Apech

Deep thoughts, Lois.

You can't possibly deport all Muslims. For a start many are second or third generation and therefore citizens of the US, UK, France etc. and so where would you deport them to? And on what grounds - for simply practicing a faith? Thus you would break your own constitutional rights and freedoms - the right to worship and the right to assembly and so on. So you throw away the rule book which makes us free in order to deal with a minority. What if some one on here meets a Sufi teacher and becomes a muslim - does he/she have to leave the country?

I'm not anti muslim per se. In fact I had a good friend who was a member of a Sufi sect for many years and read many of their books. So I appreciate that there can be many expressions of that faith. What I am particularly for is western liberal values the main threat to which it seems comes from political Islam - based on the form of islam which is promoted by Saudi Arabia and which backs terrorism. Whether or not he was monogamous or married a widow and so on I don't see as relevant. Perhaps you could list some contributions made by contemporary Islamic scholars to science and knowledge (other than religious studies)?

http://www.mcb.org.uk/child-abuse-in-rotherham-we-cannot-let-this-happen-again/ - to be fair they are not the police who are the ones who should have acted sooner.

Ah so he had three wives consecutively not at the same time - my mistake.

So the marriage to his third wife Aisha when she was 6/7 years old is a myth?

Hey! We like you and that's all that counts.

They have dualistic stripes tho'.

Islam has within it the desire to establish a Caliphate in which Sharia law would be applied universally. The language of Islam includes holy war and other approaches to achieve this. The status of muslims as regards non-muslims (even other peoples of the book) is higher. The status of women relative to men is lower. Homosexuality is punishable by death. And so on. The west on the other hand promotes a secular state separate from the church, guarantees freedom of religion, free speech and assembly, democracy not theocracy - and equality under the law. The two are incompatible. There is no problem with being a muslim in a western liberal democracy provided you are not actively using means other than those allowed by law and democracy to promote a Caliphate. Just as a Christians may recognise the bible says 'thou shall not suffer a witch to live' - they are free to think this provided they don't burn anyone at the stake. In the west issues should be resolved by rational public debate.

I don't agree. There are two things which could and should be addressed without extreme measures like this (which would cause more suffering for innocents). One is the way in which terrorist groups are organised and recruited - which should be disrupted by the police and military. The other is the honest public examination of political Islam - it's aims and objectives and methods - and from this scrutiny the deconstruction of its validity - how it is anti-thetical to everything that is valuable in the west - this is where our politicians and media are letting us down.

For me it's interesting to look at the origin of those words. The 'ject' part means 'to throw' and ob-ject means 'throw out' - and includes the use in the sense of 'I object to someone' and want them thrown out of the club etc. Sub means 'under' and so sub-ject means to be 'thrown under' - which can be taken to mean 'put under' as in 'subject to' - for instance in Britain one is a subject to the Queen - that is you fall under her domain (that's for you Marblehead to remind you how free you are ). The 'ject' throw could be as in pro-ject - that is we project an objective world composed of those things we throw out from ourselves, and that which we subsume under what is 'ours' is subjective. This implies an activity of consciousness - which fits because the two possible roots of the word con-sciousness are 'with knowing' or 'with cutting or division'. Consciousness creates the object/subject division principally by interpreting sense data and mental processes and grouping them. What we know about the objectively real world is actually our interpretation of sense data. Photons impact on the retina and cause nerve impulses which are interpreted by the brain. This does not mean there is no objective world but simply that all we know of it is based on our own - and thus subjective assessment. Clearly if we had a very poor and inaccurate subjective assessment of the meaning of sense data we would not last very long. In former times we would have been quickly eaten by predators for instance. So there is an objective testing of our subjective processes which is based on whether they allow us to to effectively respond and thus keep ourselves and our friends alive. This really in a Darwinian sense is how we know that what we know of the world around us is accurate. That it allows us to survive in the first place and more than that to prosper creatively. That which could be called 'real' is that which can be divided and put together without ceasing to be what it is. So ultimately the 'real' is the indestructible - the eternal - or what cannot be captured through conceptualisation - i.e. the Dao. In a way the Dao is the medium in which the subject/object and world building power of consciousness occurs. By following the way we can come to know how things come to be, exist and cease to be.

I think the problem is that what Macron said does sound a bit passive and accepting. I would prefer if he had some ideas about how to stop and put an end to Islamic terrorism - which is specifically what France has been suffering from. Le Pen treats it as if it is something coming from abroad while most terrorists seem to be French or Belgian. The right though does seem able to speak its name while centrist politicians across the west like to spout 'religion of peace' stuff but seem completely silent on what the problem is and how to deal with it. I understand they don't want to fuel social tensions with Muslim communities but with ETA and the IRA there was no reluctance to name the source and the causes of the terror attacks.

“This threat, this imponderable problem, is part of our daily lives for the years to come. I would like to express all my support for our police forces and more generally the forces of law and order. I am particularly thinking of the victim’s family.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/21/fears-that-paris-shooting-will-affect-presidental-election-as-first-round-looms

When you drop the toast on the floor? (toast and floor may/may not exist).

Perhaps 96% of the universe is composed of tiny pegacorns?

Can we accept that matter is a general term for the 'stuff things are made of' - when you examine it closely it gets more complicated (e.g. quantum mechanics) - but in a general day to day sense matter exists. (?)

That was very kind of you.

Oh I wondered why the butter is always soft.

All matter is energy - but if you don't have the energy it doesn't matter.

fair enough - but green ink! did I deserve that?

No you didn't. But I don't want to get into defending his view. OK he was a Bishop eventually but he was hardly a traditional biblical scholar he developed his own philosophy. I was in citing Berkeley just, as I said above, making the point that questioning the existence of matter is not new. Obviously Berkeley didn't have a car - but that aside your example would have made no difference to his point of view - it's exactly the same refutation as kicking the stone.

I'm not going to defend Berkeley's view - I only mentioned him to point out that this refutation of a world made a matter was nothing new. But I think you are mischaracterising his argument a little.

Boswell the biographer of Doctor Johnson – the composer of the first English Dictionary – narrates an episode in which the Doctor claims to refute Bishop Berkeley’s position by kicking a stone. “After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- ‘I refute it thus.’” This refutation is a logical error called ‘Argumentum ad lapidem’ (Latin: "appeal to the stone") after this event. This is because although Johnson claims to refute Berkeley his demonstration does not prove the materiality of the stone but simply that he had the perception of the impact of his foot on the stone. Many commentators find Berkeley’s position unacceptable but yet impossible to refute just as Boswell says.

Really how so?