The Turtle Moves

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Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:51:53 -0400

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: ...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:49:48 -0400

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: thalamtnafsee replied to your post: …

where in quran does it imply eternal torture?? and if you’re going to use translations that have a poor english-arabic translator, your anger regarding this matter will never subside.

“They will wish to come out of the fire, but they shall not come out of it; and long-lasting suffering awaits them” 5:37, Muhammad Asad’s translation.

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: ...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:45:21 -0400

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: thalamtnafsee replied to your post: …

the Quran isn’t universal in terms of its language, but universal in its principles; in its ethics, in its morality. the same can be said about other philosophies that avoid what is harmful and enjoin what is good.

Eternal torture for getting your theology wrong is good?

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: ...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:41:28 -0400

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: thalamtnafsee replied to your post: …

im sorry you feel that way, but not every language is accessible to all of the human race. as a person interested in linguists, i thought you would have considered that fact already.

Why would that be a point in the Quran’s favour, though? If not every language is accessible to everybody, how can the Quran be universal?

I fucking love vim.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:25:41 -0400

I fucking love vim.

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: Peace...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:07:26 -0400

thalamtnafsee replied to your post: Peace be upon you. :) Hey, I hope you don’t mind, or think I’m intruding, but I was wondering why you don’t believe the Qur’an to be Revealed?

im assuming youve read the translation of Quran, and not the Quran in Arabic. huge difference my friend, huge difference.

What kind of God can’t make his message translatable? If it’s only accessible in one language, then it can’t be relevant for anybody who doesn’t understand that language. Ergo, it’s not meant for all of humanity.

Peace be upon you. :) Hey, I hope you don't mind, or think I'm intruding, but I was wondering why you don't believe the Qur'an to be Revealed?

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:28:00 -0400

Peace be upon you as well!

In short, I read the Quran, and saw no reason to believe it was revealed. It spends so much time threatening non-believers with eternal torture in Hell that I cannot imagine that it comes from a loving god. The god of the Quran basically says, “The ultimate crime is believing there’s any god other than Me. If you believe such a thing, you will be very sorry on Judgment Day, but HAHA it will be too late! You won’t get a second chance, I’m going to torture you for ever and ever, no matter how much you beg for mercy, even though in this book I keep calling myself ‘the merciful!’” It’s a hypocritical text. Its morality is sub-par (surah Kahf encourages Muslims to hate non-Muslims). It makes God look like a petty, shallow, sadistically cruel tyrant looking for the slightest excuse to condemn people to eternal suffering.

Also, why would I believe any text is revealed? Language is a human invention, and it’s faulty and prone to misunderstandings, confusion, ambiguity. For a text to be revealed by/from God requires an extreme set of criteria, and not only does the Quran not meet those criteria (see my previous paragraph) but no text in a human language can meet those criteria.

eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn: fr33lance: eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn: crockercorp: does anyone...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:42:25 -0400

eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn:

fr33lance:

eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn:

crockercorp:

does anyone else have this other self they’ve created in their mind that is not really exactly you irl but is more like what you want to be and has a life that continues in your head with like weird continuing daydreams but they’re not perfect or anything and wow i forget where i was going with this

yeah, mine saved the world

God, I’m the worst

Mine ruled the world.

Mine ruled the entire state of California after the apocalypse. I wish I were joking.

But it means you’ve got a healthy imagination.

eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn: crockercorp: does anyone else have this other self they’ve created...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:34:51 -0400

eyes-to-serve-hands-to-learn:

crockercorp:

does anyone else have this other self they’ve created in their mind that is not really exactly you irl but is more like what you want to be and has a life that continues in your head with like weird continuing daydreams but they’re not perfect or anything and wow i forget where i was going with this

yeah, mine saved the world

God, I’m the worst

Mine ruled the world.

Do you ever log into Tumblr, look at your dash, and think, “Now, why on earth would that...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:59:00 -0400

Do you ever log into Tumblr, look at your dash, and think, “Now, why on earth would that person ‘like’ that particular post?”

I don’t believe the Bible or the Qur’an is divine (having read both of them in their...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:57:20 -0400

I don’t believe the Bible or the Qur’an is divine (having read both of them in their entirety). I don’t believe in sin—-and therefore the whole point of following the monotheistic religions (viz., salvation) is nullified. So why keep subjecting myself to the cognitive dissonance and aggravation of trying to believe something whose fundamental tenets make no sense to me?

I’m just going to meditate, and whatever form my spirituality takes from here on in, that’s fine, but it almost certainly won’t be Abrahamic monotheism. Might be pagan, might be strictly Buddhist, who knows?

I think…I may be done with monotheism…

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:37:11 -0400

I think…I may be done with monotheism…

d-vn: Above clouds by tigric (Ana Stefanović) on Flickr.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:21:38 -0400

d-vn:

Above clouds by tigric (Ana Stefanović) on Flickr.

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Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:08:25 -0400

"When people use spiritual practice to try to compensate for feelings of alienation and low..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:07:59 -0400

“When people use spiritual practice to try to compensate for feelings of alienation and low self-esteem, they corrupt the true nature of spiritual practice. Instead of loosening the manipulative ego that tries to control its experience, they strengthen it, and their spiritual practice remains unintegrated with the rest of their life.”

- John Welwood, “The Psychology of Awakening” (via tricycle-tumbles)

I’ve been wondering why Firefox was so incredibly slow on this computer/operating system. On...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:41:52 -0400

I’ve been wondering why Firefox was so incredibly slow on this computer/operating system. On Arch Linux, Firefox was fine. Not the fastest browser in the world, but fine. On Slackware, it’s been like molasses. Same extensions (fewer extensions, in fact), same version, but sloooooow.

I just disabled the “Firefox Health Report”, a.k.a., “firefox spends time sending usage data back to Mozilla”, and that may be helping return FF to an acceptable speed.

"To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem. I get it,..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:51:54 -0400

“

To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.

I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.

And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?

So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-

6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.

6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.

But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist’s comrade.

And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…

Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.

”

- Time-Machine (via a comment at shakesville.com)

Single greatest argument about this I have ever heard.

(via justintheallan)

Alternative web-based RSS readers

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:26:24 -0400

I used Google Reader for a very long time. I tried Feedly, but it seems kind of slow and it has no option to export your data, so once you’re in, you’re locked in.

Has anybody used InoReader or Bamboo (Firefox add-on), or The Old Reader?

I'm really liking Slackware

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:23:41 -0400

I’m even liking the lack of dependency resolution. I have a much better idea of what’s installed, because I have to install it all myself.

pentadactyl makes tumblr slow as fuck

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:05:28 -0400

pentadactyl makes tumblr slow as fuck