If you believe that people are basically good

I recognize evil when I see it and its a friggin' Republican.

Does the columnist like me now?

 

I've been called a lot of things, but that's a first. Way to start the new year.

 

Consider the source and move swiftly on.

 

Joe, you think every human being is beyond evil, why wouldn't you agree with this author?

Or is that just christians who are evil?

 

I believe that ALL people are basically evil.

 

And Muslims and Jews...they're monotheists too.

joseph slips up from time to time and excuses Muslims, tho. But never the Jews.

 

Considering you, like almost all the self-appointed defenders of Christianity in the "Yemen" thread, completely, utterly and entirely missed the entire point of my comments in that thread, I guess it can come as no surprise that you'd make stupid comments on the topic here too.

Since you are incapable of grasping the obvious, I'll spell it out for you.

Whenever some wacko Muslim does anything bad, the usual response among many (but not all) Christians has been to spout that Islam is a bad, evil, violent religion. Ah, but when someone points out that Christians haven't been any better, then all the excuses come out of the woodwork. "That never happened! OK, it happened but it wasn't Christians. Well, yes it was but it wasn't "real" Christians. It was a few 'bad apples', blah blah blah..." This blatant double-standard is called "hypocrisy". You see, religions that live in glass houses should not go around about throwing stones and yet that doesn't stop some folks here from screaming "Look at those awful Muslims! We should have a Crusade against them because they're evil unlike us Christians who are entirely good."

Well, how did YOU like it when I compared YOUR religion unfavorably with another one? How did YOU like it when I showed that YOUR religion hasn't been any better than Islam when Christianity was as strong in its societies as Islam is now in Muslim societies? How did YOU feel when I suggested that YOUR religion be changed and that YOU should convert to a "better" religion? I bet that hurt, didn't it?

The reaction of some of the self-appointed "defenders of Christianity" was quite instructive. For the most part, the "defenders" immediately and unthinkingly launched into wild rage, attacks, lies, insults, pathlogical denial, verbal violence - in short, everything that Y'shua ben Yosif preached against or would have preached against according to how his life was recorded in the gospels. Yeah, I'm sure Jesus is REAL proud of how you guys behaved in the "Yemen" thread.

So what makes you think that the verbal attacks on all of Islam won't make even peaceful, moderate Muslims feel any differently when their religion is attacked and they are lumped in with violent lunatics from how you felt when your own co-religionists' moral shortcomings were harped on and you were lumped in with those who commit pogroms, "holy wars", etc.? What makes you think that painting all Muslims as evil terrorists and harping on the outrages committed by the few ass-hole fundamentalist fanatics will create anything other than ill-will within the general Muslim community? Do you really expect them to say "Oh dear, you're right. Our religious beliefs are worthless and evil. We're a bunch of violent loonies. We must convert now. Praise Jesus!"? No. You're just trying to make yourselves feel better about yourselves by self-righteously hating on someone else so you can feel all superior.

Do you finally get it now? Islam isn't any better or worse than Christianity and Christianity isn't any better or worse than Islam so dump the hypocritical, self-righteous superiority complex and, in the words of the guy most Christians so glibly ignore, remove the beam from your own eye before you jump all over the speck in someone else's. Here endeth the sermon. If you don't get it by now, I shake the dust off my sandals at you.

 

Off your meds today? You know what the good psychiatrist told you about that. Now do be a good lad and take your pills.

 

Prove it. I'd like to see the chapter and verse of the Koran saying that the basic premise of Islam is violence.

 

"The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly has made the world evil and ugly." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Of course, ol' Fred here could have said the same of anyone who takes a universally absolute pessimistic view, not just Christians, but he was writing to and about Christians in a society where the overwhleming majority of people claimed to be Christian. Besides, Fred believed in brevity and assumed, incorrectly, that when he pointed to the moon, most of his readers would actually look at the moon and not simply stare like dolts at his finger.

 

At least the Christian god does the killing himself, I suppose

Jude 1:5
I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.


Or not

Hebrews, Chapter 9:

9:22
And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Acts, Chapter 3
3:23
And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.

So at least Christianity doesn't call for that sort of thing.

 

Mind boggling. Simply mind boggling.

Thank you for proving my point so effectively.

 

First of all what is the good and what is the evil? Who decide that? If god exist, that god decides what is good and what is evil. But if he doesn't? As a Christian, I don't believe that people are good or are evil, anyone can achieve the salvation or get dammed. I can't decide if Teresa from Calcutta deserve the "heaven" while Hitler deserve the "hell", only god know that. If god doesn't exist, I think that the good and evil are just things that the humanity invented, always changing to fit the interests of a group of people.

 

Joseph,

There is some truth in whay you say, but please do us the courtesy and don't paint us all with the same brush. In the Yemen thread, (which I admit to titling for effect), I posted the following:

"I don't believe I have ever, in any thread, defended violence done in the name of Christ or the Christian church. Nor have I denied the historical failings of the church in instances where, by advocation or silence, the church has not followed its own teachings against greed or revenge. I doubt superdave has either."

The issue of whether Christianity is superior to Islam is not about violence or self-righteousness. Rather, it is about true v. false religion based on Jesus' righteousness. Because of Jesus' teachings on his own divinity and the purpose of his death, a Christian cannot possibly hold that Christianity is merely co-equal with other religions.

I don't know much about Islam, but I daresay a Muslim could not treat these religions as co-equal without emptying one or both of them of their essential beliefs and doctrines.

 

For joseph pakovits.

You talk much about the atrocities made for the Christian societies. Of course they were lamentabl (based on the new political correct thing) and i hope it doesn't repeat again. But Jesus told us "Don't judge or you will be judged". That just the way that the world is constructed. Saying the truth, If the Spaniards hadn't killed millions of indians (in the name of god) in their conquer of America, not just me, but my whole race wouldn't exist by now.

 

Ah, so "Thou shalt not kill" is now some newfangled PC thing. I see...

What kind of pansy-ass liberal feminazi would think up "Thou shalt not kill" anyway? Maybe the same guy who told his followers to rip the unborn from their mothers' wombs as they conquered the Levant?

Tell that to Daksims, please. Not surprisingly, he and a lot of people like him don't seem to have read that bit.

What "race" are you? Indy 500? Monaco Grand Prix? Ha, ha, is little joke, yes?

Anyway, to be fair to the Spaniards, they generally killed for gold, not God. In fact, a few of the Jesuits who came over to the "new world" with the conquistadors or in the immediate aftermath deplored the way the Indians were treated and actually tried to understand the native religions (mostly for the purposes of better converting them, though, it must be said).

Of course, the ability to view the natives as hell-bound infidel pagans was helpful in slaughtering them with a clear conscience. Then again, it's not like Christians slaughtering, raping and torturing other Christians was exactly unkown at that exact same time, either, seeing as how the conquistadors and Luther were rough contemporaries.

At any rate, Christians as a group have behaved no better than Muslims as a group, thereby rendering any attempt by either side to claim superiorty a sad joke.

 

Point of order: you don't have to quote a whole post if you're only replying to one part.

OK, now to bizness:

The trouble is that extreme moral dualism, believing that one has The Whole, Sole and Only Truth Ever while everyone else is Absolutely Wrong, almost always leads to self-righteousness and eventually to intolerance and violence. This has been repeated again and again and again throughout human history and not always in the realm of religious belief systems either. Whether it's Communists versus Capitalists, Christianity versus Islam or Millwall versus Leeds Utd, The lesson of history is that where such an extreme dualistic belief system of any kind is strong enough, violence follows and when two such belief systems collide, look out! I'm sorry that Christianity is not immune to this experience but it isn't and to try and pretend it is only makes things even worse. If, as your holy book says, "by their works ye shall know them", then Muslims and Christians have been virtually identical since Islam began and neither side can claim superiority. As I proved in the Yemen thread, to claim such superiority only creates hurt and rage in the other side and does nothing to help.

 

But, Joe what you don't get, or choose to ignore, is that Jesus Himself proclaimed HIS (not mine or any other mere mortal) superiority to any other false religion or "god". We, as christians accept Him at His word, not ours.