If radical Islam is violent due to culture and not religion

Great Debates
1122

You are coming form the point of view that all religions are more or less equally good/bad, are you not? Do I have your position correct?

I am coming from the position that some religions are definetley worse than others. I am not trying to be rude, I am not going to get into another “debate” about the overlap between the NT and the OT, I am simply going to assert to you that the philosophies and actions of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed are distinctly different, in thought and action… however, Moses and Mohammed are much closer to each other than either is/was to Christ… again, not to be rude, you either agree with this point or you don’t… I’m too tired of the topic to debate it yet again…

Jesus may of said some confusing ambiguous things like, I bring a sword not peace, but, he never said anything like the following and he never went to war with other people or took slaves or made oppressive statements about the role of women.

Statements of Mohammed:

Qur’an 5:33

Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment,
Qur’an 9:29

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.
Qur’an 9:5

And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

Qur’an 48:29

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah ; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves.

Qur’an 9:73

O Prophet, fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.

If you want to check the accuracy of these statements, you can do so here, it will link you through.

1123

Try to follow. It is not a complex concept.
Yes, there are very many Evangelicals in Alabama, so the local proportion would be high.
The proportion of Evangelicals when considering the entire United States is lower than that of Alabama.
The proportion of Evangelicals across all Christians in all of the world is *even lower *(i.e. 13%)

THEREFORE, what you see done by Christians in Alabama is not representative of Christians as a whole. Just those specific Christians of that specific denomination wot live around you. You would never, and I mean never ever see such a billboard in Italy or Spain or Mexico, despite those places being like 99% Christian.
So you can not say that this billboard is representative of the beliefs of Christians (or even just American Christians).

It’s not apologetics, it’s insisting on using words proper. Properly.

[QUOTE=Hank Beecher]
This is a very commonly stated bit of propaganda from the Islamic public relations handbook
[/QUOTE]

:rolleyes:

1124

I’m too tired, too tired of the topic and too tired from lack of sleep to address the other points. If there is one you are particularly frustrated (for lack of a better word) that I did not answer, I’ll try to respond to it if you repeat it…

If not…

Ok, we are in a point of agreement here, about Kant, about Morality in general. (For lack of a better explanation). What I don’t understand is why you do not agree with me, that if you live in violent and chaotic times and you have the option of taking the non violent path, a different path, why is that not better, morally superior?

1125

Not exactly. Based on history, I think some religions are probably more inclined to be associated with peace and lack of oppression than others.

But I think Christianity and Islam are pretty much equally good/bad, compared to each other.

Those are all fine, but the God of the bible, and other figures, in both the OT and NT, said and did stuff as bad as any of those quotes from the Quran. It just depends on how one interprets it.

Another thing to keep in mind – there is a religion that places value on the Old Testament and no value on the New Testament. If you think the NT is much more “peaceful” then the old, it would follow then that you would think the religion that places more value on the NT than the OT would be more “peaceful”, on average. Do you believe this is true? Do you believe Christianity is far more likely to be associated with peace, non-violence, and lack of oppression, on average, then Judaism? If not, then why not, when the texts of the OT and NT are so different?

Since interpretations can and do vary, and since different people within the same religions place different emphasis on different portions of the same texts (including the OT and NT), I think the only reasonable way to evaluate whether either religion is “worse” than the other is to look at history. And looking at history, it’s pretty clear that there were long periods of time in which Christianity was much more likely to be associated with horrific violence and oppression than Islam, and long periods of time when the reverse was true.

Considering this, I see no way to conclude anything other than that Christianity and Islam are roughly equal in terms of links or propensity for violence and oppression.

1126

Try to follow, it is not a complex concept. :wink:

I don’t care what they do in Italy or Norway. I care about what happens in Alabama and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

I realize that “most” Christians and “most” Muslims (in the USA and Europe) are not like that. I also - do not care - at all. I’m only concerned with religion when it becomes a problem. The other times and places, like Seattle or New York City or Italy or Norway… a bit annoying and nonsensical but… really not on my radar man. I’m concerned with religion when and where it is a problem.

Why should I care about where it is not a problem? I’m an Atheist. When you remove the militant half of Militant Atheist and just focus on the Atheist half… why should I be either impressed or unimpressed with the way Christians in Seattle or New York City or Italy or Norway act?

Also, sorry for repeating myself like 3 times…

1127

Thank you for responding. You typed a lot out. Well, not a lot lot lot, but I can tell you put thought into that. I’m just too tired, sleepy, at this point to respond well. Plus, at some point, this is past 1125 responses now, I’m certainly in many of those responses but not all of them…

Could you boil that down to one paragraph? Sorry, I am not playing “gotcha”. If you pick your main, number one (or two) points I’ll try to respond. If not… ok… maybe I’ll respond after sometime tomorrow… but maybe not… this thread is like 3 weeks old and my mental health will only tolerate so much disagreement with other people… if you notice I’ve been on again and off again with this thread.

Sorry for such a long and rambling answer.

1128

Okay. Firstly, to answer your earlier question, I don’t consider all religions equally good/bad, but I do think Christianity and Islam are about the same. Now here are my two main points: I think that your comparison of the Quran and the NT/OT requires interpretation (these texts ALWAYS require interpretation), and there are ways of reasonable interpretation that show the NT and OT in just as bad a light as the Quran, and figures like God and others as just as ‘bad’ (or good) as Mohammed. Second main point: if the OT really is much worse than the NT, then you would expect Judaism to be much worse than Christianity in terms of association with violence and oppression. This is pretty clearly not so, in my view – I’ll assume you’d agree (and speak up if not). With all this in mind, I think the only reasonable way to compare Christianity and Islam is to look at history, rather than texts that must be interpreted, and can be interpreted in many ways – and historically, they seem to be about the same in terms of association with violence and history.

1129

I mainly want to know if you’re a pacifist, because if you are, that at least provides a consistent basis for your antipathy for Mohammad.

Because violence isn’t inherently wrong. Violence is just a tool, and it can be used for moral or immoral ends. Violence directed at putting a stop to a violent and chaotic state of affairs is moral, as is violence in defense of others, so long as it’s proportional. “No one may initiate violence, but violence can be used to stop those who do” is a maxim that works under the Categorical Imperative (as it is universable and treats others as a means and not an end).

If you consider violence to be inherently and always wrong, that’s fine, for you. Others reasonably disagree.

1130

Ok, we are not in complete agreement, well, we are not talking about - exactly - the same topic but let’s focus on where the common overlap is. I disagree about Christianity vs Islam and OT vs NT… maybe some day later that will be worth talking about, maybe not… IDK

The area of overlap, Islam vs the Old Testament… or Mohammed vs Moses… I see your point there… I’m too tired to give you the “perfect” answer to show that I agree so I think this will clarify, if not, you can tell me:

The Violent passages in the OT, the actions of Moses and other prophets up to and beyond David/Solomon… up to the point of the fall of Israel and captivity… I agree much of that is barbaric and violent (by our standards) and I agree that there is not significant difference between those actions and those texts than the actions and text of Mohammed/The Koran.

Now… some people/most people are probably going to say I am changing the goalposts or whatever. Ok… let them say that, it’s fine with me if they do…

From what I understand all the violence and barbarism from the time of Moses and David etc, by the time you get to Jesus, pretty much the whole entire Jewish community, both the Rabbis and the common people, they were more or less all in agreement to leave “the violent” parts behind and focus on the “Hasidic” parts of the law. Whether this was 100 years before Christ or 500, I don’t know, but that is the impression I have of the situation.

Whereas in the case of Islam there has been fighting/infighting/war/conflict from the inception and from there on out… with, the periods of peace that people on this thread keep mentioning. But, the whole Suni/Shia split, that started way back right after Mohammed died, and, in one for or another has continued to the day, more or less uninterrupted, fluctuating between hot and cold war, if, you can take that analogy. And, periods of “Militant Islam” beyond the Suni/Shia split, conflict with other people/peoples… that has been off and on for the last 1400 years.

So, when the OT calls for a stoning or we will make war under these categories and treat the prisoners in this manner, I am not as concerned about those passages as the 5 passages I have listed upthread here on this thread. Not to start that all over again but in case you don’t know what I’m referring to.

Ok, so, I asked you for a short response (which you gave) and wound up giving you a long response. I will assume it worked out well regardless of that little detail. And, I’m not in 100% agreement with you, as I stated just above, but, I can definitely honestly admit there is a lot I need to correct, defiently with my attitude with out a doubt and quit possibly with some of the positions I hold as well. Thanks for chatting with me.

1131

Honestly… I am not so much a pacifist as I am a coward. If ISIS or the Taliban somehow had the ability to amass 900,000 troops (front line and support) and gain access to aircraft carriers and tanks and attack helicopters and jets…etc… I would fight and die to repel such an attack.

If, Mohammed, the enlightened peaceful Mohammed showed up and let us carry on with our life more or less as normal as long as we did not interfere with the 5 prayers a day ritual in the town square and paid our taxes and not make trouble… I would not consider that worth risking my life to prevent or kill someone in an invading force to prevent…
Just in case I got that wrong… If China took over Japan, and North and South Korea and The Asian part of Russia and Southeast Asia… if they took over all that land and had the “pay your taxes and don’t make trouble and you will be fine” philosphy… and it really was fine… if there next invasion was the USA… I would not be fighting them at all, I would be learning to speak Chinese and trying to figure out how to adapt to the new changes that would come with all of that.

If, however, they had a form of rule that was more similar to Mao/The Cultural Revolution… I would fight tooth and nail every inch and not feel guilty about killing or fighting. To what degree I would overcome my cowardice, IDK… but I wouldn’t want the next version of Chairman Mao running the USA… that’s for sure.

Just a quick note… I box and do MMA for a hobby, just for fun, not saying I’m good at it… I enjoy it as a hobby but when “push comes to shove” I am not a violent person… I will usually look for a way to avoid a fight or avoid a conflict.

So… am I a pacifist? In principle, yes. In most situations… most situations… yes. But I can not say I am a complete pacifist or that violence in self defense is wrong or even that violence in a preemptive manner… in very few, very narrowly drawn lines, would be unacceptable.

But, “Hey, those guys in that city over there, they worship the blue god and we worship the green god!!!” No, that is never a justifiable cause for violence. And, if, they attacked you a month ago or a year or 3 years ago and you are just getting around to your counter attack, no. Only in case of “clear and present danger” is a counter attack acceptable. (To my standards).

1132

Fair enough. I think we’ve drilled down to the assumptions on which we disagree.

1133

So if any single line of the Koran can be interpreted negatively, you declare that those lines are therefore the ‘central teaching of that religion’ because ‘it’s in the book’.

But when people point out single lines in the Bible that can be interpreted negatively, you heap scorn on them for doing what is exactly the same thing that you just did with the Koran?

If you had any care to be intellectually honest, you would evaluate each religious text using the same set of criteria. EITHER you consider each whole work and don’t judge it only by a few lines out of context, OR you damn each religion by the worst few lines you can find from their respective texts and call those the ‘central teaching’. Choose one.

1134

Wouldnt it be more important to evaluate how each religion acts on their texts rather than what the texts themselves say? The texts were written centuries ago and some of the subtelty has surely been lost. Try reading Shakespeare without the notes and his work is less than 500 years old.

1135

If you are evaluating comparative religions, you’d have to do this over the entire history of the religion, not on current times.

And religions don’t act, followers act and rarely as a unified body.

1136

Nope.

A Fundamentalist is one who bases his or her beliefs on a nearly literal interpretation of the book.

A fundy is simply someone who acts (or spouts claims) that the book is the sole source of belief (according to the fundy’s twisted interpretation).

One cannot be a Fundamentalist Atheist, because there is no book that sets out any specific beliefs for atheism.
One may, however, be a fundy atheist, simplistically ascribing all beliefs and actions to a book and insisting–against all evidence of the actual beliefs and actions of believers–that they have to stick to the fundy’s interpetation of the book.

You are not a Fundamentalist and I have never considered you to have the requisite character to be a Fundamentalist. You are, however, a classic fundy.

1137

The story of Jesus and the woman take in adultery is found only in the Gospel of John.
More specifically, it is only found in versions of John after the late 4th century C.E. It is not found in the very earliest manuscripts of John that we have: two 3rd century papyri, and the Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both from the 4th century. Furthermore - at least, according to some scholars - the writing style and vocabulary are very different, containing words not used anywhere else in John. Which suggests that it was a late interpolation.

Subtlety schmubtlety, the texts themselves have been lost. What we have are copies of copies of copies of copies. The very earliest fragment we have (that is accepted by most scholars) dates probably to 125 C.E. That’s about a century after the death of Jesus. It’s a fragment of the Gospel of John. The first complete New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, which I mentioned above.

The New Testament is very well attested in ancient sources - manuscripts, papyri, quotations from the early Church fathers - but between all these sources there are about 400,000 variations. That is, there are more variations than there are words in the whole NT.

Furthermore, while some of these variations are unimportant - to quote Bart Ehrman, “…most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.” - some lead to radically different interpretations of Jesus’ words and thoughts.

For example, Hebrews 2:9 now reads “But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” But two manuscripts, one known to be a copy of a lost 3rd century text, have a different reading. Instead of saying that Jesus died “by the grace of God”, they say that Jesus died “apart from God”. According to the 3rd century Christian writer Origen, that was the version of the majority of manuscripts of his time. I think you will agree that adds a completely different perspective on the Passion.

All this to say that Robert163’s statements:

…are extremely naive and simplistic assumptions. The main thrust of his argument lo, these many pages, is that a “straight reading of the text” is the best way to compare Muhammad and Islam to Jesus and Christianity. But (at least for the NT) a “straight reading of the text” isn’t even possible.

The example from the Letter to the Hebrews, the number of variations compared to the number of words in the New Testament, and the quote all come from Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.

1138

n/m

1139

You know, Tom, talking to you kind of gives me a headache. A very very mild one. Talking to you is a surreal experience, like waking up in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode of the movie version of 1984 where people are chanting “freedom is slavery” or “war is peace”… where the propaganda machine is at full swing… what a fundamental contradiction is your whole position.

How incredibly incredibly — incredibly — bizarre it is that you fault me because I am looking at the - literal - meaning of the words on the page.

If we are driving down the street and you tell me to take a left, and, I take a right, and I say to you “Well, I wasn’t going to take the literal!!! meaning of your directions!!!” How crazy would I sound Tom? Pretty crazy. You said left. You meant left. I was supposed to turn: left.
And ye shall abide in the burning lake of fire and gnashing teeth forever.

And ye shall instruct thy women to be modest.
Here is what you can not do in the first situation: you cannot pretend that lake of fire and forever mean anything but what they say. You can argue about how hot the fire is, but you can’t take the word out of the sentence. You could try to say, "well, the Prophet really meant “ABC” instead of lake of fire. Except… you can’t say that. Because he didn’t say ABC. If you want to say it was written down wrong, or… something else… you can’t say that either, because all you have to go on are the 14 words in the sentence. You may want to add to or take away, but, you can’t. You are stuck with the 14.

Here is what you can not do in the second situation: you can not pretend that women are not supposed to be modest. I don’t give a care, not 1%, that that was “2,359” years ago. It is the word of god, in your text. God is eternal, moving forward and backward in time. What is relevant and true to god a day ago was relevant and true 10,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago. And will be for the next 100,000 years.

Now, you can debate what “modest” means, but, you can not debate the central concept that women are to be modest.

So, yeah, just as angry and ignorant as I sound to you, you need to understand you sound worse to me. Worse in terms of bizarre and you give me a very very mild headache. Words mean what they mean Tom, they just do, it is not my fault negative passages are in your text, not my fault at all. But you want to blame me for pointing out they exist instead of admitting they exist. Oh sure, you give a tacit admission but it is never an admission, full stop. It’s allways “Yeah, but…”.
I really really really - really - can’t believe that you say that my problem is I take the words Literally. We do not have an icon for this but if we did it would be: steam comes out of ears and head explodes.

PS- I realize there are a lot of people who will disregard the two example passages I listed above. Fine, I get that, I do. But the truth is not a popularity contest and if we can’t agree on the meaning of words… well, my friend, that is insanity.

1140

Sure you can, and many do. Many Christians hold “hell” to be only a metaphor, without any literal value at all. No lake of fire, no flames, no little pointy-tailed devils with pitchforks, no brimstone, no sulphur.

There is a fairly substantial view holding for “annihilationism,” or the total destruction of the soul, on the grounds that the soul that sins shall die.

So…nope. No one is bound by the rules you just made up.

1141

It is interesting that you consider something bizarre, simply because you appear to lack the capacity (or willingness) to understand it.

You claim to examine the “literal meaning of the words.” That is simply dumb. It ignores context, (something you insist on doing). It ignores rhetorical devices such as allegory, allusion, parody, paradox, irony, satire, litote, imagery, connotation, and a host of other devices that cannot be read literally without destroying the actual meaning of the text. This is why I identify you as a fundy atheist. You and the faculty of the Moody Bible Institute and the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab all line up to insist on the literal meanings of texts against the clear understanding and scholarship of the overwhelming majority of believers and scholars, (many of whom are not believers).

You have already announced in more than one post that you are driven by an emotional reaction to political events in the world that cause you to ignore everything except the literal, (thus flawed), interpretation of texts. Yet you continue to falsely attack me with ad hominem attacks on my posts claiming that I cannot be correct because I am a believer, when I have never appealed to my beliefs to support any of the factual refutations of your silliness that I have submitted, relying solely on facts.

So, you choose to promote errors based on you beliefs, while rejecting my posts that are based on facts, then accuse me of being misled by beliefs.
The irony is strong with this one.