You know, I was sitting here thinking that that still didn’t explain everything, since we still don’t know what it was that disinclined them to look further into the matter and what stopped them, but then I read this again and realised we’re talking about a pre-internet, pre-easy research time.
They don’t even have to do that. Many Christians believe the Bible is perfect, narrated directly by the mouth of God.
All it takes is to say, “The book is perfect, and here is what it really means.” Bible interpretation is rich in nuance.
One of the easiest, regarding the Koran, is “Kill the infidel.” Ah, but that only applies during the period of warfare, not to times of peace. Easy peasy.
Look how easily Christians have carved exemptions to “Thou shalt not kill.” They now exclude war, capital punishment, killing in self defense, and even euthanasia for those suffering from hopeless illness. Even after Jesus told Peter to put the sword down, Christians still imagine that killing in self-defense is supportable by Jesus’ teachings. It isn’t…but they’ve made up their minds it is.
Another fun one is “No one knows the date, not even the Son.” Wow, the Father knows something the Son doesn’t. Thus, the Son cannot be a co-person in the Godhead with the Father. Well, no… And they’ll go on at wondrous length explaining why that isn’t so.
All of this without ever making any official declaration that the Bible is “not perfect.”
No-one would ever argue otherwise, it is self evidently true.
but…Many? Majority? or just “some”? Is it a much less common position than in islam? Is it the official position of the main christian sects that the bible is perfect?
I don’t think it is healthy or wise for anyone to believe that man-made book of law and lore is perfect and inerrant.
And the relative numbers matter. I would argue that a billion people believing in the perfection of a problematic text presents a greater danger overall than a billion people believing that an equally problematic text is a mixture of historical reporting, allegory, folk tales, philosophy, teaching, myth and legend.
You can certainly interpret your way to good or evil in both cases (and humans do…that is our natural inclination) but would you agree that the former example above more closely describes islam than christianity or judaism?
Well, slightly under one-third of all people in the US endorse a literal interpretation of the Bible. That’s a hundred million people or so. Biblical literalism AFAIK is much less prevalent among Christians outside the US, though perhaps increasing its presence in some non-US communities where US fundamentalist sects are evangelizing.
Biblical literalism is the official position of numerous Christian sects, but not the so-called “mainstream” ones such as Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, Methodism, etc. Probably the largest officially Biblical-literalist sect is some variety of Baptist.
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And the relative numbers matter. I would argue that a billion people believing in the perfection of a problematic text presents a greater danger overall than a billion people believing that an equally problematic text is a mixture of historical reporting, allegory, folk tales, philosophy, teaching, myth and legend.
You can certainly interpret your way to good or evil in both cases (and humans do…that is our natural inclination) but would you agree that the former example above more closely describes islam than christianity or judaism?
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Well, we can agree right off that the “billion” part is not very descriptive of Judaism.
Sure, definitely agree. Remember, no one in this thread is arguing a total equality of faiths, and no one is denying that there are a lot of Islamicist terrorists. We’re denying that Islam drives homophobic violence. Islam doesn’t; some subsets of it do.
This would seem to be so obvious it doesn’t need debating for hundreds of posts, but certain members of the loyal opposition refuse to acknowledge it.
Either an ideology can influence culture, behavior and politics (for good or bad) or it can’t.
If it can’t then any conversation and debate is meaningless and pointless
I think we all know that isn’t the case. Therefore it is worth exploring whether there is anything within an ideology that makes it more prone to extremism. That includes considering if there is anything about it that makes violent subsets more prevalent.
If you could wave a magic wand over the textual literalism and figurehead infallibility of all faiths and ideologies (past and present) so that people cease believing their books and decrees are the perfect word of gods (or equivalents)…do you think that more or less atrocities would occur due to extremism?
Is such literalism good, bad or neutral? Do we see such literalism more in one ideology over another?
The lack of a strong secular culture in current Islam-predominant societies. Remember that the worst excesses of Christianity weren’t (by and large) curbed by more carefully scrutiny of the Gospels; they were mitigated by the Enlightenment and by persistent efforts to reduce the sway the religious hierarchy held over both legal and social strictures.
One has only to consider some of the various proposed laws coming out of the US Bible belt - laws intending to codify the supremacy of Christianity and implement certain conservative views (see the SRIOTD thread for examples). Were these laws allowed to pass unchecked by the Constitution and various civil rights groups we would already see gays locked up and women subject to onerous restrictions and other practices very similar to those in many Islamic countries.
No one has claimed that an ideology can’t influence culture; we’re debating the degree of control. The loyal opposition claims that the Koran has vast influence, out-weighing all other influences. Since this is not true of the Bible, the Torah, the Hindu texts, etc., there is no reason it has to be true of the Koran.
Other, countervening influences do exist in other cultures. Islam is not absolutely unique among all human civilizations in being totally enslaved by one book.
Yes, it took Christianity centuries to break away from the Bible’s tyranny. Islam will need time to moderate the undue influence the Koran has. But history shows it can happen – in fact, among the majority of Islamic societies, it already has happened.
Less, most likely, as we have seen with the Bible.
At this point in time, Koranic literalism is probably ahead of most other forms of scriptural literalism, statistically speaking. This wasn’t true during the medieval period, when Islam was at its height and Christianity at its nadir. These things are open to change.
It never fails to confound me why Islam cannot be criticized without that sentiment not being somehow twisted into an implied endorsement of Christianity. Cannot both of these malignant creeds be denied equally?
You’re snark isn’t self serving. The treatment of gay people in the Middle East isn’t news worthy for the same reasons given in this thread. It interferes with the local narrative of political correctness. Everybody is equal, all religions are the same.
It’s a fact that Mohammad specifically codified homosexuality as a sin with the penalty of death. it’s not an interpretation. It cannot be offset with arguments that he also supported peace. I’ve already posted a short list of Muslims who support the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. It’s in the hundreds of millions and it’s not a complete list. That’s not my definition of peace but YMMV.
And I’ll just add the latest Islamic terrorist attack. This one in Bangladesh. Only 20 people killed. A slow day during the time set aside to honor the word of God in the religion of peace.
Remind me what did Yahweh, Jesus’ dad . . . oh wait Jesus is Yahweh, have to say about homosexuality?
CMC fnord!
Nice attempt at a re-direct. 9/11 killed more people than Pearl Harbor. It was the worst terrorist attack against the United States.
I don’t know, remind me what the man who supposedly sacrificed himself for the sins of mankind said about the sin of homosexuality? He must have screwed it up so bad the boss sent down yet another prophet.
There seems to be a different philosophy between the 2 prophets. One gives up his own life willingly on behalf of sinners and one kills the sinners.
Your repeating of this doesn’t make it true. Everything is an interpretation, even a supposed “literal” reading (which, according to the peaceful Muslims, just ignores “literal” readings of other portions of the text).
If there were something special about Islam that made it uniquely unable to be interpreted peacefully or tolerantly, then there wouldn’t have been periods in the past in which the Islamic world was a far better and safer place to be Jewish, or gay, or whatever., than the Christian world
It wasn’t the text of the Bible and the Quran that made the Spanish expel Jews in the 15th century and many of the Islamic empires to welcome those expelled Jews into their societies – it was specific interpretations and other societal, cultural, and political concerns.
Worst terrorist attack, sure. But it did nothing in terms of threat and damage to the nation compared to Pearl Harbor (which actually did herald an existential threat in the Japanese Empire), or the self-inflicted wound of the Iraq war. After 9/11, America was united, with all the world but the a few assholes like the Taliban with us. After Pearl Harbor, the country was united, but the world was entirely divided, and we had to change everything to defeat our enemies. After 9/11, we played exactly into our enemies hands by getting into a pointless war of choice in the Middle East – dividing the country, scattering our allies from our side, and wasting thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars for nothing.
Jesus was not a prophet, he was Yahweh incarnate. (Ya know, one of the most significant claims in the New Testament. “I and the Father are one.”)
What did the man/god who sacrificed himself, to himself, for the sins of mankind have to say about the “sin” of homosexuality? Never heard of the Old Testament, ya know the thing that all of the Abrahamic religions are based on?
Leviticus 18:22 - Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Leviticus 20:13 - If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Ya know what he didn’t say? “Umm, that thing Dad, I mean I, said about the [DEL][COLOR=“Black”]sin[/DEL][/COLOR] abomination of homosexuality? Well, he, :smack: I changed his, err my mind, it’s all good now.”
CMC fnord!
That’s simply not true. There’s a difference between a vague idea or sentiment and an express law.
What about “express laws” that, according to the peaceful Muslims, disallow mistreatment of homosexuals?
One religion’s god is another religion’s messenger. He is a prophet in the Muslim religion and superseded by Mohmmad.
Yes, I’ve heard of it. Not one word of it was written by Jesus. The bible is a scrapbook put together years after his death. His death and self-sacrifice is something of a theme withing the Christian religion. Unlike Mohammad, he didn’t kill people for sinning. He sacrificed himself on their behalf Remember the quote of St Augustine rewritten by Ghandi? Love the sinner, hate the sin? It’s a considerably different philosophy from hate the sinner, kill them. There really isn’t any other explanation for killing gay people for the sin of Homosexuality when it’s a specific law set forth and carried out by Mohammad.
You’d think Jesus would be killing people if that’s what he wanted his followers to do. His lame ass response to sinners was to kill himself on their behalf.
You know what he didn’t do? Kill gay people. Or anybody else. In fact he hung around with a prostitute.
Why are Jews, overall, just as statistically peaceful and tolerant (or very likely more so – American Jews are way, way more tolerant of homosexuality than American Christians) than Christians? Is it because the Old Testament is more peaceful and tolerant scripture than the New Testament? Or is it because of other cultural and societal reasons?