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in Acts 5, the apostles clearly state that "We must obey god rather than men."

But those are not the Lord's words, are they? Not even any of His prophets'... So, it is possible for a Christian to ignore them as a mistaken (or imprecise) opinion of a fallible human.

The take-way by most Christian theologians on this topic is that the bible says you should always honor the laws of man, but you must fear and obey God's word when it conflicts.

That's the thing — it can be (and is) argued both ways. Which theologists constitute a majority? You say, "most" choose God's law, but the overwhelming evidence points the other way — and did for centuries already: there are very few cases, when a Christian criminal claimed to be following his faith in contradiction to the secular law. Islamic clergy and ordinary faithful, on the other hand, are quite anonymous in that the only acceptable political order is Theocracy with Sharia being the law. Today the overwhelming opinion of Muslims is approving of the Paris murders. States and organizations condemned them (whether sincerely or not will never be known), but the ordinary Muslims are rejoicing. Are you going to call them all "uncivilized" — and still avoid accusations of racism?

It is these old testament books that have the aformentioned description of religious law and punishments.

Except Koran — which is the God's word entirely — adds quite a few of its own...

And not just in this regard, BTW. For example, portraying of humans and even animals is forbidden by the two earlier religions too. As is worshiping anything other than the imaginary. But Mohammed, having seen the sort of idolatry Christians succumb to with their icons and "holy relics", has made his laws a lot stricter. Generally, this fact is recognized, viewed as a good thing, and causes no controversy (except when the followers destroy ancient statues on these grounds).

Why can't the same people admit, that Islam is also a lot less forgiving about people criticizing or otherwise "disrespecting" Islam, than Christianity and Judaism are?

What about the people financing these acts of terrorism? Generally it's the mega rich sheeks and dictators. Arguing that Christian fundamentalists would go around bombing people if they had the money is absurd. Relatively the people who finance Al-Queida are vastly more rich than any Christians in the mid-west.

Islam has a long well documented history of fanaticism that involves killing. Mohammed himself killed thousands in all the battles for Jihad (i.e. taking over all countries until Islam is universal.) To quote from a Hindu source about Mohammed's war atrocities.


http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/mogha l_atro.html

You must remember, without Charlemagne it's quite possible that Arabic would be the dominant language in the EU right now.

And while you can claim the crusades as a Christian example of war atrocities. I think you'd find it to be one of the only cases in history. Very few modern Christians would consider the cruisades to be in line with their faith, even remotely. Nowhere in the New Testament does it suggest to go out and try and conquer countries in the name of Christ.

I think the original post meant this Aryan invasion theory.

Actually, the Aryans probably came from the area just south of the Caspian Sea. They migrated from there into Europe and India.
Weather(sp?) or not they actually invaded those areas is being debated.

Besides, if you can't believe what's written in the vedas, you got nothin'. Everything else is power mongering and fiction.

It is "Hindu", you insensitive clod :-)

Kidding apart: "Hindu" is the name given to it by people looking in from outside. Quick intro here

India becoming a superpower,Heh don't make me laugh.I know what India could become and what India is already in terms of being a superpower.It is a superpower all right,a superpower (or is it a pooh-power of corruption,(Everybody agrees India is a ,corrupt land),genocide,dowry deaths(bride burnings bride burnings ,losers,and a country of losers.

Jainism? Sikhism? Shinto? Hinduism? Bhuddism? Taoism? Zoroastrianism?

Four of the above do not formally recognize the existence of One True God, so your question makes no sense.

Speaking as a pantheist and a Universalist Unitarian, your question doesn't work for me either. You may as well ask if my neoteric ether has transflogistanized! (uh, I don't know the answer to that one either, perhaps somebody else does.)

However, if I twist my mind back into the contorted, tiny blinders of my fundamentalist christian childhood, I think I can answer your question from that perspective. I imagine the same answer would work for fundamentalist Judaism or Fundamentalist Islam, which seem to work pretty much the same way. Here goes: "YOU ARE EVIL!!!! YOU HAVE WICKED THOUGHTS!!! YOU MUST BOW DOWN TO THE MAJESTY OF THE ONE TRUE LORD!!! YOUR FLESH MUST BE MORTIFIED!!! KILL THE UNBELIEVERS!! KILL!! KILL!!"

Was that the answer you were looking for?

Reminds me of story see bottom of this page

The US Gov't was funding an early computer group to translate documents from Russian-to-English and back. The hope, obviously, was to eliminate the need for human translators. A particular sentence was fed to the computer, which translated it into Russian. The computer was then fed the Russian, and it translated it back to English.

The original sentence was "The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak".
The resulting sentence? "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten".

The computer didn't know which of the many possible words to use when translating spirit, so it used "vodka". Likewise, it tried to put the word "strong" into context, and since strong vodka is prized in Russia, it decided that the vodka was good. Likewise, flesh got translated to meat, and weak flesh became bad meat.

As someone who left Islam, I know from experience that I am not dead

If you were in Afghanistan then you *would* be dead for converting away from Islam. Last time I checked the United States didn't have Sharia law, it has weak beauracratic Christian law imposed by heavy-handed oppressive cops (why the heck were tanks used against WTO protestors I mean *tanks* if Tianneman square happens in the United States it's OK but not in China, hypocrites). The US is far from perfect, but still it's far closer than a *lot* of countries, like China massacring Tibetan monks, jailing Falun Gong Tai Chi practitioners (WTF??) and Brazil torturing and killing poor people for being well, poor, and you thought medicaid was bad. Do you believe the women on rawa who get shot for walking without their husband beside them => were whores could have said, "But I'm not muslim" as a defense. The countries that implement Osama binLaden-type Islam and need to be nuked: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE. Read this

People converting from Islam were warned they will face the death penalty in an edict issued by the Mullah in January.

Non-Muslims have no right to worship in open areas, and can only do so in places assigned to them, AFP quoted Wali as saying.

An order to Hindus to wear yellow colors was introduced a few years ago in Kandahar, the center of the Taliban's main power base in the south of the country, though it was only partially implemented, Wali said.

The dress code is aimed at non-Muslims, particularly Hindus and Sikhs, being spared when religious police squads order shops to close and herd people to mosques at prayer times, AFP cited local press reports as saying

Which reminds me my neighbour from across teh street lived in Egypt 30 years ago. There was a crisis involving the Americans, I couldn't make out what it was because she broke down crying. All Americans and British were warned to leave the country, but the warning came too late. After Friday prayers, after a furious speech by the Imam, hundreds of muslims poured out of the mosque looking real pissed, a British man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, several muslims grabbed his right arm and leg, several more his left arm and leg. They pulled and tore him apart, severing his limbs. He died. She broke down crying again so it was difficult to make out, but it was something like because the mobs started looking for all the Brits and Americans so they broke into her flat with machettees looking for non-muslims to kill, but fortunately she had anticipated this and had sought refuge in her neighbour's flat. The next day she and her British husband left and claimed asylum in the UK.

More recently my friend whom I've known since I was 5 was supposed to go to India and Pakistan with his good good friend who was so nice to him called "Sheikh Omar" - yes that one, I know 2 people that went to the same school as Sheikh Omar. In India they were supposed to meet with my friend's Uncle, a Brigadier in the Indian army. There was a last minute cancellation and my friend couldn't make the flight. If he made that flight he'd be dead, and would be on the Daniel Pearl decapitation video (available for download on Kazaa). He's already informed the FBI and given a full report so this is on the up and up.

So the next time you suggest that I'm "just quoting from Google" you might want to think again. After all you have to know what you're looking for to find what you're looking for unless you try the "Are you feeling lucky?" button.

Many people on /. know people that died in WTC, well I indirectly know the people that actually did it. Small world, eh? I think think this makes me qualified enough to comment on the evils of Islam's most popular implementation.

As for who created these problems and the history of the Taliban, Mujihadeen, native American Indians, British, French and Spanish(wipe out the entire Mayan race WTF???) colonisation, yes it's an unfortunate truth that every colonial nation has committed heinous crimes against many others, except for Tibet, Hinduism and Buddhism, the three most dissed religions. Immigration has worked because the immigrants' religions were malleable, Hindus would go screw it and eat American beef steaks, Scottish immirants would forget haggis and eat Pizza Hut, multiculturalism was working so well... until Islam came along. In my office canteen a woman wearing a bhurka was sitting there saying I shouldn't eat pork, one of our managers replied, "If you don't like pork, the airport is that way". I'm glad to see the native culture is adapting to resist Islam in this way, the same way Picard treats a Klingon completely different than anyone else. Before the British divide and conquor techniques were used these types of militant muslims didn't exist. Ultimately Britain is to blame for WTC by segregating Hindus and Muslims in India by creating a feedback loop especially in the muslims by telling them they were "outnumbered and repressed". But then without Britain's colonistaion would America exist at all?

You speak about corporate rule, and yet the SEC knows that if it doesn't regulate them these corporates will destroy themselves, just look at Enron. Better the devil you know.

In WW2 Winston Churchill knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl harbour, but they didn't tell the US because they knew that the average US citizen doesn't know or care about anything unless NY gets nuked or something, so that's exactly what you got. This is why bad stuff keeps happening to the US, maybe you should have a complaints box at the white house which actually makes a difference, but then that's not possible because it'll never get more ratings than WWF. Don't believe me? Well OK where's the USS Nimitz right now? Where's the USS Kennedy? Where's the S. S. Essess? Which one's the odd one out? Heck I don't even know, the only time I'd notice a big international event is when somebody gets nuked or the world trade centre falls down, even now. This is why I'm pretty sure a lot more peope knew about WTC before it happened than are owning up now.

Do you know how many innocent afghani citizens were killed while "radicals" were purged? I'll bet you can give me exact figures for the number of Americans who were killed

Well Islam is strong and that's why people don't want to hurt it. Loads of Hindus die, who cares? CNN is blaming the Indian government for the dead people in Gujurat. How did this start? 2000 muslims surrounded a train and burnt everybody alive. How dare the international media tries to blame the hindus? That's like the (RI|MP)AA making computers illegal and then being surprised when there's a civil war. Oh yeah geeks are sissies like hindus so if computers are made illegal geeks'll just rant on /. and that'll be the end of it. If (RI|MP)AA kills RMS in an "accident" EFF will collapse, he's irreplacable, his moral viewpoint is unique. Only stupid people attack Klingons

Just leave Google alone and actually go talk to people, and maybe you will learn that Google doesn't have all the answers. Live a little, and you might discover that even you are not capable of being perfect, even though everyone tries (Americans, Canadians, and Muslims included).