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29008. concerned - 2/26/2008 6:22:16 AM As far as other religions being more retrograde than Christianity, Islam is the first major candidate. If you are not aware of any aspect in which Christianity is preferable to many other religions from a strictly secular perspective, you are simply ignorant about religion as a whole. 29009. concerned - 2/26/2008 6:23:27 AM Anomie apparently has drunk the hate Christianity Kool-Ade without bothering to learn anything about comparative religions. His education at this point will be no trivial thing, and not something I feel responsible for. 29010. concerned - 2/26/2008 6:26:34 AM Islams usurpation of government functions through Sharia and draconian edicts against apostates and other 'deviations' from strict orthodoxy have been abjured by Christianity. Nobody in their right minds (excepting, perhaps some Muslims) would claim that Islam is preferable here. 29011. concerned - 2/26/2008 6:34:59 AM I'm sure you don't see the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a Christian invasion, but then you are on the side of the Christians.
Where's the forced conversions that you claim are 'typical' of Christianity?
Admit it. You just have a blindingly huge anti-Christian bias.
29012. concerned - 2/26/2008 7:12:49 AM anomie -
winstonsmith had at least part of it right. Familiarity breeds contempt of Christians. They're easy targets for gross insults, lies, misrepresentations and put downs. So, anyone can feel safe having a go at them. 29013. Jenerator - 2/26/2008 2:27:45 PM Of course, your slam about religion and humor only applies to Christians. Left Wing Moral Equivalence asserts that all religions are equally valid, except for Christianity, which is less so, and subject to contempt.
Personally, I subscribe more to the idea that those who mock Christianity but not other religions are chickenshit bullies.
Truer words never spoken!
My attempt to discuss Islam a year + ago was met with constant attacks on Christianity! People can't dissect Islam at the Mote, they must only talk in cliches and stereotypes about Christianity.
That's why this thread is mostly dead.
29014. Jenerator - 2/26/2008 2:44:20 PM An interesting piece on religion in the news:
Study: Nearly Half of Americans Change Their Religious Beliefs
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Associated Press
The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey finds.
The study released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is unusual for its sheer scope, relying on interviews with more than 35,000 adults to document a diverse and dynamic U.S. religious population.
While much of the study confirms earlier findings — mainline Protestant churches are in decline, non-denominational churches are gaining and the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing — it also provides a deeper look behind those trends, and of smaller religious groups.
"The American religious economy is like a marketplace — very dynamic, very competitive," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "Everyone is losing, everyone is gaining. There are net winners and losers, but no one can stand still. Those groups that are losing significant numbers have to recoup them to stay vibrant."
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey estimates the United States is 78 percent Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51 percent and slipping.
More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion at all, the survey found. Factoring in moves from one stream or denomination of Protestantism to another, the number rises to 44 percent.
One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious institution.
"In the past, certain religions had a real holding power, where people from one generation to the next would stay," said Penn State University sociologist Roger Finke, who consulted in the survey planning. "Right now, there is a dropping confidence in organized religion, especially in the traditional religious forms."
Lugo said the 44 percent figure is "a very conservative estimate," and more research is planned to determine the causes.
"It does seem in keeping with the high tolerance among Americans for change," Lugo said. "People move a lot, people change jobs a lot. It's a very fluid society."
The religious demographic benefiting the most from this religious churn is those who claim no religious affiliation. People moving into that category outnumber those moving out of it by a three-to-one margin.
The majority of the unaffiliated — 12 percent of the overall population — describe their religion as "nothing in particular," and about half of those say faith is at least somewhat important to them. Atheists or agnostics account for 4 percent of the total population.
The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition because of affiliation swapping, the survey found. While nearly one in three Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than one in four say they're Catholic today. That means roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.
The share of the population that identifies as Catholic, however, has remained fairly stable in recent decades thanks to an influx of immigrant Catholics, mostly from Latin America. Nearly half of all Catholics under 30 are Hispanic, the survey found.
On the Protestant side, changes in affiliation are swelling the ranks of nondenominational churches, while Baptist and Methodist traditions are showing net losses.
Many Americans have vague denominational ties at best. People who call themselves "just a Protestant," in fact, account for nearly 10 percent of all Protestants.
Although evangelical churches strive to win new Christian believers from the "unchurched," the survey found most converts to evangelical churches were raised Protestant.
Hindus claimed the highest retention of childhood members, at 84 percent. The group with the worst retention is one of the fastest growing — Jehovah's Witnesses. Only 37 percent of those raised in the sect known for door-to-door proselytizing said they remain members.
Among other findings involving smaller religious groups, more than half of American Buddhists surveyed were white, and most Buddhists were converts.
More people in the survey pool identified themselves as Buddhist than Muslim, although both populations were small — less than 1 percent of the total population. By contrast, Jews accounted for 1.7 percent of the overall population.
The self-identified Buddhists — 0.7 percent of those surveyed — illustrate a core challenge to estimating religious affiliation: What does affiliation mean?
It's unclear whether people who called themselves Buddhists did so because they practice yoga or meditation, for instance, or claim affiliation with a Buddhist institution.
The report does not project membership figures for religious groups, in part because the survey is not as authoritative as a census and didn't count children, Lugo said. The U.S. Census does not ask questions on religion.
29015. David Ehrenstein - 2/26/2008 3:33:13 PM This is why conventionl politics will never offer anything of value to anyone who isn't corporate. It's held hostage to religion. 29016. anomie - 2/26/2008 6:15:12 PM Concerned, I don't defend Islam or excuse its excesses. I'm just not so sure it surpasses those of Christianity. You on the other hand have a distinct bias that seems to overlook long periods of Christian dominance, invasions, inquisition periods. Limiting the discussion to agreed-upon periods of history, I'm sure we could come to a general agreement. Taken as a whole, however, Christianity certainly has a longer history than Islam and as many incidents that could be considered as retrograde or proselytizing. So yes, to make any claims about which religion is "most" anything is short sighted.
So no, while I don't defend Islam, I do point out that it's hypocritical of Christians to criticize mainstream Muslims merely because of the wave of fanatacism and terror being carried out by some. Christians don't have any moral high ground in doctrine (or historical fact) to stand on.
But folks like you can not accept the fact that we all abhor terrorism and violence and intolerance unless we wave the flag and carry a bible.
And finally, your response implied things that don't apply to my position. For example, I don't "prefer" Islam. I think pretty much all religion is nonsense.
29017. anomie - 2/26/2008 6:26:56 PM Forced conversions in Iraq: If you'd loosen yuor brain a bit you could see things from a different POV. You don't have to agree with that POV to acknowledge it. Could it be possible that some Muslims see the invading army as a force that will change their religion. What we see as protecting individual rights and enforcing tolerance of others, they see as forcing change in their religion and society.
Look no further than Kansas (or pick your state) for an American analogy. Religious people claim that Secular Humanism is a religion being forced on their kids at school. They claim that to teach kids science and tolerance is forcing religion on them. They claim that prohibitions against using public monies is a violation of free speech.
Religious people can't seem to get a grasp on common sense. And you, Concerned, can't seem to be objective about religious intolerance. 29018. judithathome - 2/26/2008 7:22:29 PM That's why this thread is mostly dead.
Not really. It's "mostly dead" because people are talking about other things. And those other things aren't being interrupted by fanatics claiming we're trying to ignore the subject or saying our education is lacking or that we're just plain stupid. Tactics you and Conn'd seem to prefer as "debate".
29019. anomie - 2/26/2008 7:45:36 PM Jen, you too are blind to your own bias. Your idea of discussing Islam was to focus on extremists imams or Muslim fringe groups, and to point out certain passages of the Koran that tended to support your critique. If you discussed anything else, I missed it.
But now when others pointed to extremist Christian groups, or periods of history, or when Old Testament genocides and absurdities cited...these you describe as cliches and stereotypes.
Try as you might, you can't prove any moral superiority over Islam. In fact, Christians don't even subscribe to a personal morality of any kind. Their God is just no matter what. If you can worship the God who laid the plans for the invasion of Caanan, instructing Joshua to slaughter children, then you can worship just about anything. But then that's all cliche and stereotype to you I suppose. 29020. concerned - 2/26/2008 8:04:02 PM If you can worship the God who laid the plans for the invasion of Caanan, instructing Joshua to slaughter children, then you can worship just about anything. But then that's all cliche and stereotype to you I suppose.
Well, first of all, as I posted, I am an agnostic.
You are hopefully aware that agnosticism is not Christianity in any form.
Secondly, Muslims *do* worship 'that' God, and one who is guilty of much nefarious wrongdoing that the Christian God isn't, besides. 29021. concerned - 2/26/2008 8:16:29 PM Considering that Leftists wish to claim absolution for the 150,000,000 excess deaths that their political philosophy has caused during the 20th Century, simple fairness requires Left Wingers to overlook Christianity's excesses before the middle of the eighteenth century.
IAC, criticism of Christianity that relies on actions taken in its name before the Enlightenment really lack relevance in a discussion of comparative religions today.
I'm sure anomie would agree with this, presuming that he is a reasonable person.
29022. anomie - 2/26/2008 9:09:28 PM Concerned, I applaud yuor agnosticism. I was responding to Jen on the invasion of Canaan.
You are totally whack if you think I absolve leftist of any of their atrocities. I havn't seen anybody here defend Stalin. Where are you getting that premise from?
I am a reasonable person. That's why I don't compare historical and radical Islam with modern mainstream Christianity. Various canvases of history require different brushes. 29023. concerned - 2/26/2008 9:18:16 PM Unfortunately for your viewpoint, there are several fundamentalist Muslim regimes (Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia) in the world today, but no such thing exists wrt Christianity.
So we have:
1)forced conversion to Islam
2)dhimmitude
3)sharia
4)fundamentalist regimes
5)no human rights
6)widespread poverty
7)human slavery
8)strong anti-intellectual bias
all characteristic of Muslim countries, but not of Christian countries.
You have established exactly zero reasons as to why Islam is not more objectionable than Christianity, while I have listed quite a number of very important and irrefutable reasons why Islam *is* more objectionable than Christianity. 29024. anomie - 2/26/2008 10:01:37 PM All of which may be precisely because of historical lessons-learned and the Western "anti-Christian" watchdog activism that guards against religious interference of all stripes. As Judith daid, we happen to have Christians knocking on our doors, and I might add sniping at our secular freedoms in this country.
I repeat, I don't defend Islam and if we confine our timeline to the present, I will agree that Islam on the whole is much more objectionable from a seclurist POV than is Christianity. But that doesn't mean we can take a watchful eye off Christianity for a moment. Some segments are straining at the bit to get our schools and politics Christianized, and force us all to participate with everything from public money to public reverence.
So by listing a few "facts", you have established very little in comparing the overall merits of the two religions. And we haven't even discussed the hideousness doctrinal issues of each one. 29025. concerned - 2/26/2008 10:23:36 PM Well, ok. I can go along with that. By all means keep a watchful eye on Christianity.
Isn't it strange, though, that the secularists who have 'triumphed' over Christianity in Europe are beginning to admit unequal law (Sharia) to some of their selected citizens. 29026. anomie - 2/26/2008 10:27:22 PM Not only strange, but shameful. I assume you're talking about the Archbishop of Canterbury in the UK. I hope they put a stop to it before it starts. 29027. anomie - 2/26/2008 10:28:10 PM Not to mention dangerous and harmful to the children involved who have little choice in things.
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