I never understood what you were thinking when you objected to my mild assertion that something more than violent verses in the Koran must be responsible for Islamic political violence, given that the Bible also includes such verses. I don’t care how common it is, I don’t see at all why that it is a false equivalence as you asserted.
Now I see above that most Muslims are kind despite the contradictions in their books, because they don’t understand their religion enough, which suggests to me that unless the violent types are all Koranic scholars, which I doubt, the power of this book to drive people to violent acts despite similar verses in the Bible was somewhat overstated, and that other factors must share this responsibility.
That’s all! I’m just still not sure why you disagreed with me to begin with, and found this statement amusing in that light.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]I never understood what you were thinking when you objected to my mild assertion that something more than violent verses in the Koran must be responsible for Islamic political violence, given that the Bible also includes such verses. I don’t care how common it is, I don’t see at all why that it is a false equivalence as you asserted.
Now I see above that most Muslims are kind despite the contradictions in their books, because they don’t understand their religion enough, which suggests to me that unless the violent types are all Koranic scholars, which I doubt, the power of this book to drive people to violent acts despite similar verses in the Bible was somewhat overstated, and that other factors must share this responsibility.
That’s all! I’m just still not sure why you disagreed with me to begin with, and found this statement amusing in that light.[/quote]
There is violence in in the Bible, but they are not “commandments” forcing unbelievers to convert. The violence is the testament to the times. A story of a women getting stoned is not the bible telling us stoning is acceptable. It’s just an account of what happened. Christianity is based on the actions of Christ and his resurrection to form a new convent with man. And Jesus was like a biggest hippie there is.
Getting closer to the truth is better than appeasing them.
The same can be said about the old testament, but christian teaching is very clear about the importance of the new testament, which DO NOT promote violence, and that the old testament belong to pre-civilization times.[/quote]
So vicarious redemption through human sacrifice is not violence? Condemning people to an eternity of torment in hell for the crime of being born in the wrong country or to the wrong parents is not violent?
There are many ways to define violence, but I’m quite comfortable saying the New Testament has it’s fair share.
“So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”
What a lovely non violent passage from the wonderful new testament.[/quote]
Did you even bother to take in the context of this quote? It’s very easy to take one line out of any religious text and put it out of context.
There is violence in in the Bible, but they are not “commandments” forcing unbelievers to convert. The violence is the testament to the times. A story of a women getting stoned is not the bible telling us stoning is acceptable. It’s just an account of what happened. Christianity is based on the actions of Christ and his resurrection to form a new convent with man. And Jesus was like a biggest hippie there is.[/quote]
All that takes a lot of processing. Last I looked, the Bible included the Old Testament, which is considered the word of God. Funny you mention stoning, the Old Testament endorses it on multiple occasions:
To be honest I think that’s probably true, we seem to be talking about two different things. The false equivalency is really so much simpler than you are implying. In a discussion about ISLAM, when the topic of the title is ISLAM, any reference to christianity and the Bible is a false equivalence. I said in that thread that no doubt people will very shortly come in and make references to the Bible, and you did.
So when I said false equivalency I was referring to any red herring that was dragged through the topic of Islam, usually in the form of the Bible. When you were defending against it, you meant it to open a discussion about why belief in these books manifests in different ways considering the similarities between them.
We were not talking about the same thing, we were using it in different ways, so no surprise it led to some confusion. Actually it seems we are pretty much on the same page with most of this, just interpreted an exchange differently.
So you’re point was a valid one, and I’ve said as much dozens of times. Of course it’s not just the words in the book. There are many other reasons why terrorism is on the rise, not just the Quran. But to say the Quran isn’t a major factor likely just means the person hasn’t read it or understood it. The Quran is on a whole other level of twisted evil.
Beyond the obvious part that the prophet in one of them was Jesus and the other was the horrific Muhammad. Beyond the other fact that the Bible has a new testament which at least attempts to move toward a new less violent direction. Beyond those which are huge by the way, you have twisted evil things such as in the Bible it is not the job of Christians to be executioners to non believers. That’s Gods job, and he will sentence non believers in the rapture. In Islam believers are charged with the job of executioner and actually rewarded for taking it upon themselves to kill the non believers. Kind of a fucked up difference don’t you think?
So for people to pretend that Christianity and Islam are on the same level of violence is just ignorant. (or put differently, a false equivalence They are not the same) Christianity and the Bible are horrific no doubt, but then there’s Islam.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because someone is an atheist that they don’t understand the holy books. Context matters, and yes with the proper context the New Testament (in my humble opinion anyway) is still an ugly, violent, totalitarian book. It’s different than the Old Testament, but arguably not any better or more moral.
To be honest I think that’s probably true, we seem to be talking about two different things. The false equivalency is really so much simpler than you are implying. In a discussion about ISLAM, when the topic of the title is ISLAM, any reference to Christianity and the Bible is a false equivalence. I said in that thread that no doubt people will very shortly come in and make references to the Bible, and you did.
So when I said false equivalency I was referring to any red herring that was dragged through the topic of Islam, usually in the form of the Bible. When you were defending against it, you meant it to open a discussion about why belief in these books manifests in different ways considering the similarities between them.
We were not talking about the same thing, we were using it in different ways, so no surprise it led to some confusion. Actually it seems we are pretty much on the same page with most of this, just interpreted an exchange differently. [/quote]
I guess. From my viewpoint, it was a simple, unambiguous comment directed at one point that you made. But I see how it could have been confusing in context. I tried to explain myself several times.
Cool. I’m not saying it isn’t. Some day, I’ll have to read it, no time. In my view however, Islam features many questionable values in general.
[quote]Beyond the obvious part that the prophet in one of them was Jesus and the other was the horrific Muhammad. Beyond the other fact that the Bible has a new testament which at least attempts to move toward a new less violent direction. Beyond those which are huge by the way, you have twisted evil things such as in the Bible it is not the job of Christians to be executioners to non believers. That’s Gods job, and he will sentence non believers in the rapture. In Islam believers are charged with the job of executioner and actually rewarded for taking it upon themselves to kill the non believers. Kind of a fucked up difference don’t you think?
So for people to pretend that Christianity and Islam are on the same level of violence is just ignorant. (or put differently, a false equivalence They are not the same) Christianity and the Bible are horrific no doubt, but then there’s Islam. [/quote]
It’s debatable. It’s nice that there’s a New Testament, but I won’t fully agree with you until the moment they toss the Old Testament entirely. It says to stone people who worship other gods. How twisted and evil is that? Yet people don’t do it, and regardless of problems I do have with Islam, by far most Muslims don’t make it their duty to become executioners.
I’m still not convinced the New Testament is any better than the Old Testament. Vicarious redemption through human sacrifice is a terrible idea, as is divine totalitarianism where we can be punished for all of eternity for thought crimes. The people who wrote the Bible had a truly messed up moral compass if they think any of that qualifies as good. This is why it’s so absurd for people to claim morality came from there. Perhaps there is a God and perhaps morality did come from God, but one thing is clear to me, morality sure as hell didn’t come from the Bible or the Christian God.
As for people not following the books, thats just lucky for us. Thankfully they don’t understand and follow their holy books because if they did on a mass scale I doubt humanity would survive. It says many times in the Quran that a good Muslim is one who follows the life example of Muhammad. If a billion Muslims did that, good bye cruel world for all of us.
But my issue is when people try to say Islam is good, and their evidence is because there are so many good Muslims. It’s true there’s over a billion good Muslims, but Islam is still evil.
I look at it like this. I’ve listened to rap music since grade 10. Don’t ask why, I just do for some reason. Anybody who has listened to rap music for any length of time knows that in general it’s demeaning towards woman, it scoffs at hard work and glorifies the hustle, it de-emphasizes education, promotes drug dealing and prison time, and glorifies violence and murder.
Now I can find you all kinds of rap songs with positive messages about staying in school, respecting woman, and being a contributing member of society. I can also find you millions of people who listen to rap music and have never committed a crime in their life. I’m one of them. But so what? The over arching message is still a horribly violent and society destroying one. So is it any wonder that 5% of the population (young black males) are committing nearly 50% of the murders? Thug culture is a real thing, and it has a source.
It would make no sense at all to say that rap music isn’t glorifying violence just because some people who listen to it aren’t violent. Just as it makes no sense to say that Islam is a religion of peace just because many Muslims are peaceful.
Islam and Christianity are religions of violence, but thank God most religious people don’t follow the teachings of their holy books. With respect to Islam though, still far too many do and we see the direct result of that too often.
Even if we assume that there is divine inspiration at the source of a religion, the religious tradition is man-made. It consists of scriptures, interpretation, customs, rituals, etc.
Thus, just looking at individual text passages in the scriptures won’t tell us if a religion tends towards violence or not. It all depends on how these texts are interpreted and how they are used in a given sociopolitical context.
The violence we see from the Islam world is largely due to political Islam, in other words, the use of Islam for political purposes. The objective is power and/or money. Religion is used as an ideology to achieve these objectives.
Well Islam is as much as a religion as it was an empire so it’s always been political if you look at it’s history.
With the Bible, most Christians are to understand the Old Testament as lessons and examples of Gods nature and some historical knowledge. But the foundation of Christianity is jesus and his teaching and the resurrection. So basically you got a hippie that ran around and pissed people off and a war general that conquered and created an empire.
The teaching also was to spread the faith to all humans, which was used as pretext during the crusades and colonialism to conquer foreign lands. In that, Islam and Christianity have the same mission.
When the Christian Portuguese navigatores explored the Far East early in the 16th century, they slaughtered the entire male Muslim population of some of the coastal cities they conquered. That was a definite escalation in the use of violence over previous Arab traders in the region.
But heres what I see as the difference. Jesus himself never used any form of force, violence and conquered or managed or created an empire. If he did yeah I get your point. And come on, the crusades and colonialism happened like thousands of years after the time of jesus. Like if Jesus was a conqueror that created and managed an empire yeah that makes sense, but the exact opposite happened. He never fought back against the romans or religious leaders that wanted him dead. In fact, it was kinda what he was here to do if you believe it or not, to be sacrificed. And after his death his followers and believers were persecuted with death as the punishment until the roman emperor Constantine used it to make it the religion of rome, debatable if he actually converted or saw that so many people were converting and used it as a political platform.
But historically, Muhammad was a war general and created and managed an empire. Not only that, after his death his successors the caliphs as they were called expanded and created one of the largest and most successful empires that really influenced history for many positive reasons and some negative but not here to give you a history lesson.
They are not the same) Christianity and the Bible are horrific no doubt, but then there’s Islam. 
