Manchester next

[ConanTheBarber]

I am saying it is relevant and anyone unbiased would acknowledge that.

Then give an argument. You are very hysterical ... very difficult to have a discussion with.

Many Imams deplored islamic terrorisms. You know, Islam doesn't have a Pope. Actually, ISIS is killing mostly Islamic people, and is armed by Saudi Arabia which is allied of the good, white, christian USA.

All long familiar facts.
They don't change the fact that the Pope is probably too informed to apologize for the church's support of the Tutsi genocide of Hutus when no such genocide occurred. It was Hutus killing Tutsis. Very basic stuff.

You don't like your own medicine?

My medicine?

That there were other muslims trying to overthrow Gaddaffi doesn't change a thing, christians presidents did what you said only islamic terrorists do.

If Muslims were trying to overthrow Gaddaffi, then an alignment of those aims with Western political aims shows that the military action was against a dictator and not against a religion.
"Christian presidents did what you said only Islamic terrorists do"?
What is that action, and where do I say only Islamic terrorists do them?
It's not your habit to be specific, but it might be nice if you sometimes were.

If its muslims, than it demosntrates that Islam is the evil, if western christian presidents do the same, then hell, it was just a mistake, let's keep going and hate muslims.

If it's Muslims saying they're committing violence in the name of jihad, then I take them at their word. Why don't you?

You should read the Holy Bible sometimes, so you wouldn't make such stupid statements. Maybe.

I quoted the Quran to show its eschatology. Do you have a problem with that? If so, why?
In what, precisely, did my stupidity reveal itself?
I've read a good deal of the Bible. It has a lot of violence, the Old Testament having more even than one sees in the Quran.
But that violence depicts the arbitrary, almost psychotic wilfulness of a stone-age god.
Nowhere are Christians told to take up the battle against proponents of other beliefs and against their fellow Christians in a battle that cannot end until Christianity is triumphant.
But Muslims are told that in over 100 verses of the Quran.

 

[coopturn]

So what is your point in posting this video? Are you hung up on the word crusade and trying to draw a parallel with those of the middle ages, because there isn't one? Billy Graham has held crusades all over the world. Does that have some significance to the crusades of the middle ages? No, not at all.

 

[dazza46]

Can we please put the manchester thing to rest as i actualy live in the manchester area. Mores the point my nephew lost a school friend in the desaster.

 

[ConanTheBarber]

historically wrong
Killing unbelievers was actually declared by popes Leo IV and John VIII to be spiritually beneficial for Christian soldiers: Their sins could be erased if they killed in defense of the Church.

the bible itself does expressly not only allows for such violence, it is often recited with praise.... as it was commanded by god himself on several occasions

God demands purity and strict obedience, and idolatry and blasphemy were punishable by death (Exodus 20:3, 5)
God can justify the slaughter of entire communities (Deuteronomy 20:10-18).

"[Joshua's army killed everyone in Jericho], both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.... Joshua defeated the whole land... he left no one remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded."
(Joshua 6:21 and 10:40)

"I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.... The enemies have vanished in everlasting ruins; their cities you have rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.... The LORD will swallow [up his enemies] in his wrath, and fire will consume them. [He] will destroy their offspring from the earth ... their children from ... humankind." (Psalms 9:2, 6, and 21:9-10)

"[Thousands of angels] proclaimed with loud voices: 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth, wisdom and might, honor and glory and praise!'... I saw heaven wide open, and a white horse appeared; its rider's name was Faithful and True, for he is just in judgment and just in war.... [H]e was robed in a garment dyed in blood, and he was called the Word of God. The armies of heaven followed him.... Out of his mouth came a sharp sword to smite the nations; for it is he who will rule them with a rod of iron, and tread the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the sovereign Lord." (Revelation 5:11-12 and 19:11, 13-15)

The cases of Leo IV and John VIII are poorly chosen. They both ruled at times when Muslims were making incursions into Italy itself. This was defensive violence, far different from jihad.

Revelation is a fantasy that doesn't seem to motivate many Christians to violent action. (I don't know of any personally. Do you?) Again, nothing like the many exhortations to jihad in the Quran cited by jihadi after jihadi.

Though early Jewish groups did commit violence under orders from Yahweh, there has never been an injunction to continue the violence often depicted in the Old Testament.

Jesus' own injunction was peaceful. When James and John urged reprisal against Samaritans who rejected him, he rebuked them.

 

[marinera]

I am not a Christian and would welcome the decline of all religion.
I asked you for a link proving that "the Roman Church espoused the view that Tutsi are more close to European than Hutsi and so endorsed genocide." Do you have one?
....

You are a christian to the bone dude. And what your search engine has that you can't find links by yourself?
https://books.google.it/books?id=YG...e Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda&f=false

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/29/pope-catholics-rwanda-genocide-church

http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/genocide-rwanda

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...rch-apologise-failure-rwanda-genocide-vatican

 

[ConanTheBarber]

I would love to be able to say you are wrong. Unfortunately I cannot.

Christianity has three ways of modifying or changing beliefs:

• Church councils or similar, particularly common in the Roman Catholic church, but found in the Anglican church, the Orthodox, and doubtless others.
• Textual interpretation, particularly in the protestant tradition. Absolutely everything must be understood against the key statement "love God and love your neighbour". This method is common in protestant churches.
• Continuing revelation. This is particularly common in Quakers, charismatic churches.

To some extent all Christian churches use all three. There are also inter-denominational organisations.

The Christian Church can and does change. The Church today is not the same as it was a century ago. It has adapted. It is also possible for the Christian Church to say that some organisations that claim they are Christian are not, or that Christians should have done more to stand against wrongs. I understand the Jewish faith has comparable mechanisms for change.

By contrast Islam does not have such mechanisms. This faith is regarded by its believers as incapable of change. The majority of Moslems have traditionally not been particularly well educated in their faith. The majority just don't know what their faith says. An issue is that we now have a young generation better educated than their parents who are discovering what their faith says.

The world desperately needs to see Islam modify its core beliefs. This is a challenge for Islam first of all, but it is something that Islam has to do. What we have now is a fudge: the majority of Islamic communities and mosques quietly ignore parts of what their faith says. While a fudge is better than nothing it is not adequate. Islam has to do better. I suppose the follow through is that the whole of humanity has to tell Islam that it has to sort out this mess. And it is Islam that has to budge.

The Quran is published in Russia (in a Russian translation) but is censored - the bad bits are taken out. From an academic perspective I have all sorts of issues about censorship. However the UK does have laws about inciting violence, and this does have impact on what can be put in print. If it wasn't a holy text it could not be published. Of course in a digital age there is no way of stopping access to a text, but I do wonder if in the UK we need a censored Quran, issued by and fully supported by mosques in the UK.

An excellent post. I scarcely know what to single out for agreement.
I agree that reform of Islam will be very difficult.
I imagine you know that there is a solid body of evidence that the Quran has had a number of editions — that it is not the inviolate, straight-from-the-horse's-mouth account that legend asserts.
Some of those engaged in this research have gone underground because it is dangerous to suggest that the Quran and its message have undergone any changes at all.
This shows how resistant many of the Muslim faithful are to change of any kind.
If your Holy Book is basically dictation from the Creator, you have no wiggle room at all with the result.
My only hope is that rising levels of education will make the premises of the Quran seem absurd.
But the idea that knowledge of science and the world would reduce the hold of religion on mankind has come to seem pretty conjectural. The opposite is occurring in many places.

I have no problem with Quakerism, your faith, Jason. It has almost no dogma and equates the experience of god with the experience of love, no?
Can't go far wrong with that.

 

[marinera]

....

If it's Muslims saying they're committing violence in the name of jihad, then I take them at their word. Why don't you?

....

Bush is a Christian and said he has done a war against Iraq (a criminal war) and that God told him to do that. You are not taking him at his words. All your attempts to split hairs are trying to hide how you carry the very same 'We are better than them and our god is the true one' that islamic terrorists carry. Busted!

 

[ConanTheBarber]

You are a christian to the bone dude.

You should tell my bone. I haven't been a Christian since I was 11.
I am, however, interested in religion. All religion, actually.

And what your search engine has that you can't find links by yourself?

If there's something useful in those links, then pull that stuff out. I'll read it then.
The link you initially gave was useless.

 

[ConanTheBarber]

Bush is a Christian and said he has done a war against Iraq (a criminal war) and that God told him to do that. You are not taking him at his words. All your attempts to split hairs are trying to hide how you carry the very same 'We are better than them and our god is the true one' that islamic terrorists carry. Busted!

Please, little fool.
I do not believe in god.

 

[marinera]

You should tell my bone. I haven't been a Christian since I was 11.
I am, however, interested in religion. All religion, actually.

Oh really? And you know the violence in the Quran but ignore the violence in the bible?

I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh" (Deut. 32:42)

Deut 20:16-18
But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.


1 Samuel 15:3
"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'"


Numbers 25:1-15
ERV
Holy Bible: Easy-to-Read Version
1While the Israelites were camped near Acacia, the men committed sexual sins with Moabite women. 2-3The Moabite women invited the men to come and join in their sacrifices to their false gods. So the Israelites joined in worshiping these false gods—they ate the sacrifices and worshiped these gods. There the Israelites began worshiping the false god, Baal of Peor. And the Lord became very angry with them.
The Lord said to Moses, “Get all the leaders of these people. Then kill them so that all the people can see. Lay their bodies before the Lord. Then the Lord will not show his anger against all the Israelites.”


You can find other similar peaceful verses in the Bible by yourself.

 

[Jason]

@marinera, the whole of the Old Testament is replaced by the New Testament. The OT is perceived as the story of a people struggling to understand what God requires and often failing. The phrase that is often used to describe the position of the OT is God seen "through a glass, darkly".

The OT is full of terrible stories. Abraham intended to murder his son as a human sacrifice, because he thought God demanded this. The OT story says God stopped this. The NT says that Abraham was wrong, that he had misunderstood what was wanted. The OT indeed demands genocide (one of your examples); the NT rejects it.

Jesus summarises the whole of the OT, the "law and the prophets" in two commands: love God and love your neighbour. Every single word and story in the OT should be read against these commands, and time and again it is clear that the Jews got it wrong. For that matter many individual Christians subsequently have got it wrong.

Judaism also updates the OT.

 

[ConanTheBarber]

Oh really? And you know the violence in the Quran but ignore the violence in the bible?

I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh" (Deut. 32:42)

Deut 20:16-18
But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them—the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God.


1 Samuel 15:3
"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'"


Numbers 25:1-15
ERV
Holy Bible: Easy-to-Read Version
1While the Israelites were camped near Acacia, the men committed sexual sins with Moabite women. 2-3The Moabite women invited the men to come and join in their sacrifices to their false gods. So the Israelites joined in worshiping these false gods—they ate the sacrifices and worshiped these gods. There the Israelites began worshiping the false god, Baal of Peor. And the Lord became very angry with them.
The Lord said to Moses, “Get all the leaders of these people. Then kill them so that all the people can see. Lay their bodies before the Lord. Then the Lord will not show his anger against all the Israelites.”
https://www.bible.com/bible/406/NUM.25.1-15.erv
https://www.bible.com/bible/406/NUM.25.1-15.erv
You can find other similar peaceful verses in the Bible by yourself.
https://www.bible.com/bible/406/NUM.25.1-15.erv

This shows you are unable to read. I have no trouble acknowledging that the Old Testament is probably more violent than the Quran. In fact, I have said so on this very thread. But you would have had to read ....

I think it is time for each of us to turn our attention to other posters.

Life is short, you know.

Take care.

Stay well.

 

[deleted37010]

@marinera, the whole of the Old Testament is replaced by the New Testament.

can you tell me when this happened?
replaced?

 

[Drifterwood]

all the time.... we kill innocent people all around the world....routinely.... and it is referred to as collateral damage... never as children playing or a wedding or funeral filled with innocent people
all over the world......every time we kill innocent people... we create hearts and minds that hate us and want revenge...

Nearly 90 Percent Of People Killed In Recent Drone Strikes Were Not The Target
U.S. drone strikes have killed scores of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/civilian-deaths-drone-strikes_us_561fafe2e4b028dd7ea6c4ff

I won't be rude, because I would like you to actually consider this.

When YOU have what you call collateral damage, is that because you actually have a target that you consider a threat (a serious threat)? and because of the rare opportunities you have to neutralise that threat sometimes means that a range of innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time near your target get caught in the fire? This is what you mean, right?

You are using this to excuse an attack on a bunch of teeny boppers? Can you tell me who was the target that threatened the existence of any ISIS members or the ISIS cause? Were there military leaders at the concert, warlords? Key strategists? Key propagandists? people known to have beheaded hostages?

When you understand terrorism, and yes your country is quite capable of using it, please rejoin this conversation.

Otherwise, stop pissing on the graves of kids before they are even buried.

 

[deleted37010]

I won't be rude, because I would like you to actually consider this.

When YOU have what you call collateral damage, is that because you actually have a target that you consider a threat (a serious threat)? and because of the rare opportunities you have to neutralise that threat sometimes means that a range of innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time near your target get caught in the fire? This is what you mean, right?

You are using this to excuse an attack on a bunch of teeny boppers? Can you tell me who was the target that threatened the existence of any ISIS members or the ISIS cause? Were there military leaders at the concert, warlords? Key strategists? Key propagandists? people known to have beheaded hostages?

When you understand terrorism, and yes your country is quite capable of using it, please rejoin this conversation.

Otherwise, stop pissing on the graves of kids before they are even buried.

i'm simply stating that we drop bombs on kids all the time...

 

[Jason]

can you tell me when this happened?
replaced?

For Christians, about AD30. The key Bible verse is Luke X:27.

For Judaism I don't think there is a single statement. I suppose it might be possible to argue that there was some hint as early as Maccabees (somewhere in the four books) but it's later developments which show the change - Zohar for example. I'm sure there are people who can give a far better answer for Judaism than I can.

 

[marinera]

@marinera, the whole of the Old Testament is replaced by the New Testament. The OT is perceived as the story of a people struggling to understand what God requires and often failing. The phrase that is often used to describe the position of the OT is God seen "through a glass, darkly".

The OT is full of terrible stories. Abraham intended to murder his son as a human sacrifice, because he thought God demanded this. The OT story says God stopped this. The NT says that Abraham was wrong, that he had misunderstood what was wanted. The OT indeed demands genocide (one of your examples); the NT rejects it.

Jesus summarises the whole of the OT, the "law and the prophets" in two commands: love God and love your neighbour. Every single word and story in the OT should be read against these commands, and time and again it is clear that the Jews got it wrong. For that matter many individual Christians subsequently have got it wrong.

Judaism also updates the OT.

I happened to have studied in a Catholic school and what you are saying is not true according to them: the old testament is not replaced by the new one, the two books together are written by the holy spirit and contain God' truth. If one points to the contradictions, they just say something like 'The God' paths are mysterious' or some similar meaningless statement. Fact is,any part of the Bible is picked up according to what the priest wants to push as God' message at any given moment.

 

[Drifterwood]

i'm simply stating that we drop bombs on kids all the time...

You don't.

You drop bombs or more accurately send drones against known enemy combatants. A range of people of all ages and innocence get caught in the cross fire.

Please stop telling me that this justifies blowing kids where I live to pieces at a pop concert.

 

[marinera]

i'm simply stating that we drop bombs on kids all the time...

Yep. The term 'collateral' is generally mere hypocrisy, if you bomb a city you know for sure that most of people killed will be innocents. And if 'intelligent' bombs, drones or whatever show to not be that intelligent and neverthless you employ them again and again, you know for sure that you re going to kill innocents. But hey, they speak a different language, they have a different religion, so...who cares? It's not terrorism, it is just 'collateral damage'.

 

[Drifterwood]

Yep. The term 'collateral' is generally mere hypocrisy, if you bomb a city you know for sure that most of people killed will be innocents. And if 'intelligent' bombs, drones or whatever show to not be that intelligent and neverthless you employ them again and again, you know for sure that you re going to kill innocents. But hey, they speak a different language, they have a different religion, so...who cares? It's not terrorism, it is just 'collateral damage'.

You invaded my country and destroyed its culture almost completely.

Am I justified in blowing up your children?

Grand Children?