[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

scandium,

as long as you do not realize that Christian churches and many Christian sects are not in conformity with the teachings of Jesus as expressed in the new testament, your arguments remain a contradiction in themselves. In opposition to that, Islam is very much in conformity with the teachings of it's founder. You simply avoid to adress this major difference. Muhammad gave a textbook of how to act intolerant. Jesus did not, bot taught how not to be intolerant and aggressive. How can you compare these two by saying "Christianity did like Islam?" the church did like Islam. But the church was in violation of it's religion in doing so. Islam is violant becaue it IS in conformity with it's religion and ideology. You compare a true Islam of the present to a perverted chrstianity of the medieval. You compare things that are many centuries apart. And you ignore the difference in authenticity oin both factions.no wonder then that your argument does not make much sense.

I'm going to have to get into scripture after all, since you seem to be insisting that christian acts of authoritarianism and intolerance have absolutely no basis in scripture and are only due to the church which is what seperates it from Islam. Read the following and then explain how you can feel that way:

Exodus 22:20 "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed."

Psalms 79:6: "Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name."

Deuteronomy 13:6-10 "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die..."

Deuteronomy 17:2-5 "If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and inquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die."

Those are from the Old Testament, and before you respond with "But Jesus...", I'll remind you that the christian book is made up of both the old testament and the new testament. While certain christian faiths may put more weight on one text than the other, there is no such universal practice and the bible contains no instruction to do so. The bible, again, contains both texts and having been raised as a Catholic and attended Catholic school, I know from my own prior reading that there are many more intolerant examples than these few. And this shreds your arguement completely as to the supposed benelovence of christianity versus the intolerance of Islam. Both are filled with intolerance and the fact that Western society isn't authoritarian and backward like Islamic theocracies is because of the rise of secularism and inspite of christianity, not because of it. We no longer live that way because our society is governed by secular, rather than christian, law.

Want to tell you that we moved beyond the medieval. That'S why we have protestantism now. and no more inquisition. No inner-religious wars, as we had for centuries. A diverse theology. A multi-faced philosophy. Science. Arts of many kinds. Legal protection of females.

These things - science, philosophy, women's rights - have again attained prominence in spite of christianity, not because of it. Recall that there was a period in our own history when scientific and philosophical inquiry was carried out only at the peril of one's life - for blasphemy, heresy, etc - and that people really were put to death for these "crimes" against the church. The "church" being the instrument of organized christian religion that had profound, tyrannical rule over people's lives. They were, and still are, the body that interpreted scripture and presribed the "correct" way for people to live in harmony with it.

Islam's history is the history of the - by far - biggest, most expansive and most successful conquest of all times

Really? And yet when one looks at the continents of North America, South America, and Australia, one sees the predominence of christianity in these places and where it was not formerly even known to exist. If one continues to examine these continents a couple other things would stand out as well:

a: they were colonized by states whose national religion was christianity;

b: they were either accompanied, or followed by, christian missionaries to convert the indigenous "heathen hordes";

c: very few of these indigenous peoples remain in much of these places, having in many cases simply been wiped out completely by the supposedly enlightened and benevolent christian Europeans. I live in one such place where the indigenous native tribe that formerly occupied this region was exterminated, completely, by my European ancestors who colonized it.

If that doesn't count as conquest (with a healthy does of genocide mixed in there for good measure) than I don't know what does.

So again, please pay attention to the difference between Jesus' teachings and the NT, and the church not being in conformity with this, and Islam and it's teachings, both of which ARe in conformity.

Sorry skybird, but it doesn't work that way. It is profoundly intellectually dishonest to give christianity a pass by excluding the Old Testament (where all of the intolerance and such is that you profess christianity is free of) to make a point that "only Islam" is intolerant and authoritarian. That might work with someone who knows nothing of christianity, but being a product of one of the most influential christian faiths I know better.