The Barbarity of Christianity (as compared to Islam)

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Is burning someone at the stake Christ-like?

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Did these Christians burn people at the stake because Jesus told them to, or did they burn people at the stake because they were uncivilized, barbarous people whose religious beliefs happened to be Christianity? And were these groups more or less civilized than their pagan predecessors, who also had their own ugly habits?Did the English ban Jews from their midst because Christianity made them into racists, or because they were racists who happened to be Christians?Do modern-day Muslim nations greatly limit personal freedom because Islam tells them to, or do they do this because they don't have the Western values of individual liberty that were begun by the (pagan) Greeks and rediscovered by later Christian countries? Are modern-day Christian nations more advanced than Muslim nations in this regard because Christianity made them so, or again, was it our Western tradition?To look at cultures and assign whatever good or evil they do to their religious tradition is a bit simplistic. It ignores the fact that people have in themselves an amazing capacity to do evil things, and then justify such behavior on whatever belief system they happen to adhere to. This is true whether it is Cortez abusing the natives (rationalizing it as spreading Christianity, but really searching for gold) or Islamic armies conquering and occupying Spain.

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Islam is not a threat.

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"Islam" is not a threat, it is a belief system.The adherents of Islam may or may not be a threat, depending on how Westernized they are and whether they respect the religious liberty of others. Some are, some aren't.This is true of any belief system. A group of adherents to Christianity would certainly be a threat if they want to kill you or force you to convert to their belief system. To a Muslim or Jew in Jerusalem during the Crusades, Christians would most definately be a threat. By the way, so would Muslims to a Christian community in Romania during the same time period, and for the same reasons.By the way, there are Muslims who would like to kill Westerners and/or force us to convert, so yeah, those guys are a threat. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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But in the case of burning folk at the stake to save their souls or because the people were thought to be witches, the proximate cause was Christianity.

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I'll have to grant that if you really think you'll save a soul by burning its owner, religion would have to qualify a dominant cause. I wonder, though, if the original idea of burning people came from the Bible, from the previously existing pagan culture of Europe in some ways only got a thin veneer of Christianity and Roman laws.And was it the Bible that dictated that single women might witches? Or sexism that was just native to that society?

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The continued expulsion of Jews throughout Europe had as its proximate cause Christianity. The fact that we are speaking of Jewish Expulsion (and we should also be including other pogroms such as special taxation and ghettos) makes those events religiously driven. The people may also have been xenophobic in general and there were other groups who were also targeted (Romany being one example) but the "Jewish Question" was based on Christian dogma.

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Did the instruction to oppress Jews come directly from the New Testament, or was it a convenient interpretation of the New Testament by religious authorities in Europe? It makes a difference because any interpretation by the latter may be colored by the local culture, of which religion is a part but not the whole.

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Complicated. Since the treatment and acceptance of individual freedoms varies greatly among Islamic Nations that is very hard to answer. Indonesia is far different than Saudi Arabia.

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Yes. This is because religion doctrine quickly becomes interpreted by different cultural groups. The original Islamic cultural hearth of Saudi Arabia had a very different starting culture than the Pacific Rim culture of Indonesia when Islam was introduced. While all references to previous pagan cultures were either Islamized or effaced by Mohammed during his time, when Islam arrived in Indonesia later a sort of coexistance between pagan tradition and Islam was struck out. While the area is threatened by stronger interpretations of Islam, such as Wahabism from the Gulf States, some of the old pagan shrines are still visited today.This sort of variation of behavior even in one religious system, I think, strengthens my argument, which basically is, "it's complicated".

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That too makes some assumptions I believe unwarranted. For example, the idea of a modern day Christian Nation. I am not at all sure that other than the Vatican, there is a Modern Day Christian Nation.

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I knew that would be mentioned. You are technically correct. The United States, for example, is a nation with numerous different religious persuasions, including the non-religious, and has a secular government. But someone from a very different background visiting here, say India or Saudi Arabia, would still probably consider this to be a Christian nation. For the sake of simplicity, I consider most of the west to be "Christian" even though we have secular governments and tolerate numerous different belief systems, because it is the Christian tradition that has had the greatest influence on us historically.Edited by gene90, : Corrected some of my atrociously bad typing.

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True. But there are also Christians who hold to the same mode of behavior. In the US, the threat is usually more subtle than violence, but we still see the good Christians lining up shouting that God Hates Fags and bombing abortion clinics. Not all that long ago good US Christians were bombing churches and hanging folk.

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Christian violence still exists in the US, and if you want more examples you can find them in the Third World, where the majority of belief systems tend to be at their most violent.However, it seems to be Islamic violence and terrorism that is the greatest danger at this time. I think over time Western ideas of personal freedom will filter into the Islamic countries and the violent parts of the Quran will be reinterpreted just as parts of the Bible are no longer considered binding by Christians (the New Covenant) or by Jews (the Oral Law).

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When you engage in an activity knowing that innocent people are going to be killed, how do you escape moral culpability when those people are killed?

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War is not the only activity in which people die as a result of our actions. My old hydrogeology textbook cited a study that found that 1/20,000 people will contract cancer caused by drinking chlorinated water over their lifetimes. (I can cite it if you'd like, but don't have it with me at the moment.)Does that mean that water utilities are culpable for the deaths from those cancers?The question is whether the number of people that die outweighs potential good from acting, or the potential evil that would result from inaction.

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IMHO the greatest danger is Ignorance, just plain Ignorance.

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Maybe. No belief system or culture has a monopoly on that.

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Islam today is threatened (and the rest of the world as well) by virulent strains of Fundamentalism. It is that, Fundamentalism, that is the issue. The facts are that right now Fundamentalism does not hold strong political control in much of the west. However, that does not mean that we are free from the threat of Fundamentalism any more than Islam was.

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Like the Islamic world, which at one time was the height of tolerance, education and enlightenment, we face the threat of a rise in Fundamentalism. Should we see a continued increase in what I call the Christian Cult of Ignorance, we too could rapidly descend to a state of sectarian warfare and intolerance.

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I cannot dispute that.But I would say that Islamic Fundamentalism is the proximal threat, and that Christian Fundamentalism is currently held in check by our secular traditions. I hope traditions of religious freedom and secular government will triumph over both, but right now Islamic Fundamentalism holds sway in more parts of the world than Christian Fundamentalism does.

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B. This is not a comparison of Judiasm/Islam, but Christianity/Islam since Judiasm was not Christianity but another world order for the specific purpose of establishing a messianic nation in a world full of paganism. Neither Christianity or Islam reject that fact. What they disagree on is which prophet and which doctrine the people are to follow.

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Could you elaborate on that a little? I don't follow. Why shouldn't we include the Old Testament in this analysis?

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Tal said that there are Muslims who deliberately target innocent civilians while American (and presumably Christian) soldiers simply engage in military operations that they know will result in the deaths of innocent civilians without actually deliberately targeting them; he claims that this makes Islam different than American Christianity, while I am asking why this makes a difference.

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First of all, the American military, like the American government, does not have a set religious creed. In fact, there are a small number of Muslim soldiers in the American forces in Iraq now. This is really beside the point, though, since I think it is self-evident that the good (or bad) behavior of individuals does not necessarily reflect on the good (or bad) nature of their religious beliefs.I agree with Tal in that there is a huge moral difference between terrorists who murder civilians with the intent of perpetuating a sectarian civil war, with foreign soldiers who military engage said terrorists to attempt to establish peace, support a democratically elected government, and frankly, go home as soon as possible reasonably certain that they won't have to back one it turns into New Sudan.If nothing else, the intent of the various forces in play in Iraq has to do with the morality of the situation. If terrorists would stop killing civilians deliberately, American forces would not kill civilians by accident, the war would be over, and the troops could come home.I also think that one has to weigh the occasional, very regretful, and accidental killing of civilians by American forces against what would happen if we were to implement what the Iraq Study Group called a "precipitous withdrawl". If you have not read their report, it is rather informative on what "could" happen there. By the way, one conclusion of the study group is that since we began the destabilization of civil order there, we have a moral interest in the outcome.It is pretty obvious now that a lot of mistakes have been made in Iraq, starting perhaps with the decision to invade (a decision I vigorously supported). Now that we're there, though, the only debate that matters is what to do now. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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Why is one barbaric and the other not?

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Kind of reminds me of a certain Platonic dialog. Yes, to everyone involved, his cause is "right". No sane person will knowingly undertake a cause that is wrong or morally unjust.The problem is that not everybody agrees on what is just.If one believes that one Iraqi religious sect should commit genocide against another, and that Islamic fundamentalism makes for the best form of government, then the terrorists in Iraq have the moral high ground.If one believes that representative government and peace are morally preferable, then the American forces have the moral high ground.Otherwise, you could agree with Thrasymachus that might makes right and whoever wins the war in Iraq is right, or if the two are morally equivalent, then morality is all relative and killing is probably okay anyway so it doesn't matter. After all, if deliberately killing civilians to perpetuate an endless conflict is no different from accidentally killing civilians in attempting to end a conflict, then morality is irrelevant. Flip a coin. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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In other words, regardless of intent or whether or not you agree with the stated goals, why is engaging in activities that you know will kill innocent civilians different than deliberately targeting them?

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If you disregard intent, then your statement is true, and all wars are simply organized murder. I'm not sure why this matters though because I've yet to see why we should disregard intent.In the real world intent matters--there is quite a difference between the ambitions of the terrorists (a blanket term for a large number of different actors with conflicting goals but similar methods of operation) and the forces that are attempting to bring peace and stability to Iraq. To disregard this reality seems to serve no purpose.By the way, in US law, intent makes a great deal of difference. Somebody, it may have been you, in this thread compared US policy to drunk driving: drunks may avoid collisions, even travel roads that minimize encounters with other traffic, but still cause fatal accidents. This is not a bad analogy, but it is one that I can use to suit my own purposes: in the US legal system, a drunk driver who causes a fatal accident will more likely be charged with vehicular manslaughter than murder. If he had set out to deliberately kill someone, he would be charged murder. In fact, we actually have different levels of punishments for manslaughter, second degree, and premeditated murder. Therefore, in our culture and legal traditions, someone's intent makes quite a bit of difference. Another example that stole headlines recently was the astronaut that was charged with attempted murder. What did she do? She certainly didn't kill anybody, but faces very serious charges because it appears to some authorities that that was what she had planned. Therefore she will face considerably more serious charges than assaulting someone with pepper spray.If we consider intent in our legal system, I don't see why it should be rejected in this discussion. Edited by gene90, : No reason given.

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But this also suits my purpose. The drunk driver's intent did not absolve her of the responsibility for the deaths that resulted from her behavior. In either case, her behavior is considered criminal.

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I have to grant that death by incompetence can be considered a crime, though this is rarely applied to warfare because of the inherent expectation that noncombatants will die.

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I imagine it's because if one really believe that it's intent that matters, and it's not important that the blown up school bus full of children is the result of suicide bomber deliberately climbing aboard the bus or the result of an accidentally mistargeted missile, then one is forced to admit that there are cases where it is justified to blow up kids. I bet most people don't really want to go there.

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We've killed a lot of kids in America over the years with things like airbags, antibiotics, peanut butter sandwiches (allergies and carcinogenic aflatoxins) and the occasional vaccine. Is that the equivalent of murder?We "don't want to go there" because it's a very emotional issue. Real people die every day because of decisions we make, I don't mean to make light of that. What I want to argue is that the only rational way to make sense of this is with a cost-benefit analysis. When we don't do that we end up in the situation the Peruvian government found itself in in 1991: after they ended chlorination thousands died from cholera.

I've been through about five edits, and didn't think any added to the debate, so I don't have anything else to add on this line of thought.I was thinking, though, yesterday, about the definition of "barbaric", as meaning non-Greek or non-Roman language, culture, or tactics. In military terms that might be taken non-symmetrical means of warfare. Instead of coming out of the fight the phalanx directly, barbarians would hide behind rocks and launch arrows, etc.In this context, I think the insurgents are using non-Western (and therefore barbarian) tactics.(Yeah, I didn't want to completely waste this post.) Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.Edited by gene90, : No reason given.