Religion of Peace: Why Christianity is and Islam Isn’t (Video Interview)

[CrONoS]

Interview with Robert Spencer

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Robert Spencer’s 7th book, Religion of Peace: Why Christianity is and Islam Isn’t, is released today. Michelle talks with Robert about why he wrote the book and more.

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/13/new-vent-michelle-interviews-robert-spencer-about-religion-of-peace-why-christianity-is-and-islam-isnt/

[Nostromo]

Is this good scholarship or is it just anti-Islam propaganda?

BTW, have you ever read René Girard? You'd probably like him. He has a lot to say about violence, its causes and how different religions deal with it.

[CrONoS]

hhummm...

Don't know, didn't read his book. Maybe you should look the video if you want to know.

But I'm pretty sure the french intellectual; Pascal Bruckner could be a good read.

[CrONoS]

I don't know René Girard; I'm presently reading his bio.

[Dracon II]

I've read Girard... interesting stuff, though I wouldn't argue so strongly for the distinctiveness of judeo-christianity as he does.

[Dracon II]

Some info on Girard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

http://www.uibk.ac.at/theol/cover/girard_le_monde_interview.html

[Ellestar]

Blah-blah-blah
The historical facts are, both religions are about as bloody when society tolerates it. So much for all this "don't kill" crap in holy writings. Hypocrites.

[Dracon II]

In fact... the conclusions that one draws from Girard's thinking is that the dissemination of Christianity has increased the likelihood of widespread and frequent outbursts of violence.... not because of any positive exhortation to be violent however. Quite the contrary in fact.

[Agathon]

Oh for God's sake. In world history they are about as violent as each other.

On the other hand, Islam is a lot less stupid than Christianity, which tries to get you to believe the absurdity that three coexistent people are actually the same person, and other such nonsense.

[Dracon II]

Personally, I think that man's propensity for violence is not in itself an indictment of religion. I can only reserve judgement on Islam as I know very little about it... but the fact that we can quite reasonably accuse a violent Christian of hypocrisy suggests that there is at least something progressive and worth preserving about the religion.

Also, I wouldn't go so far as to prefer Islam over Christianity because Islam is more theologically consistent, comprehensive and less open to metaphysical criticism. I personally think that the fact that Christianity contains certain contradictions, and the fact that it has failed to provide a comprehensive and stable doctrine on a number of key aspects of man's (particularly social and political) life has in fact been quite fruitful and emancipatory for western civilization.

Western man can categorically deny Jesus Christ only in the sense that Peter did... that is, in bad faith.

[dannubis]

Well, I think in essence, Christianity is violentless, Islam isn't. I don't think somewhere in the Gospels it is written that violence is ok. (I know He gets angry when He kicks the merchants out of the temple but He was human after all).

However, what "the Church" (= the total collection) has made form it is an abomination and in no way better than what modern day Islam has become.

[Dracon II]

The role violence takes in the content of Christianity depends to a large extent on what one sees as the relationship between the new and old testament, and one's interpretation of the divine violence in Revelation.

[Proteus_MST]

Yes, whereas christ seems to promote a peaceful living together,
the opposite is true for the old testimony,
where there are numerous occasions where god himself orders his chosen people to commit violence or even himself is violent against his creation (sodom and Gomorrha, great flood and the like).

Many fundamentalist christians seem to put a great weight into the things written in the old testimony.

[dannubis]

Which is funny because the New Testament is supposed to supercede the old one

[Lung]

I guess they never got around to that part