I said nothing about how many versions of the Qur’an there are.
The number of versions of the Qur’an has nothing to do with your thread.
Even with a single version of any holy book, there will always be different followers with different interpretations–and this still has nothing to do with the question in the OP.
The OP asked a loaded question that provided a choice between two options and acted as though one of them must be correct. In reality, neither of the provided options was correct.
Your inability to correctly frame a question is not my problem.
Hijacking your own thread to accuse another poster of a comment that that poster has not made does nothing to answer the question, although it might indicate the way in which you had hoped to force the discussion.
Quote:
The Thirty Years War (1618-48) was the most destructive conflict in Europe before the twentieth-century world wars. There are several explanations of what caused the war, but these rarely discuss the merits of alternative interpretations, nor do they make their own underlying assumptions explicit. Anglophone scholarship generally fits the war into a wider struggle against Spanish Habsburg hegemony, whereas older German writing saw it as a conflict beginning in the Holy Roman Empire but fusing with wars elsewhere. Others place greater emphasis on structural causes, interpreting the war as the culmination of a ‘General Crisis of the seventeenth century’ attributed to social, economic or environmental factors. More recently, there has been a return to the view that it was a religious war, or that it was a ‘state-building war’ related to the transition from medieval to modern political organisation. This article reviews these approaches and investigates how they work as historical explanations, before suggesting an alternative. It identifies the difficulty in defining the war as a chief obstacle to explaining its causes. While related to other European conflicts, the Thirty Years War was primarily a struggle over the political and religious order within the Empire. It was neither inevitable, nor the result of irreconcilable religious antagonism. Rather, it stemmed from a coincidence of tension within the Empire with a political and dynastic crisis within the Habsburg monarchy that undermined confidence in the emperor’s ability to resolve long-standing constitutional problems.
Sorry, but there’s been too much moving of goalposts. As I mentioned, it is absolutely clear that in the plain text of Luke 19:27, Jesus specifically asks his followers to gather and kill unbelievers.
By your own definitions, you have labeled Christianity a ‘violent religion’. You have failed to describe any substantive difference between Christianity and Islam in this respect.
Lots of brilliant theologians, such as Saint Augustine certainly believed that the teaching of Christ called for torture and war.
Augustine and IIRC Thomas Aquinas both strongly spoke out in favor for the execution and torture of heretics and used “the teachings of Christ” to justify it and both were vastly more versed in them then you, I, or anyone on this site will ever be.
With all due respect have you ever actually read the New Testament?
It’s got a lot more than just the Sermon on the Mount.
You’re familiar with Revelations when Jesus comes back to Earth and commits genocide and mass murder on a grand scale dwarfing anything done by Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
well, that is one opinion. mine differs. it seems kind of funny, you and I NEVER bump heads unless it has to do with religion. you can question my validity or objectivity all you want, go ahead, I don’t claim to have any, in fact I claim the opposite. in fact it’s your objectivity that I am doubtful about, much more than mine.
i really don’t know how it is possible to “hijack my own thread” but maybe we could let some other moderator make that decision in the future.
1- I don’t care what Aquinas had to say, about, anything
2- Aquinas thinking that jesus advocated torture is not the same thing as jesus - actually - advocating torture and war, is it?
3- Mohammed most certainly DID advocate war and slavery and other forms of violence. He even participated in these acts. Talking about Aquinas will not change that. It is merely your attempt to distract us from this fact.
Yeah, that’s in the book of Revelation’s, written by John, which many religious historians think was a dream or a vision. My own personal opinion was that it was a psychotic delusion.
well, actually, there is a substantive difference. you do not agree. ok. but I am not going to spend any more time defending a religion (Christianity) that i despise just so you can feel like you are scoring points and “winning” a debate. like it or not, Jesus DID have a rather unique message of peace and pacifism which is not found in the other 2 judeo christian sects.
You can argue that all wars are really about politics, and usually about commerce. This is true of the Thirty Years War. But it’s fallacious to leave out the immediate causes.
It’s like saying that World War Two was about British economic domination of European trade. Yeah, there’s something to that, but there’s also the whole Nazi thing. Leaving that out is misleading. Or like saying that the American Civil War was about the North’s economic domination of the South: that isn’t entirely wrong, but there was this slavery thing that was really key to the affair.
The Thirty Years War was about religion, the way the ACW was about slavery. That’s what led to the burning of the cities and the annihilation of nearly a third of the population.
Also, Iesus could be a bit of a jerk, sometimes. He once improvised a whip made of ropes and started beating the crap off some harmless merchants who were peacefully going about their day. And let’s not forget the time he magically murdered a fig tree because it didn’t have fruit at the time he had the munchies.
Today - at least from what we see reported in the media - justifying violence with religion seems to be more popular among Muslims than Christians. However that does not mean that the Muslim parts of the world are generally more violent. If you compare international statistics of homiciderates, you will find the first country with a sizeable Muslim population ranked at 25. And that one is Nigeria, which is still half Christian.
Violence in the Muslim regions of the world has recently taken the more spectacular forms of terrorism or civil war. But I need to see proof that these parts of the world are really seeing *more *violence than the rest.
Thank you for conceding that your claims about the New Testament were extremely stupid.
That is an amazingly anti-intellectual statement about one of the most renowned theologians of Christianity.
Ok, claiming that you actually know more about the message of the New Testament than two of Christianity’s most renowned theologians(I’ll assume that you feel the same scorn for Saint Augustine) strikes me as extremely stupid.
This is a little claiming I know more about the Civil War than James McPherson or me challenging Stephen Hawking about theoretical physics.
Now, if someone were to challenge Stephen Hawking I’d think it fair to ask him to provide some support for us to be confident in his knowledge and understanding.
Perhaps you could give us some reasons to feel that your a bigger expert than either of them. I.E. languages you speak, degrees you’ve received etc.?
3- Mohammed most certainly DID advocate war and slavery and other forms of violence. He even participated in these acts. Talking about Aquinas will not change that. It is merely your attempt to distract us from this fact.
Ok, show me where jesus ACTUALLY calls for war and torture in the New testament. If you can do this, then, feel free, insult me, deride, correct me, whatever about my false claims of expertise and general ignorance about the bible. But if you can’t show any such passage then maybe, maybe… you should refrain from such remarks.
You know, that’s actually a good point. Like, a really really good point. Again, I am not abandoning my position completely, ie, at it’s source Islam is violent, but I am willing to concede that it is a very complex issue and culture plays a very big role.
If the name of Islam is being blackened, and it is, it’s down to ISIS and others like them. These goons claim to revere Muhammed yet they’re dragging his name down to the dirt in the eyes of many in the non-Muslim world, who unfortunately seem incapable of distinguishing between the extremists and the peaceful majority. All their brains register after each fresh atrocity is, “Those fucking Muslims are at it again.” This is what ISIS is achieving in its idiocy. It bears a heavy responsibility for it.
And, yes, there’s some bloodthirsty stuff in the Koran. So is there in the Bible. The vast majority of Muslims and Christians pay no attention to it at all, correctly figuring that it’s irrelevant to the main thrust of their faiths.