(June 14, 2016 at 2:35 am)robvalue Wrote: It goes to show just what a bad system "faith" is for learning true things. Two people can use "faith" on the same book, then one comes away killing people and another wants to be peaceful.
Of course, I'm missing the vital step that it's what people are told the books say that matters more than what they actually say. Oral myths are the religion, in its current form.
Well, yeah, exactly. At the end of the day, it's more about interpretation based on personal and collective values and experiences than about simply what an outsider believes a religion or its scriptures is about.
When I went through the Quran a few years back just to see what it said, I saw verses promoting warfare and violence based on certain conditions (not much different from the conditions adopted by nonMuslims for warfare), but I didn't interpret any of these verses to the extent that certain violent groups of Muslims would interpret them. And that's how heaps of Muslims see these verses as well (not just me).
