But is this interest symmetrical? Americans can just as easily build a bomb and take it into Karachi. So if there is a right to strike pre-emptively, why does this right not extend both ways? Isn't this ultimately why the UNO was founded?

I am not even going to find a picture of Forest.
Sigh, just three hours too quick for me have a go at him but yes....good call!
No, because it is not a religion that people rally behind for religion's sake so much...but the people that follow it, they are all up for a great big war every now and again....no problem. I very much doubt it has anything to do with monethism though.

Maybe not and maybe they never did but clearly converting people is not the source of the problem here else surely Israel and the surrounds would be a peaceful place to live.

Been to Indonesia and spoken to the largest Muslim nation on the planet have you? They are just as tollerant as a tollerant Christian and possibly even more so from my experience.

If I was your friend, I would not mention that to any of my muslim friends. That is pretty much the only thing that would really incite them to any form of violence, would be a person claiming that Islam preaches violence.

Yup but it was most probably completely philosphical rather than physical, and it most probably worked because we seem to use a lot of their mathamatics and science....he-he.

Don't worry, neither do the rest of us except for the religious nut jobs who want to stir up more problems.

Millions when the pope went to Africa and told Africans that condoms would not save them from AIDS. He did not try that on his trip to NY, no, somebody would have shot him.
It is a great world today where the most horrific weapons that can be used are words.
Possibly we will be able to escallate this to billions when we find that major religions breeding policies has caused a population explosion that will kill a large percentage of the human population.

More people die because of this sort of Christian idiocy in Africa that is fed by the Amercian and Roman churches each year than all the people in the world that have EVER been killed by terrorism. Check your facts before you say two or sometimes because that sort of lack of caring for human life makes me angry.

Yes, I am on the athiest side.

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Living it up in Gersau.

Meaning it's cultural, not religious. I love threads like this: it helps bring out the angry unthinking wingnuts so you can identify them.

The UN is a useless organisation.
The UN is exactly an extension of the USA
A citizen of the USA is less likely to be prone to extremist, international terrorism or security threats than a resident of Karachi.
Democracy has little to to with civil liberties, although the two are often found together.
If all anyone was doing was "believing" in private, how would anybody know about it.

Maybe we're not talking about the same pope here but when exactly did he encourage Africans to have sex without condoms?

Well OK, he said condoms could make the problem worse.

This archbishop is more of a conspiracy theorist.

I can find many more on the dangers of contraception, too many to post.

They are going to have sex. Education about health matters is life and death in Africa. Telling them that condoms are not going to help is like handing a shotgun to a 6 year old and telling them that it won't hurt fluffy if they shoot her.
A lot of rural Africans believe 100% what is said to them by these religious nuts. They don't sit down and think...okay, but perhaps there is a deeper point being made here, let me think for myself about this. A lot of them have the cultural background where they simply accept at face value, a literal statement that is given rather than being more critical about what they are told. The catholic church should know this after seeing the disasters that they have cause over the last few centuries in Africa.
Sorry, this is off topic but there is no way on the planet that anybody can spin the Pope's behaviour in Africa to me as anything but evil.

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Living it up in Gersau.

Yeah, but how about those Polish priests close to Opus Dei that infiltrate our computers through Honduras?

Wait a minute! The catholic church told the people to not have sex. It also told not to use condom. Now one advise was not listen to and the other one was.

Why is that? Why people did listen to not use condoms (they were accessible through organisations, right?) but didn't listen about not having sex?

You're joking aren't you? Are you not human?

Not buying condoms is a pretty easy bit of advice to follow.

Being told not to have sex though.

The one is health advice and the other is advice on going against what is a perfectly normal inbuilt behaviour.

Here fluffy, don't be scared, I just want to see what will happen when I shoot you with this shotgun. I am a child and naturally curious. Even when mommy or daddy tell me not to do something I often do because my natural curiosity over-rides what they said. They don't judge me as evil because I did that. However if they had any sense, they would have made damn sure that I understood the consequences of having a shot gun and most probably tried to keep it out of my hands.

Now if the pope was a good person (as in opposite of evil), he would have said to the Africans....hey guys, we believe that gay and premaritial and recreational sex is evil and these are our Christian values...but we know everybody is week so if you happen to get week and fail in your Christian duties, then please at least use a condom so that you don't end up dying a horrible and painful death and killing loads of other people at the same time.....but no, he is not a good person and so did not give them that message.

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Living it up in Gersau.

You expect red blooded humans to abstain from having sex? This is the same catholic church that doesn't allow masturbation either.

Come on Nil, you know the answer to this! Idiot, normally adolescent men will use any excuse to drop the condom. They're going to have sex though. Everyone, including the Pope, knows this.

We can all argue about this for days. Just as we have argued about it for centuries but the fact remains that we also have our bunch of Crazies who've killed and faught in the name of faith, country, racial superiority or just world domination. Today however we do in under the cloak of politics and establishing peace. Nothing's changed. We are a species where most of us thrive of confrontation, destruction and mahem. You cannot change that.

We all have our problems in and outside of our faiths - It's the ability to use Rationale and common sense which differentiates us from the crazies. It's what brings the people who believe in faith of any kind and the atheists together.

If you're going to be a bumbling idiot who of all the things in the world believe the statistics that the Media provides and the facts that the Politicians present then it's your choice, your opnion and your problem, not the rest of us. And like everyone in this world you are entitled to it.

The fact remains that a bullet or bomb does not see your faith, color, race, belief or your attempt at integration. If it is going to get you, it's going to get you. When I get on a plane, see a mob or see a strange bag at the airport - I'm as scared of my Crazies as I am of yours.

My opinion is that the god that each of us believe in (no offense to the aethists here) via our respective faiths does not and I mean DOES NOT need a human being to take action, revenge or undo wrong for him. He does not need favors from us mortals.

Every thing that we see today or what history has shown us are People using Religion for their own gains in one form or the other. It has nothing to do what their central principle of FAITH is.

Now with all this said. I wish to excercise my right of not participating and dignifying this thread with any more responses because I do not NEED to justify why I have A**holes in my faith or any other for that matter because I don't think I owe it to anyone's ignorance of facts, sense of reality and lack of common sense.

Now where's that KFC?

Do a Youtube search for "Indonesia Ahmadiyya" if you have the stomach. I am sure you can dig deeper to learn the problems religious minorities are facing there but don't let that get in the way of giving Indonesia a complete clean bill of health.

Guys, of course I know the answer, you should know me better.

My point here is more about what someone tells you to do, and what you are ready to listen about it. If I tell you it is a sin to have sex before mariage and it is a sin to use condoms. As a true believer, you can decide to listen both advices or you make a choice and decide for yourself.

To call the Pope evil is going to far for me. I don,t think the guy was right to say those things. Pretty dumb actually. But to make him evil?

People in here spend their whole time to claim the right to say what ever they want under the saint freedom of speech. And if someone gets hurt, too bad.

How is that different of what the Pope is saying and what all the free speech defenders are saying.

I am just playing the Devil's advocate here...

Yeah people are evil when they, knowingly, influence people to die. We all knew what would happened when he preached against condom use. If he knew he's basically a murderer. If he didn't, he's too stupid to still be alive. And since he has a PhD, I'd guess the former.

Could be.

It could be him wanting to do a form of genocide.

It could be him believing in people's faith.

Yawn back at you Is JK Rowling a prophet? Did she tell anyone to live their lives based on Harry Potter revelations? You said all religions are same and I said they are not. The mere fact that some religions are monotheist and other polytheist proves that all religions are not same and I have not even gone into the actual teachings, content of the different religious books or the founding personalities of various religions.

So all religions or their teachings are not same. If they were then we would not have so many brands of religions. It's fashionable, politically correct and worse of all intellectually dishonest to say that all religions are same.

I mean it's obvious that Judaism is the bee's knees.

Indonesia is a huge country with a large and poor population - it is full of social problems to say the least. And yes, these social tensions are an ideal breeding ground for extremists. Same is true everywhere else - the people in the Arab countries are currently not rioting because they do not like their dictators anymore, they do so because they cannot afford enough to eat! - Yes, there are some people taking advantage of angry young men and turn them into extreme followers. Same happens in every culture, but the Muslim world happens to be on the "more corruption, more dicators, less individula freedom, higher unemployment" side of things, so they generally have more angry young men than we do in Europe.

But have you been to Indonesia - and I do not mean Bali? There is maybe an extremist in every few thousand Indonesians. This means there is a risk for a suicide bombing or any other terror attack - and they happened before - but this also means that there is a huge Muslim population that can very well be fairly tolerant, does not hang gays, does not wear burquas.... Just to give an example on how different Muslims can be: On Lombok does a local Muslim type not only drink alcohol - they use it for ceremonies in their mosques!