I am an Islamophobe. If you are not, you might not be a moral person.

[Immanuel Can]

Martin Luther.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

Martin Luther was a mere man, fallible, as are we all. He said some good things, and a few really, really silly things. This is one of them. Fortunately for Christians, Luther has no general authority, and nobody has to pay attention to his excesses. They certainly aren't reflective of Christians generally.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilee

Galileo was a Catholic, in spite of his controversies. He was also beset by the Aristotelian scientists and the Inquisitors of his day, and his comment is a product of his unpleasant experience...not an articulation of Christian doctrine.

There is nowhere in Scripture where "sense, reason and intellect" are said to be anything but good gifts of God. Indeed, we are enjoined to "love God with all our mind." So this too does not articulate anything about Christian theology...just about his own experience.

[Arising_uk]

Thanks. I think it's the solution. Focus on eliminating Sharia. It's the core of what we don't want and what nobody needs.

Ever the crusader eh!

What's it got to do with the Christian how the Muslim wishes to live. Especially since in their rules is the one about obeying the laws of the country they are in as long as it doesn't mean they have to sin.

[Arising_uk]

Oh yes. The delightful class system. Where everything hinges on going to the 'right school' and 'talking proper'.

It doesn't help what school you go to in the antipodes?

[Arising_uk]

...
- Example: the mayor of London. ...

The only example this is of is that London votes Labour.

- Example: Osho’s minions legally took over a town in the USofA, or maybe it was a whole county. ...

Democracy, what a pain eh!

- Example: political power to influence laws and regulations, based on the unlikely agenda of sexual identification. Or, maybe it’s called gender identification.
- Example: In the USA, Obama’s political projects were unpopular. The country did not want the monster stimulus package, cash for clunkers, or an overhaul of the healthcare system. So, how was he successful? He did it with ruthless, focused political will and purpose; sweeping aside the legislative process of negotiation among the representives of the people, and by railroading legislation during a short, two-year period when his party had the majority. And he did it by telling really big shameless lies, knowing they were lies, and looking right into that camera eye. This was all tacitly supported by big media, and there was little investigation into his actions. There was little investigation into his history. ...

Not much different from any of your presidents then.

Christianity is not forced upon people. ...

Not any more it isn't.

- It is offered. ...

With little choice in the past.

- Sometimes it is offered with food in one hand, and a bible in the other. ...

Yeah, nothing like a starving person to clutch at crumbs eh!

It is not offered with food in one hand, and a sword in the other. ...

You're right, it was just generally the sword.

- A Christian will not not say convert or die.
- A Christian will not say that because you did not convert, time to die.
- Not even soldiers who are Christian holler "Praise Jesus!" as they go about their secular duties.
- The moral authority for the one who says those things is found in the tenets of a religion that kills Christians, because they are Christians.
- The question is, how devout to the tenets is any particular follower?

Or even the question of how a Christian can be a soldier?

Although Christians kill, the moral authority to kill is not taken from the tenets of Christianity.
- The moral authority is either ego, or secular. (Greetings! You have been conscripted.)

Never heard of conscientious objectors?

From what I’ve heard, at least one religion is forced and enforced under threat of penality.
- This is accomplished by making the religion the equilivant of secular law, according to the tenets of the religion.
- This is done even in this day and age, so far removed from the middle ages. Imagine that.
- Rather backwards, wot?

All religion is rather backwards what.

- Imagine a religion legally meting out taxation, shunning, corporeal punishment varying in severity, and even death. Most folks will say, sign me up for the religion that doesn’t do that to me.

Who has to imagine it, it was called Catholicism.

The difference between Christianity, and the other one that wants to kill Christianity, is:
- The second is a totalitarian outlook.
- The first is not.
- Thus, the affinity of the second religion with the old axis that was on a conquest spree.
- That was war conquest spree.
- Invasion is another method of conquest.

There's truth here but given that the Christians believe there's going to be almighty war where they kill all the unbelievers I can't see much difference in the long run.

Do you think people put political analysis above fitting in with the crowd?
- I don't think so.

Maybe but I'm slightly more optimistic than you and think the actual voter does think about who and why they are voting for their MP.

I think the media tell people what to think in a lot of ways.
- And then people think that way.

I think the media is being overestimated here as they tend to reflect their readership or viewers rather than the other was around but agree that social media is becoming the stronger political tool.

[surreptitious57]

I am an Islamophobe if you are not you might not be a moral person

I am not an Islamophobe so does that mean I might not be a moral person

Does that also mean that all Muslims by definition cannot be moral people

In all other respects if I am not a moral person can I still be one if I am an Islamophobe

In all other respects if I am a moral person can I still be one if I am not an Islamophobe

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Oh yes. The delightful class system. Where everything hinges on going to the 'right school' and 'talking proper'.

It doesn't help what school you go to in the antipodes?

No one ever asks that, and you certainly can't go by the way someone speaks.
I suppose it's fine to label and generalise about which 'class' a person comes from, but not which religion or ethnicity (those are unmentionable).

[Vendetta]

Thanks. I think it's the solution. Focus on eliminating Sharia. It's the core of what we don't want and what nobody needs.

Ever the crusader eh!

What's it got to do with the Christian how the Muslim wishes to live. Especially since in their rules is the one about obeying the laws of the country they are in as long as it doesn't mean they have to sin.

There's a difference when the very framework of their "way of living" is intrinsically harmful to others. In this sense maybe the right to a religion can only go so far.

[Greatest I am]

...That would clear up the issues, while removing any scurrilous charges of "racism" or "Islamophobia."

I could not say this better.

Regards
DL

Thanks. I think it's the solution. Focus on eliminating Sharia. It's the core of what we don't want and what nobody needs.

I agree. We have to have a fight of ideologies instead of killing each other.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

Martin Luther.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

Martin Luther was a mere man, fallible, as are we all. He said some good things, and a few really, really silly things. This is one of them. Fortunately for Christians, Luther has no general authority, and nobody has to pay attention to his excesses. They certainly aren't reflective of Christians generally.

It has been a Christian staple that knowledge should be rejected for obedience. It has been that way since the so called fall of man.

That is the general Christian mind set as they are idol worshipers and use faith instead of common sense and logic.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

I am an Islamophobe if you are not you might not be a moral person

I am not an Islamophobe so does that mean I might not be a moral person

Does that also mean that all Muslims by definition cannot be moral people

In all other respects if I am not a moral person can I still be one if I am an Islamophobe

In all other respects if I am a moral person can I still be one if I am not an Islamophobe

If you would tolerate a slave holding ideology, like Islam and Sharia, that denies women and gays full equality under the law, you are not a moral person.

Regards
DL

[Immanuel Can]

It has been a Christian staple that knowledge should be rejected for obedience.

Untrue, of course.

I don't know where you got that assumption -- and I'm not saying it was from nowhere: maybe you have some experience, I don't know -- but it isn't from any Christians I know...and I'm certain I know a lot more of them than you do. It's also not in their Scriptures, and it's certainly not evident in the doctrine or practices of most, so I think you're barking up the wrong tree there.

You're misreading the Genesis story. The tree wasn't "The Tree of Knowledge." It was "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." But you'd have to read beyond the Gnostics to find that out. You'd actually have to read Genesis.

[Arising_uk]

And interestingly enough it wasn't for eating from that tree that they got expelled but because they might well have also eaten from the Tree of Life. Which also interestingly enough is offered as a reward at the End of Times to some of the faithful. There's also a nice little ambiguity about 'God's' use of 'us' when 'it' says that 'man is become as one of us', us?

[Greatest I am]

It has been a Christian staple that knowledge should be rejected for obedience.

Untrue, of course.

I don't know where you got that assumption -- and I'm not saying it was from nowhere: maybe you have some experience, I don't know -- but it isn't from any Christians I know...and I'm certain I know a lot more of them than you do. It's also not in their Scriptures, and it's certainly not evident in the doctrine or practices of most, so I think you're barking up the wrong tree there.

You're misreading the Genesis story. The tree wasn't "The Tree of Knowledge." It was "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." But you'd have to read beyond the Gnostics to find that out. You'd actually have to read Genesis.

Well, your superior knowledge aside, are these Christians not saying what I just put?

Martin Luther did.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

How about what Joyce Meyers says?

http://imgur.com/IBroXK9

In the Christian take of this myth, disobedience caused our fall. That is not the Jewish take as they see Eden as where man was elevated. Not where he fell.

If you are to only read Genesis, then you will not know the real moral of that story.

That being that God was trying to keep man stupid and blind and that we should all fight against a God who wants stupid slaves.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

And interestingly enough it wasn't for eating from that tree that they got expelled but because they might well have also eaten from the Tree of Life. Which also interestingly enough is offered as a reward at the End of Times to some of the faithful. There's also a nice little ambiguity about 'God's' use of 'us' when 'it' says that 'man is become as one of us', us?

There is no ambiguity when you read it the Jewish and proper way.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/ ... -theodicy/

"Judaism preaches the Rise of man: and instead of Original Sin, it stresses Original Virtue, the beneficent hereditary influence of righteous ancestors upon their descendants’."

Regards
DL

[Immanuel Can]

How about what Joyce Meyers says?

Wow. Are you ever missing the point.

Joyce Meyers has as much authority among Christians as does Oprah Winfrey among secularists. Look, the distinctive feature of Protestantism is the primacy of the individual conscience...so there are no Popes. Nobody speaks for us but ourselves. What we believe and what we practice is what we believe to be true personally. We've got a fair number of core common principles -- things like issues of salvation, Christology and basic practices, but also a range of views on secondary issues like pattern of meeting and clergy. And if you've wondered why there are quite a few various denominations and groups within Protestantism, that is precisely why.

In Protestant understanding, even Martin Luther was just an ordinary man, despite his signal role in discrediting medieval Catholicism. Nobody believes he was "infallible in matters of doctrine" or could speak "ex cathedra." What he said, he said for himself and anyone who cared to follow him in that. But not even the Lutherans would all subscribe to that statement, let alone the rest of the Protestant groups.

And Joyce Meyer...well, oy vey.

What we hold is that if the Bible claims it, it's authoritative. Otherwise, it just isn't.