Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West? (win by getting the most upvotes)

[enchanted_elixir]

Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West?

Winner of the debate is the individual with the most upvotes.

 

[Toggle9877]

No

 

[Proex]

bad, lock the thread up

 

[copercel123]

Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West?

Winner of the debate is the individual with the most upvotes.

Islam is not good for ANYTHING. Such a useless religion (like every religion tbh).

 

[lestoa]

i couldn't care less thinking about any of this bullshit

 

[JasGews69x]

The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “This matter will certainly reach every place touched by the night and day. Allah will not leave a house or residence but that Allah will cause this religion to enter it, by which the honorable will be honored, and the disgraceful will be disgraced. Allah will honor the honorable with Islam, and he will disgrace the disgraceful with unbelief.”

 

[bwcchadrape1488]

Islam is neither good nor bad since all ideologies make best use of their position and whichever one has the best existence is the best ideology. I could not care less about Islam since if some become islamic, others will oppose it and conglomerate someplace else. Islam can never affect myself since I'm not tied to permanent settlement

 

[copercel123]

Islam is neither good nor bad since all ideologies make best use of their position and whichever one has the best existence is the best ideology. I could not care less about Islam since if some become islamic, others will oppose it and conglomerate someplace else. Islam can never affect myself since I'm not tied to permanent settlement

Islam is bad.

 

[Popstar867]

Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West?

Winner of the debate is the individual with the most upvotes.

Religion is good for society like it or not , I can send every proof you ask for if your really interested in this topic

 

[BigJimsWornOutTires]

For now, it is good:

“The Muslims are taking over the UK, France, and now New York, muh!” Ah, yes, such an elaborate scheme

Islamists are expropriating the mentioned places which are upsetting Gen Mils—Xers—and Boomers. Here are a few incidents: https://theworldwatch.com/videos/1632518/new-york-is-cooked-this-is-what-an-invasion-looks-like/...

looksmax.org

COME, ALL MUSLIMS AND TALIBAN TO THE USA! WE ACCEPT YOU WITH RAINBOW ARMS!

 

[User28823]

total muslim death

fucking allahu akbar in ur own country NIGGER

 

[copercel123]

Religion is good for society like it or not , I can send every proof you ask for if your really interested in this topic

Obnoxious saying. Religion is not good by any means. Send the studies

 

[Popstar867]

Islam is not good for ANYTHING. Such a useless religion (like every religion tbh).

Without religion life wouldn’t be as it is today , atleast give me an argument so I can help explaining it to you

 

[pabloo]

Without religion life wouldn’t be as it is today , atleast give me an argument so I can help explaining it to you

The religión that made society stable and be prosperous was Christianity

 

[Popstar867]

Obnoxious saying. Religion is not good by any means. Send the studies

This will help you understand the basics of why religion is important . If you disagree with any of the comments these two are saying I can argue with you

 

[wollet2]

islam is a plague of the universe

 

[copercel123]

Without religion life wouldn’t be as it is today ,

religion literally held back the development of countries, without religion, the world would have been better and with fewer wars.

 

[Popstar867]

The religión that made society stable and be prosperous was Christianity

Christianity is 2000 years old btw . Humans were around 200,000 years ago . Many societies flourished before the coming of Christ

 

[wollet2]

Religion is good for society like it or not , I can send every proof you ask for if your really interested in this topic

its the shittiest of the popular religions with the shittiest followers by far

 

[Popstar867]

its the shittiest of the popular religions with the shittiest followers by far

and what’s your reason for that ? Don’t just give me vague comments expecting me to respond

 

[wollet2]

and what’s your reason for that ? Don’t just give me vague comments expecting me to respond

pushes for violence the most, its followers are the most violent and retarded subanimals out of any religion no need to debate this
destroy islam utter cancer of a religion

 

[JasGews69x]

pushes for violence the most, its followers are the most violent and retarded subanimals out of any religion no need to debate this
destroy islam utter cancer of a religion

proof with context?

 

[wollet2]

proof with context?

slit ur throat

 

[Popstar867]

religion literally held back the development of countries, without religion, the world would have been better and with fewer wars.

This is not me writing ofcourse but I always sent people this before people start making lies


Myth 1: The Church suppressed "science" (we're using this in quotes because we're not going to lump all of human knowledge into an ill-defined monolith).

Reality: The "decline" (that there was a decline at all is rejected by most historians) of "science" during the early middle ages was driven by two factors: the rise of Latin as a literary language in the early CE and the birth of Islam. Wait, didn't the Roman Empire all speak Latin before then? No. And more importantly, the Romans used Greek for almost all of their formal writing and scholarly work, in much the same way as the Western world used Latin as the language of scholarship long after it had perished as a spoken language. Moreover, the entirety of the Eastern Empire (basically anything that had previously been conquered by Alexander the Great) spoke and wrote Greek. This linguistic divide led to a cultural, political and religious divide that culminated in a few different events. One being the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. This is important to note because a) most of the educated world was in the East: Greece, Persia, Egypt, Asia Minor and the Levant. Out of the 15 or so most educated cities in the known world at the time, most of them were in the East, and most of them spoke and wrote Greek.

So, when the Empire split, the West was basically all of the barbarian Celtic and Germanic tribes (plus Rome and Carthage), while the East included Alexandria, all of the Greek universities, Antioch, Constantinople, etc.

The West was overrun by the pagan warlords and Chieftains, who would generally get converted, do a few final conquests, and settle down and try and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Church.

Now that we've covered that, let's talk about Islam for a bit. Look at the conquests of Islam: remember that the Greek (and Persian) speaking world is the educated world. Notice where Islam spreads first? So the Byzantines weren't just fighting to keep random bits of earth, they were fighting to keep the educated world intact. By and large, they failed at this, and the centers of education fell one by one to the various Muslim empires, and with it, the educated world transitioned to Islam.

Myth 2: Western painters and sculptors forgot how to do realism because the Church suppressed it.

Reality: This one actually has a bit of truth to it, but in perhaps a different way than one might expect. Realism in the Roman and Greek world was tied to the state religion. Specifically, the cult of the Emperor, and the various polytheistic cults that were endorsed. The statues, in particular, were idols (literally), that were painted, and presented with offerings.

I'm going to emphasize again that sculpture in ancient Rome was primarily religious. Statues of various public figures were venerated. Think modern Catholic saints and Hindu temples. So, it was not a suppression of "secular" art, but rather the art of the religious establishment.

As more and more of the empire converted, there was a fairly heated debate as to what was considered "idolatry." It was understood that one should worship God alone, and the issue at hand was how to break people of the millennia old habits of worshiping (and venerating) idols.

There were two camps in this debate, the iconoclasts (philosophically similar to the later reformation iconoclasts, but arising completely seperately) and the icon supporters (whose fancy name escapes me). The iconoclasts held that ANY imagery depicting humans, plants (e.g. tree worship), or animals (e.g. owls for minerva) was an invitation to idolatry. The other group held that as long as the images were clearly demarcated as such (as in there was no way to confuse it for the "real thing"), the risk was an acceptable one, as a clear distinction could be taught.

The latter group won out in the end, and the result was the depictions that are somewhat comically disproportionate. It would make you think of the subject, while clearly not "embodying" it (this is a topic that could be its own book, but suffice to say that the significance of an idol was not merely material).

So, in short, art depicting humans and animals in a way that we might think of as verisimilitude was suppressed, but particularly because of the importance of images in religious practice, not because of some paranoia.

Myth 3: We lost lots of important technologies, e.g. Greek Fire, Concrete.

Reality: Roman concrete required a pretty specific ingredient which is abundant in the Mediterranean during certain geological events, but which is non-existent otherwise: volcanic ash. Modern concrete uses a completely different chemistry (although one can use fly ash from coal power plants as a pretty good substitute for volcanic ash). The point is, if your volcano isn't erupting, or you just don't have a volcano, then the formula for Roman concrete is worthless.

More broadly, the reason for the instability is actually the reverse: Roman technology dispersed throughout the Roman empire, and started to develop on its own. Access to relatively high quality steel blades (unheard of in the Early Roman empire) was almost universal (and low quality steel blades was universal). Horse husbandry proliferated as well (and wasn't used by the classical Romans very effectively anyway, as they lacked stirrups). Archery, cavalry and oceanic travel continued to develop as well. It was definitely more distributed, and tribal, but superior in nearly every measurable way.

Myth 4: Christianity Suppressed knowledge seeking, and literature

This is probably the most egregious accusation, in my opinion, as exactly the opposite is true.

While it's generally well known that the printing press was developed to print Bibles (so that people could read them), what is much, much, much less known, is why the West moved to Latin. While it had been a trend, easily the most significant event that cemented the transition was the Vulgate. It's significant for two reasons. Firstly, it's a translation into Latin, not Greek. But perhaps even more significant, it was published in spokenLatin, as opposed to literary Latin. This isn't quite the same as it would be a millennia later: the reason they translated into spoken Latin was because it was intended to be read to an illiterate audience, but all the same, it meant that it was accessible to people with otherwise very limited education (there are a few surviving Bibles commissioned by barbarian Kings so that they could read them)(This was my own misconception. Apparently, not vulgar Latin). Literacy (and education) was spread in a way that was unprecedented, and in spite of a time of extreme political instability.

Myth 5: Galileo! Copernicus! Darwin!

Ah, yes. Galileo. So, first of all, let's clear something up. Geocentrism was a physical, scientific model that predated the Christian Church. It was codified by Ptolemy (a pagan), and was the de-facto standard until Copernicus.

The narrative is spun as the Church defending God, but it should be better seen as the Church defending the scientific establishment. Heliocentrism was a paradigm shift on the order of someone proving Einstein wrong -- it was something that was generally believed to be impossible. Clearly it wasn't impossible, but all of the scientific establishment had been built on it up until that point. It would have been a monumental and difficult shift in any climate that the Catholic Church was the most powerful authority at the time is a contingency.

Myth 6: Flat Earth

As far as I'm aware, this was part of the aforementioned narrative to discredit the middle ages, and not a view that was promoted or believed widely. In other words, the Enlightenment thinkers made this up about the people from the middle ages.

Myth 7: But they bled people!

Uh, yeah, so did the Enlightenment thinkers (George Washington, and enlightenment Deist, was bled to death). A lot of the perceived issues with medicine stem from the political instability in Western Europe and the aforementioned loss of centers of learning to Islam. But most of it is the smear campaign.

tl;dr Most of the misinformation and negativity about the early middle ages comes from a smear campaign undertaken by enlightenment thinkers. While some of the chosen facts are real, they are often presented without context and in a way that gives a grossly misleading picture of the era. Christianity helped the spread of science, if anything, not the other way around.

 

[JasGews69x]

slit ur throat

Posts24,377
Reputation19,626

 

[Popstar867]

pushes for violence the most, its followers are the most violent and retarded subanimals out of any religion no need to debate this
destroy islam utter cancer of a religion

I like learning history so I took a couple of classes about Islam . I’ll explain everything to you later (also you’re extremely incorrect about this btw). But if 1.5 billion people were the most violent then society would surely crumble don’t you think ? And the Muslim countries aka Middle East wouldn’t be so rich if they’re really retarded

 

[FaceandBBC]

Oh boy, this thread is going to be 9 pages of religion copers arguing.

 

[enchanted_elixir]

Oh boy, this thread is going to be 9 pages of religion copers arguing.

My intention lol.

 

[Popstar867]

Oh boy, this thread is going to be 9 pages of religion copers arguing.

It’s not about if religion is real or not at all btw just if it’s good for society (which it is) this topic isn’t even controversial

 

[Popstar867]

 

[copercel123]

Myth 1: The Church suppressed "science" (we're using this in quotes because we're not going to lump all of human knowledge into an ill-defined monolith).

Reality: The "decline" (that there was a decline at all is rejected by most historians) of "science" during the early middle ages was driven by two factors: the rise of Latin as a literary language in the early CE and the birth of Islam. Wait, didn't the Roman Empire all speak Latin before then? No. And more importantly, the Romans used Greek for almost all of their formal writing and scholarly work, in much the same way as the Western world used Latin as the language of scholarship long after it had perished as a spoken language. Moreover, the entirety of the Eastern Empire (basically anything that had previously been conquered by Alexander the Great) spoke and wrote Greek. This linguistic divide led to a cultural, political and religious divide that culminated in a few different events. One being the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire. This is important to note because a) most of the educated world was in the East: Greece, Persia, Egypt, Asia Minor and the Levant. Out of the 15 or so most educated cities in the known world at the time, most of them were in the East, and most of them spoke and wrote Greek.

So, when the Empire split, the West was basically all of the barbarian Celtic and Germanic tribes (plus Rome and Carthage), while the East included Alexandria, all of the Greek universities, Antioch, Constantinople, etc.

The West was overrun by the pagan warlords and Chieftains, who would generally get converted, do a few final conquests, and settle down and try and gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Church.

Now that we've covered that, let's talk about Islam for a bit. Look at the conquests of Islam: remember that the Greek (and Persian) speaking world is the educated world. Notice where Islam spreads first? So the Byzantines weren't just fighting to keep random bits of earth, they were fighting to keep the educated world intact. By and large, they failed at this, and the centers of education fell one by one to the various Muslim empires, and with it, the educated world transitioned to Islam.

Not really. The Church absolutely banned books, burned “heretical” texts, and made sure science couldn’t challenge its authority. Blaming language or Islam ignores how the Church actively shut down ideas it didn’t like. This wasn’t just passive decline, it was enforced stagnation.

Myth 2: Western painters and sculptors forgot how to do realism because the Church suppressed it.

Reality: This one actually has a bit of truth to it, but in perhaps a different way than one might expect. Realism in the Roman and Greek world was tied to the state religion. Specifically, the cult of the Emperor, and the various polytheistic cults that were endorsed. The statues, in particular, were idols (literally), that were painted, and presented with offerings.

I'm going to emphasize again that sculpture in ancient Rome was primarily religious. Statues of various public figures were venerated. Think modern Catholic saints and Hindu temples. So, it was not a suppression of "secular" art, but rather the art of the religious establishment.

As more and more of the empire converted, there was a fairly heated debate as to what was considered "idolatry." It was understood that one should worship God alone, and the issue at hand was how to break people of the millennia old habits of worshiping (and venerating) idols.

There were two camps in this debate, the iconoclasts (philosophically similar to the later reformation iconoclasts, but arising completely seperately) and the icon supporters (whose fancy name escapes me). The iconoclasts held that ANY imagery depicting humans, plants (e.g. tree worship), or animals (e.g. owls for minerva) was an invitation to idolatry. The other group held that as long as the images were clearly demarcated as such (as in there was no way to confuse it for the "real thing"), the risk was an acceptable one, as a clear distinction could be taught.

The latter group won out in the end, and the result was the depictions that are somewhat comically disproportionate. It would make you think of the subject, while clearly not "embodying" it (this is a topic that could be its own book, but suffice to say that the significance of an idol was not merely material).

So, in short, art depicting humans and animals in a way that we might think of as verisimilitude was suppressed, but particularly because of the importance of images in religious practice, not because of some paranoia.

Still suppression. Whether it’s about idolatry or not, religion dictated what people could and couldn’t paint or sculpt. That’s creative control based on fear of sin, which killed innovation in art for centuries until the Renaissance broke away from religious constraints.

Myth 3: We lost lots of important technologies, e.g. Greek Fire, Concrete.

Reality: Roman concrete required a pretty specific ingredient which is abundant in the Mediterranean during certain geological events, but which is non-existent otherwise: volcanic ash. Modern concrete uses a completely different chemistry (although one can use fly ash from coal power plants as a pretty good substitute for volcanic ash). The point is, if your volcano isn't erupting, or you just don't have a volcano, then the formula for Roman concrete is worthless.

More broadly, the reason for the instability is actually the reverse: Roman technology dispersed throughout the Roman empire, and started to develop on its own. Access to relatively high quality steel blades (unheard of in the Early Roman empire) was almost universal (and low quality steel blades was universal). Horse husbandry proliferated as well (and wasn't used by the classical Romans very effectively anyway, as they lacked stirrups). Archery, cavalry and oceanic travel continued to develop as well. It was definitely more distributed, and tribal, but superior in nearly every measurable way.

That’s missing the point. The real problem was no one was trying to rediscover or improve it. Scientific curiosity was discouraged. People weren’t experimenting because thinking too far outside religious doctrine got you labeled a heretic.

Myth 4: Christianity Suppressed knowledge seeking, and literature

This is probably the most egregious accusation, in my opinion, as exactly the opposite is true.

While it's generally well known that the printing press was developed to print Bibles (so that people could read them), what is much, much, much less known, is why the West moved to Latin. While it had been a trend, easily the most significant event that cemented the transition was the Vulgate. It's significant for two reasons. Firstly, it's a translation into Latin, not Greek. But perhaps even more significant, it was published in spokenLatin, as opposed to literary Latin. This isn't quite the same as it would be a millennia later: the reason they translated into spoken Latin was because it was intended to be read to an illiterate audience, but all the same, it meant that it was accessible to people with otherwise very limited education (there are a few surviving Bibles commissioned by barbarian Kings so that they could read them)(This was my own misconception. Apparently, not vulgar Latin). Literacy (and education) was spread in a way that was unprecedented, and in spite of a time of extreme political instability.

Barely. The Church kept literacy for itself and actively fought against translating the Bible into local languages. They weren’t trying to educate the masses, they were trying to control information. Schools didn’t flourish until religion stepped back.

Myth 5: Galileo! Copernicus! Darwin!

Ah, yes. Galileo. So, first of all, let's clear something up. Geocentrism was a physical, scientific model that predated the Christian Church. It was codified by Ptolemy (a pagan), and was the de-facto standard until Copernicus.

The narrative is spun as the Church defending God, but it should be better seen as the Church defending the scientific establishment. Heliocentrism was a paradigm shift on the order of someone proving Einstein wrong -- it was something that was generally believed to be impossible. Clearly it wasn't impossible, but all of the scientific establishment had been built on it up until that point. It would have been a monumental and difficult shift in any climate that the Catholic Church was the most powerful authority at the time is a contingency.

Total rewrite. Galileo was literally put on trial, forced to recant, and put under house arrest by the Church. This wasn’t about scientific models, it was about protecting religious power from being undermined by facts.

Myth 6: Flat Earth

As far as I'm aware, this was part of the aforementioned narrative to discredit the middle ages, and not a view that was promoted or believed widely. In other words, the Enlightenment thinkers made this up about the people from the middle ages.

Sure, most educated people knew the Earth was round. But that doesn’t excuse all the other knowledge religion suppressed. This one’s just a distraction to make the Church look smarter than it acted.

Myth 7: But they bled people!

Uh, yeah, so did the Enlightenment thinkers (George Washington, and enlightenment Deist, was bled to death). A lot of the perceived issues with medicine stem from the political instability in Western Europe and the aforementioned loss of centers of learning to Islam. But most of it is the smear campaign.

That’s a cop-out. The Church literally banned dissection, called illness a punishment from God, and slowed medical progress for centuries. Just because others got stuff wrong too doesn’t mean religion wasn’t holding medicine back.

TLDR for you:Yes, religion preserved some knowledge, but it also delayed science, art, medicine, and free thought for centuries. Real progress didn’t start until religion loosened its grip.


There’s a reason 95% of the smartest people that ever existed were non-religious.

 

[Gaygymmaxx]

Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West?

Winner of the debate is the individual with the most upvotes.

Muhammad fucked a 9 year old end of thread

I hate retarded Muslims

They either lie, misrepresent the age

Or literally say "women were physically developed at 9 years old back in those times"
(Courtesey of @Gengar I believe)

 

[wollet2]

I like learning history so I took a couple of classes about Islam . I’ll explain everything to you later (also you’re extremely incorrect about this btw). But if 1.5 billion people were the most violent then society would surely crumble don’t you think ? And the Muslim countries aka Middle East wouldn’t be so rich if they’re really retarded

fuck off with your stupid subhuman mongrel religion that is islam

 

[Jaynoyn523]

Debate Thread: Is Islam good or bad for the West?

Winner of the debate is the individual with the most upvotes.

bad

 

[PseudoMaxxer]

I hate these types of threads tbh, no one gives a fuck about these religion wars blud…ugh, holy repfarm.

 

[PrinceLuenLeoncur]

Posts24,377
Reputation19,626

Why bother even responding to these guys? Just leave them alone let them circle jerk in their echo chamber don’t take the bait

That’s why you see me ignoring most niggas who try trigger me here with this shit

 

[kurd]

anyone that is not a complete retard knows the answer to this question

 

[cakdripa]

İslam is bad for everyone