Senethro
Overlord
Rephrase please, I'm scared of quotes.
Why Islam Can't Reform
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
Rephrase please, I'm scared of quotes.
Senethro
Overlord
You made some absolute statements regarding race and ideology and I pointed out with clear examples that they weren't nearly so absolute in reality.
I mean, you can stick to your line if you want, just use an argument that I haven't demolished.
In general, you can also assume that people aren't idiots. So, point out exceptions, and then you can continue the conversation in situations where their statements are true, and then expand it into situations where their statements are false. The fact that some people can choose their race doesn't invalidate the gist behind what he was trying to talk about.
There's no doubt that the Abrahamic god is one that used both collective punishment and prophylactic murder. Yeah, mostly in the OT. So, when people talk about Jesus 'reforming' Christianity, it's true. Jesus's teachings certainly allow a Christian to refute the OT. But some Christians, and I notice a liberal/conservative bias here, have internalized the idea that God is okay with collective punishment and prophylactic murder. Now, not all the time. And only when they personally can justify it as the wise choice. But they're foundationally okay with it.
Jesus seems pretty Joshua-y in Revelations.
I don't know why I bother discussing with SJWs. Like their right-wing cousins (the Nazis), they're mostly incurable. But anyway.
My point, which you missed entirely, was not that a "blanket analysis" of Islam will reveal exactly how all Muslims behave and dissect all details of their faith. My point was rather that all religions, no matter how internally varied, have some unifying "ideological" characteristics, or they wouldn't be considered a common religion. There is absolutely no reason to believe that all religions are exactly as easy to reform or as compatible with modern Western societies, which is a SJW dogma. This is due to the obvious fact that the unifying set of beliefs of the different religions are not the same. So Christianity is not the same as Islam which is not the same as the Aztec religion. They may all pose different problems of different intensity depending on the context in which they're practiced.
In the specific case of Islam, I was arguing that there seems to be a strong impediment for a theological argument for the separation of spiritual and temporal power, as Mohammed was both Prophet and Caesar, in a striking contrast to Jesus (the unifying figure of Christianity, like Mohammed for Islam). So religious authorities in Islamic countries always have a strong theological case for temporal power - you can't say "render unto Caesar" when the Prophet is Caesar.
This very simple point that I made above has no analogy to race. Only people truly obsessed with race, whose whole ideology is based on a race-centric view of the world, would see any similarity or possible analogy.
Senethro
Overlord
Do you listen to yourself luiz? You say your opponents are akin to nazis while saying yourself a religious group is incompatible with western society and that they are inevitably enemies.
I said nothing of the sort. I merely pointed out that it makes no sense to dogmatically assume that all religions are equivalent. Clearly, they may pose different challenges and problems, which vary by context.
Refuting this dogmatic and irrational belief in equivalency does not at all mean the absurd things you said.
This whole idiotic discussion started because aelf implied that stating that all religions are not necessarily equivalent is like saying that all races are not necessarily equal. But this makes no sense, because race and religion are two entirely different concepts. His aim was clear, however: any suggestion that religions are not entirely equivalent is akin to racism (the anathema SJWs use to stop a discussion).
Absolutely. It's entirely a bias on my part. I keep forgetting that Revelations exists, and that it forms part of the Christian mythology. It's really a fault on my part. I rather a respect a lot of the moral seeds portrayed by Jesus in the Gospels, and I accidentally excise Revelations from the useful portion of Jesus' teachings.
Well this is just for curiosity's sake, but we don't even know who the author of Revelation was, and several Christian denominations don't accept it. Luther for instance considered it neither canonical nor prophetical, and Calvin wrote no comment on it (the only book of the NT he didn't comment). It's also completely excluded in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox churches, which are of counrse one of the biggest branches of Christianity. Even those that accept it as canonical consider it entirely allegorical (except crazy sects).
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So it is possible for Abrahamists to read their religious texts as watered down from the literal?
Revelations was never supposed to portray acts of Jesus that happened, it's a prophecy, and one which is hotly contested. So it can be interpreted as an allegory, or entirely excluded. We can't really interpret Mohammed's wars, conquests and massacres as allegories; they're meant as quite literal descriptions of stuff he did.
Same as the genocides favorably reported in Joshua which are foundational to all 3 Abrahamic sects. Jesus certainly didn't come out and say that was wrong or that it was a mis-reporting of God's favor and will.
In fact, Jesus's greatest (documented) moral error was probably in telling his followers to love the Abramamic god
But Jesus himself was not a warlord, and did not have any temporal power nor attempt to have it. This matters.
I'm discussing the theological implication of having a Prophet who was Caesar to the separation of temporal and spiritual power.
And avoiding the theological implication of having a Prophet that is going to go insanely violent during end times or the common sense notion that people of faith in modern times often to not hold to the crazier notions of their religious texts. You seem to admit that Christians can do it. Why not think your average Muslim does it also?
Because the Revelation does not describe anything that Jesus did, is not even accepted as canon by half of Christianity, and is regarded as allegorical by the other half.
There's nothing allegorical about Mohammed's warlord career. All Muslims accept him as a warlord and conqueror. Who Mohammed was and what he did are the very essence of Islam.There is absolutely nothing to do with the crazy and hard to interpret prophecies of Revelation, which anyway only talk about the end of time. I'm talking about how Mohammed actually behaved during his life, and is believed to have behaved by all Muslims.
Or are you trying to imply that Muslims view Mohammed's deeds as allegorical and not real historical facts?
I'm saying that a typical Muslim is going to live peacefully despite the text, just as typical Christians and Jews can live peacefully despite the violent, God-approved rhetoric in their religious texts. Joshua is an just about every Christian Bible and is seen by most believers as historical and God-approved rather than allegorical.
No, most believers certainly view Joshua as allegorical and not an exact role model, as that is the opinion of the main Christian denominations. In fact, most Christians have very little familiarity with the OT, but all Muslims know Mohammed was a conqueror.
Of course most Muslims can and will live peacefully, that's not at all the argument I was making. I was saying that it's harder for reformist Muslims to mount a theological argument against the mixing of temporal and spiritual power than it was for reformist Christians, because Mohammed himself held temporal power and is the ultimate role model. So in that regard Islam is more problematic than Christianity, where we can quote Christ himself: "render unto Caesar". It's no wonder (for me at least) that we therefore see even in Muslim countries that have for decades embraced reformism and relatively progressive policies a constant resurgence of religious authorities trying to gain temporal power.
My point was merely that all religions are not necessarily equivalent in everything, and in fact thinking they are is ridiculous. It was not an attack on Islam, Muslims or even Mohammed - who in fact was pretty decent as far as 7th Century warlords are concerned.
Making decent (and honest) theological arguments from the Bible is hard. I'm not arguing that all religions are equivalent - I just think the Abrahamist sects aren't all that different, they all share the same ancient & violent baseline. Omce believers can look past that, it is not so hard to look past most anything else to fit one's own viewpoint.
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