A C.A.I.R. hack tries to ambush Allen West at a talk.
West took him toschool madrassa.
There's an idiot smarminess about defenders of the Religion of Peace™. There is indeed much to defend in Islam-- it has genuine goodness (e.g. a strong community, acts of charity, recognition of a higher power), as well as evil. But as Pope Benedict noted in his Regensburg Address, the good qualities of Islam are common to all mature faiths.
That which is unique to Islam is evil. Islam was born and flourished in violence. It identifies worship of God with obedience to the State. It condones killing to an extent unknown to other modern faiths. Apostates are put to death. It is spread only by violence and maintains its influence almost wholly by violence. It is the antithesis of a Religion of Peace™.
That is not to say that Muslims are violent as individuals. Most Muslims are peace-loving people, just like most Christians and Jews and Sikhs and atheists are peace-loving people.
But Islam is violent, and anyone who argues otherwise shouldn't say it in front of Alan West.
West took him to
There's an idiot smarminess about defenders of the Religion of Peace™. There is indeed much to defend in Islam-- it has genuine goodness (e.g. a strong community, acts of charity, recognition of a higher power), as well as evil. But as Pope Benedict noted in his Regensburg Address, the good qualities of Islam are common to all mature faiths.
That which is unique to Islam is evil. Islam was born and flourished in violence. It identifies worship of God with obedience to the State. It condones killing to an extent unknown to other modern faiths. Apostates are put to death. It is spread only by violence and maintains its influence almost wholly by violence. It is the antithesis of a Religion of Peace™.
That is not to say that Muslims are violent as individuals. Most Muslims are peace-loving people, just like most Christians and Jews and Sikhs and atheists are peace-loving people.
But Islam is violent, and anyone who argues otherwise shouldn't say it in front of Alan West.
No. Islam wasn't born in violence. It started as a Christian sect, which didn't recognize the Trinity. 'There is but one God, and Mohammed (which means 'he who is to be praised' ie Jesus) is His messenger' was the rallying call to distinguish it from other forms of Christianity, including what later became the orthodox form with the Trinity.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Byzantines and the Persians had weakened themselves in wars, the proto-Islam expanded. And then when the ruling dynasty changed and it moved to Arabia about a century later, the rulers did what rulers often do; invent a religion and holy scripture and invent a nonexistent history, as a means of consolidating their power.
Religion is very useful to rulers. Islam was invented to support the already existing Arab empire. The conquest came first, followed by Islam, not the reverse.
And Mohammed as a historical person (unlike Jesus) never existed.
Islam as a justification for violence in creating an empire isn't unique. Christianity has served just as well in justifying violence in the Americas for example.
Muhammed existed, Islam was born and spread in violence, and you're nuts.
DeleteStarted as a Christian sect?
DeleteQuestion... When did Mohammed get baptized?
Both Mohammed and Jesus are fabricated superheroes - there's no contemporary evidence for either of them.
DeleteYou might as well worship Spiderman or the Hulk.
We have manuscripts attesting to the life of Jesus and Muhammed dating to within a century or so of their lives.
DeleteThere is no other figure in the ancient world for whom we have such strong manuscript evidence documenting their existence.
We have more certainty about Jesus's existence based on manuscript evidence(and Muhammed's as well) than we have about the existence of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar etc.
You know that's bullshit. Plenty of contemporary historians wrote first-hand accounts about Caesar. Not to mention the gazillion coins, statues, monuments, inscriptions, etc.
DeleteIn stark contrast, zilch from contemporaries of Jesus. Maybe the mythical Jesus was modeled after a real person, but it's all hearsay, if that. Same problem with Mohammed.
Try focusing, troy. We are talking about the proximity by date of the documents we have. We have some actual documents about Jesus' life from the second century ad.
DeleteThe earlies copies of Caesar's writings and reports by contemporaries date from about 1000 AD, which were copies of copies of copies...
We have tens of thousands of copies of ancient Gospels and letters, dating to within a couple of centuries of Jesus' life.
The manuscript evidence for Jesus is massive and nearly contemporary, and is much more reliable than that of any other ancient figure.
The Qu'ran, which dates to 150 years after the supposed time of Mohammed, doesn't mention Mohammed. The biographies of Mohammed were written about 3 centuries after Mohammed supposedly lived, to fill a need of Muslims to 'know' something of their supposed prophet. The early battles, such as the Battle of the Trench were fictional to make Islam appear to be a mighty religion, in having a small Muslim force defeating a much larger one.
DeleteI think that Jesus existed, as an apocalyptic preacher, like John the Baptist and Paul of Tarsus (we are still waiting for the Apocalypse), but heavily overlaid with myth. Christianity falsely has the reputation of being a religion of peace, because it arose at a time when Rome was extremely strong, so it had to act weak and peaceful to survive. Once it got power, it behaved violently against its foes.
King Josiah attempted to exploit the wars between the Persian and Assyrian empires by reinventing Judaism and editing scripture to increase his power, but fell at the first hurdle in being killed in battle with the Egyptians. Religion is very useful to rulers in consolidating their power if they have it. If he'd succeeded, Judaism would have been the Islam of the day, a strong military force.
With Islam, first came the conquest, then came the Qur'an not vice versa. The Qur'an justified the conquest after the fact.
The manuscript evidence for Jesus is nonexistent. There's no source outside of scripture. We don't know who wrote the gospels. And they're copies of copies of copies too. Paul never met Jesus and about half of the canonical letters are forgeries.
At least you accede that Jesus existed. You claim that our understanding of Him is mostly a accretion of myth, etc. Many scholars have addressed this, and have made very strong arguments that the gospels accurately portray Him. The best I've read is NT Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God. He goes into enormous detail to show that Jesus portrayal is strongly realistic, by showing that the pervading myths of the first century ad were radically unlike the Jesus we find in the NT.
DeleteThere were plenty of religious leaders who came to be portrayed via myths, and many of the gnostic gospels did add mythology to the portrayal of Jesus, but the canonical gospels utterly lack mythological characteristics.
It's a magnificent read, if you have the time (it's a massive tome, but it's on kindle)
No thanks. Besides being long (860 pages - I don't have the time) and expensive, it's a typical Apologetics book. An argument stating that it's reasonable for believers to believe.
DeleteI'm not a believer. I don't accept that there's souls. That it's reasonable for God to sacrifice himself to himself to atone for all human sins, past and future.
Even accepting that there were no preexisting myths of exactly the sort of resurrection as in the gospels, doesn't mean that the resurrection occurred. The resurrection was necessary as an add-on, because the Jews weren't expecting the Messiah to be executed as a common criminal.