As most people know, here in Canada we have just experienced two incidents in which a Canadian soldier was murdered in a most cowardly fashion by young men who were influenced by the Muslim extremism of the Islamic State terrorists. One was run down by a car in a parking lot, and the other was shot in the back as he formed part of a ceremonial guard at the National War Memorial.

Understandably the larger Muslim community wants to disavow any connection, and so do apologists for religion in general. In an interview Karen Armstrong spouts a lot of bilge, most notably here:

Wahhabists encouraged people to read the Koran directly, and ignore the centuries of interpretation by learned scholars. Now that sounds great and liberating, but people were then licenced to come up with many wild interpretations. In the past, no one read the Koran on its own; it was enmeshed in a wide swath of complexity that actually held radical interpretations in check. Now that check’s been lifted, and all kinds of freelancers like Bin Laden, who is no more qualified to issue a Fatwa than I am, have free reign to come up with these extraordinary interpretations.
What she is really arguing is that we should disregard the plain words of the Koran—not to mention the Sira and Hadith—which all endorse violence against unbelievers in favor of complicated and unintelligible interpretations which reverse the obvious meaning.

Here is how I see it.

The vast majority of religious adherents are decent folk, who imagine that their religion is all about encouraging the ordinary virtues such as generosity and compassion along with a few ceremonial observances exalting the supposed founder of the religion, whether Moses or Jesus or Mohammed.

They are told that their Holy Book is the Word of God, but most of them spend little time reading it for the simple reason that it is boring. Of those who do read it I would wager they do as I once did, letting the words flow through their mind without paying much attention to the meaning, reading with the mind on cruise control as I like to call it.

A simple example. The Old Testament is full of wars. As a layman I plowed through it all with no discomfort. Why not? I was no pacifist. As a history buff I think that the Allies in World War II were waging a just war. So surely a war that God commanded way back then was also a just war. I don't mean I reasoned it out; that was simply my underlying attitude.

However, once you slow down and let the words mean what they say, you have only two options. I saw that the Old Testament God was supposedly commanding the Israelites to invade the homelands of other peoples and to give them the choice between slavery if they surrendered or extermination if they fought. Once I understood that, I could not believe in the Bible as the Word of God. Some people would choose to twist their mind into a pretzel in order to go on believing.

That was my particular stumbling block, but there are other texts in the holy books which have more impact in the world today.

Each religion has its own wrong-headed form of fundamentalism when fanatics assume that every word of their holy book comes from God.

To start with the most ancient religion, there are fundamentalists among the West Bank Jewish settlers who are convinced that God deeded a specific parcel of real estate to the Jews as described in the Torah. Thus Muslims who may have occupied some of the land for centuries are nothing but vermin to be swept off just as the ancient nations were supposedly driven out by Joshua. Their numbers are not many, and of course even the rational Jewish majority are a tiny group compared to the Christians and Muslims.

Christians, as I see it, can develop two forms of irrationality from taking the Bible literally. One is a penchant for prescriptive morality. It is easy to prove from the Bible that "God hates fags" and that has prompted not only the futile picketing of the Westboro Baptists but also more dangerously the western Pentecostals who have influenced the Ugandan government to promulgate repressive anti-gay laws. The other form of Christian insanity is the conviction that the end is nigh, which they share with Paul and Jesus himself. If the world is to end within a decade or two, there is obviously no need to concern ourselves with long range problems like climate change or social justice.

Islam too has its problematic statements in its holy texts, most notably conversion by force, beheading of those who do not acknowledge the prophethood of Mohammed, and treating women as sex slaves. Let us note that all of these positions are endorsed in the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. Take one chilling example from the Bukhari Hadith, considered to be quite authoritative:

When some of the remaining Jews of Medina agreed to obey a verdict of Saed, Mohammed sent for him. ... Mohammed then said, "Saed, give these people your verdict." Saed replied, "Their soldiers should be beheaded and their women and children should become slaves." Mohammed, pleased with the verdict, said, "You have made a ruling that Allah or a king would approve of."

For those who would claim that Islam is a religion of peace, let it be remembered that Mohammed personally led military campaigns against unbelievers, and that Christian North Africa and the Middle East were not converted to Islam by eloquent missionaries but by armies wielding the sword.

I believe that most Muslims are peaceful people, but that is not the stance of its holy books, and the plentiful incitements to violence are there to be seized on by every mentally disturbed person looking for a pretext to justify his dark impulses.

(October 25, 2014 at 6:58 pm)xpastor Wrote: However, once you slow down and let the words mean what they say, you have only two options. I saw that the Old Testament God was supposedly commanding the Israelites to invade the homelands of other peoples and to give them the choice between slavery if they surrendered or extermination if they fought. Once I understood that, I could not believe in the Bible as the Word of God. Some people would choose to twist their mind into a pretzel in order to go on believing.

God isn't even that merciful. There is at least one passage where he outright commands the Israelites to commit wholesale genocide, complete with ripping open the bellies of pregnant women, down to even slaughtering their cattle. Only the virgins were allowed to live and be taken away as sex slaves. OK, that's my interpretation. He only says, take them for yourselves, but I highly doubt, they were taken for housekeeping.

As for Islam. My understanding is, that the Quran is meant to be read only in Arabic. Translations somehow aren't the word of god anymore. So I guess that even less muslims have even read the whole thing than christians having read the bible.

I believe the muslims who do not follow what their book says are luke warm in their beliefs, and by the standards of their own faith per their book are worse than the infedels radical Islam is targeting.

Islam per the koran is a religion of peace through the swift use of the sword.

XPASTOR- not trying to trip anyone up here. Why is the bible written in 2 different languages? I never understood that. It seems that people would loose some meaning translating it back and forth so many times.

Always a pleasure to hear from you, Xpastor. I savored your too long post all the way to the end .. so I guess it must not have been too long.

Quote:Wahhabists encouraged people to read the Koran directly, and ignore the centuries of interpretation by learned scholars.

Luther pulled the same routine on the catholics. Nothing new under the sun, eh?

(October 26, 2014 at 11:00 am)polar bear Wrote: XPASTOR- not trying to trip anyone up here. Why is the bible written in 2 different languages? I never understood that. It seems that people would loose some meaning translating it back and forth so many times.

Because originally the OT was written to the hebrew people. Therefore it was originally written In ancient Hebrew.

Then several hundred years after the last book of the OT was written, Alexander the great took over the world and spread the greek as the primary written language in an effort to assimilate the people of the conquered regions. A couple years after that Rome came to power took the region from the Greeks and at the time maintained the written language in that region. So that means at the time of Christ (nt) everyone who could read and write read and wrote koine greek as their primary language.

Again, drippy, we have no evidence whatsoever that the earliest written copies of your bullshit bible were written in anything except Greek. They may have existed as oral tales until the Greeks came along and wrote them down.

When you can find EVIDENCE then you can get back to me. I've heard your opinions and they are worthless.

Meanwhile, this appeared in Rawstory today. Sure to piss off all the abrahamic god twits.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/is-th...-the-test/

Quote:Is this violent passage from the Bible, Torah or Quran? Take the test!

(October 26, 2014 at 9:27 am)abaris Wrote: God isn't even that merciful. There is at least one passage where he outright commands the Israelites to commit wholesale genocide, complete with ripping open the bellies of pregnant women, down to even slaughtering their cattle. Only the virgins were allowed to live and be taken away as sex slaves. OK, that's my interpretation. He only says, take them for yourselves, but I highly doubt, they were taken for housekeeping.

This is a bit pedantic, but I think you are conflating a couple of passages and adding one dramatic detail. I don't remember any passage in the bible where it is commanded to rip open the bellies of pregnant women. Most of what you refer to is from Numbers 31. There is no need to rip open the bellies of pregnant women, because the command is to kill every male (right down to baby boys) and to kill every woman who has ever slept with a man. Only the virgins were allowed to live. You're quite right. They weren't taking them home to help with the household chores. In this instance they did not kill the animals but divided them up along with the rest of the loot. However, in 1 Samuel 15:3 God commands King Saul to kill all the Amalekites "men and women, children and nursing infants, cattle and sheep, donkeys and camels" and when Saul fails to kill all of them, God is so pissed off that he takes the kingship from him and gives it to David. In the Old Testament God commands genocide dozens of times if not hundreds. So far as I can tell the ancient Israelites invented the concept of genocide.

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(October 26, 2014 at 11:17 am)Drich Wrote: Then several hundred years after the last book of the OT was written, Alexander the great took over the world and spread the greek as the primary written language in an effort to assimilate the people of the conquered regions. A couple years after that Rome came to power took the region from the Greeks and at the time maintained the written language in that region. So that means at the time of Christ (nt) everyone who could read and write read and wrote koine greek as their primary language.

A bit more pedantry on my part. Alexander the Great certainly did not live "several hundred years after the last book of the OT was written." Alexander died in 323 BC. Daniel is the last book of the bible. It pretends to prophesy events that had already happened and gets everything right up until 167 BC, whereupon it makes a near-future prophecy about the death of King Antiochus Epiphanes and gets it wrong, showing that it was written between 167 and 164 BC when the king died.

There were certainly people writing in languages other than koine Greek (Aramaic, for instance) but Greek was the international language with a status much like English has today. The New Testament was directed entirely at making converts in the Gentile world, so it was written in Greek. It is very doubtful that the authors of Mark, Luke and John even knew any Aramaic, the language which Jesus spoke.

(October 26, 2014 at 2:25 pm)xpastor Wrote: This is a bit pedantic, but I think you are conflating a couple of passages and adding one dramatic detail. I don't remember any passage in the bible where it is commanded to rip open the bellies of pregnant women.

I just looked it up:

Hosea 13:16
"Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open."


But you're right. I actually conflated three atrocities. It's so hard to keep track with all these beautiful and inspiring stories. The one with thev virgins is actually in a different story. And the one down to the cattle is in a third.

(Numbers 31:17-18)--"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves."

1 Samuel 15:3: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."



It think, the enslavement part you were refering to might be this:

(Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
"As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you."