US House canidate from MN set be become first Muslim congressman

[Straybow]

Originally posted by molly bloom
And as I also stated clearly in my post, 'the intellectual rigour of the major monotheistic faiths, Hinduism and the philosophy of Buddhism' - I don't see a zealous convert to Christianity deciding that they'll have a little bit of Manichaeism, some cult of Serapis, a touch of late Zoroastrianism and a smidgeon of Neoplatonism to go with their mini-pyramid and rock crystals and sign of the fish.

One famous convert from Manichaeism, St Augustine of Hippo, completely rejected his earlier faith, campaigning against it vigorously.

Indeed, he did. But neoplatonism and other Greek philosophical influences do appear in church doctrine almost from the start.

Show me the New Age equivalent of the Sistine Chapel, the friezes in the Alhambra, the Book of Durrow, the Oratorios of Bach or even for that matter, the writings of Aquinas, Ibn Sina or Moses Maimonides.

Somewhat more intellectual rigour in one page of Aquinas than I've seen in all the chanting, crystal hugging pyramid dwelling New Age Aquarian gobbledegook.

Yeah, I mean now that we have CDs in these tiny little 5-inch cases album art really isn't what it used to be in the days of vinyl, man. But we've got Enya and Yanni, dude. Who needs Bach?

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Ramo
But it's worth noting that Ellis opposes the Bigot Amendment. From his web site:

Would a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage help us to welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick, or visit those in prison?

So if Ellis is characteristic of the NoI, the GOP is significantly more hateful than the NoI.

Ummmm, allowing gay marriage wouldn't help us welcome, clothe, heal, or visit either. Nor does the proposed ban have anything to do with hate. Both statements and the comparison of the GOP to the NoI are entirely specious.

[Ramo]

Ummmm, allowing gay marriage wouldn't help us welcome, clothe, heal, or visit either.

Yes it would. Treating gay people equally = welcoming the stranger. As for the others, hear of spousal benefits? It's a stretch, but it works. But that's entirely beyond his point: that Constitutional Amendment wouldn't help anyone, at all. And it's entirely beyond my point, which was that he's opposed to the Constitutional Amendment.

Nor does the proposed ban have anything to do with hate.

It has to do with intolerance and exclusion, but that's a threadjack, and I'm not in a mood to get into yet another debate over gay marriage. If you'd like to, you can start a thread, and I'm sure you can find someone to argue with.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Straybow
[Q] Originally posted by Ramo
Nor does the proposed ban have anything to do with hate.

yeah, right





And clouds have nothing to do with precipitation!

[Odin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The middle east and north africa were western at the time. It was only after the Arab invasion that it became unwestern in culture.

/me reminds Oerdin that the West didn't exist untill 700AD...

[Odin]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Not true at all, unless you think the Sassanids were somehow 'Western'.

When the armies of the Arabs invaded North Africa the population was made up of Libyans, Berbers, Vandals, Moors, Jews, Greeks, and the descendants of the various other groups that had been there since Phoenician times.

Neither the Phoenicians, Carthaginians nor the Jews can be accurately described as 'Western', whatever that's meant to mean with regards to early Mediaeval North Africa, and it was the Eastern Roman Empire which was defeated by the Arab armies in North Africa.

Good point. In late Roman times there were 3 civilizations on the coast of the Med: Graeco-Roman (Roman Europe, Anatolia, and Hellenized cities sprinkled throughout the empire), Irano-Levantine (formed when the Assyrian policy of deporting conquered people around fused the Mesopotamian and Levantine civilizations together) and the dying remains of the Egyptian civilization.

IMO Islam should be seen as a response to the Hellenization of Christianity by the Romans. I'm supposing Muhammad was deeply influenced by both Judaism and the Monophysite and Nestorian sects of Christianity (Monophysitism and Nestorianism themselves were partial rejections of Hellenism by the people of the Levant and Egypt).

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Ramo

Nor does the proposed ban have anything to do with hate.

It has to do with intolerance and exclusion, but that's a threadjack, and I'm not in a mood to get into yet another debate over gay marriage. If you'd like to, you can start a thread, and I'm sure you can find someone to argue with.

Meh. You brought it up and called the GOP hateful. Is it customary to lob knee-jerk insults and then say you have no balls to back it up? Perhaps you really mean it; then you should look in the mirror for intolerance and exclusion.

[Ramo]

It's not that I can't back it up, but that the argument's extremely boring and that I've been through it countless times, on Apolyton alone.

I might have responded with more if you gave me more to work more than to the effect of "no, it's not based on hate" (i.e. by explaining your opposition to gay marriage).

I can probably predict the course of the argument:

You say that we should ban gay marriage due to tradition, and then I bring up inter-racial marriage from the POV of the 50's.

You say that we should ban gay marriage since marriage should be centered around the raising of children, and I ask why not ban infertile/old/etc. marriages, or why not associate marriage exclusively with relationships involving raising children.

You say that in consequence, we shouldn't ban polygamy, and I say that polygamy should be legal.

Then I say, nothing left but bigotry.

Are you satisfied?

[MrFun]

I love your sig, Ramo.

[Straybow]

Nope, nothing to back the accusation of hatefulness.
Yep, just the typical demonization of the eeeeevil conservatives.

Move along; nothing to see here.

[Flip McWho]

The modern term west means anything west of the Iron Curtain.

The term west as a cultural term is those societies that derive out of the Greeks, Romans, and Christianity i.e. Europe.

The three monotheistic religions all came out of the mid east.

[Flip McWho]

Nor does the proposed ban have anything to do with hate.

You're right, obviously it's gotta do with the fact that Gays aren't capable of loving their partner in the same way that a heterosexual couple can.

Oh wait, no, it's gotta do with the fact that married gays can't have children.

Oh wait, I mean it's because gays can't have stable marriages.

Oh wait, not that either. It's gotta do with the fact that marriage is traditional for heterosexuals but not for homos.

Oh wait, it's because my faith says that homosexuals are bad.

[Jon Miller]

I am in favor of allowing homosexual marriage, and I don't think it is obvious, or a right, or whatever..

JM

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by molly bloom




One famous convert from Manichaeism, St Augustine of Hippo, completely rejected his earlier faith, campaigning against it vigorously.

Indeed, he did. But neoplatonism and other Greek philosophical influences do appear in church doctrine almost from the start.

Its influence was in a way of thinking, an approach to the examination, extrapolation and understanding of the holy texts and the personal experience of god.

It did not mean though resurrecting varied items of Greek paganist worship or folk religion to go alongside what was felt to be the revealed truth.

There was also grave suspicion of the mystical qualities of Neoplatonism and its links with pagan thought, with dogmatic Roman Catholic scholars condemning it.

It is easy though to understand elements of its attraction for the more mystically minded early Christians.

This is very different from the New Age approach which seems to me to reflect more a Woolworths' 99 pence pick 'n' mix bag version of faith or theology or religious practice.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Odin

IMO Islam should be seen as a response to the Hellenization of Christianity by the Romans. I'm supposing Muhammad was deeply influenced by both Judaism and the Monophysite and Nestorian sects of Christianity (Monophysitism and Nestorianism themselves were partial rejections of Hellenism by the people of the Levant and Egypt).

It's worthwhile remembering that the Arabian peninsula in Muhammad's day had been the focus of tensions and wars between the Byzantine Empire, the Sassanid Empire and their various client states, with the Byzantines supporting the Axumites against Arab kingdoms, and with two main Christian Arab buffer states to the north, each with a differing version of Christianity, each fighting the other: the Lakhmids were Nestorian Christians, persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantines, and thus forced to ally with the Sassanids, who had given refuge and aid to the Nestorian Church. Nestorian Christians also married into the Sassanid royal family, and Jerusalem was sacked, with the True Cross being given to the Sassanid Nestorian Queen Mother.

The Ghassanids allied with Rome:

...the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, realizing the need for a strong ally in today's Syria and Jordan, appointed al-Harith ibn Jabala leader of the Arabs of the Syrian desert and authorized him to use the title of king—which may imply that the Ghassanid chiefs normally did not use the title.

Axum and Himyar in Arabia :

Whether Dhu Nuwas planned to establish an explicitly Jewish state is debatable -- many of his followers were pagan or Nestorian -- but most of his enemies were Christian, and his war to establish Himyar's full independence from Axum took on a distinctly religious character. Churches were burned and Arab Christian civilians were massacred, most famously at Nagran; Dhu Nuwas is said to have justified such atrocities by referring to the horrendous persecution of Jews in the Roman Empire.

Fighting an overseas war was difficult for Ethiopia, but outside help became available when news of the Nagran massacre reached the north. Patriarch Timothy of Alexandria wrote a letter to Caleb urging more aggressive action, and the Byzantine emperor Justin I offered the use of 60 ships. The ensuing campaign, which Caleb led in person, was in all respects a Crusade, under the spiritual guidance of the celebrated Axumite monk Pantaleon, who figures prominently in some of the many amazing legends which grew out of the war. The Ethiopian forces were eventually victorious in a great battle on the seashore at Zabid, where Dhu Nuwas himself fell in the surf.

http://ecole.evansville.edu/glossary/caleb.html

The pre-Islamic Arabs were by no means all the illiterate unsophisticated Bedouin that Oerdin might like to give the impression they were; in fact, they had had kingdoms in Petra and Palmyra, in the Yemen where they had built the Marib Dam, they had city states which traded with Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire and further afield, they understood Greek philosophy and had been leaving their marks around the Mediterranean since ancient times- an Arab dynasty ruled in Edessa and Neoplatonism found a home with the Sabaean Arabs of Harran:

...Harran in northern Syria, a city which was home to the star-loving Sabaeans, a pagan sect whose transcendent theology was imbued with Neoplatonic elements. In the third century ah (ninth century ad) Harran was visited by refugee scholars from the schools of Alexandria; in the following century these scholars moved from Harran to Baghdad, bringing to that last city elements, both Aristotelian and Neoplatonic, from the rich philosophical heritage of both Alexandria and Harran.

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H003.htm