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Organized Religion, the Bible and the Will of God
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Post by
MrMojoRisin
As for all this other discussion, I understand that you believe you're right and that Muslims and myself are wrong. I think you're wrong. The thing is, the Muslims aren't going to go away, at least not for a long time, so instead of burning bridges and building walls between the Western World and the Islamic World, we should be trying to foster understanding and empathy between them.
We can't compromise on some things, but we can on others. If we don't, we're going to always be enemies.I completely agree with this. I want to work with them, and compromise, and work together. However, none of that has to do with me not being able to say "I believe their religion is wrong".
But how do you "work with, compromise, and work together" with a group of people whose faith inherently commands them to convert you, or kill you?
I too would like to do these things, because as Skreeran said, they are not just going to go away. What I do not see is how that is possible. I know how strong my faith in Christianity is, and I would believe that their faith in Islam is just as strong
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
As for whether or not religion and war should mix, all we're asking is that you try and think like a Muslim, if only for the purposes of being able to reason with them.
I never said I didn't. I just said that I don't think they are right. What the hell?But how do you "work with, compromise, and work together" with a group of people whose faith inherently commands them to convert you, or kill you?
Well, I've got two things to say here. First, I was mainly talking about the majority of Muslims who don't want me to die. I know there are hundreds of thousands of them that would kill me in a heartbeat, but we are talking about working with the peaceful elements. Second, if you would like to know how to work with people who would either convert or kill you, you have a great example of that in Jesus. We need to be willing to love, and set the example of compassion and forgiveness, even to the point of death. That is the most powerful conversion tool I can think of. I would be willing to go to my death, at the hands of militant Muslims, if it would teach them compassion and self sacrificing love.
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
You
know
this? You are really willing to say that hundreds of thousands of people are murderers because they are muslim?
Elura, please stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say "because they are muslim". You put that in my mouth to make me look intolerant. I'm going to call you out for it every time. To make it interesting, I can start putting words into your mouth. That should be fun, and at least level the playing field a bit. How would you like that? I could make up some stuff, and just ask you why you believe it. I could ask you why you think it is ok that Muslims kill Christians or something like that. Should be fun. Or, just maybe, we could drop that strawman crap and have an honest discussion. Wouldn't that be nice? You could spend pages and pages defending yourself against stuff I make up about your viewpoint. You have to notice that this has been going on for a while now. You question me about my beliefs, and I play defensive. In all of our discussions, it fits that mold. You attack my views. I defend. You make up some crap. I defend. You never noticed that, did you? I don't attack your viewpoints. I don't question them. I let you believe what you want to believe, and simply explain and defend myself. That alone should tell you something about tolerance.
Truth be told, I don't know why they do it, whether it be religion, or whatever. It isn't important. They do it. That's all I know. I know this because of stuff like the elections in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to militant and so called "radical" Islam won popular support, in a landslide. Further evidence is the support of Hamas in Palestine, another "radical" Islam group that loves to pine for the death of the infidel. Shoot, just consider the government of Iran. How many people are in that, and look what happened to the Christian who went over there? You bet there are hundreds of thousands of people who would kill me with a clear conscious, who also happen to be Muslim.
No, I didn't read your article, and it really doesn't matter what it says. Islam has some pretty large violent and intolerant elements in it. That's simply fact beyond reproach. I simply cannot understand the people in this thread who ride Christianity all day long about its intolerance, and then jump up and down to come to the defense of Islam. I will never get that, and I've seen people do it for years. Where does that thinking come from?
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
How is that not what you just said? First, I was mainly talking about the majority of Muslims who don't want me to die. I know there are hundreds of thousands of them that would kill me in a heartbeatYou are obviously talking about muslims, as that is what you stated. Since Mojo has stated several times that this is what islam is, and you are not disagreeing or stating anything else, it has to be
because
they are muslims and islam teaches them this. Unless you mean it's because they like cherries, you just forgot to mention that.
I'll make this simple for you. I'm going to give you a background situation, and then give you two possible sentences to describe that situation, and you tell me which one is accurate.
Mr.Blonde went to a baking convention. Mr.Blonde was there and saw that 300 bakers were attending. 100 of the bakers got together and decided that Mr.Blonde must die. Those 100 bakers then set out to kill him.
Now, which of the following statements is true:
A) 100 bakers set out to kill Mr.Blonde.
B) 100 people set out to kill Mr.Blonde because they are bakers.
If you can tell the difference between these two statements, then you can understand the context of what it is you quoted.
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
If the only reason they have to kill you is because of something being a muslims entails, then it is because they are muslims.
As in, if they weren't muslims, they'd have no reason to want to kill you since they don't view you as an infidel and there is no god telling them what to do.
None of which I said. I just said there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims who want me dead. That is a true statement. I never said "the religion of Islam teaches to kill me", nor did I say that people who are Muslims want me to die, nor did I say that people who want me to die are like that because they are Muslim. All that you inferred, because you are conditioned (perhaps by yourself) to defend against stereotyping of Islam. In fact, it's as deep as the discussion of radical Islam has EVER gotten in this forum, and I think that is as deep as it WILL EVER get in this forum, because people cannot discuss anything else when discussing the violence in Islam. All that can be discussed is how we must be tolerant because "they aren't all like that", and anyone who tries to discuss the violent elements in it, is assumed to be stereotyping everyone in the entire religion, and we go right back to "they aren't all like that how dare you".
Post by
240140
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Skreeran
I never said I didn't. I just said that I don't think they are right. What the hell?That was the impression I got from the discussion about religion and war. It sounded to me like you thought they had no good reason to think that the two should go together. If that's not what you meant then I'm sorry for misreading you.
As for militant Islam: I don't think it's right to deny that there are a lot of Muslim Radicals out there, who want to kill us for religious reasons. I don't think acknowledging that fact is the same as claiming that Islam under all interpretations commands the murder of non-Muslims.
Post by
MyTie
Ooooh okay, so you
know
that they would be homicidal crazy people even if they were not muslims and had nothing to do with those beliefs. Okay, I guess I did misunderstand you.I believe there are religious movement sects of Islam that teach violence. A lot of the violence is tied to various mosques, and religious teachings of certain clerics. It isn't Islam, but certain teachings of denominations of Islam. I won't say that ALL of Muslims are like that, but at the same time I won't say that their religious beliefs have nothing to do with it, when the violent Muslims yell "allah hu akbar" right before they behead their victims.I do defend against the stereotypes of islam because the people who are affected by it are not the radical muslims.That's awesome. Now, if you don't mind, go somewhere that is needed. Stop preaching to me about not stereotyping something I haven't stereotyped. It's a big huge strawman, and one that rears its ugly head every time I discuss violent radical Islam, and never goes away the entire discussion, and dominates the entire discussion. I'm not going to apologize to you for stereotyping something I haven't stereotyped, so give it a rest. Of course now you are going to say that no muslims in America or any other western country get treated badly because of it, because that is where you always go.
I wouldn't say that, nor have I ever said that. In fact, I don't know what the hell you are talking about here. Should we sit around and lament at how western society victimizes Muslims now? That's horrible, true. Great that we got that out. Now let's talk about the middle east, where Muslims are being beheaded by other Muslims for not believing the same denomination of Islam. This is kind of like when people bring up Westburo Baptist Church to try to show how intolerant Christianity is, when people talk about how violent Islamists used children as suicide bombers. So, we all have to stop and discuss how, no, we don't agree with WBC, but perhaps that has zero to do with what we are talking about.
I'm hoping to exhaust these two talking points:
1) Not all Muslims are violent.
Why do I want to exhaust that talking point? Because I never said they were, so it's completely irrelevant.
2) Radical Christianity is a problem, just like radical Islam is.
Why do I want to exhaust this talking point? Because those two very different problems, are of extremely different scopes, and intensities, to the point of being a ridiculous comparison.
I'm extremely curious to see what will happen to the discussion once we move past those two points. To be quite honest, I've never seen it move past that, here on wowhead. People just bounce back and forth between those, for days. I imagine they've nothing else to say about the subject, so they just beat those to death. How about we try moving on. Let's address the problem of violent radical Islam. why is it there? How do we fix it? Who are these people? Where does it come from?
Post by
Skreeran
I'm not sure if
we
can fix it. I think Radical Islam is Islam's issue. The best we can do, I think, is defend ourselves against it and try to remain rational, reasonable, and willing to talk things out. If Islam proves to be anything like other historical religions, then this is most likely a particularly radical phase that it will eventually grow out of.
Post by
MyTie
I'm not sure if
we
can fix it. I think Radical Islam is Islam's issue. The best we can do, I think, is defend ourselves against it and try to remain rational, reasonable, and willing to talk things out. If Islam proves to be anything like other historical religions, then this is most likely a particularly radical phase that it will eventually grow out of.
Good point. How did the violent elements of Christianity die out, such as the Crusades? I think that the powers that be just lost power. I think that's probably what needs to happen here. Thoughts?
Post by
Skreeran
Well, that, and the zeitgeist just changed with time. Whatever needs to happen, I think we're the wrong ones to do it. Any action we take to affect the course of Islam is going to be taken as aggressive and they'd only fight that much harder against it.
Post by
Gone
Surely it's not up to you to decide it's not a good thing if it's the word of god?
Pretty much this. People need to stop speaking for God. The only one who knows what God will is, is God himself, and it's for him to judge people.
Post by
MyTie
The only one who knows what God will is, is God himself
I disagree. God explained His will in the Bible. Even if you don't believe in the Bible, the idea that an omnipotent and benevolent being created all of the universe, and then didn't bother to communicate purpose for it, seems a bit far fetched. That seems harder to believe than the concept of God itself. One of the reasons that I have arrived at Christianity is that 1) I believe life is art, therefore there is an artist and 2) Any artist who created love would want to be loved in return, therefore 3) that artist would have communicated that desire to His creation. So, I'm left looking for a religion that supposes an omnipotent God, one that supposes to know Him since creation (narrows everything down to the big three), and one that teaches to love Him, and everyone else (narrows it down to Judaism and Christianity). Further, I don't want any religion that is self contradictory. That leaves Christianity. From that understanding, I fail to understand how it could be true that there is a God, and at the same time, He communicated no will to us. That seems contradictory to the nature of love itself.
Post by
Gone
The only one who knows what God will is, is God himself
I disagree. God explained His will in the Bible. Even if you don't believe in the Bible, the idea that an omnipotent and benevolent being created all of the universe, and then didn't bother to communicate purpose for it, seems a bit far fetched. That seems harder to believe than the concept of God itself. One of the reasons that I have arrived at Christianity is that 1) I believe life is art, therefore there is an artist and 2) Any artist who created love would want to be loved in return, therefore 3) that artist would have communicated that desire to His creation. So, I'm left looking for a religion that supposes an omnipotent God, one that supposes to know Him since creation, and one that teaches to love Him, and everyone else. Further, I don't want any religion that is self contradictory. That leaves Christianity. From that understanding, I fail to understand how it could be true that there is a God, and at the same time, He communicated no will to us. That seems contradictory to the nature of love itself.
But now your argument comes down to your interpretation of God having more validity than somebody else's. You aren't the only one with a holy book, and they were all written by men, not by God.
Also I just noticed this:
God is reflected in nature
Actually according to the Bible, the Earth is cursed by sin, and that Satan is the prince of this world.
Post by
asakawa
MyTie, you started a long way down a very specific road and your belief in 1, 2 and 3 are not universal or objective. I enjoy the simplicity of your core beliefs but building an ostensibly logical framework on top of a foundation of assumption and conjecture does not make the conclusions logical.
That's your belief system and I have no interest in criticising it (it's really quite poetic, I like it) but you're presenting your view as the most logical and sensible interpretation of reality when I don't think that is, remotely, the case.
Post by
MyTie
Actually according to the Bible, the Earth is cursed by sin, and that Satan is the prince of this world.
Sin is wrong, and the world has been twisted by it, but the creations themselves are good. See Genesis 1. The idea is that this world is temporary is true, but that doesn't mean that the good that happens here, like love, is not a reflection of God. Further, righteousness itself cannot be twisted. The characteristics of God cannot be twisted, and we have those here on Earth, although they are not of the world.But now your argument comes down to your interpretation of God having more validity than somebody else's.Like I said earlier, not all views on God are equally valid, such as FSM and Catholicism. That said, I'm more than willing to discuss the nature of God, and try to arrive at conclusions we both would agree on. We can do this on things we can observe about the creation of the creator. This isn't based solely on what is inside of us, as in opinion, but can also be based on our understanding of empathy, morality, and observable natural traits of the creation.You aren't the only one with a holy book, and they were all written by men, not by God.This is supposing that there is no God, or that God in fact didn't write the book. I think you mean to say:You aren't the only one with a holy book, and they could have all been been written by men, not by God.But if we are to suppose it possible that there is a God, let us also suppose it possible that He inspired, directed, and sanctioned the Bible to be His will. If that were possible, then your statement is false.
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