[Descenterace]

Christian fundies are just as bad as Muslim fundies. There's probably a similar proportion of them too.

Point is, it's not about Christians vs. Muslims. It's about stupid people vs. other stupid people. It has nothing to do with beliefs and everything to do with the blatant, mind-numbing idiocy of a certain percentage of people. And y'know what? We'll never be rid of idiots like this. It's a fact of life.

So I vote that we make it legal to hunt ****wits. Coz then they'll have something important to whine/fight about.
 

[Nuke]

i wish christians and muslims would anihilate one another so that people of heathen pride may reclaim the earth

I pray for it every day, and sacrifice a chicken now and then

i hope its an extra crispy sacrifice, the gods love extra crispy

[NGTM-1R]

Christian fundies are just as bad as Muslim fundies. There's probably a similar proportion of them too.

I don't recall the last time Christian fundementalists caught international headlines, held the state of Israel hostage, or crashed airliners into the WTC. Base canard, my friend. Both of them.

Islam has always been more accepting of violence in its name then Christianity is. Jesus sought to prevent a war; Mohammed lead one. Jesus denounced conversion by the sword; Mohammed practiced it.

[Descenterace]

Oh, no recent examples of Christian atrocities spring to mind.
Remind me... who sanctioned the Crusades, and in the name of which God were they fought?

Christianity has been responsible for a fair few wars.

[NGTM-1R]

Certainly. But then again, Christianity has learned better. Islam has not.

[Herra Tohtori]

...But then again, Islam is also younger religion, by margin of about 600 years.

Christianity in 15th century wasn't that much better than what we see in islamic world today.

And conversely on 15th century, Chinese culture was much ahead of European.



...I'm not trying to prove anything with this post, just to show that things are never as simple as they should be.

[Bobboau]

If I was in a position of power I would deliver a two part address, the first part would go as follows:
"sometimes it seems as if the musleims of the world have amung them the craziest halfwits on the planet ready to spring forth tward violence at the drop of a hat!"

part two would be delivered the next day, and would be as such:
"see what I mean?"

[Descenterace]

Herra: And that's all that's required.

My point stands. Christianity has learned because it's had longer to do so, but idiots still exist. That bull**** about Intelligent Design and evolution being taught on an equal footing is an excellent example of this.
Difference is, the Christian fundies prefer to use words to bore their opponents to death. Unless they happen to run the country, in which case they've got the military at their command.

[Styxx]

"We're the religion of peace, and we'll ****ing kill you if you say otherwise!"

Though I'm not interested in defending the Pope, I support anything that ticks off fundamentalist nutjobs of all varieties.

[Ulala]

.
Difference is, the Christian fundies prefer to use words to bore their opponents to death.

I'd rather be bored to death by words than by bullets, swords, bombs, biological weapons, airplanes, etc.

[brozozo]

Pope Nazi the Third Reich went up enormously in my estimation after his comments. He has balls. I like - balls.

Oh, please. If you want to accuse a pope of supporting Nazism,  go dig up Pius XII's bones.

[Janos]

I like people who draw up comparisons between Islam of today and Christianity of 600 years ago - despite the fact that for last 1400 years they have evolved in completely different enviroments, and the birth of Islam was very, very different from the birth of Christianity, they somehow come up with minor similarities and extrapolate on those.

Islam started as relatively unified theological work, used to actually gather people under a single banner. They sought to bring stability to greater Middle East, by sword. But alas! islam soon learned that it would be better to give the opponents a choice - bend or die. So they came up with delicate rules for the entire religion, which - warlikely - prevented abuse against fellow muslims but allowed for violence against pagans. All while keeping a discreetly neutral position towards elder religions of the same phylogenetic tree, namely Jewism and Christianity. This, of course, inevitably resulted in internal strife and finally civil wars and separations and stuff. You can witness it today by comparing Shia and Sunni.

Christianity, on the other hand, started as a bunch of obscure, hysterical, often violent sects which were pretty much underground. It took over 300 years - from the death of Christ and the formation of the new sects to the internal problems of Roman empire - for them to form even relatively binding consensus about things like holy trinity, flesh of god, killing, war, whatever. After this the Christianity quickly spread to Europe, of all places. I will not give you a rundown of Europe of 400ad to Europe 2006ad, but it's a complex mishmash which survived pretty much by interacting with Asia and North Africa, while different tribes were happily slaughtering each other for just and unjust reasons and just for fun and hell just for war! I started to type a brief history of Renessaince, Mameluks, Ottomans, Lutherians and **** but just gave up. The histories of the two are intervined yet so different from each other that direct comparison is pretty much impossible. Christianity is sect-and-interpretation-based, very flexible and tired religion. Islam is law-and-habit based and the only significant strife happened 1000 years ago. People would do well to try to judge the two religions by themselves or then just drown in the grey goo of cultural relativity.

People who follow the religion, though, are people and people don't really change. They will always be xenophobic and warlike.


Edit: OK two quick points and bad metaphores before I go to bed.
1. Bird and bat have wings. They are not closely related though, similarities do not always support close relativity.
2. Cultures with similar backgrounds can and will evolve differently because of different enviroments and humans guiding them.
3. Just because code A and code B have similar sequences it does not mean that they process them similarly

My long and badly written reply to inevitable backlash will come tomorrow. Sleep ist mein Freund.

[Mefustae]

*Pope should apologize for accusing Muslim Faith of Violence!*

It's not a mistake. It's a quote. If he had said that those were his beliefs, you'd have a point. As it is, all he did was quote ancient texts that did not reflect his own beliefs but were used to demonstrate a point, and then you act like he did some big crime. Why don't you just accuse me of being a nazi, or being insensitive to Germans if I use a quote from Hitler to denounce prejudice? It would make about as much sense.

What he did was say the words. Again, it wouldn't have mattered if he was standing under a 50ft. Neon sign that said "QUOTE! NOT MY OPINION!", extremist assholes would take it out of context and stir up their followers to create strife, which is exactly what has happened. I have never used the word 'crime' in explaining what he did, merely what he was wrong to say what he said in so many words. You can draw comparisons that if you quote Hitler you'd be seen as a Nazi, but it doesn't work that way, because you don't personally represent an entire religion!

By saying what he said, whether he meant it or not, he gave fanatics and extremists gasoline with which they can fuel their fires of hatred, and for that he should make an apology, if only just to contribute to ending the violence.

The only ones in the wrong here are the bastards who take the sentence out of context.

I take it you would also make the case that only the child who shoots up the school is guilty, not the man who gave him the gun.

[Ford Prefect]

Does anyone actually know what the context of this heinous quote was? Because I hear people all over the place saying "He was just quoting LOL!", but in my experience, public speakers quote for one of two reasons: Either they think the quote contains truth or that it's a big fat lie, and I really doubt the Pope was saying, "See, this is what we DON'T think about Islam."