, christians and jews were treated well in muslim lands” and then I say “Spencer wrote a book on how that’s not true.” you can’t just say, “well Spencer is a whacko so what I said is true.” And this ability to use citation of others? It’s called “research”. You seem to be more than willing to cite your historians view of this issue, but disdain any evidence against it. That’s “close-mindedness.”
I do admit that challenging conventional wisdom is not easy, but that doesn’t mean conventional wisdom has the right to be correct. It is ASSUMED correct until something comes along and challenges it.
And Galileo? He referenced Copernicus. Another whacko.
1: Obama is uninformed on foreign policy.
Here is my assertion: Obama, despite the fact that he graduated with honors in international relations, has a lack of knowledge towards history and that hurts him. One piece of evidence is the Bolton article. In that article, Bolton shows how he totally misunderstands the Kennedy and Krushchev meeting. Obama’s statement was no gaffe.
Here is another article from Bolton, highlighting another shortcoming of Obama’s historical understanding:
I even gave you that MSNBC interview which shows Obama not being aware of the ICBMs being off the trigger with Russia.
There is more out there, but I am sure that I’ve proven my point. You ASSUME that just because he graduated with honors in international relations, that he knows history. That is an assumption. The evidence that I’ve laid out says no. Here, you are again letting credentials obscure your perception of Obama.
5: That I have no responded to your assertions.
You have responded to my assertions by name-calling and by assuming that credentials matter more than content. Those are weak arguments. In any debate, using those arguments against mine would result in me making the point. You can’t spout gospel and expect that to be the answer.
