26 months equal 202 lives

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by scandium

What category am I putting all Christians into? Nowhere have I ever said they are all genocidal, only that following Jesus rather than Muhammad has never been an exemption from committing the "war, aggression, repression, and land grabbing"

Prove it. We still wait for proof to your absurd statements. As long as you don'T see that the motives of the churches for acting often violated clearly the teachings of Jesus, but where actings in it's own political interest, you do not have any argument here. And it seems I am not the only one being completely unable to see how one could call that church policy to be in the following of Jesus. It often was in violation of Jesus. Where as Islam showing a violant, war-mongering kind of behavior, it is not in violation of Muhammad, but in precise recognition of his demands. And that is the decisive difference you for whatever a reason try so hard to kill, but it is pretty obvious for most people here. How could you dare to compare a Ghandi with a Saddam Hussein, a Siddharta or a Jesus with Muhammad, simply stripping them off any differences because you say (yesterday) all ideas could be abused, and not ideas do kill, but people? Was Hitler a victim or an executor of his ideas? I bet the latter. But according to your absurd logic, fascism is of same value than pacifism, tyranny is of same value than democracy, Jesus' altruism is of same value as Muhammad's murderous selfishnes, becasue all ideas can be abused, and thus it is not worth to see the qualitative differences between them. But ideas are the reasons why people may want or may not want to kill. Ideas do make people act, or not act. Even you are driven by your ideas, and since your idea in this debate is queeer, your arguments are also queer. But according to you that doesn't matter. Ideas planted in people'S heads can even be a reason why people enjoy killing. Those thugs on those Iraq videos killing hostages even enjoyed it and thought to commit an act that earns them some heavenly praise. How could you dare to reject the differences here? How could you dare to say that Jesus' teachings are of the same value as the ideology that these thugs are follwing? How could you dare to deny any value in any cultural achievement, philosophy, idea - for the simple reason that it could be abused, if one is trying that? How could you spit on the efforts of generations during centuries that tried to improve life and living since the medieval, who often failed, that is right, nevertheless there can be no doubt that we live a far better life today than our ancestors a thousand years back? How can you reject all that with a single snip of your finger?

Time and again you are offending mindlessly hundreds of thousands of >true< Christians, what do i say: millions and millions, who turned away from the church in disgust for exactly this reason: the violation of Jesus teachings, and the fact that the empty facade the church is today for most people cannot offer them anything of what these people look for in a religion. Nevertheless the overwheliming majority of these still have no problem to see themselves as Christians, and to refer to Jesus as a valuable example to base your acting upon. I myself have left the church long time ago, but despite practicing Buddhist Zen, I have no problem to see the value in the teachings of Jesus and christian mystics like Meister Eckehard or Thomas a Kempis and so many others (all of which are not better than any given bad ideology, because Scandium says they can be abused and thus are not better than these bad ideologies), and I even have taught people in both and urged them not to look into the far away culture of the East, but stick to what this their own tradition has to offer. But in your attempt to level out all qualitative differences so that noone can politically incorrectly claim that one thing may be better than another thing (the big lie of the political left: everything is equal, each man is as valuable as another), you said yesterday that all this doesn'T matter.

You said it is not ideas that kill, but man. You said there is no difference between chru8ch and Jesus, and between Jesus' focussing on peace - and muhammad's wars. Well, the ideas that I follow do made people try to avoid war and violance. where they seek war and violance, they are not Christian or buddhist at all. Islam, as an idea, has made peopoe commit more war, violance, conquest and subjugation than any other in world history as we do know it. but according to Scandium, all this does not matter.

I do not know if I should shout at or laugh about you, sorry. It is ridiculous, all this hyper-intellectual reasoning of yours. But such ignorrance surely is the reason why politics and communties are desintegrating, and thus it raises my anger. The opinion you represent I call the EU-desease, and it does nothing constructive, it only destroys, it adds no conture or form, but deletes them; it kills identity and replaces it with the dictation of "solidarity". Growth without limits and rules is no structural order. It is cancer. Cancer kills.