Bill Maher: Islam is inherently worse than other religions.

[Bereta_Eder]

When Herresson talks about the middle east, what everyone else better do is shut up.

[Bereta_Eder]

btw, lovely

I wonder if someone could make a techno beat with "go home yankee" in turkish accent.
Been years and years since I've heard it.
(how proud traditions wither... )

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Yep, that was an excellent post - quite rare around here these days.

[Sava]

very good post

[Sava]

Hitler was not fond of Christianity, and
Stalin was an atheist.

Thankfully, for my point, they weren't only members of the Wehrmacht/Red Army, respectively.

AFAIK, neither one was personally carrying out their own orders.

How many Nazi party members and high ranking Soviet figures were baptized?

hint: probably all of them

They're Christians... whether modern Christians want to accept that or not. Were they marching their armies holding crosses and fighting in the name of the Lord? No.

But we can argue this until we're blue in the face.

This next paragraph is a separate thought (and not directed at any person in particular).

Speaking of the age of religion (I missed that whole discussion entirely), Christianity has been around a lot longer and has committed much more evil than Islam. That's just a fact of it being around longer. So if we're going to examine overall culpability, Christians have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to labeling all Muslims as bad across the board.

That sort of behavior is the very definition of racism/bigotry... quibbling about what constitutes a race doesn't help the cause of the racist.

I have no use for it or anyone who engages in such behavior. It's childish and wrong. Not just morally wrong... factually wrong. Find an adult way of expressing your frustration at the evils of modern day terrorism carried about by Islamic radicals.

[Heresson]

Thankfully, for my point, they weren't only members of the Wehrmacht/Red Army, respectively.

AFAIK, neither one was personally carrying out their own orders.

How many Nazi party members and high ranking Soviet figures were baptized?

hint: probably all of them

They're Christians... whether modern Christians want to accept that or not. Were they marching their armies holding crosses and fighting in the name of the Lord? No.

Soviet soldiers were actually marching in the name of communism and atheism that it supported. It was only when Moscow was very endangered that Stalin resigned from forceful atheisation...
Of course, most were baptised: but that doesn't make them Christians, if they denounced it. And their personal opinions didn't matter. There were milions of people fighting in armies that they didn't support at all, since the beginning of time.
The same goes for nazis. Nazizm was radically opposed to Christianity, and its cult of race was condemned by the pope. Thousands of Catholic, but also protestant, priests were in concentration camps. Hans Frank, the nominally Catholic general-governor of Cracow, has laughed at Christianity and said Hitler is his Messiah...
In this case, you could more claim that many didn't actually feel the contradiction between fighting for Hitler and Christianity. Some even probably thought of him as the savior from communism.
But, again, they were marching in the army of someone whose ultimate goal were also to outroot Christianity.
I come from Upper Silesia, which was a German posession for a long time, so Hitler wanted to make Silesians Germans and needed soldiers, so they were authomatically declared Germans and forced to fight in Wermacht. They weren't asked. Thousands of them deserted in the Western Front and joined Polish army fighting Germans... or were taken into it after they became prisoners. Of course they are responsible for fulfilling the evil orders, and for their own evil, but to ascribe their actions to Christianity is wrong.
That's why I am not ascribing Armenian Genocide to Islam, not completely. Because on the lowest level the hatred was motivated religiously. And even on the highest ones, it was influenced by it. But the actions weren't done in the name of islam completely. Nominally the sułtan-caliph pronounced holy war, but it was a propaganda action... so I'm not sure if it can be done.

Speaking of the age of religion (I missed that whole discussion entirely), Christianity has been around a lot longer and has committed much more evil than Islam. That's just a fact of it being around longer. So if we're going to examine overall culpability, Christians have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to labeling all Muslims as bad across the board.

That sort of behavior is the very definition of racism/bigotry... quibbling about what constitutes a race doesn't help the cause of the racist.

I have no use for it or anyone who engages in such behavior. It's childish and wrong. Not just morally wrong... factually wrong. Find an adult way of expressing your frustration at the evils of modern day terrorism carried about by Islamic radicals.

I wouldn't say it's obvious Christianity commited "much more" evil than Islam. It's completely debatable which one commited more evil. I guess Christians commited more evil; but not necessarily Christianity. Anyway, Christianity wasn't a ruling religion for the first 3-3,5 centuries... and it lost its political edge earlier. Of course, there's the Americas, which is the place where - at least in the territory of the current USA - the Christian conquest was extremly devastating. But many of the Muslim conquests were extremly brutal too. In general, this is completely a matter of opinion, and not a fact, and it brings nothing valuable. We can discuss situation at some stage, but it's hard to amass it all and put nicely on two even scales. Because in one time, we can talk about laws. But how do you compare it on a longer scale, when the laws were changing?
There are a lot of paradoxes, too.
For example, the truth is that islam - unlike Christianity - had used holy war idea almost from the start. But actually that helped islam to make some general rules about it, that are harsh from the current rights-of-man perspective, but were actually self-curbing of the Muslim conquerors. Christianity didn't face this until much, much later (what was the first pagan land conquered by Christians? Charlemagne's Saxony?) and in fact part of the mistreatment of conquered non-Christians in America etc came from the fact that there were no strict rules concerning them, like in islam. Hence I guess that had islam conquered the territory of USA, more autochtonic cultures would survive. But the progress of yesterday if tomorrow's backwardness: Christianity moved forward, because of lack of strict rules, Islam has a problem of being tied by the rules that were set in very different eras.

I do not portray all Muslims as all, or always, bad. At some points of time, they were acting better than Christians did. Today, as a general tendency, they clearly don't. I'm just providing with an explenation why.

Islam is much more logical and well-knitted religion, and has less internal contradictions, which it owes to the fact of having one actual founder and having had political influence from the start. Thus it's harder to make a revolution in it and dismantle its political influence; also because this revolution comes from outside.

[Heresson]

Thankfully, for my point, they weren't only members of the Wehrmacht/Red Army, respectively.

AFAIK, neither one was personally carrying out their own orders.

How many Nazi party members and high ranking Soviet figures were baptized?

hint: probably all of them

They're Christians... whether modern Christians want to accept that or not. Were they marching their armies holding crosses and fighting in the name of the Lord? No.

Soviet soldiers were actually marching in the name of communism and atheism that it supported. It was only when Moscow was very endangered that Stalin resigned from forceful atheisation...
Of course, most were baptised: but that doesn't make them Christians, if they denounced it. And their personal opinions didn't matter. There were milions of people fighting in armies that they didn't support at all, since the beginning of time.
The same goes for nazis. Nazizm was radically opposed to Christianity, and its cult of race was condemned by the pope. Thousands of Catholic, but also protestant, priests were in concentration camps. Hans Frank, the nominally Catholic general-governor of Cracow, has laughed at Christianity and said Hitler is his Messiah...
In this case, you could more claim that many didn't actually feel the contradiction between fighting for Hitler and Christianity. Some even probably thought of him as the savior from communism.
But, again, they were marching in the army of someone whose ultimate goal were also to outroot Christianity.
I come from Upper Silesia, which was a German posession for a long time, so Hitler wanted to make Silesians Germans and needed soldiers, so they were authomatically declared Germans and forced to fight in Wermacht. They weren't asked. Thousands of them deserted in the Western Front and joined Polish army fighting Germans... or were taken into it after they became prisoners. Of course they are responsible for fulfilling the evil orders, and for their own evil, but to ascribe their actions to Christianity is wrong.
That's why I am not ascribing Armenian Genocide to Islam, not completely. Because on the lowest level the hatred was motivated religiously. And even on the highest ones, it was influenced by it. But the actions weren't done in the name of islam completely. Nominally the sułtan-caliph pronounced holy war, but it was a propaganda action... so I'm not sure if it can be done.

Speaking of the age of religion (I missed that whole discussion entirely), Christianity has been around a lot longer and has committed much more evil than Islam. That's just a fact of it being around longer. So if we're going to examine overall culpability, Christians have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to labeling all Muslims as bad across the board.

That sort of behavior is the very definition of racism/bigotry... quibbling about what constitutes a race doesn't help the cause of the racist.

I have no use for it or anyone who engages in such behavior. It's childish and wrong. Not just morally wrong... factually wrong. Find an adult way of expressing your frustration at the evils of modern day terrorism carried about by Islamic radicals.

I wouldn't say it's obvious Christianity commited "much more" evil than Islam. It's completely debatable which one commited more evil. I guess Christians commited more evil; but not necessarily Christianity. Anyway, Christianity wasn't a ruling religion for the first 3-3,5 centuries... and it lost its political edge earlier. Of course, there's the Americas, which is the place where - at least in the territory of the current USA - the Christian conquest was extremly devastating. But many of the Muslim conquests were extremly brutal too. In general, this is completely a matter of opinion, and not a fact, and it brings nothing valuable. We can discuss situation at some stage, but it's hard to amass it all and put nicely on two even scales. Because in one time, we can talk about laws. But how do you compare it on a longer scale, when the laws were changing?
There are a lot of paradoxes, too.
For example, the truth is that islam - unlike Christianity - had used holy war idea almost from the start. But actually that helped islam to make some general rules about it, that are harsh from the current rights-of-man perspective, but were actually self-curbing of the Muslim conquerors. Christianity didn't face this until much, much later (what was the first pagan land conquered by Christians? Charlemagne's Saxony?) and in fact part of the mistreatment of conquered non-Christians in America etc came from the fact that there were no strict rules concerning them, like in islam. Hence I guess that had islam conquered the territory of USA, more autochtonic cultures would survive. But the progress of yesterday if tomorrow's backwardness: Christianity moved forward, because of lack of strict rules, Islam has a problem of being tied by the rules that were set in very different eras.

I do not portray all Muslims as all, or always, bad. At some points of time, they were acting better than Christians did. Today, as a general tendency, they clearly don't. I'm just providing with an explenation why.

Islam is much more logical and well-knitted religion, and has less internal contradictions, which it owes to the fact of having one actual founder and having had political influence from the start. Thus it's harder to make a revolution in it and dismantle its political influence; also because this revolution comes from outside.

[Sava]

Soviet soldiers were actually marching in the name of communism and atheism that it supported.

I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a Red Army soldier who didn't have a cross hidden away, somewhere.

[C0ckney]

I don't really see examples of Christians "doing the same" today. There are no worldwide Christian parties, no worldwide Christian terrorist groups, no significant part of Christians calling for theocracy, no significant part of Christians supporting death penalty for biasphemers or apostates, no Christian states actually having apostasy laws, no Christian countries forbidding building non-Christian temples, I don't think there are Christian countries forbidding Muslim proselitation too, and I
could say dozens of other things.

"we are all the same" answer just ignores the problem.
Islamic terrorism is a temporary phenomenon that will pass. Sharia isn't.

i think you rather missed my point here, which was not 'we are all the same' but rather that all religions can be and have been used to justify violence in some way or other, and that that by itself is enough to say that a religion can be used to justify violence and that therefore a textual debate becomes irrelevant; unless it's actual theological discussion, rather than a real world one.

but while we are on the subject i will point out that christianity has been used recently to justify violence. to take but one shocking example: the rwandan genocide, during which we saw armed priests encouraging their followers to kill tutsis and even taking part in violence themselves (if you don't know what i'm talking about google wenceslas munyeshyaka and athanase seromba, the second of whom ordered the bulldozing of his church with 2,000 tutsis inside and had the survivors shot). these men and many others are being protected disgracefully by the catholic church in europe.

[Sava]

no Christian countries forbidding building non-Christian temples

Who said this? I can't bother to reread the thread.

Muslims are facing tremendous challenges dealing with (TOTALLY NON-ISLAMAPHOBIC) all sort of zoning requirement issues when it comes to building new mosques. My county in particular is being especially ****ty... and it's turned blue in the last few years.

America is good at using the rule of law to oppress minorities.

[Kidlicious]

Who said this? I can't bother to reread the thread.

Muslims are facing tremendous challenges dealing with (TOTALLY NON-ISLAMAPHOBIC) all sort of zoning requirement issues when it comes to building new mosques. My county in particular is being especially ****ty... and it's turned blue in the last few years.

America is good at using the rule of law to oppress minorities.

[Sava]

I really hope a tornado kills you next year.

[Felch]

Speaking of the age of religion (I missed that whole discussion entirely), Christianity has been around a lot longer and has committed much more evil than Islam. That's just a fact of it being around longer. So if we're going to examine overall culpability, Christians have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to labeling all Muslims as bad across the board.

That sort of behavior is the very definition of racism/bigotry... quibbling about what constitutes a race doesn't help the cause of the racist.

I have no use for it or anyone who engages in such behavior. It's childish and wrong. Not just morally wrong... factually wrong. Find an adult way of expressing your frustration at the evils of modern day terrorism carried about by Islamic radicals.

Christianity hasn't done anything wrong, nor has Islam. Ideas can't act; they can only motivate people to act. If you want to know if Christianity motivated people to commit abominable crimes, you have to look deeper than their affiliations. In many cases, religion was a motivating factor for evil. In others it was irrelevant. Some conquistadors tortured and enslaved natives out of religious fervor, others because they wanted gold and silver. Occasionally religion was even a motivating factor for good, like with Bartolomé de las Casas. In any event, if you want to ascribe the evils committed by Christians to their Christian faith you should support your claim with evidence beyond "People who were baptized did bad things." That's lazy and thoroughly unconvincing, especially since baptism usually occurs before a child is old enough to have any choice in the matter. Baptism itself is no proof of a person's beliefs or motivations.

As far as criticism of Islam being bigotry - you're wrong. Islam is a set of ideas, first and foremost. We can't blame people for being white or black or tall or short, but we sure can blame them for being idiots and spreading terrible ideas. People are entirely responsible for their ideas and for the ideas they pass on to others. Just as we can and should lambaste people for racism or rejecting childhood vaccination, we should be critical of any religion or ideology that rejects human rights.

[Sava]

(pro tip: many people are born into a religion)

you are generally a smart guy felch, but you are so way off, it's concerning

[Felch]

People aren't born Muslim or Christian, anymore than they are born racist. But if you have racist redneck parents, no one will be surprised when you paint a Confederate flag on your pickup truck, right?