The hajj, one of the largest annual human gatherings in the world, begins on Wednesday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Amid rising temperatures and logistical challenges, the pilgrimage has increasingly become a test of endurance both for pilgrims and the Saudi government.
Millions of Muslims from around the world travel to the city to take part; Saudi Arabia said 1,475,230 pilgrims from abroad have arrived since Sunday. Last year, the Saudi government said more than 1,300 pilgrims died, many from Egypt. Most of those who perished had been unregistered, Saudi officials said, meaning they had made the trip without the permits that gave them access to heat protections.
It’s a requirement in their faith todo this at least once if you can.
That does not make it less stupid
Bingo.
I have way more respect for ravers at Burning Man who OD on Ecstasy while dancing naked and copulating for 14 hours straight.
At least they enjoyed their completely unproductive dalliance
And you get to decide what people should or shouldn’t enjoy?
Different people can have different life goals and find fulfillment in different ways.
I’ve done the BM thing he describes and he hasn’t. I absolutely laugh at his begrudging approval. And uh, I guess I have respect for the cable TV watching he did that week? Is that the appropriate thing to say ;D
Faith is idiocy
We all choose makey-uppy things to believe in, through which we interpret the purpose of our own existence. There’s no objective reason to be kind to strangers beyond what we can get out of it - there are plenty of billionaires in the world to prove that selfishness and greed is a valid life strategy - but we CHOOSE to BELIEVE in made-up concepts like fairness and love, because it makes most of us happier to live that way. I see no reason to look down my nose at people who choose a few more made-up concepts to believe in than I do. I’m only bothered by the people who are pig-headed about it, incapable of accepting that people believe in different things than they do… and that category includes people who say “faith is idiocy”.
While Im inclined to agree with you neither atheists nor theists can prove the other wrong.
But only one of them is making a claim. Theists claim there is a god. The burden of proof / unproof is on them. Really it’s pretty insulting to posit that such a fantastical cosmic being exists, and not be able to offer any evidence for it whatsoever.
They can offer proof that’s the book that claims there’s an omnipresent being.
Both are making claims and neither can substantiate it. The difference is the more mainstream religious folk tend to recognize this whereas many atheists seem not to.
I can show you a book about Hobbits and the dark lord Sauron and it doesn’t prove they exist.
Atheists don’t make any claim. They do not claim there is no god. They simply do not hold a belief in a god. If there were any reason to believe in one, any evidence for one, we would of course believe.
So really, there are just normal people interacting with the world as it comes, and religion, making up wild shit about what’s happening up in the sky.
The difference is the people who compiled the Bible at the Council of Nicea believed in it to varying degrees. The guy who wrote the Hobbit knew it was fiction.
Sure, but atheists don’t organize together to persecute theists for their beliefs, in many theocracies right now being a non believer is punishable by death, not to mention the homophobia, the sexism, the tolerance for child rape, and many other kinds of abused towards vulnerable people, and other dogmatic nonsense. Religion creates in groups and out groups and twists people into being obedient fools who will do anything to stay part of the in group and guarantee their ticket to their so called heaven, I’d rather people learn to think for themselves and have the strength to live on their own, rather than becoming slaves to someone else’s ideology
Apparently they do it online. Every single time something religious is even hinted at, or somebody does something in line with religious beliefs, or even if somebody posts a picture of someone that moderately resembles a religious figure… Send in the atheists to proclaim their denial en mass. It’s just as pathetic and annoying as the goat herder yelling about his sky god.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_repressions_in_Mongolia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
You should be able to understand that a totalitarian dictator attacking religion as a competing institution, in order to consolidate his power, says more about totalitarian dictators and absolutely nothing about atheists.
Of course more dumb what about isms, you think I can’t Google religious atrocities and find dozens and dozens of more links, and as I already explained to the other guy, if you pay even a fraction of attention to your own links, these are autocratic political organizations persecuting religions so as to eliminate any competition over control of the masses. Notice how in all of these examples it’s political organizations doing these things, where as for religion even the avg Joe turns into an asshole so as to not get ostracized by his little tribe of good for nothings
Did it cross your mind that where persecutions were done “in the name of religion”, religion was instrumentalized by autocratic political organizations for their political goals?
By the way, did you think that you are not on the track to get people persecuted, when you dehumanize people based on the fact that they are religious? You know, the broad generalizations and consistent insults?
Thats how genocidial regimes start, when they want to annihilate the people they hate a decade or two down the line.
You might want to crack open a history book focusing on any of the attempts at socialism or communism in Asia. You will find many atheists persecuting theists.
There aren’t many theocratic states remaining.
Everything creates in groups and out groups, nothing does this better than leftism.
The church has been a political power throughout history, and has often come into conflict with other political powers, such as totalitarian dictators. It is utterly disingenuous to claim that this has anything to do with atheists. It’s about the state eliminating the church and their message as a competing institution and influence.
You need to crack open a book desperately if that’s your current perspective because Im not talking about churches. You absolutely have bigoted atheists, who murder theists. China loves murdering religious folk.
There are tons of atheists who are bigots.
You gonna keep using that “crack a book” line repeatedly without citing any references? It’s getting tired.
Are youasking me to refer a book about the CCP’s treatment of religious communities?
“Atheists” who make themselves, or the State, a swap-in replacement for God(s) are not much different from purely religious authorities who abuse their positions. It is apparently a common kind of power-seeking Dark Trait.
The Leviathan theory of the state – the Motherland who is greater than us, who we would die for as cells die to preserve the body, and whose Exegeses come from the Great Leader/Supreme Council/President for Life.
It’s exactly the same play on faith and credulity and servility that religions use.
It’s almost as if there is a factual history of atheists murdering theists and that the claim I replied to is wrong about that very well known historical fact.
Religion is just a means of controlling the idiot masses like yourself, those political parties that clamp down on religion aren’t doing it because they are atheist but because they don’t want any competition when it comes to controlling people, and morons like you who think of the world in binary terms like left and right fall for this stupid shit. As I said before read more than one book in your life and form your own opinions for once, stop assimilating the views of the people around you like a good little sheep, stop worrying so much about being discarded by your flock, this isn’t the dark ages, you won’t die from starvation on your own
Considering that you are two comments in and you have already made a series of factual errors AND I have said Im an atheist I don’t think you are qualified to determine who is less intelligent than average.
You also need remedial English lessons because oof.
Atheists don’t need to disprove theists any more than they need to disprove Leprechauns. The burden of proof is on the one making the positive assertion.
Do you believe in atoms? If so, prove them!
And no, linking to Wikipedia articles or to books about physics is no proof. That is just scriptures.
Which is a different way of stating you are incapable of proving what you believe just like they are.
Lack of belief is not belief in nothing.
The assertion that there is no God cannot be proven as you cannot prove a negative.
There assertion that there is a divine entity cannot be logically demonstrated in any valid way logically speaking.
The validity of either claim cannot be tested and thus have the same overall value and it is a matter of which you choose to accept.
Lacking a belief in God is not asserting there is no God. I don’t know how to dumb this down any more.
Lacking a belief in God, asserting there is no God, and asserting there is a God are all equally impossible to prove provided that by “God” we mean an omnipotent omipresent being.
I dont know how to make that any clearer.
You night wanna look up the history of philosophy of the middle ages, they do a lot of fancy reasoning to make Faith and empiristic data work. They couldn’t really find a way, so you might have the same trouble. Beautiful aruments, though.
I have read them. The fact is you cannot prove either position. You only have the one that makes sense to you. In my case it is atheism but knowing I cannot prove my belief there is no God can you see why a believer might not be willing to dismiss their beliefs without proof?
Correct, no one argued that.
Correct again.
Do you really mean that?
If I were to accuse you of something terrible like being a child molester with absolutely zero evidence…
That’s valid? You can deny it, but your denial is of equal value to my accusation right? So if everyone in this comment section chooses to believe you molester children from now on… do you have a problem with that?
The reason I’m an atheist is the same reason I don’t believe you’re a child molester yet. I think there is a burden of proof of evidence that would need to be met before the accusation needs to be taken seriously.
There is no evidence of me being a child molester AND if I were there would be proof that’s why your example is a false equivalence.
If the Christian God exists, for example, there would be no way of knowing for certain because that God would be omnipresent and thus would be everything. If God is everything what do you compare it to?
If you spend enough time focusing on the truth of this you will eventually conclude you cannot prove your belief like they cannot prove theirs so neither side has anything demonstrable.
You know that the hajj change day every year. A muslim have plenty of opportunity to go when there is no dangerous heat
In software engineering, you change requirements when they are too stupid.