Chris­tian­ity and Islam think they’re the key to sal­va­tion and Chris­ti­ans in par­tic­u­lar have a his­tory of killling people who think oth­er­wise.

Chris­tian­ity and Islam think they’re the key to sal­va­tion and Chris­ti­ans in par­tic­u­lar have a his­tory of killling people who think oth­er­wise.

Just for starters, it was Christians who conquered America. That's around 100 million people eliminated. That's not pretty.

Islam does, I think, have stuff about killling apostates, but does not advocate killing unbelievers. Though I'm sure quote-mining can 'prove' it does.

In fact, Islam has historically been far more lenient than Christianity.

In the middle ages, heresy would get you killed. Jews were tolerated with periodic pogroms and that's about it. You get anri-semites saying look at how many countries expelled Jews - they must have deserved it! - that was the Christian world where Jews were lucky to be tolerated at all.

Of course you can't lay charges at the foot of Jesus. Just as you can't blame Mohammed for everything done in his name. You can't blame Marx for everything done in his name.

dogsmilk wrote:
Well it's kind of a new one - America has never really come to terms with its existence being the result of such a massive genocide. One prepetrated by European Christians who frequently made religious references, felt the Good Lord was on their side and tried to impose their religion on the natives they hadn't wiped out. But of course, that doesn't say anything about Christianity is inherently all about or how Christians in general act.
Indeed, beyond Christianity white Europeans can seen as historically a very warlike and brutal bunch of people. I'm a white European and I don't think the bloody history of 'my people' says anything about me as a person though.

Islam is not predicated on killing unbelievers. The Islamic empire - at its peak far more advanced than Europe was at the time - quite blatantly did not havea policy of killing people just because they weren't Muslims. Though of course they thought they were better than non-Muslims - just as Christians, Jews and atheists tend to think what they believe is best.

'My game' is not putting billions of people into the same little box and writing them off. I don't have a vision of the world that entails demonising other groups and allowing myself to be whipped up into a frenzy by propaganda.

Of course Muslims have perpetrated atrocities - who hasn't? The point was, there was a long period of time where Islam was far more enlightened and tolerant than Christianity. These things aren't fixed. Christianity, Judiasm, Islam, whatever are whatever people decide to make them. It's not the religion that causes atrocities, it's people deciding touse thereligion as a justification. Like you said, you can't blame Jesus for millions of people being killed in his name.
Mohammed was an Arab in an area and era where life was tough and he ended up fighting for his embryonic religion. It's not exactly surprising the Koran contains a bunch of stuff to do with war, because Mohammed fought battles.
So are you suggesting that because Jews and Muslims came into conflict over Isdrael in the 20th century, it must therefore follow they hated each other hundreds of years ago?

Yada yada.. but this next one takes the biscuit...
I don't think he did.
Though I notice the 'child sex' thing - has it occurred to you that modern age of consent simply did not exist for much of history? People have been marrying what we'd now consider children for hundreds of years. Modern Islam doesn't go round promoting sex with children does it?

Why is it somehow better? I'd need to go back through the New Testament to find examples, but I see to recall not everything Jesus said was all hippie love-in stuff.

I didn't say Christianity was 'worse', nor am I trying to suggest that. I am saying they are all what people make them and none of them are inherently good or bad. Islam is evil if people make it evil. I think it's a slam-dunk historical fact that more people have died in the name of Jesus than anyone else, but I do not think that means Christianity is bad or a worse religion. For a start, it ascended in Europe at a time when Western Europe was thrown into chaos by the collapse of the Western Roman empire and then the surviving Eastern segment of the empire started to undergo its much slower collapse . It took centuries for Europe to get back on its feet again, so no wonder Christianity got moulded in an apocalytic, hellfireish way. And you can see the advent of the crusades as an attempt to unify a fractured landscape of eternal feuding - hey guys, lets unite and go kick some infidel butt. So you can see that as where politics come into it. And that leads to another aspect -control. Religion can be used to control and manipulate people, but then so can secular ideology.

Any religion is good if people make it good. And you can quote-mine any of their texts to 'prove' whatever you like about them. Some people handle poisonous snakes because their interpretation of the bible leads them to believe they should. The vast majority of Christians don't buy that, but the passage is there.

So what are you saying? Jews and Muslims have an evil religion and everyone should try to get rid of Islam and Judaism?
Everyone should sit round slagging off Jews and Muslims and going on about how we're better than them? This is the path to persecution, oppression and war.

Irf Jews, Muslims or Christians do fucked up things and claim their deity demands it, then that should be criticised. But are you seriously advocating pre-judging people irrespective of their actions just because they might do something bad if they read their religion a certain way?
And of course they might do bad things not because of anything to do with their religion - just because they're like that as people.

I don't care if someone is a Muslim a Christian or a Jew. I care about what they do as people. Like that thread with that IMF bitch - would it matter if she was Jewish, a Muslim or a Christian? Would it change anything? Do the IMF care about religion? The biggest problem that faces the world today is that a tiny amount of people control virtually all the wealth. That's about power. You can dress it up in whatever way you want - blame the Jews, blame the Masons, blame the Satanic Illuminati. All there really is to blame is the system we all live in that enshrines this as an economic inevitabliity. It doesn't matter if the bankers, the IMF, the politicians are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Satanists or disabled black lesbian radical feminists in dungarees. If you're really rich and powerful, you are going to do your utmost to make sure it stays that way. End of. All those poor people are just abstractions - like people see starving children in Africa and feel bad about it but they're not going to sell their house and car and send the money over there. They're doing that on a much bigger scale. Just as much as you think you really need your car, they think they really need their mansion and private jet - because the further up the ladder you go, the more you lose touch with reality and that life becomes normailty. Because that world is your frame or reference and your normality. Looking for all these abstract targets to attack is just shifting the focus away from the key issue - endemic inequality and exploitation. That exists for no other reason than power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

if someone would just wipe out all the muslims, our problems would be sorted wouldnt they.

amaralsright wrote: The notion that 100 million American Natives were wiped out by Christianity is absurd.

What about disease?

What about the the corporatists, the militarists, the Royalists, the Politicians, the atheists, the land grabbers, the power grabbers, the money men, the opportunists... it's a long list.

Blaming Christianity is ridiculous.
Muhammed killed people who did not submit to Islam.

That is Islamic history.

At Tabouk for instance. Submit or die.

Except for Christians.
That is a matter of opinion.
Do you need a list of Islamic conquests and attrocities that triggered the Crusades?
Right back to the time of Muhammed.

When he ordered the beheading of 800 of them in a single day.

(Let me think.. what would Jesus have done?)
You really need to find out a bit more about Muhammed.
Stone adulterers v Don't stone adulterers.

Is there really a contest?
Actually I think you did.

"in particular"
Both religions have founders who prosecuted conquest and annihilation.

The same can't be really be said about Jesus although overall Christianity is the same as the others.

I didn't say they were wiped out by Christianity - I said they were wiped out by Christians. I was also perfectly clear that I believe that the fact Christians annihilated the massive population of the Americas doesn't say anything about Christianity. It's incidental. They did it becaues that's the sort of mindset they had. They could just as easily have been Muslims or atheists or whatever. But they weren't.

What about disease? It's certainly true people died to a lack of resistance to disease, but I'm afraid this notion they all just dropped dead of disease due to understandable European ignorance is bullshit. For one thing the Europeans already had some understanding of disease and there's evidence to suggest an element of biological warfare entered the fray, for another there are copious accounts of wholesale slaughter. For example, "dogging" to Spanish colonists didn't mean hanging round in a car park watching people have sex - this was raising dogs on human flesh for the 'sport' of setting them on natives who they'd disembowel on command. Trains of Indian slaves would led around chained together by the neck and if one collapsed they'd simply decapitate them. I could go on all day about the totally insane barbarity these guys engaged in - and recorded for future generations as they weren't arsed.

But it's ok. Like the Aztecs were evil and fucked up and deserved all they got - Mel Gibson made a film about it. America was a backwards land that need 'civilising'.

What about them?

How many times do I have to point out I'm not blaming Christianity? It's like you simply cannot understand the point.
I thought that was submit or pay a tax or something?

Read what I've said. Try to understand it.

That was just an excuse. The Muslims weren't putting any crimp on Urban's day. And the Muslims were having a pop at the Orthodox world which the Catholics didn't much like anyway. Urban wanted good Christians to stop fighting each other. So he gave them a target. And suddenly it was tremendously important to 'liberate' Jerusalem. So then they totally fucked up the first crusade and sort of forgot about that and made it not a proper crusade at all.

Right. So because Mohammed had some conflict with Jews, that therefore means Jews didn't live peacefully under Islamic rule for hundreds of years. Gotcha.
See you havethis either/or mindset. It's like if people are ever in conflict, they're always in conflict. If I say Christians did bad things, I must think Christians are bad people. It's...just...people. Doing different things over different time periods for different reasons. The religious ideas mutate and change. They're not fixed and they're not the root cause of everything - human avarice and aggression is the root, not what some book says.

I probably do. I should probably study the Koran, but then it'ssaid youshouldn't really read it in English and I don't speak Arabic.
I think you should probably spend more time with Muslims.
Stone adulterers v Don't stone adulterers.
Mark 9:43

- Christianity encourages self-mutilation. Does the Koran do that? If not Islam wins. You see how that works?

The Old Testament actively encourages stoning for adultery. Jesus suggested he withoutsin should cast the first stone. I don't think he actually said you couldn't stone adulters.

Is there really a contest?

Whatever Jesus said, people have still killed in his name. So what does that tell you?

i think when ppl try to act in the interests of religion, as the hand of god, they invariably act for themselves.

It doesn't matter if the bankers, the IMF, the politicians are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Satanists or disabled black lesbian radical feminists in dungarees.