Amid Rising Heat, Hajj Becomes Test of Endurance for Pilgrims and Saudi Arabia
Amid Rising Heat, Hajj Becomes Test of Endurance for Pilgrims and Saudi Arabia
Millions have made the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The kingdom faces scrutiny over safety after more than 1,300 people died last year.
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.
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Darwin awards
islamophobe award
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.
It’s a huge assumption on your part that they believed it. It was and it remains an instrument of control. They took considerable editorial liberties, too, with the supposed word of god.
Anyway, even if they believed it that is STILL NOT EVIDENCE. The position that the Bible is evidence is incredibly weak. If you want to keep arguing that position, you’re going to have a very hard time and then lose.
It’s a huge assumption on your part that they believed it. It was and it remains an instrument of control. They took considerable editorial liberties, too, with the supposed word of god.
That is an equally large presumption. I happen to agree that some were more interested in control but many were believers.
Anyway, even if they believed it that is STILL NOT EVIDENCE
To them it is. Do you not get that they believe they have the words of their divine being in book form? If their faith is correct it would be proof.
You don’t seem to understand the word proof.
Proof means it can demonstrate what is true to anyone.
“If everything I’m saying is true, then this book is evidence of the truth!”
See, all I have to do is believe LOTR is real and then I meet your burden of proof. See how pathetic a standard that is?
Before you say no one believes LOTR is real, let me remind you that yes there are some people, and I consider them about as crazy as Christians are. Secondly, there are thousands of religions with supposed texts. Are all of those “proof” too?
I’ve heard the same self-validating logic about the council of Nicea. When asked “how could this possibly be the word of god when it was so clearly meddled with by human decisions?”
The answer: “well if you accept at all that it’s the word of god, don’t you think he would make sure it came out right?”
In other words, you either believe it or you don’t. But that’s the beauty of actual evidence, actual proof: you don’t have to already believe in it. It is sufficient to change preconceptions.
But why am I not surprised at this conversation. I mean OBVIOUSLY a religious person wouldn’t understand the very idea of proof. “Faith is the evidence of things unseen” blah blah. The brainwashing is real. People lose their very faculty to reason.
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.
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?
I’m saying that references are more convincing than the condescending exhortation to “go read a book.” I’m also saying that if you persist in flogging people with the claim that you’ve read more than them, it won’t be long before you’re asked to show one bit of evidence for that. You can’t just run around saying “you’re wrong! I’ve read books that say so!”
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" 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.
Sure, but atheists don’t organize together to persecute theists for their beliefs,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinist_repressions_in_Mongolia
Estimates differ, but anywhere between 20,000 and 35,000 "enemies of the revolution" were executed, a figure representing three to five percent of Mongolia's total population at the time.[2] Victims included those accused of espousing Tibetan Buddhism, pan-Mongolist nationalism, and pro-Japanese sentiment. Buddhist clergy, aristocrats, intelligentsia, political dissidents, and ethnic Buryats were particularly impacted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
Soviet Marxist-Leninist policy consistently advocated the control, suppression, and ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs, and it actively encouraged the propagation of Marxist-Leninist atheism in the Soviet Union.[2] However, most religions were never officially outlawed.[1]
The state established atheism as the only scientific truth.[14][15][16][17] Soviet authorities forbade the criticism of atheism and agnosticism until 1936 or of the state's anti-religious policies; such criticism could lead to forced retirement.[18][19][20]
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.
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.
"I make no claim"
"You can't prove it!"
I mean, yeah, because no claim is being made. Do you genuinely not understand the difference between no claim and a negative claim? Even if you think they're the same thing, the burden of proof is still on the person making the positive claim.
The assertion that there is no God cannot be proven as you cannot prove a negative.
Correct, no one argued that.
There assertion that there is a divine entity cannot be logically demonstrated in any valid way logically speaking.
Correct again.
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.
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.
if I were there would be proof that’s why your example is a false equivalence.
Not necessarily. This is lemmy, you're on a completely anonymous account. I wouldn't expect to have any proof.
Maybe you just didn't get caught yet.
If the Christian God exists, for example, there would be no way of knowing for certain
I was willing to grant you the philosophical God argument, but if you want to evoke the Christian God you're now making a whole bunch of positive claims.
Why don't we look at the evolutionary record and see whether all of humanity comes from Adam and Eve or if animals evolved from a common ancestor?
We can look for evidence of a flood, or an exodus and see there is none.
We can track the history of Yahweh, and how he was syncretized with El and Baal from Caananite faiths, and morphed over centuries from a local Storm/war God to the only God.
The early Israelites engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Initially a lesser deity among the Cannanite pantheon, Yahweh in later centuries became conflated with El; Yahweh took on El's place as head of the pantheon of the Israelite religion, El's consort Asherah, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי), came to be applied to Yahweh alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
We can compare the contradictions between the behavior of the Old Testament God and Jesus to conclude like early Christians such as Marcion of Sinope Yahweh and Christianity are incompatible
Study of the Hebrew Bible, along with received writings circulating in the nascent Church, led Marcion to conclude that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of Yahweh, characterized as the belligerent god of the Hebrew Bible. Marcion responded by developing a ditheistic system of belief around the year 144.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope
We can compare the Gospels and see where they copied stories from the Iliad/Odyssey.
Odyssey Location Mark Location
Athena descends like a bird 1.319-324 Spirit descends like a dove 2:1-2 Sailors volunteer to follow Athena 2.383-413 Fishermen volunteer to follow Jesus 1:16-20 Nestor’s feast for 4500 men 3.1-68 Jesus’s feast for 5000 men 6:30-44 Menelaus’s wedding feast 4.1-67 Jesus’s feast for 4000 8:1-9 Odysseus enters city behind mules 6.252-261 Jesus enters city on an ass 11:1-11 Alcinous’s prolific figs trees 7.112-121 Jesus curses unprolific fig tree 11:12-14 Blind Demodocus among sailors 8.471-473 Blind man at “House-of-fisherman” 8:22-26 Lotus-eating, forgetful comrades 9.62-107 Forgetful disciples at sea 8:19-21 Polyphemus the cave-dweller 9.105-525 Dangerous demoniac from caves 5:1-20 Aeolus’s bag of winds and gale 10.1-55 Jesus calms winds and sea 4:35-41 Cannibals at the harbor 10.76-136 Hostile Pharisees at the harbor 8:10-13 Following a water carrier to dinner 10.100-116 Following a water carrier to dinner 14:12-16 Circe turns soldiers into swine 10.135-465 Jesus sends demons into swine 5:1-20 Odysseus’s last supper before Hades 10.546-561 Jesus’s last super and Gethsemane 14:32-42 Death of young Elpenor 10.546-560 Flight of naked young man 14:43-52 Blind seer Tiresias 11.90-94 Blind seer Bartimaeus 10:46-52 Death of Agamemnon at a feast 11.409-430 Death of the Baptist at a feast 6:14-29 Burial of Elpenor at dawn 12.1-5 Young man at tomb at dawn 16:1-4 Eurylochus’s vow 12.298-305 Peter’s vow 14:26-31 Eurylochus’s broken vow 12.367-396 Peter’s broken vow 14:66-72 Eumaeus’s Phoenician nurse 15.417-491 Syrophoenician woman 7:24-30 Odysseus’s transfiguration 16.172-301 Jesus’s transfiguration 9:2-13 Suitors plot to kill Telemachus 16.383-385 Vinedressers kill the beloved son 12:1-12 Conspiracy to kill Telemachus 17.182-213 Conspiracy to kill Jesus 14:10-11 Penelope’s hospitality 17.534-547 Generous widow at temple 12:41-42 Irus the beggar 18.1-94 Barabbas the brigand 15:6-15 Telemachus’s amazement at house 19.35-43 Disciples’ amazement at temple 13:1-2 Penelope’s request for a sign 19.102-271 Disciples’ request for a sign 13:3-8 Prophetic oak at Dodona 19.296-307 Prophetic fig tree 13:28-31 Eurycleia washes her master 19.370-575 Woman anoints Jesus 14:3-9 Eurycleia’s recognition of Odysseus 19.474-486 Peter’s recognition of the Messiah 8:27-30 Odysseus slays suitors in his house 22.17-86 Jesus expels merchants from temple 11:15-19 Contested authority over the house 22.221-233 Contested authority over the temple 11:27-33 Odysseus hacks to death evil slave 22.474-477 Bystander slices off a slave’s ear 14:43-5
https://testimonia.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MacDonald.Mimesis.pdf
Or also where they contradict each other
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.
I don't think theist Christians would agree with that though. Quoting Tertullian:
We do not worship your gods, because we know that there are no such beings. This, therefore, is what you should do: you should call on us to demonstrate their non-existence, and thereby prove that they have no claim to adoration; for only if your gods were truly so, would there be any obligation to render divine homage to them. And punishment even were due to Christians, if it were made plain that those to whom they refused all worship were indeed divine. But you say, They are gods. We protest and appeal from yourselves to your knowledge; let that judge us; let that condemn us, if it can deny that all these gods of yours were but men.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm
When it comes to a philosophical creator god I agree with your statement, this view describes agnostic atheism.
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.