'Committed Christian'? Obama's religious history unmasked
A follow-up to LetsShrug's post on Obama's prayer breakfast comments
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While we're very happy to have you in the Gulch and appreciate your wanting to fully engage, some things in the Gulch (e.g. voting, links in comments) are a privilege, not a right. To get you up to speed as quickly as possible, we've provided two options for earning these privileges.
haven't you noticed how the arab mind works; corner one and he will change the subject until he believes he has the upper hand. in the case of 0 he is in a unique position that he can say what ever the hell he wants and knows nobody will respond back to him directly to his face. he has never read the history of which he spoke but was TOLD what to say. then again he never knows why he says anything because he is always TOLD what to say. I keep looking for the string coming out the back of his neck.
The offending text refers to the polytheists in Mecca that persecuted Mohamed's people and is is taken out of context. The quran also states that jews, christians and muslims are all people of Abraham who will go to heaven..
"2:62 Those who believe, and those who follow the Jewish (faith), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in God and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve."
The statements being used to assert islam is fundamentally intolerant are little different than the old testament, where god instructs Samuel to kill women, children and infants:
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
Islam is being used by individuals to control the masses for power, exactly, like christianity and other religions have been used to control people for power.
Also please show me where it says in the bible to slaughter the amish and mormons.
Amish and Mormons were not religions at the time of the writing so naturally the bible does not say to slaughter them.
"If you should raise your hand against me to kill me – I shall not raise my hand against you to kill you. Indeed, I fear Allah, Lord of the worlds."
and 5:34 says:
"Except for those who return [repenting] before you apprehend them. And know that Allah is Forgiving and Merciful."
As I said, using statements like the one you quote out of context is inappropriate. Even the passage you quote is in defense against an aggressor, not an instruction to conquer.
Now, back to the second question, and the main point. Indeed the bible does not instruct the killing of amish or mormons or heritics, yet self-proclaimed christians did just that and worse. Now you probably respond with something like they were misled, not really christians or we aren't like that anymore... Exactly!
Now offer islam the same relief.
A boil on the backside of humanity for two thousand years? They didn't attack Europe during the Crusades. Europe attacked them, and at the time, they were far more tolerant of other religions and more technically advanced than Europe, where persecution and book banning against heliocentricisim were instituted by the church for the next thousand years.
BTW, my books are not the bible, quran or toban's spirt guide. They are Physics and Chemistry texts and Scientific American Mind. No place in my mind for mythology. I just point out that ALL mythology serves to control a populace, and none are innocent of killing.
Do you know the Italian word for homosexual? Finnoccio, which is the word for fennel. Why are these related? Because they used to burn homosexuals at the stake, a little like a cage but publicly endorsed. To cover the smell of burning flesh, they'd put fennel in the fire. Thus when one smelled fennel, they knew it was a homosexual being burned.
How far is the Westboro Baptist Church from this really?
Do not preach against islam, unless you are ready to condemn the misuse persistent in all religions. If so, please do join me and let's
stop arguing.
The concept of the crusades being the christian answer to saracen invasion of Spain versus seeking to take back Jeruselum from the beginning is arguable. Clearly it was about power, the power of the ignorant, intolerant christian church over people versus the more tolerant, far more advanced muslim peoples over peoples.
You can argue that the saracens took over Spain in 771, but Spain was hardly secured by christians at that point. No doubt the christians were mortified of the muslims at that point. Around this time the muslims looked a whole lot more like the US than the christians. They were more tolerant, had banking, trade, technology and science. During this time, it was the saracens that tolerated other religions, particularly jews. Charlemagne, Urban and the christians were as bad as Nazis. Cordoba had muslims, jews, christians, mature trade, clocks compasses, paved streets, street lights and knowledge of Asia. Europe had none of these.
On his way to the crusades, Count Emicho (of Germany) took it on himself to slaughter jews in many towns. His troops killed ~5,000, in 1096, when the population of Europe was ~50M.
My point is that christians have been on the wrong side of the same justice you complain about more than muslims. Today is just a day, and neither text has changed significantly in 1,000 yrs.
Why are the christians so tame? They have SUVs, all the food ten people could eat and 50" TVs. Again, what would the Westboro Baptist Church be doing if it could institute policy, and separately where were the self-policing christians in Nazi Germany?
It is wholly inappropriate to act like the recent disgusting behavior is unique to islam. It is just wrong. Islam is a tool of the present terrorist to gain power and attention, nothing more, and chritianity has been used just as many or more times for the same end.
Extremists of all types try to use religion get people to turn off their brains and hate one another. I can hear them in their chops at the prospect of widespread fighting and killing in the name of the religion.
We do not need to eliminate the Muslim religion; we do need to deal with Muslim terrorists (and, yes, call them "Muslim terrorists" - maybe some of the Muslim non-terrorists will get tired of the term and turn on their extremist element and start kicking their butts. Wait that has happened: the Kurds are Muslims (at least some of them).).
Jan
I'm not so sure what kind of kinder gentler course correction can be made with the teachings of Mohamed, though. I don't think the idea of coexistence really works for Islam.
Especially since the Quran teaches that it is permitted to lie to an infidel, in order to achieve an Islamic goal.
That had slipped my memory banks.
Immediate second thought: They need a miracle.
I stare at those thoughts in print.
Nothing else comes.
Still, I've off and on been wondered about a passage in Revelations that the Antichrist will have his followers chop off the heads of Christian who refuse to worship him.
What's the only religion left in the world whose members (not all) still lop off heads with gleeful abandon?
Is this Islam's irreversible destiny? Is that from where the Antichrist shall spring up from?
Or shall the future prove that my theory barked up the wrong tree?
I'm just supposing here.
And there is a Christian school of thought who thinks Revelations should be one of the "lost books of the Bible."
Most of those lost books aren't really lost. I once had a book that contained such "lost books."
Later that became a program on the History Channel.
Just ran back after taking a quick look. There's gobs of stuff about those "lost books" on the Internet. Here's one picked almost at random--
http://amazingdiscoveries.org/S-deceptio...
I grew up with a Catholic Bible that Catholics were not encouraged to read. Each Sunday mass had a reading from an Epistle and a Gospel before the sermon was preached.
When I moved away from home I also moved out of being a Catholic.
I had a problem with Purgatory and praying for souls in it. I also had a problem with praying to Mary, angels, saints and dead relatives.
My parents told me that the Church just needed to grow.
I was all like, well, it already has had two thousand years.
I learned a couple of years ago that the Catholic Church finally grew up enough to finally dump the Purgatory that was never even in the Catholic Bible.
Whoopie!
I'm still not going to go back and pray to Mary or even to St. Patrick on my same day birthday.
I always wear green and brag about being a quarter Irish.
Jesus is the door to God. That's all there is, folks. Neat and simple.
Just curious, having corned beef and cabbage on your birthday?
Some mouse coward gave you a zero just above and and before your "Yes, not really lost, etc."
I just did what I could with my own +1.
I am peaches, I am cream.
I'm the captain of the team.
Yay me!
As for the corned beef and cabbage, I love it. Can't get anyone else to eat any, so the stew pot that I make once a year lasts me for a couple of weeks.
I've helped other picked-on innocents here with that.
Harrumph! Be assured that Capt. Allosaur shall carry on in that noble crusade. Oorah!
For as Robin Williams said playing Popeye in that movie, "I have a sinsk of humiligration."
How do you fix that corned beef and cabbage stew pot by the way?
Here's one that looks good - http://www.food.com/recipe/corned-beef-a...
I'd drop out the onion (I hate onions) and the potatoes - they're merely filler in this recipe. The bay leaf, allspice, and cloves are necessary for the flavor. And the carrots and cabbage add the sweetness.
I'm the only one in my house that will eat it. What can I say, the rest have no taste (although they all like it when I grill Fillet).
My mother used a clothespin on her nose....
"We westerners have had our challenges with religious intolerance, including all sorts of intolerable, abominable acts of persecution and violence against persons not conforming. These persist in modest form, as do most forms of diverse opinion. However, they rarely society or cause violence. Ours was a Renaissance, a religious reformation taking considerable time. With the resources and speed of communication available today, the west (or US) seeks to help islam to free itself from the cancerous radical element causing so much societal damage to its people, in a manner more rapid than our own transition to religious tolerance and secularism..."
Great idea Robbie!
However, I'll gladly support your habit, if I can drink along, next time I'm in MKE!
https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/pla...
Yes. I think they need a widely-recognized Pope-like figure to define the religion's position on modern events. Otherwise people are free to pick passages that show the religion is whatever they want it to be. Islamist extremists use this to call for a religious war, and people who want war for whatever reasons are eager to oblige.
If the Caliph represented the *average* religious person, the religion would be focused on things like getting our kids to respect others, work hard, and not squander their inheritance; it would be much less about violent extremism.
Perhaps they could persuade their clerics to make specific statements rejecting radical islam, and encouraging people to "identify non-believing criminals that seek to bring about war, pestilence and continued poverty on their countries by wastefully taunting and offending the wrath of peaceful countries outside our borders. Our texts says to wage war on invaders, but these people are not invaders. We have become the offenders through radical actions."
Maybe I'm just jousting at windmills...again, but I think this could work, and what a position for the US to take!
I agree with you. I wonder if there's some way to reach the average people. Baywatch reached the average person, which gets people's attention but can used to show how decadent the secular world is. The thing I don't get is science and capitalism *deliver the goods*. Do people want have thousands of on-demand video show? They can debate whether the shows should be porno or religious programming, but science and capitalism are what delivers them. I wonder if most average people see these Islamists taking over their country and say, "you teenage fools. Science and capitalism makes things happen. Your policy just aggrandizes you and fires up war-hungry teenage fools in foreign land and that's until some combatant kills you. You could instant learn to do something productive and enough for a nice iPod to spread the word of god to your friends or just do whatever you want."
Science and capitalism work. I don't understand why they're not universally popular.
Also agree that science and capitalism work. Why don't people make them more popular? Great question, and where Objectivism stalled.
As Don Adams would say, "Would you believe the problems parallels the Ant and the Grasshopper motif?" The Klingon in me says that when natural selection stopped (a long time go for humans), the positive traits were no longer cherished and erotic traits succeeded, even though they are not PC. We humans are smart enough to recognize success, but like paddling a canoe from the back, it is easy to coast.
Even better, feel good by participating in an institution where the ants support the grasshoppers! ...Feels so good...
Because we lack external limits or controls, we settle with sloth and lethargy...except the few that are self-driven. These successful are despised by the others (back to the force the ants theme).
Unfortunately, all this seems natural to me, except for the absence of limits, but the gothic conclusion also seems natural. I would love to be able to objectify this problem and get people seeking controls to limit it...or we wait for the second coming of the invisible pink unicorn.
Have you seen the movie Idiocracy. It's a goofy comedy about that.
While watching, I keep wondering 1) why I can't stop watching, and 2) is there is any reason it could/couldn't happen. Now that you mention it, it does seem like a comic version of Atlas Shrugged, 1984, Brazil, etc.
BTW, I really did like the movie, not spamming or belitteing. Someone downvoted without saying why.
Last year, a team of Islamic scholars issued a refutation of ISIS underlying theology: (quote)
Awad said its aim is to offer a comprehensive Islamic refutation, “point-by-point,” to the philosophy of the Islamic State and the violence it has perpetrated. The letter’s authors include well-known religious and scholarly figures in the Muslim world, including Sheikh Shawqi Allam, the grand mufti of Egypt, and Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem and All Palestine.
A translated 24-point summary of the letter includes the following: “It is forbidden in Islam to torture”; “It is forbidden in Islam to attribute evil acts to God”; and “It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non-Muslims until he (or she) openly declares disbelief.”
This is not the first time Muslim leaders have joined to condemn the Islamic State. The chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, for example, last week told the nation’s Muslims that they should speak out against the “terrorist and murderers” who fight for the Islamic State and who have dragged Islam “through the mud.”
(endquote)
These acts do not claim much public attention, however. They disturb out blackandwhite mentality.
Jan
I would like it a lot more if someone just out and said they were Muslim or Atheist. Sadly, this would guarantee their non-election.
Jan
diversionary tactic.
You would be hard pressed to find a supporter of those Christian injustices today, yet s there is a flood of volunteers wanting to join in the current atrocities.
Obama says, “No God condones terror.” Yet Muhammad is depicted in a hadith as having said: “I have been made victorious through terror” (Bukhari 4:52.220). And the Qur’an says: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies…” (8:60)
OB said: “It also just indicates the degree to which whatever ideology they’re operating off of, it’s bankrupt.”
I make a call to help OB, does anyone know the name he searches for to describe- 'whatever ideology',
some form of Presbyterianism maybe, or is it right-wing Zionism, Buddhists for climate action, or fundamentalist Objectivists? Beats me.
Cloward–Piven weren't moralists?
Bummer....
For a happy birthday?
Food for thought.
(Pun intended).
It makes me look kinky.
I'd keep the onions (like them and read they are good for Type 2 diabetics) and not even buy potatoes (doctor said to avoid spuds).
All that being said, I suspect strongly that Obama IS a muslim, but just hid behind christianity in order to get elected. Not that I care, and would have felt better if he admitted it. I also think that the muslim religion is very warlike towards "non believers", and therefore I am very wary of muslims who dont come out specifically and vocally against the violence we see perpetrated by so called "extremist" muslims. If you dont come out against it, you are saying implicitly that the violence against non believers is OK.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kra...