Originally Posted by Kurts
Franc, you are exactly right about just how Islam "converted" non-believers (been doing some research, have you
?). Regardless of what its more peaceful practioners like to stress, it IS a violent religion. The Koran, Hadith & Summa's are chock full of passages (100's in fact) that point this out. Remember too that all Muslims have a vested interest in suicide if it kills infidels - it provides a direct path to heaven for the killer AND his family.
As to Crossfreak's comment, I have no hard & fast numbers to prove otherwise but Christianity has its bloody past, too & not just the Crusades. The Inquistion comes to mind (remember that the last auto-da-fe occurred in Mexico in the 1860's) not to mention various other heretical purges & battles, wars fought for no other reason than to force one branch or demonination on one country or another, etc. Spanish bishops baptising New World Indian children just to kill them immediately afterward (bashing their heads against rocks was the prefered method); the list of atrocities done in the name of the Christian God is quite lengthly.
To this point though, at least as of today & the recent past, Christianity has settled down & no longer converts folks via the sword. Let's hope it stays that way!
Religion is man-made & man-controlled with its own agendas & power struggles created by man.
As if we somehow know the mind of a god........folly.
That's my biggest beef against religion: not that there might be a supreme being somewhere but that we swear we have all the answers when in reality we have none. Anyone who can come forward & tell me that he/she KNOWS EXACTLY what one god or another is thinking doesn't know squat because he/she is no more or less smarter than I am & I sure as heck don't know either! And this is the problem with Islam today!
The fundamentalists swear they have the answer & the answer is the forceful conversion or the death of infidels.
Back to Deb's posting: this is also why I have no serious issues with torture. This isn't a conventional war we're fighting today; many of the methods we use are necessary to gain information, we have no other choice. That's the one side: the other side of this coin is that it puts us in a position of lowering ourselves to their standards when we should try to maintain the higher moral ground because we
are a moral people.
Then again, we didn't fly airplanes loaded with innocent people into buildings.
And I'll NEVER forget that day!!!!
Kurts,
Thanks for the praise. I know I often come accross as a dumb savage but my major in college was world history. My minors were political science and ancient religions. Never taught a day of class. A letter from my draft board got in the way.
Inquisition, Salem witch trials, religious purges in Mexico, none hold a candle to the Mayan's sacrifice of a human every five minutes during the height of their empires. The Incas were not much better. All to please the gods.
Christianity doesn't even come close.
We know more about Christian killings because it was recorded by the western civilzations that commited the acts. And as you have pointed out, history is written by the victors.
Who speaks for God? There is the rub. One must take all prophets with a bit of skeptisism. Weird how they must speak in riddles. I guess it makes fitting their predictions to future events more malliable and likely.
What ever the source of gospel, I can't imagine the equivocation involved in accepting a command from my Lord that forces pain, suffering or death upon another human. That perversion has to come from an evil that resides in all of us. The choice to accept or reject such motivations must be a singular and personal one. Each and every time.
I for one cannot understand the ease with which some succumb to a choice that logicaly cannot be equated with what is good for the human community. To harm or kill another in the name of religion makes no sense. And yet, mankind has done it since the first ape stood upright with like minded friends and took his neighbor's property. Inventing God's purpose as the reason may quell the guilt in one's basic soul but, civilized man has, sadly, made it an acceptable art.
There is a hole in the sky over Manhattan where 3,000 lives evaporated because someone's God told them to scare us into fearful submission. I won't forget it either. And I won't go into that fearful submission.
I hope, yes to God, that our leaders won't take us there.
roadster with a stick