So you fail to remember its practices in regards to women then?
I think you meant barbarism 
When you whooosh upon a star…
Not bad, could have said berberism.
He probably would have called me on the carpet for that, too.
Let’s everyone keep their religious beliefs to themselves and stop trying to get people to join whatever their respective beliefs are.
We should outlaw public discussion of religion since it’s way worse than saying “fire” in a crowded theatre. Religious fervor has been and still is a pox on society and dangerous to the peace.
Even the numnutz on TV should be outlawed. They are as bad as anything.
Religion causes power struggles, deviceivness, hypocrisy and hatred.
Imagine, there is no religion…
How about these wonderful Christians in Uganda. The death penalty for homosexuality. That’s just heart warming. This bill is being largely driven by American Evangelical groups, by the way.
Christians take a back seat to fucking nobody when it comes to intolerance and violence.
Get with the fucking program. When random individuals or backwards states do something heinous, it’s because sometimes people are monsters, and some countries are just backwards that way.
Unless that person is Muslim, or that country has a Muslim majority. Then it’s because Islam is more evil than Hippies, Commies and Dungeons&Dragons combined.
I’m a little confused. When we’ve counted up the score, does the prize go to the most barbaric or the least barbaric religion? And what exactly is the prize? Without knowing these things, I’m having a hard time caring about, or even understanding, the scorekeeping system. Indeed, I’m tempted to go back to my old system of condemning evil no matter what the underlying motive is.
My point is that Islam does not hold some kind of monopoly on atrocity or intolerance. Christianity is just as capable of producing zealots, and even state sponsored zealotry.
The really depressing thing about the violent homophobia currently going on in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa is that it did not come endemically from those cultures, but from evangelical American missionaries preaching it to them.
OK, we now know magellan01 is a thoughtless bigot on religion as well as sexuality. Is there anything else we should know about you, big fella?
It blows me away how no one will listen to what you is saying. I never thought I’d see this much willful ignorance on this board.
Ok, you know what- Christianity is a stupid fucking religion, and it often leads to disgusting acts. Less now than once upon a time, but the blood of those past acts is still splattered on Christianity in my opinion; secularism is responsible for the decline in barbarity, not the religion itself. This can be said for EVERY religion; it is fucking stupid, and wrong, and evil, and the extent that that evil isn’t practiced in the world today is due DIRECTLY to secularism-- NOT to anything inherently better in its holy books, or the poeple who practice the religion.
But, for right now, we are talking about Islam. We are talking about one particular facet of disgusting religiosity, one that today, right now, affects a lot of people. Can we talk about that? Like, I said, I get it. Christianity sucks too. It really really does. But bringing up those things is a distraction from the subject at hand, unless you want to make an argument about poverty being truly at fault here, which is an interesting idea. But, that isn’t what anyone is doing; no one is making an argument, they are just tu quoquing the fuck out of each other and obscuring the pretty interesting things casdave is trying to say.
Which I guess is ok, since casdave isn’t the OP, and the OP is a dishonest debater and generally a piece of shit, and maybe casdave should open a GD thread about this and we can have an adult discussion (if those assholes don’t show up). I think discussing this stuff is a good idea. It is one of my tenet beliefs that thinking about stuff, and talking about it, and debating to find stronger arguments and discard false or weaker ideas is a good thing, and I thought it was one of the central tenets of this board as well. Which is why I am so fucking saddened to see how people are refusing to engage these ideas.
There’s a lot of actuarial nonsense going on here. All we need observe are the following:
-
The New Testament gives Christians a lot of leeway to disregard those parts of the Old Testament which are offensive to a modern sensibility. There is no such “out” in the Qur’an. While Jesus said he intended to uphold “Every jot and tittle of the law”, he was also given to saying things like “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath”, so there’s plenty of wiggle room there for moderates.
-
The Qur’an gives virtually no room for intellectually honest non-literalist hermeneutics. Why don’t you ever hear moderate Christians arguing for a symbolic interpretaion of the Ten Commandments? It’s because God dictated them to Moses personally. Muslims believe that the entire Qur’an was dictated to Mohammed via the Angel Gabriel. That means it’s far more difficult for intellectually honest Muslims to do what Christians have been able to do, and just flat out ignore those aspects of their scripture considered barbarous today. Islam, in short, is a lot more “all or nothing” than Christianity.
That’s why the average Muslim is a lot more likely than the average Christian to believe things we rightly consider disgusting and medieval, the death penalty for apostates being just one example. Their scripture keeps them on a tighter leash.
Incidentally, much love and respect to casdave for fighting the good fight so tenaciously and convincingly. Nice job fella.
Certainly explains why Christians, worldwide, are such sticklers when it comes to avoiding worldly wealth. Scripture keeps them on such a short leash, and all. And their firm commitment to non-violence, as well.
Sure. As long as we’re not ascribing some quality to Islam that is not found in other religions. If we are, though, then the nature of those religions is pertinent.
[QUOTE=Cort]
The Qur’an gives virtually no room for intellectually honest non-literalist hermeneutics.
[/QUOTE]
You underestimate the capacity of the human mind. The intellectual honesty of any given set of hermeneutics is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
No it doesn’t. Not really. Some Christians try to interpret it that way, but plenty still prefer to hold onto intolerant passages which appeal to them (especially the gay bashing bit inj Leviticus), and this whole angle is irrelevant anyway. The fact remains that Christians are just as willing and able to commit atrocities in the name of their religion as anybody else. Islam isn’t special in that regard, and not for nothing, but most of the really intolerant parts of Islamic law are based directly on Mosaic law.
Cite that Muslims are more likely to hold to these kinds of beliefs than Christians? How is killing gay people any less reprehensible than killing apostates?
Its pretty simple, really. The Amish are Christians, but not all Christians reflect Amish values. Its different for Islam, because all Islamist are fundamentalist whackos, because the Wahhabist sect is. Islam is made up of human beings, but Christians are people. Very, very different.
It’s a fool’s errand to try and quantify the relative amount of “wiggle room” in the sacred texts of the 3 Abrahmic religions, but I will note that Jews don’t have the NT to worry about, and yet they find plenty of “wiggle room” when they need it.
You and the folks on your side here are making the mistake of putting the cart before the horse. It’s not religion that changed first in Europe, but the civil society that changed and dragged the Christian religion along with it. And that’s what has to happen in Muslim countries. The culture needs to change, as it has largely done in places like Turkey, and the religion will come around. It will have to, or it will be rejected. There is nothing inherent in Islam to prevent that from happening.
No need to go that far in defense of the indefensible. The cite has already been given earlier in this thread regarding Muslims, but surely you’re not going to claim that ~50% of Christians want to kill gays. Are you?