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Christianity's days of mobs and rage before the birth of Islam

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Western World - 08 Feb 2006 23:01 GMT
We should all realize that it was the Renaissance and the enlightenment
that took the power of the state out of the power of the church. Before
then, Christianity had a face much like today's radical Islam.  It
fought freedom and democracy with rage and intolerance. Millions were
killed based on faith alone. Before the church lost it power, it was as
violent as today's radical Islam.

But before the dark ages, this is how Christianity rose to power.  Aside
from the intolerance of the church councils and the imperial decrees,
there was continual destruction by wild Christian mobs. In the early
fifth century Alexandria, mobs of hundreds of monks killed Jews and
pagans in the steets and then burned down their buildings.

Under Alexandria's Bishops Theophilus and Cyril there was great violence
which included the murder of the famous NeoPlatonist philosopher and
mathematician Hypatia. She was dragged from her cart and her flesh was
ripped from her bones with sharpened Abalone shells (which many men of
the time shaved with) while she was alive.

A fascinating and thorough examination of church canon and imperial
decrees from the 4th-6th centuries can be found at
http://community-2.webtv.net/tales_of_the_western_world/RL but here is a
very enlightening timeline of temple destruction and religious violence
by Christians.

PAGAN TEMPLE DESTRUCTION BY CHRISTIANS IN THE EMPIRE

From Vlasis Rassias' book "DEMOLISH THEM..", published in Greek, Athens
1994, Diipetes Editions, ISBN 960-85311-3-6)
 
314  Immediately after its full legalisation, the Christian Church
attacks the Gentiles: The Council of Ancyra denounces the worship of
Goddess Artemis.

324  Emperor Constantine declares Christianism as the only official
Religion of the Roman Empire. In Dydima, Minor Asia, he sacks the Oracle
of the God Apollo and tortures the pagan priests to death. He also
evicts all the Gentiles from Mt. Athos and destroys all the local
Hellenic Temples.

326  Emperor Constantine, following the instructions of his mother
Helen, destroys the Temple of the God Asclepius in Aigeai of Cilicia and
many Temples of the Goddess Aphrodite in Jerusalem, Aphaca, Mambre,
Phoenice, Baalbek, etc.

330  Emperor Constantine steals the treasures and statues of the
pagan Temples of Greece to decorate Nova Roma (Constantinople), the new
capital of his Empire.

335  Emperor Constantine sacks many pagan Temples of Minor Asia and
Palestine and orders the execution by crucifixion of "all magicians and
soothsayers". Martyrdom of the neoplatonist philosopher Sopatrus.

341  Emperor Flavius Julius Constantius persecutes "all the
soothsayers and the Hellenists". Many Gentile Hellenes are either
imprisoned or executed.

346  New large-scale persecutions against the Gentiles in
Constantinople. Banishment of the famous orator Libanius accused as...
"magician".  

353  An edict of Constantius orders the death penalty for all kind
of worship through sacrifices and "idols".  

354  A new edict orders the closing of all the pagan Temples. Some
of them are profaned and turned into brothels or gambling rooms.
Executions of pagan priests.

354  A new edict of Constantius orders the destruction of the pagan
Temples and the execution of all "idolaters". First burning of libraries
in various cities of the Empire. The first lime factories are being
organised next to the closed pagan Temples. A major part of the holy
architecture of the Gentiles turns to lime.

357  Constantius outlaws all methods of Divination (Astrology not
excluded).  

359  In Skythopolis, Syria, the Christians organise the first death
camps for the torture and executions of the arrested Gentiles from all
around the Empire.  

361 to 363  Religious tolerance and restoration of the pagan cults
declared in Constantinople (11th December 361) by the pagan Emperor
Flavius Claudius Julianus.

363  Assassination of Emperor Julianus (26th June).

364  Emperor Flavius Jovianus orders the burning of the Library of
Antioch.

364  An Imperial edict (11th September) orders the death penalty for
all Gentiles that worship their ancestral Gods or practice Divination
("sileat omnibus perpetuo divinandi curiositas"). Three different edicts
(4th February, 9th September, 23rd December) order the confiscation of
all properties of the pagan Temples and the death penalty for
participation in pagan rituals, even private ones.
365  An Imperial edict (17th November) forbids the Gentile officers
of the army to command Christian soldiers.

370  Emperor Valens orders a tremendous persecution of the Gentiles
in all the Eastern Empire. In Antioch, among many other Gentiles, the
ex-governor Fidustius and the priests Hilarius and Patricius are
executed. Tons of books are burnt in the squares of the cities of the
Eastern Empire. All the friends of Julianus are persecuted (Orebasius,
Sallustius, Pegasius etc.), the philosopher Simonides is burned alive
and the philosopher Maximus is decapitated.

372  Emperor Valens orders the governor of Minor Asia to exterminate
all the Hellenes and all documents of their wisdom.  

373  New prohibition of all Divination methods. The term "pagan"
(pagani, villagers) is introduced by the Christians to lessen the
Gentiles.

375  The Temple of God Asclepius in Epidaurus, Greece, is closed
down by the Christians.  

380  On 27th February, Christianism becomes the exclusive Religion
of the Roman Empire by an edict of Emperor Flavius Theodosius, requiring
that "all the various nations which are subject to our clemency and
moderation should continue in the profession of that religion which was
delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter". The non-Christians
are called "loathsome, heretics, stupid and blind". In another edict
Theodosius calls "insane" those that do not believe to the Christian God
and outlaws all disagreements with the Church dogmas. Ambrosius, bishop
of Milan, starts destroying all the pagan Temples of his area. The
Christian priests lead the hungry mob against the Temple of Goddess
Demeter in Eleusis and try to lynch the hierophants Nestorius and
Priskus. The 95 years old hierophant Nestorius ends the Eleusinian
Mysteries and announces the predominance of mental darkness over the
human race.

381  On 2nd May, Theodosius deprives of all their rights the
Christians that return back to the pagan Religion. In all the Eastern
Empire the pagan Temples and Libraries are looted or burned down. On
21st December, Theodosius outlaws even the simple visits to the Temples
of the Hellenes. In Constantinople, the Temple of Goddess Aphrodite is
turned to brothel and the Temples of Sun and Artemis to stables.

382  "Hellelu-jah" (Glory to Yahweh) is imposed in the Christian
mass.  

384  Emperor Theodosius orders the Praetorian Prefect Maternus
Cynegius, a dedicated Christian, to cooperate with the local bishops and
destroy the Temples of the Gentiles in Northern Greece and Minor Asia.

385 to 388  Maternus Cynegius, encouraged by his fanatic wife, and
bishop ("Saint") Marcellus with his gangs scour the countryside and sack
and destroy hundreds of Hellenic Temples, shrines and altars. Among
others they destroy the Temple of Edessa, the Cabeireion of Imbros, the
Temple of Zeus in Apamea, the Temple of Apollo in Dydima and all the
Temples of Palmyra. Thousands of innocent Gentiles from all sides of the
Empire suffer martyrdom in the notorious death camps of Skythopolis.  

386  Emperor Theodosius outlaws (16th June) the care of the sacked
pagan Temples.  

388  Public talks on religious subjects are also outlawed by
Theodosius. The old orator Libanius sends his famous Epistle "Pro
Templis" to Theodosius with the hope that the few remaining Hellenic
Temples will be respected and spared.

389 to 390  All non-Christian date-methods are outlawed. Hordes of
fanatic hermits from the desert flood the cities of the Middle East and
Egypt and destroy statues, altars, Libraries and pagan Temples and lynch
the Gentiles. Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, starts heavy
persecutions against the Gentiles, turns the Temple of Dionysos into a
Christian church, burns down the Mithraeum of the city, destroys the
Temple of Zeus and burlesque the pagan priests before they are killed by
stoning. The Christian mob profanes the cult images.  

391  On 24th February, a new edict of Theodosius prohibits not only
visits to pagan Temples but also looking at the vandalised statues. New
heavy persecutions all around the Empire. In Alexandria, Egypt, the
Gentiles, led by the philosopher Olympius, revolt and after some street
fights they lock themselves inside the fortified Temple of God Serapis
(The Serapeion). After a violent siege, the Christians take over the
building, demolish it, burn its famous Library and profane the cult
images.

392  On 8th November, the Emperor Theodosius outlaws all the
non-Christian rituals and names them "superstitions of the Gentiles"
(gentilicia superstitio). New full scale persecutions against the
Gentiles. The Mysteries of Samothrace are ended and the priests
slaughtered. In Cyprus the local bishop ("Saint") Epiphanius and "Saint"
Tychon destroy almost all the Temples of the island and exterminate
thousands of Gentiles. The local Mysteries of Goddess Aphrodite are
ended. Theodosius' edict declares: "the ones that won't obey pater
Epiphanius have no right to keep living in that island". The Gentiles
revolt against the Emperor and the Church in Petra, Aeropolis, Rafia,
Gaza, Baalbek and other cities of the Middle East.

393  The Pythian Games, the Aktia Games and the Olympic Games are
outlawed as part of the Hellenic "idolatry". The Christians sack the
Temples of Olympia.

395  Two new edicts (22nd July and 7th August) cause new
persecutions against the Gentiles. Rufinus, the eunuch Prime Minister of
Emperor Flavius Arcadius directs the hordes of the baptised Goths (led
by Alaric) to the country of the Hellenes. Encouraged by Christian monks
the barbarians sack and burn many cities (Dion, Delphi, Megara, Corinth,
Pheneos, Argos, Nemea, Lycosoura, Sparta, Messene, Phigaleia, Olympia,
etc.), slaughter or enslave innumerable Gentile Hellenes and burn down
all the Temples. Among others, they burn down the Eleusinian Sanctuary
and burn alive all its priests (including the hierophant of Mithras
Hilarius).  

396  On 7th December, a new edict by Emperor Arcadius orders that
paganism be treated as high treason. Imprisonment of the few remaining
pagan priests and hierophants.

397  "Demolish them!". Emperor Flavius Arcadius orders all the still
standing pagan Temples to be demolished.

398  The Fourth Church Council of Carthage prohibits to everybody,
including to the Christian bishops, the study of the books of the
Gentiles. Porphyrius, bishop of Gaza, demolishes almost all the pagan
Temples of his city (except 9 of them that remain active).

399  With a new edict (13th July) Emperor Flavius Arcadius orders
all the still standing pagan Temples, mainly in the countryside, to be
immediately demolished.

400  Bishop Nicetas destroys the Oracle of the God Dionysus in Vesai
and baptises all the Gentiles of this area.

401  The Christian mob of Carthage lynches Gentiles and destroys
Temples and "idols". In Gaza too, the local bishop (also a.."Saint")
Porphyrius sends his followers to lynch Gentiles and to demolish the
remaining 9 still active Temples of the city. The 15th Council of
Chalkedon orders all the Christians that still keep good relations with
their gentile relatives to be excommunicated (even after their death).

405  John Chrysostom sends hordes of gray dressed monks armed with
clubs and iron bars to destroy the "idols" in all the cities of
Palestine.

406  John Chrysostom collects funds from rich Christian women to
financially support the demolition of the Hellenic Temples. In Ephessus
he orders the destruction of the famous Temple of Goddess Artemis. In
Salamis, Cyprus, the "Saints" Epiphanius and Eutychius continue the
persecutions of the Gentiles and the destruction of their Temples and
sanctuaries.

407  A new edict outlaws once more all the non-Christian acts of
worship.

408  The Emperor of the Western Empire Honorius and the Emperor of
the Eastern Empire Arcadius order together all the sculptures of the
pagan Temples to be either destroyed or to be taken away. Private
ownership of pagan sculpture is also outlawed. The local bishops lead
new heavy persecutions against the Gentiles and new book burning. The
judges that have pity for the Gentiles are also persecuted. "Saint"
Augustine massacres hundreds of protesting pagans in Calama, Algeria.

409  Once again, an edict orders Astrology and all methods of
Divination to be punished by death.

415  In Alexandria, Egypt, the Christian mob, urged by the bishop
Cyrillus, attacks a few days before the Judaeo-Christian Pascha (Easter)
and cuts to pieces the famous and beautiful philosopher Hypatia. The
pieces of her body, carried around by the Christian mob through the
streets of Alexandria, are finally burned together with her books in a
place called Cynaron. On 30th August, new persecutions start against all
the pagan priests of North Africa who end their lives either crucified
or burned alive.

416  The inquisitor Hypatius, alias "The Sword of God", exterminates
the last Gentiles of Bithynia. In Constantinople (7th December) all
non-Christian army officers, public employees and judges are dismissed.

423  Emperor Theodosius B declares (8th June) that the Religion of
the Gentiles is nothing more than "demon worship" and orders all those
who persist in practicing it to be punished by imprisonment and torture.

429  The Temple of Goddess Athena (Parthenon) on the Acropolis of
Athens is sacked. The Athenian pagans are persecuted.

435  On 14th November, a new edict by Emperor Theodosius B orders
the death penalty for all "heretics" and Gentiles of the Empire. Only
Judaism is considered a legal non-Christian Religion.

438  Emperor Theodosius II issues an new edict (31st January)
against the Gentiles, incriminating their "idolatry" as the reason of a
recent plague (!)

440 to 450  The Christians demolish all the monuments, altars and
Temples of Athens, Olympia, and other Greek cities.

448  Theodosius B orders all the non-Christian books to be burned.

450  All the Temples of Aphrodisias (City of Goddess Aphrodite) are
demolished and all its Libraries burned down. The city is renamed
Stavroupolis (City of the Cross).  

451  New edict by Emperor Theodosius II (4th November) emphasises
that "idolatry" is punished by death.  

457 to 491  Sporadic persecutions against the Gentiles of the
Eastern Empire. Among others, the physician Jacobus and the philosopher
Gessius are executed. Severianus, Herestios, Zosimus, Isidorus and
others are tortured and imprisoned. The proselytiser Conon and his
followers exterminate the last Gentiles of Imbros Island, Norheast
Aegean Sea. The last worshippers of Lavranius Zeus are exterminated in
Cyprus.

482 to 488  The majority of the Gentiles of Minor Asia are
exterminated after a desperate revolt against the Emperor and the
Church.

486  More "underground" pagan priests are discovered, arrested,
burlesqued, tortured and executed in Alexandria, Egypt.  

515  Baptism becomes obligatory even for those that already say they
are Christians. The Emperor of Constantinople Anastasius orders the
massacre of the Gentiles in the Arabian city Zoara and the demolition of
the Temple of local God Theandrites.
528  Emperor Jutprada (Justinianus) outlaws the "alternative"
Olympian Games of Antioch. He also orders the execution (by fire,
crucifixion, tearing to pieces by wild beasts or cutting to pieces by
iron nails) of all who practice "sorcery, divination, magic or idolatry"
and prohibits all teachings by the Gentiles ("..the ones suffering from
the blasphemous insanity of the Hellenes").  

529  Emperor Justinianus outlaws the Athenian Philosophical Academy
and has its property confiscated.  

532  The inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus, a fanatic monk, leads a crusade
against the Gentiles of Minor Asia.  

542  Emperor Justinianus allows the inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus to
convert the Gentiles of Phrygia, Caria and Lydia, Minor Asia. Within 35
years of this crusade, 99 churches and 12 monasteries are built on the
sites of demolished pagan Temples.

546  Hundreds of Gentiles are put to death in Constantinople by the
inquisitor Ioannis Asiacus.

556  Emperor Justinianus orders the notorious inquisitor Amantius to
go to Antioch, to find, arrest, torture and exterminate the last
Gentiles of the city and burn all the private libraries down.  

562  Mass arrests, burlesquing, tortures, imprisonments and
executions of Gentile Hellenes in Athens, Antioch, Palmyra and
Constantinople.  

578 to 582  The Christians torture and crucify Gentile Hellenes all
around the Eastern Empire, and exterminate the last Gentiles of
Heliopolis (Baalbek).

580  The Christian inquisitors attack a secret Temple of Zeus in
Antioch. The priest commits suicide, but the rest Gentiles are arrested.
All the prisoners, the Vice Governor Anatolius included, are tortured
and sent to Constantinople to face trial. Sentenced to death they are
thrown to the lions. The wild animals being unwilling to tear them to
pieces, they end up crucified. Their dead bodies are dragged in the
streets by the Christian mob and afterwards thrown unburied in the dump.

583  New persecutions against the Gentile Hellenes by the Emperor
Mauricius.

590  In all the Eastern Empire the Christian accusers "discover"
pagan conspiracies. New storm of torture and executions.

692  The "Penthekto" Council of Constantinople prohibits the remains
of Calends, Brumalia, Anthesteria, and other pagan / Dionysian
celebrations.

804  The Gentile Hellenes of Mesa Mani (Cape Tainaron, Lakonia,
Greece) resist successfully the attempt of Tarasius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, to convert them to Christianity.  

850 to 860  Violent conversion of the last Gentile Hellenes of Mesa
Mani by the Armenian "Saint" Nikon.

(Then during the Reformation, Protestants did the same thing to
Catholics, banning the 'Mass' and plundering, vandalizing and
confiscating their churches)

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Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 09 Feb 2006 10:15 GMT
>We should all realize that it was the Renaissance and the enlightenment
>that took the power of the state out of the power of the church. Before
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>fifth century Alexandria, mobs of hundreds of monks killed Jews and
>pagans in the steets and then burned down their buildings.
<rest of post snipped>
<although it was interesting reading!>

Yeah, but Christianity outgrew that, as science showed
the world a better way to understand things.  In post-
renaissance Christendom, there was just as much violence,
but now it was tied to greed and ambition instead of
so much religious fervor.  

Greed and ambition are human faults, independent of
religion (or the level of religious fervor).  

Saddam, we could understand.  His greed and ambition
were longstanding and well-known, so his sudden call
for islamic uprising in his hour of defeat fell on deaf ears.  

The recent Anti-Cartoonists, we can't understand.  We
can't understand why they haven't made the leap to
civilized conduct, when faced with the same scientific
truths as the rest of humanity.  We can't understand why
the lessons of religious tolerance that Europeans had
to learn the hard way through centuries of warfare aren't
now just as self-evident to the islamists.  

The answer is inescapable: Islam is a mature religion
but an immature belief system, compared to the
world's other major current belief systems.  Islam as
a political system has been an abyssmal failure, and
has had to rely on crutches like nationalism and/or
totalitarianism in every case it's been tried so far.  

You can design a utopia, but if you want it to work,
you'll have to keep human beings far away from it.  

Islam sets out a perfect world, but only as long as
everyone is converted first.  Should that magically
happen someday, islam itself will be rent into a hundred
competing shards, because humans who can be
perfect in faith can never be perfect in thought.  

Islam is not doomed, but can only survive as a religion
by marrying it's belief system to a more modern political
system.  Either islamic democracies will evolve and learn
tolerance from within, or islamic totalitarianism will arise
and they will be taught tolerance by force... by the rest
of the world.  

THIS is the war America is now fighting.  Not a War
On Terror, nor a War On Islam, but a War On
Intolerance.  It is being fought in very many places
other than Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is a
skirmishing war, not a "hot" war.  

Libya figured the game out, and folded.  Iraq and
Afghanistan had to be taught about tolerance.  
Only two remain: Iran and Syria.  Pakistan seems
to have sobered up quite a bit since they tested a
Bomb.  Now (finally) they get it: if they use it on their
hated enemies in India, then all of their /own/ cities
will get bombed out too.  

Why couldn't they just learn the lessons of the
nuclear struggle of the US vs. USSR for 45 years?  

America isn't the hegemon because they have nukes,
but because they have found ways to win regular
warfare with astounding efficiency.  

Consider, in a purely military sense, what America
has done in the Mideast in four years:

they have conquered 1.1 Million Square
Kilometers of land...  

....and conquered 56 Million People...  

... not only conquered, but have occupied the same
for three or four years...

... and have only lost 2521 soldiers in the whole
campaign.  

What!!??!!??  

You can do the research yourself, or you can
take it from me: the war on Al-Quaeda so far
has been a stunning success as far as wars go.  

Less than 3,000 soldiers lost for 1.1 Million Square
Kilometers, and occupying 56 Million people for
up to four years?  That's unheard of in warfare,
and this campaign against islamists will go down
in history as the most bloodless war in humanity's
history, considering the numbers of people involved.  

Germany lost 3,000 soldiers in their first assault on
Crete alone.  The Persians under Xerxes lost 20,000
soldiers at Thermopylae alone.  America lost more
civilians on Sept 11th of 2001 than in four years of
conquering and occupying 2 out of the (then) five
islamic terrorist states.  

It's been nothing short of a resounding success.  

No matter what we leave behind, it will certainly be
better than the Afghanistan of 1991, or 1998, or
2000.  And in Iraq, a clear leap forward from the
place under Hussein.  

If you're an American, you should be proud that
your country has pulled off a military miracle and
achieved a political impossibility at the same time.  

Hitting the Taliban, Al-Quaeda and Hussein at the
same time clears up more than three problems, and
doing so while losing less than 3,000 soldiers is
amazing.  

Clearing out the Taliban allows America to pursue
the terrorists as a law enforcement action instead of
a military action, which is a task much more suited
to police than an army.  

Clearing out Saddam Hussein allows America to
strategically remove soldiers from the wider Gulf
region, thus removing the relevancy of the most
shrill rhetoric among islamist conspiracy-theory
nutjobs.  

Groove on this: they've been whipping up alarm
bells at the mosques since America put soldiers in
the Gulf and Arabia to fight Saddam in 1991, and
the soldiers *didn't leave*.  

Now that Saddam's done-for, we can leave the
neighboring countries, and remove the major
reason that Osama Bin Assh*le was able to
convince 20 jerks to crash airplanes into office
buildings.  

You can complain about lack of vision in Bush II's
White House, and you can complain about the
utter ineptitudes that arise now and then from all
known bureaucracies, but you cannot deny the
obvious strategic gains America has won by her
current administration's policies.  

Soon, we will be out of the MidEast, and we will
leave the radical fundamentalist wing of islam
without a leg to stand on: philosophically, politically,
or (if need be) literally.  

THAT is the path of survival for humanity... to
integrate muslim beliefs into a coherent and
sustainable political structure which eschews
violent fundamentalism for reasonable evangelism.  

Make no mistake about it: most muslims are reasonable
people.  All we need to do is give reasonable people
the opportunity to speak their minds, and they will
turn a certain percentage of their listeners into
reasonable people as well.  

This could not happen under the Taliban, it could not
happen under Saddam Hussein, and it can not happen
in Iran or Syria as they are constituted today.  Elections
in Iraq and Afghantown, even if not successful today,
will lay the foundation of self-rule that is contagious
to the oppressed, and irresistable to the normal human
phenomenon of youthful rebellion.  

Pulling Afghanistan and Iraq into the 20th Century
will go a long way towards bringing freedom of speech
into Syria and Iran without having to invade them to
remove intolernat regimes.  Pulling out of Iraq and
Arabia and Kuwait and the Gulf will make great strides
against the conspiracy theories of embittered islamism,
and thus protect America from serious terrorist attacks.  

Please remember that to withdraw from the male-dominated
islamic world requires a withdrawal commanding respect.  
If America turns tail and runs, they will have accomplished
nothing.  Seeing a former dictatorship through two election
cycles qualifies as "we did a good job", and whatever
happens afterwards cannot be politically blamed on America.  

In a broader sense, we're getting closer to the point where
all warfare is ended as being moot, and the remainder of
humanity's conflict is a matter for the police, not for standing
armies.  

Isn't that what you're working for too?  That day when
reasonability trumps ambition?  

If you have a vision of the future as utopian peace, then
you might do well to consider how *exactly* today's screwy
world could possibly morph into a utopia.  One of the
scenarios is to tame the nascent islamist rage by
philosophically marginalizing it, leaving only North Korea
as the sole impediment to world peace.  

That's what i'm after: world peace.  

Fight a few more wars against the few remaining dictators
stuck in the military frame of mind, then concentrate on
integrating the MidEast and Africa into a reasonable
political structure which pays suppliers as equitably
as producers.  

Just like you, i wish for peace and justice everywhere.  

Unlike you, i recognize that America's current strategy
is the one most likely to bring peace to the world, after
these last few wars.  Someday, historians will call the
first decade of the 2000's the "Last War", and will
praise Bush II, even though he deserves scant credit
for the policies upon whose shoulders he stands today.  

Do you have a more coherent strategy for world peace?  

SL
Reply to this Message
Robert Cohen - 09 Feb 2006 13:54 GMT
re: Is the U.S. today losing or winning or whating?

I've been depressed about Iraq since ...the spring of 2003.

Then it was North Korea, which China is hopefully helping to
ameliorate, since it is in their interest as much as anybody's (imho)
to do so.

Now it's Iran, but there is no seeming big brotherly/dutch uncle China
to exercise its leadership.

Vladamir & others, show the world you care.

The Israelis are duly concerned, and the Hannah Arrendt
admonition/chastisement about the European Jews' overall
non-resistance/weakness leading to what happened plays within the
Israeli mentality.

I've recently been watching the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee
questioning of the Sec of Defense and some of the Chiefs of
Staff/generals of the military.

Iraq appears to be an irresolvable dilemma/quagmire to me.

If I could be as optimistic in my thinking as our n.g.'s SL, then my
disposition could vastly improve.

I wouldn't feel this ominious/pessimistic sword of Damocles feeling.

I wouldn't worry nearly as much about the national debt/deficit, the
factory layoffs, the global warming, and the oil-petrol dollar catch 22
inter-dependence.

As FDR didn't say in 1933-4: The only thing I  fear is the bloody
future.
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 10 Feb 2006 08:19 GMT
<snipt>
>If I could be as optimistic in my thinking as our n.g.'s SL, then my
>disposition could vastly improve.
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>As FDR didn't say in 1933-4: The only thing I  fear is the bloody
>future.

Aww, chin up, camper!  

When you look at current events, then compare them
to historical events, the "good old days" were not that
good after all.  

The world really /is/ getting better every year, and as
the stunning revolution of instant information access
continues to ring this planet like a gong, totalitarianism
slips further into absurdity.  

The huddled masses do, in fact, want their MTV.  No
organization that separates its subjects from entertainment
can stand for long.  

Thus, we don't have to invade N Korea because they'll
collapse from within and S Korea will be there to lift them
into the 21st Century.  

We don't have to invade Iran, because the paternalistic
attitude of the ayatollahs in power will lead to internal
revolution, and like a set of dominoes, this will remove
a plank from the jihadists' platform, which calms down
Egypt and Arabia, which isolates Syria, which lets
democracy finally flower in Lebanon...   ...   ...   ...  

Five years ago, there were six really bad nations on
earth.  Today, we're down to three.  As long as the
US makes good on their promise to leave Afghanistan
and Iraq, those remaining three will collapse on their
own.  

As for your other worries, don't worry.  Global warming
will force us to develop tech that will prove very useful
in reverse when a warm period causes an ice age (and
all warm periods cause ice ages).  

Layoffs in manufacturing are forcing the next generation
into tech, science and entertainment (which are our real
exports anyhow).  

Debt/deficit is higher than i like, but i'd only lower it by
one third.  There's a common misconception that debt
is bad, but it's not true.  Personal debt is bad, but gov't
debt is good for the economy.  Consider the alternative:
a gov't which takes in more money than it needs.  This
would be a nightmare where the excess is removed
from the economy, stifling investment and growth.  

And the whole oil fiasco is doing one thing very well:
speeding up adoption of renewable energy sources.  
The more OPEC puts on the squeeze, the faster
demand falls and the sooner they lose their market
clout.  Hah, they're idiots!  

Consider this bright ray of hope: by the physical laws
governing partial pressures in closed gas systems (like
our atmosphere) the general thermodynamic energy
available in the system increases as heavier gasses
replace lighter ones.  Burning fossil fuels takes O-O
(molecular oxygen) out of the atmosphere and replaces
it with C-O-O (carbon dioxide) and a host of other,
heavier molecules.  We're not affecting the 70% of the
atmosphere that's N-N (molecular nitrogen), so the net
effect will be a slight increase in wind speed around
the world as a heavier atmo is stirred by solar heating
and cooling cycles.  This makes more hurricanes and
tornadoes, which sucks, but it also makes wind power
extraordinarily efficient, and then more wind-to-electric
conversion takes energy /out/ of the atmosphere,
which completes the cycle.  

That's a non-vicious cycle if i ever saw one.  In fact,
it's a very friendly cycle.  Who knows?  200 years
from now they may be laughing at us for actually
paying for the right to burn fossil fuels.  If the people
of 2006 had only known that burning oil would
create a free energy system for all of humanity to
tap into, the thinking might go, they might wish that
the 2006'ers had burned it all faster, as fast as they
could suck it out of the ground!  

SL
Reply to this Message
Robert Cohen - 10 Feb 2006 13:38 GMT
re: SL's optimism

10. if everybody agreed about everything, then no para-mutuel
horse-race betting
9. better to be the proverbial pollyanna, then the proverbial
henney-penney
8. meanwhile, just sell refigerators to eskimoes--hey, it's a growth &
cut-throat  marketplace that's about exploiting resources like air and
water
7. duh: green is brought about by market forces
6. it's a blue un-delicate spaceball, and we could just leave it anyhow
5. one thing about repressive religion: the real people don't like it
4. china doesn't prove that political totalitarianism can be adapted to
their advantages
3. bird flue? one thing we got now are excellent antidoes, terrific
vaccines, and we know about these phenomena as we do about ebola, aids,
strap/'strep/ resistable infection
2. all us world's peoples are ultimately adaptive, rational, practical,
compromising, and not so foolish as we seem
1. if there's a tidal wave or earthquake or catastrophe coming, then we
have fema
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 11 Feb 2006 08:12 GMT
>re: SL's optimism
>
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>1. if there's a tidal wave or earthquake or catastrophe coming, then we
>have fema

I have no idea what you're trying to say there.  

SL
Reply to this Message
Ty - 10 Feb 2006 13:43 GMT
> On 9 Feb 2006 05:54:05 -0800, "Robert Cohen" <robtcohen@msn.com>

>>As FDR didn't say in 1933-4: The only thing I  fear is the bloody
>>future.

> Aww, chin up, camper!

> When you look at current events, then compare them
> to historical events, the "good old days" were not that
> good after all.

Yup. I have a few words for those pining away for some mythical Good Ole
Days -- air conditioning; indoor plumbing; ipod; widescreen TV; amazon.com;
and the NFL Sunday Ticket.

> The world really /is/ getting better every year, and as
> the stunning revolution of instant information access
> continues to ring this planet like a gong, totalitarianism
> slips further into absurdity.

I don't think that the lunocrats will go quietly into the night, but I agree
with you that the age of instant info is a fatal threat to their long-term
survival.

> The huddled masses do, in fact, want their MTV.  No
> organization that separates its subjects from entertainment
> can stand for long.

True, which is why the Chinese are co-opting hypocritical US companies like
Google ("do no evil...er, uh well, uh a little evil is ok") to help them
"partially censor" the Internet. Won't work...it's like trying to "partially
censor" Pamela Anderson.

--Ty
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 11 Feb 2006 08:11 GMT
>> On 9 Feb 2006 05:54:05 -0800, "Robert Cohen" <robtcohen@msn.com>
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>Days -- air conditioning; indoor plumbing; ipod; widescreen TV; amazon.com;
>and the NFL Sunday Ticket.

Here here!  And don't forget the Lingerie Bowl... models
in bikinis playing full-contact football.  God it's great to
be alive right now!  

>> The world really /is/ getting better every year, and as
>> the stunning revolution of instant information access
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
>--Ty

Yeah, and a similar situation in Iran.  They want to have their
"own internet", while the regular folks there are gaining the
tech savvy to crack the censorship like a rotted almond.  

SL
Reply to this Message
Ty - 11 Feb 2006 19:41 GMT
> On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:43:14 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>

>>Yup. I have a few words for those pining away for some mythical Good Ole
>>Days -- air conditioning; indoor plumbing; ipod; widescreen TV;
>>amazon.com;
>>and the NFL Sunday Ticket.

> Here here!  And don't forget the Lingerie Bowl... models
> in bikinis playing full-contact football.  God it's great to
> be alive right now!

The West may have missed an opportunity to fatally weaken the imams. We
should have transmitted the Lingerie Bowl into all Muslim countries on all
frequencies for free.

Or, we could airdrop "Baywatch" DVDs...

>>True, which is why the Chinese are co-opting hypocritical US companies
>>like
>>Google ("do no evil...er, uh well, uh a little evil is ok") to help them
>>"partially censor" the Internet. Won't work...it's like trying to
>>"partially
>>censor" Pamela Anderson.

> Yeah, and a similar situation in Iran.  They want to have their
> "own internet", while the regular folks there are gaining the
> tech savvy to crack the censorship like a rotted almond.

The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim Middle
East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.

--Ty
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 12 Feb 2006 05:12 GMT
>> On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:43:14 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>
>
[quoted text clipped - 26 lines]
>The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim Middle
>East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.

I wouldn't go that far.  There are plenty of normal people
who are muslim by accident of the time and place of
their birth.  I got around to reading the koran in the mid
1990's, and gotta say it's an excellent book.  Beautiful
prose, coherent philosophical framework, and it parallels
the torah/bible so closely that it's easy to see they came
from the same neighborhood.  

The problem isn't islam, it is (once again) totalitarianism.  
When oil money came pouring in, gangs of criminals
set themselves up as 'governments' and thoroughly
raped the land and the citizens.  No political opposition
was allowed, no freedom was allowed... but the dictators
dared not squelch the mosques.  

So guess where resistance movements were centered?  

Islam is OK, but political conditions have thrust it forward
as the sole social entity which hotheads can infiltrate
and use to organize stupid actions.  The truth is these
people really DO need revolutions to restore human
dignity to them and to redirect oil profits from a few fat
pockets to thousands of poor villages.  

One of America's greatest squandered opportunities was
the response to Iran's revolution in 1979/1980.  Only 5
years after Vietnam, Carter couldn't say: "return the hostages
healthy or we're gonna slap your country down."  Instead,
we tried to cozy up to Pakistan and Iran, sucked some more
Saudi, and bought new 'friends' in the underworld of Soviet-
occupied Afghanistan.  

But what America *should* have done was to reevaluate
the relationships to the various totalitarian regimes in the
MidEast.  Today, so many dolts say "they hate us because
we have freedom".  That's a crock of sh*t.  20 years of
suppporting dictators just to guarantee a steady supply of
oil for Europe, the US and Japan -- THAT'S why they hate us.  

In hindsight, we held all the cards.  In the bipolar world of
1979, the arabs (and others) would have had far lower
clout as a client of the (oil producer) USSR, than as a
minion of the USA.  If the US had disengaged economically
and did the humane thing by pressing for revolution in the
MidEast's dictatorships, they'd be calling the US the Great
Brother to a bunch of muslim democracies today, not the
Great Satan.  

SL
Reply to this Message
Ty - 12 Feb 2006 16:26 GMT
> On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:41:29 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>

>>The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim
>>Middle
>>East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.

> I wouldn't go that far.  There are plenty of normal people
> who are muslim by accident of the time and place of
> their birth.  I got around to reading the koran in the mid
> 1990's, and gotta say it's an excellent book.

YEah, I really like the parts about slaughtering infidels, murdering
adulterous wives, killing converts from Islam, etc.

> The problem isn't islam, it is (once again) totalitarianism.

Sorry, but I disagree. It looks to like the problem is that Islam's
theologicical rules are incompatible with liberal Western democracy.

It's a waste of time to repeat the discussion, however. Most of my points
were made in the "Vile Infidel Cartoons of Blasphemy" thread and you can
read them there if you're interested.

--Ty
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 15 Feb 2006 00:52 GMT
>> On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:41:29 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>YEah, I really like the parts about slaughtering infidels, murdering
>adulterous wives, killing converts from Islam, etc.

It's impossible to divorce any book from the times during
which it was composed.  The Old Testament of the bible,
for example, has God commanding the 'chosen people'
to slaughter their enemies and (after some post-mortem
circumcision) to pile their foreskins at the Temple.  

Even that would have been considered barbaric by the
standards of 7th Century Arabia.  

And, of course, the bible also mentions what you decry:
death penalty for adultery and wholesale slaughter of
unbelievers.  

>> The problem isn't islam, it is (once again) totalitarianism.
>
>Sorry, but I disagree. It looks to like the problem is that Islam's
>theologicical rules are incompatible with liberal Western democracy.

Actually, that is not true.  Islam's "rules" support human
rights and tolerance for unbelievers just as well as the
bible's New Testament.  Both books stress that humans
are imperfect, and are thus ineligible to pass judgement
on fellow people.  Therefore, in the words of Jesus and
Mahomet, it's best to meet unbelievers with tolerance,
and if they refuse to convert, then let god sort it out.  

>It's a waste of time to repeat the discussion, however. Most of my points
>were made in the "Vile Infidel Cartoons of Blasphemy" thread and you can
>read them there if you're interested.
>
>--Ty

I'll get around to reading that thread someday.  

SL
Reply to this Message
Ty - 15 Feb 2006 11:39 GMT
>>YEah, I really like the parts about slaughtering infidels, murdering
>>adulterous wives, killing converts from Islam, etc.

> It's impossible to divorce any book from the times during
> which it was composed.

That point is irrelevant if the topic is how the book relates to *today*. I
flesh this out below.

> The Old Testament of the bible,
> for example, has God commanding the 'chosen people'
> to slaughter their enemies and (after some post-mortem
> circumcision) to pile their foreskins at the Temple.

> Even that would have been considered barbaric by the
> standards of 7th Century Arabia.

> And, of course, the bible also mentions what you decry:
> death penalty for adultery and wholesale slaughter of
> unbelievers.

A false analogy.

1. We are discussing the 21st century, not the 7th. Whether any faith was
tolerant by 7th century standards is irrelevant to its tolerance now.

2. The Old Testament was "replaced" by the New Testament (that's why it's
the "New" Testament). While Christians differ on the extent that the NT
replaced the OT, we all pretty much agree that Christ's commands take
precedence over OT commands. So "turn the other cheek", "pray for your
enemies", etc., replaces the violence commanded in the OT. The OT rules you
reference are simply not applicable to Christians today.

3. Unfortunately, there is no Muslim New Testament. The Prophet's words and
deeds are held by Islam to be PERFECT for ALL TIME. So if he commands the
slaughter of infidels, that command must be obeyed, no matter how much
"times have changed". This means that those who would presume to modernize
Islam are going to have to commit apostacy -- a death sentence in most
Muslim nations. They will, in effect, be arguing that the Prophet's words
and deeds are *not* perfect for today. See Salman Rushdie...

4. Even worse, Islam recognizes no secular authority. Muhammed was both King
and God's Prophet. Christ, by contrast, explicitely recognized secular
authority -- "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's..." So secular governance does
*not* contradict Christian theology. The same cannot be said of Islamic
theology.

5. So, as you can see, the cases are very different. The challenge for
modernizing Christians was to obey Christ. The challenge for modernizing
Muslims is different (and much harder) -- find a way to *disobey* the plain
commands of the Prophet without getting beheaded for apostacy.

This is the glaring problem with Standard Muslim Apologist Defense Number
One. When confronted with numerous instances of violence by members of the
Religion of Peace (tm), apologists refer to violence committed by Christians
in the past. So, the argument goes, all religions are violent so there's no
reason to single Islam out.

However, there are a few problems with this argument:

1. The degree of slaughter perpetrated by peaceful Muslims vastly exceeds
anything Christians have done in the name of religion in the last few
hundred years. In 2005 alone, self-identified Muslim terrorists carried out
1237 terrorist attacks against infidels, killing 7,090 and wounding over
12,000. This does not include events in places like Darfur, where peaceful
Muslims have gleefully slaughtered hundreds of thousands of infidels and
displaced millions more. So...

Religion of Peace (tm) '05 vs. Spanish Inquisition:
RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
Spanish Inquisition in its entire 350 years of existence: About 4,000
killed.
Winner - RoP

RoP '05 vs. Ku Klux Klan:
RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
Ku Klux Klan (1882 through 1968): 4742 total
Winner - RoP

RoP '05 vs. The IRA, etc.
RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
Irish Terrorists (1969-1996): 3181 total killed by all groups
Winner - RoP

RoP '05 vs. US Criminal Justice System
RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
US Criminal Justice System: 330 executed between 1960 and 2005.
Winner - RoP*

RoP '05 vs. Abortion Clinic Bombers
RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
Abortion Clinic Bombers: 7 killed over last 30 years.
Winner - RoP

*The RoP wins this contest on a technicality. When executions by US state
governments is considered and we tally all executions since 1608, we find
that the US has executed 15,494 people since 1608...more than twice the
number killed by the RoP in 2005.

2. The plain words of Jesus make it clear that He forbids his followers to
make war on infidels, murder unbelievers, murder converts from Christianity
etc. So Christians who do that are *violating* Christian beliefs. But
Muslims who murder in the name of Islam are doing exactly what the Prophet
says. Surely you can see the difference between the two cases.

Then, of course, there's Standard Muslim Apologist Defense Number Two, which
goes something like this:

"We should not consider Islam a violent (misogynistic, intolerant, etc,)
ideology because many Muslims are not personally violent (misogynistic,
intolerant, etc.)."

Even if assume that most Muslims are indeed peaceful, there's a fatal
logical flaw in this argument. It can be illustrated by replacing Muslims
with Nazis and Islam with Nazism:

"We should not consider Nazism a violent ideology because many Nazis are not
personally violent."

I am somehow dubious that these same apologists would endorse *that*
statement. Yet how are the two arguments meaningfully different?

And note that after WWII many Europeans made the exact argument that a
majority of Nazis weren't murderers. So...did the small number of Nazi
fanatics "misinterpret" or "twist" the words of Mein Kampf?

Indeed, you could credibly claim that the members of most vile, murderous
ideologies are peaceful. But would that fact -- if true -- make the Ku Klux
Klan a peaceful organization? Stalinists? Trekkies?

If so, then this "argument" precludes criticism of *any* ideology, no matter
how vile. Yet these same apologists have shown no reluctance to condemn
other ideologies...

>>> The problem isn't islam, it is (once again) totalitarianism.

>>Sorry, but I disagree. It looks to like the problem is that Islam's
>>theologicical rules are incompatible with liberal Western democracy.

> Actually, that is not true.  Islam's "rules" support human
> rights and tolerance for unbelievers just as well as the
> bible's New Testament.

If necessary, I can provide numerous examples from the Koran, Hadiths etc.,
of the Prophet:

--Calling for the murder of those who blaspheme or ridicule him;

--Commanding the murder of infidels and the effective enslavement of the
survivors;

--Commanding the murder of homosexuals;

--Commanding the murder of those who convert from Islam;

--Commanding the murder of adulterous wives (but not husbands);

--Commanding that wives can be convicted for adultery solely by the
uncorroborated testimony of their husband;

--Commanding that males inherit twice what females inherit;

--Commanding that a woman's testimony in court be given half the weight of a
man's testimony; and

--Commanding that thieves have their limbs hacked off.

Review the New Testament -- you will find *no* examples of these kinds of
commands from Jesus.

And *if* the Prophet did these things, and *if* Muslims consider his
commands perfect for all time, wouldn't you agree that Islam is anything but
a Religion of Peace (tm) -- as the term "peace" is defined by sane people?

--Ty
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 18 Feb 2006 08:24 GMT
>>>YEah, I really like the parts about slaughtering infidels, murdering
>>>adulterous wives, killing converts from Islam, etc.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>That point is irrelevant if the topic is how the book relates to *today*. I
>flesh this out below.

Yes, you do, so please consider me intellectually
bitch-slapped.  Honestly, i'm not being sarcastic;
you've written alot of stuff, and i can only argue
a hair-split here and there.  

I do have to admit your points are well supported, and
mine come from a different understanding of the issue.  
Early in this thread, i suggested that all religions go
through violent periods of rabid intolerance, and
christianity has already gotten over that sickness.  

In that sense, islam is an 'immature' religion, but i still
don't think the whole religion can be discarded because
of its current dyspepsia.  I think the current dysfunction
has roots that are more political in nature than religious.  

That's the only point on which i disagree with you.  
Sounds like you think we should oppose all of islam
with force to make them get over their fever and live
up to the "religion of peace" thing.  

I think we should see current islamist whackjobs as
opportunists capitalizing on political discontent in an
area rife with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.  
As such, i think the best strategy would be to set
behavioral boundaries for the hotheads and offer
incentives for those who give popular rule a chance.  

>> The Old Testament of the bible,
>> for example, has God commanding the 'chosen people'
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>1. We are discussing the 21st century, not the 7th. Whether any faith was
>tolerant by 7th century standards is irrelevant to its tolerance now.

Agreed, but you seem to want to flush the baby with
the bathwater.  Christianity has matured to the point
where differences in the interpretation of "ancient"
scriptures no longer means violence.... except for
some American fundamentalist whackjobs who firebomb
clinics.  Islam has not matured as far yet, but we might
remember that christianity had a 600-year headstart.  

>2. The Old Testament was "replaced" by the New Testament (that's why it's
>the "New" Testament). While Christians differ on the extent that the NT
>replaced the OT, we all pretty much agree that Christ's commands take
>precedence over OT commands. So "turn the other cheek", "pray for your
>enemies", etc., replaces the violence commanded in the OT. The OT rules you
>reference are simply not applicable to Christians today.

Yes!  That's one of my favorite ways to rebut the odd
claims of today's christian fundamentalist whackjobs.  
When the Temple Veil ripped on Jesus's death, that
means the old ways are over, metaphysically speaking.  

Therefore, the argument is with the Jews, right?  Even
though all the OT is in the bible, good christians don't
believe all that foreskin cutting and philistine smiting
crap, right?  

I've seen that dodge before.  Unscrupulous christian
leaders sometimes use the OT as the stick to the NT's
carrot, to make believers give them money.  Insane
muslim clerics sometimes use the paranoid parts of
the koran to scare the crap out of young men... to
make them fight for them.  

Now, i know what you're thinking: "the koran's paranoid
part is what condemns it".  

Instead, if one surveys the "sacred" writings over the
past few thousand years, only a very few don't have a
'paranoid section'.  

>3. Unfortunately, there is no Muslim New Testament. The Prophet's words and
>deeds are held by Islam to be PERFECT for ALL TIME. So if he commands the
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>Muslim nations. They will, in effect, be arguing that the Prophet's words
>and deeds are *not* perfect for today. See Salman Rushdie...

There is a struggle within islam today, between the
fundamentalists and the reasonable human beings
common to all populations.  If one side wins, we can
live in peace, if the other wins, then we'll have to go
to war with all of them.  Right?  

That point needs to be made crystal-clear to the
islamic world.  Unfortunate knuckling-under in
France and Denmark has only served to prolong
the crisis.  They think they're being "sensitive to
all cultures", but they're really just sending out the
message: "we cave in to violence".  Right?  

>4. Even worse, Islam recognizes no secular authority. Muhammed was both King
>and God's Prophet. Christ, by contrast, explicitely recognized secular
>authority -- "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's..." So secular governance does
>*not* contradict Christian theology. The same cannot be said of Islamic
>theology.

You got me there.  I say that if gunmen fire from a
mosque, then it is no longer a church, but has become
a fortress, and is thus fair game for demolition.  

>5. So, as you can see, the cases are very different. The challenge for
>modernizing Christians was to obey Christ. The challenge for modernizing
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>in the past. So, the argument goes, all religions are violent so there's no
>reason to single Islam out.

Not the same thing as saying: "all religions go through
violent phases".  Not trying to be an apologist, but what's
the alternative?  If we seriously go to war with the radicals
(real war, not a half-war like in Iraq), then the result would
be to wipe out moderacy in the islamic world, and then
we're left with the task of fighting them all.  I'm not saying
that's bad or good, just saying that's what'll happen.  

>However, there are a few problems with this argument:
>
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>that the US has executed 15,494 people since 1608...more than twice the
>number killed by the RoP in 2005.

Good points, all.  And you didn't even have to resort
to the inhumanly cruel things muslims did during the
crusades, or their piratical acquisition and deplorable
treatment of slaves long after christendom abandoned
that "peculiar institution".  

>2. The plain words of Jesus make it clear that He forbids his followers to
>make war on infidels, murder unbelievers, murder converts from Christianity
>etc. So Christians who do that are *violating* Christian beliefs. But
>Muslims who murder in the name of Islam are doing exactly what the Prophet
>says. Surely you can see the difference between the two cases.

Just like all other 'scriptures', the koran has numerous
internal contradictions.  If it didn't, then there would be
no such thing as moderates, no such thing as Sunni
vs. Shia vs. Sufi vs. et cetera.  For every quote condoning
murder, there is another one urging nonviolence and
letting allah take care of nonconformists in the afterlife.  

And that brings us back to the fact that the koran was
written to appeal to its audience: arabs in the 7th Century.  
It speaks in words that made much more sense to them
than to us today.  The "infidels" in the koran were not
the christians of the time, they were the polytheistic
clans which ruled Arabia and fought constantly among
themselves.  

Mahomet's purpose was to unite those tribes under a
more modern religion, in order to stop the internecine
warfare.  He succeeded in his own lifetime, which is
pretty rare for a prophet!  Jesus had a very similar
message, showing that Mahomet certainly read the NT.  

Jesus took a different tack on the quest for peace,
but his situation was different: a coherent and ancient
culture under occupation from a far empire.  Mahomet's
world was an ancient culture of tribal warfare which
many empires had conquered, but none who ruled for
very long.  

If there is one criticism to be leveled at the koran, it
is that the book might have been aimed at solving
the smaller problems of a smaller audience, when
compared to the place and times of the bible's NT.  

>Then, of course, there's Standard Muslim Apologist Defense Number Two, which
>goes something like this:
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>majority of Nazis weren't murderers. So...did the small number of Nazi
>fanatics "misinterpret" or "twist" the words of Mein Kampf?

False analogy.  In fact, there's no valid analogy to be
made /anywhere/ by comparing /any/ two societies
with each other.  Hitler was a twisted whackjob;
Mahomet was not.  The zeitgeist that let Hitler deceive
his way into power is not the same environment that
led Mahomet to try and unite the arab tribes of his day.  

>Indeed, you could credibly claim that the members of most vile, murderous
>ideologies are peaceful. But would that fact -- if true -- make the Ku Klux
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>how vile. Yet these same apologists have shown no reluctance to condemn
>other ideologies...

Yeah, that's true, heh.  It's best to see it all, including the
recent rise of muslim whackjobbery, as part of the cycle
of human history.  When any ideology goes too far, it
automatically sows the seeds of its own demise.  This
cycle will not end, because ideologies are like fingerprints:
no two people have the same exact one.  

The inescapable result is that there are 6.6 billion
human belief systems in operation today.  

The less-obvious conclusion is that every religious sect
in the world today consists of Exactly One zealot, and
somewhere between One and One Billion "enablers".  

>>>> The problem isn't islam, it is (once again) totalitarianism.
>
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
>
>--Ty

Conversely, there are plenty of early christian books
which did not make it into the new testament for one
reason or another.  I have read most of them, and
only a few stand out as quality literature, let alone as
valuable philosophy.  

One of the best is the gospel of Thomas, which most
scholars now agree was available to each of the
evangelists and Peter and Paul, and which was
quoted during the writing of "our" new testament.  

The Jesus in this book is not the touchy-feely
Smiling Jesus you know from Sunday School.  

No matter which particular stripe of christianity you
adhere to, this book will upset you deeply.  You will
immediately come up with seemingly valid reasons
why it was not included in the canonical NT.  Why?  

Remember what i said about 'zealots' and 'enablers'?  

Every enabler thinks that they are a zealot.  

This is why there is such a thing as "history".  

SL
Reply to this Message
Ty - 18 Feb 2006 18:06 GMT
> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 11:39:58 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>
>>"Scaly Lizard" <scalylizard@nospampleaseyho.com> wrote in message

>>That point is irrelevant if the topic is how the book relates to *today*.
>>I
>>flesh this out below.

> Yes, you do, so please consider me intellectually
> bitch-slapped.  Honestly, i'm not being sarcastic;
> you've written alot of stuff, and i can only argue
> a hair-split here and there.

I didn't intend to "bitch slap" anyone; it's just that your argument is the
standard defense of Islam and it has some pretty glaring faults.

> I do have to admit your points are well supported, and
> mine come from a different understanding of the issue.
> Early in this thread, i suggested that all religions go
> through violent periods of rabid intolerance, and
> christianity has already gotten over that sickness.

That may be true, but it may simply be a characteristic of human history,
rather than of the religions themselves. In any case, as noted before, I am
not confident that Christianity's success means that Islam can do likewise.
The challenges for the two faiths are just too different.

> In that sense, islam is an 'immature' religion, but i still
> don't think the whole religion can be discarded because
> of its current dyspepsia.  I think the current dysfunction
> has roots that are more political in nature than religious.

> That's the only point on which i disagree with you.
> Sounds like you think we should oppose all of islam
> with force to make them get over their fever and live
> up to the "religion of peace" thing.

I think that we should acknowledge the true nature of the threat and go from
there. You cannot defeat an enemy unless you first acknowledge what he is.
Can you imagine beating the Nazis, had we constantly asserted that Nazism
was a "peaceful ideology" that had been "hijacked" by a few fanatics?

>>A false analogy.

>>1. We are discussing the 21st century, not the 7th. Whether any faith was
>>tolerant by 7th century standards is irrelevant to its tolerance now.

> Agreed, but you seem to want to flush the baby with
> the bathwater.  Christianity has matured to the point
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> clinics.  Islam has not matured as far yet, but we might
> remember that christianity had a 600-year headstart.

Your assertion ignores the fundamental difference between the two faiths.
Christians "merely" had to start doing what Christ commanded. Muslims will
have to find a way to disobey the Prophet's plain words -- without getting
beheaded for apostacy in the process. A profoundly harder task, it seems to
me.

>>2. The Old Testament was "replaced" by the New Testament (that's why it's
>>the "New" Testament). While Christians differ on the extent that the NT
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>you
>>reference are simply not applicable to Christians today.

> Yes!  That's one of my favorite ways to rebut the odd
> claims of today's christian fundamentalist whackjobs.
> When the Temple Veil ripped on Jesus's death, that
> means the old ways are over, metaphysically speaking.

Yep. Anytime some purported Christian uses an OT passage to call for murder
of someone, they are ignoring the plain words of Christ. Worse, they are
*subordinating* Jesus...something that a "Christian" cannot do.

> Therefore, the argument is with the Jews, right?  Even
> though all the OT is in the bible, good christians don't
> believe all that foreskin cutting and philistine smiting
> crap, right?

Well, I don't. And since the Jews don't seem to be flying airliners into my
country's skyscapers, I'm not too worried about their theology.

> I've seen that dodge before.  Unscrupulous christian
> leaders sometimes use the OT as the stick to the NT's
> carrot, to make believers give them money.  Insane
> muslim clerics sometimes use the paranoid parts of
> the koran to scare the crap out of young men... to
> make them fight for them.

But the problem is that there is *no* Muslim New Testament to replace those
old -- and still binding -- passages in the Koran.

>>3. Unfortunately, there is no Muslim New Testament. The Prophet's words
>>and
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>Muslim nations. They will, in effect, be arguing that the Prophet's words
>>and deeds are *not* perfect for today. See Salman Rushdie...

> There is a struggle within islam today, between the
> fundamentalists and the reasonable human beings
> common to all populations.  If one side wins, we can
> live in peace, if the other wins, then we'll have to go
> to war with all of them.  Right?

Right. The problem though, is that I see little evidence of the so-called
"reasonable" people. And worse, the "fundamentalists" are the ones who
appear to be doing *exactly* what the Prophet said to do. And I fail to see
how ignoring Islam's systemic hostility to Western values will help the
"reasonable" ones.

> That point needs to be made crystal-clear to the
> islamic world.  Unfortunate knuckling-under in
> France and Denmark has only served to prolong
> the crisis.  They think they're being "sensitive to
> all cultures", but they're really just sending out the
> message: "we cave in to violence".  Right?

That's how I see it. I've also done business in the Muslim world. One thing
I learned quickly is that a willingness to compromise was almost always
interpreted as weakness. A point that the "sophisticated" Euros might want
to keep in mind.

>>4. Even worse, Islam recognizes no secular authority. Muhammed was both
>>King
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>*not* contradict Christian theology. The same cannot be said of Islamic
>>theology.

> You got me there.  I say that if gunmen fire from a
> mosque, then it is no longer a church, but has become
> a fortress, and is thus fair game for demolition.

As do the Laws of War in international law. It's fascinating how our lefties
go berserk if we damage a mosque...and never seem troubled that we were
*returning fire*. The poor Muslim terrorists were shooting *from* the
mosque...

>>5. So, as you can see, the cases are very different. The challenge for
>>modernizing Christians was to obey Christ. The challenge for modernizing
>>Muslims is different (and much harder) -- find a way to *disobey* the
>>plain
>>commands of the Prophet without getting beheaded for apostacy.

>>This is the glaring problem with Standard Muslim Apologist Defense Number
>>One. When confronted with numerous instances of violence by members of the
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>no
>>reason to single Islam out.

> Not the same thing as saying: "all religions go through
> violent phases".  Not trying to be an apologist, but what's
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> we're left with the task of fighting them all.  I'm not saying
> that's bad or good, just saying that's what'll happen.

Well, why don't we first just honestly recognize what our enemy is and what
it actually commands? Then we can discuss strategy. The problem here is that
so many in the West willfully blind themselves to what the Muslims
themselves say about their faith.

>>However, there are a few problems with this argument:

>>1. The degree of slaughter perpetrated by peaceful Muslims vastly exceeds
>>anything Christians have done in the name of religion in the last few
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>>Muslims have gleefully slaughtered hundreds of thousands of infidels and
>>displaced millions more. So...

>>Religion of Peace (tm) '05 vs. Spanish Inquisition:
>>RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
>>Spanish Inquisition in its entire 350 years of existence: About 4,000
>>killed.
>>Winner - RoP

>>RoP '05 vs. Ku Klux Klan:
>>RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
>>Ku Klux Klan (1882 through 1968): 4742 total
>>Winner - RoP

>>RoP '05 vs. The IRA, etc.
>>RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
>>Irish Terrorists (1969-1996): 3181 total killed by all groups
>>Winner - RoP

>>RoP '05 vs. US Criminal Justice System
>>RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
>>US Criminal Justice System: 330 executed between 1960 and 2005.
>>Winner - RoP*

>>RoP '05 vs. Abortion Clinic Bombers
>>RoP: 7,090 murdered in 2005 in the name of Islam.
>>Abortion Clinic Bombers: 7 killed over last 30 years.
>>Winner - RoP

>>*The RoP wins this contest on a technicality. When executions by US state
>>governments is considered and we tally all executions since 1608, we find
>>that the US has executed 15,494 people since 1608...more than twice the
>>number killed by the RoP in 2005.

> Good points, all.  And you didn't even have to resort
> to the inhumanly cruel things muslims did during the
> crusades, or their piratical acquisition and deplorable
> treatment of slaves long after christendom abandoned
> that "peculiar institution".

As I noted before, I am not particularly concerned with what *anyone* did
hundreds of years ago. I'm worried about today. My examples also mock
hypocritical western lefties who whine about things like the KKK, capital
punishment, abortion clinic bombers, yet are strangely silent about far
worse behavior among Muslims.

>>2. The plain words of Jesus make it clear that He forbids his followers to
>>make war on infidels, murder unbelievers, murder converts from
>>Christianity
>>etc. So Christians who do that are *violating* Christian beliefs. But
>>Muslims who murder in the name of Islam are doing exactly what the Prophet
>>says. Surely you can see the difference between the two cases.

> Just like all other 'scriptures', the koran has numerous
> internal contradictions.  If it didn't, then there would be
> no such thing as moderates, no such thing as Sunni
> vs. Shia vs. Sufi vs. et cetera.  For every quote condoning
> murder, there is another one urging nonviolence and
> letting allah take care of nonconformists in the afterlife.

Yes, but the problem is that all of the Muslim sects agree on the
interpretations that are so hostile to the West. And Islamic jurists have
evolved a series of sensible rules to harmonize contradictory commands. One
is that later statements take precedence over earlier ones. And be careful
here -- the Koran is not arranged chronologically, but rather by the length
of each chapter.

So you'll note that all the peaceful stuff appears in the early days of
Muhammed's rise to power when he was weak. Once he achieved dominance, his
theology became very harsh indeed. And the rules of interpretation above
give the harsh stuff precedence. This, by the way, is *required* if they
want to preserve Muhammed's perfection. For him to be perfect and unerring,
Allah would have had to issue different instructions as times changed. The
problem is that once Muhammed died, there were no more Prophets for Allah to
issue policy changes through.

> And that brings us back to the fact that the koran was
> written to appeal to its audience: arabs in the 7th Century.

Yes, but it is being taken as literal truth by many millions today.

>>Then, of course, there's Standard Muslim Apologist Defense Number Two,
>>which
>>goes something like this:

>>"We should not consider Islam a violent (misogynistic, intolerant, etc,)
>>ideology because many Muslims are not personally violent (misogynistic,
>>intolerant, etc.)."

>>Even if assume that most Muslims are indeed peaceful, there's a fatal
>>logical flaw in this argument. It can be illustrated by replacing Muslims
>>with Nazis and Islam with Nazism:

>>"We should not consider Nazism a violent ideology because many Nazis are
>>not
>>personally violent."

>>I am somehow dubious that these same apologists would endorse *that*
>>statement. Yet how are the two arguments meaningfully different?

>>And note that after WWII many Europeans made the exact argument that a
>>majority of Nazis weren't murderers. So...did the small number of Nazi
>>fanatics "misinterpret" or "twist" the words of Mein Kampf?

> False analogy.  In fact, there's no valid analogy to be
> made /anywhere/ by comparing /any/ two societies
> with each other.  Hitler was a twisted whackjob;
> Mahomet was not.

A bald, conclusory assertion. All your reply really does is claim that the
analogy is false. You have failed to explain *why* it is false. But
understand one thing:

I am not equating Islam and Nazism in the statement above. I am saying that
the mere fact that many Muslims are peaceful does not mean that Islam is a
peaceful ideology. Any more than the existence of peaceful Nazis would mean
that Nazism in a peaceful ideology.

>>Indeed, you could credibly claim that the members of most vile, murderous
>>ideologies are peaceful. But would that fact -- if true -- make the Ku
>>Klux
>>Klan a peaceful organization? Stalinists? Trekkies?

>>If so, then this "argument" precludes criticism of *any* ideology, no
>>matter
>>how vile. Yet these same apologists have shown no reluctance to condemn
>>other ideologies...

> Yeah, that's true, heh.  It's best to see it all, including the
> recent rise of muslim whackjobbery, as part of the cycle
> of human history.  When any ideology goes too far, it
> automatically sows the seeds of its own demise.  This
> cycle will not end, because ideologies are like fingerprints:
> no two people have the same exact one.

> The inescapable result is that there are 6.6 billion
> human belief systems in operation today.

> The less-obvious conclusion is that every religious sect
> in the world today consists of Exactly One zealot, and
> somewhere between One and One Billion "enablers".

>>If necessary, I can provide numerous examples from the Koran, Hadiths
>>etc.,
>>of the Prophet:

>>--Calling for the murder of those who blaspheme or ridicule him;

>>--Commanding the murder of infidels and the effective enslavement of the
>>survivors;

>>--Commanding the murder of homosexuals;

>>--Commanding the murder of those who convert from Islam;

>>--Commanding the murder of adulterous wives (but not husbands);

>>--Commanding that wives can be convicted for adultery solely by the
>>uncorroborated testimony of their husband;

>>--Commanding that males inherit twice what females inherit;

>>--Commanding that a woman's testimony in court be given half the weight of
>>a
>>man's testimony; and

>>--Commanding that thieves have their limbs hacked off.

>>Review the New Testament -- you will find *no* examples of these kinds of
>>commands from Jesus.

>>And *if* the Prophet did these things, and *if* Muslims consider his
>>commands perfect for all time, wouldn't you agree that Islam is anything
>>but
>>a Religion of Peace (tm) -- as the term "peace" is defined by sane people?

> Conversely, there are plenty of early christian books
> which did not make it into the new testament for one
> reason or another.

An irrelevant point -- though true. My argument is that Islam and
Christianity are very different faiths with very different requirements for
their adherents. So it is not intellectually defensible to equate them.

--Ty
Reply to this Message
Scaly Lizard - 22 Feb 2006 17:50 GMT
>> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 11:39:58 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>
>>>"Scaly Lizard" <scalylizard@nospampleaseyho.com> wrote in message
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>I didn't intend to "bitch slap" anyone; it's just that your argument is the
>standard defense of Islam and it has some pretty glaring faults.

It's only a figure of speech, but know that your
replies have made me re-evaluate my attitude to
the islamic world.  You make the situation sound
more grim than my gut tells me, but your citations
of religious and common-sense points only brings
greater urgency to the search for a solution to the
conflict.  

I believe that there is a solution other than war
against all islam.  

>> I do have to admit your points are well supported, and
>> mine come from a different understanding of the issue.
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>not confident that Christianity's success means that Islam can do likewise.
>The challenges for the two faiths are just too different.

I dunno.  The time vector shows a striking similarity.  
Where was christianity with a timelag of 600 years?  
They were burning witches as fast as they could cut
the wood.  

As i said, i can't find anything inherently evil about
the koran, as its message closely resembles the
new testament bible (except Paul's stuff).  There
are a few lapses into OT-style fire and brimstone,
but the rational reader has to mediate those passages
with respect to the book's intended audience.  

If, as you say, such interpretation is heretical apostasy
in all of islam, then islam is doomed to a military conflict
with the West, a conflict which it cannot win.  That's
cultural suicide, and perhaps is reflected in the rise of
personal suicide among islamist radicals.  

When i survey the islamic world, i just can't shake
the feeling that there's got to be a better way.  There
are enough positive passages in the koran to construct
an entirely benign worldview, so where are those people?  

Why don't the moderates hold marches?  

The truth is that in any human culture, 50% are just
not that interested in marching.  In repressive cultures,
that leaves 25% willing to march and 25% willing to
beat marchers down.  

What we saw in the Danish Cartoon War was the
25% hotheads marching and the 25% repressive control
apparatus taking a powder because the anger of the
mob was directed elsewhere for once.  

>I think that we should acknowledge the true nature of the threat and go from
>there. You cannot defeat an enemy unless you first acknowledge what he is.
>Can you imagine beating the Nazis, had we constantly asserted that Nazism
>was a "peaceful ideology" that had been "hijacked" by a few fanatics?

"Reclining face to face  upon soft couches, they shall
be served with a goblet filled at a gushing fountain.  Their
drink shall neither dull their senses nor befuddle them.  And
by their side shall sit bashful dark-eyed virgins, as chaste
as the sheltered eggs of ostriches."  
                          - koran, the ranks  

"If it was Allah's will to punish men for their misdeeds,
not one creature would be left alive on the earth's surface.  
He respites them till an appointed time."  
                          - koran, the creator

The "appointed time" is the same Judgement Day
as in christianity, and the good get the virgins while
the evil go to the exact same hell as in the NT.  

Christianity skips the enticement of afterlife virgins,
but otherwise the two "end times" scenarios are
remarkably similar.  Mahomet certainly drew from
the bible when writing the koran, and tailored his
message to 7th Century Arabia just as well as
Jesus tailored his message to 1st Century Judea.  

Jesus's messgae was more pacifistic, when
confronted with the overwhelming military might
of Rome.  Mahomet's message was more
confrontational, when faced with the constant
tribal conflicts in Arabia (and lack of any serious
external threat).  Arabia had been buffeted by
the Steppe expansions of Attila and others in the
5th Century, but was left in relative seclusion until
Tamerlane and the Khans.  

Thus, islam was well-timed to have a chance to grow
unchecked in the vacuum between the periods of
Central Asian pressure on Arabia.  Thereafter, the
pressure on islam from Asia and christendom was
codified as an us-against-the-world mentality, and
has changed very little since.  

>> Agreed, but you seem to want to flush the baby with
>> the bathwater.  Christianity has matured to the point
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>have to find a way to disobey the Prophet's plain words -- without getting
>beheaded for apostacy in the process. A profoundly harder task, it seems to me.

Yes, but a task which should be aided by the
information revolution.  Hopefully.  One strain of
thought relates the recent spurt of fundamentalism
in *both* christianity and islam as a reaction to the
declining relevancy of deism in a world where
science punches wider holes in ancient texts.  

In the face of the march of science, individual
mysticism is on the rise, which can only be
abhorrent to the "big" religions.  Christendom
has grasped this earlier than islam, by virtue of
free speech.  

Islam lags, but not by 600 years anymore.  The
information revolution has cut their maturation
rate to 150 years behind christianity.  The important
strategic objective now must be to withdraw all
forces from the MidEast.  If the US withdraws from
a position of strength, then a central tenet of islamic
political thought is satisfied.  

If the US withdraws but democracy breaks down,
then we still have the respect of the average muslim,
for offering an honest alternative to totalitarianism.  

Thus, the success of democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan
is not as important as the fact that we make a good-faith
effort and then we withdraw.  Making good on the promise
to withdraw is paramount to the philosophical war at hand.  

Showing the USA as a stabilizing influence, rather than
just an influencer, will go farther than Iraq's borders to
energize public-rule movements all across the islamic
world.  If we do our best then get out, we show the
androcentric islamic world that we're not out for
conquest, so they will feel more confident to clamp
down on the shriller imams preaching global war.  

>Yep. Anytime some purported Christian uses an OT passage to call for murder
>of someone, they are ignoring the plain words of Christ. Worse, they are
>*subordinating* Jesus...something that a "Christian" cannot do.

The same theme runs throughout the koran.  It predicts
dire decades in Hell for unbelievers, but reserves to Allah
the right to judge men's souls.  600 years ago, the notion
that God would sort it out was enough justification for
christians to burn tens of thousands of people alive.  

Today, islamist nutjobs behead innocents before the
webcam, for similar reasons of public relations.  

Withdrawing foreign troops from the MidEast will
force the nutjobs to either succeed spectaculary
or fail miserably.  

As impoverished as their philosphy is, when compared
to the modern world, i predict their failure.  

>But the problem is that there is *no* Muslim New Testament to replace those
>old -- and still binding -- passages

No, but there is still room for a more tolerant
form of islam to arise from the koran's more
rational passages, no?  

>> There is a struggle within islam today, between the
>> fundamentalists and the reasonable human beings
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>how ignoring Islam's systemic hostility to Western values will help the
>"reasonable" ones.

I'm more hopeful.  

>> That point needs to be made crystal-clear to the
>> islamic world.  Unfortunate knuckling-under in
[quoted text clipped - 24 lines]
>*returning fire*. The poor Muslim terrorists were shooting *from* the
>mosque...

Not a temple anymore, but now a military placement.  
If you think your god commands war, then meet our
god, who deplores war but lets us do it anyway.  

>>>5. So, as you can see, the cases are very different. The challenge for
>>>modernizing Christians was to obey Christ. The challenge for modernizing
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>so many in the West willfully blind themselves to what the Muslims
>themselves say about their faith.

The more islam drifts towards fighting, the fewer
converts they will attract in christendom, let alone
from the buddhists and hindus and chinese.  

There's a self-limiting factor in extremism: the
percentage of the population willing to die for
a god is always replenished more slowly than
the natural growth rate of the population.  

Today, islam has hotheads willing to fight to
the death, and we've made it easier for them:
a bus ticket to Jordan or Syria then slipping
into Iraq.  Contrasted with buying a plane ticket
to New York, they're much more likely to fight
us over there, by virtue of convenience.  

We're better off killing the nutjobs in Iraq, where
we have soldiers, instead of in Manhattan where
we are defended by lattespresso vendors.  

>>>However, there are a few problems with this argument:
>
[quoted text clipped - 49 lines]
>punishment, abortion clinic bombers, yet are strangely silent about far
>worse behavior among Muslims.

Ah, that's only the politics of fear.  The American
left has seen the philosophical underpinnings of
socialism degrading for thirty years, and has chosen
the hollow husks of multiculturalism and utopianism
upon which to make a last-stand.  

>> Just like all other 'scriptures', the koran has numerous
>> internal contradictions.  If it didn't, then there would be
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>here -- the Koran is not arranged chronologically, but rather by the length
>of each chapter.

Yes, and luckily, the version i have has a list
of how to read the books in either order.  

>So you'll note that all the peaceful stuff appears in the early days of
>Muhammed's rise to power when he was weak. Once he achieved dominance, his
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>problem is that once Muhammed died, there were no more Prophets for Allah to
>issue policy changes through.

Well put.  Upon re-reading some of the koran,
i now see (post 9-11-01) the more angry tone of
the book.  The assurances to the faithful that
allah will sort it all out on the Day Of Judgement
are still there, but the vitriol level imparted to the
faithful seems higher than i remembered from a
pre-9/11 reading.  

>> And that brings us back to the fact that the koran was
>> written to appeal to its audience: arabs in the 7th Century.
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>peaceful ideology. Any more than the existence of peaceful Nazis would mean
>that Nazism in a peaceful ideology.

In contrast, i would posit that people are, as
a whole, peaceful.  We want to raise kids in
peace more than we want to raise kids in a
perfect society.  

The same basic human aspiration, for a better
life for our descendants, will (i believe) trump
islamist radicalism with normal human moderatism.  

We merely have to get the triggers for islamist
radicalism out of the way.  That means doing our
level best in Afghanistant and Iraq, then getting
all the way out of the area.  

THEN, every muck-raking imam will be faced with
the fact that America doesn't really want to conquer
their way of life after all.  Where can they find the
next Satan to keep the faithful interested?  

When forced to deal with their internal contradictions,
most proponents of jihad will feel their philosophical
planks collapse under their feet.  

>>>Indeed, you could credibly claim that the members of most vile, murderous
>>>ideologies are peaceful. But would that fact -- if true -- make the Ku Klux
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
>> in the world today consists of Exactly One zealot, and
>> somewhere between One and One Billion "enablers".

>...  

>> Conversely, there are plenty of early christian books
>> which did not make it into the new testament for one
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
>--Ty

Not to equate them, but perhaps an immature islam is going
through the same convulsions that christianity did 600 years
ago?  

Many factors suggest that islam's subjugation to semi-secular
rule mirrors christendom's mire of feudal rule in the 1400's.  
Just as the West's fumbling attempts towards democracy
were the culmination of a thousand years of scientific
advances eroding the authority of Rome, if we can find
the restraint to let the muslims argue it out amongst
themselves, we will surely see reasonable people
come out on top.  

Removing Western occupation will force nutjobs to
compete on a philosophically level field, and that's
where nutjobs always lose.  

SL
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kilgore trout - 17 Feb 2006 20:03 GMT
>> On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:43:14 GMT, "Ty" <tybeardSPAM@sbcglobal.net>
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
>
> --Ty

I bet Israeli Tanks and Jets can kill a lot more than a suicide bomber can. BTW why didnt
the Jews use suicide bombers during WW2? Didnt think of it? What about Masada? When
presented with a hopeless situation, you do what you have to do, I guess.
I mean the Ayrabs aint got no Jetplanes or helicopters or tanks.
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Ty - 17 Feb 2006 20:23 GMT
>> The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim
>> Middle East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.

> I bet Israeli Tanks and Jets can kill a lot more than a suicide bomber
> can.

"Metaphor".

> I mean the Ayrabs aint got no Jetplanes or helicopters or tanks.

Well, other than the thousands of tanks and jet aircraft that they have.

--Ty
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kilgore trout - 19 Feb 2006 15:43 GMT
>>> The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim
>>> Middle East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> --Ty

Are you saying that the Palestinians have Tanks and Jets??Its news to me. As far as I know
that is the only "ayrabs" the Jews are currently at war with. Everybody else they just
connive behind the scenes, blow up skyscrapers, etc and blame it on the Mysterious "al
Queda". This the same M.O they have used since the Stern Gang and the Irgun slaughtered
British soldiers and civilians.
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Ty - 20 Feb 2006 15:27 GMT
>>>> The rotted almond metaphor is a pretty good one for the entire Muslim
>>>> Middle East. Not as good as the suicide bomber, but still pretty good.

>>> I bet Israeli Tanks and Jets can kill a lot more than a suicide bomber
>>> can.

>> "Metaphor".

>>> I mean the Ayrabs aint got no Jetplanes or helicopters or tanks.

>> Well, other than the thousands of tanks and jet aircraft that they have.

> Are you saying that the Palestinians have Tanks and Jets??Its news to me.

Are you saying that the Palestinians are the only Arabs?

Of course, it is true that the Arabs can't actually build or design the
modern weaponry that they buy. Israel, of course, with no natural resources,
designs and builds modern tanks, missiles, jet fighters, computer software,
etc. The Arab world, with all that oil wealth and 30 times the population of
Israel can do none of these things. Indeed, while Israel exports electronics
and software, the Arab world only exports oil and fanaticism.

> As far as I know that is the only "ayrabs" the Jews are currently
> at war with.

Well, the Palestinians are the only Arabs at war with Israel...unless you
count every Arab nation except Egypt and Jordan. And let's not leave out
Iran -- not an Arab nation technically, but similarly inept in most
respects.

> Everybody else they just connive behind the scenes, blow up skyscrapers,
> etc and blame it on the Mysterious "al Queda".

So 9-11 was a Jewish plot, then? Blamed on the poor, innocent Arab
terrorists? Wow, those Jews sure do get around, don't they? Of course, your
believe *does* place you in the mainstream of Arab public opinion. A rather
dubious distinction, it seems to me.

Still, you folks fascinate me. You seem to blame *everything* on "the Jews".
Yet, you seem unable to realize that *if* a few million Jews could do what
you claim they have, then your best move is to simply surrender. Because if
they can control the destiny of 5 billion people like that, then you have no
chance...

--Ty
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kauffner@bigfoot.com - 24 Feb 2006 08:13 GMT
> 391  On 24th February, a new edict of Theodosius prohibits not only
> visits to pagan Temples but also looking at the vandalised statues. New
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> building, demolish it, burn its famous Library and profane the cult
> images.

This story first appears in _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
by
the notoriously anti-Christian Edward Gibbon. (Carl Sagan repeats it in
_Cosmos_.) There is no mention of books in any of the ancient accounts
of the destruction of the Serapeum, nor is there anything to support
the
idea that the early Christians were fanatical book-burners. The
Serapeum's
books were moved out at least 30 years earlier.  BTW, the Serapeum
Library
is not the same as the Library of Alexandria, which dissappeared
several
hundred years earlier. (According to Plutach, it was accidently burned
down
by Julius Ceasar. Of course, it would be satisfying to a Greek to pin
the
blame on a Roman even if the Library had been in disrepair before
Ceasar
arrived.)
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