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Ed Please tell me why you kill

baron said:
There is. And if you read the thread you'd know what it was. But I'm happy to expand that to 10 years, or 20 years, or 100 years. But you know what I think? I think you want to discuss the Crusades.
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If the purpose is to stack up the deaths and atrocities of each religion side by side so as to say "yes, Christians committed atrocities, but they're worse" I could not be interested less.
 
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baron said:
There is. And if you read the thread you'd know what it was. But I'm happy to expand that to 10 years, or 20 years, or 100 years. But you know what I think? I think you want to discuss the Crusades.
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As long as the relevance of the content of religious doctrine is denied as a factor in the incidence of sectarian violence, there is no need to discuss the Crusades. But if the texts of holy books are given as the causes of such violence, then it becomes relevant, because these books were in existence in the canons of the major religions as early as the Crusades.

Personally I see no need to go back that far, but if someone is to say that the Quran justifies attacks on Christians, or the Torah justifies usurpation of Palestinian land or the NT excuses crusades, then we would be entitled to see if these sorts of thing have happened continuously throughout the history of these books.

My point is that they have not, and that the violence is therefore seemingly not doctrinal in origin, contrary to the implication of the OP.
 
"He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed."

Seems pretty plain to me.

Not sure if Exodus is part of Islamic texts, but this passage does belong to Christianity and Judaism.
 
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jaydeehess said:
"He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed."

Seems pretty plain to me.

Not sure if Exodus is part of Islamic texts, but this passage does belong to Christianity and Judaism.
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Yes but Christians and Jews are not consistent in how assiduous they are at enforcing that principle. Sometimes they are, but most often they aren't. That's the phenomenon that requires to be explained.
 
Craig B said:
Yes but Christians and Jews are not consistent in how assiduous they are at enforcing that principle. Sometimes they are, but most often they aren't. That's the phenomenon that requires to be explained.
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yep, there's the rub isn't it.

We also don't put people to death for having sex with an animal even though we regard with a lot "ICK".

In all three major religions there are sects that focus on various parts of their religious texts and ignore or gloss over others.

IOW it's the interpretation of religious texts that is the problem. Above we were told that the Branch Davidians were not Christians. Some will also say that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are not Christians, but what is meant is that they are not "true Christians" as based on the speaker's own interpretation of his own religious texts. Mormons certainly do not deny Christ. IIRC neither did the B.D. Witnesses, again iirc, simply alter the divinity of Jesus (for no particular good reason).

In this thread, and I haven't read the whole thing, has anyone noted the sectarian violence between Catholics (who historically have regarded Protestants as heretical) and Protestants has an analogue in the division between Shi'ite and Sunni or the extremity of Wahhabism compared to , for instance Westboro B.C.?
 
baron said:
Yeah, kind of exactly what I just said. So his actual motivation was not Christianity, was it? You've just said as much. It was money and power, like I stated. Allow me to remind you of the topic of conversation; from the first line of the OP:



So your example is completely irrelevant. You picked someone whose underlying motive was money and pretended it was his Christian faith. And you assumed I'd simply accept that because of your self-proclaimed expertise in the matter. Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

Look, why not simply bring up the Crusades? It's a tried and trusted fall-back position for people who are absolutely dead set on exonerating Islam from its horrific history and placing every other religion in a bad light. Go on, say it, before you drop any more clangers..

Errrrrrrrr, what about the Crusades?
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Well, what would your answer be? The crimes committed by Islam are doctrinal in origin, but not those of other religions? That is of course absurd, and as the holy books of both religions were already in existence at the time of the Crusades, it would be relevant, to dispose of that argument, to discuss these long- past conflicts, wouldn't it? But it's not, of course, because the propensity of believers to perpetrate violence is not constant. A thousand years ago it was high in Christianity and lower in Islam. Now seemingly the opposite. Why? To explain that we may not need to go so far back, but if it was relevant there is no reason why we should be afraid to do it. Errrrrr.
 
Is there anyone posting in this thread that would disagree with the following statement:

Some people are motivated to do really bad things (such as terrorism) for explicitly religious reasons.

And to be clear, "religious reasons" means things like scripture/doctrine, God's commands, a reward in the afterlife, etc.
 
Religion is like software for society. Individual groups compete against each other, and new ideas are being born and tested in Darwinian way. Amount of violence against other groups is sensitive parameter. Too much and you either kill yourself, or you will unite everyone to go against you, like third reich. Too little and you will be stepped upon and forgotten .. like Tibet. Christians seems to have somewhat nailed it. Like we will kinda kill you but we will kinda feel bad about it. Islamism is just episodic turbulence, clash of competing ideas caused by globalism. Islam will move toward pacifism, and west will move away from it .. but equilibrium will be set. It always is.
Only question is, how many people will have to die this time ..

And religion as a peace philosophy ? How can that work ? You can only be pacifist as long as your neighbor is ..
 
baron said:
.....It's a tried and trusted fall-back position for people who are absolutely dead set on exonerating Islam from its horrific history.........
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Why on earth would you think I fell into such a category? Really, you do have a bizarre way of twisting arguments. The OP didn't suit you, so you deliberately re-worked it to represent the period you want it to. You were called on that, as the Americans say, and you don't like it, so you're thrashing about, spraying accusation after accusation in an effort to sully the argument, and have your opponents somehow seen as defenders of Islam. I am no such thing. I have a disdain for all religion, very much including Islam.
 
baron said:
Your knowledge of Leopold of Belgium is equal to your knowledge of the Irish Troubles. Carry on making unsubstantiated claims, I won't challenge you with facts any further.
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Sure, I am only Irish and I only lived through all of that nonsense. What would I know about it?
 
baron said:
There is. And if you read the thread you'd know what it was. But I'm happy to expand that to 10 years, or 20 years, or 100 years. But you know what I think? I think you want to discuss the Crusades.
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How about Rwanda? Church sanctioned genocide supported by RCC clergy.
 
Craig B said:
The second misconception is that the conflict is about religion, republicans being Catholic and loyalists being Protestant. It is not religion that lies at the root of the Troubles. The conflict in Ireland is about national identity and territory and not about being Catholic or Protestant. Unlike Al Qaeda, religion is not what drives the paramilitaries.​
I beg leave to dissent from the view that "being Protestant" has no influence on the thinking or actions of members of the Orange Order.
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And you would be correct. It never ceases to amaze me how the least informed attempt to tell me about my own country and the events through which I have lived. They insist I should no believe my own lying eyes.
 
I Am The Scum said:
Is there anyone posting in this thread that would disagree with the following statement:

Some people are motivated to do really bad things (such as terrorism) for explicitly religious reasons.

And to be clear, "religious reasons" means things like scripture/doctrine, God's commands, a reward in the afterlife, etc.
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No argument with that at all, and it's amazing the lengths that some go to to muddy the waters, and try and blame that which divides people on something else, so they can come back and say the politically correct thing ......... Islam, (or insert other religion here), is a religion of peace.
 
Craig B said:
Well, what would your answer be? The crimes committed by Islam are doctrinal in origin, but not those of other religions? That is of course absurd,
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It's absurd to you because you've decided it's not true. You listen to the justification given by ISIS and their associates for any of their crimes and on almost every occasion they quote scripture. Not only do we have the religious texts, we have the perpetrators actually telling us that they are the reason for the actions, and you still dismiss the idea as absurd. What more could possibly convince you?

Craig B said:
and as the holy books of both religions were already in existence at the time of the Crusades, it would be relevant, to dispose of that argument, to discuss these long- past conflicts, wouldn't it? But it's not, of course, because the propensity of believers to perpetrate violence is not constant. A thousand years ago it was high in Christianity and lower in Islam. Now seemingly the opposite. Why? To explain that we may not need to go so far back, but if it was relevant there is no reason why we should be afraid to do it. Errrrrr.
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Christianity, especially in the West, evolves and is allowed to evolve; broadly speaking it changes with the times. Islam is not flexible, almost all flavours are totally impervious to reform by their very nature and as the rest of the world changes Islam finds itself more and more out of step with the non-Islamic world. Hence, conflict. Of course, Islam was specifically tailored to be vehicle of conquest whilst Christianity was all about knowing God and redemption, so that's also a factor.

That still leaves the matter of why certain fundamental religious groups (e.g. some Jews) don't enact the depraved aspects of their religious texts whilst large swathes of Islam do. Whatever the answer is, it does not render invalid the link between religious tenets and action. If Mr Hussein and Mr Ali both read a text that says, "You must kill homosexuals," and Mr Hussein does just this but Mr Ali does not, it is ridiculous to use that discrepancy to maintain that the text did not provoke Mr Hussein into action.
 
abaddon said:
Sure, I am only Irish and I only lived through all of that nonsense. What would I know about it?
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No idea, since you choose to just snipe instead of contributing. Don't much care, either, as your opinions will not cause me to discard widely accepted perspectives on the matter.
 
baron said:
..........If Mr Hussein and Mr Ali both read a text that says, "You must kill homosexuals," and Mr Hussein does just this but Mr Ali does not, it is ridiculous to use that discrepancy to maintain that the text did not provoke Mr Hussein into action.
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It's quite revealing that you would choose Hussein and Ali as your names for this example, when Smith and Jones would be equally as relevant. Your agenda isn't very well hidden.
 
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